I’ve been thinking about money again this week. Part of it is because of the shattering of the worldwide economy, which has made it harder for this freelancer to raise rates. Part of it is because I haven’t been able to make any dent in my debt in the last two months. And part of it is because quite frankly, I am not good with money and I want to be.

I signed up for the Mint.com financial reports, so that I’d be able to track what’s going where. I still have a bank account and a credit card from India, so it’s not a perfect system, but it’s a start.

The fact that I’m not good with money distresses me, because my parents were practically geniuses at handling theirs. When they got married, neither had a penny to their names, and yet here they are, my father retired, my mother retiring, and as the world collapses around them, they’ve just bought their dream home. It wasn’t luck. There were a lot of sacrifices involved. Even when they could afford to, my parents limited going out, traveling, and buying stuff, so that they could put my brother and me through school, send him to college in London, and help me get set up even when they were struggling with a financial crisis.

Then again, those were different times. You actually believed that your retirement savings would come to you, you had job security, and you didn’t have to spend thousands of dollars on computers, printers, cameras and other assorted gadgets that have become necessities in today’s world.

I, like many others in my generation, don’t even know where to start. The state of the economy has been a rude awakening. It’s been a glimpse into what life could become if I don’t make changes in the way I handle money.

It’s also finally time to pick a country after May and make it my home for the next two or three years.

I’m hardly unique in this, but I, like many of you reading this, have a tendency to downplay my accomplishments.

Remember how excited I was when I was first published in Time? That lasted all of ten minutes. So many people wrote in to congratulate me and so many people went out to buy a copy of that issue that I felt completely and utterly like a fraud. After all, I had only written a small travel piece. It wasn’t as if I’d broken news or done an investigative report. All I’d done was interview three people about how they’d spend a night out and somehow had that published in Time.

What should have been a time to pat myself on the back for breaking into one of the toughest markets in the world, was somehow one of the times I was the hardest on myself.

I wrote to my friend Jon soon after, and this is what I said:

“I wonder, is it ever enough? I thought getting published in Time would make me… I dunno… happier? More secure? Richer? None of the three has happened. My work changes me for sure, sometimes in ways I never imagined and I love doing it. The publication, not so much. You know how there are some people who feel like hotshots even when they’re working with the lowest pubs at $10 per piece? And then, there are those like me. I thought I’d get some confidence boost from it, but I still feel like that kid who started five years ago. I’m not ungrateful– far from it– and I’m not egotistic (thank God!), but it’s not life-changing, ya know? It’s as if you build up to this, you think, once this certain something happens, I’ll have ‘arrived’ or something. But while I’m really happy, it hasn’t changed a thing. Which is great, because I don’t want to think I’m a hotshot. But that buildup and that anxiety was such a wasted effort.”

I didn’t pitch Time again for a long time. Every time I thought of doing so, a voice inside me felt the need to chastise me for doing non-serious, fluffy journalism for such a well-respected international magazine. But lately, another voice started speaking up. How many people do you know who’ve written anything for Time, it said. The answer, before I came to Berkeley, was zero.

If nothing else, that’s something to be proud of.

Jon (and you’ll see why I love him), responded to my e-mail. He said,

“If it matters, I’m constantly impressed by you. Internationally published. Internationally traveled. Incredibly independent and confident. My instinctive way of saying it is that you’re incredibly independent and confident for a petite young Indian woman, but ridiculously understated. You are incredibly independent and confident for any person of any gender from anywhere. So… I think you ‘arrived’ a long time ago.”

I wrote to my editor at Time last week and offered up an idea similar to the one I’d been previously assigned.

I have my second assignment from Time, and this time, I’m damn proud.

… that I’m loved, cherished, and adored.

… that what the world thinks of me doesn’t matter half as much as what I think of me.

… that people who make mistakes don’t always learn their lessons.

… that my mistakes and my successes don’t define me. How I deal with them defines me.

… that there’s a reason people from my past didn’t make it to my future.

… that as small as I may be, I have the power to make a big difference.

… that I have failed several times and still come out a winner.

… that my dreams are only as big or small as I make them.

… that every time I have asked, the Universe has delivered.

I’ve ventured into the European marketplace this year, completely by accident. I came across a magazine for Asian women in England around February, sent the editor an LOI, and received an assignment pretty quickly.

A few months later, my editor at Elle India let me know that one of their European editions wanted to reprint one of my pieces. Easy enough.

Several weeks ago, an editor of a magazine in France found my website and have me a ready-made assignment. He was fabulous to work with, the pay was good, and I enjoyed the whole experience.

Then, about a week ago, I received note that Glamour had optioned one of my pieces (meaning they wanted to reprint it). The check is already on its way.

I’ve worked with European publications before, but this year is the first time when I’ve looked at them as a viable market. I know several people who work with the European media, and adding up their experiences and my own, I’ve found the following major differences between American and European publications.

1. European publications, typically, will not send you five-page contracts asking for all rights (in every media that exists today and that may be discovered in future), expect you to sign a contract saying that you’ll pay your own legal fees should some psycho choose to file a lawsuit, and come to think of it, pay theirs as well, and if they’ve forgotten to get a signed contract, send you an all-rights contract after it’s been published or hold your money hostage. In fact, in many parts of Europe, like in many parts of Asia, work is often done without a contract. E-mail is typically proof enough of the terms agreed upon.

2. As is common with publishers though, publications in Europe (and Asia and Africa) too will stall on payment. Without a contract, you might feel a little nervous about missing payments. I’ve never had an invoice go unpaid, but you’ll have to see if that’s something you can work with. Or you can send the editor an informal contract of your own laying out the terms of the deal. Payment on publication is common, and is usually non-negotiable.

3. The good news, however, is that a lot of European magazines do not have huge six-month lead times that most American publications do. Editors typically work only one month in advance.

4. The money? It can be very good. While popular publications can and do get away with paying pittance, mid-size newspapers and magazines pay much better than their American counterparts.

5. There are, of course, differences in the way things are done from country to country (and publication to publication), but if you’re going to break into this market, you need to know that things work very differently from the way they do in American publications.

So I’ve made fun of the Indians. I’ve made fun of the Ghanaians. It’s only fair that I get to make fun of the Americans. Maybe I just attract this kind of intelligence.

Me: “People can be required to pay a lot of bribes at the airports in Ghana.”
Him: “Yeah, South America is like that.”

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“So is India cleaner than America?”

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I should start making a list. I’ll probably have enough material for a book one day.