She's On The Money - Glen James is Back to Answer Your Investing Questions

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

If you’ve ever felt unsure about whether you’re investing the right way, this episode is for you! We’re bringing back Glen James to tackle YOUR biggest investing questions—because even with all the info out there, investing can still feel confusing. We’re covering: When to change your investment strategy (and when to leave it alone) Should you invest with your partner? Or is keeping it separate better? What the Chemist Warehouse shake-up means for investors Tech ETFs—are they actually a smart move, or just another trend? Plus, Glen shares the one investing myth that drives him absolutely crazy—and why you need to stop believing it. Want to feel more confident with your investing? Our Investing Masterclass is now open for enrollments... come join us here! Starts April 1. Our last Q and A with Glen about investing is here. We covered things like CHESS sponsorship, investing in international markets and investing for kids. You can find Glen on instagram here and his campfire chat with Vince from Money Sherpa podcast episode is here. Acknowledgement of Country By Natarsha 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.

Hello, my name is Natasha Nabanunga-Bamblett. I'm a proud Yorta Yorta, Kurni, Wolperi and Awadjuri woman. And before we get started on She's on the Money podcast, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of which this podcast is recorded on Awadjuri country, acknowledging the elders, the ancestors and the next generation coming through. As this podcast is about connecting, empowering, knowledge sharing and the storytelling of you to make a difference for today and lasting impact for tomorrow. Let's get into it. She's on the money. She's on the money.

hello and welcome to she's on the money the podcast that's here to show you investing isn't just for the rich, it's for you too. Now, what happens when you get two retired financial advisors in a room together? It's not a joke. Well, it actually turns out they can't not talk about investing. So, we decided to hand control of this episode over to you, our beautiful community, to find out the biggest investing questions that are currently on your mind. I'm Victoria Devine, and of course, I'm one of the two retired financial advisors because in the room today, also joining us, Mr. Glenn James. Hello, VD, and hello to all your listeners. I'm so excited. Glenn, before we dive further in, I feel like a lot of the OG She's On The

Money listeners are going to know exactly who you are, your dad, my mum. But for those of you who are maybe new to the pod, who are you, Glenn? How'd you get on the show? Actually, I read a review once and someone had a go at you for having me on the podcast. Yeah, I would too, honestly. I know, that's outrageous. You had to pay me so much money to get in this room. It's priceless. Honestly, double what you paid last time.

Exactly. I've known VD for many years. Unlucky. We were on the financial advice scene, kind of still are in Australia. I run a podcast called Money, Money, Money. You probably know it as My Millennial Money, but I changed the name because millennials, it's not cool anymore. It was in 2018. It's not. I'm learning that I'm actually very uncool

and I was telling you just before that one of the people in my team has said, Victoria Devine, if you say slay again, you're out. That's very millennial. Cancelled. Totally. And we are talking about Sigma Pharmaceuticals today. We are and I'm so excited.

Because that's the word, right? Yeah. The gen alphas potentially. Sigma. Sigma, yeah. And we got to say diva instead of slay. And they do this with their finger down their face. Yeah, absolutely.

And they do not wear ankle socks, which you're not today. So I'm actually quite proud of you. I don't wear ankle socks. Yeah, because you're cool. Not heaps. But yeah, so we love to talk about money. A lot of my listeners are also listeners of your podcast. And there's great overlap with our content.

We both want good things for good people. I like it. Well, Glenn, our community delivered. They did not disappoint. We've got questions about everything. Some of them I had to remove. but questions from how to actually invest regularly without getting stung by additional fees. Like at what point does brokerage kick in to figuring out if your portfolio is actually

balanced? What does that even mean? And we're tackling the age old question, Glenn, of when do you know it's time to actually change your strategy? Plus we've got some spicy discussions on whether you should invest jointly with your partner, what to look for in a tech ETF. And of course, all the buzz that is currently surrounding Chemist Warehouse. Now, if you've ever stared at your portfolio and you thought, am I actually doing this right? What? Stick around because we're about to break all of it down for you. All right, Glenn, let's just dive straight in. Our first community member said, Glenn, Victoria, I want to invest regularly, but I'm so worried about racking up fees. What is the best way to time my investments so that I keep costs low

without sacrificing consistency? It's a good question and it's a valid argument in every area of our life. I have a car, it costs to run that car, but I get the benefits for having that cost in my life. It's no different with when we invest. We may need to pay for costs to do the transaction. We may need to pay costs to have a professional if we're going down that road. So we can't remove costs from our life, but I think it's important to understand the costs and make a judgment call. I will say when we get started with investing, you know, you've worked with shares, there's plenty of investing apps that are very low cost relative to the money that you put in. There's an app, Superhero, I think they charge $3 per trade

