She's On The Money - AMA: Jess & V Answer Your Biggest Money Questions

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

We handed over control of the show to you this week and said: ask us ANYTHING. From how to finally get ahead on your goals, to spotting when you’re leaving free money on the table, to breaking the cycle of self-sabotage spending... nothing was off limits. If you’ve ever wished you could pick Jess and V’s brains over a coffee, this is that episode.In this ep:❓ The surprising career path that landed Jess where she is today❓ How to actually save for mat leave, with bonus tips for when you’re doing it solo❓ The “free money” hack everyone talks about… but is it genius or just hype?❓ Planning for the fun stuff in life without blowing up your bigger goals❓ The sneaky self-sabotage habits messing with your money (and how to shut them down) Join our Facebook Group AKA the ultimate support network for money advice and inspiration. Ask questions, share tips, and celebrate your wins with a like-minded crew of 300,000+.And follow us on Instagram for Q&As, bite-sized tips, daily money inspo... and relatable money memes that just get you.Acknowledgement of Country By Nartarsha Bamblett aka Queen Acknowledgements. The advice shared on She's On The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She's On The Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs. Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are authorised representatives of Money Sherpa PTY LTD ABN - 321649 27708, AFSL - 451289.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My name is Natasha Bamblett, I'm a proud First Nations woman, and I'm here to acknowledge country. Tii, gulinyan ganya, nianakaka yao yinbina waka, nianakai nianbina yakarumja, duminyagumiga dumiga ithawaka nirawamundamun imalan. Mumu bangada boma ininyalan waka, gaunan yakarumja, wutunarana. Hello beautiful friends. We gather on the lands of the Aboriginal people. we thank acknowledge and respect the aboriginal people's land that we're gathering on today take pleasure in all the land and respect all that you see she's on the money podcast acknowledges culture country community and connections bringing you the tools

knowledge and resources for you to thrive she's on the money she's on the money Hello and welcome to She's on the Money, the podcast that is here to answer all of your burning money questions and probably overshare while we're at it. I'm Victoria Devine and today while Bec is off elsewhere being absolutely fabulous, I've got the one and only Miss jessica ricci joining me jess welcome back that was like a real like woohoo i feel there should be theme music playing in the background there should be um jessica ricci people get so annoyed when i say that they're like why do you always say her name like that i get so many messages like not so many actually that's probably me over um overestimating that but at least one a month

of people being like why do you do that to jessica's name because that's the way you're technically meant to say it. It's the Italian way. Yeah, I really just australized. So Jess and I, we thought today, while we've got you, we thought it would be really fun to do a community Q&A. So you might have seen on our stories, us asking for some questions, because if there's one thing we love more than a money chat, it's answering your questions. And honestly, our community, they always bring the goods. I know, I love, I feel like it's fun to do a little bit. It feels personal, right? Like it feels like we're chatting with you guys. Exactly. Someone was like the other day, they're like, oh, I saw you in person and I wanted to say hi, but I felt like that was really

rude. And I was like, you know, what's really rude when you see a friend in public and you didn't say hi. Totally. I love chatting to you guys, but you have a lot of questions. So should we get into it, Miss Jessica Ricci? Absolutely. Okay. So our first question comes from our friend Kathy. And this is word for word. Kathy says, I want to hear more about Queen Jessica Ritchie's career path. She has so much vision and such good work ethic. Oh, that's so nice. Thank you, Kathy. She does have really good work ethic. If you learn anything from Jessica, it's that. That's so sweet. I have had a very non-conventional career, which I feel like we've touched on here and there. I did not go to university which not to say that that's right or wrong but glad that I didn't

because I don't like I didn't need it for my career and I don't have hex debt as a result but at the time it wasn't an easy choice I went to school through an advanced placement program and there was a lot of academic pressure and I wasn't sure that that was the right choice but I just went straight into working I worked full-time in a retail job for a number of years and then I took my first, I guess, corporate style job. It wasn't full corporate, but it was at a real estate agency. I was an EA. I reckon that's corporate. Yeah. It's giving like soft corporate, I would say. And you know what? The really interesting thing is, is even though I didn't love that job and there was a, I learned a lot about the behind the scenes of real estate and there's so much

