She's On The Money - How Much Should You Really Have in Savings? And What To Do If Your Financial Advice Feels Wrong

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

So… what is the magic number you should have when it comes to savings? Is it a neat percentage, a chunky dollar figure, or three months of bills sitting pretty in your account? This week we’re spilling the tea on how to work out your number, so you can stop guessing and start saving with a plan that actually makes sense for your life. Then we chat about what to do when financial advice doesn’t pass the vibe check. A community member was told to merge their life savings with their partner. Cute in theory, terrifying in practice. So, what do you do when the “experts” say one thing but your gut says absolutely not? We’re pulling apart the red flags, the real questions to ask, and why protecting yourself is the ultimate power move. And because it’s Friday, you know the chaos is here too: money wins (like a $340 dress scored for $80), broke tips that actually slap, and a ferret side hustle we did not see coming. Ready for more laughs, lessons, and unhinged money chats? Check out our oh-so-bingeable Friday Drinks playlist. Listen here. Join our 300K+ She's on the Money community in our Facebook Group and on Instagram.  Acknowledgement of Country By Nartarsha Bamblett aka Queen Acknowledgements. The advice shared on She's On The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She's On The Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs.  Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are authorised representatives of Money Sherpa PTY LTD ABN - 321649 27708,  AFSL - 451289.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

knowledge and resources for you to thrive she's on the money she's on the money hello and welcome to she's on the money the podcast that makes personal finance fun especially on fridays it's our favorite day of the week because we get our little team together it's especially little today to celebrate you our incredible she's on the money community Miss Jessica Ricci is here, as always, sharing our favourite money wins. Bec's still away, so I'm going to be sharing this week's broke tips. This week, we'll be helping to answer a money dilemma that asks, how much money should you actually have in savings?

And something that you slid into our DMs about, what happens when you're not sure about advice you were given from a financial advisor? How's your week been though, Jess? It's been lovely. I went to the snow for the first time last week, which was very fun. i'd only ever seen snow ones and it was when i was hiking a mountain so that was that's not that interesting no so i um and it would have been just like a little bit slushy not really real which mountain did you go to uh it was kilimanjaro so it was pretty hectic up the top but i was so

tired that i really wasn't i didn't even notice that i it was my first time in my life seeing snow and i didn't even clock it because i was just like walking along so yeah so going to the snow for the first time was really fun i love it did you ski or did you snowboard i snowboarded because everyone I was with was snowboarding and I thought I just can't imagine it you give skier vibes I'm so sorry I'm also so envious because I haven't had time and this is like the biggest first world problem I haven't had time to like work out when we are gonna go to the snow and like low-key I'm off to Bali like next week which I'm really excited about and that was what was prioritized but my husband two weeks ago went for like just a midweek ski trip with his friends and

And I was like, one, okay, that's fine. Like have a good time. But I had a single parent and then all he's doing is sending me photos of them skiing. And so then now you're like, I went to the snow too. Do you get FOMO? I'm so envious. Next time we can go together.

How has your week been apart from that? I am prepping for Bali. Like low key, I feel like all I'm doing is talking about it at the moment, I think, because I'm like, you know when you're just like excited to get away. it's been so sluggish here it's been cold I feel like the wind this year is like extra icky so just the idea I'm gonna go to somewhere warm I'm gonna get to eat a mass amount of like nasi goreng and have a drink beside a pool and my baby is gonna be there but like it's been taking a lot more planning than you know just my husband and I going out to Bali so like making sure that Harvey

He has swim nappies I've been picking up this week, making sure he has like enough hats and rash vest and like I'm just packing for another human being that I also want to swaddle in cotton wool, you know? Yeah. I need to ask you like what your recommendations are because I was thinking about this recently. We had friends over for dinner and they've got kids

and I was like they've just, they come in, they've got like, they've got to do trips from the car, right? Because obviously we don't have kids. So you've got the high chair and the mat. We cannot. We cannot fly with carry-on only anymore. Literally, it's not possible. And I was thinking, oh, it would be nice if I could just like, you know, do some looking

on Marketplace and find, you know, just really cheap versions of all of these things. So it's like less things for my friends to have to lug around. So I'll have to pick your brain on like what the essentials are to like. Just have. Yeah. I would say a portacot. Yep. And I would say some form of high chair, but like high chairs take up a lot of space.

