#there are costumes from that one collaboration on the 2nd pic

[kerocordierite]

once again

[ignis-scientia-estrogen-brigade]

~ISEB in Japan: A Photo Journal~

If you’ve been following me on Twitter lately, you’ll know that I’ve been traveling through parts of Japan the last couple of weeks with my Ignis Play Arts Kai figure in tow. I posted a few pictures over there during the duration of my trip, but those barely scratched the surface of everything I got to do while in Japan. So I thought I’d put together a blog post of my journey while it was still fresh in my mind, featuring everyone’s favorite strategist in what I’ve been dubbing my Great Final Fantasy XV Adventure of 2019!

[Image-heavy content + commentary under the cut]

A brief backstory: I’ve wanted to go to Japan my entire adult life. For years, I’ve watched friends make the trek while I’ve been stuck at home with a severe case of FOMO. The only thing that ever stopped me from going was money (or a lack thereof), so I made the decision last summer to buckle down and sock away every dime I made to make it happen. My only concern before hopping on the plane was that I had missed the wave of FFXV popularity by about a year, but I would quickly learn that—other than not getting to eat any of Ignis’ recipes at the Square Enix Cafe—I had little to worry about.

Literally the only reason I brought my Play Arts Kai figure was so I could take this picture of Ignis at the Citadel (a.k.a. the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building), which was the very first place I stopped at on my first full day in Tokyo. The building + the surrounding plaza, while not 100% accurate, is a fairly impressive facsimile of the one in the game. It’s located in Shinjuku, which also boasts a lot of similarities to Insomnia. Having finished Episode Ardyn mere hours before jetting off on my trip, it felt like I had stepped off the plane and right into the game!

There just so happened to be an Animate right near the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, so I popped in to get a feel for what kind of FFXV merch I’d be able to find two years after the game’s release and a year after its height of popularity. Turns out, there was quite a lot of swag to be found! Truth be told, I’ve never been one to chase down official merchandise (unfortunately my job doesn’t really afford that luxury), but I gave myself special permission while on vacation to buy anything I wanted. So I did! Including everything you see above. ^^;;

The next thing I did was take the train to Ginza to meet Lyle/@landscape-gonna  (@landscape_gonna on Twitter), and I simply cannot say enough nice things about her. If you don’t know who she is, there’s a 99.9% chance you’ve seen at least one of her Ignis costumes, and they are A. M. A. Z. I. N. G. We had chatted a bit previously on Twitter before I went full-on stan mode, asking her if she'd be willing to meet up with me (a total stranger) to have lunch and talk Ignis and Final Fantasy. Not only did she say yes, but she gifted me with copies of her incredible cosplay zines and was not the least embarrassed when I busted out my Play Kai Arts figure in the middle of a busy Japanese dessert restaurant haha.

See? Zero embarrassment here.

We even did Noct’s ultimate pose! In public!

I can’t begin to articulate how special meeting Lyle was for me—being brought together from opposite sides of the world to share in our love for Ignis/FFXV is a memory I will cherish my entire life. So Lyle, if you are reading this: どうもありがとうございます ! ٩( ᐛ )( ᐖ )۶

Lyle wasn't the only friend I had in Japan. Another friend of mine, Asuka (who happens to be well-versed in anime/video game culture), volunteered to be my guide through Ikebukuro/Otome Road the next day. Quick otaku lesson: Kbooks is a chain of stores that specializes in the resale of licensed merchandise. For example, if you missed out on some of the limited availability items from the Movic and the Square Enix Cafe collaborations, you might be able to find them at a Kbooks. Otome Road in particular has something like seven different Kbook shops in a 3-block radius, each one specializing in different products (sports anime, idols, cosplay, etc). I, of course, beelined for the video game shop...

...which is where I found this fucking thing:

I’m not gonna lie, I almost bought it. I just didn’t know what I would do with it besides scare the living daylights out of people when they least expected it lol.

Yoooo Adam I found ya boi in Ikebukuro

We popped into the cosplay Kbooks shop since it was right across the street and I found an Ignis costume for sale! Please enjoy this picture of me pretending to come up with a new recipeh (since this is likely the closest I’ll ever come to cosplaying as Ignis).

One of the things Asuka introduced me to was Hanami (picnic under the cherry blossoms, basically). I had timed my trip to coincide with the blooming of the sakura, and the experience of being in Japan during that time was indescribable. I took a bajillion pictures of the sakura while I was there and unfortunately none of my photos ever quite captured the beauty and magic of them in person, but here’s a lil’ pic of a tree in bloom at Yoyogi Park (with the Movic Ignis charm I bought at Kbooks earlier that day).

Another item on my Japan checklist was to stay at a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) in Hakone, a town famous for its onsen/hot springs. Nothing in Hakone is cheap (at least, not during peak sakura season), and I had spent an absurd amount of money on a night at one particular ryokan with a private bath (shy husband haha). The private bath could only be reserved in 30-minute increments, and by the time we finally rolled into Hakone the bath we wanted only had one slot available for the rest of the night. So what did I do?

If you said, “Waste the first 15 minutes of your 30-minute, super-expensive onsen experience taking the perfect Ignis-in-a-hot-springs photo” then you would be absolutely correct lol.

I actually wasn’t planning on taking a bunch of photos of my Ignis figure on this trip, but after my husband tucked Ignis into my futon while I was in the bathroom, documenting my trip vicariously through Ignis ended up taking on a life of its own. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I popped back over to Tokyo after my stay in Hakone, which is when I finally got to make the Great Nerd Pilgrimage™ to the Square Enix Cafe! Had the FFXV collab been going on while I was there, I might’ve forked over the cash to eat at the cafe, but I opted to skip out on lunch so I could spend more money in their shop. They still had a small collection of FFXV merch...

...including this acrylic Ignis stand that I wanted but thought I would never own after failing to find it at Kbooks earlier in the week. Huzzah!

Also, I just feel the need to let everyone know that this is what the outside of the Square Enix Cafe in Tokyo looks like lmao.

Our next stop was Kyoto, which we arrived in on Gladio’s birthday (April 2nd). Unfortunately I didn’t have time to draw anything for his b-day, but we did stop for a Nissin Cup Noodle in honor of Gladio!

One of the most memorable moments of my trip was when this boating incident happened, and it requires a little bit of backstory. On my first full day in Kyoto, I attempted to field two of the most popular tourist destinations in Kyoto: the bamboo forest in Arashiyama, and the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Both places have their beauty and historical significance, and I suspect during the off-season are inspiring sites to behold. In my case, both places were absolutely swarming with tourists, which really put a damper on my enjoyment of them. Defeated, I followed a local canal back toward my hotel, which is where I spotted a miniature boat enthusiast controlling a boat that looked eerily similar to the Royal Vessel. I pulled my Ignis figure out with the intention of simply taking a photo of the boat in the background; when the man saw me holding my figure and fumbling with my phone, he flagged me over and gestured for me to put Ignis in the boat. I wish I had documented how it all went down a little better, but as I was literally wheezing with laughter, the above was the best I could capture.

One of the more off-the-cuff decision I made was to dress in kimono for a day while in Gion (Kyoto). As the cherry blossoms were at their height during my stay there, you couldn’t sneeze without hitting someone who was dressed traditionally for the numerous festivals that were taking place throughout the city. As a white foreigner, I initially had reservations about wearing a kimono (for fear of cultural appropriation), but I did everything I could to be as respectful and reverent whilst wearing the garb (and the rental shop was certainly happy for the patronage). It was an amazing experience and I would definitely do it again!

Speaking of being respectful, I made it a point not to take pictures of Ignis while visiting any shrines (because nothing screams ‘douchey American’ quite like whipping out an action figure on sacred grounds), hence why I don’t have pictures of any of the major shrines we visited in this post. I did, however, spot this miniature shrine arch in an alleyway, and thought it would be okay for my equally miniature strategist to pay his respects.

Literally, a tiny shrine in an alleyway. I suppose even alleys have their deities!

Osaka is about 20 minutes away from Kyoto by train, and since I had already traveled all the way out to Kyoto, I went the extra few miles to stop by the Square Enix Cafe in Osaka. They actually had a smaller selection of FFXV merch than the one in Tokyo and I didn’t end up buying anything, but I would’ve never stopped wondering if I had missed out on something if I hadn’t gone and seen it for myself!

My last day in Kyoto was a week into my trip, and I still had five days left to go. After walking ~10 miles every day (no joke, I have the GPS screenshots to prove it!), I was really starting to feel the grind. I’m sure Ignis was also desperate for an Ebony after being lugged around in the bottom of my purse for a week lol.

Back on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo!

Weeeeeee (ﾉ^ヮ^)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

Said hi to Fuji-san!

Stopped for a delicious matcha parfait! (Shout-out to my husband who never once got annoyed with me whenever I busted out my figure in public spaces lol)

This was without a doubt the craziest and most unexpected find of any of my merch runs. I had gone to the video game Kbooks in Ikebukuro earlier in the week and had sifted through all their Ignis merch with a fine-toothed comb. This particular Movic charm was one I had been on the lookout for, but it was a rare pull even when they were readily available a year ago, and the only Ignis charm I came across in my first trip to Kbooks was the normal Ignis one (see my Hanami pic). I had no real reason to return to Ikebukuro after I got back from Kyoto, but on a whim I went one last time and BAM—this guy was hanging out there in his lil’ baggie, just waiting for me to get my grubby little hands on him. Jackpot!

