A bit about me
I’m Cristina Gil Gallo: an industrial engineer by training, a technology consultant by profession, an investor and a lifelong learner. In my free time I love building spreadsheets full of simulations and numbers, and writing processes down until I really understand them. I’m on my own road to financial freedom, and I’ve decided to start publishing it all: if it’s useful to me, it will probably be useful to someone else too.
I have technical training and an analytical mind, but above all a constant appetite for leaving my comfort zone, trying new things and experiencing them first-hand. I do not settle for the default answers or the ready-made formulas.
Below is a summary of the moves, the decisions and the stumbles that brought me here.
Why Cristina Guiri?
A word Spaniards use to poke fun at the foreigner, and that I ended up keeping for myself.
Cristina is my name. Guiri is what we call a foreigner or a tourist in Spain, informally. Living in three different countries turned me into a permanent "guiri": working out different tax systems, pension schemes and cultural rules with no instruction manual.
Cristina Guiri is a way of saying: explore the world, open your mind, widen your options. There is life beyond the environment you grew up in, beyond its assumptions, what you took for granted and the story you were told.
Do we really have to work until the state lets us retire? Do we really have to live mortgaged forever just to have a home? I’ve started looking at money with outsider eyes, to step off the script.
Valencia → Madrid → Heidelberg → Bath
Diaries, moves and the odd financial crime along the way. Cristina Guiri did not come out of nowhere.
The script
- Around age 6, my father gave me my first diary. I wrote regularly for more than a decade, to vent, to think, to survive childhood and adolescence on paper.
- I grew up in a family with very traditional ideas. The plan was clear: be good, be sensible, don’t make waves. Good grades at school. Industrial Engineering (MSc), also with good grades. Payroll job. Every box ticked.
- I bought my first home, my main residence. In hindsight, a small financial crime, but back then it was simply what you were supposed to do.
- On paper I had done everything right, and yet I felt something was missing. I had a huge urge to take on the world, but somehow family and tradition held me back.
The first taste of freedom
- I went freelance. Terrified at first; I have not looked back. No more explaining in interviews why I was leaving, I could simply choose what came next.
- Going freelance in my field, I nearly doubled the income I’d had in Valencia. For the first time I lived more relaxed: there was always money for dinners out, the groceries, clothes if I liked them, without checking my balance first. In Valencia I’d been a bit of a balance-checker.
- I bought a storage room. Financially it wasn’t a great investment either, but it did the job.
- In 2015 I lost my sister Mónica. I began writing her a public letter every year, on the anniversary of her death, and those letters became a way to stop and ask myself an uncomfortable question: am I actually living the life I want to live? If you want to read them, they are in Letters to Mónica.
One suitcase, no network
- A German company offered me freelance work. Living abroad was on my bucket list, so I said yes.
- I landed with a suitcase, zero friends, zero support, and a language I did not speak. Not easy, but social media helped me meet the right people at the right time.
- Here I almost doubled my income again and, for the first time, started to accumulate. I decided I had to learn how to invest, and I started travelling more too.
- I made my first investments through a bank. Best choice at the time: I had no financial education. Not the best choice in hindsight, still better than leaving money idle.
Too many tabs open
- With the move to England I bought another storage room, this time in Valencia, out of sheer necessity: I hadn’t sold the Madrid one yet. Another financial crime. I split it into six, though: if one storage room doesn’t pay off, try six smaller ones.
- During the pandemic I had to halve my rate to stay in the market. It was a one-off: two years later I put it back up.
- In 2020 I started Sapsapiens, a blog about SAP. Useful for learning to publish online; not exactly thrilling. Over time I realised SAP alone would not keep me writing.
- I learned about ETFs and started investing myself. Then options contracts, which is active trading on the stock market.
- Living abroad and wrestling with the tax rules of several countries at once, I found something I never saw coming: I love international tax, personal and corporate. I read tax books and forums for fun. Yes, for fun. Had I never left Spain, I’d never have found out.
- In Bath I trained seriously in property investing, under both UK and Spanish rules, auctions included, and found out they’re two completely different markets. So far I’ve put more money into courses than into bricks.
- I also fell for a property scam: a national one, with hundreds of victims and millions of pounds involved. I got every penny back on my own, without hiring a lawyer, and learned a great deal doing it. The police investigation is still open. I tell the whole story in I invested £31,150 in bricks that weren’t mine.
- I became a mother and had an existential crisis. I came out of it stronger, and more determined than ever to choose the life I want instead of settling for the default one.
- Right now I combine my job with Cristina Guiri, the space where I’ve decided to share what I learn in case it helps someone else. My goal is to earn the same or more while working fewer hours, so I have the freedom to be a present mother and can prove to myself that there is life beyond the traditional script.
What I set out to do
Have my income stop depending on my hours, and be enough that working becomes a choice
- Leave the payroll behind and go freelanceI did it scared. I have not looked back.
- Work and live abroadGermany first, then the UK. This is not the end of it.
- Start investing in the stock marketI have spent years watching my money grow in index funds
- Have a clear retirement planThe plan is set; now I have to reach the target I set myself
- Have another source of incomeI trade options on the stock market, on top of my work. It isn't a salary, though: some months I make money and some months I lose it. Overall, so far, I've always been in the black.
- Generate income onlineThis blog is the first step. The ways to make money from it will follow naturally from the impact it has.
- Build my own businessI started with Iberova, now on hold. The companies I had before were solo trading; this is building a business with clients, a brand and a real structure.iberova.com↗
- Do a real estate deal where you refinance and get all your capital back
- Buy a business that already works and just be the ownerNot everything has to be invented from scratch. Buying something that already works and letting someone who knows run it counts too.
- Take a sabbatical year to travel the world without worrying about money