She's On The Money - Going to the chapel and we're...

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

GONNA GET MA-A-A-RRIED. Today on the show, we're talking all things weddings! How much does the average Aussie spend on a wedding? Why is the cost of weddings on the rise? What can we do to keep them down? This is our final episode of season one, friends! Thank you for this incredible journey - growing this community of money-savvy women has been so heartening and rewarding. We have loved every minute! Do you love the podcast SICK and want more SOTM? Of course you do! Join our Facebook page to share your money wins and money confessions, follow us on Insta for daily inspo to keep you on track and DEFINITELY subscribe to our newsletter, the written recap of the pod's key takeaways, including some bonus bits you won't want to miss... In a money mess and need help untangling the muddle? We've got you sorted - simply record your qualm and send it through to us at [e-mail] and you may end up on the podcast! 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 only and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. Victoria Devine is an Authorised Representative of Consultum Financial Advisers Proprietary Limited ABN 65 006 373 995 I AFSL 230323.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

She's on the money. She's on the money. Hello and welcome to She's on the Money, the podcast for millennials who want financial freedom. I'm Annabelle Lee, one of your co-hosts. I'm a law student and a millennial who desperately wants to get better at all things money. To do that, every week I sit down with my friend and money expert, Victoria Devine. That's you, Victoria. Good morning.

As always, it's been a great week for so many of our Shoes on the Money community members with so many coming into the space to share their money wins. So let's share our favourites from the week, shall we? What have you got for me? Alright, so I have one from Matilda. She says, massive money win. Thanks to my sister Jessica's immense help and nifty spreadsheet work. woman after my own heart. I've gotten my boss to finally back pay me what they owe. I'd been paid

$18 an hour as a 20 year old casual for the last two and a bit months and they weren't paying any super, no penalty rates either. But tonight I'm going to get a nice $1,400 boost to my bank account, $500 added to my super and a 45% pay rise moving on. How good is that? I love watching your eyes light up when someone says spreadsheet it's a bit creepy isn't it there are like certain words that just like you're like oh yes that's the word i love like it's really bad so we went out last week with my dad and my dad's an accountant and we full-on got into this conversation about spreadsheets and my sister leant over the table and was like guys cut it out we're not all financial advisors and no i'm sorry but i'm also not sorry at all he taught me some really cool

stuff i've got one from kate this week who said when after pay reaches 30 and you invested three K in it at $3. Woohoo, money win. Check her out. I think that's a really impressive one and something that actually got a lot of traction in the group. But I think we need to actually remember that just because one person made a lot of money on a particular share because they invested early, that does not mean that it is a good share to invest in moving forward. It could have already peaked. It might not be the right share for you at this point. She's just got a really good example of getting onto a good thing really early and that's why investment can be really cool sometimes. So cool. Victoria today on the show we're talking about weddings but before

we get there as always it's time to share a money win or a money confession from the week. How did you go this week? All right Annabelle I have a confession for you this week. Oh no tell me. I know I feel like I had a couple of good runs with my money wins but this week I purchased something online and was really excited to do so had been planning to for a while and I waited for a discount code to come out so I could purchase it and I was all gung-ho on my phone trying to get the purchase done before running on to something else that I forgot to apply the discount code. Oh, Victoria, Victoria. So I haven't yet emailed them to see if they could, you know, apply it post because they did give it to me directly so I feel like they would be happy with that but I was also a little

bit embarrassed to email them especially after I waited for so long to get the code. So maybe that can be my action for the week to email them. How much were you saving? $150. Oh yes. You need to chase us. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Tell me you've got a money when Annabelle come on. I do. I will save this segment, Victoria. Okay. I'm so grateful to have you. So my friend's mom was throwing out a bunch of stuff and she was going to throw out her sewing machine. And I was like, I'll take that. And so I've been this past week, I've been like altering my clothes. I'll be maybe not so successfully but I've been like taking up clothes I changed an old pair of jeans into shorts oh you're impressive getting ready for summer are you sure you don't want to go into being a tailor