All in all, I spent way too much money and I couldn’t be happier for it. The only thing I couldn’t find for the life of me was the Ignis cologne by Movic, but after searching through several Animates and Kbooks, I began to suspect it might be an online-exclusive item that wasn’t available in stores. (Which was probably a good thing for me cause I was already stretching my budget to the limit by this point haha.)

On my last night in Japan, I went back to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building—only this time I went at night when it was all lit up! I also went up to the observation deck on the 45th floor (something I didn’t know you could do the first time I was there) and enjoyed a fantastic view of nighttime Insomnia Tokyo. It was the perfect bookend to a perfect trip, and my heart is absolutely overflowing right now with love for both Japan and Final Fantasy XV!

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Eurovision 2018 Blue Carpet ceremony: Favourite moments

• “Everybody hates you?” • Always Watched Security-guys • The ‘corgi’ from Russia • Introduction to Rybak as Eurovision royalty • Netta the Little White Riding Hood • Ryan’s explanation why it’s “o-SHOCK-nessy” and not “o-SHAUN-nessy” • “Favourite Eurovision song?” “Sheni gulistvis” “We don’t know that one” • Yulia singing something from the Little Mermaid • Jessika’s and Basti’s ‘twerking’ skills • Ari, Lea and Almaia singing Amar Pelos Dois when asked to • Hosts asking Franka’s team to teach them how to “lo-o-o-ove”, Lea’s team the dance moves of her song, Benjamin the dance moves of his song, Laura how to hair flip, The Humans how to... hairflip too?, Marija from Eye Cue the dance moves of their song, Madame Monsieur the arm movement to their song • Hosts asking Alekseev to say a word in ‘Belarus’ (he said “hi” in Belarussian and the host thought it meant something like ‘good luck’), AWS what does “hello” in Hungarian mean (and it’s pronounced something like Sia or “see ya”), one of the African guys from the Dutch team a phrase on his own • Mikolas being called a naughty boy • Mikolas leaving the backpack intrigue for the very end of the blue carpet • Saara getting asked about the 2nd place curse again • Georgian guys singing a bit of their song • O Jardim in English and Nova Deca in Portuguese • Montenegrin stage team singing a chorus of Inje • Jon Ola Sand and some other key Portuguese people being interviewed • Kirkorov’s backstory as to how did he want to collaborate with DoReDos • DoReDos confirming that their name means the first two note names of the solfège (Do, Re) • Hosts constantly asking the participants from countries that never won the question: “your country has never won, so will it this year?” Most contestants: “yea I hope so”, Örs from AWS: “you know, we’re not here to win, we’re here to make a huge metal party” • “Pastei de nata is life” • Mikolas’s dancer dancing a bit and the hosts being like “now we know why you’re one of the favourites this year!” • The hosts bringing up the questions about the robots to Sammarinese team and later on asking them if they are going to do something special about the message thingy that one of the robots display (actually they’re looking for another message to display this Thursday, suggest them ideas at twitter.com/1in360talent) • The grande arrival of Metamoro • Ermal’s glasses • The awkward pause between the hosts and Fabrizio (who doesn’t really speak English that much) and his translator • Melovin... kind of • Eugent showing off his tattoos for yet another set of people after some interviewers got to see them before the blue carpet • Alekseev’s umpteenth “please support me” • The hosts remembering Eleni taking pics with uniformed men • That GoT joke directed towards Rasmussen • The hosts and Rasmussen singing “Livin’ on a Prayer” • Netta obviously wanting to win Eurovision • Netta actually bringing Doron Medalie (I think) along with her, and that one is her song’s songwriter who also co-wrote “Golden Boy” • The questionnaire between Alexander Rybak and that Eurovision fanboy from the blue carpet hosts • Mikolas’s bottle message being plainly made up from emojis • Ieva saying she drank Fanta and Sprite • The “would you rather” question Madame Monsieur got from the hosts. Remember, winning Eurovision would make the hosts divorce the two so you know who to pass your votes onto next week instead........................ yes ofc metamoro ;)))) • The hosts explaining Madame Monsieur that “merci” in Portuguese means “obrigado” and MM instead explains the actual meaning of the song • Aisel knows only one Portuguese word despite having Portuguese backing singers: “obrigado” • Yet another “obrigado” kwen: Lea Sirk, but she knows way more Portuguese phrases, including the one where she’s asking for gin and tonic • Stefan from ZiBBZ serving that beatbox realness yet again • Also him only knowing one phrase in Portuguese • The hosts bringing up that Michael from Germany and Waylon from The Netherlands are becoming fathers and Saara is getting married as well as Christabelle • Laura singing in Portuguese • Almaia singing all 3 entries sung by the past winners of Operacion Triunfo that went to Eurovision • The hosts mentioning to Saara that the last time Finland sent monsters, they won Eurovision • The hosts reminding Russian team of Russia’s past Eurovision successes • The hosts knowing Cesár’s Twitter account’s password that actually came true (as they said, he wrote in it that he will represent Austria in Eurovision 2018). Uh oh, now he’s gonna change it... • The hosts asking if Aisel taught the Portuguese backing singers how to melt the hearts of the Portuguese • Some of the message bottles were nice, and AWS’s wasn’t really trolly or anything, just that Lisbon is a city of many possibilities (I think) • Belgium’s talk was just mainly about liquor tasting and the creative process behind the song itself and how it indeed was about a broken teapot • Johnny Manuel reprising “I Have Nothing”, that song that made him a viral singer (that and AGT itself) • The Bulgarian backing singer being part of EQUINOX for this show only • Eleni being the only one wearing a dress in her team while the others wore orange costumes • The ridiculous clothing of DoReDos (and their ‘do - re - do’ harmonisation) • Bojan from EyeCue promising that next time they’ll do a song in 8 genres • Madame Monsieur eventually choosing that they’d rather still be together but get last place in Eurovision, because that way “they can bring another song next year” • The hosts telling Franka that Croatia hosted Eurovision once (well, current territory-wise, they aren’t off) • The hosts reminding Serbian entrants that they are one of two countries to win on their debut (actually Refrain was the second song in the show of that night so you can’t count Switzerland’s actual debut entry that performed earlier as a debut win for the nation...) • The hosts actually getting Sanja onto the shot eventhough he’s not gonna perform on Lisbon stage anyway • Something like “I don’t know what you have but we want to have what you have”, that I think it means “I don’t know what you’re on but I want some too”, yeah the hosts actually said that once • That one shot with girls in bikinis dancing on a boat • That one shot where Rasmussen and his backings were doing the ‘viking walk’ that they were doing on the DMGP stage and will do on Eurovision stage too • Iriao being really fond of Salvador’s victory and not being asked to sing Amar Pelos Dois but rather the hosts told others to check their cover out and that Salvador will likely love it • Yianna explaining her song concisely that it’s a dialogue between Greece and its people • Yianna answering that question about how she has to explain Eurovision to her American friends • The hosts keeping on mentioning some Portuguese word to EQUINOX that they know • Malta in Portuguese apparently means something like “guys”? • The hosts wanting Vanja to be a funny guy like he always is • Mahan Moin saying “hi” or something like that • Isaura mentioning that her grandmother died last year... so “viszlát” which season of the four now? • “We wanted to speak in Portuguese but we can’t”, that reminds me how last year the Ukrainian entrants only got away with speaking in mothertongue because they WERE from that country • Waylon having to defend country in Eurovision and being one of those peope saying that all kinds of genres are welcome in Eurovision. We love us some holy trinity action of defending the genres that require some attention in eurovision because they’re not pop, electro or ballad. Just like AWS saying that “metal is equal” and Eugent saying that “rock is a sparkle in Eurovision” • The hosts bringing up this to Michael that he asked people to send him in picture with their fathers • Madame Monsieur (and Ari I think that was the second entrant) being told that it’s Mother’s Day today; for MM because it’s something about Mercy and for Ari because it felt like one of the hosts wanted to adopt him so she could say to him that it’s her boy... or smth idk • ZiBBZ being mentioned by Madame Monsieur as a couple that knows each other for longer than they do (10-11 years together) • ZiBBZ family being speculated as the one to be fun with the most • ZIBBZ being thought of as a couple(?) • Elina explaining her blue carpet dress, that it used a special knitting technique and what do the words stitched on the dress are, they were describing Estonia as “wild”, the second word and... “Nordic”. Yeah, keep dreaming SATW Estonia • For EQUINOX, being in this amazing team of themselves is already a victory (so maybe no need for an actual one, or is it?) • Jessica unsuccesfully reprising “Sea of Flags” • Albania: first to have chosen their song, first in the blue carpet, performing 3rd on Tuesday. Eugent was asked if he could be the first person to bring Albania a victory and he answered that he’ll just try his best (completely, not just to win) • One of the hostesses apologizing for touching Soma • “matchy-matchy” • The hosts refering to themselves as The Carpe(n)ters • The hosts being sad because they had to split apart • The hosts starting the blue carpet with “let the opening ceremony begin!” • The hosts introducing the actual Eurovision hosts • The way they pronounced the names of their people correctly • One of the Eurovision host’s dad is a doctor • Usually the karaoke playback of each entry would begin within the first chorus and loop from that place if the interview is going on for longer, but for AWS it was just almost 3 minutes of their song playing in full (and I’m assuming the “Viszlát” shout they did by the end of their time kind of halted the playback a little) • Other pronunciations made by the hosts like Michal Shooter, the almost correct one of Eugent’s name, them pronouncing “j” as “zh” in Julia, Maikolas Josef and Ieva Zashimauskaite • One shot of Iriao signing the Eurovision guidebook on the page with their info on to some journalist perhaps • Franka’s backing team describing her in one word, two of them came up with “amazing” and another one sang out the word “crazy” • “Europe’s living a shell-ebration” • Lea and Ieva naming their Eurovision 2018 favourite entries (Ieva first heard the Spanish entry and liked it, among few Lea liked was The Netherlands) • Most acts being asked about their postcards. Macedonian tiles, Aisel on air baloon, Michael gliding iirc, AWS going to chocolate festival and making a Eurovision logo of it (oh no, Takasa teas!!1), SuRie drinking Portuguese tea when being British, Waylon having pastei de nata for his postcard, Alekseev visiting some place, Saara being a bad golfer and so on • Elina Nechayeva being reminded of Pocahontas • Mikolas admitting he always sucked (at something that I can’t remember) • Eleni just sharing what she wants on her social media • Cesár being “hungry” (for more Eurovision experience) • Franka and Christabelle being asked to sing their past NF entries (and only the latter one did it) • It’s already Franka’s year to her herself • Some finishing line directed to the Cypriot team before moving on to Czech Republic that I can’t remember • Eleni inserting her bottle message to the mysterious wheel (it’s in the way she does it) • Netta clucking properly after the hosts being unable to cluck out the word Pikachu • Laura telling the story of coming to Eurovision this year • Örs pretending to have a security call because, you know, he's a security guy • Ermal telling the story of how he met Fabrizio in last year's Sanremo • Laura bringing up that she was born in Ipanema. “Oh so you’re The Girl from Ipanema!” • Alekseev not drowning • Melovin being asked about the message Verka Serdiuchka made him and his own perfume (one of the smell ingredients is chocolate iirc) • Alexander fangirling over Salvador again • #BraveLoveFreedom (such a Gaga slogan tbh) • Filipp Kirkorov repeating after the host to make sure his/her friend gets lucky in the lottery • #feelthefuego • And of course, the opening to the party, with dancers in extravagantic costumes spinning in huge see-through beach balls, using that as a way to walk through the carpet

