A pilot from Australia reaching Financial Independence by investing in Real Estate, Low Cost Index Funds and Super | Financial Independence Retire Early
On board the pod today is Ana Kresina who works in Fintech under product management. We discuss career advancement, working towards personal finance goals, travel and investing, as well as working towards financial independence with a young family. You can check out Ana’s blog at AnaKresina.com.
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Introduction – Ana Kresina
In this episode, I chatted to Ana Kresina who works in Fintech under product management. She is also obsessed with personal finance and has a blog under her name – AnaKresina.com, where she writes about career advancement, personal finance topics and travel. Ana moved to Australia from Canada, has a young family here in Australia and is navigating how to move forward in her career and work towards financial independence as her family grows. She shares her journey and what she has learned about personal finance and investing on her blog, as well as shares with me how she has and is working toward her financial goals and helping other people along the way.
I really enjoyed my chat with Ana so jump on board as we chat about investing, working toward personal finance goals, travel and getting ahead in your career!
“For me, financial independence is about creating opportunities that you might not have had otherwise. It’s about opening doors to explore passion projects, or being able to travel without stress, or it’s about taking time off to spend with your family. Basically, It’s about creating a life that makes your heart sing. Ultimately, we all want to do the things that make our heart sing … the things that make us happy. It’s just easier to do the things that make us happy when we have financial security.”
G’Day, and welcome to another episode of Captain Fire, the Financial Independence Podcast, where I open the cockpit to some of the best and brightest in personal finance, as well as those who have reached or are on their way to financial independence. Before we get started, remember nothing said here is financial advice and you should always do your own independent research before making any financial choices.
With that being said, I hope you enjoy the episode and learn something new.[00:01:00]
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On board. Today is Ana [00:02:00] Kresina, who works in FinTech under product management, but is also obsessed with personal finance and runs her own blog under the same name, which is all about personal finance and career advancement anna, how you going?
I’m doing great. How are you today?
Yeah, good, thanks.
Obviously we’ve chatted quite a bit together offline. But for people on the blog who you are new to, would you be able to introduce yourself and maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself and where you’re from. .
Ana: Yeah, perfect. So my name’s Anna. I have a blog under my name AnaKresina.com. I write a bit about career, personal finance and any passion I have around travel and so forth around. How you can better yourself and I work in FinTech. I work in product management, which is really focused about creating better products for the users, which I feel quite passionate about.
And so I blend all of that together in terms of what I share on the internet.
Captain Fi: Yeah, it’s awesome. I like some of your stuff about travel and obviously [00:03:00] people that are listening might be able to pick up a slight accent. So where is that accent from?
Ana: I’m Canadian. My family’s from Croatia, so I also speak Croatian, but I was born and raised in Canada and moved over to Australia about eight years ago.
Captain Fi: Oh my God. So trilingual you speak Croatian Canadian and Australian ? Yes. Yes. . don’t know if it quite works that way. So, I guess you touched a bit about what money with Anna is about. But how can you help people on their journey to financial independence?
Ana: Yeah, so what I love to do is just document my own learnings and my own journey. So I. in my late thirties. I wish I came across financial independence and some of these personal finance ideas earlier in my life as we all do. But being where I am now, I feel that a lot of people are in a similar part of their own journey.
I do have a young family. I’m figuring out how to move forward in my own career, and I’m just trying to document that and help others along the way. And so I started doing that by blogging when I [00:04:00] went on parental leave with my first child. and I got positive feedback from people asking a lot of questions around how did I start investing, what are the things I’ve considered and my own personal finance journey.
And so I thought if I can continue sharing that as I learn potentially I can help other people as well. So of course, none of what I share. Personal finance advice. I’m not a financial advisor by any means, but I do know that sharing a journey of what you’re learning along the way can help others because it really did help me when I came across financial independence.
Captain Fi: I think it’s brilliant and, I actually started blogging pretty much doing the same thing. Exactly not trying to reinvent the wheel, but just showing people that, Oh, it. Possible. And it really helps me stay accountable as well. So what has your journey to fire looked like so far?
Ana: Yeah it’s been an interesting one. So , I came from a frugal background. My parents were immigrants, a lot of my frugality and my relationship with money really came from my father who [00:05:00] talked quite a bit about, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much you save. And that has always stuck with me. But the problem for me was that there was no added part to that where it’s about investing or what you should actually take those savings and put it in. So for a very long time, I just had savings in a bank account.
