She's On The Money - How to get your super back on track if you made an early withdrawal

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Last year the government allowed eligible Aussies to pull money out of their Super; for some it was a lifeline, for others it was a free $20k. No matter the reasoning, the consequences of this choice will impact our future selves, which is exactly what we dissect today. PLUS, if you did pull some money out, we chat through how you can pump your Super back up so future you is set to go.PLUS, because you’re a SOTM listener, use the code POD50 and you’ll score $50 off the course. Head to our website here: https://www.shesonthemoney.courses/masterclass to find out more today!Love the pod but looking for a more hands-on approach to your money? Look no further. Our budgeting & cash flow masterclass is the tool you need to help overhaul your finances for good. Join Victoria as she steps you through your budgeting and cash flow with all of the smarts and none of the intimidating jargon.Finally, if you're in a money mess and need help untangling the muddle - we've got you sorted - simply record your question and send it through to us at [e-mail] and you may just 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 and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. Victoria Devine is an Authorised Representative of Australia Pacific Funds Management Proprietary Limited ABN 34 132 463 257 - AFSL 339151.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. Now, you may recall last year, a small thing happened, a little old COVID-19. really yeah i don't even know yeah like someone a friend of a friend mentioned it yeah but it took a huge toll on people right across the globe and one of the most significant tolls beyond obviously physical and mental health was definitely financial so to help out the significant number of us who were left financially battered in 2020 the government allowed eligible australians to

access up to 20k of their super which is a lot of money it is a lot of money so you could access $10,000 of that in the first financial year that it was available and $10,000 in the second financial year. So you could like dip twice. If you were one of the 3 million Aussies who did take money out of their superannuation, today we're going to explain why it's so important that we top that money back up and we're going to tell you exactly how to do it. That we are. I know, I'm so excited. But before we do that, last week we held an amazing webinar on investing. Oh yes, we did. It was so, so much fun. With the team at Superhero, it was fantastic. and I thought it was interesting to bring up because we've said this before but a lot of

people don't realize superannuation is actually an investment. Exactly and I mentioned it on that webinar because that is something that I harp on and on and on about and I'm sure I will in this episode as well but to all of you who actually joined us and there was a very large chunk of you who did getting the vibe that they liked an investment webinar. Yeah. You're getting that vibe too. I'm picking up what they're putting down. So I absolutely love that webinar one because I really like hanging out with the team at superhero two because i really like hanging out with she's on the money community and three because i literally could not talk enough about investment but if you did miss that we have just uploaded that webinar to our youtube so you can replay it so if you

missed it you don't actually have to miss out long term or jess hot tip you could pretend it's a podcast and put it on in the car and just listen to it that's actually a really good idea genius it was a lengthy boy i think it was about an hour long oh my gosh it was so long but it was packed with fun and heaps of really great info on investing. But given we just had a chat about this, I don't know if you named me before. I don't think I did. I just expect everybody knows. It's not George King. No, it's not Georgia King. Who is it? It's Jessica Ricci. I always call you Jessica Ricci. That is the correct pronunciation if you are from Italy, which is where that name heralds from. But as always, I am joined by the gorgeous, the delightful. Oh, don't you pull a

Georgia King and be over complimentary. We're here with Victoria Devine, the woman herself. Yes, I'm a financial advisor. And actually, I've been on pretty much every single podcast. I've never missed a deep dive one. Georgia King has though. Oh, Georgia King. Come on. But let's jump straight into it. I think it's important to contextualize this chat with a bit of a refresher on the mechanics of super and why it's so important. V, take it away. Okay, I think that is a really good place to start because we still get so many questions

about super and I reckon it's almost about time for us to have a little bit of a super refresher whole pod episode. But super really simply is an investment that is put aside for us for our retirement. It's the money that we are going to leave off when we no longer working every single day. When you're paid by your employer a portion of your income which is usually 9.5% which is known as the superannuation guarantee which is apparently going up in July. We'll talk about that a little bit later. More money. Yeah, you're getting more sooner by my friend. Amazing. That goes straight into our super, which we can't touch until retirement. And unlike what a lot of people think, which is just like, oh, it's a savings account for my retirement. This money is actually