shit I just spoiled the entire evening to you didn’t I

[kuuxkat]

[Part 1] Kuu’s Semi LL Prilgrimage

So I guess it’s an open secret on where I went to for a vacation, the land of the rising sun.

To be specific I went to Tokyo for SIF Thanksgiving 2017, and I’m here blogging about it to salt everyone else share my experiences along with photos.

An 8 day trip isn’t too long, but it isn’t short either, which meant there would be time for normie stuff, AKA visiting normal tourist places as I do like visiting shrines and etc but I’ll not post much about them.

So bear with me, and I’ll be separating the post to a few segments so as to avoid boring people.

Part 1: SIF Fest 17

Part 2: SIF Cafe/Bandori Cafe with some normie stuff

Part 3: Mini Prilgrimage near Odawara

So without further ado, let’s get to it.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Bonus

SIF Fest is held at Ikebukuro station at Sunshine City and the admission is free.

Amazingly there was an English Map for it, but sadly I only knew about it on the second day from one of the staff.

They have an English speaking staff who can help you out at the event itself, but realistically if you’re relying on a map ON the day itself, it’s RIP for merchandise.

The map is below, I managed to leave it intact and scan it.

As you can see, the venue is split into several sections on different floors.

The merchandise area is on the 2nd Floor and the main displays are on the 4th and the 3rd Floor

For the main displays, there is one main area for talk shows but it is by BALLOTS ONLY. You ballot for seats before the event and only then you can have a seat. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of it.

I wasn’t paying attention to the talk shows anyway XD

In front of the Talk Area are displays like:

1) Lifesize Shiitake Display

2) Aqours Puppet Display (From the April Fools Vid)

3) Aqours Clubroom Display

(Sorry for the blurry pic)

Bonus! Aqours tracksuit display with the VA Signatures! I thought it was at an exhibit at UDX and pictures weren’t allowed but here they are!

I’ll only post a few favorite pictures~

There’s also a display on Aqours 1st Live costume but pictures aren’t allowed.

Lastly! Life size cutouts of the girls from u’s, Aqours and the N Girls are on Display!

For the second main area on the 4th Floor it is split into 2 halls,

The Display Hall and the Attraction Halls.

The Attraction Halls have things like: (I didn’t take pics cause it’s kinda lame to me)

1) Photo Spot: They set up a display for you to take pictures in the set. The set is the beach shack that Aqours took over.

2) Experience SIF: A display using a LCD TV to play SIF, it’s similar to the one in the SEGA Collab Cafe. There’s quite a queue for it. You’ll get a promo Chika card if you take part, but you can get the card in SEGA Arcades anyway.

3) SIF ~After School Activitiy~ Machines: The queue is massive, but basically the game to play on for a fee with your Nessica card.

4) School FES Fair: You take part in rigged minigames like shooting with an airsoft and etc to win exclusive prizes unique to this section. It’s a shillfest, each try varies from 300-500 yen!

5) Photo Sticker Machine, you take photos with SIF Card Backgrounds and they’ll print the pictures for you.

6) Numazu Burger stand: It’s.... like so not worth it..... Just go Numazu.

The Display Halls

Same as above, I didn’t take photos much photos here as it’s basically not that interesting to me but it had stuff like:

1) Interactive display of LLSS Project

2) The advertising truck used during the LLSS project promotion that ran in Akiba, Shinjuku and Shibuya in 2016

3) Signatures of the VA

At the 3rd floor is where things gets interesting, as it’s where the display hall is.

The 1st display hall would include:

1) Izu Hakone Railway and Izu Mito Sea Paradise collaboration booth: I didn’t take pics of this cause it’s really saddening to see how hard the staff were in trying to sell Uchichi stuff. I know Shukamod would approve. But seriously it was quite sad but heartening to see people buying it still. Unfortunately they were also significantly less busy than the rest of the areas.

2) Uranohoshi High School Store Display: Basically all the stuff they sold exclusive on the Official Web store are on display.

3) Noppo Collaboration Store: Giraffe Bread. The queue was ridiculously long!

4) Numazu Collaboration Projects: Basically a listing of the collaboration merchandise and stuff they sell at Numazu, you get to buy CDs too.

5) Numazu Location Map: A listing of where to go for a prilgrimage.

The 2nd Display hall is mostly about merchandise and they would include:

1) Alter co: Custom made LL figures from Alter. They were beautiful, but the queue was so long >_< sorry!

2) Gamers: CDs, BD, DVDs and exclusive gifts from gamers (Basically SIC (School Idol Collection) Cards)

3) SEGA Interactive Corner: Crane games from SEGA. Basically Nesoberi galore. All the Nesos were grabbed in the second day >_< But I did take a picture of this:

4) Cospa Products: Basically all sold out when we were there! But they sold cushion and pillow covers for LLSS.

5) Claw Crane Area: Pure evil, crane games with rewards of exclusive gifts from SIF Thanksgiving for 1k a try!! It’s ebil!!

6) Scouting Postcard Shop: Wanna try scouting for real? Queue up for this ridiculously long queue to get an attempt to scout IRL with envelopes just like in SIF! The rewards are B5 size versions of the cards available in SIF. The queue was horribly long.

7) SIC Card Game Corner: They’ll teach you how to play the game.

Bonus!

Now is the part everyone is interested in!

The MERCHANDISE SECTION located at the SECOND FLOOR.

Unfortunately, as anyone who went to events before, you know that what the queue is like...

BUU BUU DESUWA!!

You’re NAIVE! Unless you’ve went to Comiket, the queue will chew you up and consume you.

FYI I was late for the event and I had to queue 4.5 hrs just to START shopping at the merchandise area.

Also FYI, the exclusive SIF Thanksgiving’17 T-shirt was sold out within an hour along with the SIF Thanksgiving’17 Backpack, the SIF Thanksgiving Fans and other exclusives shown in the link here and here. The badges are the next to go and for some reason Kanan’s jersey is sold out too on the 1st Day, You’s Jersey is sold out on the second day.

Here’s how mad the scene was:

I reached the start of the queue at around 3pm and there was at least 2-3 hours worth of people still in the queue.

I was queuing up on the second day at 7am and I still took 1.5 hrs AFTER the event started at 1000 hrs to even start buying.

WORSE STILL - all merchandise sold out on first day won’t be restocked.

But then again, even with so many people in the queue merchandise was NOT sold out at all! There were plenty on the second day.

It’s RIDICULOUS!

But I did leave the event with something important to share.

The Capsule Machines are located separately from the main merchandise area.

