Financial Savvy and Glitter for All
Lillian Karabaic ’13, an ice-skating, Bowie-loving finance reporter who has spent over a decade transforming people's relationship with money, is on to the next challenge.
It’s not even 8 a.m., but Lillian Karabaic ’13, the newest morning host of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Weekend Edition, joins me at the Lloyd Center ice skating rink on her day off, during what would usually be her lunch hour. Wearing personalized pink skates, she warms up, cutting sharp figures into the ice.
The Lloyd Center rink’s oval design is unique, and not in a good way, according to Lillian. Figure skaters rely on a rink’s standard shape to accommodate their routines’ precise geometry. As she skates, she pauses in between moves, deciding what to do next—and calculating how to succeed with less space than she needs.
Her training makes skating seem effortless—so much so that someone far less skilled can see themselves in her and imagine what they might one day achieve if they follow her lead. This is true not only of her athleticism, but also of her reporting and financial savvy.
Lilian is a multi-hyphenate wunderkind. She has helped countless people overcome financial struggles through her books that explain personal finance using cat illustrations and Oh My Dollar, a podcast and online forum that delivers money smarts “with a dash of glitter.”
She’s known for making people comfortable while they learn, whether it’s about budgets, or ice skates. With her varied passions, she has established ties to many of Portland’s communities, from cyclists and ice skaters to glam rock fans and personal finance enthusiasts. Her animated voice, on air or in writing, is authoritative but personable as she guides her audience through uncomfortable topics like failures in Oregon’s organ donation system. She sounds like a friend or a cool teacher.
Though she’s something of a Portland icon, Lillian was raised in Cincinnati and spent time on both sides of the Ohio-Kentucky border. Ice skating was among her early hobbies and one of her first self-funded ventures. Her parents didn’t want their daughter exposed to the sport’s deep-seated sexism, and they refused to pay for lessons. So, she paid her own way with her allowance and lemonade-stand money. When Lillian’s coaches told her parents that she had real talent, her parents finally gave their support, too. “My coaches told my parents, ‘She’s actually pretty good, and she needs to go further than she can get on her rolled-up change,’” Lillian says.
Lillian had to contend with the skating world’s regressive politics when she was outed as queer at what had been her home rink in Kentucky. Though she wasn’t barred from competing, she says she was isolated from her teammates because of homophobic assumptions. “It was rough. I had to use the guys’ locker room, which they thought was very reasonable because they were still letting me skate with their daughters,” she says. “It wasn’t a great experience in the sport, so I had to take a break.”
Lillian arrived in Oregon after dropping out of high school in 2006. She’d originally moved for a six-month stint in Dexter, where she worked as a vegetarian kitchen manager for an intentional community, Lost Valley Education Center and Ecovillage. She moved to Eugene later that year to work for Bosco House, a home for new and expectant mothers, and arrived in Portland in 2007 after spending time with AmeriCorps in Lane County. Her communal living arrangements—including a period where she lived in an outdoor cardboard geodesic dome—kept Lillian’s rent around $300 per month for several years.
She took classes at Portland State University and Portland Community College and enrolled at ºìÌÒÊÓƵ in 2009 at the height of the Great Recession. She was drawn to studying the financial world because she did not see the lived experiences or income brackets of her peers represented in financial education. “I read every personal finance book, and they were all like, ‘Oh, this is how much you should put into your retirement account,’ and I was like, ‘We don’t have retirement at the nonprofit I work at!’” she says.
At times, Lillian clashed with ºìÌÒÊÓƵ’s academic structure, but she credits the rigor and personalized learning experience she encountered among ºìÌÒÊÓƵies with helping her excel in journalism and finance.
“I’ve been to dinner at the houses of most of the economics professors. I know all their spouses,” she says. “I studied abroad in Berlin, and I was with other American students, and I would hear about their experiences at Ivy Leagues, and it seemed like I just wasn’t sure they were getting an education. ºìÌÒÊÓƵ was so rigorous and so hard, but so supportive.”
Lillian’s thesis, advised by Professor Noelwah Netusil [economics], focused on the intersection of bikeability and gentrification and touched on the then-bubbling Portland housing crisis. Her thesis disproved the idea that adding bike lanes to urban centers increases home values enough to drive out longtime residents; in a unique approach, she focused on rental data rather than home sales records, which are the typical data sets analyzed for urban studies and easier to come by.
By 2014, a year after she graduated, Lillian’s rent had more than doubled. Even with such new financial challenges, she maintained financial independence.
■ ■ ■
Before she ever thought she would become a financial expert, Lillian began to share her spending decisions across online platforms.
