My family always had good money habits. Never spending everything we had and almost always buying things when we had money set aside to pay for them upfront.

So in my adult life, not noticing I learned the same habits by observing, I kept on living my life as my salary permitted and never spent all the money I had. However, during Covid, I realised that that was not enough. I had to leave the apartment I was sharing with 2 other girls because I did not have enough money to keep paying for rent with no job. You see, I didn't spend all I earned, but I usually had the same amount of savings, and it was low.

I had to risk our friendship and tell them I couldn't afford living there anymore, which ended up increasing how much they paid and as they lost their jobs too, we all decided to go our separate ways.

While living with my mom, and with lots of free time, I learned how important money was for me. I had to pretty much loose it, or loose the option of earning it, to learn how much it meant to me. I started to learn about money management, earning more, saving more, all while also being able to identify and buy what was important for my happiness - even if that included eating out with friends at times. Up until that point, I simply could not see how I could save money for one of my goals = go to Europe for a month.

During my learning journey, I was so focused on not going though this again, that I knew exactly what to do once I started working again. And as promised to myself, I improved my ways of dealing with my money and started to save, every month.

When once in the past I did not think I was capable of saving that much money (what I calculated the trip would cost), in about 1.5 year I saved 2.5x that amount. That is when I first learning the power of knowing how to deal with your money. I not only had enough money for the trip, I also had money for an emergency fund - which is what had I had in the beginning of the pandemic, I wouldn't have to move out and risk my friendships. One friendship continues to this day, but the other never went back to how it was.

I think that what I learned trough this experience and ever since then, I started to see my life and my capacity to achieve what I want in a different way - whether be it money-related or not. This changed my life and my mindset so much that I decided to contribute to helping others to do the same for themselves. Last year, in 2023, I created a company called "The Hearts Finance" on Instagram. I chose this name because I believe that money needs to be connected to our heart's desires. The page is in my native language, Portuguese, but I am working on releasing contents in English to help people improve their lives. Follow if you're interested and I'd love for you to send me a DM mentioning you saw this project. But if you do nothing else, I appreciate you reading my story so far and I hope you liked it. Let me know in the comment in Skillshare what your thoughts were and any suggestion if you have some.

Cheers to all of us trying to improve our writing skills! x

Nicole Silva

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