for an ETF. Which is a good deal. Which at the end of the day, it's the cost of doing business if you want to invest. And we shouldn't be dictating our investing strategy by a tax outcome, by investing fees. Now there is a pendulum that swings. If they're like, oh, if you invest $100, there's $50 in fees. Well, no, we're not doing that. But the winning point here is you are getting started, you are investing. And this is a crazy kind of comment that flies in the face with some money community members out there who produce money content, there comes a point in your financial life where you can't expense hack or reduce costs in order to get to financial freedom. Yeah. But there's only so much you can do. So don't stress too much. Any of the big

type of apps that you've heard of, I'm confident to say that, and this is a broad statement and And we should never make broad statements, but I will. Any of the big players that you see in Facebook groups, sponsored podcasts, they're not going to be unscrupulous. And particularly, I know you, VD, and for me on my podcast, we don't work with brands that we think aren't good on balance for a lot of people. A hundred percent.

Like if I am working with somebody, you can guarantee that I would use them personally. like it doesn't mean I am because there's so many different players in the market like if I'm working with a bank but I already have my banking set up with one I'm not going to change to the other but I wouldn't have an issue doing so and I think that's a really important point to remember because both you and I we were actually having this beautiful conversation before we started recording we're talking about brands like that we'd recently said no to and we'd never just throw brands under the bus I'm sorry there's no tea there but like I'll throw after pay under the

pass it oh yeah actually yeah no we're not working with any buy now pay laters that is true all right so like i mean more aligned brands but there are some that both of us are like absolutely not like either we don't like their management teams or we don't like their structure or we don't like their pds so like there have been multiple times that i've been like your product is beautiful my community adore this product and i would love to support you but your pds says some things in there that I'm just not comfortable with. And like, I would never want just one person in my community to be tripped by those. So I think it's a good point you make. Like we're talking about product here and costs in the money world. And there's a question we maybe can

go to that question now as I produce your podcast on the fly. You can do whatever you want. We can, we need to talk about strategy first and I'm a bit basic. So I like to use analogies back to that car analogy where we buy a car and we have to pay on-road costs and fuel before we worry about should I buy a car yes or no because there's fees involved let's go back okay you need a car do you need something that's a compact SUV Lucy's in the studio with us today always to throw Lucy in the back of do we need a little hatchback to zip around town. We can't get an electric car because I've got nowhere to charge it. Do I need a Prado because we're doing an overland tour with the family? We have to work

out the strategy for the car first. And that is, I've nailed my strategy down to, I want a compact SUV. I'm going to get a hybrid one. That's looking like a RAV4 on balance, whatever. so okay awesome now we know our strategy then we can kind of dial in and look in that strategy we know a rav4 hybrid will suit our needs okay can't afford the hybrid we'll still get the rav4 i'd like a blue one can't find a secondhand blue one i'm going to settle for a white one because on balance that white rav4 still meets all of the criteria all the needs yeah so terrible analogy, but we're here now. And there are some things that are nice to haves, right? Yeah. I agree. And I think when we're talking about investing regularly, because you and I both

on our podcasts say you need to be regularly and consistently investing, but also some of us just don't have the cash to be investing large sums of money. And at that point, you might be a little bit confused because you're like, but Victoria, you talk about dollar cost averaging and the importance of consistently being in the market. But then I also am going to tell you if you are investing $50 a month and then you have your brokerage fee on top of that, perhaps that's actually a bit detrimental because yes, your dollar cost averaging, but then it's costing you more to get into the market. We need to go, okay, well, if my budget for investing is $50 a month, perhaps I actually invest maybe every three months and make the most of brokerage.

But the important thing here is that every single month, you're still putting that money to the side. You might not actually make that investment transaction until you have $150 based on the maths that you've decided, all right, I'm happy to spend that, you know, $3 in brokerage because it's a larger sum of money. Therefore, it's a smaller percentage of the overall investment. I like to tell people, have a strategy, however small. So, you've just said to me, your strategy, big picture, I want to invest for my future. I want to live on less than what I earn and invest the rest. That's your strategy. Okay. I've got $50 a week to invest as part of my strategy. Awesome. Then what you've done, you've said, okay, $50 a week investing. If I go to

a traditional broker, like your Comsex, your NAB Trade, they may charge $19 per trade. And I think that that's where people get a little bit caught up in like, which is the best investment platform? And it's like, well, there's actually one that suits your strategy. There's actually no such thing because like someone could say it's ComSec. And then the reality of that situation is, yeah, for them. Yeah, because they're happy to spend $19 a trade. And that works because you didn't realize they're investing $4,000 a month. And that $19 is actually such a small percentage. but they've made a recommendation to somebody investing $50 a month. Can you imagine how much your profit is going to be eaten away if your trade is $19, but your investment is $50 every month? Like that is detrimental to you creating wealth. Yeah. So, strategy always comes first. Then we look as part of the strategy, potentially ownership structure. And there's a question there about joint accounts with partners. You're perving on my list. I didn't give you a list. How do you know what's on my list?

