My Fantastic FinCon18 Experience

My Fantastic FinCon18 Experience

FinCon18 was absolutely fantastic.

For almost a year, I had been enthusiastically looking forward to FinCon18. I had read so many amazing articles about the FinCons of years past that the FOMO in me just had to check it out for myself.

I was so excited that I purchased tickets early in the year just in time for the early bird pre-sale special. Wanting to share this excitement, I utilized the Southwest companion pass, to engineer a way to get my whole family (me, my wife, and daughter) flights to Orlando for free.

It was my first FinCon. And it certainly did not disappoint.

I met so many new friends that I had previously only interacted with online via blogging and Twitter. I learned a lot and had plenty of fun. I’m already looking forward to FinCon19 in Washington D.C.!

Being a first time FinCon attendee, I’m writing about everything I experienced. Get ready for a long-winded post. Here we go…

Getting There: First Flight for Baby

FinCon18 was held at the beautiful Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando.

Orlando is already a vacation destination in and of itself, so I brought the whole family.

Initially, I had planned to meet up with my best friend from anesthesiology residency so that we can hang out and take our families to Disney World. But our plans didn’t pan out because he couldn’t get the vacation time off. That was a bummer.

However, it worked out.

Instead of spending an entire week in Orlando, my wife and decided to shorten the trip and just spend four days there. We wanted to keep this trip relatively short because it was our baby’s first flight on an airplane. How will she do on the flight? It was also our baby’s first time in a faraway destination and in a different time zone for an extended period of time. How will baby adjust to the time change and will it affect her sleep and naps? There were so many variables that could mess up her routine and potentially make her cranky and sleep deprived. That’s why we wanted to keep the trip short and sweet.

It turns out that the flight wasn’t too bad for baby. But it wasn’t easy either. Take off and landing was fine as my wife breastfed our baby during these times to help relieve potential ear pain from cabin pressure changes. Once in the air, she never wanted to sit still as she would try to stand up and attempt to wiggle her way out of our arms. There were a few times in which she screamed in short bursts. But overall she did better than we expected. She even slept for two hours in the roughly 4-hour long flight. Phew!

Checking In

We arrived at the hotel and convention center late at around 8 o’clock in the evening. Since we arrived so late, I missed some of the workshops, the keynote presentation, and the welcome reception scheduled on the first day.

After checking in, we settled into our room which was quite nice. The room was clean and the bed was comfortable. I was very happy with the accommodations and impressed by the friendly service staff at the resort. It must be that Southern hospitality.

My wife and I were both hungry, so we ate some Chipotle burrito bowls that we had bought earlier at Orlando airport. Since it was only about 5:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, we walked around to explore the resort. It was around the time of our daily evening walks anyway.

The halls of the resort were relatively empty…

There were a few FinCon attendees hanging out and chatting. I didn’t recognize any of them at the time so I didn’t say hi. Plus I looked pretty messed up from the plane flight and from trying to entertain the baby for a few hours!

In addition to FinCon18, there appeared to be other conventions going on at the same time. I heard a loud ruckus from one of the ballrooms. When I peeked inside, I saw a massive party for Barnes and Noble managers. That party was lit! It’s funny to watch folks in business suits party like it’s 1999…

Walking past the Barnes and Noble party, I surveyed the FinCon18 area. I saw where I would check in. And I checked out the grand ballroom where FinCon Central would take place.

After thirty minutes of walking around, the baby started to get a little tired. So we went back up to the room and retired for the night.

Thursday Morning Sessions

I woke up early morning to this incredible view.

After getting dressed, I headed down to the registration desk to check in. I received my name badge and a bag of free swag including a FinCon18 t-shirt.

There were so many interesting talks scheduled in the morning, including:

• How to Rapidly Create Quality Videos from Start to Finish
• From Zero to $100,000+ Annual Income, How to Build and Grow a Lifestyle Blog
• Crushing the Algorithm: How to Grow Your Community and Be Seen on Instagram
• The Art of Slow Travel — The Benefits, Challenges, and Why It’s a Life-Changing Experience
• Canned Content is Crap: How to Grow Your Business Online with Original Content
• First Timer’s Orientation

I wish I could have attended all of these presentations. But I can only be at one place at a time.

While I wanted to learn how to monetize a lifestyle blog, crush the Instagram algorithm, and slow travel… I ended going to the First Timer’s Orientation.

First Timer’s Orientation

I’m glad I went because it was very helpful. The presentation was given by Nick True, who is the First Timer’s liaison, FinCon social media manager, and blogger at Mapped Out Money. He is a great speaker and very funny too.

