She's On The Money - Millennials are entitled (to take their paid leave)

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Happy Wednesday to you friends! Today on the show we chat all things leave entitlements and if you’re thinking of skipping this one because it sounds a little bland, then stop right there missy – we promise it’s a goody. As it turns out there is lots you’re entitled to as an employee in Aus including a few things you may never have heard of, so if you’re not too sure about what your work rights are, then drop everything (within reason) and get this ep in your ears ASAP. Keen to know more? Here’s the Aus Gov’s terribly informative page we talk about if you want more info. They also have some interesting info on your rights re the pandemic, so check that page out too.Also we chatted about Workpac v Rosato, and if you want to learn more, definitely have a read.If you’re keen to watch the HP Lisa Messenger webinar series featuring our favourite friend Victoria, then check it out for free today.Craving vodka pasta after Georgia’s long-winded story about dropping hers on the floor? Course you do! Get this in your gob (just be careful not to drop).Love the podcast sick and want more SOTM? We had a feeling that was the case. Join our Facebook page to share your money wins and money confessions, follow us on Insta for daily inspo to keep you on track and absolutely subscribe to our newsletter, the written recap of the pod’s key takeaways, including some bonus bits you won’t want to miss. 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! Your hosts are Georgia King and Victoria Devine. 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. My name is Georgia King. I'm a copywriter and journalism student and it's Wednesday, which means it's time to chat money with Melbourne-based finance magician, Victoria Devine. Hello, V. Hello. I like being called a magician. I thought you might like that.

Yeah, that's nice. I'll keep that. Carry on. Now, today on the show, we're talking leave entitlements, covering off everything from what Australian law says you're entitled to when it comes to annual, maternity, carer's leave and more, as well as what the goal is if you're a freelancer. Plus, we'll be exploring how to navigate the sticky situation of what to do when your boss doesn't want you to take the leave you're entitled to.

Is this a subtle grab at me, Georgia, or no? Okay, cool. Moving on. It's a personal attack. Now, there are very juicy times ahead, Vicky D, but before we knuckle down and get on into it, you very excitingly had a little webinar with the amazing Lisa Messenger a couple of weeks ago. For anyone who missed it, give us a little recap.

Oh my gosh. Yes, I did. So HP have put on the HP Business Not As Usual series, and it is hosted by the delightful Lisa Messenger, who has a podcast of her own, if you guys are interested in listening to it. but they pull together so many exciting business owners. So for example, obviously me, subtle plug, humble brag, obvious.

But I was speaking about financing during a crisis and they probably put me first because it can't get much worse than that. And then recently they've had the likes of Pippa Hallis who established Elabashe and Elise Tran who established The Daily Edited, which if you guys have ever been in the She's On The Money office,

I think it's looted with She's On The Money. slash the monogram stuff yeah that's all of our monogrammed loot which is very exciting but they are amazing business women so if you are keen to have a listen to that or replay my webinar with Lisa jump on on jump on on jump on on jump on line and you can re-watch it via the link that we are going to put in the show notes how long roughly are we talking for that one look it was probably about 50 minutes of solid content same size as the podcast I was genuinely really worried because obviously during COVID I wasn't allowed to travel to Sydney to go and film this with Lisa, but we had such great chemistry.

I really enjoyed that interview, not going to lie. Interesting. Maybe you should start your own podcast, though. Oh, my gosh, yes. Just don't fire me. Money wins and confessions. Let's move along. You can go first because you always do and that's how we do it.