Oh, Emma showed you. Emma's our producer and she's too organized for me. Strategy, ownership structure, product, which is the investment app or platform. Like what are we actually investing on? Then we can talk about ETFs or we can talk about the actual investment, which is actually where this leads.

So I've got two questions and one of our community members said, hey guys, I'm trying to build my portfolio, but I actually feel like I've just plucked the percentages out of thin air? How do I actually work out the right balance for your investments? Because like, let's say we've picked our product and we are on an investing platform and now it's time to pick our actual investments that we are putting money into, Glenn. Let's start with a round number that I feel like a lot of our community use as an example. It doesn't mean you have to start with

that because on a lot of investing platforms, you can invest with as little as one cent, but let's say you've got a thousand dollars, Glenn, because I feel like that's a sturdy portfolio beginning. How are we working? Can we do 10,000? We can do 10,000. You rich, rich. I like it. I was worried you were going to say, let's start with $7,920. Oh no, we only work in round numbers because I need to lull my community into thinking I'm actually good at maths and I can only work with round numbers in my head. So let's do $10,000. How do we then go, all right, well, how am I balancing this? Like, am I doing half, half? Am I doing 25% of each? What's that look like? So I love everything that we do in the money world. We do these podcasts. It's our career.

I love that we talk about investing. The problem that we get online and whatever industry you're in. So we're in the money industry. If you're in the health industry, if you're in the fitness industry. If you're in the butcher, baker, candlestick maker industry, when stuff gets online, the top line vibe of all that we do online is awesome. We want people to invest for the future. Stunning. The problem then sets in when we get down to other levels with different content creators is the nuance and people will get dogged on a point that doesn't make sense to chess other people chess sponsorships one of them so there's a school of thought where we get questions like this people come in listen to she's on the money i listen to your podcast sometimes

do you miss me and you're like i need to hear vd's voice yeah i hope you're listening to the deep dive so that you can learn as well. I do learn, yeah. Yeah, fantastic. So we get all this information and we're like, I've got to get started investing and I'm new to the Facebook group. Someone has just said, what percentage allocation do I need? How do I build my portfolio? And I'm offensive and I get cancelled every other week. There's a train of thought to say with respect and care that if you don't quite know what percentages to make up your portfolio, how can you know how to manage a portfolio ongoing? Okay. So there's that. I have a whole investing masterclass where I

teach people, but also we need to answer the question on the podcast because otherwise we're gatekeeping. Exactly. So that being said, you've got some options there. We do the portfolio in a box, your ETF, that's the one-stop shop. So I focus on being good at my work. I've got my $50 a week and I put into that and get on with my life. Then we go to the next step, which your lovely questioner has written in. I want to build a portfolio. I actually have learned about investing. I know that I can buy a single ETF with Australian shares. Awesome. I know I can get an ETF with just American or just tech. Awesome. So the question is now, if you want to go down that road and have a bit of a DIY. Sure. What percentages do we use? Uh-huh. I've got an

answer. Don't know if it's the best. Is it your risk profile? It is, but I'm talking more simplistically. If you log into your superannuation account and have a look at index balanced option with any major super fund, they will show you what their research says is a good balance in their portfolio. They might go, yeah, 35% international, 25 Australian and a bit of property you could mirror that it's a good risk profile and that's actually something that in my investing masterclass I teach because it's like you have your risk profile and you would know when you do this with clients Glenn it comes out with a beautiful pie chart and I love to talk about pie charts because like I'm a visual learner and we know that this

amount should be shares this amount should be property this amount of cash and maybe some like fixed interest assets. And I want that, but I want it just for my share portfolio. And one of the best ways to do that is to look at superannuation breakdowns of what a low risk portfolio, a balanced portfolio, or a high growth portfolio is. And you will find more often than not, and this is a broad brush statement again, that if we look at a growth portfolio, because most of my community are growth investors from our research, you look at it and it goes, all right, well, 45% international assets, 50% Australian assets, and then you might have 5% of like bonds or cash. And so you go, all right, am I comfortable with that? Does that suit me? And we're not saying

that that would, but it's a good example. All right. I'm going to now either build that out with individual shares and I'm going to take off my $10,000, four and a half thousand dollars of that and I'm buying international assets. Is that an international ETF? Is that international direct assets? Keep in mind, if it is ever international, you will never own it directly. I have an international ETF to be clear. And then you've got your 50%. You could build that out with maybe like six or eight direct shares, or you could pick an ETF that makes sense to you. And I would say most people in our community from our research pick two different ETFs and then they might pick a bond. They might pick to keep a little bit of cash. And we always say, and financial advisors

will tell you that keeping cash in your portfolio is important, not because it's not invested and it's not working, but like you're going to have the ability to rebalance whenever you need to. So with your weekly or monthly contributions, you'll be contributing. Fantastic. But one is going to grow more than the other. And you might need to tip a little bit of cash here or there to keep that balance. And so that's what we mean when we say building a portfolio, or that's what we mean when we talk about balancing. And I just get so passionate about that because I'm like, I can show you, but I need to sit you down and give you examples because I'm going to give you this example and it's going to be really constructive, but it might not fit you. You