The main point of the talk was to show us how to get the most out of our FinCon18 experience. Nick had us establish clear goals for attending the conference. And he encouraged us to connect with other attendees and vendors with a friendly smile and a proper introduction.

One of my main FinCon18 goals was to meet and interact with all of my blogger friends that I have met online. Since I blog semi-anonymously, a great introduction is critical. And smiling has never been an issue with me. 🙂

Immediately following the orientation, there were seven more sessions happening simultaneously. I went to the Withdrawal Strategies for Early Retirees session.

Withdrawal Strategies for Early Retirees

Now, let me be clear. I have no intention of retiring early. However, the session had several blogging all-stars that I follow. I really wanted to see them. The panel discussion was moderated by Jean Chatzky and the panel included Jonathan Mendonsa of ChooseFI podcast, Karsten (aka Big Ern) of Early Retirement Now, Physician on Fire, and Tanja Hester of Our Next Life.

There was a great discussion about the Trinity Study and the “4% rule” for safe withdrawal rates. Jonathan appeared to be the most steadfast in stating that 4% rule will almost always work. The rest of the panel seemed to take a more conservative approach.

Tanja is an extremely eloquent speaker. Believe it or not, her speaking is just as good (maybe better) as her writing! She brought up several excellent points. She stated that we are not always great at accurately measuring our expenses and that we can’t assume that our annual expenses will always be constant over life time. What about the future? What about kids? Divorce? Expenses related to care for sick elderly relatives? All of these factors may cause an unanticipated increase in our annual expenses. She also brought up the point that because early retirees peg their retirement date to achieving a “magic number” (usually 25x annual expenses), they have a higher chance of experiencing poor sequence of return risk.

That totally makes sense.

With this raging bull market, my net worth has skyrocketed. My family and I could probably leanFIRE retire to a place with a much lower cost of living. But am I going to do that and walk away from a job that I like? Of course not! Eventually, the bull market is going to end and I am inevitably going to experience some poor sequence of market returns that could result in me running out of money.

Karsten reiterated his assertion that the 4% rule is not a set and strict rule at all. It’s more like a 4% rule… of thumb. He also brought up his famous analogy of “Trinity Air”, and airline with a spotty safety record with a 97% success rate. While perhaps 3 cases crash and burned (ran out of money), the other 97 successful (didn’t run out of money) cases could have been one hell of a turbulent ride! The analogy is both funny and frightening at the same time. It brought a wave of laughter from the crowd. For more on Karsten’s post that explains this, you can check it out here.

New Blog Strategies from Two Ancient Bloggers

Next up, I went to see Jim Wang and J.D. Roth discuss new blog strategies. If you don’t know these guys, they are two of the O.G.’s of personal finance blogging. They have a lot of street cred. Both started blogs around ten years ago, then sold them a few years later for seven figures. You read that right, they sold their sites for millions. Let that sink in.

J.D. Roth can’t discuss the terms of the deal regarding how much money he sold his blog Get Rich Slowly for (and how much he paid to buy it back). But it is reportedly in the millions.

Meanwhile, Jim Wang started a finance blog called Bargaineering and sold it for $3 million five years later. Both have a knack for creating great sites. In 2015, Jim created the successful site Wallet Hacks.

Here are some key takeaways from their talk:

• Content style and approach matters. In the past, you can publish anything. Now, you have to publish with a purpose and write articles that are focused, tactical, and provide valuable information
• Delivery of content has changed. Before, your site might just be a blog. Now, sites are media empires with different channels such as audio, video, email, social media, etc. to enhance audience expansion and user experience.
• Link liberally to your best content, to supporting evidence, and to other people’s great work. Sharing is caring.
• SEO is secondary, but important. The best SEO is always great content.
• Social media can be important to help grow traffic. But it can also be a time and money sink. Balance is key.
• Email newsletters are great for connecting with your audience.
• Guest posts should be written to reach new audiences, not to build links. Showcase your best work.
• Monetization has expanded beyond affiliate marketing and display advertisements. Great sites now provide eBooks, courses, and coaching as addition sources of income.
• Site design is important as it affects user experience. Make it easy to find your best work.
• Speed is crucial. It affects user experience and influences search ranking.

Thursday Afternoon

Afterward, I went back up to the room to check on my wife and baby.