invested on your behalf. So it is in your best interest to make sure you know what that investment is and how it's held and what the performance on that is, because that performance is in direct relation to what your retirement balance is going to be and essentially the lifestyle that you can have and a simple change now might put you hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead in the future without you even having to contribute more so pay attention it is so so important but it's important because I care a lot about future you you Jessica but also the entire community and it's important because a lot of us just write super off as something that we shouldn't care about until retirement but as you know it is arguably one of the things that I'm

most passionate about absolutely so I'm kind of picking up here that super is important are you you picking up what I'm putting down? 100% I am. Now, I know that obviously you're super passionate about this topic. And when this announcement came out last year, you definitely had some thoughts. I did. Colourful thoughts. Share them with us. Look, I am going to preface this with it is a very entitled opinion of me to be able to say don't touch it. And for a lot of people, that was the right decision. There are a lot of people that I know access that and it was the financial lifeline that they needed at that time. And there was honestly no other option. I mean, we can't have expected the government to just give everybody going through financial distress

$20,000 to top them up because even if we wanted to, we just don't have financial resources like that, unfortunately. They did a lot. Arguably, there are a lot of holes in the argument and what they put forward. But with JobKeeper and JobSeeker, I genuinely feel really lucky to be an Australian and have you know if I needed it had access to those resources like I'm sure lots of people who are listening like yes JobKeeper literally saved my butt yeah it's a it's a hard one because so many people were the industries like whole industries just shut down so absolutely I can understand why when the government said hey like you can take this money ten to twenty thousand dollars take it out if you need it I could see people being super excited by that totally but

there were two mind frames when it came to that there were the people who were just like oh my gosh free money I can access ten or twenty thousand dollars from my super I don't care and then there were the people that were like oh my gosh I definitely need this financial resource but I'm really stressed about taking it away from future me so this episode is for both of those parties the parties that didn't care about it because we're telling you that you should and you need to fix it but also the parties and the listeners that are a little bit overwhelmed because they're saying look I needed to take that money Victoria I've got you I'm not saying that was the wrong decision at all but I can also see why you'd be stressed about replenishing it and that's what

this episode is about so that we don't have to stress long term because as much as taking that amount out of super right now is going to impact future you it doesn't have to if we replenish it brilliant now we do love a good little stat here at she's on the money are you going to become the new resident stats gal are you trying to take Georgia King's job I could never I could absolutely never but lots of people let's just cover this really quickly because you guys are thinking it why is jess on the pod today as opposed to georgia king so many people like well why don't we see more of georgia i know to be honest i wish you would see more of georgia i wish i would see more of georgia but she does in fact have an awesome completely different full-time job outside of

she's on the money yeah in a very impressive media company yeah like she's a dead set legend and unfortunately that means that everybody not just us wants a piece of the georgia pie Exactly. So it's not because we don't want you having Georgia. She's not going anywhere, my friends, but turns out the G King, she's at work. That's the answer. She's a busy lady and that means you get me. Sorry. It's a very good substitute. I'm not going to lie. It's kind of like when people are like, oh, sorry, we don't have your favorite pizza, but we've got your favorite pizza that you've forgotten about. And they're like, ah, I only eat one kind of pizza and it's margarita. So

terrible analogy. You're so bland. What have you got for me? so let's work off of the base rate of ten thousand dollars if someone had withdrawn that money from their super now they might go okay like in the grand scheme of things ten thousand dollars perhaps isn't that much money however if we take that ten thousand dollars and apply the magic of compound interest yeah you're gonna make me do quick stats or have you done this well i was just about to say you uh how many years do you want it over 30 40 so i've actually done that if you just took ten thousand dollars over 40 years which is about the period of time that an average 25 year old will have in the working market before they do decide to retire at an interest rate of seven and a half