If you are only interested in the exclusive capsule machine merchandise, you can access it by going to the main areas and accessing through the 4th floor.

Since the queue for the main exhibits isn’t as bad, you can reach the place faster and claim your goods.

Be warned though, each roll of the machine is 500 yen and you have to specifiy how many tokens you need before going to the machines. You have to queue up again if you didn’t get what you want.

The queue was absolutely horrible on the second day but I got my chance to roll a few times on the first day, even so the more popular variants were sold out by the first day.

Overall Thoughts:

Lord if you can order stuff on the Online store, do it. The queue was killer, and the merchandise is what you want.

Only the capsule machine goods along with some exclusive goods are not available online.

The freebies are very generous and with the queue so massive, it’s like training for comiket.

I really enjoyed the SIF Fest exhibits, had lots of fun with the photos and the merchandise were great. (Great savings too XD)

OMG this post went on for too long, I’ll continue with my next post tomorrow.

Kuu - Out!

[fesahaawit]

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017)

What up, y’all! Just got back and sobered up from our financial blogging conference, and thought I’d share some of the highlights from it.

Namely, the handful of new financial companies that were part of our yearly fintech competition I helped judge! It’s always so interesting to see how people use technology to solve our problems out there, and just like last year’s competition this one did not disappoint.

But first, gotta give it up to PT Money for organizing this amazing event each and every year (it was my 7th one attending!), as well as to all the other bloggers who volunteered their time to make it happen. If you’re a $$$ blogger or podcaster or just plain obsessed with personal finance, you NEED to come out to it one year and experience what it’s all about! I promise you will leave incredibly motivated or I will shut down this blog forever ;) (Or at least buy you a beer to cry into – hah)

So what happened at FinCon 2017?

Here are a few of the more exciting highlights… Because good luck telling social media people that what happens at FinCon stays at FinCon! ;)

Rapper Dee-1 crowd surfed while rapping his hit song, Sally Mae Back (Crowd surfed! At a financial blogging conference!)

Best selling author David Bach (of Automatic Millionaire fame) popped in to share his wild story on getting on Oprah for the first time, and how the Latte Factor is “not about the damn lattes!” Haha… Rebuking the hate he so often gets when people say they will never give up their coffees no matter how sexy compound interest is ;) He may or may not have also dropped a few F bombs on stage showing that he is definitely not one of the more stuffier financial “experts” out there. Super cool to run into him around 1 am on the last night too to talk shop! (Interesting fact: he’s fairly short)

Darren Rowse shared his story of how he became one of the world’s first professional bloggers when one of his camera reviews went viral over night. He’d later go on to start two majorly successful blogs, including the one most bloggers are familiar with and learn from: ProBlogger.com

Chris Guillebeau of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Comformity talked about how it’s perfectly okay to let a side hustle be just that – a side hustle! There’s no rule that you need to turn it into a full-time job if you’re perfectly happy with your current one. Just let it be your creative outlet while you bring home some extra side money! (I agree with this 100%!! Not all of us are born to run companies!!)

Cait Flanders held a presentation on writing Rockstar content that was packed solid which we think/hope went over pretty well! Interweaving the back story of Rockstar Finance and how it’s evolved over the years as well. (Cait curates it with me, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the scene)

A bunch of people from our community created a parody of The Office called The Floor which was shown at our annual blogger award ceremony and was downright HILARIOUS. Then ended with a surprise live musical performance by American Idol contestant Dalton Rapattoni! (It was all about the music this year, haha… Thx for putting it together, Scott Alan Turner!)

And lastly – we had one pretty damn fun Halloween party to wrap up the conference! Erik from The Mastermind Within said it best: “it was hilarious to see people with $1 million+ net worth’s singing Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back”.” Haha… That’s how we roll! If you can’t live it up, what’s the point of all that money??

As for the best costume of the night? I gave it to this guy. Can you tell why? ;)

(full back story here – he totally shaved his head for this!!)

Other interesting gems pertaining to yours truly: I randomly got interviewed in the bathroom, and I was  presented with the International Blogger of The Year award from UK’s SHOMO awards. Where I then made an acceptance speech that included “Long live the queen!” which I thought was pretty clever? ;)

Now to the Fintech Competition, and the 10 new financial companies to watch out for!

As I mentioned, I was one of the two judges for it again this year, where our ratings made up for 50% of the votes with the audiences’ making up the other 50%. We awarded two prizes for the night ��� $1,000 for first and $500 for 2nd – and below are my honest opinions of each, along with what they do. I’m not getting compensated by anyone listed here, and there are no affiliate links included at all.

Follow along and see if you can guess who won! :) In no particular order:

Agreeable (AgreeableApp.com) — Agreeable was one of my favorite apps who presented, and was built to help solve the problem of no shows whenever you go to meet someone off Craigslist or Facebook. Whereas currently you’re just $hit out of both luck and time when the buyer/seller doesn’t show up, with this app you’d actually get *paid* an agreed upon amount if anyone bails, ensuring that it’s in both parties’ interests to make the scheduled time. There were some privacy concerns I first had with this as it tracks both of your locations to confirm that the two sides made it to the meet-up okay, but after talking w/ one of the founders at a party afterwards I was impressed with their patent-pending solution to this. We’ll see if this puppy takes off, but I’m personally rooting for it to! (Also can be used for soooo many other areas in life too – imagine if Comcast or other services were forced to pay you if they never show up when they’re supposed to?? We’d all be rich! ;))

Birch Finance (BirchFinance.com) — This app was another killer idea, which I SWORE already existed but I guess not (a good sign that they’re onto something!). Basically, you tell Birch what credit cards you have and use, and then it’ll analyze them as you’re out shopping and tell you which ones to use to reap the *best* rewards, as well as *how much* you’ll get back by them, rather than you having to guess all the time. It’ll then show you other cards out in the market, and compare what would have happened had you used *those* cards instead of the ones you currently have. And since it’s all based on your specific transactions and spending patterns, you can see first hand exactly what your cards – or future cards – are worth to you. A pretty epic tool for any card hackers/lovers. (I’ll never use it since I’m a minimalist with just my one USAA card, but I’d be allll on it if I were in the rewards game!)

Budgit (BudgitApp.com) — Budgit is an automated budgeting and savings service that organizes your bills and spending so you can save for your goals. I tried real hard to figure out how these guys were different from all the other budgeting apps out there – and even posed the question during Q&A time – but even after doing so I was honestly still just as confused. They actually have this question posed word for word at the bottom of their website (“How is Budgit different?”) but the 3 answers given were “No ads ever”, “Hassle-free”, and “Secure and private.” Which I’m pretty sure most apps are?? All that said, as a budget guy I don’t think you can have *too many* apps out there spreading the good word, so I very much wish them all the luck and success as they can get. (PS: This app is not the same one as BudgIT)

College Backer (CollegeBacker.com) — These guys were pretty cool as they help get people to gift their child 529 contributions instead of more toys and “stuff.” Something I very much try to do every year too and rarely succeed! ;) And while like Budgit I couldn’t pin point how exactly this service is different than the others out there on the scene (there’s quite a few who let families and friends jump in to make this happen), I did like the general purpose of it and hope they take me up on my recommendation to pair these gifts with some sort of physical item too so the kids don’t totally hate opening up the gift of 529 funding, haha…

Honeyfi (Honeyfi.com) — Honeyfi is a new app *for couples* that makes sharing your budget and managing your money much easier together. Which I absolutely love! Honeyfi allows you to collaborate, link accounts, and even message each other at any time through the app so everyone in the relationship can be on the exact same page. There’s not many apps I can think of that focuses mainly on couples (actually, I can’t think of one?), so I’m really hoping this one takes off as I think they’re onto something good here… Budgets are even sexier when TWO people are involved!! ;)

KINFO (GoKINFO.com) — KINFO is an app for DIY investors that brings together information from hedge funds, insiders, analysts, bloggers and other private investors so you can see what everyone else is doing along side you. Particularly bloggers which the founder seems most excited about as it helps put all of our personal recommendations into one spot for people. Though as many of you know mine would look pretty boring as it would only show one fund: VTSAX :) I’m not sure if looking at what others are doing adds more or less noise into the decision making process (probably more?), but then again I was influenced to go All In with Vanguard from my peers so it could prove to be a pretty helpful resource.

Squeeze (Squeeze.com) — Squeeze is an app that helps you save by finding the best deals, promo codes, and coupons directly related to your current spending. It sounded a lot like the others in the field so I had a hard time putting them into their own special bucket, but needless to say you can’t have too many coupons in this hyper consumer world of ours… And as for branding, they absolutely NAILED it. Some of the other fintech names were pretty random!

Take Command Health (TakeCommandHealth.com) — These guys won my personal award for the best presentation, if only for the inclusion of photoshopped Trump and Obama pics littered throughout :) But their app was def. no joke. In a nutshell, Take Command helps you easily find the best option for health coverage by using big data to help source the best, and cheapest, health care options for you both on and off the exchange. They also shared the release of their small business feature which helps companies offer better and cheaper plans to their employees as well – something that many places are struggling hard with right now. So while the topic of health insurance typically doesn’t turn heads (at least for good reasons!), these guys had our immediate attention and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if they hit a home run with this.

