Marco Carreira
I didn’t realize I was on my financial path to becoming a financial coach for a long time.
But once I connected the dots, it all started to make sense.
How It All Started
My interest in personal finance started when I was young.
I remember having conversations with my dad about how important it is to save and invest money.
He was so passionate about personal finance that he loved sharing his knowledge with me.
Even if I didn’t understand much at that time, hearing from it at a young age was the first step of my financial path to becoming a coach.
Creating Savings Habits
I started to create savings habits for as long as I can remember.
I was fortunate that my family was always asking me what I wanted for my birthdays.
Being a minimalist kid, I didn’t really need anything else than what I owned at the time.
So my answer was always the same: “I don’t need anything”.
But people don’t like to show up empty handed, so they would always give me cash so that I could buy something that I wanted.
Any money that was given to me always ended up in my savings account.
I had no idea what I was saving for, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time.
Working Part-Time
In college, I started to work part-time during weekends and holidays to cover my expenses.
It was not the most glamorous job, but anything that could pay me the minimum wage was a win in my eyes.
So I started working as a grocery clerk in the toilet paper, diapers, and menstrual products aisle.
I would use the money earned to pay for food, gas, and going out with my friends.
Meanwhile, the money that was left would go to my savings account.
I was fortunate enough that my high school was close to where I lived, so I didn’t have to spend on rent money.
Financial Path to Reducing Expenses
After a few weeks in college, I began to think about how I could cut down on my expenses.
I didn’t want to jeopardize my social life, so I started to look into my lunches.
At that time I ate at the college cafeteria every day, and the food was a bit pricy.
I realized that it would be cheaper for me to buy my lunches from a grocery store.
As a result, I was able to reduce my food expenses by half.
I also realized that the cafeteria lineups were going crazy during lunch hours.
There weren’t a lot of options, so people could wait in line for 45 minutes to get a sandwich.
I saw an opportunity there and decided to buy extra sandwiches and drinks to sell them to my classmates.
I was not making a lot of money, but it was enough that I was eating lunch for free.
Saving On My Student Loan
After a few years in college, I went to a private school in Paris for my master’s degree.
It was one of the top computer science schools and also one of the most expensive ones.
I had to study there for three years to get my masters.
Since I couldn’t cover their tuition and fees with the money that I saved, I had to take on a student loan.
Fortunately, I had heard about a student loan program sponsored by the French government.
They created it for masters students that didn’t have the means to pay for their tuition.
The first loan payment was only due after graduation.
I also found out that the loan interest rate was lower than my savings account interest rate.
So, I applied for the highest amount I could get from the bank and saved it in my bank account.
Another thing that saved me a lot of money was to strike a deal with my college administration.
Instead of paying the college fees at the beginning of the year, I would pay them at the end of the year.
It allowed me to make more money on my student loan.
Bay Area Internship
My financial path to becoming a financial coach accelerated during my internship.
My school required all its students to either study or work abroad for a semester.
After sending out many resumes to Canada and the U.S., I finally got an internship opportunity in the Bay Area.
During the six months of my internship, I lived as a minimalist to save as much money as I could.
So the only purchases I made were a mattress and a bike. That way I could go to work without paying for transportation.
At the end of my internship, I had saved enough money to pay for half of my student loan.
But since I still had a few months before my first loan payment, I transferred it all to my savings account.
My First Full-Time Job
After my internship, the only thing in my mind was to find a job in California.
It took me a while to get interviews as I was still living in France, but after a few months I got a job at a big tech company.
Since they had an office in Paris, I was able to start working in France while waiting for my U.S. visa.
Once again, I got lucky that the Paris office was close enough to where I lived, so I didn’t have to pay for rent.
For those few months, my goal was to save enough money to pay off my loan before leaving for the U.S.
I enrolled in all my company benefits to make extra money, and before leaving France, I was debt-free!
Learning about U.S. Finance
One of the first things I did when I arrived in the U.S. was go to open a savings account.
The low-interest rate that they offered, chocked me as it was 100 times less than what I could get in France.
But I still opened one because it was the only thing that I knew.
During my first weeks at work, I was overwhelmed by all the financial choices I had to make.
There were ten times more options to choose from than when I was working in France.
I had to choose my benefits without understanding what I was doing.
So, I invested in my 401k by randomly choosing mutual index funds.
I made a lot of mistakes because I didn’t really know where to find the information needed to make those choices.
After a few months, I decided to learn everything there was to learn about my work benefits.
Becoming A Financial Coach
Learning everything about work benefits allowed me to help my colleagues to make better financial decisions.
That was the first time I “coached” people without knowing that I would become a financial coach in the future.
Four years later, I decided to become a financial coach to help people make the most out of their money by making better financial decisions.
Thoughts
Finance has always played a big role in my life. I always loved to share my financial knowledge with friends and family.
All the decisions we make everyday contribute to our own financial path.
It doesn’t matter how many mistakes we made, we need to keep learning to improve our finances.
Whatever your financial goals are, I can help you achieve them. Take a look at my financial services page.