SHOW NOTES
On this month’s episode of the Creative + Moneywise podcast, freelance photographer Nolwen Cifuentes talks about her journey into and out of $60,000 in debt.

By early 2020, Nolwen had shot photos for TIME, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine and many other editorial outlets, markers of career success that belied her money problems. She hit her financial rock bottom just before the pandemic, when she phoned her boyfriend (now fiancé) and asked to borrow money to pay her bills — again. A flip switched and she knew she needed to take better care of her finances. So she started paying off her debt and — when the pandemic caused her to lose all her photography work — she got a job at a pizza parlor for a few months.

Nolwen is an editorial and commercial photographer living in Los Angeles. And as of last week, she has paid off half her $60,000 in debt.

A NOTE FROM LAURA
Today I’m joined by Nolwen Cifuentes for a frank and honest talk about how she got into debt and what she’s doing to get out of it. We discuss what she learned about money growing up and how that affected her attitudes about finances as an adult. We talk about how taking control of her finances has made her feel more like an adult than overcoming her drug and alcohol addiction. And we also talk about how getting her finances in order has impacted her relationships. It all sounds very serious, I know. And it is. But it’s also a fun and very cool conversation.

A fun little fact about this episode: Nolwen is the first person I’ve interviewed for this podcast whom I didn’t know at all before. I met her on Instagram via her Don’t Be a Starving Artist feed! Be sure to follow her (link below).

LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE
Nolwen Cifuentes’s website
Nolwen’s Instagram
Don’t Be A Starving Artist Instagram

MUSIC CREDITS
Cinematic Orchestra Cello Loop by Wanderexplore
Happy Upbeat Cello by Audiokraken
The Ascent by Sound of Picture
Mosey by Sound of Picture
Encounter by Sound of Picture
On My Way by Kevin MacLeod with a Creative Commons License
Son of a Rocket by Kevin MacLeod with a Creative Commons License
Coast Highway by Sound of Picture
Ultraviolet by Sound of Picture

FULL TRANSCRIPT from 01:06

Laura
Hi, Nolwen. Thanks so much for joining me on the show today.

Nolwen
Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited.

Laura
So, I want to jump right into it by asking you about this Instagram feed you have called Don’t Be a Starving Artist. How did this come about and why?

Nolwen
Yeah, I started this, I think it’s just been a few months ago. I’ve actually been freelancing doing all kinds of stuff since 2012 and then really started focusing on editorial and commercial photography in the last five years. And just having a lot of struggles financially and just felt like there wasn’t really a place or outlet to talk about finances, especially with another artists and creatives.

I just felt like I had really hit rock bottom in terms of managing my money and just like being in so much debt and just not really knowing what to do about it and then in March 2020, I started listening to a few different financial podcasts. Specifically, in the beginning of my journey I listened to a lot of Dave Ramsey. I don’t endorse him anymore because of some of his personal views. But he was a really big part of my journey in the beginning.

All of this was kind of happening during the like beginning of the pandemic. And yeah, so I just started like really paying off debt and really like managing my money in a way that I’ve never done before in my entire life. And just got really like excited and passionate about it and wanted to talk about it. And I felt like a lot of my friends and peers were interested to learn more.

So, I was just like, I’m just going to put all my like thoughts and ramblings on an Instagram and see if this is interesting to people. I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback, a lot of people DM-ing me and talking to me about financial management and, you know, especially how to do that as a freelancer where your income is so inconsistent.

Laura
Yeah. I think it’s really important to, to speak openly about these kinds of things. And that’s what I love about your Instagram channel is that you are so open. You talk about budgeting, you talk about how much money you make, how many bank accounts you have. I mean, I think I’ve watched most of your videos and I don’t even remember how I first found your Instagram feed, but I think it just kind of like appeared in my Instagram feed.

And I was so excited to watch your first video, but I was also scared like, “Oh my gosh, how does the Instagram algorithm know me so well, I’ve never heard of this person and here her videos popped up in my feed.” It was scary, but also exciting.