percent which is pretty standard when it comes to predicting into the future you're taking nearly two hundred thousand dollars of future you that's so much money and i really feel like uh and maybe it's just me and not knowing that much about money but i didn't see a lot of education from the government or anywhere else apart from what we spoke about around the impact of that money long term? A hundred percent and that is what I was getting up in arms with. I was very grateful for the opportunity to exist that meant that people didn't go into debt and that people didn't have to borrow money that they couldn't afford to pay back because at the end of the day there's obviously the caveat that you will lose the opportunity cost of having that invested for

the long term, but you're not lumped with a $20,000 personal loan that you're going to then struggle to pay back. So I really liked it, but I really didn't like that there wasn't this thinking period built into it. There wasn't this, you know, self-reflection period where the government was saying, well, hey, Jess, do you actually need that? Like, what does that look like to you personally? Have you thought about the impacts of taking this out? They kind of were just like, oh, by the way, you can take 20 grand out of super and so many people were like, oh my gosh, yes, great, free money. People got excited. Like I know people personally who took that money out to perhaps purchase a new car or a few other things like that. And interestingly, the ABC

actually reported in September last year that more than a quarter of the people who access superannuation under the early release scheme made that decision within a day. So that's 24 hours, which to me kind of indicates that this was a bit of a snap decision from people who didn't take into consideration those long-term impacts. Do you kind of agree with that? I absolutely agree with that. I think that people automatically just thought, great, free money like we can withdraw that or the people that were really struggling that genuinely needed that and I do really want to drive home that I'm so fine with you taking it out because you needed it for a very valid reason but a new car a house deposit a future holiday those things are not

appropriate I've got people in the community that message me they're like it's great I took that 10k out I got a new lounge suite so I could have a really comfortable COVID and bought a new tv I'm like what are you doing yeah genuinely and you guys know who you are because I actually respond to my dms like that I'm always like ah look that's probably not what I would have done but I think that people automatically just saw it as the free money but the people who really needed it were forced into making a decision really quickly without having their options put in front of them and the education put in front of them that I genuinely think they deserved so if you were taking it out you deserve to have someone say look I can completely understand

that you need to take this $10,000 out but have you thought about how you're going to potentially replenish that because that is a really big chunk of super that you're taking away from future you absolutely and obviously as we said we fully support people being able to do what they had to do COVID was a really tough time and I think it's hard because there was not a lot of people who had someone there able to hold their hand through it because it was unprecedented I'm so sick of that word? The buzzword of 2020. Okay, move on Jessica. No more unprecedented emails or words or anything please. Well, before we do get into how we should be fixing that situation, if we did happen to take money out during COVID, talk to me a bit more about the people who took the money out for house

deposits or to pay off debts. To me, I can kind of see that being kind of a smart idea on the surface but was it actually? Look, it could have been because there are a lot of people and for example, I had someone in my DMs really recently bit stressed that they'd taken it out to pay off their credit card because they had like a $9,000 credit card. Fine. I can see why you'd want to take $10,000 out and put it on your credit card to extinguish that debt completely because credit card debt runs at like 18% on average, I think. And that's ridiculous. I get that. But those credit card repayments that you were making now need to go into your superannuation to replenish that amount. So you're paying yourself instead of going, okay, cool. I got out of that situation

without impacting myself at all, because you did, you took it off future you. And that $10,000 is actually $200,000 that you've taken off future you. And I know that interest repayments suck, but for me, I'd really question it. I'd try and work out how to potentially do a balance transfer on my credit card to a no interest credit card or taking out a personal loan at a smaller percentage rate so that I could better manage that before going and taking out super and saying okay well that's the solution to this I just want people to have all their options so they know what they can do but when it came to the people that were taking it out for homes I'm probably a little bit more controversial in my opinion of this because I don't agree with it at all so some people were

tempted and they did they have successfully taken money out of their super under the temporary COVID-19 hardship measure that the federal government released to us and they used it to purchase a home and now if you go onto the ATO website which obviously I'm a dream I love that website I go there all the time the intent of that superannuation early release scheme was actually to support people who were adversely financially impacted by COVID-19 that were not able to meet their expenses and that was to cover those expenses and that's like basic necessities that's basic necessities like I cannot pay rent I cannot put food on the table I cannot do those things but some people were taking it out and putting it towards their home deposits right and