transferable knowledge and transferable skills. And I think when I look at really every job that I've done. There's things that I've taken that like to this day, I still use really regularly. So from real estate, I went into an actual proper corporate EA role and I did a couple of different ones at different companies before ending up in an ops job at the most corporate place I'd ever been. And that was where I really realized corporate wasn't for me. Are you sure? This particular company was not for me. The misogyny, the, like just the, I don't, I don't want to trash too publicly, but it just was not a good time. I've heard all of their gossip and I would happily trash them. Yeah. It was just very much not a good time. And it made me really realize how

important values are to me in a workplace and working somewhere that's misaligned to my values was something that I found really deeply challenging. And so I finished up there. I had lined up a job. This is, I finished up there end of 2019. I'd had reached out to somebody at marketing agency that I'd applied for a job for previously. And I'd been top two and I'd kind of kept in touch with this woman. And I said, Hey, like I'm actually looking for work. If you see anything going, would you mind letting me know? And she said, Oh my God, what crazy timing I'm about to hire an EA role, come in and chat. Like this seems like it's meant to be. And so we'd arranged for me to come in. She said, you know, everything's shut down in January in marketing

land, like come in, start a Feb, maybe mid Feb actually, you know, to give me a bit of time to get things sorted and we will basically get you on the books. I was like, great. And then mid-Feb 2020, she goes, oh, I'm so sorry. I've caught the bug that's going around. I'm so sick. The little COVID bug. I'm so sick. Can we push this out like a week? And I was like, of course, like what's a week? It's here nor there. Oh my God, important context that I completely skipped over. So when I stopped working retail full-time and I went into corporate, I kept my retail job on the side. So I would work the late night shifts, the weekend shifts. I was doubling up. So I was working maybe like 45, 50 hours a week, which was great for saving money. And so I kept that on the side

the whole time. It was lovely because you have forced shutdowns over Christmases normally when you work in a corporate environment. So I would work through like my normal year, pick up full time work basically through the Christmas sales period. And then in retail that normally tapers off mid-Jan, which would be when I would go back to my normal job. So when I left that job, I was like okay well I can at least work full-time through Christmas like I normally do in retail shout out classes and then I needed something to pick up and I had a lot of friends at the time who worked in logistics and they said oh just pick up like a casual pickpacker role you can do it through a labor hire agency so you're not tied down to any kind of contract the pay is really

good it's really it's relatively flexible and I was like oh great like I can work there for maybe four to six weeks till I get this new job at this agency cash in the door don't have to spend my savings that's exactly what I want fast forward she gets sick she asks to push the meeting out and I was like oh well I've got a job like no stress on me of course take your time I'm not I've got nowhere to be and she did take her time well now we're at the end of February 2020 and I think we can all remember exactly what happened and so can we push the meeting out a week became oh I'm so sorry there's this sickness going around we're going to move to remote work because we can we're a digital agency. I feel like it'll only be a couple of weeks. Can we just push our meeting

back a couple more weeks? And I was like, well, sure. What's a couple more weeks. And then that became a couple of months. And then it kind of became, I'm so sorry. We're just trying to keep our head above water. We are, there's a hiring freeze. The job doesn't exist anymore, which I totally understood, but it was really hard because now we're maybe like four months into 2020, I'm working in this pickpacking job, which like I was grateful to have because so many people were losing their jobs at the time. Yeah, absolutely. And I was really lucky that being in logistics, it was the one industry that was booming, but it was tough work. Like I was getting up at 4am to be at work at 5am working a 10 hour day. And if you guys know Jess, I'm not a morning

person. If I said, oh, I got up at four to do something at five, I think the rest of the team would be like, yeah, okay, V. Yeah. We don't care. The second Jess says I was up at four, I go, watch out, watch out, watch out, give her a wide clearance. Like she's probably going to cut you. On struggle straight. And honestly, my mental health really took a hit and that, you know, I was towing the line of like being grateful to have a job when I knew so many people didn't, but also feeling like my career was really not moving forward. I was feeling super stuck. I ended up moving warehouses mid 2020 because I was like, okay, well, if I can't get a job in my industry because nowhere was hiring for EAs, everyone had a hiring freeze. I was like, well,

maybe I can just move to a warehouse with better conditions because they weren't really great. They weren't ideal. They weren't great. And so I ended up at the Mecca warehouse, which they were wonderful to work for. It was still obviously tough work in logistics, but they were really fantastic as a company to be employed by. I would have preferred to bag makeup too. Absolutely. When I hired you, which is what I'm sure we're going to get to soon, she still worked at Mecca with that Mecca discount, guys. It was very, it was lovely. That 40% discount. Oh God.

