Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Amanda Thompson on getting financially fit

Starting point is 00:00:00 So financial fitness is a journey. So again, we get stuck as soon as we say finance, it's money, dollars, cents, numbers, spreadsheets. It's more than that. Wealth encapsulates everything. I believe that just like you said, the financial part of the journey is self-development, is personal development, and it's an act of self-love. Welcome to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, the leading weekly show to help you unlock your full self-health and wealth potential. I'm your host, Bushy Martin, and each week I go deep with the best investors, experts, leaders, and founders to find out what it takes to break free from the grind, discover freedom, and live by design. Subscribe now and join me and get invested

Starting point is 00:00:49 in the life you really want. Let's get started. Hi, Freedom Fighters. Do you want to be financially free? And do you want to get fit and stay fit? And what if achieving financial freedom and fitness are actually integrated related? Now, I've probably got you scratching your head thinking, what the hell do I mean by this? Surely financial freedom and fitness have nothing to do with each other, but I beg to differ. If you've been listening to me for a while, you'll know that I'm a big believer that sustainable success lies at the intersection of what I call the three elves, self, health and wealth, where self revolves around what's between your ears, what you believe, what you think, expect, your vision, your values, your outlook and your attitudes. Health is about

Starting point is 00:01:37 the happy habits, the daily disciplines and the rewarding rituals that you develop and do consistently and persistently in all aspects of your life. And your self and health then combine to create the power of exponential growth that leads to your wealth in however you decide to define it. And sustainable success is a bit like a three-legged stool. You must develop all three equally to remain stable, because if you ignore any of them, eventually it's all going to come crashing down. Now, in the health sphere of this success triangle, you've probably all heard about the concept of preventative health when it comes to achieving fitness. And this is about developing healthy habits and regular routines in relation to exercise, diet, sleep, and breathing,

Starting point is 00:02:22 et cetera, that combine over the long term to produce sustainable results. If you want to run a marathon, you don't just read a book or watch a YouTube video and then throw on your runners and jog continuously for 42Ks. You're just not likely to last the distance, and in fact, you'll probably end up in hospital trying to do it. You need to develop a regular training regime and gradually build up and stretch your endurance and fitness over time. Initially, and for quite some time, you won't see any obvious difference in your fitness or performance, but just like the exponential growth curve of compounding returns, eventually you'll be able to run the marathon comfortably. And this same consistent, persistent, patient approach via regular routines to achieve

Starting point is 00:03:05 fitness is exactly what you need to adopt with your money habits in order to achieve your version of financial freedom. It's what I like to call preventative wealth that mirrors the approach to preventative health where your daily discipline of taking regular financial supplements over the long term keeps you financially fit so that you can last the distance and live comfortably on your long-term money marathon. You see, I strongly believe that what stands between us and even our most ambitious dreams has far less to do with possessing some natural talent, magical skill or luck and far more to do with how we see the future and how we break big dreams and challenges down into small actionable steps. It's not quick but just making those continuous small

Starting point is 00:03:49 steps and the compounding nature of all of those millions of decisions that we take on a regular basis means that even a marginal improvement in our approach can have a huge impact on our end results. Just a 1% improvement in doing it every day means we're 365% better at the end of the year. We just need to start with the end in mind and then just focus on the next step ahead with the belief that if we just keep doing it, we're going to make it. And continuously doing and improving our self, health and wealth means we become the person we need to become on the journey to be able to sustain our dream lifestyle long term. So financial freedom and independence is integrally related to our fitness it requires the same end goal vision and long-term approach

Starting point is 00:04:34 to just continuously doing the do day in day out come rain hail or snow and then believing in yourself and the process this is the essence of creating wealth by stealth and living by design not by default but what does financial freedom really mean to you has it all become a bit of an an unachievable pie tree that you've almost but given up on? And imagine what it would be like if you're determined to achieve your version of financial freedom, but the debt is stacked against you due to invisible inbuilt systemic biases and barriers. A situation where your earnings were on average 23% lower than others. A situation where you had less opportunity to borrow. A situation where your super balance of retirement is on average 28% less than others.

Starting point is 00:05:24 A situation where 33% of your group stop work with no retirement savings at all. And a situation where you were forced to take years of unpaid leave out of the workforce to care for your family. A situation where not that many years ago, you weren't even able to go on the title of a property and you weren't even allowed to borrow and all of this just because of your gender. I'm sure that you'd feel that all of this was actually totally unfair yet this is exactly the situation faced by women in Australia. So what can hard-working Aussie women and those who care about them do about it? Well this is exactly what our special guest Amanda Thompson is determined to change and what she's going to talk about today with the release of her great

Starting point is 00:06:11 new book, Financially Fit Women, how to become your own CFO, confident, focused, and on top of your money. And if you're a meal mile, listen to this like myself, don't think that what we're going to talk about today isn't equally applicable to you, because the fundamentals of financial fitness apply to everyone, regardless of race, religion, color, creed, or circumstance. So listen up, because you're about to enjoy some pearls of wealth building wisdom from Amanda, who's an award-winning financial planner and author, a three times world championship qualifying iron woman, and the founder and director of Endurance Financial. Amanda is living proof of the benefits of developing financial fitness after overcoming a series of serious life challenges, which I'm

Starting point is 00:06:55 sure she's going to share with us today. So if you're serious about taking control of your finances and gaining confidence in managing your money on your road to the financial freedom that you deserve. You're going to love this deep type conversation on financial fitness with Amanda Thompson. So welcome. Let's get invested, Amanda. Hello, Bushy. How are you? Awesome. Look, I have been looking forward to catching up with you for a while. I really did enjoy your book. I think it's got some fundamentals there. And I love the analogy of the financial fitness because as I've sort of, I guess, expanded on in the introduction, there are a lot of parallels with that to achieving anything in life. But Amanda, before we sort of get into the nitty

