She's On The Money - Investing Diary: How This SOTM Team Member Built Her Portfolio (And Could Retire At 35)

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 boma ininyalan waka, gaunan yakarumja, wutunadana. 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

Starting point is 00:00:42 knowledge and resources for you to thrive she's on the money she's on the money Hello and welcome to She's on the Money, the podcast that is here to show you that investing isn't just for the rich, it's for you too. I'm your host, Victoria Devine. And today, as you can probably hear, we are doing something a little bit different. You, our incredible She's On The Money community, are always sliding into our DMs asking to get pervy on the money diaries of the She's On The Money team. And today, I finally have a volunteer. Yay. Volunteer attribute.

Starting point is 00:01:37 Attribute works. Same. But instead of the usual money tea, we're going to dive into something even juicier. We are going to do an investing diary because our volunteer is not just, I would say, a very valued member of our social media and courses team. She calls herself the head of the course department. Yep. She also is a very experienced investor who's been building her portfolio for years and has a lot of wisdom. Is that what we're going to call it? I think I've been oversold. I always oversold. But Brooke Green, welcome to the show. Not the government name. It's what was on zero when I looked you up to check who was coming on my show.

Starting point is 00:02:16 That's my name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brooke Green. Welcome to the chat. I'm very excited to have you here. You have been on the show before, so this isn't your first time. The last time you were on our show was in New York. It was indeed in New York.

Starting point is 00:02:30 It was a sleepless, delirious time. I don't even remember what we were speaking about. I remember exactly like it was yesterday. We were talking about McGriddles, things that are expensive in America. And the McGriddle is now in Australia. It's now an Australian item and a pumpkin spice latte. Bring that here. love laugh so for those in our community who might not have met you through social media

Starting point is 00:02:52 can you tell us what do you do at she's on the money and like why do you do it at she's on the money oh well one time i posted a tiktok saying got made redundant and then you slid into my dms and said do you want a job and i started working i thought that was the opportunity of a lifetime i know and it's i've been here for a while now it's some old furniture i do some of the socials there's two people in the socials team and you and georgia yeah me and georgia my work wife sorry to my partner but oh he knows he does he's quite aware he's aware but we do all of the content together i do mainly the video stuff and some blogs and stuff and then courses and all that jazz anytime you sign up for a course the process i've made and unfortunately if it goes wrong it's probably

Starting point is 00:03:32 my fault yeah and if you see like a diabolical meme on our uh yeah i am the intern yeah usually if we're blaming the intern, it's me. It's usually Brooke. So talk to me, actually don't talk to me. Let me do a little bit of a disclaimer because unfortunately this is not financial advice. We're not giving advice as much as lots of us want to be more like Brooke. You shouldn't be copying Brooke. That's a terrible idea. Well, past performance is not a reliable predictor of future performance. And if we're going to talk about your investing journey, I don't want them going, oh my God, you bought what and when and where, and then like copying it. Because you You can't buy it when I bought it.

Starting point is 00:04:09 Exactly. Yeah. Unless you've got a time machine in which you, like, if you do. Call us. No, but like also you just copy Brooke. Yeah. You'd be really rich. You'd be fine.

Starting point is 00:04:17 Probably won't be really rich because I'm not. Guys, I'm trying to sell this to the community. Oh, yes, yes. Very rich. I had to get a tribute on the show. I'm here. Okay. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:04:26 So let's get into the advice after we've done our disclaimer of like not taking her advice. So Brooke, you've been investing for, I would say quite a while, like way before you joined She's On The Money. Could you give me a little bit of background? How did you even get into investing and what were you doing at the time? So I was working in mining because I'm from Perth. So if you're a Perth girlie, you probably understand that law. But I was working in mining as a receptionist and I was very excited because I saved my first $10,000. And I was talking about it with my work colleagues that I was going to buy a house because in my head, $10,000 was enough to get a house

Starting point is 00:04:57 deposit. Wrong. Still don't own a house. But one of the accountants was like, oh, well, you shouldn't buy a house. That's going to be a waste of your money because you're so young. Put the 10K in index funds and call it a day. You'll be well better off. And I looked at him like. An index whatever. And then I went home and I Googled index funds, still had no idea what any of it meant. And then I decided to fall down the rabbit hole of Reddit, read everything there was to know about index funds and thought, oh, that's really cool, but I'm not doing that because that's really scary. And then I joined a million and one subreddits, including the financial independence retire early