And of course I had personal goals. I wanted to travel and I wanted to do these things, but it only happened when I moved to Australia actually, where I had more disposable income because I got a job with a higher wage and I didn’t know what to do with my savings.
My bank account was getting bigger, but I really wanted to figure out how do I make money off my money? What do I do? A lot of people in Australia and in Canada invest in property and that was just something that I wasn’t ready to do as a non-resident of Australia.
And so I went down this big journey of learning about what I should invest in and it started out by talking to financial advisors who back in [00:06:00] Canada will charge you 2.5% the highest in the world on your investments. And I realized that hey, actually there’s a lot of information on the internet that I can teach myself and came across Mr. Money mustache and realized that actually there are other people who are sharing their journey and I can. Educate myself and make these decisions, which was quite empowering for me. And so I’m quite late to the fire journey. I came across it in my thirties and it’s evolved over the years as well.
But what I did learn was that reading other blogs, listening to podcasts hearing how other people have. Evolved from reducing their expenses to increasing their income, that I could also do that as well. And so financial independence isn’t unachievable. It is actually something that I can do. And so this is where I am in my journey.
Captain Fi: It’s exciting. I love that. I love that there’s just so much information that you can get. Online and I love how inspiring it is. And so like you, I [00:07:00] love going and reading other people’s blogs and looking at their journey to fire and how far they’re getting along.
Yeah, it’s just really cool. It’s become like a little hobby passion of mine. And so I know on Your blog, career is obviously a huge focus and you talked a lot about it. Specifically you’ve talked about remote working and your time as a travel writer, but would you be able to tell the audience a little bit more about that aspect of the blog?
Ana: So my career is a huge focus for me because it has really allowed me to have the lifestyle that I want. When I started out, when I graduated university, I graduated with a bfa. So that means bachelor fine arts. And really there’s two avenues that you can do with that.
Either you can be an artist or you can be an art teacher. And even though I dabbled in the arts quite a bit as my career evolved, I realized that there were other more lucrative and better paying jobs that I could do. The pivotal point for me was when I moved to Australia and I got a job in tech and I realized you don’t actually need to be an engineer or a technical person to work in tech.
There’s a lot of roles that you can do within that space. [00:08:00] And I evolved from a calms marketing position to a user researcher position, which ended up with me. Being in product management, which is where I am today, and what that means for people who don’t know. Product management really focuses on the products that get built on a platform that also helps the business grow, but also is user centric and helps the user of the customer.
In a way of solving their problems. So I really love my job cuz I work very closely with engineers and so forth, but I didn’t know that this was an avenue or a possibility. And In learning that there are other jobs out there that you don’t have to have that technical background of engineering that you can move into tech.
I realized that also I can increase my income and my savings rate along the way, and so sharing some of that, I wish I knew this when I was younger, is also part of my fire journey because when I left Canada, I was on a quite low income comparison and I. More than doubled my income coming to Australia [00:09:00] when I first moved over and had I had someone be like, Hey, listen, just because you studied in the arts doesn’t mean you have to stay there.
Yes, you can evolve and you can learn new skills, and tech is really a space to be. That’s something that I really want to share within my own career development because often. You can feel pigeonholed in a career that is really hard to move from. And that also then creates this belief that you can’t increase your income as well, which isn’t true.
And so these are little things that I had to teach myself along the way that is also a part of that psychology around fire, where yes, you can reduce your expenses as much as possible, but the other side of increasing your income. Is infinite and that’s just something that I love to share and talk.
Captain Fi: It’s not something that really gets talked a lot about in this whole personal finance community, a lot of it’s like, Hey, I didn’t have my morning latte, so I’ve got another $2 worth of ETFs or something. Whereas yeah, if you’re gonna focus on your [00:10:00] maximum return activities the career is a huge one.
So it sounds like you really. Your job. I guess a lot of people, the reason they’re into fire is they probably feel like they don’t have enough control over their life. They wanna regain some financial independence and, a bit more control over their life. But it sounds like you absolutely killing it
I’m guessing you get to work from home with tech, if it’s a progressive platform.
Ana: Yeah, of course. Yeah. I do love my job and I love what I’m doing because what I’m doing on an everyday basis is I’m solving problems for users, I’m solving problems for the business, and I’m trying to bring those two together in a very viable, feasible, valuable way.
Yes, working from home has been a godsend, I think. Originally I was living quite close to the city and I’d walked to the city all the time and you could see people and it was great working in an office. Obviously the pandemic hit and working from home opened the doors for me because I also became a parent around the same time.