It was the best part about hiring, you know. And then, yeah, end of 2020, I had been following Shoes on the Money. I'd been paying down my debt. I'd listened to season one. And you guys put a post up on Instagram saying you were hiring for two different roles. You were hiring for someone to do content. You were hiring for an EA. And I applied and I said, oh, I actually kind of am qualified to do both of these things.

And so. For Ken, I lost dust. Yeah, you kind of rolled them together to give me my own little custom job. And I've been here ever since. it has been the best I'm sorry that really was a journey I'm such a bad storyteller do you know what no because I think people would have really enjoyed listening to that because I enjoyed listening to that and I think it's so much nicer to just hear it in Jess's tone of voice and the way you would have explained it at breakfast as opposed to like okay cool so if I just read

through my LinkedIn like that's not as fun moral of the story is you don't have to follow the linear a path like things can go up and you can go backwards and sideways and it's like diving in so you started as my EA and did some content stuff on the side what have you done since joining because I think a lot of people are like well what does Jess do like she was more on the pod now she's not as much on the pod and like we see her floating around but she's not V's assistant like what do you do well I look after all of our partnerships and I guess after I joined the show really exploded and you know all of a sudden we had all of these amazing partners that wanted to work with us. The team grew when I started, I was the first and only employee. And so from there,

we've gone to a team of what, like eight now or something like that. And so the business has expanded. We've been able to do so much more. And with that has come the opportunity to do so many different commercial partnerships. We've had the books and we've had all of the incredible projects. We have, you know, our sponsors for the show. And so I look after all of that, which is really fun because we, you know, we get to talk to so many incredible, really well-aligned companies. And then I'm just kind of kicking around on the pod when I need it. Like that was never intended to be part of my job. I wouldn't say when I was hired, but it's so much fun. It just makes sense. Yeah. And we have fun doing it. I love it. There's nothing more fun than sitting down and getting to

have a chit chat with you. It's the best. Anyway, enough about me. I think I just talked for about 10,000 years. We've had so many people in the community asking when we popped this question box up, they want to know VD from you. What are your tips for financially preparing for a baby, preparing for maternity leave, parenting in general? And are there any tips you specifically have for a first-time mum? Because you're a first-time mum. I am a first-time mum. And you know what? If you're going into this as like a first-time single mum, that's really hard. I think you need to just take the pressure off yourself. I think social media doesn't do a lot of good things for parenting. It's a topic that I have been sort of touching on on social media recently.

and the amount of backlash I get for just having an opinion, whether it is right, whether it is wrong, like it's just wild how much that topic triggers people. And I think that when I was pregnant, I just, I was trying to learn. I was trying to absorb like my entire TikTok feed became about pregnancy and birth and babies. And like, I loved it, but at the same time I found it all consuming. So I think taking a step back would be some of the best advice I have. I just think that people are going to tell you that you need all this stuff as well. You don't, you don't need the stuff. Like I was very grateful and very lucky during my pregnancy to be sent so much stuff. You just don't need it. Like you need a nice dry place for your baby to sleep. You need something

to keep them really warm, a few onesies and a way to feed them. Like, honestly, they are going to be fine at the start. And I would really prioritize your mental health. So like we could do, and I've done episodes on like financially preparing for a baby, go listen to those. We'll link them in the show notes, but I don't think it changes what you're taking into consideration, whether you're in a couple or whether you're single, just because you're going to have to think about childcare costs. You're going to have to think about, well, how do I feed this child? How do I clothe them? yes you don't have a dual income but all of the like parameters are kind of still the same so to me it's genuinely about taking the pressure off yourself and then realizing that do you know