Starting point is 00:07:39 gritties, I'd love for you to sort of talk to us a bit about what do you do differently? And most importantly, why do you do what you do? I think the fact that I'm the gender that you described so well and tick so many boxes in that statistics that you gave. And I also add to the fact that I'm divorced and a single mum of two kids. So, you know, the ticks keep going for me in my lived experiences and I think with that Bushy I've been a financial planner for over 20 years now and as life's evolved for me you tend to attract like people so when I started my own business it was open for all and it still is open for all there is no discrimination at all at Endurance Financial but what I saw was women in similar situations to me seeking me out for help

Starting point is 00:08:29 and then I started to realize that there were so many similarities male female other when it came to financial advice that what had been bubbling away in me through all my corporate years was still there and what I realized was that financial advice so many people believe it was only for the wealthy and that's not the case and it's something that i i need to address and i wanted to address and hence the offerings and the way i do financial advice now has has changed to include or make financial advice both affordable and accessible for anyone regardless of what their assets are like or their pay packet is very good point well it's a it's a great segue into uh my next question and that is, you know, can you sort of expand on what's your mission and purpose and what are your

Starting point is 00:09:25 values that support and drive those? So probably my mission is that I've just spoken about the misconception that financial advice is specifically for the wealthy. But if we flip that, we are all driven by the same motivations. And when it comes to money, the main motivator is fear. So the decisions we make around money are usually based on fear and in my industry it's one of the most potent forces that makes us decide what we're going to do and there's really two main fears one that we're not going to be able to provide sufficiently for our families so there's a fear of you know which is every everyone's they want to look after their loved ones and the second one is that fear that we aren't going to have enough in retirement to actually enjoy all the hard work

Starting point is 00:10:14 that we're doing right now but the really key message there bushy is that in that those two common drivers there is nothing that says that there has to be a specific asset base or salary attached to it everyone is the same and so that is my mission is to be able to provide the stepping stones for want of a better word or you know the um the build up to the marathon on and for people to start auditing their own their own finances but more than just numbers and spreadsheets going all the way back to making sure that your goals are aligned to who you are so that you're going to have more financial success in the long run love it well we're going to deep dive into the financial fitness piece shortly but before we do that i'd i'd love

Starting point is 00:11:04 for you to give it give us a bit of a reader's digest of your own journey in terms of what you've invested your time, energy and money in over the years and why and how has this actually led you to where you are and what you're doing today? So I started my career at two of the major banks and quite quickly realised that I had this love of business and so pushed and worked my way to become a business financial planner at two of the corporates. The problem that I faced or the first problem i faced that i was a very young girl in an old man's world um you know i i had stints where i was the only female in a national team of 26 and i was 10 years younger than the next person so even that was a struggle because i either had to choose to try and be someone i

Starting point is 00:11:53 wasn't to fit in or i had to rebel against the system and then feel quite lonely and i did this for quite some time and I am blessed in that this experience made me realize I love my job I do not wake up not wanting to go to my job so you know the old saying if you love your job you'll never work a day in your life yeah and that's me I do feel that but when I became a single mum all of a sudden I was working full-time and trying to look after two kids at home and I'm having a giggle because I'm going to judge this reader's digest is going this I'm the person that's going to the end of this story right now um I found myself I landed I landed in hospital at age 34 in intensive care with what can only be described as the optimal of burnout and stress

Starting point is 00:12:47 in that I'd had a heart attack at the age of 34 and so um you know I'm this person challenges faces all so it took me a while I didn't do it instantaneously but I went this is telling me something the world's telling me that I've I'm not happy where I am not what I'm doing but where I am my values weren't aligned and so eventually endurance financial was born from the fact that I did not want to be subjected to an organization that wasn't led by my same values and also that had landed me in hospital so severely ill and then and then the slow creep out of that the slow creep out of even the discrimination of having being sick and you know I don't talk about it often but when you talk about the big conglomerates that are only interested in making money for their

Starting point is 00:13:40 shareholders they forget about the people that work for them I was seen as the liability for quite some time and it really I felt that I felt that a lot because I've given so much in in essence they'd been a part of my marriage that I'd given to that to that organization and you know the mum guilt's real the time that I'd given to my kids um for that organization and um so so yes I started endurance financial with a very very clear goal and of of money so I have invested my money in endurance financial but wisely and that if I took a leap into my own business I had to be able to put food on the table and support the roof over the head of my girls and I and so I gave myself a very stringent business plan and said to myself six months I'll give myself six months

Starting point is 00:14:30 because that's the only capital backing I've got other and otherwise I'm going to go and have to knock on someone's door and get a job again and you know I thrived so I didn't even spend a cent of the money that I'd put put away yeah so um and then you know just living life as a woman I'm 47 I have to count that so I've got less than 40 years left if you go by a life expectancy and just to add a couple more stats to your start of this podcast I'm going to live six years longer than the same male counterpart which means that my retirement savings need to last longer than that of a male yeah and then the other one is in less than 10 years I hit the really alarming statistic of being the highest demographic of homelessness in Australia which is women over

Starting point is 00:15:20 the age of 55 so you can see as I get older my motivations don't change it's kind of like the life that I'm I'm living and I understand I want to make sure I protect the generations that come after us from having that same issue yeah and I love that and in great motivators in that context I want to circle back a bit for a second if I can, Amanda, because, you know, those really challenging events of obviously losing your marriage and becoming a single parent and a heart attack at 34, they're pretty big flashing red lights in terms of some discomfort in life generally. Can you take us back to those times and talk us through how you felt in the lead up to it? What do you think triggered those issues and, more importantly, what did you learn from them that has then inspired you to go on and do what you're doing now?