You just mentioned right now that you hit a financial rock bottom. What does that really mean? What happened?

Nolwen
Well, I have been in credit card debt, since I was 18 years old. I think like right when I turned 18, I got a credit card for, I don’t know what, something like maybe Victoria’s secret or something random.

Laura
And how old are you now?

Nolwen
I’m 33. I took out student loans to go to school. Didn’t even think twice about it. To me, debt and credit cards always felt like free money and I just never thought twice about it. I mean, I was like in my thirties and just feeling like I don’t have any savings, I don’t have a single penny in savings.

I was in about $60,000 a debt when I hit my rock bottom. I was living with my now fiancé, but he was just my boyfriend at the time and I couldn’t pay the rent and I had to call him and I had already borrowed money from him several times before for similar type of things. But, I was just sitting on top of this hill, and said, “I can’t pay the rent again. I need to borrow money. Actually, not only can I not pay the rent, I also can’t pay my cell phone bill and this other bill and this other thing. Can I borrow like $2,000?”

And you know, he’s always been very kind and supportive, but he sort of said like, “You know, this is kind of a pattern for you. Is this, you know…..” Like he just kinda made me more aware, like, yeah, no, you’re right. This is something that it keeps happening.

And, and I felt very, very sad. You know, I felt like bad about myself. Like I can’t… I haven’t been able to take care of myself financially, you know? m, and even though my career in terms of photography is doing well and I’m booking a lot of really cool work and I’m working on a lot of projects that are dream clients of mine and dream projects, but for some reason just can’t get this whole financial thing together.

That was really when I felt was my rock bottom. I was just sitting on top of this mountain. My parents live in this beautiful town in the country of Colombia. And I was just sitting, staring at the nature and like, “Oh God, again, I can’t pay my bills. This is going to keep being my life forever, or I need to make a radical change.” And then that’s basically when I started paying off debt. 

Laura
That’s amazing that you were able to make a change pretty quickly like that because it sounds like within a few weeks you just kind of flipped a switch. What was it that made you go from recognizing you had a problem to actually taking action? Because those are two completely different things. And I know people who get tripped up on that, they’re like, yeah, I have a problem. But then taking action is another really big step.

Nolwen
Right. I had known that I had a problem for a while. I’ve been keeping a journal for a really long time. And if I look through my old journals, I’ve been saying I have a problem with financial money and debt for years. So, it’s definitely something that I knew for a long time, but I just felt…. I kind of had this idea that like, “Oh, I’m going to make like a ton of money on one commercial project. And I’m just going to pay everything off.” That was kind of my, my fantasy, you know?

I also have been sober for a little while and I feel like this financial thing was just like another part of this kind of pattern of addictive behavior. And I think because I’ve already made a pretty massive change in my life becoming, getting sober, it just felt like, well, this is the next big step as part of my own personal growth. And like, if I can get sober, then I can also manage my finances, you know?

And honestly the whole financial management to me felt like almost as big and treacherous as, you know, cutting drugs and alcohol out of my life. Like it felt like almost equal mountains. So I don’t know what kind of flipped it was just, I just felt like I can’t and do not want to live this way anymore.

Laura
Do you think you were actually earning enough money to cover your expenses? Or were you sort of buying into this notion of being a starving artist?

Nolwen
You know, I think when I first started photography, I was definitely buying into like kind of romanticizing the starving artist thing. I mean, I lived out of my car for a year and just like couch surfing and, and it kind of felt very… I sort of like would put myself into these like difficult situations. Cause I just felt like that was part of the, the world of being an artist.

However, getting sober was a big part of me getting out of that whole thing. And when I was still not managing my money and when I hit that rock bottom, I was making enough money. I think I was making like $66,000 a year that year. I should have been fine, you know I should have been able to survive. I was just completely mismanaging money, just, if I got a big paycheck, just spent it. Some things were like clothes and shoes and eating out and furniture and all kinds of just things. A lot of it ‘em was me trying to keep up with like my friends and my peers around me. Like even just spending a hundred dollars on a manicure before I had even paid my rent.

