For this week’s Twitter Tuesday Profile we’re heading to Honolulu, Hawaii to talk to a server and bartender. Recent college grad Ryan Schmitz decided to step off the career track for a while and focus on his passion of diving and travel. While his blog, PlantingDollars.com, and his Twitter account, @PlantingDollars, may be focused on being responsible with money, he’s definitely living an adventurous life. Ryan bought a one way ticket to Hawaii and just showed up. But his goal is to show how you can be financially responsible and enjoy life to the fullest at the same time.
OODC: How did you get started blogging and tweeting?
@PlantingDollars: I have always been interested in personal finance and discussing how money affects people’s lives. Therefore I discovered personal finance blogging a few years ago when surfing the web. Being that I’m in my early 20′s there aren’t a lot of like minded people my age. My friends don’t discuss IRA’s, financial freedom, and investments so I found that blogging is an outlet to discuss these topics with like minded people while creating a personal brand, it’s been a fun ride so far.
OODC: It seems like failure is an important part of the road to success for you. Why do you feel that way?
@PlantingDollars:We all learn from mistakes and experiences, there’s no way of getting around that. I’ve learned that experiences are my best teacher and experiencing failure is something you don’t forget because there are often lessons taught along the way. I like to see how successful people in history achieved their success and there’s an obvious common pattern of guys, and gals, who simply didn’t take no for an answer, failed a ton, but persisted until they finally reached their goal. The common denominator for all these people was a healthy dose of failure along the way, but in success stories you often don’t hear about the previous failures. Overcoming the fear of failure is a bit like releasing the shackles in your life because you’re willing to try anything in order to reach your dreams. I think this is a really important concept to understand when working towards your goals. Failure should be something you look forward to because it means you’re at least putting yourself out there and trying.
OODC: What do you hope people gain from reading your blog?
@PlantingDollars:I hope people find that anyone can achieve financial freedom and learn from my journey. Ideally I’d like to see people stop doing things they don’t enjoy, stop buying so much crap they don’t need (for many reasons, but especially because of the environmental impact), and simply start doing things that they enjoy more than keeping up with the Joneses. I think if we all learned to follow our passions and manage our money correctly the world would be a much better place.
OODC: Who are some of your favorite money tweeters?
@PlantingDollars:Thus far these are some of my favorite money tweeters…@DeliverAwayDebt, @FinancialSamura, and @LeanLifeCoach.
Thanks again to @PlantingDollars for being part of this week’s Twitter Tuesday Profile. Want to be considered for an upcoming profile? Just tweet me!