From living all over the world–she has called Khartoum, Riyadh, California, London and Toronto all home at some point–to facing and beating cancer during her pregnancy with her youngest child, food blogger and culinary queen Zahra Abdalla is every bit the epitome of an intrepid, fearless woman.

The charismatic personality behind one of the region’s top food blogs “Cooking with Zahra,” she credits blogging as her therapy and “an artistic outlet” during her fight with thyroid cancer. It’s a period in her life that she also credits as a turning point in adopting a new attitude towards life and money.

She invited us to her home to dish on all things money. Read on below for the full scoop.

Money as a Path to Self-Sufficiency

Zahra credits her family’s difficult immigrant experiences in Canada as the primary reason behind her work ethic and money mindset. “I was 11 years old when we’d moved to Canada, because the political situation in Sudan had gotten very difficult. My father faced some major roadblocks, losing his savings in England because his bank went bust and struggling to keep our factory in Sudan going given the political climate,” she recalls.

 

Seeing first hand how they went from living a well-to-do lifestyle to starting from scratch all over again in a completely new country fueled a spark in young Zahra, who felt compelled to “stand on my own two feet. ” “I realized at a very young age that you only have yourself to depend on. I started working at the age of 11, selling newspapers,” remembers Zahra, who also worked as a babysitter and helped her father in his various small businesses.

A Good Investment Can Be a Turning Point

In an interesting twist to typical collegiate life, Zahra’s turning point financially came in the form of an apartment that her parents bought for her when she was 19 years old. “The deal was that my parents would pay for the initial down payment but I had to pay for the maintenance, monthly mortgage payment and any taxes. I rented out the apartment and had to get three different jobs to cover the shortfall so that I could make those payments,” she explains.

Maximizing this investment at an early age also meant Zahra had to make different choices from the usual college student. She decided to live at home (“so I could save money spent on dormitory fees and food”), commuting 1.5 hours each way daily.

“Looking back now, going through those struggles in the short term made a major difference in the long-term. That apartment gave me a lot of leverage in the future.” When the property tripled in value, Zahra – who had college student loans to pay off – opted for refinancing “so I could pay off my student loan and my sister’s debt, giving both of us clear paths that we could build on from there.”

Wealth Creation = Mindset + Method

For Zahra, a pivotal shift occurred in her money mindset a few years ago.

“I stopped seeing money as a point of tension and something to stress about or be embarrassed about. I decided money is going to represent something positive in my life, something that can create more opportunities. I wasn’t afraid of saying I want to earn more, I want to save more. When you shift your mind, you unknowingly shift your actions days by day and you will find lucrative opportunities coming into your life.”

She credits “The Rich Man of Babylon” for inspiring her to systemize her savings approach with the tenet that every month, one should automatically save ten percent of your earnings. Zahra made it a point to save the majority of whatever she made from her various early career experiences and used these savings towards testing different business ideas along the way.

Zahra, who is entering the world of angel investing and has plans to grow her real estate portfolio, believes that investing is accessible to everyone once “you first shift towards a positive money mindset and stop seeing it as something stressful and complicated.” She explains:

“Everyone has an opportunity to invest. You just need to appraise you risk appetite, your financial situation, your immediate obligations and then figure out a percentage meant to be saved and invested.”

Find and Share Financial Wisdom

The more we speak about money positively with each other, believes Zahra, the more we enable others to put this wisdom into practice in their own lives. “Over the years, I’ve encouraged all my nannies to save. In fact, I chastise them if they spend on anything unnecessary! My last nanny launched her own side business in Madagascar where she would trade rice and sugar, and my current nanny has managed to buy land with her savings.”

Even among friends, money shouldn’t be such a taboo topic, says Zahra, who recently supported a friend through a difficult financial situation. “She trusted me enough to actually talk about her struggles. Now I am by no means a financial advisor but I helped her figure out why she’d fallen into this pattern of growing credit card debt. I made her understand how her inability to limit her lifestyle choices-always eating out and partying, spending excessively on gifts and travel-was all adding up. She didn’t have any savings because she felt she had the rest of her life to save and she was already in her thirties! Today, almost a year later she’s made a total turnaround!”

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