Starting point is 00:16:15 Some people will tell you I haven't learned a thing, Bushy, because I do Ironman triathlons and it's not really taking a step back, is it? But we won't go down that path. What I learned was, and I do say this in my book, I do give little tidbits of my life in the book, and one of those is when I actually thought there was a potential of that I wouldn't wake up the next day, there was an air of calm over me. And I know that sounds

Starting point is 00:16:40 really weird, but I practice what I preach and I had financially secured my children's future by way of insurances. So I knew that I did not have to worry about money for them or money for myself should this be a long, long-term factor. And so that for me, I know as scary as it is, if I was going to leave this earth on that day, my kids were going to be okay financially. And so that's one of the biggest things I learned. And when you speak, you know, and the funny thing about being a financial advisor, when you go and do choice surveys and things like that, we're seen as insurance salesmen, which I am not, but I am so glad I had it. And I still have that conversation about our incomes are actually our number one asset

Starting point is 00:17:31 that we have our ability to earn money for our family is an asset that people do not think about um and then the other thing I realized was I just needed to do things on my own terms and it's funny I I do lead with the heart so it is a pun on a heart attack and a heart I've always been someone that feels and so for me I now follow my my heart I follow if something doesn't feel right my heart obviously was telling me I wasn't in the right spot and I know it sounds a bit woo but but it's how it worked out for me um and I rebuilt so I was coming I was coming from a marriage where I separated you know it's a do as I say not as I do approach because I just wanted to be really I wanted to be easy and not hassle free or hassle free no conflict so I left my

Starting point is 00:18:22 married with a very insufficient deal in terms of financial payments and I don't regret it now I probably would have done it differently if you'd have faced with it now but I'm very lucky that my girl's father and I get along really well in terms of we have the number one motivation which is our children now I will argue that if money had have been too involved maybe that wouldn't have happened for me but I always tell my clients to push it push it and make sure that you get what you you need so that's one of the other things that I've learned the hard way and if you want a little giggle I've learned that there is another acronym to the word STD and that would be yes I like that one I've used it a few times myself in the past because it's absolutely

Starting point is 00:19:15 spot on but amanda i'd love to uh i mean how do you go from a heart attack at 34 to uh you know qualifying three times in the world championships as an iron woman i mean that that's a massive leap to talk talk us through that you did ask me if i was going to be transparent with you so um not long after that so we were at age 34 at age 36 um the next blow to my life came along when i was diagnosed with melanoma i laugh now because it's just such an amanda thing we we do joke in my house there are manderisms you know there are some amanda isms and i i was feeling quite sorry for myself and that how many times is this brick wall going to present itself right in front of my nose and um a bit of a control freak if i must be honest and how do you control cancer

Starting point is 00:20:06 like seriously um this is what was going through my head so instead of dealing with that i chose something that i could control which was training for an iron man so before i'd even had the operation for the melanoma that was in in my leg by the way so training training or running was off the cards for such a long time i'd signed up for my first iron man and the lessons that i learned both physically and emotionally about myself in that period is why I continued doing it but also it's allowed me to use all the spin-on words my business is called Endurance Financial my book is called Financially Fit Women and just like you said at the start of this podcast I am the true definition of aligning fitness and financially fit financial fitness together

Starting point is 00:20:59 because it's the same habit-forming responses that you need to get either of them. And so triathlon reminds me every day and my commitment triathlon to triathlon reminds me every day of what I need to be doing for both myself and my clients. Yeah, I love that. What are the essential qualities that you've distilled from that experience that has not only been useful to you

Starting point is 00:21:24 as a triathlete in the Ironwoman exercise but also developed your role as a financial planner so you've got to have a plan don't you like i can't just go and say i'm going to train haphazardly to do a half iron man or a full iron man for that matter so i've got to have a plan so it's a plan to put time aside to do something and you have to form healthy habits and the only way to do that is to take small steps and again um we are very aligned and this is the first time we've met bushy and you use my marathon analogy so i can't even use that you You can't pick up a book and run a marathon the next day. But you've got to trial and error as well.

Starting point is 00:22:03 So, for example, you may find that a certain, you know, doing sprints works for you or training three days a week and having two rest days works for you. It's the same with anything finance. You know, I use investments as an example. You may think you want to do shares, property, property trusts. you might just want to put your money in a bank account but you've got to start somewhere start small and figure out what sits right for you and the other thing that i learned is you've got to

Starting point is 00:22:36 come back to self in whatever you do and again you've mentioned this and i i'm already loving this podcast because you had me i just wanted to be listening to every special guest was at the start of this podcast because i was like this man's great i can't wait to hear this guest um it is that you've got to come back to self and you've got to be aligning your financial goals with who you are what you truly want for your personal wealth and and what sits with your values and i do that in triathlon training every day it's where i i'm still single mum so it's my alone time that frees my mind up so i'm not coming home grumping at my children all the time yeah i love that well translating that then how does your brand of financial planning differ from

Starting point is 00:23:29 the mainstream perceptions of financial planning which in many cases unfortunately aren't that good i think they're getting better and i was having this conversation only yesterday and and it's not discrimination because i could have easily been this person and they were telling me that their financial planner that they use was very dry and kind of felt like he was reading from a textbook yeah and I was actually sticking up for someone because I believe in habits Bushy and as I said to you I kind of rebelled from what I was taught early on whereas this particular person may not have and this is the habit that he's been forming for however many years he's been in this particular industry and so for me I'm personable or I try to be personable I try to be

Starting point is 00:24:16 transparent and transparent, not just in my own life, but every single client I meet teaches me something, which then I can pass on to someone else. So when you meet with me, you'll get me just chatting away and telling you the first thing I'll tell most people is there's not much I haven't heard in 20 years and you're not alone. So, you know, we can bring it back to those fear parameters and so I take my clients on a journey as opposed to putting band-aids or telling them that they have to do something so I take them on a journey of self-discovery really so that they can be aligned to the plans that we will eventually put in place. I love that I love that well I want to sort of circle back now and get you to talk us through your own personal money story in terms of