Qoins (Qoins.io) — Do these guys look familiar?? They should! I featured them here last year the second I came across them because they’re the FIRST to finally apply “rounding up” technology to debt!!! Which is something severely lacking in our industry… And while I had to recuse myself from voting on this one since I was definitely biased (they donated $$$ to our Community Fund over at Rockstar Finance), I was beyond pleased to see them here and thought they gave a great presentation. You can find my review of them here (I was the first ever blogger to share them!) but in a nutshell they round up all your transactions to the nearest dollar, and then uses the spare change to help pay off your debt every month. It won’t clear all of it, but every $30 or $40/mo helps!

WizeFi (Wizefi.com) — WizeFi is a paid app ($8/mo) that helps organize your finances, analyzing everything from your assets and liabilities to your insurance and spending habits. Once hooked up it’ll then estimate your future net worth if you continue spending the way you’re currently spending, and then compare it to your future net worth if you follow your custom WizeFi wealth-building plan. It comes with a super slick interface and the focus on net worth of course turned me on, but at the end of the day not too sure that alone is worth the $8. Especially since it doesn’t physically *move* the money for you like Digit or Acorns does and still requires you to take action (which most people won’t). I was also turned off by the mentions of an affiliate program for customers to make more money, both in the presentation as well as on their website (it’s prominently listed as the #3 reason to sign up?!), even though I’m sure the founder meant well. Overall would have been better if you had the chance to test out a free version, with an option to upgrade later to “pro” or something similar if interested…

Alright… Ready to guess who won?? Any really stand out to you??

Here were the 1st and 2nd place winners after all the votes were tallied up:

Birch Finance

Take Command Health

Honestly though, ALL of these guys came out winning as they not only got to pitch in front of tons of $$$ influencers and enthusiasts, but also landed on this illustrious blog here!!! Haha… Surely that’s worth at *least* $10.00 right? ;)

So congrats to everyone who participated. I wish I were smart enough to come up with my own money app! If you want to take a look at last year’s competition and results, you can find that here: Fintech Competition 2016

Next Year’s FinCon Event…

If you can believe it, plans are already in the works for next year’s conference! If you’ve always wanted to visit Orlando, Florida – now’s your chance! We’ll be partying it up with Mickey next year :) Learn more and pick up tickets here: FinconExpo.com/2018

So there we are – another great conference on the books :) THANK YOU thank you THANK YOU to everyone who came out and put up with me over the weekend! It was a blast hanging out with my 2nd family in the flesh, and I wish you all a most successful next year.

Special shout out to the following who really made me smile throughout: Chelsea Norton, Cait Flanders, Steve Adcock, Jim $, Shin, Bobby Lee, Pete McPherson, Latoya Scott, Fritz, Hélène, Hannah Rounds, the Tiller Team, Miss Mazuma, Optimal Finance Daily, John and Sharon Duffy, Shannon Austin, The Dumpster Dog, Miss Thrifty, Maria Nedeva, FIREcracker, and Romeo Jeremiah.

See y’all in another 11 months!

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017) posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

[heliosfinance]

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017)

What up, y’all! Just got back and sobered up from our financial blogging conference, and thought I’d share some of the highlights from it.

Namely, the handful of new financial companies that were part of our yearly fintech competition I helped judge! It’s always so interesting to see how people use technology to solve our problems out there, and just like last year’s competition this one did not disappoint.

But first, gotta give it up to PT Money for organizing this amazing event each and every year (it was my 7th one attending!), as well as to all the other bloggers who volunteered their time to make it happen. If you’re a $$$ blogger or podcaster or just plain obsessed with personal finance, you NEED to come out to it one year and experience what it’s all about! I promise you will leave incredibly motivated or I will shut down this blog forever ;) (Or at least buy you a beer to cry into – hah)

So what happened at FinCon 2017?

Here are a few of the more exciting highlights… Because good luck telling social media people that what happens at FinCon stays at FinCon! ;)

Rapper Dee-1 crowd surfed while rapping his hit song, Sally Mae Back (Crowd surfed! At a financial blogging conference!)

Best selling author David Bach (of Automatic Millionaire fame) popped in to share his wild story on getting on Oprah for the first time, and how the Latte Factor is “not about the damn lattes!” Haha… Rebuking the hate he so often gets when people say they will never give up their coffees no matter how sexy compound interest is ;) He may or may not have also dropped a few F bombs on stage showing that he is definitely not one of the more stuffier financial “experts” out there. Super cool to run into him around 1 am on the last night too to talk shop! (Interesting fact: he’s fairly short)

Darren Rowse shared his story of how he became one of the world’s first professional bloggers when one of his camera reviews went viral over night. He’d later go on to start two majorly successful blogs, including the one most bloggers are familiar with and learn from: ProBlogger.com

Chris Guillebeau of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Comformity talked about how it’s perfectly okay to let a side hustle be just that – a side hustle! There’s no rule that you need to turn it into a full-time job if you’re perfectly happy with your current one. Just let it be your creative outlet while you bring home some extra side money! (I agree with this 100%!! Not all of us are born to run companies!!)

Cait Flanders held a presentation on writing Rockstar content that was packed solid which we think/hope went over pretty well! Interweaving the back story of Rockstar Finance and how it’s evolved over the years as well. (Cait curates it with me, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the scene)

A bunch of people from our community created a parody of “The Office” which was shown at our annual blogger award ceremony and was downright HILARIOUS. Then ended with a surprise performance from American Idol contestant Dalton Rapattoni! (It was all about the music this year, haha… Thx for putting it together, Scott Alan Turner!)

And lastly – we had one pretty damn fun Halloween party to wrap up the conference! Erik from The Mastermind Within said it best: “it was hilarious to see people with $1 million+ net worth’s singing Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back”.” Haha… That’s how we roll! If you can’t live it up, what’s the point of all that money??

As for the best costume of the night? I gave it to this guy. Can you tell why? ;)

(full back story here – he totally shaved his head for this!!)

Other interesting gems pertaining to yours truly: I randomly got interviewed in the bathroom, and I was  presented with the International Blogger of The Year award from UK’s SHOMO awards. Where I then made an acceptance speech that included “Long live the queen!” which I thought was pretty clever? ;)

Now to the Fintech Competition, and the 10 new financial companies to watch out for!

As I mentioned, I was one of the two judges for it again this year, where our ratings made up for 50% of the votes with the audiences’ making up the other 50%. We awarded two prizes for the night – $1,000 for first and $500 for 2nd – and below are my honest opinions of each, along with what they do. I’m not getting compensated by anyone listed here, and there are no affiliate links included at all.

Follow along and see if you can guess who won! :) In no particular order:

Agreeable (AgreeableApp.com) — Agreeable was one of my favorite apps who presented, and was built to help solve the problem of no shows whenever you go to meet someone off Craigslist or Facebook. Whereas currently you’re just $hit out of both luck and time when the buyer/seller doesn’t show up, with this app you’d actually get *paid* an agreed upon amount if anyone bails, ensuring that it’s in both parties’ interests to make the scheduled time. There were some privacy concerns I first had with this as it tracks both of your locations to confirm that the two sides made it to the meet-up okay, but after talking w/ one of the founders at a party afterwards I was impressed with their patent-pending solution to this. We’ll see if this puppy takes off, but I’m personally rooting for it to! (Also can be used for soooo many other areas in life too – imagine if Comcast or other services were forced to pay you if they never show up when they’re supposed to?? We’d all be rich! ;))

Birch Finance (BirchFinance.com) — This app was another killer idea, which I SWORE already existed but I guess not (a good sign that they’re onto something!). Basically, you tell Birch what credit cards you have and use, and then it’ll analyze them as you’re out shopping and tell you which ones to use to reap the *best* rewards, as well as *how much* you’ll get back by them, rather than you having to guess all the time. It’ll then show you other cards out in the market, and compare what would have happened had you used *those* cards instead of the ones you currently have. And since it’s all based on your specific transactions and spending patterns, you can see first hand exactly what your cards – or future cards – are worth to you. A pretty epic tool for any card hackers/lovers. (I’ll never use it since I’m a minimalist with just my one USAA card, but I’d be allll on it if I were in the rewards game!)