And then a lot of it was things that had to do with my business. I was justifying like, well, I really need to shoot this personal project. So, I need to get a studio space. I need to rent this lighting. I need to, you know, rent a better camera. I need to get a better lens. So, a lot of my debt and my money and the bad financial management went back into my business. And I would pay for these kinds of business expenses before I would even pay my rent or my bills. So that was kind of keeping me in this cycle of staying really broke. You can’t be putting a bunch of money into a personal shoot before paying your rent. That just doesn’t make any sense.

For example, I just spent about $5,000 on a personal project at the end of last year. But I had already three months saved of expenses. I had been paying off a lot of debt. You know, I just had everything sort of in place where the extra 5,000 wasn’t going to hurt my living situation. And obviously I was not putting anything on a credit card. So, I think it’s okay to spend money on your business and personal projects like that, but just always make sure that you’re paid first before you do that.

Laura
Very good advice. So, I want to go back a little bit more into just the finance side of things. And you said that you were basically, or you’ve been in debt basically since you were about 18. So what, what did you learn and feel about money when you were growing up and how did that influence your later financial decisions?

Nolwen
Yeah, I didn’t learn much at all about money. Like my parents never got into investing. So that was something I just had zero idea about. And it’s funny during this holiday break me and my family went and we did a tour of all the homes we used to live in. We moved around a lot, but it was all in this same city we had like five different houses in this, like one town in California. So, we went to see them all and I was like, “Oh my gosh, all these houses are beautiful.” Every house we lived in, like we lived a very blessed life. Like all the houses were so nice, the neighborhoods were beautiful. But for some reason, I remember as a kid and my family was always stressed and tight about money. I just remember always hearing, “We don’t have enough, we don’t have enough.”

We were, you know, definitely like just a middle-class income and I always had food on the table. We did all kinds of activities. Me and my brother and sister were always in like choir and swimming and sports and like all you know, theatre. So, even though my life didn’t feel… there was no lack at all, the conversations around money that I would hear from my parents were always that we don’t have enough and that money… There’s like a lot of stress around money. So, I always sort of had this like negative view of money and that there’s never enough. There’s not enough to go around. What I saw was that credit cards are free money basically. And that money in general is just kind of negative and stressful.

Laura
Now last year was really tough for a lot of people because of COVID. And actually, I think probably one of the first videos I watched was one where you talked about not having any work. And so you got a job at a pizza parlor, and I want you to talk a little bit more about how you came to that decision, because I know as an artist, how I feel, how a lot of other photographers, I know feel, we feel like we’re artists and that’s all we’re supposed to do and doing anything else is sort of like we failed. So tell me more about how you survived COVID and decided to go get this job at the pizza parlor.

Nolwen
When the pandemic happened, I lost all of my consistent income and all my editorial work, all my freelance photography work, just like went to a complete halt. And that was another big realization in my financial management that I suddenly realized like, “Oh, I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck.” I think I had about two months of expenses saved up. And I sort of realized like, “Oh, well, what do I do after that two months? Like, I’ve got nothing.”

So I was kind of freaked out and also I had started paying off my debt. I had put in a thousand dollars to my emergency fund and I didn’t want to just stop it. I was like, yeah, well, I can just go kind of live for two months and like cross my fingers and hope that work comes back afterwards. But I can’t pay any extra towards debt.

So, at this point I was listening to like hours a day, like three hours of Dave Ramsey every single day. He was talking about the pandemic. He said, if you don’t have any income coming in and you don’t have an emergency fund or anything, if you go to a pizza place tonight, you will be working tomorrow morning. You will have a job tomorrow. And I was like, you know what, I’m just like, let’s just do it.

