The original title for the post was “Meeting a Personal Finance Blogger is Fun.”

So just a few days ago at around 10 PM, I said good bye to fellow PF Blogger, Jonathan of MyMoneyBlog.com (as it was getting too late for us old farts).

Jonathan was in the Bay Area and he decided to contact me and Noah for some three-way male bonding. We chatted, had sandwiches, played ping pong, and gave Jonathan a quick demo of Mint.

As Jonathan and Noah got heated up in a ping pong match, I suddenly had one of those “life is weird” moment. I realized that, indirectly, I was here, interning in Mountain View because of the two guys in front of me.

You see, I started Stop Buying Crap back in April of 2005 due to a Google search result that landed me at My Money Blog, and in turn, I met Noah through my blog. It really is a new world, when strangers from the internet can somehow influence your life, whether directly or indirectly.

One thing I noticed right away when talking to Jonathan is how much similar some of our values in personal finance was. Although I was never too involve with the entire personal finance blogging community (too large to keep up), I always have an impression that the community contained a group of super-nice people (some of us in the east coast are even throwing a happy hour get together). Meeting Jonathan reaffirmed that belief, and made me realized that I certainly wouldn’t mind labeling myself as a personal finance blogger.

It’s a big change in my mind, I think. Back in the days, I would never label myself as a blogger , even though I post more frequently than I do today.

I was always imaging the potential response. “You’re a blogger? WTF is that?”

But today, it’s a part of something I do. It certainly isn’t my only label, but for now, I am definitely a personal finance blogger (even if I’m crappy, sporadic one).

And so, although I don’t post as regularly as before (for a long time now), and I’m hardly a regular contributor in community discussions, I still consider myself a part of the community (and the community includes the readers too). And why not? It’s a great community.

It’s a community of people with different ages, different locations, different ethnic backgrounds, different net worth; but we all share the same common goal, to reach financial independence so that we can take care of our loved ones.

Pretty damn cool, I think.