Budgit (BudgitApp.com) — Budgit is an automated budgeting and savings service that organizes your bills and spending so you can save for your goals. I tried real hard to figure out how these guys were different from all the other budgeting apps out there – and even posed the question during Q&A time – but even after doing so I was honestly still just as confused. They actually have this question posed word for word at the bottom of their website (“How is Budgit different?”) but the 3 answers given were “No ads ever”, “Hassle-free”, and “Secure and private.” Which I’m pretty sure most apps are?? All that said, as a budget guy I don’t think you can have *too many* apps out there spreading the good word, so I very much wish them all the luck and success as they can get. (PS: This app is not the same one as BudgIT)

College Backer (CollegeBacker.com) — These guys were pretty cool as they help get people to gift their child 529 contributions instead of more toys and “stuff.” Something I very much try to do every year too and rarely succeed! ;) And while like Budgit I couldn’t pin point how exactly this service is different than the others out there on the scene (there’s quite a few who let families and friends jump in to make this happen), I did like the general purpose of it and hope they take me up on my recommendation to pair these gifts with some sort of physical item too so the kids don’t totally hate opening up the gift of 529 funding, haha…

Honeyfi (Honeyfi.com) — Honeyfi is a new app *for couples* that makes sharing your budget and managing your money much easier together. Which I absolutely love! Honeyfi allows you to collaborate, link accounts, and even message each other at any time through the app so everyone in the relationship can be on the exact same page. There’s not many apps I can think of that focuses mainly on couples (actually, I can’t think of one?), so I’m really hoping this one takes off as I think they’re onto something good here… Budgets are even sexier with TWO people are involved!! ;)

KINFO (GoKINFO.com) — KINFO is an app for DIY investors that brings together information from hedge funds, insiders, analysts, bloggers and other private investors so you can see what everyone else is doing along side you. Particularly bloggers which the founder seems most excited about as it helps put all of our personal recommendations into one spot for people. Though as many of you know mine would look pretty boring as it would only show one fund: VTSAX :) I’m not sure if looking at what others is doing adds more or less noise into the decision making process (probably more?), but then again I was influenced to go All In with Vanguard from my peers so it could prove to be a pretty helpful resource.

Squeeze (Squeeze.com) — Squeeze is an app that helps you save by finding the best deals, promo codes, and coupons directly related to your current spending. It sounded a lot like the others in the field so I had a hard time putting them into their own special bucket, but needless to say you can’t have too many coupons in this hyper consumer world of ours… And as for branding, they absolutely NAILED it. Some of the other fintech names were pretty random!

Take Command Health (TakeCommandHealth.com) — These guys won my personal award for the best presentation, if only for the inclusion of photoshopped Trump and Obama pics littered throughout :) But their app was def. no joke. In a nutshell, Take Command helps you easily find the best option for health coverage by using big data to help source the best, and cheapest, health care options for you both on and off the exchange. They also shared the release of their small business feature which helps companies offer better and cheaper plans to their employees as well – something that many places are struggling hard with right now. So while the topic of health insurance typically doesn’t turn heads (at least for good reasons!), these guys had our immediate attention and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if they hit a home run with this.

Qoins (Qoins.io) — Do these guys look familiar?? They should! I featured them here last year the second I came across them because they’re the FIRST to finally apply “rounding up” technology to debt!!! Which is something severely lacking in our industry… And while I had to recuse myself from voting on this one since I was definitely biased (they donated $$$ to our Community Fund over at Rockstar Finance), I was beyond pleased to see them here and thought they gave a great presentation. You can find my review of them here (I was the first ever blogger to share them!) but in a nutshell they round up all your transactions to the nearest dollar, and then uses the spare change to help pay off your debt every month. It won’t clear all of it, but every $30 or $40/mo helps!

WizeFi (Wizefi.com) — WizeFi is a paid app ($8/mo) that helps organize your finances, analyzing everything from your assets and liabilities to your insurance and spending habits. Once hooked up it’ll then estimate your future net worth if you continue spending the way you’re currently spending, and then compare it to your future net worth if you follow your custom WizeFi wealth-building plan. It comes with a super slick interface and the focus on net worth of course turned me on, but at the end of the day not too sure that alone is worth the $8. Especially since it doesn’t physically *move* the money for you like Digit or Acorns does and still requires you to take action (which most people won’t). I was also turned off by the mentions of an affiliate program for customers to make more money, both in the presentation as well as on their website (it’s prominently listed as the #3 reason to sign up?!), even though I’m sure the founder meant well. Overall would have been better if you had the chance to test out a free version, with an option to upgrade later to “pro” or something similar if interested…

Alright… Ready to guess who won?? Any really stand out to you??

Here were the 1st and 2nd place winners after all the votes were tallied up:

Birch Finance

Take Command Health

Honestly though, ALL of these guys came out winning as they not only got to pitch in front of tons of $$$ influencers and enthusiasts, but also landed on this illustrious blog here!!! Haha… Surely that’s worth at *least* $10.00 right? ;)

So congrats to everyone who participated. I wish I were smart enough to come up with my own money app! If you want to take a look at last year’s competition and results, you can find that here: Fintech Competition 2016

Next Year’s FinCon Event…

If you can believe it, plans are already in the works for next year’s conference! If you’ve always wanted to visit Orlando, Florida – now’s your chance! We’ll be partying it up with Mickey next year :) More details to come…

So there we are – another great conference on the books :) THANK YOU thank you THANK YOU to everyone who came out and put up with me over the weekend! It was a blast hanging out with my 2nd family in the flesh, and I wish you all a most successful next year.

Special shout out to the following who really made me smile throughout: Chelsea Norton, Cait Flanders, Steve Adcock, Jim $, Shin, Bobby Lee, Pete McPherson, Latoya Scott, Fritz, Hélène, Hannah Rounds, the Tiller Team, Miss Mazuma, Optimal Finance Daily, John and Sharon Duffy, Shannon Austin, The Dumpster Dog, Miss Thrifty, Maria Nedeva, FIREcracker, and Romeo Jeremiah.

See y’all in another 11 months!

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017) published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

[fesahaawit]

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017)

What up, y’all! Just got back and sobered up from our financial blogging conference, and thought I’d share some of the highlights from it.

Namely, the handful of new financial companies that were part of our yearly fintech competition I helped judge! It’s always so interesting to see how people use technology to solve our problems out there, and just like last year’s competition this one did not disappoint.

But first, gotta give it up to PT Money for organizing this amazing event each and every year (it was my 7th one attending!), as well as to all the other bloggers who volunteered their time to make it happen. If you’re a $$$ blogger or podcaster or just plain obsessed with personal finance, you NEED to come out to it one year and experience what it’s all about! I promise you will leave incredibly motivated or I will shut down this blog forever ;) (Or at least buy you a beer to cry into – hah)

So what happened at FinCon 2017?

Here are a few of the more exciting highlights… Because good luck telling social media people that what happens at FinCon stays at FinCon! ;)

Rapper Dee-1 crowd surfed while rapping his hit song, Sally Mae Back (Crowd surfed! At a financial blogging conference!)

Best selling author David Bach (of Automatic Millionaire fame) popped in to share his wild story on getting on Oprah for the first time, and how the Latte Factor is “not about the damn lattes!” Haha… Rebuking the hate he so often gets when people say they will never give up their coffees no matter how sexy compound interest is ;) He may or may not have also dropped a few F bombs on stage showing that he is definitely not one of the more stuffier financial “experts” out there. Super cool to run into him around 1 am on the last night too to talk shop! (Interesting fact: he’s fairly short)

Darren Rowse shared his story of how he became one of the world’s first professional bloggers when one of his camera reviews went viral over night. He’d later go on to start two majorly successful blogs, including the one most bloggers are familiar with and learn from: ProBlogger.com

Chris Guillebeau of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Comformity talked about how it’s perfectly okay to let a side hustle be just that – a side hustle! There’s no rule that you need to turn it into a full-time job if you’re perfectly happy with your current one. Just let it be your creative outlet while you bring home some extra side money! (I agree with this 100%!! Not all of us are born to run companies!!)

Cait Flanders held a presentation on writing Rockstar content that was packed solid which we think/hope went over pretty well! Interweaving the back story of Rockstar Finance and how it’s evolved over the years as well. (Cait curates it with me, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the scene)

A bunch of people from our community created a parody of The Office called The Floor which was shown at our annual blogger award ceremony and was downright HILARIOUS. Then ended with a surprise live musical performance by American Idol contestant Dalton Rapattoni! (It was all about the music this year, haha… Thx for putting it together, Scott Alan Turner!)

And lastly – we had one pretty damn fun Halloween party to wrap up the conference! Erik from The Mastermind Within said it best: “it was hilarious to see people with $1 million+ net worth’s singing Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back”.” Haha… That’s how we roll! If you can’t live it up, what’s the point of all that money??

As for the best costume of the night? I gave it to this guy. Can you tell why? ;)

(full back story here – he totally shaved his head for this!!)

Other interesting gems pertaining to yours truly: I randomly got interviewed in the bathroom, and I was  presented with the International Blogger of The Year award from UK’s SHOMO awards. Where I then made an acceptance speech that included “Long live the queen!” which I thought was pretty clever? ;)

Now to the Fintech Competition, and the 10 new financial companies to watch out for!

As I mentioned, I was one of the two judges for it again this year, where our ratings made up for 50% of the votes with the audiences’ making up the other 50%. We awarded two prizes for the night – $1,000 for first and $500 for 2nd – and below are my honest opinions of each, along with what they do. I’m not getting compensated by anyone listed here, and there are no affiliate links included at all.