like I've got a few things that need fixing I'll start like a tailoring company one day maybe now Victoria let's talk about the average cost of a wedding Bright to Be magazine found the average Australian wedding costs $65,482 while Wedded Wonderland put the average cost of a wedding at $53,168. Then we have ASIC, who a few years ago said the average cost of an Aussie wedding sat around $35,000. Victoria, why are these numbers so different? I think these numbers are so different because of where they're pulling data from. So Wedded Wonderland might have pulled their data from their database and might have sent out a survey, whereas ASIC I think is probably going to have a more realistic number because they would have the data that's collected in the

census every couple of years. So even saying that $35,000 is a lot of money to be spending on a wedding. And to be honest, I don't know a lot of people and that might be my privilege speaking. I don't know a lot of people who have only spent $35,000. I have, I guess, a friendship circle and I live in a space where a lot of people are spending a lot more than that. And it honestly baffles me, especially as someone who's not engaged and not planning on getting married anytime soon i'm in this position where i'm like whoa that's a massive cost i was reading all those numbers and i was like they sound just as big like they all sound completely out of my like range it's crazy and to think that a lot of people spend money on weddings and this is the one thing that

gets me they spend so much money on weddings to then go into a marriage in debt and that baffles me yeah so sydney morning herald and age money editor caitlin fitzsimmons said these are surveys done by bridal magazines and wedding planners. They have a vested interest in giving you a high number and trying to normalize spending a lot of money on your wedding. What do you think about that? All right. Well, I feel like maybe had I known you were going to say that second, I would have changed what I said before, but absolutely. So I think that they want to normalize spending a lot of money on your wedding, which makes a lot of sense because the wedding industry is incredibly lucrative. You look at how much weddings cost and as much as I've got no intention of

getting married soon. My best friend, Steph, actually just got engaged, which is really exciting. I know, right? Like everybody posting the group, your tips for Bali weddings, because I know that's where we'll go. But she just got engaged and we've started looking at wedding venues and how much that's going to cost her and what that's going to look like. But it is so much more expensive than I even anticipated. And looking up quoting tools and wedding budget blogs and things really blows it out of proportion. Like I did not know someone could spend that much on cake oh cakes are so expensive my sister's getting married too and we've been we're gonna go cake testing cake test oh can i come oh yeah probably yes please so excited but they're so expensive

it's crazy incredibly expensive that's all despite the actual cost of getting married having an authorized celebrant and the right paperwork costs a maximum of about 400 in australia in some states like tassie you only need to pay 50 to be officially married so why is it that australians are spending tens of thousands of dollars on one single day I think that goes back to the way Australians and potentially other people in other parts of the world view weddings like it is your one day like we as little girls had bride Barbie growing up people would always talk about you know the man of your dreams the person you would marry what type of wedding you would want like I remember when I was 16 girls talking about the type of wedding they want and I remember there was a full

argument in my high school over two girls who liked the same dress like are you kidding mine yeah but like we didn't even have partners at that period of our life you were 16 exactly potentially I'm getting a little bit confused because we also had our debutante ball at the same period of time but even that was an expensive cost that I found quite ridiculous at the time so I think that we tend to spend so much money on weddings because one we feel like it's expected of us. But two, in our culture, we see it as a good start to a married life. So to have a big, beautiful wedding is a reflection of hopefully the type of marriage we will have. But I think the reality here is one in two marriages don't actually last. And in 2019, that figure is only

creeping up. So the question really is now, why are we spending so much money on something that could be a potentially bad investment? Like putting my financial advisor hat on, if I said, hey invest sixty five thousand dollars there's a one in two chance of you losing the whole thing how would you feel you don't want to have to regret that no do you think that there's a performative aspect of weddings in that we want them to be like the weddings we see on Pinterest boards and on our Instagram feeds that means that we're splashing more cash on them I think that comes back to Instagram culture as well and people setting up unrealistic expectations for what a wedding looks like so recently we've had some really great threads in the Facebook group about

weddings and about how much they're costing people. And so many people had so many good ideas, one on saving money, but two on potentially just downgrading the entire wedding. A lot of people were saying, hey, I got married 20 years ago. We went to the registry and then we had a party with our friends and it was honestly the best day of our lives. And I think we need to work out why we're having a wedding and what feelings we're trying to elicit here. Is this actually in line with our values so I genuinely have no issue with you telling me you want to spend a large sum of money on a wedding if that is what your goals and your values and your aspirations are and if you tell me look above and beyond absolutely everything else Victoria this is