need to go back and do the work to get the outcome. There's actually no, hey, here's actually the answer. So I think you've got your investing masterclass. I do. I would honestly say, and this is the best thing about investing. We can spend a whole hour talking about one question. If you are getting started, I believe the best and the first investment you should make is in your own education and understanding. Oh, a hundred percent. Your investing masterclass, it's under $400. That's a money win, they say. I would honestly say invest in the masterclass, do the time, learn, then start your investing. In fact, I will, to anyone who's on my Instagram that's going to look at maybe some of these

clips, I'm going to donate three masterclasses. Oh, no, I'm going to do that to you and then you can give them back. Whatever. I want to give away some masterclass. I'll pay with my own money. Okay. Because I believe we need to understand first before we invest. Now on that school of thought of whether we build our own portfolio, we do tweaks, we need to understand and work out whether we are a set and forget investor or we want to dabble and tweak. I would say I'm more of a set and forget investor. There is a disclosure here. Victoria and I are

licensed by a company and they've got an investment platform called Life Sherpa Invest. They have not paid for me to say this. No, it's just a good platform. I did a full deep dive on my show. And we can link that in the show notes as well. Yeah, we'll link it in the show notes. So, you can go to the Life Sherpa Invest website. They've got all the different portfolios. So, can be like higher growth, growth balanced. And you can see all the ETFs that they invest in and the percentages. It's literally free, publicly available information. And I love that they do that. One, because transparent kings, but also I just love that they're like, no, we back ourselves so much that you could go do this yourself or we could manage

it for you. Yeah. Diva. Is that the right? Sure. Slay. Sigma. Shibbity. Skibbity. Gosh. Skibbity toiletries. This clip is not aging well. So the thing is in the deep dive I did with Vince, we did a campfire chat podcast the other day. I listened to those. I won't lie. Three hours long. Yeah. So it wasn't for me because I listened to it on two times speed because both of you you talk like snails. It's that millennial pause. Yeah. But like the pause happens after every word. So if you're going to listen to Glenn's content, that's fantastic. It's really good content. Now, the thing is, you can go to a super fund, you can go to LiveShare for Invest and look at the assets and the asset allocation. But what if something changes in the portfolio? You need to

be on top of that. We talked about one of the Aussie equity funds. They made a change to a manager. You just have to be on top of it. So check out Life Sherpa Invest. Again, I'm personally going to be using that in my own money because I was a client, then I started a super fund and I'm now going to investing that in my super fund. So that's exciting. I'm a big believer because of the transparency. I'm happy with the fees because they're not gouging, they're reasonable and they take care of the investing. Yeah. I feel like as ex-advisors, we have gone through a lot of different phases where we go real aggressive with buying direct shares on our own. We want to control every inch of our portfolio. And then we go, oh, maybe we want to take our hands off and

we do a bit of like super stuff. Or then we put our hands back on and go, oh, maybe I really want to go into having just ETFs. And I feel like I've done the swings and the roundabouts over the last 10 years. And now I'm at a point where I'm like, you know what? I've got a few assets that are direct shares. They're fun. Like, you know, and I'm maybe having a little bit of a look at things, but most of my portfolio is two ETFs, sorry, now three ETFs, international, Australian, and I'm calling it a day because I'm just exhausted with how much time, energy and effort goes into managing a portfolio consistently. And for what benefit? Like I'm achieving the same returns that a managed fund can. Yeah. And I think the older we get, the more we look back

and become a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Look it up, Google Images. It's an awesome thing. You start out, you get really confident, you get ignorant. Then you realize that, oh crap, I know nothing. And you kind of reset. I've realized in my life, I'm a full-time content creator. That's what my focus is on my podcast and my business. I'm outsourcing the investing. But if you want to do it yourself, you can copy other portfolios. You just have to be onto it. Yeah, 100%. All right, Glenn, I want to know now,

we've talked a lot about investing individually, but one of the questions we got from the community was, is it a smart move to invest jointly with your partner or should it just be in one name? I want to know your thoughts first. Or do you want to know mine first? I don't care. You can know my thoughts.

do you just want to know my personal strategy well I guess if your personal strategy is your public thoughts I'll hear both either I mean I'm in a situation that is I would say privileged because if something should happen in my relationship and we decide not to continue it which is not on the cards at the moment but I think that anyone who's Steve for now yeah like I like Steve for now he's in the good books but if we decided to part ways we both have the ability to continue to earn good income. I'm not compromised because I took, you know, time to be a stay at home mom or like, you know, made sacrifices for his career to flourish. Like he has a solid career and so do I. So a lot of that conversation I think needs to come into

joint assets. Like, you know, if you're staying at home, making a lot of sacrifices to put someone else's career first, like I don't want it to be in one name. I have an individual share portfolio that's in my name because I established it before I even met Steve. And while we're in that dating and like early lifestyle phase before we were married, I was still investing into that. We also have an investment portfolio that we own jointly, but we own it inside a trust. And the reason we own it inside a trust is because, and I'm just being really honest, I know that I have a lot of privilege and I am very grateful for it, but I also need to point out, I did work really hard for this. So I don't want to be shy that I've been successful.