While I attended the morning sessions, my wife took the baby on a morning walk around the resort. They walked around the golf course and checked out the nature trail. Apparently, alligators are really a thing in Florida…

For lunch, my wife and I ate some chips and veggie wraps that she had bought from the resort’s in-house mini market. The wraps were just okay.

After we finished eating, we tried to put the baby down for a nap. But it was so hard!

She gets really distracted in a new environment and wants to look at everything. She is so vigilant, attentive, and aware of her surroundings. It’s a blessing and a curse. Eventually, she fell asleep. But her nap only lasted about 30 minutes. She’s a very light sleeper.

Physician Bloggers Happy Hour

Both B.C. Krygowski and Miss Bonnie M.D. coordinated a happy hour with all of the physician bloggers who were in attendance. There were more than 20 physician bloggers at FinCon18! The overall physician personal finance blogosphere has grown to over 60 blogs. This is quite remarkable, and most of this expansion is due to the inspiration from blogs like White Coat Investor, the Physician on Fire, and Passive Income M.D.

At the happy hour, I also met Crispy Doc, The Physician Philosopher, Millionaire Doc, Carrie Reynolds of the Hippocratic Hustle podcast, Doc G of DiverseFi, Dr. Cory S. Fawcett, Wealthy Doc, Nomads With A Vision, Dr. Dawn Baker of Practice Balance, Victor of 39 point 6, Dr. David Draghinas of the Doctors Unbound podcast, and Doc of All Tradez.

It was great to finally put a name and face to the personality of their blogs.

Throughout my almost one year of blogging, I have learned that the physician blogging community is incredibly collaborative and supportive. We often read each other’s blogs, frequently leave comments, and promote each other on social media. Being a physician can be tough. And blogging is not as easy as it seems. We all understand that it’s hard, so it’s fantastic to be a part of such a friendly and supportive community.

Thursday Evening

After the happy hour, I went back up to the room to hang out with my wife and baby. Since the baby was awake, we went downstairs to walk around the hotel. We were going to walk outside, but it was so hot and humid!

As we were walking down the main lobby stairway, I saw Lisa who writes at The Give And Get. I follow her blog, enjoy her writing, and we have had some back and forth light hearted conversations on Twitter. Because her blog is not anonymous, I recognized her right away. And since the conference is so huge (over 2,000 in attendance), I decided to say hi just in case I didn’t get another opportunity again. She has the well-deserved reputation of being fearless (at least financially), but I think I scared her!

One of the drawbacks of being semi-anonymous is that nobody knows what you look like. So I guess I kinda caught her off guard.

I saw a few other people that I recognized in the personal finance blogosphere including Jerry from Peerless Money Mentor and Deanna from Ms. Fiology. I basically just said hi in passing and I wish I had the chance to talk to them some more.

Dinner time

Then it was time for dinner. We checked out the restaurants within the resort but they were packed. While we were figuring out where to eat, I saw Sandy from Yes, I Am Cheap and said hi. It was nice of her to stop by for some fun conversation as we talked about our kids. I have to admit, the baby is a great ice breaker and conversation starter. At 6 months old, she was probably among the youngest at the resort.

Because we are vegan, my wife had checked out the menus of all the hotel restaurants ahead of time. She wanted to check out Tobias Burger and Brew because it had the impossible burger. When we went to check out the waiting time, I saw that Bethany and Charles of His and Her FI were eating there. Bethany and I had interacted with each other through Twitter and I knew of her because she had written an excellent guest post on Angela’s blog Tread Lightly Retire Early. Anyway, I introduced myself as Dr. McFrugal (remember, almost nobody knows what I really look like) and she invited us to her table. We chatted about various things, including how and why we became vegan. It’s always interesting to hear about other peoples’ personal vegan journey. After having a great conversation, they finished up their dinner and gave their table to us. My wife and I enjoyed a delicious impossible burger. And our baby watched us enjoy it! 🙂

Ignite FinCon18 and beer party

When we were done with dinner, we went to check out Ignite FinCon. It was pretty packed so we mostly hung out at the cash bar outside. My wife and I had a great conversation with Michael from Financially Alert and Lisa from The Give And Get. Michael was one of the few other bloggers from San Diego. He talked about his life as a FIRE’d stay at home dad. And Lisa joked about how I scared her away with my introduction earlier in the day. We also talked about interesting current events that were going on and how Lisa spent her morning working and watching the news because of a certain specific current event (I’m not sure what, I think she mentioned some kind of hearing or something?).