Starting point is 00:05:30 subreddit and realized these people were retiring at like 40 because they were investing in ETF and index funds. And I was like, well, I do don't want to work until I'm 60. So I shall do this. And then I bought my first ETF and it was the scariest moment of my life. And then it wasn't that scary. I feel like once you rip the bandaid off and you do it, you go, oh, was that it? Yeah. Tell me, are you, would you identify as a financially independent retires early? I do want to do that. Like technically I worked out that if I continue investing the same way that I am now. Technically, I could retire at 35. And I know that that's probably not going to happen because I do like to spend money. But if I did stick with a plan, it would be possible,

Starting point is 00:06:10 but it probably won't happen. But I shall try. That's okay. And to give people a little bit of context, how old are you now? I'm 26. She's not 34. Actually, when this episode comes out, I'll be 27. Oh, that's quite intimidating. I think that's really exciting. And I want people to know that it's entirely possible. I would say that you probably don't come across as a financially independent, retire early, kind of girly, but that's because we like nice things. Yes. But also you do invest most of your income. Yes. Cause I'm scared of being broke. Yeah. So talk to me about, you went down a rabbit hole of jumping on Reddit, getting into what they were getting into, but now what do you invest in personally? Can you walk us through like what

Starting point is 00:06:52 strategy you have? Yes. I have prepared it earlier because I think it's better to have the facts. I am a bit crazy when it comes to money. So I obviously work here, but I also have a side hustle as well doing social media. And so all of my social media money, I put in either savings or investing. And then my actual work income, I still invest it. Anytime I've got a pay rise, I just add that to the investing. So I invest roughly $650 a week, but I dollar cost average. So for me, it makes the most sense to actually invest every two weeks. So $1,300 every fortnight. And it is all divided into a portfolio, which is reoccurring and then it will rebalance automatically. And it just based on whatever the lowest share is that I need to get to the

Starting point is 00:07:38 correct percentage. So at the moment, my investing split is, oh, I can't tell you the exact numbers, I can't do maths, but it's probably 50% of my portfolio would be VHG, then VTS, VEU, VAS, acdc qual robo ooo and berkshire hathaway b okay so let's talk about that a bit more because a lot of like i got that and a few girlies in our community would have been like slay great hold on let's just one of these random letters can we go back and write all of those down i heard a lot of these yes so let's start there love a vanguard you love a vanguard i do love a vanguard um talk to me why was that kind of like the first place you invested because i feel like for our community obviously we're talking our platform and they go oh great like maybe shares these maybe perla maybe

Starting point is 00:08:28 whatever yeah and then the next conversation is well what am i buying and i would say especially i know the most popular etf in australia is vanguard etf yeah is that just why you went with it talk me through no so a lot of the financial independence retire early movement is all about finding like one or two etfs that really make sense for your portfolio and then just going hell to leather at that. So the first one that stuck out to me that made the most sense to me after all my research was VDHG. So that was the first ETF that I bought. I put like 5k into that and then it slowly grew over time. And I was like, okay, well that makes sense. Let's continue doing that. And before I had more information, I just maintained that strategy because it is

Starting point is 00:09:06 really diversified. And then as I got a bit more experience and read nine investing books in two weeks, one time, long story short, investing masterclass, don't ask questions. I then just So like the investing masterclass was crowd-sourced through the whole She's On The Money community. It was our crazy, worst two weeks of my life. I'm so sorry I made you do that. It was fine. I was like, fact check me.

Starting point is 00:09:28 Yeah, it was a lot. And then I was like, okay, well, I kind of want to change my strategy a little bit to make sure the risk was weighted. But a lot of my ETFs are Vanguard because I like the structure. I also like that it's a massive company and I don't have risk of it shutting down tomorrow because everyone invests with them. So like it makes sense. so that's kind of stuck with that. It just is safe. Yeah. And Brooke has been using,

Starting point is 00:09:50 I would say the acronyms, but those are called ticker codes. So if you want to know more, cause I'm not going to sit here and go, Oh, tell me about this ETF. How does that work? High growth fund. Exactly. But if you want to Google them and learn a lot more about that ETF, you can do that and then pick one that aligns to your strategy and your values, because you might look at it and go, Oh, I don't want to hold those things. Or I really like that. That makes sense. brooks are genius so you can make your own decisions talk to me about direct shares you said a few at the end yep why when where how like you've gone from being in the fire community which generally want to invest in etfs and they they don't believe in direct investing you're doing