So maybe like those booster seats. The tabletop ones? Yeah. That can like sit on the dining chairs that you already have. because like I don't know lots of people have lots of different opinions but like I like having my baby involved in the conversation like I want him to sit at the table yeah like he doesn't have a high chair with a tray off to the side like his high chair is one that I purposefully could put under the like dining table with us so I feel that and maybe just like a big tub of blocks

yeah yeah something good something universal yeah something universal that they can play with that like kind of promotes creative play but also like you can pack away because like I'm assuming you don't want your house to look like kids live there because right now it looks like toy world yeah all over my lounge room oh fun so let's move on from there because I'm not gonna lie I don't love that my entire lounge room is now a toy shop would you like a five-star review oh I would love one I'm glad because we got a really good one this week so this one is from Morgan she says the podcast every woman needs. I have been an avid listener of the podcast for over five years. I just want to say a huge thank you to Victoria, Jess and Beck and the whole She's On The Money

team for completely transforming my money mindset. I went from $6,000 in debt after a Mexico trip with zero savings to having more than $50,000 invested in ETFs and a super balance well above the average for my age, thanks to your advice. I grew up with an abundance mindset and never felt like I ever went without, but I saw the other side through my dad. Now, tens of thousand dollars in credit card debt, forced to sell his luxury car and move in with his 96 year old mom with nothing to his name. That hit me really hard. Thanks to your podcast, I now truly value the importance of looking after future me you've changed my life and i'll be a loyal listener forever it literally is the highlight of my week much love morgz that's so nice thank you it's literally my favorite like

please don't get me wrong like everybody loves a good review but like knowing that the content that we make changes lives not just oh i love what you do thanks yeah it's like sorry did we like help you you did all the work I'm not trying to take credit for that but like sorry please tell me more stories like this absolutely they make me so excited that's incredible and how incredible you can then use that information to hopefully pass on and help your family exactly as equally exciting every single week we ask you to share your money wins and confessions with us and then Jess goes through that thread and brings what she deems to be the best money wins and confessions to the show. What have you got this week, Jess? It's always hard to choose, but I'll start off

this week with one from Catherine who said she has her citizenship ceremony this week and she wanted to get a special dress for the special occasion. She fell in love with one she tried on in David Jones, but it was $340. She went home to think about it and found the exact dress with tags still attached for sale on Depop for $80 including postage. She then got herself a pair of $10 heels on Facebook Marketplace and she said she's so chuffed. Literally, you can probably see my comment on that already because I've been there and I am excited also welcome friend you are now one of us congratulations a beautiful little odd muse number two for anyone who dresses are so expensive but like also just so beautifully cut they look gorgeous and I love that the girls are

female owner she documents on tiktok anyway I'm sure lots of people have seen that I just think it's very cool next I've got a money win from Sienna who said she changed her passport to her married name for free in New South Wales. Sorry what? And instead of putting the existing expiry date of two and a half years from now they gave her a full 10-year passport for free. What? Isn't that crazy? I don't know if that's maybe she just got lucky and that's not the standard thing. No I think it is standard if you get married and you change your name like you can apply to have your stuff updated they're like oh no we won't charge you for that. Yeah so there you go like you find the form online and get it done. Next I've got a money win from Grace who said she had lots of