Yeah, there is a thing out there and it's called living in reality. I think I live in it most days. You're allowed to work hard and be successful. Yeah. And I don't- Not at the detriment to others. Oh, absolutely not. And that's why I'm proud of what I do every day because my success has come from bringing other people up, but we also own an investment property. So inside our trust at the moment, which we established when we decided to, you know, kind of invest a bit more aggressively for our futures is an investment property and a share portfolio. And obviously

every year, those profits, if there are profits get distributed to us and, you know, we can reinvest and whatnot. And the reason for that is literally because of historicals. There was no point me selling down my share portfolio to invest it into the trust because there would have been capital gains issues, tax issues, whatnot. I have stopped contributing to that portfolio, unless it's like that portfolio holds the stuff that I like to have fun with. Yeah. That's your little side quest. Yeah. That's yeah. Side adventure. But then inside our trust, the share portfolio that we have has a consistent monthly investment that goes into it in both of our names and it is a

joint asset. And for us that works. So I think, and you would know this already, but the decision made there was a tax decision to hold it inside a trust because I am a high income earner. Yeah, and it's an asset protection position. And I will say family court will pierce any corporate veil. So, if there is a family court property dispute, they'll open that trust right up. It's not protected. Yeah, it's not protected in that way. Yeah. So, I think your comments I would agree with. And when you started talking, I got a bit nervous. And then you said the T word trust. You got nervous because I just own stuff in my personal name.

No. You're like, what is she doing? No, not at all. I got a bit nervous. My personal view is I don't think there is great benefit holding a joint investment account. However, it's technically for both of you not because it's owned by the trust and you're both beneficiaries.

So if we move that aside, if you're not a self-employed person, if you do not have a trust and most people most of the time don't need a trust. That is a shiny, fancy thing that essentially tells you that I earn a significant amount of money. And I think it's important to be transparent with you guys about that. I don't take it for granted any day of the week. And do you know what? It could be gone tomorrow. Like I might lose literally everything and that is okay, but that's the risk you take as a business owner. I don't want to say that with the expectation that you then go, oh my goodness, Victoria has a trust with her husband and that's what I should do because that strategy might not fit and nine

times out of 10, it won't fit. I wouldn't in my own personal life have a joint account with a spouse or partner in terms of shares because the issue is there's really no flexibility and particularly with estate planning, I'd have to fact check myself. It's one or the other. when you set up a joint brokerage account, you need to check with the brokerage to work out whether by default it's tenants in common or joint tenants. So that means if you die, you need to just check if there is a joint share brokerage account, whether the registry say that one half goes to the estate of the deceased or one half goes to the surviving person automatically. so check that. The reason also why I don't love joint share accounts, there's a philosophical

side to this, which I can get to. With the lack of flexibility, if two people have a genuine alternate risk profile, it just gets a bit more confusing. If there is a separation and we did need to sever the assets, well, one sale, it lands on both people's tax return. There's just less flexibility. I went into it in great detail in the investing book that I think I was talking about last time. I think when it comes to money and investing, your own share accounts, it's fine. If there is a broader discussion in your household, I actually put in my Facebook group a couple of weeks ago. Does anyone want to come on the podcast and debate me on something that they disagree with me? I don't know what I could come on the podcast and disagree with you about

because I feel like you're the boy version of me. Yeah. And this is where it gets philosophical. In your household, do you share money or have you got separate finances? I'm of the personal view that the law says if we're in a de facto relationship over 18 months and whether there's $100,000, $10,000, if it's in joint names, it's either. If it's in separate accounts, it's either. Yeah. However, there is a carve out. My own view is, and this is a teaser for the debate I'll have

with my awesome listener, she's coming on to debate me because she thinks couples should keep their money separate. Yeah, like fully separate and never together. Yeah, I would agree on the principle and the debate will be that there's no current record of any DV or anything like that. Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no. However, I think as best practice, if the law says you both own everything equal,

practically I think we need to have our own emergency funds in our own names. Okay, I agree. I was about to tell you that I disagree. You've got your little escape money. Yeah. And that's awesome, but I'm talking day to day. Yes, Steve and I have our incomes come into one account together

and we share everything like there's never a conversation of his pay versus my pay like we're always talking household income over time that has ebbed and flowed there have been periods of our you know shared life where we've shared money and he's earned more than me and then years where I've earned more than him and I can't tell you when that's happened because it comes into the one account and then we deal with life but we have always had our own spending accounts we've always had our own savings like to the side so that that is kind of like a form of protection because we know that 50% of marriages end in divorce right so even though it's not very sexy and not very romantic and we don't want it yeah we don't want to talk about it like we actually have to have