Starting point is 00:10:32 that talk yeah so i like to dabble because i'm bored and i give myself five percent of my portfolio to have fun with, but they're mostly not in like all my like auto invest is with like Perla. And then I, most of my direct shares are American and that's because I find American culture really interesting. So I have Berkshire Hathaway B, which is technically a direct share, but it is also like an ETF, which is Warren Buffett's company. And we did a whole episode on him. Yeah, we did Girlboss. And then a lot of my other direct shares like Tesla, Apple, Google which is Alphabet and all those kind of companies I dabble with those because I only pretty much invest in companies that I believe are going to exist in 20 years time I invest a

Starting point is 00:11:16 lot in the tech sector because I think like Waymo and things like that are just going to boom so in my head if I'm investing in those direct shares they're probably going to outperform some of my ETFs but it's still high risk for me so I try to keep it just below five percent and that's just like my little fun. I literally do the same thing. Cause like as somebody, and you guys don't have to do this, obviously again, not advice, but you and I are both very interested in investing in general. So I still want to have fun with it. And like, if I go way back, all of my portfolio used to be direct shares and now it is not. Well, when I was a financial advisor, I picked portfolios for people of eight to 12 direct shares and like obviously I was in that 40 plus hours a week

Starting point is 00:12:04 always looking at it for clients so it kind of made sense I just took the advice that I was literally giving clients and applied it to myself once I left the industry though I was like I one can't keep up also I'm not that interested in keeping up with trans urban yeah it's not that fun I don't care that much. And so moved all of my, I would say assets, sold them down as time went on and moved them into ETFs. And now I just have a little bit of fun on the side. You've got fun money. Yeah. But I want to pick things that I, and I've said before, they don't always work out. You've heard my conversation.

Starting point is 00:12:41 What is your fun money choice right now? What's your direction of choice? I keep doubling down on Paradigm. So Paradigm Biopharmaceuticals, again, not advice, but P-A-R-A-S-X is what it is. And I have put a fair bit of money into that. They do a lot of medical research. I read their annual reports all the time and they are doing a lot of research into osteoarthritis, which doesn't have a lot. That sounds so fun. For me it is, but they do a lot of research into this space and they have found, or they have a drug that, and I'm not even trying to sell it. I'm just trying to tell you why I'm interested. They have a drug that has been trialed in other areas. So we know that it's safe for human consumption and has started

Starting point is 00:13:23 having an impact on osteoarthritis. And the CEO actually has osteoarthritis and his boots and all in. Anyway, I've been investing in this for way too long and it still hasn't paid off, but I keep putting my money in. Financial advice is fun. Yeah. And then my husband's always like, so how are those paradigm shares going? And I'm like, not good. We shall not retire. Let's not talk about this because if you look at it, very bad. And that's why we invest in ETFs. But that's why it's 5% of our portfolio because I'm still genuinely interested in this, but like, I can't put my life savings in there and hope that that company does well for me to be able to retire. Just, it's a bad time. Let's talk about what shares and ETFs you've seen the greatest return

Starting point is 00:14:09 on? Cause like paradigm is not an option. Basically I, back in COVID times, I invested in a company called RCE, which, oh, that's the ticker code, which was Reese Pharmaceuticals. And they were doing a lot of the COVID testing, but that was like prior to them doing that. So the stock went up shit loads. Couldn't tell you the exact amount cause I've sold it now, but that was really good for me. But my best performing ETF at the moment is Qual. It's up 30%, percent 30.99 oh no i've lied to you i've actually lied to you that was now it's my crypto thematic etf which is up 38.35 percent yeah so not bad tell me i want to talk more about that direct share that you purchased and then sold yeah at what point did you feel like i'm gonna sell this

Starting point is 00:14:53 because so many people see the money and go oh my god it's gonna keep going up but like how do you make the decision to sell probably just knowing that okay well the whole point of this share going up was because of COVID testing. COVID testing is not going to exist forever. All that jazz. It was actually for COVID like vaccinations, that part. And I thought, well, I would rather have this money somewhere that I think is a little bit lower risk and it's gone up. I've more than doubled my money. Let's just take it out and let's put it in something that I think is a little bit more beneficial long-term. So I just sold it and then put it in BDHG. Yeah. That's literally how I work. And it sounds really boring, but sometimes I get a little bit scared when I see too much