Starting point is 00:25:08 where your own money beliefs came from? What money fears did you grow up with? Because we've talked about fears a couple of times already. Have they changed? If so, and how? And as important, I'd love your thoughts on how you manage your emotions when it comes to money. We spoke in the green room before this about rational intellectual thinking versus emotions. And I think we're both on the same page in that I think regardless of what we like to say, a lot of our decision making around money is still emotionally driven it should be and it has to be so can you sort of walk us through you know your money beliefs fears and the emotional part of your own journey it is and I learned I learned a fair bit quite early on in life I grew up quite quickly in my

Starting point is 00:25:53 teens for a whole host of other reasons and a part of that was an understanding of probably the financial life in my family so my mum became a single mum herself when I was a teenager and so through her lens I saw how tough women of that particular age bracket did it and one of the stories I'll often say is I remember this particular day sorry bushy this is also how I financial plan I just tell I tell stories all the time I love stories I remember this one particular day and mum was I remember saying to her mum why don't you just do something for yourself or go out and you know she said because I'm working really hard to pay the home loan you know and it wasn't back in that day she was you know there's less than you know compared to today

Starting point is 00:26:44 it wasn't a lot yet but it's still a part-time single woman wage and she said but her words that still stick like glue to me today is I don't have much in super I won't have much to leave you and your brother so I want to pay this home loan off and instantly at that age I said to her mum we don't want anything if and when you go I would rather see you live life but what I realized quite early on was this fear concept that my mum had is she wanted to be able to provide for her family whether it was in life or death and that your own home is not an asset and it's not an income producing asset and I learned that very very quickly as my mum was paying off this loan that wasn't going to make anyone any money unless she carved it and so that's probably the start of my

Starting point is 00:27:37 my money journey but also my fierce independence when I was child was that I worked I worked from the moment I was allowed to and I worked hard and so for me I supported myself pretty much financially from my teens and and I liked that feeling I liked not having to rely on anyone for money I remember when again there's stories that I remember when I had my first child and I was taking her to the local shopping center and it was back in the days there was no paid maternity leave for me and I remember seeing a shirt that I liked and I rang my husband and said would I be able to buy this shirt and then he said of course his response was of course it's our money and I hung up the phone and said, I am never going to feel like that ever again. And that was my, so

Starting point is 00:28:26 what I'm trying to say to you is I learned my own personal stories from my own, like, and I took them with me and I take them with me today, those feelings that I like or not like. And then I've built up, you know, I've paid myself a salary from my business, which so many people do not do right from the word go, which means that I'm slowly rebuilding my superannuation from the time that I've had out of the workforce I've still got my insurances I have an investment property that I worked so hard to to get and I've chosen that in an area not that I would live but more so where I believe growth is because I will flip that property or it will be my passive income later on however it's a property that I know that I have if I have to go if I'm destitute

Starting point is 00:29:13 and I have to go and live I will still go and go and live in it so I thought um very um clearly about what I wanted my money to do for me um but my first and here's another story for you so my first um when I first started working I worked for Colonial First State as a personal assistant right it was just that day job while I was figuring out what I wanted to do and I was lucky because I got that insight and started doing just um regular regular deposits into regular investments and then unfortunately my husband's father passed away and no one had any money except me and I sold my shares to pay for the funeral but I had them there I had them there I'd invested them wisely I didn't make a loss so even before I

Starting point is 00:30:02 really jumped into financial planning I'd somehow gained this insight just by listening to the people that i was working for um and you know here we are today still still doing what i want to do i'm you know contemplating what next for me it will not be crypto i can tell you that for me again it's not what i want but the biggest thing that i know about myself because you know and i'm banging on about it a bit lately is really understanding what retirement looks like for myself and and defining that word because you know i'm not sure when this will go to air or anything like that but we've seen a lot in the press lately the hoo-ha of the pension age has gone up to 67 and it's causing this whole ruckus and to me it's like really there's not many of us

Starting point is 00:30:49 by the time we get there that will be eligible for the pension and so i've defined right now what's important to me and retirement what i want it to look like well let's go let's go straight there because I you know I talk about living by design and and so I'd love for you to paint a really vivid picture and word story around you know what does your uh lifestyle look like at that stage and so paint that out for us and then then supporting that talk talk to us about uh the investment strategy that you're adopting and and what it is now and how it's changed and will continue to change over time to to make that happen yeah and I think the first thing I want to say that I've spent a lot of time working on the me on me and what I want so what I tell anyone

Starting point is 00:31:34 here is my story and what works for me and so the only thing I want people to do is if you get these light bulbs well that could be me then go and visit it but don't think this is exactly what everyone should need to do you know one of the biggest things I spend money on is bikes and travel at the moment yeah and you can you can see into my money mindset and my history when I tell you that my only real financial goal at this point in time is to take my children overseas for a triathlon every year now the money mindset part of that comes into who in their right mind thinks traveling overseas has to be attached to a race that you have to pay with but you can tell that I've come from scarcity I need a reason to go overseas I want my girls to think that there's

Starting point is 00:32:19 a reason to go overseas that we are not made of money to go on an overseas holiday every day so So what's really key for me is I know that is my goal right now. So I want to tick that off. And then I put a monetary value to it. So I do not go, I need $10,000 a year to travel every year. I figure out what exactly I want to do and then I put the money value to it. I think that's really, really important for anyone. The second thing I do is I realise that what am I willing to give up now

Starting point is 00:32:49 to get that goal? Okay, because I also have a retirement. so I call it sacrificial spending or intentional spending whichever way you want to flip it I do not use the word budget anywhere as you've realized in my book I don't like it because it's a negative word um and so therefore then what I do is saying what am I spending on now that is sacrificing my future and so those two things go through my head now I can't envisage ever retiring in the sense of I'm going to do nothing and sit on my hands and and watch the wall for me I have this passion to want to do pro bono work for domestic violence or empowering