And so my values changed, right? Walking to work, seeing [00:11:00] people is quite different in terms of now where I wanna make sure that I’m there for my kid and I can pick my kid up from childcare and spend some time together. So I think working from home has become, Such a blessing especially , in this time in my life where I am a parent.
And yeah, it’s made my life easier. I never, ever wanna go to the office again. I do miss the interactions with people, but I don’t wanna work from in an office again, ever.
Captain Fi: That is exactly how I feel. Like I did spend time working in operations. And look, it was nice having people, but there were long shifts.
They were really stressful. I love. Just being at home. And I’m really enjoying personally for me, just like tinkering on websites and having passion projects like this podcast. So I guess just on that, if you, hit your fire number are you still gonna work?
If you really enjoy work, Is there any reason to stop?
Ana: Yeah, that’s a great question. My partner and I talk about this all the time. We’re quite aligned when it comes to our financial goals, and I don’t think either of us will stop working. We might [00:12:00] pair back a bit or work more on passion projects, but we both do love our.
Jobs and what we’re doing. We both work in tech and it’s just an exciting space. There’s always something going on, but there are always side projects that you wanna do on the side that we both do, right? I do this blog and I write and I create content. And I know my partner creates.
Video games and board games and random things that, we don’t have the time to pursue because we do have to work. So it’s just a matter of balancing those. And I think to your point, like it is really interesting. A lot of people in fire do talk about having these different.
Avenues of passive income, which are really important, right? Whatever it might be. Your side hustle, your blog, your, property income and so forth. But also because we spend so much time, day in, day out at work, I think focusing on happiness at work and increasing that income is just so paramount , in that fire space.
So I love that more people are talking about the growth in their. Careers and how to negotiate and [00:13:00] how to continue on from there. So I guess the answer to your question is I’ll probably still work. , it’s just in what capacity that might change.
Captain Fi: Yeah. So shifting it and, allowing you the flexibility to pursue your interests, like passion projects and stuff.
, I think it’s a great idea and I think really you gotta do something. You can’t just sit on the couch all day. I think , Dave from Strong Money Australia. He said something that I really liked and it was, you are not retiring from something.
You’re retiring to something. And so you’ve gotta think about what are you actually gonna do? You can. Quit your job and sit around doing nothing. You wanna have fun and work on passion projects. So look, Anna, unpacking a little bit more about career development, what are some things people can do?
To earn more, Like where can you go to learn about, how do I upskill, How can I know that I’m getting paid a fair rate? How can I negotiate better? What are some of the tools and some of the tips and tricks you’ve found to increase your income from your career?
Ana: That’s a great question. I think the number one thing is to do research.
There’s websites such as [00:14:00] Glassdoor and so forth where you can actually see different wages in your industry. I know LinkedIn also has an area where you can look that up. And so people do include their salary , including any type of bonuses. So often you, if you work in tech, you might have options or stocks that are associated with your wage, with your salary, that you get your salary package. And so being able to look at all of that in weigh the pros and cons of that equity and your salary, and understanding what you’re worth in your industry. That’s number one. Number one is understanding what you’re worth is. I guess Number two I think for me is Talking to other people about your salary.
It’s quite taboo to talk about how much you make, but especially if you’re in the same industry and you’re working with someone else who’s doing a similar job to you, the only person who’s benefiting from not sharing your salary is actually the company, right?
They’re the ones who hold that privilege of knowing how much people are paid and can underpay other people. And so having that [00:15:00] transparency by talking to other people and sharing what your salary is, that’s really helpful. , So that you can understand where you’re at. Are you getting paid less than other people?
And there are many times in my career where I found out I was, And by knowing that, Allowed me to be able to negotiate. Which brings me to my third point would be going and negotiating, and there’s a couple different ways to do this. The easiest way to jump in your career and negotiate is by going to another company.
It’s harder to be able to negotiate your way up if you’re already in a company. I found from experience and from talking to other people. But if you go to another company, it is much easier to negotiate everything right off the get go. Everything from your salary to your equity to holiday, to so forth, and you have that in writing and it’s a fresh place to start.
So being armed by knowing your worth and doing that a research up front, it’s easier to then go and negoti. If you’re in a role that you love and you still wanna stay at that company, which I’ve also done being able to negotiate based on your [00:16:00] performance results. So being able to say, Hey, listen, I’ve achieved this.
