BIO: Anna Rosling Rönnlund is a Swedish designer who, with her husband Ola Rosling, developed Trendalyzer, interactive software for visualizing statistical information.
STORY: Anna and her husband bought a home after moving to the US. A while later, they had to move back to Sweden, so they decided to sell the house. This was during the financial crisis that hit the real estate market badly. So the couple lost a lot of money after the sale.
LEARNING: Keep your costs low. You don’t always have to buy a home.
“Spending time doing things you love is the best investment ever.”
Anna Rosling Rönnlund
Guest profile
Anna Rosling Rönnlund is a Swedish designer who, with her husband Ola Rosling, developed Trendalyzer, interactive software for visualizing statistical information. In 2005, with statistician and father-in-law Hans Rosling, she co-founded the Gapminder Foundation, where she serves as vice president for design and usability. In 2016, she announced Dollar Street, a website that imagines a street of homes to help visualize how people of varying cultures and incomes live around the world. In 2017, she collaborated with Hans Rosling on his book, Factfulness.
Worst investment ever
Anna and her husband moved to the US, where they were both working at Google. They decided to look for a place to stay close to the office. The couple had sold their apartment in Sweden, so they had some cash to purchase a house. They bought their home just before the real estate market crashed and then moved back to Sweden after it crashed. They decided to sell the house and lost quite a lot of money.
The home was just a few miles from where Facebook was building its new headquarters. Had the couple held onto the house for just a year or two after moving back to Sweden, they’d have gained quite a lot of money.
Lessons learned
- When investing, start from your dream or passion and then gradually diversify to other things.
- Keep your costs low, but still enjoy life, and make sure you do things you like—it doesn’t have to cost a lot.
Andrew’s takeaways
- One way to protect yourself is to keep your costs really low.
- You don’t have to buy a house, especially when you’re moving to a new city.
- Property can fall, and you lose for a while, but in the long run, it eventually comes back.
Actionable advice
If you’re not going to stay in a home for a very long time, don’t buy it—rent instead.
Anna’s recommended resource
Anna recommends reading Factfulness because it’s all about how to make sense of the world. It gives you a general overview of the biggest trends and proportions to make better decisions in life and work.
No.1 goal for the next 12 months
Anna’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to add the questions received from the general public and interactive video-led courses, the Worldview Upgrader. This is a tool she developed for people to check their knowledge and upgrade their worldview.
Parting words
“Good luck with your investments, and make decisions based on data.”
Anna Rosling Rönnlund
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