Is it? I like structure, so, yeah, let's keep that. Okay, Georgia, I actually have a money win this week. Happy for you. Thank you. It's like a money win. that's not a loss but also I could have done it myself so let's see way back in June I purchased a number of bookshelves from the very trusty Ikea and they were for my office but then COVID

happened in Melbourne again and we've been in lockdown so I have not put those bookshelves up they've been sitting in their boxes taking up a lot of space in our office as you would know Georgia and so I kept talking about how I was going to come in and put them together but it was never going to happen because I actually am not very good at flat pack furniture thought maybe I'll get my partner in on this but I didn't want to get a divorce before we even talk about marriage so I have jumped on Airtasker I'm paying someone to come in and set up our bookcases tomorrow for a pretty good amount of money 75 bucks there's three big bookcases so money went from me because I can continue working while this happens but also I love that there's someone on Airtasker

who's gotten another job out of this and he seems lovely so far so I don't know I thought that was a money win that I could potentially pass on to the community as well because if you want some extra cash coming up to Christmas why not jump on it ask for and put together someone's flat back furniture clever clever exactly that can't be that hard I mean it's not that hard I can clearly put together flat pack furniture but I've just got six million things on at the moment especially coming up to Christmas that it made sense to just find someone for a reasonable price to get it done. So for me, that's a money win and kind of a life win. So mine is obscure. Whoa, what a change for George. So I've recently moved into a new apartment with my boyfriend.

Oh, Georgia! Getting personal. So it's getting serious. It's getting serious. No, no, we're just mates. Housemates in a one bedroom apartment. Roommates. Yeah. Anyway. I love that for you. For another time. No one's interested in this. I am. I absolutely am. And I know every single one of our listeners wants to know about your personal life like the good housemate that I am to my boyfriend I was like I'll make dinner tonight sweets you just go relax have a beer on the balcony that's how I talk to him um anyway he's drinking his beer having a good time I'm making vodka pasta oh it's kind of my specialty it is the most it's your specialty yet you've never made it for me I mean I actually wouldn't eat any of it things going on feeling attacked

I just want to be included, Georgia. No, I actually did make a vegan version of it for my partner's parents recently, so maybe I could make it for you, gluten-free pasta. All right. Anyway. I'm on this. Yeah. But who do you think you are, Gigi Hadid?

Well, it's not her recipe, but this has been making the rounds recently, hasn't it? Well, it's exactly the same, but I didn't use her recipe. It's Gigi King's recipe, you know? Oh, I like that. We're as good looking as each other. Anyway, I don't believe that Gigi Hadid actually eats vodka pasta, but that's a chat for another time as well point is I was uh halfway through making the dinner and then got a little excited went to pop a record on and the entire vat of pasta sauce fell on the

ground oh no a new apartment like it's not that new it's got but it's got brand new flooring in it doesn't it yeah and now it has pasta remnants um but that's okay because it's delicious but the the loss is that it was you know expensive and I had to make it again so yeah well you literally put vodka in your pasta so I mean it was mishka oh okay all right well babe maybe I don't want you to cook no no that's honestly for those of us who are under the age of 24 I do believe we have a very good relationship with mishka vodka absolutely it got a lot of jobs done back in the day anyway that's my confession done shall we move across to the face I'm not even sure what that confession was. Absolutely we should Georgia. So I have a money win from Jazz. Jazz said and I

really liked this one actually because as you know Georgia it's something that I am definitely guilty of. She said so not many people know this and she reckons it's a bit of a hack. She says she's a size seven women's shoes and sometimes she can even be an eight depending on the fit but when it comes to sneakers and runners she's a kids size five to six so she bought some new ASIC runners which are usually 180 bucks for women's shoes which we've all been there it is so expensive for runners exactly and she said she bought the kids version for 90 bucks which is to me a massive money win but then on top of that Georgia she said she used her shop back account so she got even more money back yeah I love that for her and I think that this is an epic money win

because we can all especially if we have smaller feet we can all learn from that and potentially embrace it ourselves I've got size 80s I mean not 80 wow sorry just size size eight and I put on an ease on the end because that's how I speak would I fit into children's shoes you absolutely would because my friends now we're sharing personal information like moving in with our boyfriends and shoe sizes I'm a size 40 which is a nine women's yeah and I can sometimes fit in kids runners so yeah all the way up to my flopper my flopper flipper my flipper feet There you go. I wouldn't have pictured that.