I’ve increased this by X percent. I’ve delivered this and this has impacted the company in X, Y, Z type of ways, is really important. What I used to always do is have a document on the side that I would open up and include all of these things. So every time we released a new product and there was a positive impact on that, I would write it down so that I wouldn’t forget.
Because in six months time when you’re looking for a job or when your review comes up, you may forget that information. So by writing it down, you have it documented. You can then also include it in your resume in the future. And also when you have a down bad day, it’s nice to look at this document and look at your achievements, but by having this arsenal of information that you’ve captured in terms of how you’ve benefited the company, it is easier than to go into negotiations and talk to your employer and say, Hey, look at all of the things I’ve done.
This is my expected increase in [00:17:00] salary. And so those are just a couple different ways that you can try to negotiate a better wage for yourself. And sometimes if the monetary side is not as important, there are ways to maybe potentially negotiate the equity side or holidays or being able to, get, more paid vacation or whatever that might be.
So there are areas that you can negotiate, or even a title change. Having a title change is quite important. The other thing to. Kind of In the back of your pocket is going to other interviews. So even if you’re not looking for a job, even if you’re not interested in jumping ship, just constantly talking to recruiters and seeing what’s out there will allow you to have a better understanding of your own worth.
Of what your wage could be, your salary could be elsewhere, and also just keeping those skills fresh, interviewing is a skill set in itself. The more you do it, the less nervous you’ll become, the easier it is to go somewhere and actually negotiate your worth. So those are some of the tips that I would suggest when [00:18:00] it comes to salary negotiation, because it is a huge part of our life, working and you want to be paid what you’re worth..
Captain Fi: Absolutely. And for pretty much all of us, that is the biggest source of income. So a lot of people focus on their site hustling here getting a little bit of income here and selling things on marketplace, that kind of stuff. While that has its place the prime focus should obviously be on that maximum return activity, which is.
Your wage. Ana mate, that’s a gold mine, that’s brilliant. Now, as someone who’s shifted roles and jobs and worked for many different companies sometimes I’ve had, three or four jobs at once, I wish I knew that when I was 17 and starting studying my journey. From an aviation specific side there’s a website called aap which is I think the Federation or the Guild of Air Pilots, and they have a link to the award.
So you can actually see what aircraft you’re flying, where it’s single twin engine, scenic flights regular passenger transport, that kind of stuff. What the actual minimum award wage is. So I found that. [00:19:00] Helpful to know, when I went in to try and negotiate, for example, about my pay as a flying instructor.
But I found it very difficult because I didn’t really have many people to talk to about what was an appropriate amount of money to earn. And I guess more recently now running a bunch of different websites I feel like I’m entering this new area now. I still don’t really know what are reasonable rates for advertising and things like that on my aviation site and like my gardening site.
So reaching out and talking to people in the niche in the industry has been super helpful. So it sounds like you’ve got an absolute. Gold mine of experience when it comes to career advancement. So I think I’m gonna be paying a bit more attention to some of your articles on career advancement.
So hopefully you can write some about about the marketing space. That’ll benefit me. Thanks, .
Ana: All right. I’ll talk to some experts.
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Look, say Anna you touched on earlier how work from home made your life a lot more easier.
Balancing a young family and being a mom. We often see women particularly mothers disadvantaged financially. Whether that comes to how much you’re being paid, career negotiations household labor, those kind of things. How has, starting a family and being a mom impacted your career and your family’s journey to financial independence?
Ana: This is such a topic that is very dear to my heart. A huge part I think is just. [00:21:00] Realizing how expensive it is having a child. Not only , are children expensive cuz you need to buy all the things, but now there’s a loss of income. Esp, if you’re a single household, then absolutely that is super detrimental if you have two incomes. It is still quite challenging, but there are other things that compound over time, such as super, right? You’re no longer having your employer pay into your super. The cost of childcare is also quite high and all these things compound over time. And at the end of the day, a lot of women are disadvantaged by this.
And so for my own experience, there was a lot of things that I. Considered prior to having kids and I had my first kid at 35 no spring chicken, but what I tried to do is save up as much as possible in order to go through this life change. I was quite fortunate because often tech companies are a little bit more progressive when it comes to some of their policy around parental leave.
And they did pay [00:22:00] for my super during my whole leave which was a year, which I was quite grateful for. But had they not , I would have a loss of compounding within my Super. Similarly because I do have a higher income than my partner we had to adjust in terms of our expenses and how we were going to shuffle that around.