flybys points so she decided to treat herself to an Apple Watch off their store and then she still had points left over afterwards. That is actually so good. I still tell every man and his dog about your KitchenAid mixer. Oh it's just the best. Every time I use that KitchenAid I feel so good about it. You're just like this was free. I know and I'm making something with love. Next I've got a money win from Irina who said money win and pet tax. She's been cat sitting as a side hustle for two and a half years and she now has plenty of regular customers but she also keeps getting new ones she said this past weekend she expanded her business by adding a new species to her portfolio stop it and getting herself a new regular client and she said meet sunny the ferret and i've

got to say ferrets are cute ferrets are so cute oh my god look at that little tiny wait oh i did i screenshot a big one i um i follow a ferret on tiktok actually i actually can't be trusted i like look at other people's tiktok feeds and they're like you know productive or like cooking and whatnot. And mine are like ducks. I've got ferrets. I look at cat videos. There's this girl I follow and she has that cat called Junie. Oh, I love Junie. I watch every single Junie video. Like, I'm sorry. Like I just look at pictures of animals. That's what the internet's for in its truest, purest form. The internet is for funny. Sorry. I just stopped following anybody who made me feel bad about myself. Anybody who made me feel like I needed to buy stuff. I was

like unfollow immediately and then I'd follow another duck page. Yeah you've really trained that algorithm. Next I've got a money win from Lucy who said she sent a message to someone at her workplace saying hey if you ever want a hand running the cooking classes that they run she was happy to help out. Yeah. Turns out it's turned into almost an extra six thousand dollars a year in extra income for her. Sorry what? She said it may even double beyond that because they run craft workshops as well and so she might be brought on to do that. She said yes technically I'm working more hours but it's different from her main role and it's something she will enjoy. I want to know where you work that you get to do cooking classes and craft workshops because that sounds like a job

I would very much like to have. Please don't tell her. I don't want her to leave. So yes. That's so funny and then lastly this week I've got a money win from another Lucy. This time Lucy with an I. She said she got an email from Bupa saying that they had gifted her $50 to spend on their online reward store. She logged in and she decided to get herself two $25 Uber Eats vouchers. She said is perfect for a girly who works shift work and she sometimes is asleep all day after a long night shift and she doesn't want to make dinner when she wakes up so she can just file the little gift cards away for later. I love that. That is a good little wrap up of the group this week, Jess. Thank you. Have you got some broke tips that Bex sent you? I do. Are you ready? So the first one is from

Ebony and she said, students and concessions get into the Immigration Museum in Melbourne for free. it's a warm place and such a fun way to spend a day i'm sorry that's genius lou has another tip for us she said to avoid paying full price at cotton on in store always check their online prices first because they will price match their online store in store oh i've done this one many a time yep she said i've got up to 50 off retail twice doing this that's so clever. And last book tip comes from Liana and she says, I'm at the end of my two week pay cycle and I typed in what things I had in my fridge and pantry and wrote into chat GPT at my location to come up with dinner plans for five nights under $100. Not only did it come up with a wicked plan,

I had 60 bucks left over. As a mom of three, this is a bloody money winning my books and now I don't need to dip into next week's food budget. That's incredible. You'd be amazed at how much stuff there is in your pantry that you can turn into a meal with a little creativity? 100%. And do you know what? It doesn't even need creativity. Sometimes you just need a fresh mind because like the amount of times I've been like, I have nothing. And then look something up online and I'm like, I had everything. And you don't even have to go to calls. Exactly. Well, Jess, let's go to a really quick break because on the flip side, I'm very excited. We get to answer a money dilemma that asks how much money should we actually have in our savings account, which I think is very

valid and something that you slid into our DMs about this week. What happens when you're not sure about the advice that a financial advisor gave you? Don't go anywhere, guys. Welcome back, everybody. Let's take a listen to this week's Money Dilemma. Hi there. Have you got a money dilemma you just can't solve? The She's on the Money team is here to help. Every week, we tackle your dilemmas, both big and small, to answer your most burning money, career and life questions. To get involved, simply head to our website and leave us a short voice recording and you might just find yourself on the show. Now let's take a listen to this week's Money Dilemma. Hi team, I hope you're all well. How can I work out how much money is ideal