Starting point is 00:33:32 women so for me I'll do a retirement where I may be fully retired but I still want to be giving two days a week somewhere else which means that I'm either going to keep working for those other three days and get some money, but I'll still need to fund it. Or, you know, I'm not working and I'm taking a passive income from my investment property. I don't want to sell my investment property. So I'm factoring that in as a passive investment. For me, retirement, as I get older, if you asked me three years ago, I would have said, I'll go on holidays and I'll probably move to the country because I'm just sick of the amount of cars on the road in Melbourne. And now I'm thinking not that I want it in a hurry because my eldest is nearly 21 but I think I'm going to be

Starting point is 00:34:18 one of those grandparents that want to give lots to my grandkids and continue to give to my family so I've even thought about the fact that kids aren't going to stop costing me it's just going to be grandkids not kids and so my retirement is really mapped out in terms of in today's dollars what I what I want and what I'm going to do and I can't see my personal retirement costing me much less than what I'm on now because I'm already filling in all those gaps of time that I'm going to have as opposed to money. I love that and what I also love about what you've just shared Amanda is that our lifestyle goals do change and evolve so as long as we've got a GPS I like to refer to it as a GPS rather than a roadmap because we've at least got a picture of how we want to

Starting point is 00:35:02 live how much that lifestyle costs and then we can determine what sort of income producing nest egg that we need to create that's going to fund that, then within that and between now and then, if our goals change, at least we've got a GPS that we can revisit on a regular basis and say, well, this has changed, we need to slightly alter that, but at least we've got a directional device that's focusing us on the end game

Starting point is 00:35:25 and we are investing in a way that's going to help us achieve that. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about your own investment strategy in terms of what was it when you started, how has it evolved over time and where's it heading? You talked a bit about shares and you talked a bit about property

Starting point is 00:35:41 and you're excluding crypto from the equation, but can you talk to us today about that? When we know which one's going to rule the world, maybe. Yeah, no, I love it. Can you talk about that for us, your investment strategy and how it's evolved over time? So obviously when I worked at Colonial First State, you invest in what you knew when it was all Colonial First State.

Starting point is 00:36:00 And I remember the very first risk I took was in the Colonial First State geared fund. sounds like a you know um sounds like a bike yeah yeah i know right um and i don't my bikes are not an investment because they depreciate so let's get that straight i do you know i understand the difference between appreciation and depreciation um my investment strategy at the moment um we talked you talked about time as well at the start i don't have a lot of time um at the moment so my investment strategy is such that my investment property, I pay principal and interest on it because I want to own that property. My long-term goal is passive income from that property.

Starting point is 00:36:45 I don't want to have to take a lump sum from my superannuation to pay for it. So it's going to be paid off sooner rather than later. Again, I work for myself so I can control the income I get and don't need the tax deductions and all of those things. But from a personal perspective, you'll see me i do two things bushy because i like to dabble i do like to take risks every so often but not extensive risks remember i still got two kids at home and that's it's important and i run my own business so there's a risk in that um so i invest in a lot of etfs and i do it regularly but i also will have a little bit of play money every so often to invest in stocks that i'm interested in but my investment strategy is very similar to when occasionally I go to the casino

Starting point is 00:37:30 and play roulette that I'll have a specific amount of money that I put on that roulette table I don't really but it sounds good every so often I do yeah I'm going back to my banking day see we're at the casino all the time no we weren't but I'll always take my wins yeah and I will not reinvest my wins so on that on that roulette table if the number six comes up which is my lucky number and I win, I take that win and it goes into my pocket and it does not go back down onto that table. It's very similar with shares for me. I don't get greedy. If I've made a decent gain, then I will sell those shares and I will then just pop it back into the bank and figure out what the next thing is. But normally for me, the win goes into one of the ETFs, just the steady

Starting point is 00:38:15 growing so it's a very conservative approach um but i'm also investing in my business um in that i will review my superannuation and all of those things from a financial perspective as well what suits me when it does um love it love it beautifully said so if we we look back on on your investment journey so far what's what's been both your best and your worst investment and what have you learned from each of those investing in men don't go there no i'm joking i'm not good at those choices stick to the shares amanda sorry um do you know what and i sound like such a financial advisor here but diversification and regular investment yeah you can never go wrong diversify and if you don't have time to

Starting point is 00:39:07 diversify just pick an etf that um diversifies and that's the best the best thing that came into my life was ETFs, honestly, because the pain of deciding what rebalancing, it just all happens for me. And they're passive, so they're cost friendly. And the worst bit of investment advice I had, let me think about it, because obviously, I give myself most of the advice. Do you know what the worst bit of investment advice I had, and I don't know whether you're a class as that but is sponsorship so my business sponsoring things and really not understanding the return on investment for me not you know I say that I do my due diligence but see my biggest issue is my inability to say no to people and so if someone says Amanda could you sponsor this you

Starting point is 00:39:57 can advertise you'll probably get business yeah yeah nah that's one of those yeah nah moments where I'm really focusing in on what my return on investment is when I put my business money towards something. It's probably where I've still got a lot of learning to do. Yeah, beautifully said. Look, I want to swing into the subject that's right at your heart and that is your great book, Financially Fit Women. But before we sort of circle into that,

Starting point is 00:40:26 can you sort of give us a little bit more colour around what are some of the other unique financial obstacles that women face over and above what we've spoken about so far? One of them is ourselves. We're our worst enemy, women. Yeah, you've heard of women's intuition. It exists. We just forget to bring it into ourselves.