I did read through some of the comments on this too and I'd love to continue this conversation actually purely out of entertainment. Probably provides no value to anybody else but me. But a few people were saying that we shouldn't do this because it's not as good for our feet as adult shoes. But I would argue that kids' shoes should be really well made, especially if they're ASICs because kids' feet are still developing.

Well, that's true and they're also like on their feet more than adults because they wear them to school and stuff but then when it comes to shoes like converse aren't they just universally completely flat on the sole yeah so interesting maybe it doesn't actually matter so if anyone works for like the athletes for sure can you just tell us the gosh yeah we'll have some insider goss you can remain completely anonymous and we will dish the dirt on shoe sizes love can't wait what have you got for me georgia okay so mine is from the lovely lauren who has a DIY money win. So she saw an earring organizer slash display on Etsy a few weeks ago, but it was over $90. So she was like, eh. Etsy can be really expensive. Yeah. And then she had to pay

shipping on top of that. So she was like, no, no. Hard no. I'm going to do it. She's on the money and I'm going to DIY it. So she spent $34 creating it herself. Oh, I love that. And the pictures are so pretty. I know she's got so many pairs of quirky earrings. There's some ice creams. There's and flamingos my personal favorite there are the iced vovos what about you they stuck out to me as well the iced vovos and probably the watermelons yeah look I quite like that if you guys don't know what we're talking about jump on in and look at Lauren's post just search Lauren uh Etsy I guess it'll probably come up but yeah we loved that oh my gosh Georgia I just saw the baby Yoda earrings what where yeah the baby Yoda he was just hiding there that yeah it takes the cake that

takes the cake well done well done lauren i think we could probably move along to the main topic of today's show if you're ready what a dream it's going to be so exciting leave entitlements it doesn't sound exciting and actually be when you suggested this as a topic i think that's literally what i said to you like you did this topic interesting yeah and then i didn't reply get it on purpose geez are we fighting anyway whoa i did my research guys turns out this is actually an incredibly interesting complex topic i promise you uh especially when we compare our workplace rights in australia to those that exist in other countries because it turns out we're pretty lucky well that's it that is it and that was a nice wrap the show yeah so i hope you enjoyed this one guys

no we will continue now i have lots of questions for you today v especially with christmas holidays coming up and many of us taking leave around this time but i think probably the most sensible place to start would be to have a little chat through all of the different leaves that we are entitled to in Australia. As there are a few, some of our listeners may not have even heard of. So to kick us off, talk me through what each of these classes of leave mean for Aussie employees. I most certainly can do that, George. But before we get into today's chat, I do actually want to flag that there are so many different types of leave in Australia, right? So you can be full-timer, you could be part-time, you could have a casual role, you could have fixed-term

contract you could be a shift worker you're like you georgia king you could be a freelancer or an apprentice the list goes on and on and on and on but all of these different types of employees receive different entitlements which is uber confusing and if you do want the full scope on specifics of your employment type there is a fantastic os government website that lays it out super clearly and we're going to link that in the show notes but today just to clarify we're mainly going to be talking about full-time, part-time and casual roles because that's what 99.95% of our listeners are classed as. So that would make the most sense, Georgia King. So straight into it, Georgia, you are absolutely right. Employees here in Australia are entitled to annual leave or

holiday leave, where typical full-time employees working 38 hours a week receive four whole weeks off per year. Now that is a pretty good outcome if you ask me for Aussie employees when we look at the way other countries operate. So to give you some comparison, Georgia, I was reading this week. In China, for example, employees are entitled to a minimum of five paid annual leave days and a maximum of 15 days. And that's for employees who've been with the business for some time. In the USA, there are no hard and fast laws at all about annual leave, and it varies completely on the employer. But the average US worker receives about 10 days of paid annual leave each and every single year so by comparison we have a pretty sweet deal here I would say

part-timers also are entitled to four weeks of paid leave but it's paid on a pro rata basis fyi and that's based on how many hours they work as a part of their part-time contract what does pro rata mean for anyone who doesn't know what that means so pro rata Georgia means proportionate allocation so it means that I would say if you've got a full-time job in that role you get 50 grand a year but because you're only working three days a week that salary would be brought back down to 30 grand a year so it's yeah it's yeah it's equivalent to the amount of days you work in that role so it's kind of like a percentage if your job was outlined as being a full-time job at 60 grand a year but you only worked 50 of that role by two and a half days a week you'd get about