Starting point is 00:15:30 profit like i might say you know your crypto etf i'm assuming you're probably looking at that and going oh like at what point do you take some cash off the table and swap it you're gonna keep it yeah i think with thematic etfs i kind of only invest like i also consider them part of the fun money portfolio all right i was like oh what's this no the thematic etfs i have are like in those sectors that i think are interesting so like tech robotics computing i also have some like esports gaming ones as well, which are random. That is so not what I assumed you would pick. I love a man in IT. And I just think that in the long term, they're going to perform pretty well. And they all have for me so far, but I still keep them as like a low weighting. Like they're all under

Starting point is 00:16:09 10% of my portfolio. So I kind of don't really worry if they're going gangbuster. I'm not going to rebalance them. I just think they'll be fine. They'll live their life. Yeah. Live, love, laugh. That's my investing strategy sometimes. So dividends, we invest to get a return. We don't invest just because it sounds fun and you like sport. We invest because we literally want to make money. What kind of returns are you seeing when it comes to dividends, not just like increase in value of shares? And how do you decide to reinvest your income if you do, or do you ever take income out of your share portfolio? It depends on the month, but most of the time when I receive dividends, I just reinvest them straight away. Usually I'll reinvest it back into

Starting point is 00:16:49 the ETFs, but if I'm like, okay, well, I want to buy something in America, I do it on a different platform. So I'll take the dividends and then invest them elsewhere. Every now and then I'll get like a $700 dividend and go, oh, it would be really fun to get a Dyson Airwrap. But that's rare. Like I would say 90% of the time I would reinvest it. 10% of the time I'm just a girl and I would like to go buy something. Yeah. Look, I resonate with that. And I feel like that is absolutely fair. So does that mean that you do not have a dividend reinvestment plan on you do it manually? I do it manually. Yeah, I'm not surprised. So let's take a quick break because I feel like we have dove into a lot very quickly. And then we're going to get into what I would say is some of the

Starting point is 00:17:32 spicier stuff, Brooke's tactical moves, how she handles market dips, and something we get questions about all the time, and that's debt recycling. So guys, stay tuned. all right welcome back brooke i feel like this has probably overwhelmed a lot of people can we do a very quick recap you're an investor you're an aggressive investor you're investing 650 each and every single week or 1300 every single fortnight because you dollar cost average into the market and you've worked out that that works better for you when it comes to paying for brokerage. How did you work that out? A calculator. Yes. But did you go, oh, well, I would be comfortable with those brokerages fees or did you decide, oh, that's what the internet recommends

Starting point is 00:18:25 is appropriate for brokerage or where did you get the info? There's heaps of dollar cost averaging calculators out there, but my brokerage is typically $9.50. So I think in $1,300, it's pretty negligent. I try to keep it below like 1%. I realistically would love to invest every week, But if I'm not investing $1,000 at one time, I think it's a bit silly. So that's why I like to do it every fortnight because $1,300 is like a little sweet buffer. But then if I'm like paid a bit more some months, it might be a bit more than $1,300 a fortnight. But like, that's like the minimum that I would invest. Yeah. And when you started investing, I'm assuming that you weren't investing $1,300 because you had different incomes. I feel like for some people that is

Starting point is 00:19:07 wildly unrelatable. And that is fine because you've worked up to that. But when you started investing, you had your first 10 grand. How much were you investing consistently after your initial investment? Not a lot. Like when I first started investing, I did that 10 grand. I could do the first 5k and then I did two and a half thousand into RCE. And then I did two and a half thousand into something else. I actually can't remember what it is because I'm, it was years and years and years ago. I ended up selling that. I think it could have been like an all market share. and then after that I would just save up all my savings for a house deposit and then go okay well I'll take a little bit of that and I'll put it in there was no like consistency it didn't really

Starting point is 00:19:43 start being consistent until I had a second income and I was like okay well all of this second income is free money because I'm not usually getting it I'm just going to invest all of the second income and then from then on I just decided okay well this is the amount that I can justify investing regardless of having a second income or not I'm just going to invest that so that's kind of, and you've worked out what works for you. And I think that a lot of people will be surprised that you have a second income because they'll go, wait, what, where do you find the time? And I think it's, I think it's up to personal values, right? Like my second income doesn't take long. Yes. But also I think that a lot of people might assume that you're spending

