This is a guest post from Jenna at Adaptu about a recent meetup she held in Portland.
As many of you know, Phil was in Portland, Oregon earlier this summer attending Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit, a conference for non-conformists. I was also there, attending as an Ambassador. This role was something I took great pride in, I love my friends and I love my city. So being able to show my friends the city was an easy task for me.
We had two financial blogger meet ups during the lunch breaks at WDS. During one of them Phil mentioned he wanted to see more local FinCon meet ups. After recovering from an awesome weekend of friends, creativity and trading personal finance tips, I sent him an email asking him if he thought a one-time Adaptu sponsored FinCon meet up would be okay with him. He said sure as long as:
- There was no hard pitching of Adaptu during the meet up.
- It was open to anyone attending FinCon.
Both of those were easy rules to follow. (I mean Adaptu is a really slick tool. Everyone should be using it anyways to gain a better understanding of the finances.) And I like people, especially those that RSVP.
After sending out a few emails to several financial bloggers I knew living in Portland, we figured out a day, time and place that worked for almost everyone.
On Tuesday, August 21st, six financial bloggers, several Adaptu team members, and myself met at Al-Amir for the first ever FinCon PDX Meet Up. In attendance were:
- JD Roth from Get Rich Slowly and fellow WDS Ambassador
- Jeffrey Trull from Money Spruce and Adaptu Freelance Writer
- Glen Craig from Free from Broke and Adaptu Expert
- Joe from Retire by 40 and recently retired
- Kathleen from Frugal Portland and fellow rock climber
- Andi from Making the Life You Want and fellow PDX homeowner
Over trays of great Lebanese food, we started our meet up doing introductions, talking about our work projects and what we love about Portland. Glen is from New York and had been visiting Portland for about a month with his family. Jeffrey recently relocated to Portland. Things that made Portland unique included: our great public transportation and polite drivers, our good food and beer and Portland’s knack for just “keepin’ it weird.”
The topic then changed to real estate, the cost of housing on the East Coast versus the West. Whether it is best to rent or buy, the low interest rates, home improvement horror stories. We also spent some time discussing tipping practices since JD had just posted a blog post on the topic. How does one tip a sanitation worker, wonders the new homeowner?
All in all it was a great meet up. It was fun to meet Joe, Kathleen and Andi, people I’d been messaging with for months online and finally got to meet in person. The Ambassador in me was thrilled to hear that Glen and his family were having a blast during their time in Portland. And it’s always fun to joke around with Jeffrey and JD.
Can’t wait to see you all in a few weeks at FinCon! I’ll be there along with Benjamin, our amazing Customer Support Technical Lead. I hope this is the first of many Portland FinCon meet ups and can’t wait for the next one. Maybe we can even host a future FinCon here! Ever been to Portland? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.
(Photo credit JD Roth)