And so women often are disadvantaged within this space, and also by taking a break in their career they have a big gap in their resume. And so going back to the workforce is a little bit harder and challenging in terms of finding a job. Many cases, women are the ones who stay at home and want to raise kids or work part-time.
And so part-time work is also not as available and is sometimes a challenge in higher paid roles. And all of these, again, compound., luckily for me, I have a very supportive partner who we’re very aligned with when it comes to child caring duties and. Finances and so forth. But over time, the compounding effect of childcare costs, loss of income, loss [00:23:00] of super, really disadvantages women.
And if you’re not financially literate, if you don’t have exposure to thinking about this stuff as a woman, often if divorce happens down the line. There’s also a huge disadvantage that happens because in many cases not always, women are the ones who often care after their children in a divorce kind of situation.
And if they’re disadvantaged financially, this compounds So I think it’s so important for financial literacy to be taught, especially to young women, especially to moms and how that actually impacts the family.
Captain Fi: It’s really powerful stuff. Like I am so grateful for my mom and her financial literacy, she self professors that that she’s no expert, but she was able to, Keep our household running , on, you know, a 0.4 teacher salary with three kids at home and no child support.
So we’ve seen that firsthand unfortunately in that kind of financial abuse that can happen [00:24:00] with separations. Uh, So I’m totally on board. I think financial literacy is super important, especially for women. And I think we need to have this conversation about how can we make this system fairer and more equitable.
So for blokes listening to this, , It is really important and you need to be on the same page with your partner when it comes to finances
Ana: Exactly. And I think lobbying the government to also cover things such as super while on leave would be really beneficial.
There are things like that, that we can do creating policy so that the secondary care or in. Cases, the male care can also take leave is really impactful as well. If we have more fathers, for example, taking leave to care for their kids, you create more space and workspace for people to be able to get promoted, especially women, and it becomes a more equal playing field for people to stay home.
Now I know that not everyone has both parents at home. There’s a lot single parents that have to navigate this, but just creating that shift is so important [00:25:00] in rethinking the way we actually think about parental leave. I would love to see some of those policy changes happen sometime in the future.
Captain Fi: You are definitely a lot smarter than me when it comes to this. You’ve got firsthand experience. I think the government should be listening to people like you.
Ana: Well, you know, I,, I do go for my Australian citizenship test this week, so fingers cross I can have more of an impact with a vote in the future.
Captain Fi: Now that’s funny So originally from Canada and obviously no stranger to travel with being a travel writer initially and I guess a fancy term for travel in the whole fire sphere is geographic arbitrage. Where we talk about moving to lower cost of living areas I’m pretty fortunate I’ve moved from a pretty high cost of living area in Sydney to Adelaide, which is a relatively lower cost of living area.
But obviously there are plenty of other reasons to move and travel. So what were some of the reasons that you moved to Australia and how have you found the experience both personally but also financially?
Ana: Oh, this is such a great question. I [00:26:00] think when I first came across fire, I was also single and geo arbitrage was a huge part of my fire journey.
I probably would’ve hit fire by now had I not had a partner in kid. I have another one on the way, so for me, my goal was to live in a really low cost. Area and to potentially build out a side hustle. My career has evolved and I am now, working remotely, which means it would be quite easy for me to live anywhere that’s quite cheaper.
Unfortunately, I live in Melbourne. It’s quite expensive. I came from a very high cost living area in Vancouver where housing is quite unaffordable. I would say it’s a huge issue for why people are actually leaving Vancouver, the. Income is really low in Vancouver, but the housing prices and the cost of living is really high.
And so when I came to Melbourne, I was actually surprised with the higher income here that you can make. And so the cost of living was quite similar, but I was making more money. And so that gap between the expenses [00:27:00] and income was quite big for me. I didn’t know if I was going to stay in Melbourne, but I did
I’m here and it is quite expensive. It might not be as expensive as Sydney, but I think it’s on par now. But the values in terms of what I needed in my life have changed, right? I now have a family. I have a partner. We’re both working. We want space, we want a backyard, and those were things that I didn’t need.
Early in my thirties where I was happy to live in a small apartment walk everywhere, didn’t need a car. I was planning on living in a remote country somewhere for a while because it was really cheap and that’s just not the case right now. So we had to bite the bullet. We bought a house.
We are now in debt for a very long time trying to pay it off quite aggressively. And so my fire goals have changed as well. But there was a time where I did travel for about a year. I lived off my savings and lived very cheaply because I was traveling to cheap countries. Again, this comes from a place of privilege, [00:28:00] so I recognize this isn’t the case for everyone, but I did a lot of couch surfing and hitch hiking, and those things are both free, and so I was able to travel the world and experience all of these things in a very cheap way.