30 000 as a salary so pro rata means it's just in line with the proportion of hours you work in comparison to the role requirements. Does that make sense? It does make sense. I really should have found a proper definition, but that's okay. I'll just make it up as we go. That was good. Makes sense. Hopefully that works. Hire me as your HR advisor. Loved it. Casuals, what do they get in the way of annual leave? Casuals do not get any leave, but they do get the benefit of a slightly more flexible working schedule and they often receive a higher hourly rate, which is called casual loading. So that balances out the lack of benefits that they receive. In saying that, there was a case this year where it held that because the employee was casual when working

regular and systematic hours with quote the predictable periods of working time that they would actually be entitled to personal leave, compassionate leave and public holiday payments which is kind of cool. So basically the court concluded that because Rosado was a casual whose nature of work was absolutely identical or similar to then he too should receive those benefits. So if you're a quote long-term casual please do make sure that you are receiving everything you are entitled to and I know that there are so many businesses that do this when they should actually have employed people on a full-time basis it happens a lot in retail and you will see people hired as a casual but they're still working their 38 hours a week and they've been employed by that

company for the last four years which little bit sticky little bit different I'm obviously quite opinionated on this because I like people to have equal rights but definitely worthy of looking into my friends. Is that a conversation you could have with your employer? It absolutely is and I think it's more around understanding your entitlements because you might actually be really happy with that role. So I have a friend who is in this exact situation and she does not want to change her job at all. She doesn't want a permanent contract because she's getting a higher hourly rate and she's very happy to go without the leave entitlements because it doesn't worry her at all for the additional savings so it's more about understanding what it means for you not just

arguing the fact that you're not being treated equally because as seen in that court case georgia when push comes to shove if you actually have proven that you're a full-time employee you're probably going to get those benefits anyway right and you still get paid tax and super in a proper casual job as well don't you yes you do yes you should cool so just back on regular if you like and you'll leave for a second that does accrue and it carries over from year to year yes i know my friends so annual leave accumulates over the year as well so if you only take like a couple of weeks at the start of the year you can use it in the late of the year or it sometimes is transferred to the next year however most companies do really want you to take those four weeks each year

sometimes in your employment contract you'll find that it actually doesn't roll over and you're forced to take it which is called forced leave which is absolutely fine and quite normal just read your contracts to understand what you are and aren't entitled with but essentially companies don't love the idea of you banking you know eight to twelve weeks going to Europe being paid for it and then not having an employee for two to three months so it's a risk on both sides if that makes sense we then Georgia on top of that have sick and carers leave so this is something that I do not see enough people taking and I'm not saying everybody take your sick leave everybody take your carers leave but carers leave I believe is probably the most underrated leave in Australia

and you should be taking it when you need to take it. If you've got a sick parent that needs to be taken to doctor's appointments, that is what your carer's leave is for, my friends. You don't have to use your annual leave for that. You'll receive a total of 10 days sick leave per year as a full-time person and obviously pro rata as a part-timer,

which can be calculated as one out of 26 of an employee's ordinary working hours in a year. So for a full-timer working about 38 hours a week, you multiply that by 52 weeks a year, which comes to a total Georgia of 1976 did the math before of course then you divide that by a total of 26 which gives you a total of 76 hours of paid slash carer's leave annually you do the same maths for part-timers obviously and just adjust the hour figure to work out how much you actually owed love that maths maths gal come at me but sick leave Georgia is also cumulative so

