About

Brand new to the crazy world of Hundred Dollar Hero?  Don't worry, you don't have to partner up with the teacher on your first day.  But you might want to check out the START HERE page.

In the meantime, if you're nosey, you can lift the masks and find out more about the team behind Hundred Dollar Hero.

The SuperTeam

Hi, I'm Zach.

And I'm Lauren.

Are these fonts sexist? They feel sexist. Let’s go to something more normal.  We can talk with one voice anyway, its one of the benefits of being a couple.

Anyway, we’re Zach and Lauren, and we were the actual singers behind Milli Vanilli.

That’s not true.

I thought we said we were going to be font-neutral? You know, show a united front. What happened to solidarity?

I wanted to make it very clear I don’t stand with your ‘90s-era lies.  A Milli Vanilli joke? Really? Too soon.

Okay, okay. We’re Zach and Lauren. A fairly normal couple who is weird enough to really enjoy discussing personal finance. Happy?

You forgot Archie.

And a hairy mutt named Archie. Though he rarely writes on this blog, so I am not sure he deserves a mention. Now, can we go back to talking as a single team?

Thank you. We are not CFPs, CFAs, CFAnythings.  We do not run our own hedge fund, or have stake in any hedge fund-

I’m still not even sure that I know what a hedge fund is really.

It's where the Illuminati invest their money.

Anyway, we are normal people, living in the modern world, who have detoxed from an overly modern and materialistic lifestyle. We don’t have fancy certifications behind our names but we do read and consume more on personal finance than just about anyone. Yes, even you.

We also love a good adventure and a good challenge, so we use our own lives as the testing ground for all sorts of ways to make more and spend less.

Between the two of us-
And Archie.

Yes, between us and the furball, we share all our insights from our own failings, our own glorious successes (increasing everyday), our experiments, our research and our conversations with other smart people, trying to make sense of it all.

Our Journey to Financial Independence

We are married, about a year and a half now, and live in the glorious American Midwest, which is famous the world-over for not voting in its own best interest, and being that checkerboard of fields and farmland you fly over when you are headed to hipper destinations.

Moral of the story, we love it here.  Not to say we wouldn’t entertain moving – we have certainly thought about it – but the city we live in is friendly, accessible and cheap.

We are in our late 20s, but we are old souls, which is just a euphemism we use to explain that Lauren is wise and Zach is a cynical curmudgeon.

We both got a rather late start on the whole job/savings/401(k) thing because after we graduated from college we both went ahead and got advanced degrees.  We thought attending school for 1,938,545 years would be fun.

We bought a home before we got married (rebels!).  It is in a nice neighborhood, with nice schools, and high taxes (idiots?).

Our little nuclear family now consists of two working adults and a dog who isn’t really pulling his own weight, but we seem to let him slide by anyway.  We have credit cards just to build our credit, and pay off the balance every month.

So far, so good.  Two incomes, no children (yet), no credit card debt or car payments.

We Can Be Soooo Humble

And that is where the bragging stops.

It hasn't always been smooth sailing. Our net worth has taken its fair share of lumps. After all, those shiny degrees were not given out for free.  Apart from the opportunity cost we mentioned of not working until we were 25 and 26, we incurred a wee bit of student loans.

We are paying them off in short order. They are currently unwelcome in this house, and being treated accordingly. We aren't going to stop until we are debt free, financially independent, and Warren Buffett is asking us for investing advice. Along the way, we might have some fun too.

Join us.