Starting point is 00:20:20 40 hours a week on that income as well, but that ebbs and flows and thankfully it connects in or not connects in it's it's adjacent to what you do at She's On The Money. So if you're like, I need to go work this day doing something else. Like you just do. It's not, I make it work. Yeah. We just make it work. It doesn't actually matter. So something that I know you and your boyfriend talk about a lot is debt recycling. And I would, you're not a homeowner, but you are homeowner adjacent. I know a homeowner. I live in someone's house. I pay rent now. Now I pay rent. It's very, it's very costly but i do pay right no um debt recycling uh we talk about it i would i personally wouldn't do it i think if you're gonna debt recycle you should go to a financial advisor

Starting point is 00:21:05 because i think there's so much risk in it and it's like okay well let's just have someone that this is their job they can do it sure you could do it yourself i think it's not worth the risk personally i wouldn't debt recycle because i i like the idea of fully like the equity on the house getting paid itself down all that jazz i just think it's not my style of investing i'm not a homeowner, so maybe my opinion would change when I own a home, but it's not looking like it's going to happen anytime soon for me. I like the idea of having my index funds, my ETFs, everything happening in one section and the homeowning and that jazz is a separate realm. So if I was ever going to look down that path, it would be when I have a financial advisor, like I'm not going to

Starting point is 00:21:46 be doing that on my own. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of people be like, what the heck is debt debt recycling. Quick recap. Debt recycling is basically where you take some debt out of your mortgage. So you might go, okay, cool. I've worked out that I have some equity in my property. Let's say it's a hundred thousand dollars. And you take that a hundred thousand dollars, you go to the bank and say, can I please release that? And then you give that to your financial advisor to invest. And essentially you're investing on debt. And the way that a lot of people, I want to say, justify it or like make it make sense in their heads is for a very long time, money from the bank was really cheap. So it was very, very popular pre COVID at the start of COVID before

Starting point is 00:22:29 we started having interest rates increase when you could get two, 3% as a home loan. And then the average rate of return on the share market is more than 10%. So for a lot of people, they'd go, well, right pocket, left pocket. Ah, free money. Exactly. So that would make sense. Now it's not as popular because interest rates have skyrocketed. People can't afford to be able to do that. It's more risky. But that's exactly why it's so risky is the markets ebb and flow over time. And from my perspective, as a financial advisor, I had clients who did it, but it was more often than not debt recycling because they actually had enough cashflow to be able to pull out a whole heap of equity or a really large lump sum to kickstart their investing portfolio because maybe they had

Starting point is 00:23:17 a couple of hundred thousand dollars in equity, but they also had the cashflow to increase how much their mortgage repayments were. And at that point you'd be like, okay, cool. Like Slate, if you invested 200 grand today, you're obviously in a better position than if you just started investing a thousand dollars every week. So we would do that, but it was so niche, like the people that it actually worked out for. And, you know, you could say, oh, well, what happens if you need to pay off an extra hundred grand or what happens if interest rates increase? They were financially fine if that was the case. They have it. They didn't care. Whereas for most people in our community, I would say interest rate hikes hurt. So if you're thinking, oh, I wish I had a lower

Starting point is 00:23:58 interest rate, probably debt recycling isn't for you. No, it's a very niche group of people that it makes sense for so maybe we need to do a whole episode on it because I do get a lot of questions about debt recycling now you said you love an American share you find American culture very interesting and the share market has been all over the shop this year thanks to our friend Donnie Trump how did you react how did you feel when all of that happened oh my god the shares are on sale. We literally were excited. I bought things. Did you buy? What did you buy? It was dipping and we were like, hey, we're going shopping. Not only did I buy something, but the other half of the social media team also made their first investment in the market dip. They

Starting point is 00:24:41 did. Miss Georgia also bought something. Georgia bought a VDHG. I felt very proud. I was like, oh my God, my prodigy. Proud of you, Georgia. She's watching. I told her she would get a shout and I bought Berkshire Hathaway B because I'd wanted to for so long and okay but that wasn't the smartest move because he also resigned the next day but I still bought it. I laughed so hard I'm not gonna lie but like for ages and I currently don't own Berkshire Hathaway B because for so long it has been overpriced or I've looked at it and gone oh I just can't like because it's so popular right like everybody wants in he's really smart to like have a little dip to see an opportunity and then he quit so i am currently down but it's only down a little bit

