Just as we pass down the secrets of skillfully lighting a fire or the recipe for a sauce from generation to generation, every Argentine learns, like someone learning the basic rudiments of survival, how to convert any leftover money into dollars. In an economy constantly plagued by inflation and uncertainty, it's essential to maintain an active financial attitude, at least to avoid losses. And that's something everyone knows. But recently, more and more men and women are turning to the search for tools to level up. Where do they look for them? The internet, the great source of answers.
Yeah The Wolf of Wall Street Representing an entire generation of men and women who made the world of finance an exclusive liturgy for experts and millionaires, today the Internet democratizes knowledge about money management.
Even at a time like the present, when a pandemic is devastating the entire world's habits, the virtual investment repository is there, available for any fisherman who wants to try his luck in a tsunami.
Investing your Christmas bonus instead of spending it, organizing your supermarket shopping, or building a savings fund for retirement are ideas that circulate on the networks with the same vigor as recipes. fit or pet videos. That Growing interest in adding skills in money management gives life to a world of content generators that includes new creatures like influencers and stand-up comedians of finance. Creatures that are a surprise even to themselves.
In fact, in front of this man with platinum hair and dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail who speaks freely in front of the camera, who has more than 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, bracelets on his wrists and walks around his office on an electric skateboard, it is difficult to get an accurate idea of what life was like for him. Ramiro Marra until a while ago.
-I was an office worker for 18 years, an anonymous person who went to the downtown area to work every day. And, two years ago, people started saying hello to me on the street. It's really strange for me: I'm not an artist, I don't have a rock band. My business is the stock market.
At the end of 2017, while searching for marketing strategies for the company he founded with his parents and siblings, Bull Market, Marra began exploring YouTube. He spent several months developing a channel where the company's professionals would share market news. But it didn't take long for him to realize his mistake. While watching his nephews play with their cell phones, he understood what a YouTuber was and decided to try an experiment. "I called a friend and said: film me and edit me. I talked about Bitcoin, which was at its peak, and I said it was a bubble. It went viral and I realized that was it: the focus had to be on me, Ramiro, and not Bull Market. , says.
Although its main audience is people between 25 and 35 years old, Marra says that every day he receives messages from underage boys who want to start investing. The younger ones, with a clean history of major financial frustrations, are the ones who approach us most naturally, without prejudice or conspiracy theories.
"The stock market is no longer a dirty word for young people. Those who say it's a scam are simply unfamiliar with the subject, and this distance from their own life story creates confusion," says Marra, who knows that the way to reach the public is to be unpretentious. But he also recognizes that Their success is due to having "a company behind them."
If I didn't have it, with every recommendation I make, they'd accuse me of being a salesman, which is a very common criticism on social media. They'd say: look, if you're so sure, make money yourself. And I do.
Although the forms may be misleading, Marra is still just that: a broker with an office in Puerto Madero.
The boom in financial disclosure is a phenomenon that goes far beyond the borders of Argentina. -FinCon, a global congress of financial broadcasters that extends its invitation to all the "money nerds" of the world, will be held this year for the tenth time in the United States, but that It broke out in the country about two years ago, driven by several circumstances. First, because of the possibilities that technology offers. While not long ago, transactions were conducted in person or over the phone, one-on-one, today's platforms allow any transaction to be completed in seconds from a computer or cell phone. The stock market is no longer a dirty word for young people. Those who say it's a scam are simply ignorant of the subject.Ramiro Marra
The relaxation of some recent regulations (for example, in 2017 the ban on opening online accounts was lifted) and a paradigm shift also contributed. "People are looking for new ways to invest their money because they understand that traditional methods—dollars, real estate, and fixed-term deposits—aren't enough. People have always wanted to move their money around, but previously, they only resorted to the simplest or most culturally acceptable options. Now, technology allows them to access all the other alternatives they were missing," says Marra. And when she says other alternatives, she means mutual funds, bonds, stocks, and Cedears.