what your parenting journey is not going to look like everybody else's it's going to look like yours and for so long I was like oh my god like looking at milestones completely up to you but I deleted all the apps like tracking milestones it becomes really overwhelming like I was told oh your baby will start getting teeth at like six months that's fantastic mine actually had teeth at three months and I took him to the doctor because I was so worried about it and the doctor kind of looked at me and was like yeah like he's just got a tooth like that that's a thing yeah and I was like sorry what so I think all of this external pressure did me no good and now I just do whatever I want as a parent like in the nicest possible way I think a happy baby

and a healthy baby is all I care about definitely and when it comes to prepping for maternity leave is there anything you think people should be kind of considering having conversations with their partner? Yeah. So I think that when we're talking about prepping for mat leave, what you want to really do is think about what you're doing on mat leave. I think so often you go, it'll be really easy to live off one income, but you're probably going to have a whole heap of like incidental costs, additional coffees, cause you're going on walks and you should be prioritizing getting out of the house for your mental health. I think so many times when you're on mat leave, you're like, no, no, no, we need to be really strict and really safe. But during a period of

turmoil, during a period where your hormones are absolutely erratic, like let's just maybe spend a little bit more on our mental health on, you know, that extra coffee. I know that that sounds a little bit flippant, but like, I promise there are mums listening to this that are already mums that are like, oh my God, I know the amount of times I was like, no, I really shouldn't go to the cafe I went yesterday. But like that would have changed the trajectory of their mental health for the day, I'm sorry, go spend the $5. Money well spent. Do you know what I mean? Like go for the walk, get out of the house, spend the $5, put that into your budget. And I think that mat leave can be really, really challenging because especially if you're a single mom, you are

trying to work out, well, when can I go back to work? And it might be earlier than your peers. It might be earlier than your friends. You might in a perfect world, love 12 months off, but you can't afford that. You're doing the best thing you can for your family. And I think we just want to take the pressure off. Like, let's not look at what you can't do. Let's look at what you can do and how do we kind of embrace that without judgment. Yeah, I love that. Should we, is that also a good time to be talking to your partner about potentially them making contributions to your superannuation? Absolutely. We're asking about superannuation. I'm not taking time out of the workforce to be behind. I would say, I'm not going to say it's less important, but it is

less important because as of the 1st of July this year, Jess, superannuation is now payable by the government on maternity leave. And we now get 24 weeks of paid maternity leave as opposed to what we had before. And that's really sexy, but that's also minimum wage. So it might not be what you were previously contributing. And I might be asking my partner for the top up. Yeah. Like, sorry, I'm not here sacrificing my financial future so that you can go back to work and have a really secure financial future. I'm sorry, 50% of marriages end in divorce. Like, and that's just marriages. So many people I know nowadays are having kids and they're not married and that doesn't matter at all. But like, what about those relationships? So I just get your bank, sis.

Yeah. Be prepared for the worst. Another big theme, Jess, that we saw coming up was goals. and we love talking about goals, how to choose them, how to stick to them and how to balance those really big financial dreams with life goals that also come with a really big price tag. We also had someone wanting to know if travel was a bad money goal. I don't think any money goal is inherently bad. Like all your goals, you got a goal. Yeah. Your goals are so personal to you. As someone who traveled a lot when they were younger and I spent like all of my money traveling, I don't regret spending the money I regret the way in which I did it just because like spending every dollar I meant meant I wasn't the most financially stable no we don't regret things

that we did in our youth because we didn't have the education correct like I wish that I had had the knowledge that I have now and had been investing for longer would have been better but whatever I think travel is an amazing goal I think there is so much that you can learn from being outside of your comfort zone I've done a lot of travel to third world countries and I think that particularly has been really beneficial to me in terms of gratitude and you know having I guess more of a consciousness of the impacts of what I do on a global scale and you know what I mean the world is so much bigger than us I think that traveling is a really good way to do that to connect with other cultures to meet new people to see there's just so much in the world to

appreciate and enjoy and explore and I think that that is so valuable and so I think that if that is something you want to do, just prioritize that, save, do it responsibly. I don't think that you should feel bad about that at all. And in terms of having, you know, balancing those big goals with your life goals, you love to say you can do it all, but not all at once. And I do love saying that. I think that's so true. I'm a broken record. You probably, you need to move on from she's on the money. You've been here too long. You could just paraphrase me consistently. I've adopted all of your idioms. I mean, I'm not mad. I'm just concerned. I have a good question actually to follow on from that. Our next community member wants advice on how to stop