I've spoken to mortgage brokers and some of them have said that these people that are doing that the banks aren't approving mortgages because they're saying well you know how can you service a loan because on your credit history it comes up that they've you know nominated themselves as experiencing financial hardship why would a bank want to loan to you and by doing so they're not actually able to shut themselves on the foot. Yeah, exactly. Because due to responsible lending laws that exist here in Australia, like that would actually not be a viable thing for someone to lend to, right? Well, of course, if you're saying I can't afford to pay my rent, I need this money from my superannuation. Yeah. They're probably going to say, well, you can't afford to pay for

a house deposit. If you've just literally put your hand up to the government and said you're experiencing significant financial hardship so much so that you need to withdraw on your superannuation. That being said, Jess, I actually have heard from the community that a number of people have successfully withdrawn from superannuation, put it towards a house deposit and they haven't not been able to get a loan. They have got a loan, but I think it's very touch and go. There's no strict advice. Yeah, exactly. And as someone who literally owns a mortgage broking business and I have a licensed business in this area, I would not want any of my team to ever write a loan to somebody going through that because it

is not in line with the responsible lending laws and I wouldn't feel comfortable with it. I'm just going to be brutal and say I wouldn't allow it to happen even if the bank was willing to do it I wouldn't let our team write that loan. Wow obviously quite a bit to think about there and we're going to touch back after this break to check in with the Aussie economy see where the housing market is at and address the way that you suggest rebuilding super if you are one of those almost three million people who dipped into super last year so do not go anywhere. all right v let's not mess about tell me how do we fix things if we have taken money out of superannuation okay so earlier in the episode i literally said that ten thousand dollars withdrawn

out of superannuation for a 25 year old would cost them about two hundred thousand dollars in retirement which is wild and terrifying because of how much like imagine working and being like Jess, you need to save $200,000. I can't fathom it. That's so much money. So much money, right? So what we want to do is actually recover this. And it is so simple.

The answer is actually salary sacrificing, which we did an episode on recently, Jess. If you haven't heard it, go back and listen. It's a really good episode. Yes. Which means go and have a chat to your employer about replenishing that. If you're not currently employed, please don't stress just yet because I know a lot of people are still experiencing significant financial hardship from COVID-19. So please don't feel like I'm like, oh, do it now. You have to. But this is just something to think about once you

do have stable employment and stable cash flow and you're out of personal debt. That is a very big caveat on it. If you have a credit card, if you have a personal loan, please prioritize those before you prioritize investing for yourself because you're shooting yourselves in the foot if you're not prioritizing that over investment just because you're putting money away and it's potentially making seven and a half percent each year. That doesn't mean that is a better option than paying off your 19% interest rate on your credit card or your personal loan, which is usually more than seven and a half percent, which is a guaranteed thing, right? So pay off your personal debt and your personal loans first. That doesn't include okay debt like home loans or

hex debt or any of that. We are talking bad debt, which is personal debt. So do that and then make a plan to contribute more to superannuation. And we did do a really helpful video on your YouTube channel not too long ago, all about the different ways that you can make additional contributions. I know that there's a lot to cover in that realm. It's almost a whole episode on its own. So if you do want a bit more information on that, we'll pop it in the show notes. Definitely check it out. It's worth a watch. Absolutely. So there are a number of ways we can do this, right? You can approach your employer if you've got one currently and ask them to start salary sacrificing. For me, it would be about working backwards. If you've just taken $10,000 out,

okay, no problems. How quickly do you want to replenish that amount of money? Do you want it replenished in a year? Can you afford to salary sacrifice $830-ish a month? If the answer is no, change your timeframe. If you change your timeframe by two years, that obviously becomes about $415 that you need to salary sacrifice each month to get that $10,000 back in there above and beyond what your current superannuation guarantee is or what you're currently contributing to super. So it does sound like a lot, but you could break it up over a little while or potentially even make that goal a bit bigger to make up for the lost interest and the compounding interest that you would have lost during that time. Completely up to you, but it's all about creating