Follow along and see if you can guess who won! :) In no particular order:

Agreeable (AgreeableApp.com) — Agreeable was one of my favorite apps who presented, and was built to help solve the problem of no shows whenever you go to meet someone off Craigslist or Facebook. Whereas currently you’re just $hit out of both luck and time when the buyer/seller doesn’t show up, with this app you’d actually get *paid* an agreed upon amount if anyone bails, ensuring that it’s in both parties’ interests to make the scheduled time. There were some privacy concerns I first had with this as it tracks both of your locations to confirm that the two sides made it to the meet-up okay, but after talking w/ one of the founders at a party afterwards I was impressed with their patent-pending solution to this. We’ll see if this puppy takes off, but I’m personally rooting for it to! (Also can be used for soooo many other areas in life too – imagine if Comcast or other services were forced to pay you if they never show up when they’re supposed to?? We’d all be rich! ;))

Birch Finance (BirchFinance.com) — This app was another killer idea, which I SWORE already existed but I guess not (a good sign that they’re onto something!). Basically, you tell Birch what credit cards you have and use, and then it’ll analyze them as you’re out shopping and tell you which ones to use to reap the *best* rewards, as well as *how much* you’ll get back by them, rather than you having to guess all the time. It’ll then show you other cards out in the market, and compare what would have happened had you used *those* cards instead of the ones you currently have. And since it’s all based on your specific transactions and spending patterns, you can see first hand exactly what your cards – or future cards – are worth to you. A pretty epic tool for any card hackers/lovers. (I’ll never use it since I’m a minimalist with just my one USAA card, but I’d be allll on it if I were in the rewards game!)

Budgit (BudgitApp.com) — Budgit is an automated budgeting and savings service that organizes your bills and spending so you can save for your goals. I tried real hard to figure out how these guys were different from all the other budgeting apps out there – and even posed the question during Q&A time – but even after doing so I was honestly still just as confused. They actually have this question posed word for word at the bottom of their website (“How is Budgit different?”) but the 3 answers given were “No ads ever”, “Hassle-free”, and “Secure and private.” Which I’m pretty sure most apps are?? All that said, as a budget guy I don’t think you can have *too many* apps out there spreading the good word, so I very much wish them all the luck and success as they can get. (PS: This app is not the same one as BudgIT)

College Backer (CollegeBacker.com) — These guys were pretty cool as they help get people to gift their child 529 contributions instead of more toys and “stuff.” Something I very much try to do every year too and rarely succeed! ;) And while like Budgit I couldn’t pin point how exactly this service is different than the others out there on the scene (there’s quite a few who let families and friends jump in to make this happen), I did like the general purpose of it and hope they take me up on my recommendation to pair these gifts with some sort of physical item too so the kids don’t totally hate opening up the gift of 529 funding, haha…

Honeyfi (Honeyfi.com) — Honeyfi is a new app *for couples* that makes sharing your budget and managing your money much easier together. Which I absolutely love! Honeyfi allows you to collaborate, link accounts, and even message each other at any time through the app so everyone in the relationship can be on the exact same page. There’s not many apps I can think of that focuses mainly on couples (actually, I can’t think of one?), so I’m really hoping this one takes off as I think they’re onto something good here… Budgets are even sexier when TWO people are involved!! ;)

KINFO (GoKINFO.com) — KINFO is an app for DIY investors that brings together information from hedge funds, insiders, analysts, bloggers and other private investors so you can see what everyone else is doing along side you. Particularly bloggers which the founder seems most excited about as it helps put all of our personal recommendations into one spot for people. Though as many of you know mine would look pretty boring as it would only show one fund: VTSAX :) I’m not sure if looking at what others are doing adds more or less noise into the decision making process (probably more?), but then again I was influenced to go All In with Vanguard from my peers so it could prove to be a pretty helpful resource.

Squeeze (Squeeze.com) — Squeeze is an app that helps you save by finding the best deals, promo codes, and coupons directly related to your current spending. It sounded a lot like the others in the field so I had a hard time putting them into their own special bucket, but needless to say you can’t have too many coupons in this hyper consumer world of ours… And as for branding, they absolutely NAILED it. Some of the other fintech names were pretty random!

Take Command Health (TakeCommandHealth.com) — These guys won my personal award for the best presentation, if only for the inclusion of photoshopped Trump and Obama pics littered throughout :) But their app was def. no joke. In a nutshell, Take Command helps you easily find the best option for health coverage by using big data to help source the best, and cheapest, health care options for you both on and off the exchange. They also shared the release of their small business feature which helps companies offer better and cheaper plans to their employees as well – something that many places are struggling hard with right now. So while the topic of health insurance typically doesn’t turn heads (at least for good reasons!), these guys had our immediate attention and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if they hit a home run with this.

Qoins (Qoins.io) — Do these guys look familiar?? They should! I featured them here last year the second I came across them because they’re the FIRST to finally apply “rounding up” technology to debt!!! Which is something severely lacking in our industry… And while I had to recuse myself from voting on this one since I was definitely biased (they donated $$$ to our Community Fund over at Rockstar Finance), I was beyond pleased to see them here and thought they gave a great presentation. You can find my review of them here (I was the first ever blogger to share them!) but in a nutshell they round up all your transactions to the nearest dollar, and then uses the spare change to help pay off your debt every month. It won’t clear all of it, but every $30 or $40/mo helps!

WizeFi (Wizefi.com) — WizeFi is a paid app ($8/mo) that helps organize your finances, analyzing everything from your assets and liabilities to your insurance and spending habits. Once hooked up it’ll then estimate your future net worth if you continue spending the way you’re currently spending, and then compare it to your future net worth if you follow your custom WizeFi wealth-building plan. It comes with a super slick interface and the focus on net worth of course turned me on, but at the end of the day not too sure that alone is worth the $8. Especially since it doesn’t physically *move* the money for you like Digit or Acorns does and still requires you to take action (which most people won’t). I was also turned off by the mentions of an affiliate program for customers to make more money, both in the presentation as well as on their website (it’s prominently listed as the #3 reason to sign up?!), even though I’m sure the founder meant well. Overall would have been better if you had the chance to test out a free version, with an option to upgrade later to “pro” or something similar if interested…

Alright… Ready to guess who won?? Any really stand out to you??

Here were the 1st and 2nd place winners after all the votes were tallied up:

Birch Finance

Take Command Health

Honestly though, ALL of these guys came out winning as they not only got to pitch in front of tons of $$$ influencers and enthusiasts, but also landed on this illustrious blog here!!! Haha… Surely that’s worth at *least* $10.00 right? ;)

So congrats to everyone who participated. I wish I were smart enough to come up with my own money app! If you want to take a look at last year’s competition and results, you can find that here: Fintech Competition 2016

Next Year’s FinCon Event…

If you can believe it, plans are already in the works for next year’s conference! If you’ve always wanted to visit Orlando, Florida – now’s your chance! We’ll be partying it up with Mickey next year :) Learn more and pick up tickets here: FinconExpo.com/2018

So there we are – another great conference on the books :) THANK YOU thank you THANK YOU to everyone who came out and put up with me over the weekend! It was a blast hanging out with my 2nd family in the flesh, and I wish you all a most successful next year.

Special shout out to the following who really made me smile throughout: Chelsea Norton, Cait Flanders, Steve Adcock, Jim $, Shin, Bobby Lee, Pete McPherson, Latoya Scott, Fritz, Hélène, Hannah Rounds, the Tiller Team, Miss Mazuma, Optimal Finance Daily, John and Sharon Duffy, Shannon Austin, The Dumpster Dog, Miss Thrifty, Maria Nedeva, FIREcracker, and Romeo Jeremiah.

See y’all in another 11 months!

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017) posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

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10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017)

What up, y’all! Just got back and sobered up from our financial blogging conference, and thought I’d share some of the highlights from it.

Namely, the handful of new financial companies that were part of our yearly fintech competition I helped judge! It’s always so interesting to see how people use technology to solve our problems out there, and just like last year’s competition this one did not disappoint.

But first, gotta give it up to PT Money for organizing this amazing event each and every year (it was my 7th one attending!), as well as to all the other bloggers who volunteered their time to make it happen. If you’re a $$$ blogger or podcaster or just plain obsessed with personal finance, you NEED to come out to it one year and experience what it’s all about! I promise you will leave incredibly motivated or I will shut down this blog forever ;) (Or at least buy you a beer to cry into – hah)

So what happened at FinCon 2017?

Here are a few of the more exciting highlights… Because good luck telling social media people that what happens at FinCon stays at FinCon! ;)

Rapper Dee-1 crowd surfed while rapping his hit song, Sally Mae Back (Crowd surfed! At a financial blogging conference!)

Best selling author David Bach (of Automatic Millionaire fame) popped in to share his wild story on getting on Oprah for the first time, and how the Latte Factor is “not about the damn lattes!” Haha… Rebuking the hate he so often gets when people say they will never give up their coffees no matter how sexy compound interest is ;) He may or may not have also dropped a few F bombs on stage showing that he is definitely not one of the more stuffier financial “experts” out there. Super cool to run into him around 1 am on the last night too to talk shop! (Interesting fact: he’s fairly short)

Darren Rowse shared his story of how he became one of the world’s first professional bloggers when one of his camera reviews went viral over night. He’d later go on to start two majorly successful blogs, including the one most bloggers are familiar with and learn from: ProBlogger.com

Chris Guillebeau of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Comformity talked about how it’s perfectly okay to let a side hustle be just that – a side hustle! There’s no rule that you need to turn it into a full-time job if you’re perfectly happy with your current one. Just let it be your creative outlet while you bring home some extra side money! (I agree with this 100%!! Not all of us are born to run companies!!)