sabotaging herself with irresponsible spending and not sticking to her goals. Do you know what I think it's about? And get this zooming out. Oh, because I find that from a psychology perspective, self-sabotage often happens when we're scared of change. It often happens when we're worried about, well, what happens when I achieve that goal? Am I going to feel the way I thought I was going to feel? And you might not be thinking this, but self-sabotage is often about not lacking change. It's not because you don't want to succeed. Cause if I said, you know, Jess, you really want to save for a house and I'm going to use this as an example, but then you keep dipping into your savings account. You're like, well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And then I go, but

what's your biggest goal in the world? You say, well, saving for a house. More often than not, the self-sabotage is coming from like being like, oh yeah, but I'm happy where I am. I don't really care about the change. Do you know what I mean? It's about change. So I think we really need to get serious with ourselves. If you are going in and being a bit irresponsible with your spending when that's not what you want, fine, but why? Tell me, what are you getting out of that? Tell me, do you actually, that big money goal that you were working towards, is it actually your goal? Because right now you're telling me it's not. So we need to get some hard truths out there and be like, maybe this isn't my money goal. And maybe I'm saying that I'm saving for a house because

society has been telling me I'm saving for a house and should, when I actually don't give two shits about it. Yeah. And then we need to flip it over and go, okay, well, if it is your goal, why are we self-sabotage? What happens when you buy the house? Is it the change? What happens when you are realistic about this? And I think it's just about creating a plan because we're all good at self-sabotage. I'm the best at self-sabotage. And like Jess, you would have seen this a million times. It doesn't matter what it is, whether it is for me a savings goal or I'm really close to finishing something. You know what happens when I'm close to finishing a book. I shut down the last chapter. Good luck getting that out of me. I don't want to do it. And I

don't know why. I don't want to do it. I don't like the idea of that process. I don't know what it is. But like getting me to finish something can be quite challenging. Can it? But I think it's so important to understand why that's happening. And that's when I have to go, you are self-sabotaging again. Why are you doing this? Because if you don't pull your finger out, you're not going to achieve this thing. And like, that's actually what you said you wanted. And sometimes it's just scary. And is it about identifying the trigger a little bit too, going, because more often than not, I think it's probably a pattern, right? And so you might see like with the book, for example, you get to the end and you go, oh, well, I don't want to finish reading the book. I'm too overwhelmed

with the thought of starting a new one or finding a new one or whatever that looks like for, you know, whoever, whatever goal you're dealing with. So I feel like if you can identify like what causes you to self-sabotage, you might actually be able to get to the root of the problem and then identify what solution you can put in place. 100%. All right. Katie has asked us if we can explain how platforms like Shopback actually work. We talk about them all the time, but she wants to know, how do you actually use them? And you know what, I'm asking you because you're basically the Shopback queen, Miss Jessica DiUcci. I do love a cashback platform. Basically the way that these platforms work is it's like a referral system. So if you have their like a little pop-up open

in the browser or you shop through their website, they're using the cookies to track where you're going. And so let's say you go, oh, wow, there's 20% cash back at the Iconic today. I'm going to buy that thing I wanted. When you click through Shopback to whatever platform you're using, the Iconic pays a referral fee to Shopback or whoever. For sending a client. Correct. Exactly right. Which is a really standard way of doing things. And then these platforms then share a percentage of that with you in the form of cash back. So you accumulate cash back through online shopping um and then sometimes you have to hit a threshold when you're ready you can withdraw it usually straight to your bank account to your paypal money win and it's such you're spending

the money anyway is the way that i look at it so why not i think every year i maybe get one to two hundred dollars cash back just from like standard every year yeah really just standard normal online shopping especially because i try and use the upsized ones and you're you're not the biggest shopper in the entire world this is probably gonna out me i just cashed in a thousand dollars worth of shop back money. And I did an extra investment because I was like, oh, it's just tipped over this. I'm going to like take a thousand dollars out and invest it. So I did like another investing bundle, boring ETFs. But that was really cool. And when I saw it, I was like, holy guacamole, just by having it on my like, just having it on my browser, it pops up and says, do you want to