to have in my savings account? I have a reliable weekly income, an emergency fund with another bank and I regularly invest in shares through dollar cost averaging. However, I've heard Victoria and others speak about not keeping much cash in savings. I want to maximize every dollar, but I also don't want to access my emergency fund until an actual emergency. So I'm keen to know how to work out how much to keep in savings. Thanks team. Have a great day. Bye. Jess, how much money do you think we should have in savings? I feel like there's no should, like there's no correct answer to that, right? Because it's going to be so different for everybody. Your savings set aside for something, you know, for me, the bulk of my savings is going to a house deposit. So obviously

I've got a number that I'm working towards for that, but that's relative to the house that I'm purchasing. If you're saving for a holiday or a car or whatever you're saving for, you know, you might have a goal number in mind. I think the principle that she's referring to is more so the fact that you want your money to be working hard, like with your investments, but our listeners saying she's already got her investments going. I don't think it's a bad thing to have money sitting in a high interest savings account and obviously like find the best option you can for you the account that's giving you the best interest rate but as to how much savings you should have outside of your emergency fund which typically we say around three months of expenses where possible

it really just depends on what you're saving for and what you're comfortable with and you know how much you were able to save like how long is a piece of string is really the question And that's the hard bit, right? Because we know from research that most Australians are unable to access $500 should an emergency pop up. Like they have to rely on credit. So I kind of want to draw attention to that before answering the question, because I think in this current economic climate, having savings is a privilege, not a given. And if you're in a situation where you're listening to this and you're like, what do you mean? How much I should have in savings? I can't save yeah queen we see you we get it but on the flip side I do think it comes back to your

values and what you're working towards like let's pretend and this listener wrote in and said you know I'm not talking about my emergency fund yes well I don't know are you planning on a baby are you saving for a house deposit like there's actually no right or wrong like personally Steve and I have our and like this is just our personal situation we have our emergency fund which is sitting in an offset account to our mortgage. And then we have our like cash hub or like our, you know, transactions account, which is where all of the money builds up for like our bills, our rego, whatever. And that gets direct debited, also an offset to our mortgage. And we have a little bit of what I'd call, you know, like a float. So like if you work in retail,

you know, you always start with maybe like $500 in the till at the start of the day. So you have the right change we have a float and in that I think it's like about two thousand dollars give or take and that's like the base amount so in case like someone's retro comes out and it was unexpected there's always going to be money in that account so for me I wouldn't say that savings that's just the structure of like our quote spending account and then for savings it really depends on what our goals are like we save for holidays we save for you know a house deposit it. We're putting some extra money aside in case we, you know, need a little bit more money if we're purchasing a bigger property. And, you know, I think it's really based on your values. Like

my savings had a little bit of a different trajectory when we were having Harvey. Yeah. Like I had worked out how much I needed for like a cot and a change table and all of that other stuff and a pram. Oh my Lord, different conversation. Why the heck are prams so expensive, Jess. What do you mean? It doesn't even have a motor. It should. Absolutely not. They should be self-driving at this point. If you're more than $1,500, I'm sorry. What the heck? Anyway, I think it's really up to your values. There's no right or wrong when it comes to like how much you should have in savings. I think you need to ask yourself some questions. What are your values? What are you working towards? What would you spend your money on

if you had savings because if it's like oh I don't have anything I would spend money on like Steve and I and this is just like my personal situation and I feel like that I don't know helps contextualize it I don't actually want all of our money sitting in offsets to our mortgage because don't get me wrong it's offsetting interest payable and that's a money win but both of us are quite aware that we'll make more money and that money is working even harder if it's in an investment. So like we don't sit on a lot of savings just purely because we're like, we have our emergency fund, we have our little float. Every single month when our incomes come into that account, they're divvied up. And you know, when we were planning for a baby and we were