Anyways, I like beer. Boys like beer. Girls like beer. Most people like beer. And it’s apparent that most people at FinCon18 like beer. Especially IPAs. But I also like wine. In fact, I drank three glasses of wine that night because I had three “free drink” tickets. One was issued to me, my wife gave me hers, and Michael gave me his because he does not drink alcohol at all. Lisa was quick to point out the fact that I had three glasses of wine in a span of thirty minutes.

Her point was duly noted. Moments later, we retired for the night. It was getting late and the baby needed to sleep.

Friday Morning

It seemed like most of the people at FinCon18 were hungover. While it was a struggle to get up, I was actually okay.

Funny how the first session started so early at 8 in the morning. Remember, it’s 5 A.M. PST where I’m from.

On my way to the conference hall, I pass by Cody of Fly to Fi and briefly say hi to him. I think we were both still waking up (or sobering up 😉).

Most of the people who were able to drag themselves out of bed went to the Four Flavors of Fire panel discussion. That’s because among the four panelists was Pete Adeney, the mustache behind Mr. Money Mustache. Pete is a rockstar blogger who has a cult-like following among his Mustachian followers. He is generally regarded as one of the founding fathers of the modern day FIRE movement.

Four Flavors of Fire

In addition to Pete, the other panelists consisted of Carl from 1500 Days, the Physician on Fire, and Jillian Johnshrud of Montana Money Adventures. The discussion was moderated by J.D. Roth.

The panelists talked about various topics including their life after FIRE and their core philosophies. Jillian said that now that she is FIRE, she no longer thinks about money; she just lives life. Pete talked about how you don’t have to follow the herd and keep up with the Joneses. He says that other people want you to spend money like them and buy stuff so that you can validate their lifestyle choices.

A lot of what was talked about was not really new information for people deeply entrenched within the FIRE community. Almost everybody in FinCon18 already knows about the 4%, the benefits of being FI/RE, and not having to trade time for money.

However, one of the more interesting questions that J.D. Roth asked the panel was: “What is one thing you splurge and spend a lot of money on that your readers might find interesting?

Jillian said that she spends quite a bit of money on personal development. Carl mentioned that he splurged when he bought his Acura NSX as an “experiment in happiness”. Physician on Fire stated that he splurges on travel and beer. Pete had the most fascinating answer. He said that everything he buys and owns is a splurge compared to the relative standards of the world outside of the rich first world nations. Pete certainly has an interesting way of thinking that puts a fresh perspective on how you look at the world.

Free Time

I hung around after the morning session to talk to Mr. and Mrs. WOW from Waffles on Wednesdays. When almost everybody and their mom at FinCon18 seems to be from Minnesota (or somewhere in the Midwest), it feels good to know that there are other folks representin’ Cali-forn-I-A.

Afterwards, I check out FinCon Central for a bit. I got some free swag including a pair of sunglasses and an umbrella.

After loading up on freebies, I go back up to the room to check on my wife again. As usual, she’s either hanging out with the baby or trying to put her to sleep. The struggle is real.

Lunch

By 12:45 P.M. I go back downstairs for the free box lunches. The food was just okay. The highlight of lunch was getting to meet Lily of The Frugal Gene, Olivia of Birds of a Fire, and Zach of Four Pillar Freedom.

I interact with Lily and Olivia frequently on Twitter and it was wonderful to meet them in person. They are both such amazing people. I spent the most time during lunch chatting with Lily as we talked about blogging, our plans for the future, and about life in general. She is the friendliest 20-something year old millionaire next door that I know!

Oh yeah, I also got to see Doc G in action as he was working on a post during lunch. His ability to write a post every day is so prolific and it’s really impressive!

After lunch, Lily wanted to see the wifey and baby, so I brought them down for her to meet them. The baby was still a little tired and a bit out of it, but she managed to crack Lily a wide smile. While we chatted for a bit more, I managed to flag down Dave of Accidental Fire so that I can meet him and say hi.

Shortly after, Lily went back to her hotel and my wife and I took the baby on a short walk to get some lunch. My wife hadn’t eaten ye so we went to the restaurant Mi Casa Taqueria and got some chips, guacamole, mushroom tacos, and a ginormous margarita. The food was really good!

When we were done with lunch, we went back upstairs to get the baby to take her afternoon nap before dinner.

Dinner with the Docs

Crispy Doc organized all of the physicians of FinCon18 to a nice dinner at Cuba Libre, a restaurant not too far from the resort.

The food was spectacular. My wife and I shared the grilled vegetable paella and it was excellent. The venue was on the loud side so it was somewhat difficult to carry on a conversation. My wife and I mostly talked to Bonnie and Carrie who sat directly in front of us. Victor 39 point 6 also brought his wife and baby so we talked to them quite a bit too.