Starting point is 00:40:47 And often we are so busy fighting the good fight of equality and trying to be perfect and awesome at everything that admitting that we're not so great at our finances is something we don't want to do because we feel one little chink in our armor means that we lose all the confidence in everything else so our self-confidence is our biggest issue and I say to anyone male or female if your intuition is telling you that something's wrong chances are it is or you just haven't had the education around it so go with your gut feeling if you think something's wrong then it probably is and you can't you know hide hide in the cupboard

Starting point is 00:41:35 all that time that's one of the unique challenges I've mentioned the other one superannuation it's a challenge again and we we say the books financially fit women but it's everyone yeah yeah especially the younger generation superannuation seems to be this concept that people don't care about but 11 percent of your wage is going into it now it is your money whether you like it or not so who are you not to take an interest in it and I question if you're that entitled so get on my high horse with it if you're that entitled that you're not interested in your superannuation then have a good look in the mirror because this is going to be what we rely on not the age pension your superannuation and we are very lucky in Australia I doubt that it's going

Starting point is 00:42:22 to be taxed for a very long time so it is going to be everyone's best friend once they retire Absolutely, totally agree. Are there any other big mistakes that we and women in particular are making around money then, Amanda? Look, I think insurance is another one. We don't value what we financially are to our families. And I talk about our incomes being one of our biggest assets and protecting it.

Starting point is 00:42:49 In today's society, Bushy, we know that the increased cost of living, there are more and more couples needing to work to pay their mortgages and things like that off. So, you know, we've gone to the days where mum stays at home permanently. More and more women choose to keep their career. And what we do know is every pay rise that male or female get, apparently it's absorbed in our cost of living. So apparently with every pay rise, the cost of living goes up as well. And so I don't think women in particular realise that their salary is just as important and if they lose that salary they're just as important or vice versa the cost to the family if the mum is a stay-at-home mum the cost to the family of running around kids

Starting point is 00:43:32 or having to decrease another wage so I think that one of the greatest mistakes we make is not being able to value ourselves from an insurance perspective as well yeah beautifully said well that's a great entree into your great book financially fit women can you start off by telling us why did you write it what are the key messages and uh who's best who's it best suited for other than women obviously yeah um so it was designed to be a catalyst for change as you can tell from my conversations and some of my bugbears in terms of the accessibility of financial guidance and also from a peace of mind perspective of being able to do it in the confines of your own home and not having to share too much it gives you that sense of empowerment to then take the

Starting point is 00:44:22 next steps so the idea of financially fit women was to provide guidance and tools to women not only women to anyone willing to read the pages and take the wisdom but it's practical there's practical strategies it and it it kind of takes you on a chronological journey of your life doesn't it it starts with money for today well it actually starts with your history your money history and figuring out who you are when it comes to money and it works through money for today works through money to tomorrow to even legacy to what you're going to leave for your family so it really is a roadmap to what you want for you to create what you want um and again it's only general because i'm not allowed to give personal advice but who could give personal advice in a book anyway because

Starting point is 00:45:07 i don't know every reader um so it really is that one-stop shop you know everyone i speak to has their highlighters it writes in the columns so you can take as much as you want from it or as little as you want but it's I don't think it's going to be a book that you um lend to a friend because otherwise all your handwriting in the columns are going to be there you want it sitting in your shelf so you can go back to it yeah it's a it's a really good workbook in in in that sense and I love that there's plenty of illustrations it's really easy to read I love the formatting of the book you've done it exceptionally well but tell me amanda in in your words what's the essence of financial fitness well so financial fitness is a journey so again i we get stuck as

Starting point is 00:45:56 soon as we say finance it's money dollars cents numbers spreadsheets it's more than that and you said at the start you probably can explain it better than i your definition of wealth yeah is not necessarily money-related. Wealth encapsulates everything. I believe that just like you said, the financial part of the journey is self-development, is personal development and it's an act of self-love. We see everyone go to the doctors and chiros and counsellors

Starting point is 00:46:26 and do yoga and meditation for all these other beings of ourselves, but who is really going out and seeking the guidance they need for money, which is that 49% of people link stress and anxiety to money. Spot on. Absolutely spot on. Yeah, 100%. And you make a really good point in the book when you say

Starting point is 00:46:47 that financial fitness starts in the mind. So how can we improve our money mindset, Amanda? So you've got to revisit. You know what? Unfortunately, sometimes, like most things that you've got to better, you've got to revisit your traumas too or figure out just why you are the way you are so you know I used the word sacrificial spending earlier maybe it's you need to figure out what triggers you to go and buy you know 10 pairs of shoes in one sitting or you know is it because you're celebrating

Starting point is 00:47:18 or is it because you're commiserating figure out who you are when it comes to money are you a spender or a saver when you want to celebrate you know these type of things because if you don't know the mechanics of your brain, you won't be able to use those mechanics to build your wealth later on. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's extremely well said. I want to sort of jump into the business side of the equation because you've got a great section in there around money

Starting point is 00:47:47 and business. And to kick that off, what mistakes are many of us making and how can we build the strong financial foundations for entrepreneurial success as you see it? I think COVID brought around a lot of this as well is that we've seen and we do talk, I mean, it is a book specifically, well, written with the women in mind. The majority of new businesses in COVID were women-led businesses,

Starting point is 00:48:13 home-based businesses, and the growing, both in men and women, the growing incidence of people wanting to start their own businesses to create that family lifestyle and to have time. So some of the biggest mistakes that I see are not planning. You know, that whole plan, you know, failing to plan is planning to fail. You know, the statistics around businesses are really quite scary as in, you know, 95% of businesses will fail because of cash flow. You know, that's huge.

Starting point is 00:48:46 So for me, from a business perspective, not valuing yourself and the time you put in. So if you're a service-based business in particular, you know, try and figure out what your true hourly rate is and what you're going to charge for those services from day dot because what I see consistently is it is so hard to increase your prices as you go along. So you're better off starting high because you'll struggle to increase them later. And I spend a lot of time with my business mentoring clients.