saving for Harvey to come along and when we are planning for a holiday, we actually figure out our investments and like flip that around a little bit so that we go, okay, we'll have the savings for that particular event. But then we revert back to sending as much as possible to an investment. Yeah. But that's going to be different for everybody. Yeah. Based on your priorities and stuff. Yeah. 100%. And I think that's it. Learn your priorities and it will tell you how much you need in savings. Yeah. Anything else to add Jess? No, I think that about covers it. Should we get into the juicy DM? I'm so excited. Yes, of course. This is my favorite segment and I hate that we always have to wait until the end of the episode every single

week to do it. All right. So this is the DM we got. Help. My fiance and I have seen a financial advisor who's recommended we add my name to his house title which is his asset and open a joint share portfolio with my savings. I've got about a hundred thousand dollars that we both keep contributing to. I don't want to add my name to the title. I'm a dual citizen and it can mean I have to pay capital gains tax on the house if we ever sold and also cuts me off from the first homeowner's grant in the future. After listening to so much financial advice to protect yourself, it feels uncomfortable to put his name on my life savings. But we're also getting married soon and to keep it separate doesn't sit right either. What would you recommend?

There's lots to unpack there, isn't there? Oh my God, what would you do, Jess? I think, so the first thing that jumped out is the comment that you'll have to pay capital gains if you sell a house. I believe anyone would have to pay capital gains on the profit. you do it's a little bit different if you're a dual citizen because you've got international tax to take into consideration so you are not wrong yeah but it also is a little bit it's a little bit different yeah got it okay I would say have you said this to your financial advisor because from my understanding a financial advisor is going to look at your situation give you like

their opinion on well this is what I would do if I was in your circumstances but you're well within your right to say to them oh thank you for the advice you know exactly what you just said to us like I am not like I don't want to waste my opportunity to take advantage of first-home buyer grants I ideally would like to keep my savings independent or my investments independent or perhaps he's recommended putting his name on it I don't really know maybe there's some benefit tax wise or something like that I don't know how that works I'm not a financial advisor shocking but you know you can have a conversation with them I would say and say hey like what are my other options I don't like x y and z can you give me an alternative like it's not as

if they lay down the law and that's it they're giving you their best recommendation but they're also like they will operate within the framework that you provide them so if you hadn't said to them at the beginning we want to keep our assets separate their recommendation is not going to take that into account yeah so i would say just go back to unless for some reason you were unhappy with them or their advice i would say go back to the same advisor and tell them exactly what you told us and get them to do a different work up for you i'll just be really honest as an ex financial advisor this question makes me really uncomfortable and the reason for that is I feel like you haven't been listened to and by the time you get to your SLA or like your statement of

advice and your financial advisor is putting all of your recommendations on the table and going all right Jess this is what you guys should be doing or like this puts you in the best possible position I should know you so deeply like I should be talking to you Jess about like your thoughts your values what you want to achieve like your financial advisor relationship I would say is one of the you know this is maybe just not how other advisors work but from my perspective it's one of the most intimate relationships you'll ever have because I'm going to talk to you about a lot of things I'm going to talk to you about your budgeting great I'm going to talk to you about investing I'm going to talk to you about your savings I'm going to talk to you about your

superannuation and your insurances and doing all of that touches on lots of different life aspects so when I do your insurances I actually need to ask you a lot of deep questions about your medical history and to have the best and the biggest impact and to put you in the best possible position Jess you've got to be comfortable telling me you've got to talk to me about whether you you know broke your knee in grade 12 and had to get like a pin in it I need to know if you've had any very serious sexually transmitted diseases I actually for some people and I still think this quite backwards. If you are in a same-sex relationship, I actually need to know a little bit about how much you've been sleeping around. Like your insurance application form asks. And