turn on cash back for this website? And I'm like, well, yes, thanks. And I mean, I also book a lot of travel for work and stuff through that. So I don't want people to be like, Oh, Victoria is actually a really irresponsible shopper. Cause I think you would know I'm actually not that bad, but I do have a lot of work expenses, a lot of office work stuff. Like anyway, it was nice to get some little cashola. Absolutely. And it's like, I love to, I have all my favorite shops, shops that I shop at regularly favorited. So I get notified when there is upsize. So if pet food, for example, goes 20% cash back, I'm stocking up things like that. So you can even just take your normal everyday spending and hopefully get a little bit of money back on it. Exactly. All

right, Jess, let's take a really quick break. And then we're going to get into money saving tips for travel. And we're going to have a quick chat about budget date nights. So guys, don't go anywhere. Welcome back, guys, to our very special Q&A episode. We are loving the questions that you guys send in. Honestly, we could probably do this all day, but we actually have a timer on because the studio is booked by somebody else. So Jess, what's next on the list? Another one that we saw coming up time and time again, the people want to know, what are our favorite tips for saving on travel? And we had one specific person requesting tips to the US, which we did a trip a couple of years ago.

We went to New York and then we went to New Orleans. It was lovely. And we got to go to Disneyland. Oh yeah, that was absolutely the highlight of the trip. So first thing I would say is cashback. So making sure that if you are booking travel, you are doing it through a cashback platform. It always says it's like, I think I got 2% back on my most recent flights, but 2% of flights, I'm paying a couple of grand, like that ends up being a couple of hundred dollars. So money win. The next is when you're looking for flights online,

clearing your cookies. So this sounds silly, but I always look for flights in a private browser. like I go into a private browser, make sure my computer's clear of cookies first, because there's no remarketing that happens with flights. And sometimes, you know, when you go on and it's like, oh, these return flights, you're up at $1,200. And then you go back a day later and it's $1,350. And you're like, hold on, hold on. That can be quite purposeful. So we are making sure that we don't have that on. I'm such a points hacker as well. We did a whole episode, you and I actually Jess on points hacking and sometimes I actually I try to most of the time use my points to either upgrade my travel or pay for part of my travel and you don't just have to

use points for flights you can also book accommodation which is really helpful or I think is really cool so like for example we'll get to the US but I have just booked a trip to Bali and I've paid for our business class return flights with Virgin with points and then I'm staying at two different resorts. We're going for a wedding. So the wedding venue was actually on my points platform. So I was able to book, I had to do like a cash top up, which was fine. I used all the points for that, did a cash top up and then I paid cash for the rest of it. So like technically this holiday is mainly paid for in points, like obviously not spending money and like the other hotel, but like, sorry, that's a good deal. That's a really good deal. I like for

flights to make sure that you're taking, like looking at the options. So if you want to fly in the middle of the day direct, you're going to pay the most money. But if you're willing to leave at five in the morning or stop over in a country, you can save yourself a lot of money. And I think that's really well worth doing if you are trying to do it affordably. The other thing I would say is public transport, depending on where you're traveling. But a lot of countries have really great public transport systems. New York, for example, where we went, had the subway, which I made everybody catch the train everywhere. Sorry, you're not getting Ubers in New York. That's too expensive. Absolutely. So I think that's really great. Also looking for like

discounted tickets to attractions. So you can often get like tourist like deals where it's buy one, get one half off or whatever that looks like. Student discounts are a global thing. So you can often get student discounts to get into different attractions, museums, etc. So looking on any way that you can really get a good deal, I think is a big one. And then lastly, I would say for your accommodation, I'm a skimp out on accommodation person. You're theoretically just there to sleep. And so like when I went to Japan, we were sleeping in a room that was like two meters by two meters. And we were like, see, that could never be me. And you've traveled with me. You know what I'm like. I'm not going to like, I'm not going to say I don't love staying