“Most people would think what I spend money on is ridiculous. They’d be like, ‘How many cat-print dresses and hot pink suits does a person need?’ Figure skating is incredibly expensive. It’s why it took me 16 years to come back to the sport.”
Using colorful charts and infographics that she illustrates herself, she shares monthly personal statistics reports, covering things like rent, utilities, tacos eaten, hours skated, miles biked, and money saved. In doing so, she demonstrates how she practices thrift without denying what she prioritizes.
To get around, she rides her bike or takes mass transit, saving thousands of dollars on transport costs. She doesn’t regularly indulge in Portland’s mouthwatering dining options, but does splurge on a weekly burrito or ramen bowl. And, despite her frugality, Lillian is an avid traveler. Her journeys have taken her to nearly 50 countries via trains and ferries. She lived in London as a freelance journalist for a month to report on Brexit. One of her more recent treks took her from Dublin to Shanghai to get to a conference in Seoul, rerouting from the Belarusian area because of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
Lillian has leaned into her love of whimsy and has built it into her professional and personal life. Her years leading the costumed Bowie vs. Prince bike ride as part of Portland’s Pedalpalooza generated a decade’s worth of costumes that she now uses in financial courses to disarm clients, especially those who are averse to the economic world’s reputation for stuffy rigidity. She has written and illustrated two financial advice books packed with pictures of cats; one of them is a coloring book. (A Cat’s Guide to Money: Everything You Need to Know to Master Your Purrsonal Finances, Explained By Cats; and Get Your Money Together: An Illustrated Purrsonal Finance Workbook to Help You Budget Your Money, Save for Retirement and Smash Debt.)
She doesn’t use kittens in her books to be condescending. She’s seen countless walks of life and knows how to meet people where they are. Her clients include independent artists, art schools, and nonprofits for at-risk youth who trust Lillian not just because she dresses in over-the-top Bowie drag to explain savings.
Angel Gonzalez, director of support services at HomePlate Youth Services, a nonprofit in Beaverton supporting houseless youth, learned about Lillian’s financial literacy services while in a meeting for another program. He sought her out immediately in his then role as an education coordinator the moment he learned of her use of glitter and cats in her courses.
“Her way in which she frames things is down-to-earth, honest, fun, and really connects to where youth are at,” Gonzales wrote. He notes that she “helps youth with really understanding not just tips and tools around money management, but the emotions that can be connected to spending and decisions we might make.”
Lillian is currently at work on an educational graphic novel about financially navigating the American health care system, and she is also building a Portland triplex with her partner.
She doesn’t believe in depriving yourself of the things that make you happy. “I think that there’s a lot of people who have a limiting belief around finance, that it’s going to make them miserable before they even set out to do it, and I think that there are ways to make it fun, because in the end, money is just a tool, right?” Lillian says.
She still makes appearances on YouTube, but joining OPB meant giving up freelance writing for financial outlets like Slate. She also had to wind down Oh My Dollar to avoid confusion between her and OPB’s brands. Though she doesn’t record new episodes, she still runs Oh My Dollar’s online forum, which she says attracts more than half a million hits per month in website traffic.
“There was a point where I thought to myself, ‘Should I put this in a trust and let someone else manage it?’ Lillian says. “There’s a lot of people who really rely on the emotional support of that community, and I really didn’t want to give it up.”
She loved the freedom of freelancing, but she ultimately joined OPB for the professional support the network could afford her, like editorial and production assistance, as well as employee benefits like a 401k and health insurance.
The transition has been successful. Geoff Norcross, local co-host of OPB’s show All Things Considered, says, “Lillian has been an exceptional addition to OPB. I’ve never seen a new content creator hit the ground running as fast as she has. It’s like she showed up with a bulging gift bag of stories that were just waiting for the right place to be told.”
Lillian says that at OPB, “I’ve been able to do so much more in-depth journalism that would not have been possible on my own. I’d also been doing Oh My Dollar for seven years at that point and felt like I’d accomplished a lot of what I’d set out to do with that show.”
■ ■ ■
By the time I join Lillian on the rink, her example has me deluded into thinking I will glide effortlessly. Nope, not even close. I’m exhausted by the third lap around Lloyd Center’s tiny rink, much to the bewilderment of children and elderly women who have joined us on the ice. Pardon me for not wanting to crush my interview subject with my flailing body.
But Lillian never judges my lack of grace or athleticism. Just as she is in her user-friendly discussions of personal finance, she’s clear and encouraging on the ice. And with her smarts and support—honed on the ice and over years of offering kind financial guidance—I get past my fears.
Tags: Alumni