Fenella Wagener is an accomplished woman with a background in journalism, public relations, and media. She’s currently a PR and Media Manager for Universal Music, where she looks after 3 states and has worked with a range of artists from Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift, to Elton John and Paul McCartney!
Growing up writing and recording her own music, Fenella was always destined to become a part of the industry. Though she studied journalism and has worked for the Herald Sun, Fox, Triple M and The Today Show (where she first met our very own Chris Browne), she wanted to get back into music. She describes her role as her dream job, and says she’s so lucky to be where she is.
“I missed that side of me, so this has been a perfect transition [into the role at Universal Music].”
Fenella also says how lucky she is in her personal life too. She and her partner Jens met in Sydney, and only had 24 hours together before he had to return home to Sweden. The love in her voice is beautiful as she recalls what Jens said to her when they said their goodbyes: “You’re the one.” And she says she felt the same way. They didn’t hesitate, and made sure they were reunited within a few months.
“When you know, you know!”
They’ve been together for a year and a half now, and have lived together for almost a year. Fenella and Jens are so in love; she says, “It’s been just like Christmas every day.”
With all the expenses of having a partner who lives out of the country, it quickly became apparent to Fenella that she needed to take a look at her finances. While in her producing role on The Today Show, she decided to approach Chris Browne, who she’d built up a relationship with during his appearances on the show. He invited her to meet with the team at Rising Tide Financial Services, which Fenella says was “The best decision I have ever made!”
“They helped us work out what are our expenses, and how much money can we save a month, and it’s crazy to think how much you can be saving a month!”
Fenella has gone from living paycheque to paycheque and being stressed about money, to having her finances all planned out and being able to pay for things she never thought she could afford. Like the brand-new BMW X1 that she and Jens bought a couple of months ago! They discussed what their dream car was, and were able to get it without stress.
She loves how easy life is now, and her ability to say yes to things that she couldn’t before. They even have a trip planned in a month to visit Jens’ family in Sweden, and didn’t have to worry about how they were going to pay for it. She loves how everything is all planned out, so there’s no confusion or stress when pay day hits. Everything is automatically set up to transfer to the correct accounts and it’s made it so much simpler for her to save.
“It’s just so much easier, and once you’ve worked out ‘how much are all my bills?’ and how the other things add up- what’s my direct-debits – once you know all of that, it’s literally just like future savings, albeit the expenses from day to day, our direct bills account, and our tax savings stuff; it’s just so easy.”
Fenella and Jens are now planning to save for a property, and get into the stock market. Jens works at Bendigo Bank, so he also has an interest in finance, and is ready to get into investing. They’ll also eventually be looking at getting married in Sweden, which is sure to be beautiful! Hope we all get an invite!