because I'm your advisor and I don't ever want you to submit an application that's not complete, or like you might see a question and be like, oh, that's worth skipping. I don't really want to give them that answer. It could mean an instant decline. So back when I was an advisor, I would sit with every single client and do your application together, even though it was arduous and honestly kind of boring because girl, I actually don't care about your sexual history. I really don't. It's none of my business. And like you do you, but I need to know these things to put you in the best possible position. So the fact that I get to ask all of this, I also get to be like, Hey Jess, okay. Like, do you think you'll ever divorce your husband? Hey, so what's going

on here? How do you want to set this up? You know, are there any inheritances that you might be getting that I need to structure a trust for in the future? Like we're asking some pretty deep questions. So I should know you. Yeah. I should know what would make you a little bit uncomfortable. I should have already asked about your savings. Jess, if you're saying you've got $100,000 in savings, girl, how did you get that? What happens? What's your intention? Why did you start saving? Was it because you wanted your first home? And have I asked if you wanted to do that on your own? Even if you've got a husband, you can still go get your first homeowners grant and buy your first apartment on your own. It doesn't mean you're moving into it. It might be an investment

for financial security for you. So the idea that your advisor has made advisements that you're like, oh, I don't really feel comfortable with this. Also, sorry, how does your future husband feel about putting the house in your name? Like, do not get me wrong. You're about to get married, which means that your finances are likely legally going to become intertwined. But we could be talking here about a binding financial agreement going, okay, cool. You're both coming into this with separate assets. They're called premarital assets. If you get a divorce, if this doesn't work out, what's he taking versus what you're taking? Could we get on the same page about that. The idea that we're just quickly labeling it and lumping it all

into one thing makes me relatively uncomfortable. You're also not on a level playing field. Like you've got a hundred thousand dollars in savings, but he actually owns an existing house. And I'm assuming that, you know, maybe he bought it a few years ago. There might be more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of equity in that property. Like, are we comfortable with this? Like I could have made that recommendation as a financial advisor and we're not saying it's wrong, but I would never want a client to see that recommendation on paper and either be surprised by it or not feel comfortable with it. It would be a recommendation where I've gone, oh, what if we, I've already asked the questions, you're already comfortable with it before we've come to the conclusion of

getting it on paper. And I mean, you're not wrong. You are a dual citizen. This changes tax. It also stops you from accessing the first homeowner's grant. It makes me wonder if you're saying that you can't access that. I don't know. This is just making me overthink Jess, but like if you're saying, oh, that means I'm tapped out of that. Sorry. Is property a priority for you accessing that grant? Was that a priority for you? Why isn't your advisor planning around that? I don't know. I just feel like there's been a few things that have been skipped over. I can't make any recommendations of what you should do because obviously I can't, but my recommendation would but get more advice or talk to your advisor. I don't think you're being selfish here. I actually

think you're being really smart. Like financial vulnerability, it's never romantic. Like there's nothing sexy about it. And protecting yourself doesn't mean that you don't love your partner less. We need to put ourselves in the best possible position. Jess, that's why we exist as a business. I guess think of it as future you saying, thank you for being thoughtful today. Like I don't know. I just, I feel uncomfortable with the idea that you're not comfortable with advice that your advisor is giving you. To play devil's advocate, and I agree, like you are so well entitled.

And I think we all know I'm the biggest proponent for saying protect your own assets, look after yourself first. Like I'm not saying that's the wrong choice, but I also think it would be worth asking your advisor why they gave you the advice. Cause it may be that- Where'd this come from?

Like, is it more advantageous? Correct. My assumption would be that they made the recommendation to do that for a reason. So maybe like if they were to say to you, oh, well it's because you're a dual citizen. And so by doing X, Y, Z, you can alleviate this tax. Or like, as I said, I don't know what levers and pulleys there are because I don't know

enough about that world, but there may be a reason they've made the recommendation that you're not aware of. So talking to them before going, oh, I need to get a different opinion, I think would be quite worth it. When I was an advisor, like, don't get me wrong, you didn't know everything that was going to be in your SOA because I hadn't sat down and written it yet. But the surprises that were in your statement of advice, like when you sat down and I presented the advice to you would have not been, oh, we're going to invest.