So, I went to this pizza place and it was a cute, it was a cute spot, like a mom and pop pizza place that they were very passionate about pizza and treat their employees really well. And I went there and I had previously had some experience in food service. So, I had a good resume that I put together.

They hired me on the spot. I started to working the next day. And it felt very serendipitous. It felt like, you know, I’m not Christian, I’m not religious at all, but I do feel very spiritual. And I feel like I do have a connection to some kind of like higher power. And it really felt like this is where I’m meant to be. This is where God wants me to be right now.

And it almost felt like I have to be here because I need to atone for all the crappy money decisions I’ve made, because if I had not been in so much debt… At this point, I was paying a thousand dollars a month towards minim payments to my credit cards. This is just straight up paying interest. And yeah, I just felt like if I had made better decisions, then I would not need to be working at a pizza place.

And I also wasn’t just starting out in my photography career. I think it’s different when you’re just starting. This was almost five years into my career that I had to work at a pizza place. And I had been shooting already covers for New York Times magazines. Like, I mean, I had already had a pretty successful photography career in editorial, but managed my money so poorly that it didn’t matter.

So, I worked at this pizza place. And actually with tips, I ended up making pretty good money there. I was making like $3,000 a month working like five nights, sometimes six nights a week. And I did that for, I think like five months I was there. And then in May of last year – May 2020 – I started getting editorial work back but still kept working at the pizza place cause I was paying off my credit card debt that I didn’t want to stop. I mean, I remember like one day I shot a cover for Glamour magazine and then the next night went to deliver pizzas. Like, it was very funny dichotomy of like the work I was doing.

But again, I just felt like I need to be here. I need to understand it. I need to really like atone for my financial mistakes I’ve made and, and also just do a really good job. I wasn’t going to the pizza place like, “Ugh, I hate this. This sucks.” Like, every time before my shift, I would do a little prayer and say like, “God, please help me be the best I can be. Help me be a really good employee at this pizza place. Help me like be of service to the people that I work with.” And I would really do my best. Because I was also grateful. I was so grateful. I was like, thank God that I’ve got this job right now when during a pandemic where like a lot of people aren’t working thank God that I have, that I can still continue paying off my debt. So I was just full of gratitude to even have this opportunity.

I decided to quit because I just was starting to book a lot more photography work. I think it was like three different times where I had to call off of the pizza place to do the photo job. And I kind of felt like, okay, well now I’m not able to be a good employee to this pizza place. So, I think it’s time for me to leave. Once I left, I booked this huge commercial campaign, like, I mean, two weeks after I quit the pizza place.

And then ever since it’s just, I’ve been really managing my money. I’m still paying off all my debt. I’m about almost halfway done paying off the full 60,000. I’ve paid off 23,000 and some change, since March. So like I said, paid off the smallest debt, but then I got to a point where I was $16,000 in debt on one of my credit cards and I was paying $500 a month in just minim payments. So not to the principal, just in interest $500 a month. I owed more on this one credit card than I did on my student loans. So, I decided, you know what? I just want to tackle that credit card. So that’s the one I’m working on now.

Laura
That’ll feel like such a huge win when you’ve paid off that balance.

Nolwen
Yeah. I really, I’m really excited. I’m just waiting on a paycheck from another job and then I will have the money to pay it off. It’s very exciting. It does feel like a huge relief.

Laura
It sounds like you’re a different person now than you were even a year ago when you were first going on this journey to get your finances in order. How has that affected all of your relationships?

Nolwen
Yeah. I definitely feel like that like a different person. I mean, I think the biggest thing is that I feel so much more confident in myself. I feel like a real adult for the first time, even though, I mean, I guess I’ve been an adult for a long time, but I didn’t feel that way. And I feel like – yeah, I feel like a real grown up.