But in addition, these new conditions germinated on an economic scenario in which -according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC) - In 2019 alone, wages fell 12.9 points against inflation, which reached 53.8% annually and marked a record high in the last 28 years. Common sense these days dictates that before doing anything you don't know how to do, you should check the internet. It turns out that, recently, one of the things that has caused the most doubts among Argentinians is how to manage their money so that it lasts, so that there's extra, and, in the best-case scenario, so that it multiplies.
Google to save
But not everything in the world of personal finance is about bonds and stocks. In fact, that's just a small part of it. Beyond their differences, industry experts agree on one basic, and rather conservative, premise: the basis is the order of one's own accounts and savings.
She is an expert in both things. Magdalena Gowland, who, in addition to being a secretary in a medical office, runs one of the most popular everyday economics accounts in the country: @nogastesdemas. Gowland, who has two children, ages four and three, and lives with her husband in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta, isn't a housewife with the time to walk around and compare prices in stores, as pioneer Lita De Lázzari recommended. But she doesn't think it's necessary either, and that's why she's touting her own reversal of the advice: "Google it, ladies and gentlemen, Google it."
In June 2018, she opened an Instagram account to share the talent she'd honed after years of cross-referencing information and advising family and friends on every purchase. And she did it in a daring way: she interrupted the usual succession of seductive selfies and vacation postcards from exotic destinations with supermarket sales. "A lot of people were like, 'What are you doing?' 'Instagram is all about cute, pastel colors, and you posted a butcher shop flyer,'" she recalls. But Social media doesn't lie, and what works, works. In three months, he already had 20,000 followers and a community that was asking for more.
While part of her success can be explained by the country's difficult situation, in which saving every penny became a priority for most families, her approach to saving isn't just a strategy to deal with need. For Gowland, it's about shopping smart, not spending £100 when you can get the same thing for £90. Or £75. "It's not cheap. I wanted to go to Europe or buy a good pair of shoes, but pay less," she summarizes.
Investing in freedom
"A blue ocean." Thus, with this term from the language of marketing, his profession, he defines Lucia Aguilar what she found when she began sharing her own journey as an investor on social media. "There was a lot of need for information and no one was talking about it," explains the woman behind the @luli.invierte account, where he shows, for example, receipts of dividends from his shares in Apple.
For Aguilar, the factors that make it more difficult to maintain orderly finances in the country are the inability to plan ahead and a chronic pessimism that comes from experience. "Argentine investors are very disappointed; every time they've invested, things have gone badly, so they live very much in the now. Since he can't be sure of the future, he prefers to spend what he has before it's stolen by a corralito or devoured by inflation," he says.
Part of the surprises her role as an influencer has brought her are the messages she receives daily from her followers. Many are professional women who know a lot about their field, she says, but have never heard of investments. "They write to me very frustrated saying, 'I'm a petroleum engineer, I can manage a refinery, and I feel stupid because I don't know about this,' or 'I do brain surgery, but this is beyond me.'" Argentine investors are very disappointed; every time they invested, things went badly, so they live very much in the present.Lucia Aguilar
As in so many other turbulent areas, women are now the majority in this personal finance revolution. Not only because they're behind some of the most relevant accounts in the field, but also because they're avid consumers of this type of content, perhaps because many understand that what's at stake is access to an empowering tool.
Sabrina Castelli She was 9 years old when her father died, and her mother, a housewife until then completely unfamiliar with money management, had to take charge of the household finances. Inexperience compounded with bad luck, and the money the family received from the life insurance policy was deposited in a bank and held captive by the corralito. "When I finished high school, I went out to look for answers as to why this had happened to us," Castelli says. 32 years old, behind @MujerFinanciera.
Already a certified accountant and business administration major with a top position at a multinational, Castelli realized that although she could effectively manage other people's assets, she felt the same way about her own accounts as so many Argentinians: she made ends meet with nothing left. "I started researching personal finance, found a method, and my finances changed abruptly: I stopped paying credit card debt and started saving," he notes.
The information had such an impact on her life that she decided to share it on a blog she created in early 2018, which later grew into Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. While the information was also useful for men, she wanted to focus on those the data placed at a disadvantage.