a plan and saying, okay, I'm going to do this. How much can I afford? If it's just $200 a month or $100 a month, that is fine, but start re-contributing. And this is obviously not financial advice. It is an idea. It is if you want to replenish your super, this is how you would facilitate that. And for me, it's about going, all right, salary sacrificing, very easy way to do it because it then becomes a part of your employer's obligations to you. So you don't even see the money coming into your account. Like I said, I forget. Exactly. If you want to be more hands-on and actually see it come into your account, make that decision every month, because I know a lot of people in our community had variable incomes some months they'll have an

invoice come in and they make a hundred dollars and some months they might make you know ten thousand dollars and that's really fair for you to want to control that in which case you could make voluntary contributions to superannuation which means you just get your superannuation funds bank details and transfer money in and it goes into your fund and it's all automated which is really easy you can just essentially use BPAY if you want and that is a really good option but please make sure to keep track of it because you can claim it on tax so that you make the difference between the taxable rate inside of superannuation and the tax rate that you're currently being charged for your income. So definitely keep that in mind and don't forget to tell your accountants

when June 30 comes. But then also you could invest outside of superannuation. So say you're like, look, Victoria, I've listened to all the podcasts. Like I know I should be investing again and I don't really want to put it back in super because that's not the right decision for me personally. that's not something I can decide for you but you could use like our friends at Superhero for example and start investing regularly with them and set up a plan so that you can actually you know invest and plan for future you without having the commitment of saying okay well if I put it back it's there until I'm 65 and I have no access or control over it maybe you want more control over it but what I want is you to be educated in those decisions that you can make as opposed to

saying, okay, well, I just, I don't know what I'm doing. Cause you do, you are smart. You are empowered. Like you have all the knowledge, skills, and resources that you absolutely need to do this. You just need to make a plan and get it done. Speaking of investing and our friends at Superhero, as we mentioned earlier in the show, they are sponsoring today's episode and in partnership with them, we did actually put together a little beginner's guide to investing. Yeah. It's like kind of like a cheat sheet, right? That's what we ended up calling it. was like the cheat sheet to investing. Yep. So that full downloadable ebook is available on our website. It's completely free. Head to she's on the money.com.au. Click the freebies tab and it

will be under that heading there. Which was actually really fun to put together because it was like a cheat sheet of what do you really need to know if you're going to deep dive into investing? Like what is the thing that you might want to print out, have beside you when you're investing on the computer and actually going through that journey? Obviously it's not like super comprehensive, but it's more of the high level. Here's what we think you need to know as a really great start point. All right. So to pivot a little bit here, V, I thought given the nature of this chat, it might be worth checking in with you to see how the economy is performing at the moment. Oh, you thought that would be a good idea? I know, like how high level is that?

I think it's very high level. And I actually think it's really funny that you now ask me questions like this on a regular basis. And starting at She's On The Money, I feel like you're like, hey, what's the economy mean? And then now it's like, hey, how's it performing? what's up like we love that personal growth it's actually really really fun to see but if you want an answer to that I do I can also provide that please so in December we saw 3.1% growth which is actually really impressive so I think it's important to understand that that is genuinely impressive given we were coming out of COVID which is really cool because we thought that everything would be really bad the economy has actually recovered 85% of its COVID induced fall which

was twice as fast as expected so everyone was expecting that we wouldn't bounce back as quickly as we have and I think that this is also really reflective in the property market so do you remember like and I know you didn't work with me you didn't even know me personally at that point you would have seen it like the start of COVID and you know when JobKeeper and Seeker came in everyone started talking about okay well you know the property market's going to be down in the pits when JobKeeper and Seeker and everybody's going to be selling their houses it's going to be desperate yeah everyone will be able to wish that they were cheap yeah yeah but they were all saying you know that's when you're going to be able to pick up cheap property you're gonna you know find bargains