in a beautiful five-star resort, but if we're trying to cut costs. Oh no, she enjoys it. She's grateful, but like if she's paying for herself, she's going to stay in a shoe box. Yeah. I just think you're there to sleep and store your stuff. And that's it. And I think that that's a really good place that you can look to cut costs. See, for me, I like to spend a little bit more on accommodation, I think, cause I'm generally such a homebody, like I'm the type of person and you saw this when we traveled and the US I think is a really good example of this is like, I would want to go back to the house, like in the early afternoon and have a few like rot hours of just like being inside, scrolling on my phone, having a little bit of a rest and then going back out for

dinner and whatever we were doing after. So for me, that's a priority. But I was, I was thinking as we were talking about this, another area that I would say I save a lot on is food. Um, and the first time we went to America together, Jess, we shared a room because we were savvy and also like we low-key enjoy that. I went straight to the supermarket, didn't I? I got like breakfast cereals. I got like filter coffee. I got like, or whatever it was like a cold brew coffee thing. Cause I was like, I am not spending like $7 USD on a coffee every single morning from Starbucks where it's not even that good. And I would also eat cereal in the mornings in our hotel room. It worked out so well. And I'm such a, I don't care how much money we have. I'm such a, let's

make sure that we've got snacks at home. So like, I was also packing your bag before you left. I was like, here's a muesli bar for the day in case you get a little bit hungry before lunch. Like, I'm sorry, I'm not paying for snacks out. I'm going to go to the supermarket when I arrive at my location, get some snacks, get some breakfast stuff. I swear it saves us over a like a week trip, a couple of hundred dollars easily because sorry, we've got food at home. Yeah. Okay. Home is now here in New Orleans or in Florida or wherever we are. And if we have to eat with a spoon out of the box, so be it. No, no, no, no. We also bought plates and spoons and cutlery. We are arguably relatively unhinged. And on my trip to Bali that we're about to go on, I've actually

packed a lunchbox for Harvey because I will be making little sandwiches at the buffet breakfast every morning so that he has morning tea and lunch because I'm sorry, he's under the age of two. He's not getting the menu at the pool. That's so fair. He's just not. Yeah. I don't care. You will have a little Vegemite sandwich or whatever. And I know he'll be happy with that. All right, let's move on from this. I'm still talking about saving money, but you're extra good at this Jess. Lizzie wants to know what our money date nights and combos look like with our partners. We don't do a regular, to be honest, a regular date night or conversation. We just have a structure that kind of works for us, we don't fully share finances. We split our rent costs. We split our shared expenses. So like

bills and groceries and that sort of thing. But outside of that, we really like there's not too much crossover. And so we don't have the need to have those types of conversations. But I would say if that's something you're wanting to do, it's really about just approaching it honestly and pragmatically. I think that money can be a tense thing if you feel like one person is spending more than the other, or if you feel like one person is taking your savings goals more seriously than the other, it can bring up a lot of emotions. And I think it's really helpful to take the emotion out of it and look at your numbers. So I think if you're going to approach your partner about their spending habits, for example, or wanting to cut back or whatever that looks like,

have some numbers to back you up and go, okay, well, I've done the math on what our spending is looking like. And if we cut back X, Y, Z, we could save this amount. And so I think that having something factual is also quite irrefutable. So it keeps it, I think from being emotional, it keeps it really clear for them to be like, Hey, like this is what I'm thinking. And this is the practical application of that I think is really helpful, particularly because everybody's brain works differently. So your partner might really thrive on the numbers or they might thrive on understanding your emotions. You're kind of covering both of those bases. I think try to make it fun to like, let's cook a dinner at home or have a fun dessert, or we can go out and do it

at the restaurant. But if you're wanting to make it a regular thing, it can be nice to make it feel exciting in some way. And I feel like talking about budgeting and stuff often doesn't. It's not very sexy. I feel like you and Steve probably have a better approach than I do. Do you know what? We don't. And I think that's going to surprise a lot of people. We don't do regular date nights for money anymore. I feel like we did when we were trying to save for a house, saving for our wedding, like, and everything was coming up and we were trying really hard to like stay on track more towards the beginning of our relationship. We definitely did our money date nights to kind of like get on track with each other and like kind of get on the same page and

like lots of different stuff would come up and we were doing them maybe once every month and we weren't going out for them. We were just doing them at home over dinner, but like, instead of sitting on the couch, we would sit at the dining table and have our laptop open and have the budget or whatever. Very serious business meeting. I obviously as an advisor loved it, but it can be quite confronting. Cause like we're talking to each other about like what we're spending and like our values and if, yeah, it can, it can be not that fun. Let's be honest. But we definitely did them when we were like working towards bigger financial goals. And now I would say we're a little bit more financially comfortable, but we're also in a different stage. So now our finances are

