Money, money, money

By guest writer Raluca Harabagiu

Must be funny

In the rich man’s world

Money, money, money

Photo credit: The Young Nomads from Raluca’s personal archive

I was preparing to write this article, and suddenly my mind started to sing this oldie-but-goldie song by ABBA.

As a Romanian born in the 90s, I grew up, like many of the kids from my generation, with this stigma around the subject of money: we didn’t discuss money; it was this taboo thing - you were either poor or wealthy, and I had no financial education whatsoever.

I was never a money waster, in the sense that I spent my money quite wisely. Since I earned my first salary from the radio, I’ve bought myself a pair of Little Big jeans. Maybe you think: “well, it’s not that smart a choice”, but it helped me a lot, as I felt empowered. I finally had my money to buy whatever I wanted to, and I could finally choose what I wanted to spend my money on. And I’ve always preferred quality over quantity. This was my first lesson on money.

Secondly, I’ve always preferred to spend my money on travel and experiences rather than clothing and objects. I have this remorse because I didn’t travel enough until almost 38 due to my workaholic behavior, but at least I spent my money wisely, I think.

In 2016 I was dealing with burnout and depression. I was living the best time of my life, both professionally and personally, and we (Alex and I) managed to have savings for the first time ever. We were actually really proud of this achievement. We made the decision to purchase a house. However, we ultimately decided to use our savings to move to Cognac, France, rather than making a down payment on a house.

Was it a wise financial decision? Maybe not. 10 years later, we still don’t own a property. But that year, living in France changed the way we perceived life.

Long story short, we went back to Romania due to my pregnancy problems. We were able to have savings again. The second time, when we wanted to invest this money into a property, we chose to invest it differently, in starting something on our own - smart financial decision? Well, COVID came and hit our business. I mean, the week following our launch, we entered lockdown. That’s how awful it was. So I had no job, we spent more than half of our savings, and the rest of us needed to survive the lockdown and have something put aside because the uncertainty was unbearable. After the lockdown ended, I somehow resuscitated the business and I started two other projects, hoping that the pandemic effect would not last that long, but it did. Thus, two out of the three projects failed quickly, but the first one that I successfully developed provided us with some financial security. It was just that I wasn’t super happy with what I was doing. And I’m the kind of person who really needs to love her work; it was never enough for me to just earn money.

Photo credit: The Young Nomads from Raluca’s personal archive

But life was gentle enoughand brought the right people along; they saw something in me I wasn’t able to see in myself. So my passion with my blog and Instagram account became a business. I had my first two paid partnerships when I had approximately 2,500 followers. It was insane - at that time, you needed at least 10k followers to even hope for paid collabs. But of course things don’t happen overnight, so I quit my business and started building in this direction, which suited me perfectly and is something I absolutely love. But again, was it the right decision when talking about money? We had a long time of financial stress and insecurity. Little by little, I started to earn enough money for our family to have a financial safety net. After 2 years of work, I successfully built a community and established multiple collaborations, both long-term and short-term. I was on the edge of something big. And most importantly, money was good. At last, we experienced financial stability for the first time since our move to France in 2016.

But guess what? We left Romania and decided to move to Spain. This time around, we didn’t have savings like when we moved to France; we only had some money put aside, but not enough to stay chill, so here we go again with some financial uncertainty, without owning a property, but living the life we absolutely love.

Is it easy?

Of course not. Money is important because it helps us create the life we need; however, at this age, we are choosing challenges, embarking on new beginnings, and investing in our own growth, projects, and businesses instead of playing it safe by saving money and owning a house.

So yeah, maybe we are not the common type to offer pieces of advice about money, but I think we should spend money in such a way that we avoid harming others or ourselves. This is the real success when it comes to money, in my opinion.

This post is written by Raluca Harabagiu, part of the Virtual Letters Club, a project where we write about the challenges of navigating life on a personal, professional and emotional level.

Catch up with Raluca on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralucah/