Get Invested: Are you financially fit or fragile? With Amanda Thompson
00:00 Hi, Friend Fighters. Let me ask you something. Do you want financial freedom or do you just like the sound of it? Do you say you want more choice, more peace of mind, more breathing room, but your daily money habits are still doing laps around the same old oval? Are you trying to build wealth without first building financial fitness? Because here's the rub. A lot of people want the body without the training. They want the result without the reps. They want the freedom without the discipline. And in life, property and money, that's a bit like expecting a six-pack from buying active wear. Now, if you've just joined us, welcome aboard here at Get Invested, because over the course
00:46 of this calendar year, we're going to be running through the step-by-step sequence that the 5% of successful investors use to achieve true financial freedom. And this is encapsulated in my property wealth clock that I break down in detail in my book, The Freedom Formula. So Get Invested isn't random episodes, not shiny object topping, but a progressive journey via a step-by-step upward spiral of growth where the word wealth breaks down into W for your why, E for your examination of your capacity, A for your approach and strategy, L for leverage of an expert team and your money, T for your treatment and selecting the right property, and H for your health check review before rinsing and repeating.
01:29 And today, we're in the midst of the E for examination of your capacity and capability phase, which is your current systems check. Where are you now? What are your habits doing? What's your behaviour costing you? What can you actually do? And what's your capacity? And whether the future you say you want actually matches the daily decisions that you're really making.
01:55 so if you've just joined us i suggest you jump back to get invested episode released on the 26th of december last year that's titled living by design part one reconnecting to your big why and then start listening from there so you can grasp and follow the entire end-to-end process over the course of the year to help you achieve your version of financial freedom and sustainable success now this progressive calendar year rollout of the property world process is designed to give you the shape of the journey but shape isn't the same as mastery so if as we're going through this you realize that you want to deep dive into the full end-to-end step-by-step framework the good news is we've already built it for you first in the freedom formula program then in the
02:41 deeper detailed step-by-step property wealth program so just click on the link on the show notes and if you want to know more because the first models are free so you can try before you buy. Now, in our last episode with Max Phelps, we looked at how you spend. And today, we go one layer deeper. We delve financially into how you train, how you think, how you behave, and how you build the money muscles that actually let you stay the course. Because wealth isn't built by one heroic sprint. It's built more like a long training block, with small steps, with good form, boring repetition and enough self-awareness to stop kidding yourself as you're about to hear in my great conversation with my guest Amanda Thompson. Now Amanda's core message is simple
03:33 and powerful. Financial freedom doesn't start with a spreadsheet. It starts with financial fitness, with habits, with sacrifice, with alignment, with knowing what matters and then doing the little things often enough for them to make a matter so as part of this ongoing e for examination stage of your journey this is your chance to hold up the mirror to ask yourself am i actually training for the future i say i want or am i just wearing the financial lycra and hoping for the best so if you really want to know the secrets to how to actually make it happen then let's get invested with Amanda Thompson on getting financially fit and keep listening to the end to ensure you hear the missing link that separates the 5% of the best from the 95% of the
04:23 rest. We'll see you on the inside. Welcome to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, the leading weekly show for Australians who want to learn how to unlock their 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 to live by design. Subscribe now and join me and get invested in the life that 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
05:10 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 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
05:54 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 etc 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.
06:37 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 fitness is exactly what you need to adopt with your money
07:10 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 steps and the compounding nature of all of those millions of
07:54 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.
08:33 It requires the same end goal vision and long-term approach 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 unachievable pie dream 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,
09:06 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 retirement is on average 28 percent less than others a situation where 33 percent 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
09:51 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 new book, Financially Fit Women, How to Become Your Own CFO, Confident, Focused,
10:20 and on Top of Your Money. And if you're Emil Marr listening 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, colour, creed, or circumstance. So listen up because you're about to enjoy some pearls of wealth-building wisdom from Amanda,
10:40 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 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 of amanda thompson so welcome let's get invested amanda hello bushy how are you awesome look i uh have been looking forward to catching up with you for a while i really did enjoy your book i think it
11:24 it's got some fundamentals there and i love the analogy of the the financial fitness because as i've sort of i guess expanded on in the introduction uh there are a lot of parallels with that to achieving anything in life. But Amanda, before we sort of get into the nitty 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
12:11 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 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
13:08 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 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
14:01 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 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 and for people to start auditing their own finances, but more than just numbers and spreadsheets going all the way
14:51 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 love for you to give us a bit of a reader's digest of your own journey in terms of what you've invested your time, energy, 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
15:24 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 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
16:08 I love my job like 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've got this reader's digest is going because 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 in that I'd had a heart attack at the age of 34 and so um you know I'm this person challenges face us all so it took me a while I didn't do it instantaneously but I went this is
17:02 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 hospitals 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 shareholders they forget about the people that work for them I was seen as a liability for quite some time and it really I felt that I felt that a lot because I'd given
17:51 so much in in essence there'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 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
18:40 I thrived so I didn't even spend a cent of the money that I'd put put away yeah so um and then 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 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 living and I understand. I want to make sure I
19:31 protect the generations that come after us from having that same issue. Yeah, and I love that and great motivators in that context. I want to circle back a bit for a second if I can, Amanda, because 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? Some people will tell you I haven't learned a thing, Bushy,
20:19 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, you know, 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 really weird but i practice what i preach and i had financially secured my children's future
20:50 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 that we have our ability to earn money for our family is an asset that people do not think about
21:39 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 married with a very um insufficient deal in terms of financial payments uh and I don't regret it
22:35 now I probably would have done it differently if you had 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 i like that one i've used it a few times myself in the past because it's absolutely 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
23:25 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 amanda isms 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 like seriously um this is what was going through my head so instead of dealing with that i chose
24:14 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 because it's the same habit-forming responses that you need
25:07 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 as a triathlete in the Ironwoman exercise but also developed
25:31 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 we are very aligned and this is the first time we've met Bushy and you used my marathon analogy so I can't even use that you can't pick up a book and run a marathon the next day but you've got to trial and error as well 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
26:20 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 come back to self in whatever you do. And again, you've mentioned this and 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. It is 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
27:12 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 So translating that then, how does your brand of financial planning differ from 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 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 it was reading from a textbook. Yeah.
27:53 and i was actually sticking up for someone because i believe in habits bushy and 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 transparent i am 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
28:42 um 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 uh circle back now and and get you to talk us through your own personal money story in terms of where your own money beliefs came from what money fears did you grow up with because we've talked about fears a couple times already have they changed if so and how and as important i would 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 and i think we're
29:33 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 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
30:23 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 blessed and you know compared to today 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
31:14 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 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 i remember when i had my first child and i was
32:07 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 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
32:49 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 um it but more so where I believe growth is because I will flip that property or it will be my passive income later on um however it's a property that I know that I have if I have to go if I'm destitute 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
33:38 and i was lucky because i got that insight and started doing just um a 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 really jumped into financial planning I'd somehow gained this insight just by listening to the people that I was working for And, you know, here we are today, still doing what I want to do. I'm contemplating what next for me. It will not be crypto, I can tell you that, for me.
34:24 Again, it's not what I want. But the biggest thing that I know about myself, and I'm banging on about it a bit lately, is really understanding what retirement looks like for myself 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 by the time we get
34:52 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 uh 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 is that i've spent a lot of time working on the me on me and what i want so what i tell anyone here is my story and what
35:37 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 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 a reason to go overseas that
36:22 we are not made of money to go on an overseas holiday every day so what's really key for me is i know that is my goal right now so i want to tick that tick that off yeah and i put then then i put a monetary value to it so i do not go i need ten thousand dollars a year to travel every year i figure out what exactly you 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 realize that what am i willing to give up now to get that goal okay because i also have a retirement so i call it sacrificial spending or intentional spending whichever ever 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
37:07 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 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
37:59 and a passive investment um 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 um 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 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
38:42 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 if we've at least got a picture of how we want to 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,
39:12 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 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, you know,
39:34 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 and you're excluding crypto from the equation, but can you talk just a little bit about that? When we know which one's going to rule the world, maybe. Yeah, and I love it.
39:52 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. And I remember the very first risk I took was in the Colonial First State Geared Fund. So I was like, you know. Sounds like a bike.
40:11 Yeah, I know, right? 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
40:40 because i want to own that property my my long-term goal is passive income from that property i don't I'm going 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.
41:11 Remember, I've still got two kids at home and 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 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
41:52 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 into that 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 growing. So it's a very conservative approach, but I'm also investing in my business in that I will review my superannuation
42:27 and all of those things from a financial perspective as well, what suits me when it does. Love it, love it. Beautifully said. So if we look back on your investment journey so far, 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
42:50 amanda sorry um do you know what and i'd say i'm 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 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 um and the worst bit of investment advice i had let me think about it because obviously i give myself most of the advice um do you know what the worst bit of investment advice i had and i don't know whether you're going to class it as that but is sponsorship so my business sponsoring things and really not
43:47 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 can advertise you'll probably get business yeah yeah nah that's one of those yeah nah moments where um really focusing in on what my return on investment is when i put my business money towards something's probably where i've still got a lot of learning to do yeah no beautifully said look i yeah i want to swing into the subject that's that's uh right at your heart and that is uh your great book financially fit women uh but before we sort of circle into that can you sort of give us a little bit more color around what are some of
44:32 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 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 um if your intuition is telling you that something's wrong chances are it is or you just haven't had the education around
45:28 it so go with your gut feeling if you think something's wrong then it probably is um and you can't you know hide hide in the cupboard for 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% 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 again I'm a high horse with it if you're that entitled that you're not interested in your superannuation then have a good look in
46:14 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 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 um i think insurance is another one you know we don't value what we financially um are to our families and i talked about our incomes being one of our biggest assets and protecting it in today's society bushing we know that it is 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
47:03 of 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 realize 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 of the family of running around kids 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
47:49 financially fit women can you start off by telling us why did you write it what are the key messages and 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 bug bears 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 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 and it kind of takes you
48:42 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. And, again, it's only general because I'm not allowed to give personal advice, but who could give personal advice
49:08 in a book anyway because I don't know every reader. So it really is that one-stop shop. You know, everyone I speak to has their highlighters and 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 the there's plenty of illustrations it's really easy to read i love the formatting of the book you've done it
49:44 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 we get stuck as 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 is self-development is personal development and it's an act of self-love we see everyone go to the doctors and chiros and counselors and do yoga and meditation for all these other beings of ourselves um but who is really going out and seeking the guidance they need for money which
50:37 You see, 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 that financial fitness starts in the mind. So how can we improve our money mindset, Amanda? So you've got to revisit.
50:58 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 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
51:35 mechanics to build your wealth later on yeah yeah no that's uh extremely well said uh i want to sort of uh jump into the the business side of the equation because you've got a great section in there on around money in business uh and to kick that off what mistakes uh are many of us making and how can we build the strong financial foundations for entrepreneurial success as you seen? 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 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
52:25 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 um 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 that's huge um 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 the way 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
53:18 later and I spend a lot of time with my business mentoring clients a lot of it is around their value proposition and the amount of money they charge or what their break-even 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 or see it depends what age isn't it because i'll be the 11
54:03 if you're young and you're taking 11 if you're going to 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 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 and i don't have backup income it is only me so i want
54:54 that peace of mind of 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 um 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 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
55:46 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 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
56:32 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 you did ask for help i got i got the first one right see ask me about 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
57:24 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 need both that yes 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
58:13 um i do remember my last one money talks and wealth whispers i love that expression 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 it's all right um and it comes down to sacrificial spending doesn't it um 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
59:06 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 it's not what you earn it's what you save uh that starts the 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
59:54 and that that that gets up really hard for a lot of people so uh sort of bringing this all to a head 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 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
01:00:45 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 it'll you'll ride over the inevitable speed 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 get really clear on the vision first and then work out the money side of it afterwards rather than chasing money for money's
01:01:22 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 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
01:02:06 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 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,
01:02:34 you've got to figure out what life looks like for you now. Love it. Love it. Beautifully said. 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?
01:02:54 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. That's a great quote, actually. That's a really good quote. But what about in the literary field? Apart from your great book, what's the other top book
01:03:17 that you'd recommend we read and why? 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,
01:03:40 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 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
01:04:24 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 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 well i'm very much the same i was born and bred into the list writing exercise and and there's something i've said this
01:05:22 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 the subconscious studies there's studies to 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.
01:05:54 If we just summarise what we've talked about today, what are your key takeaways and must-do actions 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.
01:06:11 Remember, you're not alone. And the only person that can change your life is the person looking back at you in the mirror. so just start 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 uh 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 uh for those that have really resonated with what you've shared with us today amanda how can we find out more and get more
01:06:46 involved with you so my website is endurancefinancial.com.au i'm a good old instagirl 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 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 look uh been a great conversation amanda we've really enjoyed it 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 well there you go what a great conversation with amanda thompson and if you were listening closely you'd have heard
01:07:32 something that most completely miss financial freedom isn't a money event it's a behavior your pattern. It's not one big decision, it's the daily reps, the repeated habits, the quiet sacrifices, the honest choices that either strengthen or sabotage your future. And that's exactly why Amanda's reveal belongs right here in the E for examination stage of the Property Wealth Lock. Because before you worry about suburbs, strategies, structures or spreadsheets, you need to get brutally honest about the engine room of your habits, your beliefs, your discipline your consistency and your ability to actually stay the course so let's land the plane with your key q a takeaways i like the old bushfire ambush lightning round question one
01:08:20 what's the biggest money trap we exposed today well the answer is thinking that financial freedom is mainly about knowledge it's not for most of us it's about behavior because you can know plenty and still do bugger all with it. Question two, what's the big unlock? The answer, trading money more like fitness than finance. No one gets strong by reading a brochure at the gym. No one gets wealthy by admiring spreadsheets that they never act on. Question three, what's the mistake that too many of us make?