Cait Flanders held a presentation on writing Rockstar content that was packed solid which we think/hope went over pretty well! Interweaving the back story of Rockstar Finance and how it’s evolved over the years as well. (Cait curates it with me, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the scene)

A bunch of people from our community created a parody of “The Office” which was shown at our annual blogger award ceremony and was downright HILARIOUS. Then ended with a surprise performance from American Idol contestant Dalton Rapattoni! (It was all about the music this year, haha… Thx for putting it together, Scott Alan Turner!)

And lastly – we had one pretty damn fun Halloween party to wrap up the conference! Erik from The Mastermind Within said it best: “it was hilarious to see people with $1 million+ net worth’s singing Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back”.” Haha… That’s how we roll! If you can’t live it up, what’s the point of all that money??

As for the best costume of the night? I gave it to this guy. Can you tell why? ;)

(full back story here – he totally shaved his head for this!!)

Other interesting gems pertaining to yours truly: I randomly got interviewed in the bathroom, and I was  presented with the International Blogger of The Year award from UK’s SHOMO awards. Where I then made an acceptance speech that included “Long live the queen!” which I thought was pretty clever? ;)

Now to the Fintech Competition, and the 10 new financial companies to watch out for!

As I mentioned, I was one of the two judges for it again this year, where our ratings made up for 50% of the votes with the audiences’ making up the other 50%. We awarded two prizes for the night – $1,000 for first and $500 for 2nd – and below are my honest opinions of each, along with what they do. I’m not getting compensated by anyone listed here, and there are no affiliate links included at all.

Follow along and see if you can guess who won! :) In no particular order:

Agreeable (AgreeableApp.com) — Agreeable was one of my favorite apps who presented, and was built to help solve the problem of no shows whenever you go to meet someone off Craigslist or Facebook. Whereas currently you’re just $hit out of both luck and time when the buyer/seller doesn’t show up, with this app you’d actually get *paid* an agreed upon amount if anyone bails, ensuring that it’s in both parties’ interests to make the scheduled time. There were some privacy concerns I first had with this as it tracks both of your locations to confirm that the two sides made it to the meet-up okay, but after talking w/ one of the founders at a party afterwards I was impressed with their patent-pending solution to this. We’ll see if this puppy takes off, but I’m personally rooting for it to! (Also can be used for soooo many other areas in life too – imagine if Comcast or other services were forced to pay you if they never show up when they’re supposed to?? We’d all be rich! ;))

Birch Finance (BirchFinance.com) — This app was another killer idea, which I SWORE already existed but I guess not (a good sign that they’re onto something!). Basically, you tell Birch what credit cards you have and use, and then it’ll analyze them as you’re out shopping and tell you which ones to use to reap the *best* rewards, as well as *how much* you’ll get back by them, rather than you having to guess all the time. It’ll then show you other cards out in the market, and compare what would have happened had you used *those* cards instead of the ones you currently have. And since it’s all based on your specific transactions and spending patterns, you can see first hand exactly what your cards – or future cards – are worth to you. A pretty epic tool for any card hackers/lovers. (I’ll never use it since I’m a minimalist with just my one USAA card, but I’d be allll on it if I were in the rewards game!)

Budgit (BudgitApp.com) — Budgit is an automated budgeting and savings service that organizes your bills and spending so you can save for your goals. I tried real hard to figure out how these guys were different from all the other budgeting apps out there – and even posed the question during Q&A time – but even after doing so I was honestly still just as confused. They actually have this question posed word for word at the bottom of their website (“How is Budgit different?”) but the 3 answers given were “No ads ever”, “Hassle-free”, and “Secure and private.” Which I’m pretty sure most apps are?? All that said, as a budget guy I don’t think you can have *too many* apps out there spreading the good word, so I very much wish them all the luck and success as they can get. (PS: This app is not the same one as BudgIT)

College Backer (CollegeBacker.com) — These guys were pretty cool as they help get people to gift their child 529 contributions instead of more toys and “stuff.” Something I very much try to do every year too and rarely succeed! ;) And while like Budgit I couldn’t pin point how exactly this service is different than the others out there on the scene (there’s quite a few who let families and friends jump in to make this happen), I did like the general purpose of it and hope they take me up on my recommendation to pair these gifts with some sort of physical item too so the kids don’t totally hate opening up the gift of 529 funding, haha…

Honeyfi (Honeyfi.com) — Honeyfi is a new app *for couples* that makes sharing your budget and managing your money much easier together. Which I absolutely love! Honeyfi allows you to collaborate, link accounts, and even message each other at any time through the app so everyone in the relationship can be on the exact same page. There’s not many apps I can think of that focuses mainly on couples (actually, I can’t think of one?), so I’m really hoping this one takes off as I think they’re onto something good here… Budgets are even sexier with TWO people are involved!! ;)

KINFO (GoKINFO.com) — KINFO is an app for DIY investors that brings together information from hedge funds, insiders, analysts, bloggers and other private investors so you can see what everyone else is doing along side you. Particularly bloggers which the founder seems most excited about as it helps put all of our personal recommendations into one spot for people. Though as many of you know mine would look pretty boring as it would only show one fund: VTSAX :) I’m not sure if looking at what others is doing adds more or less noise into the decision making process (probably more?), but then again I was influenced to go All In with Vanguard from my peers so it could prove to be a pretty helpful resource.

Squeeze (Squeeze.com) — Squeeze is an app that helps you save by finding the best deals, promo codes, and coupons directly related to your current spending. It sounded a lot like the others in the field so I had a hard time putting them into their own special bucket, but needless to say you can’t have too many coupons in this hyper consumer world of ours… And as for branding, they absolutely NAILED it. Some of the other fintech names were pretty random!

Take Command Health (TakeCommandHealth.com) — These guys won my personal award for the best presentation, if only for the inclusion of photoshopped Trump and Obama pics littered throughout :) But their app was def. no joke. In a nutshell, Take Command helps you easily find the best option for health coverage by using big data to help source the best, and cheapest, health care options for you both on and off the exchange. They also shared the release of their small business feature which helps companies offer better and cheaper plans to their employees as well – something that many places are struggling hard with right now. So while the topic of health insurance typically doesn’t turn heads (at least for good reasons!), these guys had our immediate attention and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if they hit a home run with this.

Qoins (Qoins.io) — Do these guys look familiar?? They should! I featured them here last year the second I came across them because they’re the FIRST to finally apply “rounding up” technology to debt!!! Which is something severely lacking in our industry… And while I had to recuse myself from voting on this one since I was definitely biased (they donated $$$ to our Community Fund over at Rockstar Finance), I was beyond pleased to see them here and thought they gave a great presentation. You can find my review of them here (I was the first ever blogger to share them!) but in a nutshell they round up all your transactions to the nearest dollar, and then uses the spare change to help pay off your debt every month. It won’t clear all of it, but every $30 or $40/mo helps!

WizeFi (Wizefi.com) — WizeFi is a paid app ($8/mo) that helps organize your finances, analyzing everything from your assets and liabilities to your insurance and spending habits. Once hooked up it’ll then estimate your future net worth if you continue spending the way you’re currently spending, and then compare it to your future net worth if you follow your custom WizeFi wealth-building plan. It comes with a super slick interface and the focus on net worth of course turned me on, but at the end of the day not too sure that alone is worth the $8. Especially since it doesn’t physically *move* the money for you like Digit or Acorns does and still requires you to take action (which most people won’t). I was also turned off by the mentions of an affiliate program for customers to make more money, both in the presentation as well as on their website (it’s prominently listed as the #3 reason to sign up?!), even though I’m sure the founder meant well. Overall would have been better if you had the chance to test out a free version, with an option to upgrade later to “pro” or something similar if interested…

Alright… Ready to guess who won?? Any really stand out to you??

Here were the 1st and 2nd place winners after all the votes were tallied up:

Birch Finance

Take Command Health

Honestly though, ALL of these guys came out winning as they not only got to pitch in front of tons of $$$ influencers and enthusiasts, but also landed on this illustrious blog here!!! Haha… Surely that’s worth at *least* $10.00 right? ;)

So congrats to everyone who participated. I wish I were smart enough to come up with my own money app! If you want to take a look at last year’s competition and results, you can find that here: Fintech Competition 2016

Next Year’s FinCon Event…

If you can believe it, plans are already in the works for next year’s conference! If you’ve always wanted to visit Orlando, Florida – now’s your chance! We’ll be partying it up with Mickey next year :) More details to come…

So there we are – another great conference on the books :) THANK YOU thank you THANK YOU to everyone who came out and put up with me over the weekend! It was a blast hanging out with my 2nd family in the flesh, and I wish you all a most successful next year.

Special shout out to the following who really made me smile throughout: Chelsea Norton, Cait Flanders, Steve Adcock, Jim $, Shin, Bobby Lee, Pete McPherson, Latoya Scott, Fritz, Hélène, Hannah Rounds, the Tiller Team, Miss Mazuma, Optimal Finance Daily, John and Sharon Duffy, Shannon Austin, The Dumpster Dog, Miss Thrifty, Maria Nedeva, FIREcracker, and Romeo Jeremiah.

See y’all in another 11 months!

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017) posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