Piggy Bank Disaster Turns Millennial Into Money Master

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Welcome to a brand new week. So glad you're here, Side Hustle School listeners, friends, community. Now, our team was really excited about today's story. We've got good stories coming out all week, but today's in particular, we tried out several different headlines for it. We tried the case of the stolen piggy bank.

That was my favorite, at least at first. And then we had stolen piggy bank inspires career in new journalism, also good. But in the end, we went with piggy bank disaster turns millennial into money master. That was the clear winner. I can't take credit for it myself.

Thanks so much to Mike for giving us that one. And that is exactly what this story is about. A British millennial keeps her savings in an old fashioned piggy bank. Something goes very wrong, done, done, done. And in recovering from that situation, she invents an all new career.

Pretty cool way to start out the week. I think you're going to like it. Here is the shout out to our sponsor. I appreciate them giving us some piggy banks and then on with the show. [Music]

Iona Bain was in her early twenties, working as a music teacher, scrimping and saving every penny she could.

There was no real organization to her finances, no credit card, or even a proper bank account. She wasn't your typical millennial. Half of them have zero savings, but she wasn't far off. In fact, Iona was trying to do whatever she could to avoid that trap. But she made one critical mistake.

That mistake wasn't spending too much on clothes. It wasn't partying every week. Hers was an error of a more unusual kind. Instead of using a bank account, she kept all the money made from music lessons in a good old fashioned piggy bank. The money was piling up.

That little piggy bank was full to the brim of sweet cash. But little did she know, disaster was about to strike. Iona would have her own global financial crisis. Although it was no laughing matter, what transpired feels like it was pulled straight from the plot of a Seth Rogen movie. Because on a dark and stormy night, I actually don't know if it was a dark and stormy night.

I'll just strike that. You know, just at some point this happened. At some point, her piggy bank was stolen from her home. What followed was one of the most embarrassing and surreal moments of this young millennial's life. There she was, a grown adult, explaining to a police officer that her piggy bank had been taken by thieves.

To add insult to injury, the officer asked all sorts of questions to try to identify the piggy bank should it be recovered. Where did you last see it? Was it pink? Did it have a squiggly tail? It was at that moment that Iona knew she had to make a financial change.

She needed some common sense. She resolved to learn everything she could about the financial world and take control of her monetary destiny. Step one, don't actually keep your money in a piggy bank. As a journalism student, she decided to blog about everything she learned. Luckily, since she was broke, the cost of launching a blog was tiny.

She bought a domain name and the young money blog was born. There she'd write about financial matters that concerned her and other millennials. In the beginning, there was no grand plan. She started with topics like how to save money at music festivals and how to get cheap train tickets, stuff that she would have found useful herself if she stumbled across it on Google. Over the coming months, Iona began to find her voice.

She became more comfortable, her personality began to emerge, and before long, her writing started gathering some attention. Traffic began to climb. Around this time, she also started what would be her chosen career as a journalist. She began writing for a few UK publications and continued to do that for a few years. All throughout that time, her income never grew to more than 15,000 pounds a year, which is approximately $19,000.

Not enough to live anything beyond the most frugal of lifestyles. But although there was little wage growth over those years, the growth of the blog was another story. It started to pay dividends. The more work she put in, the more her opportunities compounded. It was a little bit like compound interest with a bank, but for her, she compounded her effort, not money, at least at first.

As the blog grew more popular, more readers resonated with her unique point of view. It helped that she had the only publication in the UK dedicated to writing about financial matters for millennials. So naturally, she began to build a reputation as an expert. Visitors were flocking to the website through Google and social media, but she still wasn't making any money. Fortunately, what she lacked in income, she made up for in those opportunities.

Occasionally, she was asked to appear in radio and TV segments. Producers discovered her blog, and she became that go-to millennial expert for managing your money. One interesting incident occurred after one of her appearances. She was on TV talking about how millennials can improve their financial situation, only to have her old university librarian get in touch. The librarian wrote to say that she enjoyed the blog, but wanted Iona to know she still owed £4.57 in late fees on her library books.

I guess the lesson is even the financial masters missed something here and there. Iona had found her voice. She was helping financially illiterate readers all over the UK and elsewhere. Then in 2016, she got her big break. That break arrived in the form of a book deal.

Titled "Spare Change," it was a compact version of everything she'd learned through her years of blogging. After the book's release, Iona decided to take the plunge to go all in. By now, she was earning almost three times as much from her blog, freelance writing, and appearance fees than she ever earned working as a full-time journalist. Since then, the opportunities have kept flowing. She continues to be featured frequently on both radio and TV.

Not only that, but pursuing her side hustle gave her freedom to be creative, offered the chance to be independent, and have a more varied life. She now plans to take things to the next level. She's bringing on contributors to the blog. She's also planning on launching a course. She's producing video content and doing some consulting with large brands.

So far, she has no regrets other than not taking the blog more seriously from the very beginning. Oh, and also, she now keeps her savings in the bank. [Music]

Wow, what a story. I just kept wondering, though, what happened to the piggy bank? You know, I feel like there should be a follow-up of like three years later, somebody comes forward and confesses.

Or there's this detailed 12-podcast episode series, investigating the theft and the disappearance and where the money went and all that. But you know what? Sometimes in life, it doesn't work out that way. You're just kind of left wondering. You're like, does that person really love me?

Is she thinking of me all the time? Is she not thinking of me at all? Guess I'll never find out, just like that piggy bank. But it sounds like it worked out well for Iona. I love these stories of people who are kind of in the right place at the right time, but then they take advantage of that and they leverage that and they actually work really hard.

So yes, you know, she was the first person in the UK to put forward a major effort of writing about financial stuff for millennials. But you know, it's not like that was given to her. She went and took it. And then she did a lot of work, is what it sounds like. I mean, just like the whole process of improving and refining her voice, trying to understand, okay, who are the people that I'm really writing for?

How can I help them? And then building this kind of budding media career, which turned into a book deal and now growing it from there to make a course, do video, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, right place in the right time, good choice, but then a lot of hard work and application. So well done Iona, congratulations. My condolences again about the piggy bank, but it sounds like it's worked out okay.

Perhaps we can send some folks to your blog. And listeners, if you want to check that out or our show notes or anything I talked about today, all that info is at sidehustleschool.com/779. That's for episode 779. I hope you enjoyed this one. Thank you so much.

As we start off the week, I've got much more on the way. Make sure you're subscribed, tell your friends. It's all free. I'm excited to bring it to you. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

from the Onward Project.