01:08:57 The answer, we set goals without building systems. We chase outcomes without training habits. We want the trophy photo without doing the sweaty laps. And question four, what's the opportunity if we get it right? The answer, everything. Because once your habits improve, your savings improve, your confidence improves, your buying position improves, your choices improve, and eventually your life improves.
01:09:26 So here's some final food for thought that I want rattling around in your head this week. are you currently are your current money habits training you for freedom or for frustration because your future lifestyle won't be created by what you say you want it'll be created by what you repeatedly do so here's your key takeaways number one wealth is built like endurance slowly deliberately repeatedly number two small habits matter more than big intentions Number three, a plan and strategy beats hope every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
01:10:03 Number four, if your money isn't aligned with your values and your real goals, you'll drift. And drift is expensive. Number five, financial fitness comes before financial freedom. So here are your resulting actions and what you need to do. First, do a personal money order.
01:10:22 Not a guilt trip, but a truth test. what are your current habits actually producing second pick one financial fitness habit to improve this month just one it could be to automate your savings or kill debt spending or build your savings buffer or to track your cash flow whatever hurts most and helps most third get clear on what you're training for what does your version of freedom actually look like not instagram's version but yours. And fourth, stay with the property wealth sequence, because in upcoming episodes, we'll keep moving through the E stage, looking at how your life decisions shape your money outcomes, before we turn all of this critical foundational mindset and behaviour stuff
01:11:05 into hard borrowing and lending reality, because that's how the property wealth clock works, one step in order on purpose. Now, if this episode has sparked something in you, if you're thinking, righto Bushy, I can see the pieces but I still need the full picture, the step-by-step, the whole process from end to end. Well that's exactly why we've created our implementation programs because podcasts are brilliant for insights, mindset shifts and appetite winning. But a podcast can only give you a slice of the cake. So if you want the whole recipe, the ingredients, the order, the quantities and the exact process that helps you avoid baking a financial brick that's where our programs come in so here's a simple path if you're still
01:11:49 getting clear on your why your freedom goals what enough looks like and how this whole thing fits together start with the freedom formula program that's the best first step for aspiring investors who need clarity on the why the what and the how before they go racing off toward the wrong property for the wrong reasons then if you're serious or if you're already invested or you suspect that you may be making mistakes without even knowing it step into our detailed property wealth program that's where i take you through the full six stage property wealth clock process step by step so you can learn how to do property properly without shortcuts without guesswork without learning the hard way at your own expense and because i want you to get a feel for it first
01:12:31 the first modules are free so you can try before you buy see if it resonates and make up your own mind whether it's actually going to work for you without any pressure or gimmicks. Now, if you've been waiting for the missing link between knowing and doing, between motivation and method, between I should and here's exactly how, this may well be it. So just click the links in the show notes and let me know how you go. Have a look, invest in your knowledge, because done properly, that investment can save you an absolute fortune of mistakes and years of wasted emotion. so with all of this in mind here's your quote of the week we are what we repeatedly do
01:13:11 excellence then is not an act but a habit now whether aristotle actually said that or history's had a little creative edit the point still stands your financial future won't be built by occasional bursts of good intention it'll be built by repeated habits that become your character That's the actual game. And that's why today's episode matters. Because in this stage of the clock, the question isn't which property should I buy? Not yet. The question is, am I becoming the kind of person who can actually build and keep wealth?
01:13:47 If you answer that honestly, everything downstream from there gets better. So thanks for taking the time to listen. and remember, money fitness first, freedom second, and always, always get invested. Thanks for tuning in to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, your home for property investment insights and inspiration. Make sure you subscribe to Property Hub for free. Get your weekly dose of Get Invested inspiration along with every episode of Realty Talk, Australia's top online property show for red hot property investing news and insights direct from industry leaders and influencers.
01:14:25 And finally, I'll see you next time.
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