Starting point is 00:49:19 a lot of it is around their value proposition and the amount of money they charge or what their breakeven is so they don't understand cash flow because we talk about profit and loss and budget but what we really don't understand as business owners is the only important number is that there's money in the bank to pay wages and pay bills yeah very very good point i wanted to circle back to super now because we've spoken a bit about super already something i'd like you to expand on. Do you think that investing in super is actually going to be enough or do we need to invest beyond super? And if so, in what and how do you think? Oh, see, it depends what age, isn't it? Because I'll be the 11%. If you're young and you're taking 11%, if you're going to

Starting point is 00:50:05 have a nice superannuation balance. But for me, it all comes down to individuality. Again, there are so many free resources, and I mentioned some in the book, to go and do the calculations of how much super is enough for you or where your superannuation sits. Again, I'm quite conservative and we talk about access to super and things like that. If I'm advising someone, or let's say I'm advising myself, so I'll tell you what I do. I do not put all my money into superannuation. I'm 47 years old, so I can't touch it for another 13 years and then I have to retire to touch it. So we've got to remember that there's a couple of parameters to touch your superannuation.

Starting point is 00:50:47 And I don't have backup income. It is only me. So I want that peace of mind money pool outside of super. Should I want to semi-retire before the age of 60 or till I can touch it? So, again, I'm all for a little bit of fingers in every pie type of concept because it's what makes me feel comfortable. but I also think every single person should have an emergency fund and that amount of emergency fund will differ you know people will throw six months of salary do this do that I don't have a

Starting point is 00:51:24 set amount I can't tell you you might you might go through a thousand dollars a week so you who's who am I to tell you how much you need but it needs to be something that you understand what that's for and what it's covering. And I think even in retirement, Bushy, we still need an emergency fund as well. I think that's really important. So that's what I believe about super. I also think that a lot of people do not understand the tax ramifications, both pros and cons of putting money into super. So it's really important that when you work out your super contribution strategy you actually work out what's truly the most beneficial for you not just by what's going into super but what's tax not tax and if you can get offsets from the government

Starting point is 00:52:12 and all those type of things so I think it's an important path to go down it's not just go I'm going to salary sacrifice up to the maximum figure out if that actually is the best contribution strategy for you and and get the most you can out of it all yeah beautifully said now I uh coming back to the subject of the book financially fit uh you give uh five great financially fit tips can you start up can you just summarize what they are oh you're testing me now is one of them ask for help one of them will be asked for help the other one will be um family trusts i'm a big fan of family trusts and it's at the back of the book i'm going to open it now because i can't remember exactly what they were in what order you've really sorry to put you on the spot on this

Starting point is 00:53:01 you did ask for help i got right i got the first one right see ask for help our accountants versus financial advisors amanda what's the difference between an account and financial advisor um accountants are generally reactive and we're to we're at fault for that as humans we tend to give our accountants things after the fact now you know your tax returns due by October so if you're handing in October you're giving your account information that's retrospective and you've already lost three to four months of your following year and if you're a business you can nearly lose a year whereas financial planners generally should be proactive which means we're planning for the future and so there's no such thing as accountants versus financial planners

Starting point is 00:53:49 need both that yes and and legal advisors and you know the biggest way to decide who you need is if they're willing to work with each other because at the end of the day you are paying you are paying them for their services you are paying them for your services and um they should be taking that and doing whatever you need for them um i do remember my last one money talks some wealth whispers i love that expression don't don't go don't get poor trying to look rich they're all the whole and the other one i really like i'm pretty sure it's a warren buffett one is um you only see who's been swimming naked when the tide goes out i like that one and it comes down to sacrificial spending doesn't it um

Starting point is 00:54:38 i'm a big i have plenty of experience to tell you that what we deem wealthy people do not necessarily have a very good cash flow so some people will have the fancy cars and the fancy houses and they're in debt to their eyeballs and all of their surplus cash is just going to servicing a debt that's not necessarily and we talked about that appreciating assets you know the six cards are not going to make you money at the end of the day and so be really mindful of keeping up with the joneses and live within your means and stick to who you are um that's a really really big one for me um build your own wealth the way you want for what you want yeah yeah that's a such a good tip uh the you know it's not what you earn it's what you save uh that starts the

Starting point is 00:55:29 journey and if you get clear on how you want to live and and forget uh insta everything uh and the the superhero models that they try to paint on that exercise that have no relationship to reality uh and get in alignment with your vision for your life and your values for what's important to you that that's a a far bigger step but it comes back to what you said before the ability to say no and that that that gets up really hard for a lot of people so uh sort of bring this all ahead then Amanda where do we need to start in getting financially fit and what initial steps do we need to take oh you know it's a plan you need to plan you need to figure out what your plan is not create a plan but what is it that you want and you said it what is wealth to you

Starting point is 00:56:16 what is success to you not and then you put add the money to it later so you've got to figure out what do i want my life to look like you know um i think it's may west i think said that money's a sixth sense yeah yeah yeah you know you need it to make the other five work yes exactly right um so you know there's that concept there is money is is normally attached to any goal that we have but have the goal first then attach the money because if you just if you just strive for the money, you won't get a good plan in play because you just won't be motivated by the right things. I've often said that if you're really clear on how you want to live and you get excited about that, it's both a magnet and a compass because you'll ride over the inevitable speed

Starting point is 00:57:03 humps that are going to occur along the journey if it's vivid and attractive enough. But it also gives you a compass because every decision you're making day to day is based on, is it taking me closer to that or further away? So I can't agree with you more. Get really clear on the vision first and then work out the money side of it afterwards rather than chasing money for money's sake it comes to that money and emotions thing doesn't it if you're driven by a goal that's linked intrinsically to you you're driven by the emotion so your money decisions around that will be driven by your emotion to want to achieve something else um the other part of anything that you want to do you know we say you've got to start you've got to start and truly to start any

Starting point is 00:57:43 wealth building exercises you've got to understand what your spending is so that you can uncover your surplus so you've got money to start with and i think that it's something we don't like doing normally we don't like doing it because every tom dick and harry puts the word budget in front of it which just instantly gets you back up or you think someone's going to tell you to stop spending on something so i call it a spending plan you know let's uncover a surplus let's like get you know And it comes from that fitness concept, doesn't it? Positive endorphins encourage positive endorphins. So if we can find a surplus, we're more likely to want

Starting point is 00:58:18 to find another surplus and another one. So and I like to say that we try and create intentional spending. We know what we're spending on. And so if you truly want to start on your journey, you've got to figure out what life looks like for you now. Love it. Love it. Beautifully said.