what I want fantastic I would be more than happy to help you organize that but I think if it's not in line with your values or you're in a position where you're doing things because you feel like you have to or it comes back to that performative aspect of weddings like are you just doing it because you think you have to you don't owe anybody anything and I think this has been the theme of the last two podcasts but you do not owe anybody anything you don't have to do anything specifically even if a Pinterest wedding looks incredibly beautiful just because that looks beautiful and you like it doesn't mean you actually have to have all of those elements in your big day so my sister's currently planning her wedding and we had this big debacle about the chairs you wanted

at the ceremony and she was comparing these two chairs that were virtually the same but she was like this one's more like photogenic and more aesthetically pleasing and I kept coming back to the same question is it going to matter like are people still going to have a good time regardless of the chair you pick and it didn't matter and so we went for the cheaper chair that's really interesting and I think that that's really common like you see so many brides getting wedding planners to outsource it but then you also see people getting really bogged down in the details and something that I've always stuck to albeit I haven't ever gotten married people don't remember the table or the napkin you chose or the type of bombonieri you put on the table for them to take

home people actually remember how you made them feel and I think that that's the most important part of the wedding so if you're getting bogged down in which type of chairs are most photogenic like are you going to be looking at pictures of the chairs 20 years from now or are you going to be looking at pictures of your friends and the great time they had exactly so the irony here is that according to The Economist, those who have a wedding above their means are more likely to get divorced. A study published in 2015 by two economists at Emory University found that among couples of the same income, education and race, those who had married on a higher budget were more likely to get divorced, citing money problems as one of their key reasons for splitting.

What do you think about that? I cannot say that I'm surprised to hear that. I think it's something that is actually a reflection of people not having open, honest conversations about their money story at the beginning of their relationship but then also not working towards shared money goals that are increasing their wealth and financial security over the long term. So if you're putting yourself in a financial position where you are starting a relationship under financial stress of course it's going to be stressful of course it's going to be hard. I think you need to be on the same page moving forward and talk about things like hey what do we actually want to achieve what types of schools will we want to send the children that we

potentially want to have how much will that cost us what type of home do we want and potentially is a home deposit something that we should be working towards instead of a wedding so is there a rule of thumb you'd recommend for a wedding budget when you hear of couples spending a hundred thousand dollars on their weddings do you wince a little bit yes it hurts me a little bit inside not because of how much they're spending on something that they value but because they're spending a hundred thousand dollars and I know the power of that over time um so I think it's really important to remember that we all have our values we all have things that we want to achieve things that are important to us I think at the start of your wedding journey if you're planning

one with your partner sit down and have a really good conversation about what this actually looks like and when you do set a budget set a budget that you are sticking to and make sure that you outline what that budget actually looks like it's one thing to say hey I would love my wedding to be $100,000. But what does that actually mean? How much of that is going on the venue? How much of that is going on extra catering? How much is it going on alcohol? What are you spending on your dress? What are the groom's shoes going to look like? I think you need to get into really minute detail when planning a wedding because too many times do I hear people say, oh, we went only $10,000 over as if going over budget on a wedding is a really normal thing to happen. And that's

something that we should do with all of our budgets. Like get into the minute detail and work out what's of value to you. Like if flowers are a massive value to you, spend a lot on them because that's what's going to make you happy. But work out a way to save in other parts of the wedding. So $100,000, I actually could not care less how much people are spending on their weddings as long as they're not going into debt to do them and as long as they are spending in relation to their values. And even though $100,000 seems like a lot of money, I feel like it's very easy to spend that amount in the wedding industry or to accidentally like splash that amount of money on like the smallest thing oh absolutely and I think that we'd be naive to say oh no that's so

much money you can do a wedding for far far less like we live and are very lucky to live in the heart of the Melbourne CBD so everything that we spend money on is going to be a little bit inflated it's going to be overpriced so I think it's about thinking about whether that is aligned to our values too. So say I've got friends trying to plan weddings in the CBD right now and I've got friends that have gotten married over the last couple of years in the CBD and their weddings are probably close to that. So it is not uncommon but I think it's also unreasonable to expect. What kind of advice do you have for brides who are currently planning their big day? How can they enjoy their weddings without obliterating their savings at the same time?