sellers aren't going to be able to get rid of their homes and the complete opposite yeah and it was all through the media right like it was the front cover so many papers and all of these people predicting that the property market would just be the pits and it'd be the worst and now they're kind of like oh by the way let's pretend we never said that there's no coverage on the fact that the property market is now booming across Australia and obviously we're in Melbourne so we see it more there was an auction across the road from me the other day Jess $400,000 over the reserve price like 400 grand so much money that's a lot of surprise money yeah like who has an extra four that's another house that's not me that's an entire house that someone's like oh

actually I'll pay for an entire other house on top of this house that I'm already trying to bid for and there were about 60 people at this auction so like the property market is definitely very hot at the moment but when it comes to actual stats again instead of Victoria's anecdotal evidence of walking past an auction on the weekend according to the international monetary fund we're on the path to becoming the world's 12th largest economy this year which is up two places from 2019 kind of cool given we've gone through an unprecedented global pandemic but also Australia's GDP. So we talk about GDP in the finance world and you've probably heard it on the TV a lot of times. And if you don't know what that is, it is Australia's gross domestic product, which sounds

complicated, but it essentially just means it's the total value of the goods and services produced and provided in one country over one year. So like how much stuff did we make and do? That's GDP essentially. And that's a more simple way of putting it, but we're actually going to come in at around two trillion dollars worth of GDP this year. Trillion. Trillion. One of those numbers that I cannot comprehend. Like my brain, I think that number and it just goes, do not compute. I see it written down and it looks like a pretend number. 100%. It is absolutely not a pretend number, but it is a million millions. That's a lot. A million millions. It's a very large number. Anyway, moving right along. Continuing on the strats train and kind of

jumping back just a second to the housing market. Oh, she is becoming fat, Scal. I know. Did you know the value of Australia's residential property jumped by roughly $250 billion in the last three months of 2020, which means COVID was still a thing. Yes, we were kind of getting a little bit more hopeful, but like it was definitely still around. I'm pretty sure Melbourne was still in lockdown for at least a good portion of that. And $250 billion is a lot of dollars. Yeah. And do you know how much a billion dollars is we're talking about trillions and billions a billion is 1,000 millions yeah that's still a lot of millions it's a lot of millions but like I don't think people comprehend the volume of what that actually means they go yeah oh yeah a billion it's more than a

million it's like no that's a thousand millions like imagine having a thousand million dollars I take just one one lonely million imagine being a legitimate financial advisor and calling a billion, a thousand million dollars. Wow. I've really dropped myself here, but I'm not surprised to hear that at all. Again, as I was saying, like I'm seeing it anecdotally, I'm talking to friends about it. Amy Linardi, who is obviously a really good friend of the show and also the co-host of the upcoming The Property Playbook podcast, which we're launching very soon, which is fun. She's crazy busy at the moment. So busy. It's also one of the reasons we haven't launched yet, guys, because she is crazy busy

and I want her to be crazy busy because that's good for her business. But also seeing the hunger for people in the market trying to buy at the moment, it makes me feel incredibly grateful to not have been buying a house during a time when there's so much demand

because I'm just, I'm a stressy person. I'm very type A. I don't think I'd do well in an auction. One, I don't like losing. That would suck. I'd be the girl at the auction crying. But two, I would just feel really overwhelmed by the whole process.

I don't like being in big groups of people. I don't like not knowing the outcome. I don't like not having certainty. And I feel like that's just really stressful. So if you're going through that process right now, my friend, I feel you. Oh, my gosh. Yes. So obviously, people probably will still be reeling a little bit from the financial repercussions

of the pandemic just as a whole. Absolutely. But you also have a stat that you were talking about before from the ABS, which is about what was it? Total household wealth. What was that? Because I actually want that on the pod. because it was impressive. Well, according to the ABS or the Australian Bureau of Statistics,

total household wealth grew by $501 billion in the December quarter, which is actually the largest quarterly growth in the last 10 years. Which is epic and really, really cool. And I know that a lot of people have experienced very, very significant financial hardship. People have lost their entire businesses, their wealth, their lives. Like this is awful. But if anything has come out of COVID, people are actually saving better because they've kind of been forced into saving and then they've realized that they actually have the capacity to save. And I think that this is a really good reflection of that because our literal household wealth has grown by 500, whatever it was, $500 billion, not and one, billion dollars. And that's crazy. If that's