I’ve done other things in terms of self-improvement like I mentioned, I got sober. I’ve been eating healthier, exercising more, but none of those things made me feel like a grownup in the way that managing my money did because managing my money means that I can control my livelihood. I can take care of myself. I can pay my own bills. I feel very grateful.

And the way that it’s affected my relationships… I didn’t think that I wanted children at all before. I always, I mean, I did when I was really young. But most of my adult life I’ve said, like, I don’t want kids. I don’t want kids. And there’s some other fears. There’s like all kinds of reasons that I was saying that, but one big fear was like, how the heck am I going to take care of kids? I can barely take care of myself.

And ever since I started managing my money, I’ve sort of been rethinking it. And I spoke with my partner and mentioning, you know, “Maybe I do kind of want kids.” And he was like, “Oh yeah, of course, we want kids.” And he was kind of waiting for me to like, get to that point, I guess.

But because we…. That sort of opened up the whole conversation about getting married. It was me talking about how I wanted kids. And also, me talking about finances because me getting my financial health together, now I’m starting to have financial goals. I want to start investing. I want to be financially independent. I want to just live off of passive income. And so, I started talking about that with my partner, and then we started having goals together, here’s what we want to invest in together.

And all of that started opening up conversations to get married. Cause he said, well, we have all these goals. We want to have kids. We want to invest together. Seems like it would probably be a better move to get married and do this. And so that opened up that conversation. And then now I’m engaged. Who knows where this relationship would have gone, maybe down the toilet, if I didn’t get ahold of my finances. It made a huge difference.

Laura
Well, I know you did an Instagram Live with your then boyfriend, now fiancé, and in that Instagram Live – if you’re listening, you should definitely go find it. It’s somewhere on Nolwen’s page, Don’t Be a Starving Artist. But in that Instagram Live, it’s very clear that your fiancé, his name is Isaac, he’s very good with money. And you’ve been together for a long time. So, that means for a lot of the time you were together, he was good with money. And it sounds like you weren’t good with money. How was that in your relationship? And, and what does he think now that you’ve taken control of your finances?

Nolwen
I mean, when I first met Isaac, I was an active alcoholic. I was doing a bunch of drugs and I was completely broke. So I’m uncertain how it worked out in the beginning, but I guess we just had a really good chemistry outside of that. So, he’s seen me at like the, I mean, he’s seen me at the bottom of my barrel, you know. He’s seen me really deep into like active addiction and just intense depression.

And I don’t know, I’m so grateful. I feel so blessed that I’ve found this guy. He just fully supported me and loved me through that. And I think, I guess he just always really believed in me. Because again, you know, I got out of, I’m not in active addiction. I’ve been sober for a long time now for few years. And he supported me through it all.

And then I think just like the financial thing, I knew that he was really good with money and there’s even part of me that felt like envious toward it. I always had this big vision of myself. So, I did see myself like I want to have a lot, I want to be really wealthy one day. I want a really successful photography career. I want all these things. So, I had this vision of what I wanted to be, but the actions that I was taking weren’t necessarily getting me there.

He never told me anything about my financial management. He was just like, you know, it’s really hard. He’s a freelance cinematographer. He’s been in the game for a little over 10 years now. He just never really pushed me, just like always supported me, but without saying anything and just sort of let it, allowing me to flourish and figure my things out on my own and just was always this like really like grounded presence in my life without ever judging. I mean, the only time he ever said anything about my finances was that February when I was borrowing money from him again for like the 10th time or something.

Now we’re finally on the same page and on the same level. And like I said, I feel very confident. I’m ready to be a partner in this and I’m ready to like, let’s powerfully come into this together, you know? So it is making our relationship a lot more powerful as well.

Laura
So, are you the kind of couple now that is just talking about money and finances and financial independence all the time and annoying all your friends?

Nolwen
Exactly. That’s exactly us. We talk about finances and spirituality every day. And just our work – like what we’re working on and stuff like that. That is basically our three things we’re just like constantly talking about every single day. I think we try not to talk about it too much in front of our friends because yeah, it definitely annoys people, but together that’s like, we’re just always talking about that.

