Renata Wiles

And actually I was just really terrified.

I wrote my resignation email to my boss being like, you know, I'm starting my own business.

I'm not going to return to work after maternity leave.

And, you know, thanks for everything.

And I just sent it and I just had this like, oh my gosh, what have I done?

You know, I've just given away my safety net because that was always in the background.

It's like, well, if Rome doesn't work out, I can return to my job.

And then suddenly it was like,

I don't have a job anymore.

I'm like officially unemployed.

I was like, what happens if everyone just wakes up one day and unsubscribes?

And then I'm like, okay, cool.

You know what I do now?

And I guess as a result, I've ended up since then building additional outside of Rome income streams.

Yes, I think that I am so much more aware of money now.

And I feel like that is such a privileged thing to say.

But when your income is the same every month and your bills are relatively the same every month, it's kind of easier to just run on autopilot a little bit.

And I think that now because my income is not the same every month, I have to be a lot more aware of like if I've had a good month that I'm putting extra into savings or into our emergency fund or things like that.

sometimes it's a bad month and my kind of additional income streams don't make anything, then I have to kind of be a lot more aware every month of what's coming and going.

When I became a parent, so this is before I was self-employed, and me and my partner made the decision that we were going to combine all of our finances, everything kind of comes in and out of our same accounts.