Starting point is 00:25:22 i think it's gonna recover it's gonna recover because it has a similar like portfolio like berkshire hathaway themselves invest in a bunch of companies i'm sure people know this but um the companies that they invest in mirror a lot of the other etfs that i have so it's quite similar like risk profile to everything else i have but people don't realize the share price is not indicated on what they invest in as well. It's on what people buy. So I know it will come back. I'm just waiting. And I do feel like, yes, he retired. But he's not away. No. And I think for a very long time, and I mean, he's very old, but for a very long time, he's built this investment company and yes, he's the head of it, but there are so many analysts and people in that business

Starting point is 00:26:03 making decisions. And I think that the market just needs to see that now he's retired. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. And it tracks and then it will increase. We can come back in a year's time and I'm going to be a billionaire. Just kidding. Okay. Well call me when that happens and we'll get you back on the show. I'd love to get a billionaire on the show. So if you know one message, message us. We spoke before about you selling investments. Yeah. What else have you sold? Why? Not a lot. Like I pretty much have only sold the first few investments I ever made because I didn't really make them from too much of a knowledgeable place. Like I made those decisions because I thought that made sense. And then I sold them when I realized it didn't really

Starting point is 00:26:42 align with my overarching strategy. Like I didn't really like the idea of having 25% of my portfolio being a direct share. I thought like, oh, when I realized that that was kind of risky, I thought, okay, well, I'm not going to do that again. And then I've sold it down to keep like 90% of my portfolio as ETFs. They're pretty much the only ones I've sold. The rest of them I've held. I've also sold my shares when I changed platforms because I couldn't be bothered going through the HIN transfer. I had to print something off to sign a form. So I sold them. I thought, let me just take those capital gains tax and call it a day. That was expensive. It was an expensive decision, but I'm lazy. Talk to me about exit strategies. So I, when I was an advisor, I used

Starting point is 00:27:18 to always say to clients, what's the exit strategy? If there is one, like we always want to be in a position to be able to sell down, but we don't necessarily have to sell down. What's the plan? You said, if I continue on my trajectory, I could potentially retire at 35. Yeah. Are we selling every single asset at 35 and living large? Or are we existing off the income? What does that look like? We're existing off the income, like either dividends or selling down like a smaller percentage. I realistically could live a very comfortable life on 75k a year. I don't live an excessive life. I'm homeowner adjacent. So you're saying a man is in fact a financial plan? A man is never a financial plan, but I can afford to pay rent. What I invest now is rental income. Like I could

Starting point is 00:28:01 pay that for a rental. And I also do pay rent as well on top of that. So don't you worry. I'm spending, spending big. Oh, so you earn a good income. It's she's on the money. That is very nice. I would say it's a, it's a like, well, I have two jobs. Why do I need two jobs? Victoria Devine. Could I get a pay rise? We can talk about that. Never. Um, yeah. Hear it here first. 7% in line with inflation. Never forget. Never ever forget. Um, yeah, no, I would sell down a portion, but I would never sell everything. Cause realistically when you work out your financial independence number, you realize that, okay, well, this is the number I can draw down and my portfolio will continue to grow. So hopefully my grandkids and children would retire with

Starting point is 00:28:41 some money. She's creating generational wealth. Yes. So did you use the 5% rule for drawdowns or what did you calculate? I did the math. I found out you could just like, if whatever income you want, you then times it by 25 and that's roughly the amount of money that you should have. And I've just accepted that's the amount of money I need to have. Yeah. Okay. And I mean, the 25 rule means yes, you are using the 5% rule, which we spoke about a lot in a previous episode and you and Georgia, I was going to say you and Georgia have spent a lot of time creating our playlists. So yeah, they look so cute. Yeah. So we've got very cute playlists, but if you want to go through our investing playlists in that episode or in one of the episodes in that playlist, we talk about

Starting point is 00:29:23 the 5% rule and what that means and how that works. And if you were a bit confused when Brooke said 25 times, like that. That's the math that maths. That's the math that maths. And we talk about it a lot in that episode. And an investing masterclass. Exactly. I mean, we literally teach you everything and not only do we teach you everything. It's a really great cause I was involved in it. You should go sign up for the investing masterclass and use code Suklin. Just kidding. There's no codes. You should set one up because it would be quite funny. I should set up an affiliate code for myself. We don't do affiliates, but like apparently just for Suklin, we do. Capital gains tax. You said before I sold down my shares because I couldn't be bothered