these conversations because 50% of marriages end in divorce the other 50% Glenn end in death which is why we need to talk about binding financial agreements and then on the flip side we need to talk about estate planning. So, if you're not talking about either of those, you're going to at some point, irrespective of whether your relationship is successful or it doesn't work out, you're going to have issues if you don't have that documentation in place. I totally agree. And this is where, you know, nuance is the first casualty of a Facebook comment. But you didn't take the whole situation into consideration and it would have been much bigger than the Facebook comment would have allowed. Yeah. And that's why I want to unpack it with

my listener when she debates me on it because I think yeah business as usual day to day we need to make the view are we married or are we de facto are we doing life together yeah if the answer is yes this is why I'm getting someone on to debate me I'm sleeping just as well tonight if people disagree with me awesome I might learn something they can disagree with me and sleep just as well awesome. We can all get along. I just like debating these ideas. So, I think the debate is if we agree that we're doing this as a team together, the business as usual, rent, electricity bill, groceries, whatever, who cares? Let's have a joint account. Let's have our own individual splurge little fund money accounts. Awesome. But I think 100% we need our own emergency savings in

our own account. But back to the share question, it's just a little bit more nuanced and annoying to have a joint brokerage account, joint property, it's easy. There's one asset. Are we selling it or not? Yes or no? It just can be a bit more complex. So I'm not a fan of joint investing accounts. The trust layer basically says the trust owns the account and the income can be distributed each year to wherever it needs to land. That's all good. But I think we're on the same page there. I agree. And I think it's, you know, one of those things when I was a financial advisor it was definitely a school of not owning joint assets and setting up maybe two share portfolios even though we had a little bit more brokerage it would mean that there was structure

if someone wanted to leave we didn't actually have to sell assets you kind of just went your own way and I'm very much a risk averse person as much as I'm like I would say a very high risk investor I'm very risk averse because I just don't want there to be negative impact on people and like you see it in lots of situations where they're like we had to sell the house because the other person couldn't afford to buy out and so therefore we both lost like i just want there to be amicability where possible and that's the thing like if you hear all this stuff and you have separate finances and live together and i pay for rent because there's actually no one size fits all approach like you might do it yeah we're talking about i'm not gonna do it and this is just

my view and it's worth what everyone paid for it yeah which is millions trillions even all right glenn let's go to a really quick break because this has been good but i really want to pivot into talking about chemist warehouse and what's going on there so guys don't go anywhere all right glenn we are back and i feel like we've been having a very good conversation about investing and philosophy and sharing money and sharing assets. And it's been, I think, a lot of fun. We haven't answered that many questions, so you're going to have to come back again. I'm sorry. But we did have a community member ask us about Chemist Warehouse, especially with all of the hype that has been surrounding that business at the moment.

Obviously, we can't say whether someone should invest in it or not. But I want to know from your perspective, Glenn, what makes a company like this interesting from an investment opportunity perspective? Yeah. So, most people would own Chemist Warehouse now because Sigma Healthcare basically ate them, which was interesting because Chemist Warehouse was the bigger company. Tried to eat them. Yeah. But Sigma, they do a lot of, you know, over-the-counter medications, medical supplies. They own like AmCal, Guardian Pharmacy, discount drug stores. They are a relatively big dog, but you don't know who they are because they're not called AmCal.

That's right. So basically Chemist Warehouse, and I think it's just important before we talk about the investing opportunity is just to step back. You know, they were valued at about 10 billion Australian before the merger. Just a few dollar-oos. Where Sigma was worth about 800 million. So 10 times. It's an interesting world in the pharmacy world.

We know that Woolworths can't open a pharmacy. Coles can't open a pharmacy within the stores, which I think is good. But Chemist Warehouse, like you go in there, you can buy literally everything but fresh produce. It's like full on like the price line and all that. They do have the little fridges for your probiotics. So they're getting close. Yeah.

So I'm not really saying much here other than Chemist Warehouse, it's a retail store. they do chemistry things. They do chemistry things. But the investing thing, I think what we need to look at, and I don't play in the weeds of individual stocks. I would say if you do the investing masterclass, you will talk conceptually about individual stocks. You'll learn potentially how to value individual stocks. There are a lot of free websites that will give a rating to individual companies, whether they think they're overvalued and their rationale, whether they're worth a buy or not. But I will say, and this is just what I do, I don't have more than 10%

of my equity portfolio in individual stocks because I want to buy the market. I don't want to try and pick winners. But if you are interested in the story, you look into it, you might shop there. And just because you shop there, it doesn't mean it's a good investment. I mean, there's a bank that I bank with where it's actually a dog of a bank compared to the one down the road as an investment. So I buy shares in the one down the road and I bank with the other one. So we have to disconnect that. But if you're like, I love this story, I want to buy into Sigma, the chemist thing, it's a very interesting sector when you look at it. And if you've met any small businesses, most pharmacies are small business owners and licensees and whatnot. It's an interesting