Whereas if you travel in Australia, it’s quite expensive. But if you find a cheap country, you can live there for months on end. Whereas in Australia, a weekend would be the equivalent of that cost. So I did a lot of that cheaper stuff when I was younger and it was a part of my fire goal.
But of course that’s evolved as I’ve decided to have a family. And my fire number has also. Increased over time. And . That’s just life. You just change and adjust as it happens.
Captain Fi: Of course, the world goes on. And we need to remain agile to adjust our plan as we go along.
Ana: I think it really comes down to your why. Like why are you doing this? What is it that you want? And for me it’s about spending more time with my family, working on some passion projects and just. Being happy, like knowing what are the things that make me happy. And now with more money, , I can create more time with my family.
I can potentially take some time off to work on those passion projects. And the thing is, money is the means to get somewhere. It’s not about. Wanting to be rich and having all the glorious things that you can purchase. It’s really about knowing what your why is and why you’re doing this, and because life is really a journey.
It’s also about the journey of getting there, right? I don’t think a fire as an end date or an. An end moment where I quit my job and I retire and I have margaritas and I don’t do any work. And that’s it for me. , [00:30:00] I’m sure you know this, right? You’re still working, you’re retired, right? Yeah. And for me it’s exactly the same thing.
It’s what is my why? And if my why is my passion projects, I’m gonna try to make time for them when I can. If my why is , my kid and the kid that’s coming on the way and my partner, I’m going to try to maximize that time with them. I’m gonna do the things that I love with them and. Money just buys me time, right?
Like we get paid for our time, we go to work, we get money for the time that we are there for the most part, right? It’s not really about what you do, it’s about the time that you spend at work. And so in a way you’re just substituting one for the other. By having more money, I will have more time to do the things that I want to, but really it.
It gets hinged on the why part of that, like why are you doing this? And for me it’s family passion projects, being able to travel to see family. Cuz obviously I have family in Canada and Croatia. And those are really my whys. Besides that, I don’t really need anything else, , or at least I wouldn’t if I was retired.
Just working on [00:31:00] it, .
Captain Fi: It’s brilliant. I think, understanding your why is super important. There’s a brilliant book I read by author Simon Sinek. He actually has a book literally called Start With Why. And it’s brilliant because it speaks to, the psychology of, the human condition about, if you’re trying to.
Lead someone like when you consider leadership is basically you are, you know, influencing people to do the right thing or, in a company to make the company money. You need to be able to inspire them. And starting with why and then, Considering the how and finishing with the, what I think is, I think those are the three steps he talks about.
But starting with the why is super powerful. And we were talking about this in that previous podcast episode about in investor psychology and behavior. And there’s a lot of opportunity to stuff up your journey to fire. There’s so many opportunities where, Freak out, listen to the media, sell all of your stocks and, just make silly financial choices or, buy expensive cars, [00:32:00] things that you don’t need.
But if you have a. Firm grasp on your why. I think that really helps you to maintain your self discipline and stick to the goal throughout times when it can be a little bit scary or it can be tempting to deviate from the path. So yeah massive points to be awarded from knowing your why of FI.
So speaking of some side hustles one that I was actually really interested to bring up, we were chatting a while ago and you mentioned you had worked for a FinTech called Red Bubble, which if anyone hasn’t seen Red Bubble , it’s basically like a global sort of, Artwork slash print on demand service.
You can create designs and upload them. And I’ve made some money, like side hustling using red bubbles, make t-shirts, like funny slogans and stuff. But I’d be really interested to hear from your side. What was it like working at Red Bubble and have you tried the Print on Demand side Hustle,
Ana: yeah, I love Red Bubble. I think it’s really great cuz it supports artists and it also [00:33:00] helps people find their niche thing, right? Find your thing on Red Bubble. Working there was such a joy on many levels and I got to work with artists or creators in what they were doing.
I did do it a little bit on the side, but to be honest, I think I was just so deep in it that I didn’t have the chance to make it , a full side hustle, although a lot of artists do, or it supplements their work, and I really love that idea about being able to create something once and then.
It can be sold as many times as possible. And that was the magic of red bubble work, right? You can create a design once and it can be sold on a mug, on a t-shirt, on a bath mat, and you can sell it in an infinite amount of time. Obviously there’s parts around that where you have to think about how do you market yourself, how do you showcase yourself as an artist?