Have a think about the budget that you would like to set for your wedding and then have another to think about how long it's going to take you to save for that goal. So if you would like your wedding in 12 months, but you're only able to save $30,000 within that period of time, I wish I could save $30,000 in 12 months. But if you're wanting to spend $30,000 on that wedding, is that the right budget for you? Can you actually achieve that? If you want a $60,000 wedding, maybe you actually need to have a really good think about your timeframes and increase that. I think that people are too often willing to get into debt for a wedding because they see it as a really big life milestone when in actual fact that person if they are the right person for you is going to be there

in 12 months whether you get married right now or you get married 12 months from now hi there you've called the she's on the money hotline do you have a money problem you want help solving do you have a money dilemma you just want to chat about victoria is here to help each week we'll be playing your hotline questions to help make sense of the money mess you may have found yourself in give us a call on 0435 293 886 and you might find yourself on the show so this listener question was actually sent through to our text line she said my friend has asked me to be her bridesmaid and I'm finding the cost of being involved in her wedding is blowing out beyond my budget. She's decided to do a location wedding in Byron Bay and I'm really

stressed about how this will impact my savings. Am I allowed to tell her how stressed I am when she wants it to be so special? Can she Victoria? I absolutely think it is worth sharing with a friend how stressed you are because if I were to get married I would not want to be putting my friends in a situation that they're uncomfortable with. So by sharing how stressed you are it's not you saying I need you to fund this it's more saying hey this is something that I didn't have in my budget how you know maybe you can mold together some ideas on how you both can work together to reduce how much that's going to cost you you know if you need to wear silver shoes for the wedding maybe you have silver shoes at home that the bride would very happily have you wear

I think it's worth sharing that with them because weddings are getting really expensive like I'm seeing that even personally over the last couple of months I have a few weddings coming up where I am going to be a bridesmaid but then on top of that you've got things like the hen's party and often they are three or four hundred dollars for the weekend because my friends would like to go away. Then you're looking at the dress, the shoes, the hair, all of those things add up and I think a bride would be incredibly naive to think that they don't because they've obviously realised that by asking you to pay for them it wasn't within their budget. The average cost of being a bridesmaid between the dress accessories bridal parties and wedding gifts is $1,500 that's a pretty

big investment isn't it is it an investment or is it just I think it's not an investment I would not call it investment I would call it spending so it's something that does have to go into your budget and I will say it once again saving for things that you want to have in your budget takes compromise so if being a bridesmaid is something you would like to do you need to really have a look at the rest of your budget and work out what you're going to cut back for that period of time it might mean that you need to cut back your holiday budget a little bit or spend less on a particular thing just because you want to allocate those funds somewhere else so it's absolutely doable but again it has to be in line with your values and I actually know a couple of people who

have said no thank you to being a bridesmaid because the financial investment was just too much for them if they don't want to say no though are there other ways to limit the amount of spending when you agree to be a bridesmaid? I think it's about having an open, honest conversation with the bride and saying, hey, cool, what are you actually expecting this to cost me? Is that reasonable? Is that logical? In a world where we are more likely to have our weddings at the same time as our friends, because our friends are similar ages to us, it could be really unreasonable to expect that every single year you have a $1,500 bill to participate in a wedding. and whilst that is usually short-lived because it will only happen for you know four or five years

it is still a massive cost and it is still impacting you financially so having an open honest conversation with the bride is is imperative to you making sure that this doesn't impact you negatively over the long term so here's a nitty-gritty question if the cost of being involved is so high do you think she's exempt from buying a wedding present for the bride this is such a tricky question because again it's such a personal thing i think if you would still like to purchase the bride a gift even though you've made another investment in their wedding you are absolutely more than welcome to but potentially it's not a gift that is worth a lot of money yeah it could potentially be something more sentimental or a box you've

