From civil servant to self-sufficiency: How Anna Rozanska built her own house at 32

In collaboration with eToro.

The pressure of a stressful job, a relationship breakdown and missing her parents, led to a life change that has given 32-year-old Anna Rozanska the ability to strive for true self-sufficiency.

When Anna Rozanska experienced what she describes as a "mental breakdown” nearly six years ago, it became the catalyst for transforming her life.

Burdened by the stress of juggling multiple life changes - her parents moving back to Poland, buying her first property, a relationship ending, and switching jobs in the civil service - Anna Rozanska, 32, took a doctor-recommended break to visit family in Poland. This month-long stay proved transformative, inspiring her to pursue a simpler life away from London's pressures.

I realised I wanted this life - living in a small village in Poland and not having to worry about a ginormous mortgage in London or a stressful job.

Originally from Wloclawek, Poland, Anna moved to London at age eight and, despite initial struggles, adapted well to life in the UK. She built a successful career in the civil service, rising from assistant to senior leader over 11 years while earning her CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) qualifications.

Having realised that she was dissatisfied with this lifestyle, however, when a plot of land near her parents' house in Poland became available, she saw it as an opportunity to reshape her future, diving into research about side hustles, investing, and financial independence.

The pivotal moment in Anna's career came when she started talking to students working at Wembley Arena, where she had taken a part-time restaurant job to supplement her income.

The students were amazed when I explained about investing. A lot of this was just stuff I already knew from working in finance, though I wasn't very good at applying it to my own life at the time.

This sparked the idea for her own YouTube channel, which she launched in late 2019, naming it Panda Boss because her ex’s nickname for her had been ‘Panda’ - she decided she wanted to ‘own it’ rather than feel sad about it.

This light clicked on in my head that was like, ‘Okay, maybe if I make a YouTube channel people will learn something from it, considering these students are learning something when I talk about it.'

Then COVID lockdowns hit in early 2020 and Anna found herself with more time to create content - and her audience had more time to watch it.

Her channel grew rapidly, reaching the requirements for monetisation within about six months.

It usually takes a couple of years to make money on YouTube, but I started making videos properly around March 2020 and by August I was monetised. That was very quick.

Today, Anna has four income streams: running her own English teaching company, working in hotel sales, growing her YouTube channel (with about 21,000 subscribers) and as an eToro investor.

Starting with just £50 at the end of 2020, she has shared her investment journey with her YouTube subscribers.

In fact, she became an eToro ‘Popular Investor’ on the platform after asking a friend to teach her about the different investment platforms.

Being a Popular Investor also means her portfolio is public on eToro - she has almost 900 followers - and she can earn extra income from having her investment strategy copied by other users.

Her approach focuses primarily on dividend-paying stocks and ETFs (a basket of securities that trades on an exchange like stocks), with about 50% of her portfolio in ETFs like the S&P 500 (an index that tracks the share prices of 500 of the largest publicly traded US companies) and Vanguard All-World ETF (an exchange traded fund that aims to replicate the performance of the FTSE Global All Cap Index).

With eToro I'm focusing more on a portfolio that people can copy and I also have other portfolios which are more like my own personal playground. There is a certain degree of responsibility when you're a Popular Investor and people are copying you, so I don’t take as many risks as I would be personally comfortable with - I do that in other places.

It helps having a financial background - whilst my background wasn't in investing, understanding company financials and what all the terms mean is useful.

Anna's ultimate goal isn't traditional retirement, but rather achieving financial freedom - the ability to choose when and how she works.

She's already made significant progress, having built and moved into her house in Poland, complete with a 2000-square-meter garden where she dreams of keeping chickens and goats.

“To me the house is the biggest investment in my future. Living without paying rent or a mortgage makes a big difference,” says Anna, who thanks to her investments and savings (from multiple jobs), is mortgage-free.

It’s about time, not wealth. I want the flexibility to take a month's break if I need it, without having to answer to anyone.

As a female voice in the investment space, Anna is passionate about encouraging more women to start investing.

The gender investment gap is - according to Boring Money research £567 billion - roughly the same size of the Polish GDP.

She believes the gender investment gap stems partly from women's tendency to want to be "100% ready" before starting something new.

Women tend to want to understand everything before they start, whereas men are more likely to take that initial risk. But actually, data shows that women are better investors than men because we're more careful. Over the long term, we tend to outperform men.

Her advice for new investors, especially women?

You don't need to know everything to start. Your workplace pension is generally invested in the stock market anyway, so it's not something to be scared of. Start small with investments like ETFs, and remember that time in the market beats timing the market.

Now settled in her new life in Poland (about two hours’ drive from Gdansk), living with her nine rescue animals - six cats and three dogs - and fostering puppies and kittens, Anna continues to build her investment portfolio while helping others learn about financial independence.

It was meant to be a quieter life - it’s not, but it does feel less stressful. I feel like there's a different pace of life, and I like that there's more of a focus on health and on spending time with family.

Sitting in her office, which features framed examples of her appearances in the national press, Anna says:

I'm quite proud of all my achievements. In London I would have been paying a mortgage till I die. I didn't want to be reliant on a partner either. That was very important for me, because I don't want to be in a situation where I feel like I have to find someone, because I can't cope on my own financially.

Anna has expanded her investment horizons by taking out a loan to purchase valuable land adjacent to her new house, adapting her original debt-free goals to embrace a strategic real estate opportunity.

She has big plans for chickens, a vegetable patch and a rainwater harvesting system - and even an idea to build an English school.

It’s part of my long-term plan, it’s the self-sufficiency part of financial independence. I like the concept of just being able to go, ‘I don't have to work as much because I have all my own vegetables and eggs.’

And if Anna’s focus, determination and success rate is anything to go by, that is exactly what will happen.

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