Specifically knowing your niche audience, so are people actually looking for that design? Funny enough I did sell a couple stickers, , which I thought was awesome. I designed a couple stickers and they got sold, and I was like, Yes. Feels [00:34:00] amazing to have someone buy your work and you don’t know who they are or how they found it.
And you’re like, Yay. Someone likes what I designed. Working there was a lot of fun and a lot of cool things. And I love that you use Red Bubble as well as a passive income side hustle
Captain Fi: Yeah, it was good fun. I might have to, come up with some Captain Fire stickers like, Do you really need to buy this or this car is 20 years old bumper sticker.
But I think we’re in a bit of a philosophical conundrum because of the whole not spending money thing and then spending money on stickers. , But
Ana: you know what , it comes down to your values. And the interesting thing about the fire community is once you’re drinking the Kool-Aid, , there’s so many people drinking the Kool-Aid, and in a way people want to communicate the tribe or the group or the organization or the belief system that they believe in.
So I could absolutely see people buying your sticker because it aligns with what their value is, right.
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Look, I wanna shift gears a little bit now and just ask you a couple of personal questions, if that’s okay.
Ana: Yeah, go for it.
Captain Fi: Awesome. We talked a little bit about it when it comes to career, but just straight. Is there anything you wish you knew before you began your career?
Ana: Probably don’t do a bfa . No. That’s a lie. I love studying [00:36:00] art and critical thinking and communications, but I think, I wish I knew that you can.
Get into a different industry if you want to. I think it took me a very long time to feel as though I wasn’t pigeonholed in an art sector and realize that I can move over to a different space. So for example, now I work in FinTech. I work for a company called Pearler, and I really love working with them because they really align with my values.
But had you asked me 10 years ago if I’d be working in FinTech as a product manager, I would’ve been like, No, that’s like totally out of my capability or my skillset. And so I wish I just knew that I needed to believe in myself and go do the thing. And you can do the thing , you can always up skill, you can always negotiate, you can always learn and you can work in tech.
Without being an engineer. Yeah that’s probably like one of the top things I wish I knew.
Captain Fi: It’s great. Just be confident.
Ana: For sure. Oh, I guess the other thing I was gonna say is that if you jump jobs. [00:37:00] Quicker, you’ll probably increase your salary quicker as well.
Captain Fi: So when I was chatting to a Purple Life I think she quadrupled her salary by changing companies.
, starting out on 60 or something, and then literally finishing in the mid to high two hundreds. And then she pulled the pin pretty early. On fire. I think she fired with something like, 500, 600,000. And it’s been really cool to actually watch her quarterly updates and her investments just keep growing. Yeah. She just keeps generating money. It’s brilliant what’s possible when you focus on how much you can actually create. Okay, so another personal question. All right. And again, disclaimer, not financial advice, this is just what Anna does with her money.
Anna, what are your personal investing preferences?
Ana: So I personally invest in property and ETFs. I do have. stock , which I won’t mention, but I prefer to have something a bit broader and I invest in myself. I think that’s a huge part of also just career growth and growing [00:38:00] is like investing in myself and being able to, Allow myself to do the side hustles on the side, right?
Cause some of my investing has been side hustles and investing in time and energy and doing Airbnbs and so forth. So I’ve done all of that. I’m just not doing it now. Now I’m just like, solely. Career focused with the side of passive income of ETFs and property.
Captain Fi: Ooh, I just gotta shiver up my spine.
When you said , B and B , I had a bit of a negative experience, unfortunately trying do an Air BNB site hustle with some friends in Sydney. Right before Covid hit, and then it was bit of a hectic loss. But anyway you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, right?
And look, there are people that you know do it quite successfully, but I do love that you talk about investing in yourself and personal development cuz there’s so much that you can do investing in yourself, you don’t have to just go to uni and do a bachelor’s degree or like an MBA or some kind of postgrad.
There are vocational courses, [00:39:00] things you can do. Across pretty much every industry that’s gonna help you to get better at what you’re doing. Like at the moment I’m doing courses on website design, seo, I’m doing courses on how to become a better podcaster. I’m still pretty crap, but we’re getting better with each episode, right?
So investing yourself is really cool. Yeah, I like it.
Ana: I think it’s important. It’s crucial in your own development as a person, right? Like we are so much happier when we. Have mastered something and a part of that is actually just developing and growing. And that’s what keeps us inspired as a human being.
So you just have to do it .