Starting point is 00:58:37 I want to transition now into the ambush round, Amanda, which is where I give you a blindfold and cigarette and hit you with the questions that you get asked on every podcast. The first of those is what's your favourite quote and why? My favourite quote, which I think would be no surprise to anyone listening, is I've learned that making a living is not the same as making a life. And that's by the famous female poet, of course a female, Maya Angelou.

Starting point is 00:59:08 That's a great quote, actually. that's a really good quote. What about the literary field? Apart from your great book, what's the other top book that you'd recommend reading? I'm going really left field here because I don't read a lot. I really don't have time and I don't like that saying, so I'm going to rephrase it. I don't find it of great importance to give time to it. So it's not that I don't have time, I use my time in other ways. However, going completely opposite direction to a female poet, one of my favorite books that just intrigues me so much is David Goggins you can't hurt me you know the navy seal because I sit there thinking hmm well that's swearing it's not really a feminine

Starting point is 00:59:51 book and I wonder if you get feminine clients and I wonder how females react to this but then I really do take from his challenges so he he resonates with me so I know it's probably not a really common book but there it is no well he does he inspires a lot I've talked to a lot of people over the years who are very inspired by what he's done personally and what he challenges other people to do so it's still a good read um coming back to the old self-help wealth exercise what's a personal happy habit rewarding ritual or daily discipline that you employ regularly that's contributed most to your success today see if it has to be healthy ritual the wine drinking that I do to balance out my exercise doesn't count so um but I try and move every single day

Starting point is 01:00:39 and um that's one but the other one is really old school and it works my brain every single day is before I shut my computer or leave my desk every single day I write I hand write a to-do list for the next day so it's left my brain I get to my computer and I'm straight into work knowing exactly what I've got in the day and and I have done it for over 35 years I've made a list every single night for over 35 years even when I'm on holidays I do it. I love it I'm very much the same I was born and bred into the list writing exercise and there's something I've said this before but there's something tangible about about writing it freehand rather than typing it on a keyboard it just seems to imprint uh more indelibly on that subconscious studies there's studies to

Starting point is 01:01:30 say that writing will actually help with the memory there you go that makes but and it also means if you've written it down you can relax for the evening now it's all covered and you know what next the next day looks like so there's a whole bunch of benefits to that rather than staring at the ceiling worrying about what am i going to do and what's what's urgent what's important And yeah, great advice. Look, I really enjoyed the conversation, Amanda. If we just summarise what we've talked about today, what are your key takeaways and must-do actions

Starting point is 01:01:57 to get financially fit? Other than buy my book, Bushy. Start, please start. Please don't be scared anymore. That is my, you are not alone. Remember, you're not alone. And the only person that can change your life is the person looking back at you in the mirror.

Starting point is 01:02:16 so just start. I love it I've often said Amanda it's the start that stops most people actually yeah so I 100% agree it doesn't have to be perfect you just have to do something and then then you'll evolve as you go but get started because time is one of the key ingredients to your ultimate success so make sure it's working for you not against you in that regard. Awesome now for those that have really resonated with what you've shared with us today Amanda how can we find out more and get more involved with you? So my website is endurancefinancial.com.au. I'm a good old Insta girl, just because that's some of my demographics. So I'm at endurance financial. But you know, please reach out. It's Amanda at endurancefinancial.com.au.

Starting point is 01:03:00 If you've got a question, just just pose it to me. I'm pretty accessible. And I'd love I love speaking, as you can tell. So I'm happy to chat. I love it. You mentioned before we hit the record button, your course, do you want to sort of tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, so I've got a course that's a bit of an upstep from the book. So if you've read the book, and you want more help, but not sure whether you're ready for that one on one advice piece, or you're not a book reader like me, and you just want to get straight into the hole, I'm going to commit to this and get it done. I've got a course of the same name. So Financially Fit Women, it's called Financially Fit Bootcamp. And it really is just an extension

Starting point is 01:03:37 of the book. And it gets you doing the same activities and things like that. But it's a little bit more interactive than in the conference confines of paper well i've done and we'll make sure that we put the link for that in the show notes for all of those who are interested in taking the next step and i also i just want to mention that you've been very generous in giving away a free copy of your book financially fit women but as always i'm going to challenge everyone to take some action to earn the book so we'll decide on the best email if you send us to hello that's h-e-l-l-o at knowhowproperty.com.au and answer the question my best learning from amanda's discussion on becoming financially fit is and hit us up so we're so make sure we do that

Starting point is 01:04:23 let's do another one so like two books just because i'm having a giggle at myself today see who can um provide what they think was the best amandaism in the um in the in this podcast as well we'll give away two books and we'll see what what made people think that's an amandaism i love it all right that's a great one amanda thanks for jumping in on that and also i know you've also been very generous in providing freedom fighters with complimentary access to the download workbook that accompanies financially fit women i will provide a link to that in the show notes so that you've got something tangible that you can work alongside as you're working through the book so look uh been a great conversation amanda we've really enjoyed it

Starting point is 01:05:05 it's i feel like we could talk for hours but we're going to just scratch the surface so we'll we'll talk again in the future but i really want to thank you for your very generous time and let's make sure we keep the conversation going thank you thanks for tuning in to get invested on the property hub podcast channel your home for property investment insights and inspiration and don't leave yet until you've taken the next step towards living by design by getting my award-winning book, Get Invested, absolutely free when you sign up at knowhowproperty.com.au or bushymartin.com.au. And finally, make sure you subscribe to Property Hub

Starting point is 01:05:43 to get your weekly dose of Get Invested inspiration along with every episode of Realty Talk, Australia's leading property show for red-hot property investing news and insights direct from industry leaders and influencers. Remember to always get invested in your knowledge and I look forward to seeing you next time.

Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Amanda Thompson on getting financially fit

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