put together full of all of your favorite things i'm not sure what that looks like for you and again it is such a personal question i don't think that there should ever be any expectation though of a gift when you have already contributed so much and who knows maybe the bride will suggest that anyway. If you're having that open discussion with her, maybe she'll just be like, you don't have to buy me anything. Absolutely. And I hope that these open, honest conversations, if brides are listening to this, maybe put them in a position where they go, fantastic. I've been thinking so much about my own experience and my own budget for the wedding. I didn't even think about my bridesmaids. And maybe as a bride, you could take that step and have a chat with your

bridesmaids about what that's actually going to cost them. And I think the same goes for groomsmen as well because suits and ties and brand new patent leather shoes are really expensive so I think that to take a step back from the wedding being your wedding for a second and realizing how am I actually going to impact other people whilst facilitating this especially if you're having a destination wedding is really important and now it's time for my favorite segment the money diary segment let's go today's money diary is from 21 and considered I am always thinking I'm like very prone to overthinking and stressing a little bit but money has definitely been a source where I'm like no I need to know what I'm doing so I make sure that I think about all the ways that

it can impact what I'm doing and then sort of make the decision based on how it's going to impact me down the road or try to so I'm the eldest of five and grew up in a small town so like there's not a lot of job opportunities there but I've been working since I was 12 because there's not a lot of opportunities for older people but they need people who can work for not a lot of money it's not it's like pretty easy to be dodgy so yeah I've sort of had like probably 10 jobs I'm only 21 so lots of jobs but my mum is a school principal and my dad's sort of just like a laborer handyman kind of guy and their experience with money they've tried they've definitely given us an amazing life like i'm so grateful for them to my parents but they had like

a lot of credit card debt and lots of fights about money they're divorced now but like it was very much a sticking point for something that was to be concerned about and i didn't want that for myself so like no credit cards no credit where i can help it at all like trying to avoid that situation entirely we know 21 considered is the kind of empowered woman who knows where she wants to go so how much does she earn and how much has she got saved oh i just did my taxes like 35 000 yeah so i'm studying full-time doing primary teaching my savings account at the moment is actually pretty drained because i have had a lot of job changeovers this year not of my own volition so i was working at a cupcake shop which i loved for three years and then decided to leave

to get a new job and I wanted to like try some new things and then ended up starting nannying and that just sort of went south really quickly and I had to get out of that it was a little bit hostile so I got out of that as quick as I could and just sent like a hundred resumes out trying to find a job so I ended up having periods of not being working for like three weeks but twice and that really hit my savings so right now I only have about $1,300 but I've got all my bills paid so I'm not too stressed about that. So we know how 21 and Considered gets paid but what exactly happens to that money after it's deposited into her account? I've recently changed it so at my I work in before school and after school care and I get $30 an hour there as a casual. I work in

retail and get $26 an hour there and that's casual as well and I've only just started so my hours are fluctuating a lot and then I've just started work as a life assistant which is part-time and I get $22 an hour there so it all comes into one of the big big four banks which I closed all my other sub accounts off recently and so then I transfer into ing for spending because it's got low fees and I can structure it how I want within the app and then I transfer all my savings to up banking because it's got cute little emojis and savings goals and stuff so I've got it sort of separated and then ing is linked to my phone and my watch for apple pay because I found that I was spending pretty readily on just like frivolous stuff especially food when I had all of my money there

so I changed it over and now I feel like I'm a little bit more in control so I have rent which is $530 a month and I share house with four other people so I've got like a big house it's really nice my best friend my boyfriend my brother and his best friend so it's like very much like home it's really nice I have my phone bill which is about $80 a month I have contents insurance which is $66 a month electricity and gas which is probably about $150 a month altogether but we've just moved so that's still sort of I'm getting my head around exactly how much comes oh I have gym which is $30 a fortnight I have internet is $30 a month each I'm in charge of all the money at home so I have to like contact everyone and be like hey send me this money send me this money send me this

money how does 21 and considered go with investing though I don't invest yet but at the start of the year I sat down and made like a really detailed goals list of what I wanted to do in 2019 and I had money goals like specifically and one of them was to invest five thousand dollars in the share market but I haven't actually been able to do that yet because of all of the unexpected life stuff so I've restructured my goals and I would like to have a thousand dollars in by the end of this year and what about her debts I do have a hex debt and by the time I graduate it'll be about fifty thousand dollars because I'm doing teaching which is four years and I did psychology for a year and then had a semester where I didn't end up completing it

because I had back surgery. So got a hex for that one. And then I owe my dad $800, which I know is like privileged to be able to borrow money from my parents. But I did a six-week placement this year. With teaching, you have to do four weeks of placement per year and it's unpaid full-time work. And when I started working at a school,