According to her, women have greater difficulty accessing financial information and instruments. In Latin America, only 48% have a bank account, only 11% save, and only 10% earn any income from their investments.
"Financial education makes you free. We named the app we're developing Felicity because when a person acquires a method that allows them to save, they can access better financial instruments and make better decisions. With the money saved, you can decide for yourself whether to stay with a partner, a job, or get a beauty treatment. It's nothing more than a tool to make you and your family happy," she says.
Little capitalist pigs
It's not that before YouTube or Instagram, personal finance columnists and influencers didn't exist, but what's new is a change of tone. While on the pages of newspapers, economic brains spoke to the jet set in a coded way that seemed useful for reproducing existing fortunes—a dialogue between millionaires—on the internet, the idea prevails that everyone can optimize their finances, regardless of their income.
To use the terminology of Mexican pioneer Sofía Macías, in recent years, many more people have shown interest in becoming a little capitalist pig. Macías—who received that nickname when, at the age of 22, at a barbecue with fellow journalists and other professionals not inclined to make money, she confessed to having an investment fund in the stock market—adopted that name to start a blog and ended up building an empire in a field she defined as "personal finance for hippies, yuppies, and bohemians."
The boom in financial disclosure is a phenomenon that extends far beyond Argentina's borders but exploded in the country about two years ago.
His argument for beautifying a land historically associated with greedy beings and abusive behavior - it is enough to review the scene of The Wolf of Wall Street in which Leonardo DiCaprio's character presents his employees with the script for selling "junk" to customers - is unbeatable: Someone always profits from the money you passively save, and it's better if that person is you.
"Being a little capitalist pig doesn't mean that if you're a vegetarian and a Greenpeace activist, you have to stop being one, or change your political party, or stop thinking about how unevenly wealth is distributed in the world. No. It's enough to want to be the one who makes the most of your money and be willing to learn how to do it," Macías clarifies in Little capitalist pig (Aguilar) , one of the two books he wrote after gaining popularity on the networks and that It became a bestseller throughout Latin America.
In that paper destiny that seems to await all successful social media profiles, Marra has also just published a book on the subject: Let's talk about money (Planeta), which is among the five best-sellers in the non-fiction category.
But neither Marra nor Macías were the first to turn a song that lacked appeal for the general public into a hit. Rich dad, poor dad, A book published in 1997 by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter, it was a worldwide bestseller upon its release, and the growing interest in personal finance has recently made it back among the top 20 best-sellers in Argentine bookstores.
As in so many other turbulent areas, women are now the majority in this personal finance revolution.
In the book, Kiyosaki recounts the teachings he received during his childhood in Hawaii from his friend Mike's father, a man with no formal education but who had managed to accumulate a fortune, and compares them with those of his own father, an educated man, but mediocre when it came to money.
Although it's a critically acclaimed book—its author is credited, among other things, with a certain flair for fabrication—it's a benchmark for clarifying some basic financial concepts for the non-specialist public. It also brought to the forefront, in advance, a desire that is at the heart of millennials' anxieties today: the desire to escape what Kiyosaki defined as the "rat race": studying and getting a good job to maintain the costs of a home, working harder to enjoy a higher standard of living, and continuing to work so that life doesn't collapse. Running, let's say, on a wheel that leads nowhere.
Notes on the theater
The new wave of interest in finance may even lead someone to buy a ticket to go to the theater on the weekend and, when the day comes, the curtain opens and they appear on stage. Financial advisor Edgardo Pascualini with a show built on topics such as exchange rates, UVA credits and interest rates.
Funny Money, The title of the work in question falls into a category that could be defined as stand up financial and which aims to ensure that, as is effectively the case, the public not only has fun, but also takes out their notebooks to take notes and returns home with some ideas to fatten their wallets.
The popularity of Pascualini's show—which he refers to as a "seminar"—is fueled by the same factor that builds financial figures on social media: It is a friendly gateway to knowledge that is perceived as dry and that more and more people believe is necessary to have.