Starting point is 00:29:58 doing the HIN transfer. Is capital gains tax something that you actually consider when selling? I didn't consider it at the time. I was just lazy. I would consider it now. But if you hold your shares for over 12 months, you get a 50% reduction on capital gains tax. I'm not really worried about that until I'm 35. Just kidding. I'm not retiring then. But whenever I retire and decide that I'm going to start taking it, then I'll obviously worry about the capital gains tax. but it's not that much. Like, I don't think it's going to affect me that much. I don't think it's that bad. And I think people extrapolate out how scary it is because they're like, oh, I don't want to have to pay extra tax. Girl, if you're paying tax, it's because you've

Starting point is 00:30:33 made money and we all want to make money. And capital gains tax is tax on the profits, not tax on your entire portfolio. It's tax on the profits that you've made from the portfolio, which honestly, I hope is heaps. Yeah. Like I hope that Brooke, you have a really big capital gains tax bill. Yeah. You're welcome. You're welcome. Talk to me about your number. You said I've got my financial freedom number and I did 25 times. What is it? Why did you pick it? It's two million dollars. Yeah. I can't remember what it, I think it works out to be like 80K. Yeah. I think that was the, let me divide it by 25 to tell you. Yeah. It's 80K. I thought 80K was a comfortable life for me. Yeah. Good. And your plan is to be able to retire at 35, but you talk to me a little bit

Starting point is 00:31:21 about more your personality when it comes to working, because I wouldn't, yes, but I wouldn't say, and I think a lot of people are like, Oh my God, like if you put in the hard yards, now you can retire and you never have to work another day in life. And I think a lot of people assume that if you want to retire early, it's because you just don't want to be working. And I would say that you are born to, I'm born to work. Yes. But what does that look like? Is it just because you're like, I want financial freedom by then I want this, like, or are you planning on traveling the world? Are you planning on never working a day in your life? Like what does that financial freedom number, what does it mean to achieve it? I think because I grew up in like a very low

Starting point is 00:32:03 socioeconomic area, I kind of like realized what it's like to not have money. Like I did not grow up wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. My parents' house was $70,000. We lived on like one parent's income, which was my dad was a mechanic, an apprentice mechanic at that time. Like we did not grow up rich and like, we're just lucky to have what we have. So I think the idea of me having financial independence is like, okay, well, I know that I'm never going to be back with no money. Like I have money, worst comes to worst. I could help my mom. I could help my sister. Like I've got money spare. It's not about retiring for me. Cause I like working. I like doing things like I have a side hustle. I look for new things I can be doing all the time. Like I've got

Starting point is 00:32:44 goals to start like a little business. I just think the idea of having the financial independence is, okay, well I can be a little bit more risky with my decisions. If I start a small business and I don't earn income for the first three, four years, well, that's fine because I have my investments like backing me up. I also have a job. I also have like, I'm looking for just many ways to have money so that I'm not poor. Yeah. And I think that that's an important thing to touch on as well. Cause a lot of people might be going, well, she was really privileged or she had parents that invested or she, you know, got gifted money or had an inheritance or her parents guarantored a loan. Like I think it's really important to contextualize it because so often

Starting point is 00:33:24 we hear of people investing and then we get disheartened because then we go, oh, that's not, oh, their parents were property investors. No wonder why they own a house. Yeah. And we talk about it a lot in our team as well, because like getting to $1,300 a fortnight to invest, that's a lot of money. And it's definitely not the expectation that you listen to this episode and maybe you've never invested in your life. And then suddenly you find that money to invest. That has taken you a while to not only work up to confidence wise to invest, but also working out, okay, well, if I have this other job, is that one of the motivations to like do so much? Yeah. I think I just, I live like I've still got

Starting point is 00:34:04 my first corporate job income. Like my first corporate job was like 50 K. So to me, I'm like, well, if I can spend less than 50 K a year on all of my expenses, that's including rent and overseas holiday. Like if I can do that, then great. That spare money is either going to go into my house deposit or it's going to go like into investment. So every time I've either got a better like paying income or a pay rise or a second income. I'm like, okay, well that's not my money. I don't need that money to live. Okay. Let's put that into my house deposit and then let's invest the rest of it because I want to have that buffer so that realistically, if I was tomorrow to become unable to work, okay, great. Well, I can go back to earning a $50,000 a year