I couldn't do both at the same time. So lots of people have no work at all for four weeks unless they have weekend jobs in which you're going from working full-time to doing additional hours so it really sucks and you spend all of your money and then you have to be most of the time spending money on resources as well to use at the school and gifts for your placement mentors and gifts for your class and it's just such a drain financially and I think it's definitely something that a lot of different degrees need to think about because there's so many like even health people have to go on like

six weeks on paid placement or eight weeks it's ridiculous so yeah that always drains my money so something I have to be really considerate of like every April I know I won't earn any money because I'll just be on placement the whole time I owe my dad $800 for rego and he loaned me $400 because it was after placement and I was just about to start a new job so I had a time where I wasn't working at all and had just not earned money for six weeks I owe the government $2,000 because I clicked a wrong box when I started my second job and got tax-free threshold for two jobs so I just did my tax and I was really scared about it and actually didn't do it till I was listening to she's on the money and someone called in saying it and I was like oh my god okay I need

to do it so I finally did it all and I earned two thousand dollars but I'm going on a payment plan for that and so I'm not stressed about it at all it's like ninety dollars a fortnight it's totally achievable and it's like ninety dollars in interest over a year so I'm more than happy to pay it and it's not actually going to be noticeable because I just finished paying like literally today a $1,500 Centrelink debt because I got Centrelink when I wasn't working as much when I first moved out of home and they overpaid me so I had to pay them back $1,500 so I did that over a year as well because I had no interest so that was $75 a fortnight so this is just $15 extra. So does 21 and Considered have any good money habits she's especially proud of? My best money habit is that

I'm organized I always know what's happening I know when my bills are due I know when I know how much I'm earning I know what I'm doing now I understand a lot more about like the paperwork involved with working so I've definitely learned a lot but yeah I'd say I know what I'm doing which I think is a strength and what about her worst money habit food food is so bad I spend so much money on groceries and like I'll be like oh I'm gonna meal plan and then I won't like what the what I've decided to meal plan or I'll be really tired after work I'm like oh let's just get uber eats like spend so much money on food so much money so what's 21 and considered actually saving for what's her big money goal my big savings goal at the moment is just 2020 in general because it's

going to be a huge year so my best friend who i've lived with for four years is new in indonesia for the year and i've promised i'll visit at least once if not twice ideally so flights to bali are pretty cheap so hopefully i'll be able to manage that but i have to go during school holidays because of work and one of my friends is getting married in june in queensland and has asked me to be a bridesmaid so that is an expensive process as well as a bridesmaid the only thing i really have to pay for is my dress which is about 300 because we're buying through white one away and got a discount and i have to pay for flights and accommodation but the bride is paying for hair and makeup and most of the other stuff and then i think the other bridesmaids and i are going to

organize the hen's party so I'm not sure how much that'll be. So how would today's money diarist rate her own relationship with money if we forced her to give herself a grade? I think I'd give myself a C. The one thing I could really do better I say that I'm organized but I also leave things to the last minute because I'm a procrastinator so I know that my bills are due on the 22nd but I won't pay them till the 22nd it's just like a stupid habit and definitely my debts just sort of being I guess a little bit uneducated on what I was meant to do I think was a weakness but I think overall I'm pretty strong I know what I'm doing I know how much I'm earning I know where it's going and what I'm going to do with it so yeah I think C maybe a C plus if I'm feeling

generous. Victoria I've been watching you enthusiastically write down notes this whole time do you have thoughts? I have a lot of notes and I think it's just because I have a lot to say on this I think she's doing really well for her age and for her stage and for the situation she's been in especially recently she's doing really well I think it comes back to why we have a rainy day fund and why we have savings the fact that she could say look I had a couple of job changeovers and it wasn't my fault but I was able to pay for things out of my savings account and whilst you know she said she only has $1,300 still in savings that's a fantastic number still but on periods of non-employment that's where things like this kick in like we're all on different journeys we're not