not cool, I don't know what is. All right, back to the people who are potentially still struggling or suffering a little bit and are having a hard time saving which is completely understandable are there any resources that we can share with them that might be able to help absolutely have a chat to a financial counselor which you can actually do for free these guys don't sponsor us I have never even spoken to them because I just know what they do is amazing I have literally spoken to people in our community that have spoken with these guys multiple times and had great experiences and that is the national debt helpline so these guys are literally free financial counselors so if you're in a bit of a pickle it doesn't matter how big or small like they are

there to one hear you out like help you through but also give you some strategies because paying a financial advisor if you're in a financial pickle is a really bad idea and you can call 1-800-007-007 they're like I kind of like the double James Bond I reckon because they're that call and they will help you out and I really really respect what they do but we'll also put that information into the show notes for you. And if you're struggling to make things like repayments, like let's just remember that you are so powerful. Like you have a voice and we want you to use it. Like people are not going to think any less of you. They're not going to think of you differently. If you put your hand up and say, look, I just need a bit of a hand. I'm in a bit

of a pickle at the moment. I'm struggling. And I think that so many people who are struggling financially aren't willing to just go, do you know what? I do need a hand. This is overwhelming. so pick up the phone if you aren't able to meet repayments for your energy provider for your rent for your you know personal debt for your mortgage pick up the phone and talk to those providers be really honest with them because they are usually going to be able to bend over backwards to help you through that because they'd prefer you to be open and honest and upfront about your situation so that they can help instead of burying your head in the sand and then going cool this person hasn't been meeting their repayments at all we kind of need to repossess whatever asset

we've funded with them. So put your hand up, call the bank. They're very likely to help you and put you on a plan that makes it actually possible. And when it comes to other resources like your phone or your energy, lots of companies at the moment have COVID plans in place that are still available to you. And it's not just you, if you are feeling that way, there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in the same boat. So we just want to say like, please do not feel bad. Please do not feel like you're not good enough or you're lesser than if you can't. Because you're not like you're not at all if you can't put that money back into super yet as we said earlier you're doing your best and that's we just want to provide you that information so that when you are

able to take that next step you can but if all you can do right now is survive and pay the bare minimum just to put food on the table for your family like we're proud of you for doing a hundred percent and I think it is so important especially from a money podcast to let you know that your current financial situation does not define you as a person at all it does not define who you are what you're capable of or how smart you are or you know any of those things it is literally just what you're experiencing right now and people are not their experiences they are the tenacity that they take to them and you can be so tenacious and so strong and that is literally what we are here for I don't care what you're going through it is how you're handling that situation okay enough of

that sappy stuff Jessica I know that I love my community and I'm genuinely so proud of you all whether you are going through that positively or you're having a bit of a hard time like we are here for that we are in our dms talking to you guys literally every single day about it but that is all we have time for today but before jess does the rap which i'm so excited to hear we would like to acknowledge and pay respect to australia's aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples they're the traditional custodians of the lands the waterways and the skies all across australia we thank you for sharing and for caring for the land which we are able to learn on we pay our respects to elders past and present and we share our friendship

and our kindness. Now, the advice shared on Shiz on the Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. Not at all. Shiz on the Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or a financial decision. And we promise Victoria Devine is an authorised representative of Australian Pacific Funds Management Proprietary Limited, ABN 34132463257, AFSL 339151. And of course, thank you to our dream team of audio engineers and producers for putting it all together. Now, it wouldn't be a She's On The Money podcast if we didn't shamelessly plug ourselves. So if you want to join our Facebook group, where over 150,000 people share money, tips and tricks every single day, free of judgment,

search She's On The Money on Facebook and join us. And if Facebook's not your thing, that is okay we're also on instagram we're on tiktok we are pretty much on every social media platform so find us follow us and have a chat see you next week guys bye