These Kitties Are the Purr-fect Way to Teach You Personal Finance
If cats rule the internet, then why isn’t someone using these fine felines to educate us about typically dry topics like money?
OK, you may have never asked that question.
But Lillian Karabaic, the Portland, Oregon-based founder of the “Oh My Dollar!” radio show and workshops, believes in personal finance “with a dash of glitter.” She’s combined her view of personal finance with her love of cats to create the “Get Your Money Together” workbook, an illustrated “purrsonal finance” workbook.
Yes, I am 100% here for the puns.
A Personal Finance Book for the Rest of Us
“Get Your Money Together” includes chapters on designing a budget that works for you, navigating debt and credit, investing, mortgages and more.
“I also cover things that aren’t addressed in a lot of other personal finance books: queer relationships, dealing with having lots of part-time 1099 jobs, no benefits available at work, and finances for unmarried parents and unmarried long-term partners,” Karabaic wrote in an email.
Karabaic started a Kickstarter campaign in October to fund the project. It achieved its goal of $7,500 in its first two weeks, and if it earns more than $10,000, Karabaic will create an audio version of the workbook.
In the meantime, many of her project backers have chosen the contribution level that not only preorders them a copy of the workbook, but also pays it “furward” — yes, still here for the puns — by providing copies of the book to some of “Oh My Dollar’s” favorite nonprofit programs.
Karabaic said she hasn’t opened the application period for Portland-area nonprofits to request book copies, but in the past, she’s worked with Portland Public Schools, homelessness awareness newspaper Street Roots, and youth mentoring program p:ear, among others organizations where she’s taught in-person workshops.
Go Away, Cat Skeptics
Are the cats really necessary?
The tagline is “More cats than any other investing book,” but our furry friends do serve a purpose beyond being super-cute.
“I know so many folks who are ready to take control of their finances, but the material out there doesn’t serve them,” Karabaic said in a press release for her Kickstarter campaign. “They want serious financial literacy but they don’t want to fall asleep or break out in stress hives from trying to conquer their money.”
Karabaic said her favorite part of the book is about investing, where illustrations of cats and their toys, like fake mice and a feather stick, explain retirement diversification. “It’s the funnest explanation of portfolio allocation I have seen yet!”
So don’t write off the cats as silly. They’re there to break the tension of examining your finances and setting goals for a purrfect future.
(See what I did there?)
“Get Your Money Together” is slated for ebook delivery in January 2018, with the print version to follow in April.
Lisa Rowan is a senior writer and producer at The Penny Hoarder.