just saving so that we can keep all of our money in a bank a rainy day fund is actually for a rainy day and a rainy day is when you're not employed so I think it's important to acknowledge that you know having that fund has been what's kept her on her feet during that period of time and for that I think she's pretty lucky that past her has planned for future her which is really nice I think there are a couple of things and they were mainly notes that I took so the first thing I took a note on was how excited I was that she had checked her tax-free threshold and checked her Centrelink debts and realised that there are things that she needed to change. I think we can all take something from that and we can all check our tax details for our employment and make sure

that we haven't checked the wrong tax-free threshold box. I think we can also, if we have had Centrelink, just check in on that and make sure that we don't have any debts. And while we're at it, guys, check your super. Make sure that you have one account and not many fritted across the entire universe and make sure they're all up and running so i also really loved that she said she was using up bank so i've recently got to know what up bank is about and they're really cool so i've seen it in the facebook group yeah so the facebook group is going nuts and so i did some research on what up bank was and i really like it a lot of the group has been talking about ing and the thing i like about up bank is you actually get 2.5 on all of your savings accounts whereas in

the ing bank you actually only get it on one savings account and i think people are a little bit cloudy about the other accounts that you get interest on so like any interest is good interest so that's a bonus i also really liked that she said that she was good at chasing people up for money that's very important yeah so i think that that's important because i am very guilty of not chasing people up when they owe me things but i also think she could implement a system like using an app like Splitwise. I love that. I love Splitwise. Traveling with Splitwise is amazing when you're with friends. Yes. And if you've got a share house, it's fantastic to just pop on there that you were the one that bought the toilet paper so that next time someone buys paper towel or

Windex, it just gets taken off that. And there's no, you owe me this, you owe me that. It's just a clean tally and you no longer have to have those conversations about small things. Whilst I love that she's having these money conversations, I think it's also nice to sometimes save ourselves from having really small mundane money conversations where you owe me $3 and I owe you $4. Yeah, exactly. And that is all for today, guys. And also it's a wrap for season one of Shoes on the Money.

I cannot believe it, Annabelle. What have we done? I know, so much. It's gone so quickly though. Do you have a favourite episode? I do. I think it's still number one. I think I still am in love with money stories.

Or was it really? I think that that's the one that has, I think, had the most impact on people's lives. It is the one that I get the most positive feedback about and I think it's the one that we can all start from I absolutely love everything that money stories has to share with people and I think that other people do too and that makes me really really happy I actually can't believe that 12 weeks has flown by so quickly I love how money stories have come back it's been like a recurring feature in every episode I never knew that was so

important everything that we have done has come back to a money story and that's because we are ingrained that way we need to know where we started from so that we know where we're going and if we don't know where that start point is it is really really hard to make changes and i think that us acknowledging our stories and the journey that we've been on has been why she's on the money has impacted so many people's lives so quickly and in a way that i never saw coming we'll be back but in the meantime please keep in touch with us via the facebook group it's growing every day how many are we at now? I think we're at nearly 20,000 people in this group, which is crazy. And I'm so excited to have such an engaged and supportive community that literally helps each other grow.

It's incredible. So incredible. So just before we head off, as always, let's quickly wrap the boring but important stuff. The advice shared on She's and the Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She's and the Money exists purely for educational purposes only and should not be relied upon to make an investment or a financial decision. And of course, we promise, Victoria Devine is an authorised representative of Consultant Financial Advisors Proprietary Limited, ABN 65006 373 995, AFSL 2303 23. I have said that 12 times. And you've gotten better and better every single time.

So, as I mentioned before, our Facebook group is growing and I would so love for you to join us there. We share weekly money tips and tricks free of judgment. Search She's On The Money on Facebook and join us. If Facebook's not your thing, you can also keep in touch with us on Instagram. We're at She's On The Money AUS. This podcast has been a production of Shameless Media

on behalf of She's On The Money. Thanks for joining us, guys. See you soon.