Starting point is 00:34:42 income or a $45,000 a year income. And I've got savings, I've got investments and I was, I'm still living on that income now. It's just the spare money's gone elsewhere. Like it's not my money to touch it's crazy to me because that's my mentality and like when I hear it reflected back I'm like that kind of makes no sense because you've got so many well well you now have the experience in a career yeah and have established yourself so much so that even if she's on the money deleted tomorrow and you couldn't work here you could go get a very well-paying job like you're never going to be in a situation from my perspective where you would go and get an income of less than $50,000. But in my head, I don't know why it must be part of my money story,

Starting point is 00:35:27 which is semi-similar to yours that I wasn't given anything. I didn't grow up really wealthy. I kind of always go, oh, well, I could always fall back on that. Or I could always, and like, I forget that I do have investments and I have created that cushion. Does that feel real to you yet? Or are you still planning for the worst? Yeah. I will always be poor in my head. Like if anyone's a Perth local they'll know I grew up in the Goswells Armadale region okay I when I say that I did not grow up with money I did not grow up with money and in my head I will always be that person like I will never not be poor so like even as I have investments or like my net worth changes in my head that's not that money's not real because I don't physically have it which

Starting point is 00:36:10 also feels good because I never I'm not going out and buying designer stuff I'm not like doing anything fancy I literally don't even own a home so none of it's real until it's real so I think because until I actually retire, I think that someone tomorrow could come along and take all my investments and go, haha, you're kidding. That's not yours. Like. It's in a crazy that we get imposter syndrome over our investments as well. Like, sorry, we thought we could control ourselves. No, you cannot. Like I have an emergency fund and I get scared taking money out of my emergency fund, even if I need it for an emergency. I feel like that's very relatable though, because so many people message, you see the messages from She's On The Money. People are

Starting point is 00:36:48 oh my god I feel so guilty I used my emergency fund and more often we'll have a chat with you we'll be like oh my god no no what for and they'll say oh an emergency debt bill or my tire broke and I had to get I'm like hold on hold on can we just backtrack is that not what it was that's what it was for why are we feeling guilty anyway I think it's really really interesting learning about your investment strategy and I think the community is going to have loved the openness because I think that is very hard for people, you know, to come on the She's On The Money platform and say, well, this is how much I invest. This is how I invest. This is where I invest. And we want to go down this route a little bit more in the future. So if you've listened to this and you're like, oh my

Starting point is 00:37:29 God, I have an investing diary that I would love to share. It can be completely anonymous. Talk to me, slide into our DMs. Doesn't have to be anonymous either. It's completely on your terms. So I would be sliding into our DMs because we want more content like this because the only way, or from my perspective, you can read a million things on Reddit, Brooke. I guarantee that by listening to stuff like this, you go, oh, it's actually not that scary. Yeah, I could do it. I could do it. So unfortunately, Brooke, that is all we have time for today. I really appreciate how often you have been with the community. And I just know that they're going to be so obsessed with hearing from you. And I think that learning about investing, it can be overwhelming. When you

Starting point is 00:38:10 start at the start, it feels like you're going nowhere. When you invest even your first $5,000, you just go, well, what's that even going to do? But consistency means that Brooke can potentially retire by the age of 35, which is very exciting. Guys, if you have loved this episode, we would really appreciate it. And our content team would really appreciate it. Please go give us a five star review. So this was worth my time. Exactly. Because it genuinely helps us bring you more of the content that you love. And it lets us know that you want more juicy behind the scenes chats like this one. I know you're probably feeling all kinds of inspired right now and ready to channel your inner Brooke and start building your own wealth. And you know what? Brooke and I, we've

Starting point is 00:38:50 actually made that really ridiculously easy for you. And we've pulled together all of our best investing resources into one spot on the She's On The Money website and inside the She's On The Money investing masterclass. Girlboss. When Brooke said she had to read nine investing books, it's because i'm crazy it was actually horrible i did not want to miss a thing we didn't we did not want to miss a thing i wanted to make sure we dotted every single i crossed every single t if i was saying something it had to be fact checked twice i'm gonna link it in the show notes for you and you can soak up all of the knowledge to put yourself in the best possible position we will see you back here on friday for another episode bye guys bye divas

Starting point is 00:39:29 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 321 649 27708 AFSL 451 289.

She's On The Money - Investing Diary: How This SOTM Team Member Built Her Portfolio (And Could Retire At 35)

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