[00:00:06] Viktoriia Miracle: Hello. Hello and welcome back to happy time happy money podcasts and today we have Ana Kresina. Ana Kresina is a Canadian expat living in Australia, documenting her journey to financial independence on her website, in the hopes to inspire others, to pursue a work optional life.

[00:00:30] I love that, work optional life.

[00:00:32] She is passionate about environmentalist, minimalist, optimizing all aspects of her life. When she is working in the product management, she's most likely adventuring being an awesome parents or reading too many financial blogs. Also, she can't live without cheese. Well, I guess a lot of people will resonate with that one. Hi and welcome Ana.

[00:00:59] Ana Kresina: Hi, thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:01] Viktoriia Miracle: Well, thanks for coming over. I'm so curious to get to know more about work optional life. And, but before that, I would love for you to share your story. How did you start? What you started, what inspired you to start that? And just a little bit more about yourself?

[00:01:16] Ana Kresina: Yeah, sounds great.

[00:01:18] So I grew up in Vancouver and I was doing a lot of work that was social impact type of work, community work and not for profit and it was just hard to get ahead financially. And I got into investing and I started doing a lot of research and I realized that investing in scary as people set out to be, and really that's just the way to get ahead.

[00:01:39] Every time you save money in your bank account, you actually lose money over the years because of inflation. So this was something that kind of set me on a path of how do I get ahead? And so I became obsessed with this idea of financial independence, retire, early movement, known as fire. And that kind of propelled me on my path in the, in the next couple of years. So that's where I am now.

[00:02:02] Viktoriia Miracle: Love it. Oh, that is so so exciting. I have a couple of guests over the flyer and I love that you guys are sharing and like document in your life and super curious. It's just so interesting on how to get this. So what is it? Financial independence. Let's just start from that?

[00:02:21] Ana Kresina: Yeah. Perfect. It's so financial independence is the status of having enough income to pay for your living expenses for essentially the rest of your life. And often when we talk about income, it isn't actually money that you're making by working a job. It's actually passive income. And so passive income comes in many different forms.

[00:02:40] It can come from rent, gaining rent from a rental income that you have, or in a lot of cases, it can come from dividends or capital growth. From shares or stocks that you own and that, that all sounds scary. But for the most part, basically it means is that you get money coming in based on what you've invested in.

[00:02:57] And that's a way of being able to be financially independent.

[00:03:01] Viktoriia Miracle: So got it. So what the first step for the first like five steps? I feel like I asked this question a couple of times, but what is the first like five steps? Let's get the roadmap in place.

[00:03:15] Ana Kresina: Absolutely. So it's really good to take note of, of what money you have, like what assets you have and and also what debt you have.

[00:03:22] So being able to know what your net worth is, is a really good place to start. A budgeting is probably the next step. So if you know that you're spending way too much money on something, being able to get a hold of your finances and being able to reduce any expenses that you can. So for example, you have a couple of subscribers to random websites or devices or streaming shows.

[00:03:45] You can just remove them to, to keep your expenses lower. The next step would have to be the next step would be to have an emergency fund. An emergency fund is absolutely crucial. If you want to move forward, you want to have about three months of expenses put away in a high savings interest account so that you can access in case of something.

[00:04:04] And then the next thing would be to start investing early. So a lot of people talk about paying off debt before you invest, but actually you can do both simultaneously. You can start investing. There are different accounts in the US, in Canada and Australia, depending on where you are, where you're living.

[00:04:20] But just being able to invest and paying off your debt as quickly as possible because time is on your side, compound interest is where you can make money. so investing early and often is, is probably, the biggest part of your roadmap to financial.

[00:04:39] Viktoriia Miracle: Awesome. So that's three steps. So once I budget, I know where, what goes.

[00:04:44] I start to, I budget for investing in actual like stocks or some more passive income and creating that compound interest over the time. What is the other most important parts? What's the other important parts of this journey?

[00:04:59] Ana Kresina: I kind of jumped and jumped the steps. I would say the first part is taking account of your budget.

[00:05:04] So tracking your budget would be number one. Number two, would be actually, making sure you have an emergency fund. So having

[00:05:10] Viktoriia Miracle: Right, emergency funds. I missed that one, emergency funds.

[00:05:14] Ana Kresina: Yeah, that one's really important because if something happens, you want to make sure that you have money put away. You don't want to be stuck in having to rely on credit.

[00:05:21] How much usually is emergency fund? Yeah. So I'm a good place to start is about three months of expenses. So if you know how much you need to live three months is pretty good. If you want to be a little bit more conservative, six months is even better. But start with three months is probably a good place to begin

[00:05:40] Viktoriia Miracle: and I'll add the next step, the six one, or if it's whatever I already lost the account, it's the consistency. So important.

[00:05:47] Just really consistent, otherwise nothing is going to work.

[00:05:52] Ana Kresina: Absolutely. Yeah. If you invest early and often you have a lot of time that's on your side in terms of being able to grow wealth. And then the other step that I mentioned as well. So I guess it would be for is, is paying off debt. So if you have high, high interest debt, especially consumer credit card debt, make sure to pay that off as quickly as possible, because that's going to also chip away at, your wealth.

[00:06:16] Viktoriia Miracle: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for all that beautiful and interesting advices. So what will be the number one mistake you see that people are making while they're doing all the steps? Like what's, what is the keeping them away from actually doing all of those?

[00:06:32] Ana Kresina: Yeah. So there's, there's two that I see quite a bit. One is actually living above your means.

[00:06:37] So if you're spending more than you're making, that's probably the hardest habit to break. And if you break that habit, that's going to help you have a great path to financial independence. And the second one is, often people have analysis, paralysis investing sounds scary. Who do I invest with?

[00:06:54] Where do I start? What brokerage account, how much do I do? None of that matters in the long run. If you just get started, you learn, you know, it's the same thing as if you start a sport or if you start a new hobby, you know what? You just have to get started and you can adjust things as you go. So it doesn't really matter what brokerage.

[00:07:12] It doesn't really matter. What, you know, what ETF index fund you invest in. You know, just get in there and get started and you can always adjust. So I would say those two are the big, the big hurdles that, people need to overcome in order to, to get on this happy, healthy financial wellness goals.

[00:07:31] Viktoriia Miracle: Beautiful. And the last question that I always ask when this podcast is to fill in the blank question is, so the question sound like this. If you really knew me, you will know that I am blank.

[00:07:46] Ana Kresina: Oh, I am passionate about financial independence, I guess.

[00:07:51] Viktoriia Miracle: We can absolutely hear that passion from here. Thank you. I would love to know, I know you have, you don't have any like PDF to share, but I know you have a free gift for our audience and what is that and how they can find you?

[00:08:07] Ana Kresina: I'm open to any questions. If anyone wants to reach out to me, you can find me at, @anakresina or on my website on anakresina.com. I'm open to having any kind of conversations and helping you also on your journey to financial independence.

[00:08:23] Viktoriia Miracle: Beautiful. Thank you so much and if you're watching or listening to this episode, we'll link all the information about Ana on the episode page.

[00:08:31] So you can go there and grab all of the links that we mentioned in the episode. Thank you so much for watching or listening and I'll see you in next one. Bye.