For Pascualini -who on social media is @funnymoney.ar- There's a psychological element to people's relationship with money. Taking care of your bills is as much a part of loving yourself and having good self-esteem as eating well or exercising. And, as in all aspects of life, each generation relates to that habit in its own way.The joy of learning about finance comes from thinking about what I'm going to do when I can't work anymore.Edgardo Pascualini
If our grandparents were able to achieve goals like saving up to buy a house, it was more difficult for our parents, and for us, it's a nearly impossible mission, which has effects beyond the obvious. "You say, 'I have to enjoy something,' and that enjoyment takes precedence over long-term goals; you go on a trip, you buy a car," he explains.
Alarm bells ring when questions about the future arise. "We all know that in Argentina, retirement is tending to disappear because it's a broken system," he says. "The joy of learning about finance comes from thinking about what I'm going to do when I can't work anymore."
That is, when the slogan of the carpe diem, The need—or the anxiety to—pave the way for a more comfortable life emerges. And this generation looks for the tools to do so, wherever they know how. Simply stashing a few dollars in the mattress no longer seems like the best plan.
Ramiro Marra (37)
- What is the first step to investing? To have “balls/ovaries”, attitude.
- Is it worth investing a small amount of money? In what? You can invest from 1TP to 100TP to learn. Investing in stocks is the most fun and most profitable way to learn over time.
- In times of global crisis like the present, are there investment opportunities or is it better to be conservative? Great medium-term opportunities always arise in these situations, but there are also all kinds of profiles; there's no single way to invest.
Magdalena Gowland (34)
- What is some good savings advice for parents? Create a monthly budget and a daily expense log. Also, create a weekly menu and grocery list.
- How can we detect when a promotion is really right for us? It's key to compare prices, not discount percentages. Sometimes a product that isn't on sale is cheaper than one that is.
- In times of global crisis like the present, are there investment opportunities or is it better to be conservative? For me, the best investment today is to be aware of what's happening and be responsible. Plan your purchases so you don't overbuy or underbuy. Being conscious of what we buy is an attitude that benefits others.
Lucia Aguilar (35)
- Are fixed-term deposits a good deal? Yes, for banks.
- Do I lose money if I save dollars under my mattress? Storing money under your mattress, in any currency, is like putting an ice cube in the sun. Although the dollar melts more slowly than the peso, its value eventually melts anyway.
- In times of global crisis like now, are there opportunities to investment or is it better to be conservative? There are always opportunities, but in times of turbulence, you have to be wise or very lucky. For those who don't know, I recommend waiting a bit until a certain normality returns.
Sabrina Castelli (32)
- Is it possible to save on a low income? Yes. Savings generate results when we maintain the habit over time. We have to work on developing that habit, even if it's just $10, and increase the amount as we can.
- When is it advisable to use a credit card and when is it not? It should only be used for high-value purchases that we couldn't afford otherwise. Any product that has a useful life longer than I need to pay for it is a good buy, as long as I don't have credit card debt.
- In times of global crisis like now, are there opportunities to investment or is it better to be conservative? The main thing is to understand my situation. If I have my finances in order, an emergency fund of at least six months, income protection insurance and insurance to protect my family, and, on top of all that, some money to save, it may be a good time to invest, taking advantage of low market prices. If not, it's not the time to take risks.
Edgardo Pascualini (45)
- What is the most common mistake in managing a business? Optimism. 80% of startups close their doors within the first two years. The good news is that with a good plan and financial management, decisions can be made that allow for growth and consolidation.
- How far in advance should I start saving for retirement? From birth. Parents can set up an annual savings plan for their child, even if it's not much, so they have time on their side. If your parents didn't do it, the sooner the better. If you're 20, set up a variable-income or fixed-income plan.
- In times of global crisis like the present, are there investment opportunities or is it better to be conservative? It depends on your risk aversion: if you're conservative, it's best to stay liquid until this problem is resolved. For everyone else, there's an opportunity in tourism companies and airlines that are solid but are being severely punished. When all this is over, they'll see tremendous growth.