100% combined. Like both our incomes go into an offset account to our mortgage and then just life happens from there. Like it's not my money or his money. It's just the money that we have. And that works for us. But when we have bigger decisions coming up, we will schedule one. So like we have a holiday coming up. I've mentioned before that we're going to Bali. Like Steve and I used that as an excuse to go out for dinner. I was like, okay, cool. Like mom and dad can have Harvey that night and we'll go get, we went to the little tie players down the road from our house, love. And we just talked about, okay, we're going to go to Bali. Like how much are we willing to spend? Like how many, and it's just like a lot of logistical conversations now, as opposed to

being on the same page. So we were like, okay, let's like log into your velocity account and my velocity account. Cause we do like the pooling things. I can't see Steve's points, but he has all my points. I don't know. Anyway, how many points have we got? Okay, cool. Like, what would that get us? Do we want to spend our points on the travel, like on the flights or the accommodation? Turns out we had enough for like a little bit of like the flights and some of the accommodation. Where do we want to stay? What kind of budget are we looking for? Like, I think that really helps us when bigger things are coming. You know, if we plan another baby, we'll sit down and have a big money conversation about like, well, what does that look like? What does your leave

look like. But yeah, I think as time goes on, your money conversations aren't as like, okay, we have a date night and we go through our budget every single week. Cause that just ticks along when we're both on the same page about that. Like we don't need to have that regular date night, but when things are popping up, like I don't want to book a hotel that my husband and I haven't actually discussed. Okay. Every night we want to spend this amount. Like, cause I feel like we can easily fall into me going, oh, I want to book this hotel and it's this much per night. And Steve goes, oh yeah, no worries. That's fine. But then he's not as across our finances. I don't know. So when big things come up, we're doing it, but honestly not that regularly because it just, it's not that

it doesn't work for us, but we're now kind of on the same page. And I feel like you use your date nights to get to that place. And now we're at that place. We're using them as we need them, not monthly. Amazing. Well, I've got a fun one for us to end on from Tyler who said, if you won a large amount of money tomorrow, what would your treat to yourself be? Oh my God. I'm so sorry. Can you imagine going into your shares account and like investing a couple of hundred grand? Oh, I wouldn't do it all at once. I dollar cost average it into the market. Don't worry guys. But can you imagine transferring a couple of hundred grand to your shares account and just seeing it in your wallet it able for you to like invest it's so funny that you went a couple of hundred thousand when it said

if you want a large amount of money I'm thinking I won 20 million on the lotto like winning a hundred thousand dollars heaps of money I mean absolutely but I just took this as you know that it's we asked our community ages ago and if you search in our Facebook group there's a whole thread we asked you guys what to you is a large amount of money and it was so wild because some people were like oh twenty dollars like that's heaps yeah some people like 20 million and I'm here like I don't know that my default was like a large amount of money a couple hundred grand girl if I'm buying 20 million dollars yeah I don't know what my treat would be I feel like my favorite fantasy I feel like I get analysis paralysis and just like freeze up a bit honestly

we're probably going out for dinner yeah we're gonna go get steak frites Jessica gorgeous gonna get steak frits and a spritz. Oh, lovely. I feel like I'd be buying my ultimate dream house, which would be a huge house with big windows and curtains on the beach. Like I could walk on the beach, like walk straight up. Yeah. Love, love. Well, I think that is a perfect place to leave it because this was such a fun one. If you've got a question that you would love us to answer, make sure that you're following us on Instagram because that's where we do all our call outs for questions just like this. And while you are there, my friends, don't forget to like, subscribe and leave us a review if you haven't already it helps more people find the show and

join our amazing community guys thanks so much for hanging out and we're going to be lucky to see you again on friday bye the advice shared on she's on the money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances she's on the money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs. Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are authorised representatives of MoneySherpa PTY LTD ABN 321 649 27708 AFSL 451 289.

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