Laura
So, you recently got engaged, which is very exciting. How does this affect your financial plans? Are you going to combine all your money? Are you going to keep things separate? Are you making even bigger plans with your finances now that you’re going to be married?

Nolwen
We have talked about this a lot and I even want us to get into like a pre-marriage counseling, just so we’re really on the same page. Our plan is to combine all our finances when we’re married. So, we basically would have one main bank account where all our income would go into that one bank account.

If we have any big saving goals we want to do together, we would take from that account. And then what we would also do is have an equal percentage that we would put into our own separate bank accounts. And that’s just our own personal money, fun money. You know, we do whatever we want with that. So that way we don’t have to be constantly letting each other know, you know, “Oh, I’m going to spend money on this.”

And the reason why we’re doing this is because just from all of the, you know, we both read a lot of financial, a lot of books by financial experts, we’re always listening to podcasts. And that’s just seems to be what most people recommend. That’s what most millionaires do. A lot of millionaires they just share their income with their partners, with their spouses. That just seems to be the most recommended thing. It can bring your partnership closer and more strong and more powerful. You’re on the same page.

Now, another thing is my goal is that I want to pay off all my debt before we get married. So, this is not something that financial expert necessarily recommend, but this is just a thing that’s like very personal to me because…. As you know, I’ve been talking about my financial history and just like the way I’ve been managing money. And it’s been such a emotional thing. It’s been such a just like bad habits that I’ve created. All these decisions that I made.

I feel like me paying off my debt myself is going to completely change my mindset around money. And I want to be able to know that I can do it myself, that I don’t necessarily need a partner. I don’t need to be married to manage my money. I want to be married because I love this person and I want to share my life with this person. But I don’t need that person. All I need is myself to really manage my money, to take care of myself.

Laura
Let’s talk a little bit about financial independence. What does financial independence mean to you and why do you and your fiancé want to work towards it?

Nolwen
Well, financial independence means that you don’t have to work for your money, you’re just getting passive income, be that through dividends investments, you know, maybe real estate or whatever it may be. You’re just generating enough passive income that like pays for your life. Then you just don’t need to work anymore. , that would be awesome because I, even though I love my job and I plan to continue working, you know, for the rest of my life I want to be able to take time off when I want, I want to be able to, you know, go visit my parents or, you know, do whatever I want to do and work because I love it.

I don’t think you can get there without understanding how to manage your money. That’s why it’s important to budget and to know exactly how much money you can live off every year, every month, every year. , that is really key from my understanding to getting to that financial independence. We have a lot of different ideas to get there. We want to invest in real estate together. So that’s that’s one investment that me and my fiancé, when we’re married, want to do together is real estate.

We’re going to be doing a lot of just investing in the market. So like just index funds and that’s something I’m still kind of learning about a little bit more, but yeah, like index funds, mutual funds, Roth, IRAs, that type of thing.

And grow my Instagram channel. I’m just kinda using it as a platform to just connect with other people. You know, that’s how I met you and just, just kind of sharing my journey. But eventually I want to grow that into something that can also create some passive income where maybe I would sell some kind of like webinars or seminars or I don’t know what yet.

Laura
I bet you can do it. I mean, you know, that’s why I started Creative and Moneywise because I really felt like I think you feel – that there’s this need for creative professionals to talk a lot more about money and getting control of your money and understanding your money so that you can keep doing what you love to do and not be a starving artist. And that’s what I love about the, even the name of your Instagram channel. It’s just like, so I mean, every everyone who’s an artist knows exactly what you’re talking about. I mean, even if you’re not an artist, we know.

Nolwen
Yeah. I feel like there’s definitely not those conversations, at least in the circles of photographers that I know. I also know a lot of different filmmakers. People don’t talk about like, well, how are you managing this? How are you budgeting? What investments do you have? Nobody knows about that, it seems, in the more creative fields.