Almost all of the physicians who attended the happy hour on Thursday were there. Additionally, Nii Darko of the Docs Outside The Box podcast joined us as well.

Plutus Awards and Afterparty

After dinner, we made it back to the resort to attend the Plutus Awards.

But I didn’t really attend the awards ceremony. There were a bunch of folks pre-partying outside of the ceremony as a primer for the after party.

The partygoers congregated on this huge inflatable pink flamingo sofa-like thing.

The WOWs provided beer for everyone and we all spent the time chatting and having a great time.

While lounging in the pink flamingo, I spent a great deal of time talking to Nomads With A Vision. We talked about his future plans after partial FIRE. He plans to work locum tenens per diem work periodically, then travel the world with his family in a slow travel fashion. The plan is to move the family to a Spanish-speaking country at some point. That way his kids can learn to be fluent in Spanish. We also talked about finance and he gave me some great tips on investing and tax loss harvesting. His life story is fascinating and I encouraged him to write more on his blog. So far, he only has one post. I tease him that he will win the Plutus Award for best blog with only one post. LOL.

I also had an in-depth conversation with Susan of FI Ideas. She is amazingly smart, fun to talk to, and an overall fascinating human being. While she is completely retired now, she was an engineer (and usually the only female engineer at her work). She has led a decidedly different life than most people which contributes to her uniquely contrarian perspective. Her path to FIRE is both serendipitous and interesting at the same time. Hopefully our conversation has inspired her to write more about her story in her blog!

The After Party

After the show, it’s the after party. And after the party it’s the hotel lobby…

Okay, I’m not going to quote R. Kelly’s Ignition. But you get the idea. The after party was lit.

The alcohol was flowing and everybody was having a blast. There was even a dance floor and a DJ mixing in some fresh beats.

I didn’t drink all that much and I certainly didn’t dance. But I did get to talk to more people, which was awesome. I talked to Crispy Doc, Physician on Fire, and his wife for quite a bit. Physician on Fire shared some of his potential plans for life after retirement including RV’ing, slow traveling, and home schooling. Sounds amazing.

Crispy Doc shared some tidbits and interesting facts about his family origin and history. Things like this fascinate me because I love all things about history.

I also got to meet and talk to Kevin of Financial Panther. He’s full of energy and incredibly easy to talk to. He, Crispy Doc, and I discussed various things such as why there are so many physician blogs yet so few lawyer and dentist blogs.

At around midnight, the party was still going strong. But I had to get some sleep for an early flight home the next day.

Final Thoughts

Saturday morning, we woke up and took a Lyft back to the airport to catch our flight back home.

A big part of me wished we had stayed one more night so that I can attend more sessions, meet more people, and have more fun. But I’m glad we went back home. By the end of the conference, I was pretty exhausted. And we needed to keep the trip short since it’s our baby’s first time.

I am already looking forward to next year’s FinCon at Washington D.C.. By that time, our baby will be around 18 months old and she won’t need to nap so much. She may even be more adaptable and enjoy trips a little more too! Since it will be a few days after my wife’s birthday and after Labor Day, I’m planning an East Coast / Washington D.C. vacation before the conference. And this time, I’m staying for the whole conference!

They say FinCon is where money and media meet. That is true. But it’s also where an entire community meets. The personal finance blogosphere and FIRE community is still small, but it continues to grow. Heck, just look at how many physician personal finance bloggers there are now. Who knows,.. by FinCon19, there may 200 of us physician bloggers. Sounds crazy, but you never know…

The community is getting so big, there’s even a new documentary coming out. Playing with FIRE: The Documentary. Go check it out!

What can I say? It feels fantastic to be in a supportive community that is part of such a powerfully influential movement.

To further demonstrate the power of our community…

Here are some of the bloggers who have posts about FinCon18

• Passive Income MD
• Waffles on Wednesday
• Get Rich Slowly
• Birds of a Fire
• Millionaire Doc
• Accidental Fire
• DiverseFI
• Miss Bonnie MD
• Practice Balance
• MinaFi
• My Twenty Cents
• She Picks Up Pennies
• Chief Mom Officer
• Josh Overmeyer
• Route to Retire
• Ms. Fiology
• Do You Even Blog
• 1500 Days

If I forgot about you, let me know. I’ll add ya! 😀

Did you go to FinCon this year? Are you going next year? I’d like to hear from you!