Captain Fi: Yeah, and again, I’ve actually really enjoyed stuff for personal development that hasn’t necessarily been related to the income that I’m creating. So for me personally, When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a test pilot, and growing up watching things like Top Gun and the right stuff and , I just thought that those guys were really cool.
And, having gone through like engineering I loved the idea of test and evaluation and so I spent a lot of my uni my [00:40:00] bachelor’s and postgrad masters. In engineering, doing things like t e and, I might not be a test pilot, but it’s just something that I’ve found really interesting.
But some of the skills that I’ve learned on t e have really helped me with my business. Like for example, one of the mottos in test and evaluation is, Test often fail early. Yeah. And often pushing a product live or something, live and getting the feedback, it’s better than procrastinating.
Like maybe it doesn’t work if we’re talking about a spaceship, right? You don’t wanna send it up, half built. But when we’re talking about things, like websites and products. You work in the space. It’s a really useful design philosophy. So not all.
Personal investments have to be directly related to your career, but you’ll still find a lot of benefit from them. Okay, so almost finishing up. Off the top of your head, top three tips for someone on the path to financial independence.
Ana: Top three tips. Yeah. Number one, I would say the Shockingly Simple Math of Early Retirement by Mr. Money Mustache. Read that blog post that would be number one. Number two kind of [00:41:00] ties into just knowing your expenses and your net worth.
So just tracking, because you can’t measure the things you don’t track. So you have to track them so that you know that you’re on the right path. And then number three would be reduce your expenses and increase your income. And that’s probably the big ones.
Captain Fi: That’s brilliant. The gap,
Ana: Increase the gap. Increase the gap.
Captain Fi: All right. So finishing up, I’d love to just hear who or what has been some of the most biggest influences on your journey to financial independence.
So People, blogs, books, podcasts, that kind of thing.
Ana: So I think it’s hard to not mention Mr. Money mustache, obviously. Number one great blog
Captain Fi: Canadians are all sticking together. There’s some ulterior national stick motive here.
Ana: Yeah, absolutely. He’s the original one you have to give him a shout out.
Millionaire Expat is a book that I read by Andrew Helm and I thought he was really great. He also has another book called Millionaire Teacher and both these books were about like [00:42:00] frugality and investing. The expat one I thought was really fantastic, especially if you are planning on. Geo arbitrage or living elsewhere, or you don’t know where you’re going to retire.
It was really helpful in my journey. So I would say that I got a lot of information from the Choose FI podcast because when I came across fire, there was very little fire in Canada and in Australia. And and so Choose Fi was a podcast that I just consumed on a regular basis. And then, One of the first blogs I came across in Australia was the Aussie Fire Bug.
And if you’re not familiar with him in Australia lots of great information on there as well. So those are probably the top ones on the top of my head.
Captain Fi: Yeah, those are all brilliant. I love it. And actually there’s one book in there that I don’t think I’ve read, so I’m gonna add that to my reading list and I’ll add it to my list on the website as well.
That’s been brilliant. Look, Anna, it’s been wonderful chatting to you. I feel like I’ve learned. Quite a bit about particularly career advancement and negotiation. Again, I wish I had done this interview 10 years ago. [00:43:00] sort of Been brilliant. So look Anna, where can listeners, get in touch with you or read your blog and learn more about you?
Ana: Yeah, I’m under social or even my website, anakresina.com so you can find me there.
Captain Fi: Awesome. And if any big fintechs are listening to this, Anna’s starting wage is $1 million
Ana: I love it.
Captain Fi: All right. It’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show today, Anna. Wish you all the best especially with the family. It sounds like you’ve got your hands full there. So I look forward to reading on some of the latest developments as they come out.
Ana: Great. Thank you so much for having me.
Captain Fi: No worries. See Anna.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Captain Fire Financial Independence Podcast. To read the transcript or check out the show notes, head over to www.captainfire.com for all the details. If you have a question for the captain, make sure to get in touch. You might even make it on the [00:44:00] airwaves.
You can reach me online through the Captain Fire contact form. Or get in touch through the socials. I’m active on Facebook and Instagram, as well as a number of online finance and investing forums. And finally, remember the information presented on the show and the links provided are for general information purposes only.
They should not be taken as constituting professional financial advice. You should always do your own research when making any financial decisions and make sure it’s appropriate for your personal circumstance.
Captain FI is a Retired Pilot who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. He is passionate about Financial Independence and writes about Personal Finance and his journey to reach FI at 29, allowing him to retire at 30.