Laura
So I want to find out, what do you do for retirement savings? Are you saving anything or is this in your future plan?

Nolwen
So it’s in my future plan right now. So, right now I’m just paying off debt and I’m not investing any money right now. After I pay off debt, I’m going to save my three to six months emergency fund. And then after that, I’ll start investing. But I am learning a lot about investments and yeah, this is something I think a lot of, especially freelancers, creative freelancers, aren’t thinking about retirement. Maybe they’re like, well, I love my job. So, I’m going to be working until I die. Which like, cool, but maybe something happens to you or….. It’s smarter to not have to depend on that.

Laura
Why do you think so many creatives and especially photographers are scared of thinking about retirement or even just about finances in general?

Nolwen
Right. I don’t know. I think it’s just something that isn’t talked about. Isn’t taught. Another thing that I noticed is in just like liberal spaces… So, I’m politically, you know, I’m a liberal progressive person. And I see that a lot of my peers, like people that I follow on Instagram and in that space, just have such a negative view on wealth. Just such a bad view on wealth. The wealthy are greedy. The wealthy are exploiting the poor. The wealthy don’t deserve their money. And I’m like, what? Like, I get where you’re coming from. But at the same time, this is such so this is like a fear, yeah, it’s a fear of wealth and it’s a fear of money.

That’s something I want to really tackle and talk about and try to have conversations with people about it’s okay to have political views that are about helping people who are underprivileged and understanding that that’s like a part of our society. And how can we help people who have less privilege than others while also being okay with growing your wealth and wanting for everyone to grow their wealth and wanting to give them education and tools and resources to grow their wealth.

Because in my opinion, being financially free and having a lot of wealth, I mean, that is such, that is such a relief. That is so much help. That just puts you in such a better position to live your life and follow your dreams and have less stress and have more freedom. If you’re a really good person that wants to help other people, having wealth and having money, it’s going to provide you with the tools and the resources to do more of that help and to be more of that good person. So, I think it’s very insidious to not think about wealth or money in a useful way.

Laura
I’ll admit I used to be one of those people who thought wealth was evil. But I think my problem was that I was conflating wealth and greed. But I started to change my mind. I don’t know why, but I just, I just realized at some point that no, those two things are not always tied together. They can be totally separate. And when you have money, you can actually do a lot of good, which is something I want to do. And probably a lot of creatives and photographers want to do. And I’ll never forget.

About two years ago, I actually had an office job. I worked at a communications firm for a little over a year, and I got a huge bonus at the end of end of my first year working there. I mean, I’ve never worked anywhere you got a bonus. But I got this bonus and I was so excited. And I remember my husband and I sat down at our kitchen table and we wrote out all of these organizations we wanted to give big donations to, and it felt so amazing. I never had so much extra money that I could do good with. So yeah. I agree with you. I think it’s important to realize that money can be really good.

Nolwen
Yeah. Money can be, like you said, it’s a tool to do good. Money makes you more of who you are. So if you’re greedy or, you know, if you’re a jerk, you’re going to be more of that when you’re wealthy. But if you’re a really good person who wants to help other people, then you’re going to be able to be more of that as well.

If you read a lot of books on how…. I think it’s just a misunderstanding of what a millionaire is, most millionaires, first of all are older. They’re like in their fifties or sixties. Most of them, they got that way because they invested their money through a very long period of time. They’re not like some greedy CEO who pays their workers, you know, less than minim wage or something like that. It’s really just normal people who are teachers, engineers, you know, just like normal people with normal jobs. And they’ve just invested over 30 and 40 years. And that’s how they became millionaires. It’s a lot more simple and easy than people make it out to be.

Laura
Thank you so much for coming on the show, Nolwen. You shared so many wonderful stories and a lot of great insights, and I wish you great luck in paying off your debt this year. And hopefully getting married before the end of the year.

Nolwen
Thank you very much.