industry and they are a genuine disruptor like medication that i takes like half price from chemist warehouse it's actually a really solid business yeah but they've just taken the view we'll obviously get scale by buying the medications probably not making much on them but we'll sell the other vitamins makeup deodorants yeah i get my goat soap there all that stuff so the investment question is you'll find so much information online. It's a list company. And it's fun to do the research because it's also probably in the ETFs you're already purchasing, right? And it's in your super already. You will have exposure. I think it's interesting because a lot of you are already going to own Sigma and you might not have paid any attention to Sigma until now. And

you're hearing a name like Chemist Warehouse and you're going, hold on, what does that mean? That's a really cool acquisition. And the whole purpose of the Chemist Warehouse framework working is because it's low cost, high volume. It's why everybody I know goes down to Chemist Warehouse because their medications are genuinely cheaper. So you've got people hook, line and sinker. I'm always buying additional things at Chemist Warehouse because I'm roaming around the shop. I'm looking around going, what's going on while I'm waiting for my buzzer for my antidepressants. It is like, I do feel it for the other self-employed small business owners with their community pharmacy that might be another franchise where they literally can't do the medication for

that cheap. And I get that, but I also think that we're talking from an investment perspective and, you know, Chemist Warehouse does franchise out. So there are a lot of small business owners who own Chemist Warehouse locations, which is very cool. And Chemist Warehouse shareholders now own about 85% of the new company, which means that they are majority owners, which is kind of attractive. And there's an expectation in the market that it's going to then attract, and this is why it's being talked about a lot, attract a very strong investor interest because people are like, this was a privately listed company that we all thought was successful beforehand. Now it's gone public because it is very dominant in the pharmaceutical sector.

Every day a $10 billion whale that's private gets listed. A hundred percent. Like if you've gotten to being that size and you have made the conscious decision to list, that decision would have been made because there is significant upside. They can clearly afford to scale. They can clearly afford to even go down to the bank because even companies like Chemist Warehouse might go down to the bank and get a loan to grow their business. they have the backing to be able to do that. But when you list as a company, it puts significant responsibility back onto you as the organization. Do you have a proper board, which you didn't have an obligation to have before? Have proper governance and actually report to shareholders.

So there must need to be some very significant upside for what was privately owned company to list. And I think that's so exciting. And it's a good liquidity event for the private owners anyway. Oh, a hundred percent. They might've said, I just want some cash out. And the only way I'm going to get, exactly. I think they're a Melbourne story to start with. Yeah, I believe so. All right. Let's move off Chemist Warehouse because I know I'm running out of time with you, but we also promised that we would talk about tech ETFs. And we had a community member ask about investing in a tech ETF, but they weren't sure where to start because there are so many options out there, Glenn. What should we be looking for if we are looking for a tech ETF specifically?

There are so many options out there. I'm going shopping. I've made my decision. I have my product. I know what platform I'm investing on, but I looked up on, I don't know, shares. I typed in tech ETF, heaps of options came up. How am I picking? I don't even know if I know the answer to that. For me, it goes back to why do you want a tech ETF to start with? Because sometimes- They sound shiny. Yeah, we ask these questions. I personally don't own a tech ETF. Peel back the onion a little bit.

The S&P 500, there's a huge tech weighting. You look at NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, all these companies have such big weighting. Yeah, we were talking about NVIDIA on the podcast the other day. I think you don't realize how significant it is because they hold such dominance over certain economies. So like all these big tech companies, your Googles, you know, Tesla's borderline tech. I've got enough exposure to them.

We've got tech at home. Yeah. Like, I know I can't go to bed without tech. My mum was saying that the other day. She bought an earth sheet where they plug into the wall. It connects to the earth of the PowerPoint and you lay under it. So anyway. Mum's gone to Lulu.

Tech everywhere. Am I right? I'm calling her up. I'm going to be like, excuse me, but what are you talking about? Mom, let's drop the earth sheet. Sounds like you got scammed from a TikTok video, Mom. Totally did. Yeah, so if you do want tech exposure,

the good thing is most of them will be an index. A lot of them will be a NASDAQ index. A lot of them will be listed in the US because most of the big tech plays are in the US. And if we tie it back to the question on fees, you could take the view that, okay, there's three tech ETFs and I don't even know because I don't look at this stuff enough. I'll make examples like there's one from BlackRock.