You already would have known that that's kind of going to become a part of the plan because we're having conversation about it. But the surprises would have been which ETFs I'm picking for you or which direct shares I'm picking for you. Or, you know, we knew we were going to do your insurances. We just don't know who we're going with. And when your statement of advice would have the insurer, I think that we're going with and the plan for it. You know, if you're planning on saving for a property or whatever, it wouldn't be about, you know, oh, you should save for a house and you go, oh God, I didn't know I could do that. Like you knew that was going to be part of the plan, but I've actually done the finances for it. Your statement of advice has the timeframe

when this can happen, how much of your budget is being allocated to this, what that actually looks like. Your statement of advice, and I used to say this to all my clients, there should not be surprises in here. We have talked about everything. And if there are surprises in here, I haven't done my job properly. Like I have not held your hand enough through this process. And so maybe I was overkill. Do you know what? Sorry, you're paying me. That's my job. I should be overkill. And I feel like that's what we should be expecting if you're going to pay for financial advice, because it's expensive, right? Definitely. What did everybody else think? So first question we asked was if you were given this advice, what would you think? 50% of you with me get a second

opinion. 24% of you said good in theory, probably messy in practice. 14% said I wouldn't be doing it. And 13% said, yeah, it makes sense to join everything. The next question we asked was how would you want to handle assets pre-owned before marriage? 47% said whatever benefits us most financially. 31% said whatever gives me the most protection. 13% said keep everything separate. and 10% said, just join everything, we're married. And then my favourite part, we said, guys, what is your two cents? And I have collected a few of your responses because as it turns out, we had a lot of opinions.

There were hundreds of replies on this one. First person said, laws change, look at California house laws on splits. I don't know what that means, but. I laughed at this one because like we have been trying so hard, Jess, to gain an international audience. we've got one thank you for contributing a door but um that's not going to help because this listener is in Australia but they're right laws can change that's absolutely true but yes absolutely laws can change also I just was like oh my god like we're getting this international audience

who are giving like good advice but also not relevant in this situation but please keep giving it next person said assets don't lose or gain value with an extra name on them I wouldn't be trading security for tradition. Loved that. Next person said, divorce rates are currently over 50%. Keep control of everything that's yours, irrespective of what you love and don't. Next person said, never make a decision if you're feeling uncomfortable. Trust your gut and go get a second opinion. Someone said, I've been happily married for 10 years. We actually still have all of our assets separate, but we have some joint expenses. This just shows me everyone's money is different like there's never a financial plan like I could give you Stephen my financial plan

and you could be like in the bin like I'm not doing that and then on the flip side someone else might be like oh I'm doing that but we're gonna tweak x y and z like there's no one size fits all which sucks because I could make a plan and sell it to you guys for heaps of money but I can't personal finance is deeply personal exactly next person said couples are a team you can both benefit as a team while still protecting each party, which I think is important. I agree with that. So like if your financial advisor is recommending that you put each other's names on things, your husband to be should be as comfortable with either doing that if you both want to do that or not doing that and going, no, no, no, I want to protect Jess. Like, no,

like she needs her stuff too if this doesn't work out. Green flag immediately. Next person said, hope for the best plan for the worst protect your finances you will know how things will go and then the last one I laughed at maybe because like women are seen to be a little bit more touchy-feely she's a girl go get a female financial advisor honestly yeah go see Daisy at Everest Wealth she's very popular in our community and you know what I agree like the amount of and I'm not saying that she's the only financial advisor and that you have to have a female, but like, sorry, if you want a female, Daisy and the Everest Wealth Girls, I would say Slay. All right, Jess, I feel like that's probably a good place to leave it as always. If you haven't

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