There might be one from BetaShares. There might be one from GlobalX. There might be one from State Street. They all have the same tracking on the index. You might just go, I want tech exposure. I can see the index. I'm just going to go the cheapest. But having said that,

the cheapest might be only a whisker away from the next one up. So again, I don't know the answer. Make sure if you want some exposure, maybe you see it as a satellite in your portfolio. So you might say, okay, I do want some extra tech exposure, but I'm not going to put more than 10% of my portfolio into that because you will have overlap. You look at anyone who invested in the Spaceship app, they got a real lesson about diversification

and what a single sector tech investment will do when the going isn't good. Yeah. And tech right now is doing really well. like we're seeing returns of 20, even 30% in tech ETFs. So I feel like that is potentially what is driving the interest and the need for a tech ETF because you go, the returns are incredible, but that is fleeting. Like I always say on the pod, when in doubt, zoom out. And when you're not sure about something like, let's look at the bigger picture, what's their long-term strategy? Like, what is your strategy purchasing this ETF? Are you going to be holding it for a

long period of time? Or are you going to just like make hay while the sun's shining, which I wouldn't recommend, but I would be stepping back and picking the research house or the share trading platform first. So you mentioned before like beta shares or Vanguard, I'd work out which one of those businesses aligns to your values. You might go really love a Vanguard. Fantastic, Glenn. I'm so happy for you. Yeah. You like the color red. Cool. Well, let's actually hone it down and then just look at their offerings as opposed to every single offering on the market. Or you might be purchasing a tech ETF because obviously purchasing direct shares of an international asset is not actually the best idea. Like most people aren't going to go buy direct shares in Apple because

there's currency issues. There's a lot of things going on. You might want to pick an ETF, but you might be looking for a specific weighting so that you can say, or you can own Apple. I would be looking at it that way. There's no best ETF, but I could sit down and write a whole blog post or do a whole podcast on it, Glenn, of like what were the best performing tech ETFs in 2024, but past performance is not a reliable predictor of future performance. And therefore it would just be a conversation to have to see what happened historically. Yeah. And I think it's interesting nevertheless. I mean, if someone is on the train or going for a walk, just pull up Google now and search Intel share price and just in the top Google chart, click maximum. And so you'll see

in the early 2000s, Intel did a lot as Nvidia is kind of currently doing. And then you'll see it kind of come off. So yeah, I don't have huge overexposure to the tech ETFs. I feel like this has been fun chat. One last question though. I want to know, Glenn, what is one investing myth that is currently driving you mad? I don't know about you, but I am a tragic on TikTok. Like most of my screen time is spent on TikTok and I'll say that but like I'm not proud of it I'm just sharing and the amount of investing content I see that I'm like that is terrible weird advice and I have to scroll on because I'm not going to get in DM or you know comment arguments but what's been annoying Glenny James recently? Gosh I'll just give caution to any type of things that you know

people are like, sell the farm, go all in on crypto or Bitcoin or get rich ASAP type stuff. Yeah. I think that's probably what annoys me. If something worked for one person, it doesn't mean it's going to work again. And we can all fall into this trap. I picked a winner here. Doesn't mean I can do it again. A hundred percent. And if someone's on TikTok going, you need to put all your money to Bitcoin. If you want to build your financial future. Absolutely not.

Nah, maybe have a small allocation. in your portfolio. Yeah, we're not saying it's terrible, but there seems to be an oversaturation. Less is more. You don't have to over-engineer your investing portfolio. You'll make more money from your job and your career than your investing account at the moment. So, focus on what makes more money in your life and you'll be all GTG. I like that. We did get a few questions sent through actually, Glenn, that we covered in our last Q&A with you. So, if you're wondering about things I mentioned earlier. So if you've been thinking about chess sponsorship or investing in international markets or graduating from micro investing platforms to big boy platforms, or even

we spoke about investing for kids last time, I'm going to make sure that that episode is linked in the show notes. So you can check that out and get more Glenny James content. Glen, as always, what a pleasure. I'm so grateful to have you in my brand new studio. I love it. And it feels like a better conversation than sitting at that desk. I know. I love it. I feel like it's a lot more relaxed. I feel more relaxed. Like I don't leave the studio feeling exhausted anymore. This is just having a chat. We're not doing a podcast. I think that's the difference. Yeah. That's much better. All right. Well, thank you for your wisdom for anyone who wants to hear more from the Glenn James himself. Where can we find you? You can search money, money, money,

wherever you're listening to this. And I've got to get V on to do MLM episode for my people. I cannot wait. We've been talking about this for so long. And if you guys think I'm over multi-level marketing. You're wrong. I just haven't had time. All right. We need to get you on my show. I'm excited. All right. We are done. But if you've been listening to this and you want to get investing, my next intake for the investing masterclass is open now. Masterclass is going to open its doors and start on the 1st of April, which I'm really excited about. The link is going to be in the show notes for that. And of course, if you loved this episode, make sure that you're following the podcast so you never miss an update from us. Hit that subscribe button. Leave us a

review if you're feeling a little bit generous and come hang out with us in the she's on the money community on instagram because that's where we do all of our call outs for questions for episodes just like this we love hearing your questions so keep them coming my friends that is it for us glenny james goodbye happy investing and we'll see you next time 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

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