if you only use two days of your 10 in a year, those extra days actually get transferred over to the next year. However, when you leave the organization, unlike annual leave, those hours don't actually get paid out. Mental health days, my friends, also fall into the sick leave category as well, which I think is an incredibly important development over the last few years. And it does feel like there's a greater understanding of the importance of mental health and having laws in place that actually support employees to take those days when they really need them. And I think that's incredibly important and you kind of need like again back on my high horses like be kinder to yourself but genuinely be kinder to yourself sometimes actually just taking a mental

health day is going to make you so much more productive for the rest of the month that's so true it can make the world of difference just having that day to recharge and 100 you don't just have to have a flu to take a day off work like sometimes you're just like mental load is just maxed out you can't function you're really anxious you need to just take a day off work be at home literally cuddle your cat and have a cup of tea and i know that that's not what employers are going to want to hear from me but if you're an employee know that you are entitled to that and if you need it you should be taking it and your employer probably would prefer you take that so that you can come to work and be the best version of you anyway 100 and i think it's really

important to understand that if you do take a mental health day you don't have any obligation to explain that to your employer so some people say oh but if i need to take a mental health day it's like that is not something that your employer should even ask about if they do it's none of their business my friends do you need this is off topic slightly but when i can't remember because i haven't worked in a proper corporate job in a while but do you need like a um doctor's slip a medical certificate to have sick day so it will be in your employment contract as to what your employer expects often employers expect you to do it if you have more than one day off so if you just have one day they're kind of like yeah okay no problems i'm sure that they will have a chat

with you if you've taken like eight sick days at the start of the year and they're going hey georgia king europe or something yeah look i'm not gonna lie i have had that happen really yes absolutely and i have seen instagram stories of people at the beach when they said they're in bed with the flu that's historically it wasn't my employees thankfully it was in another job and I just felt like maybe they were just a bit ballsy yeah if I'm honest I wouldn't have the guts to do that like if I'd taken a sick day from work I'd probably be hiding out maybe if I had taken a sick day to go to the beach yeah yeah which I've never done honestly hey you could do it now that you're you know the boss look I do but I was also that goody two-shoes that never skipped out on

school yeah same so was I interesting yeah like I didn't I just feel really bad and I've never actually used my sick leave that is not a brag no that's the thing and I'm I'm the same and we shouldn't that's not something we should be proud of no absolutely you shouldn't like but why is that like that seems to be a young millennial thing that you do feel guilty for taking those sick days no don't really feel guilty exactly they're there for you to take and I wouldn't like I think it's an interesting mentality Georgia because you end up in this situation and we're like oh well I'm entitled to it and then on the flip side everyone says that as millennials we're super entitled like I get we're entitled to it but I think it's just using things

within reason like if you need the day fantastic take it but don't see your sick leave as something that you're quote gonna lose if you don't use it like I find that to be kind of gross when people are like oh I've got so many sick hours I'm just gonna take a sick day and I'm just like wow like that's not that's not the work ethic that I would love in my no it's like a poor um character train yeah i don't write that at all but let's move on what do you reckon any preferences from us um okay yeah so i wanted to move again a little sidestep to talk about maternity and paternity leave where does that stand am i allowed to shut you down shut me down girl you've done it before on the potter yeah look i'm really sorry like that is well that is a

fantastic topic like parental leave is massive but i haven't told you yet that we're going to do an entire podcast on it very soon because okay surprise for you because we need to write that but for me maternity and paternity leave is a massive thing that isn't just what is government mandated slash what's in your employment contract it's actually about the planning and working out you know how much does baby cost so I'm going to cover that in an episode that's coming to you very shortly Georgia that you didn't know about sorry cool can't wait um but we'll put that one on ice but yes maternity and paternity leave really important is that going to be a 2020 podcast topic do you reckon probably watch out my friends watch out yeah stay tuned for that one okay well

then other any other forms of leave that i've missed we've got long service leave so you'll receive around a couple of months of paid leave when you've been working for a company of a minimum of seven years that's recently changed from 10 georgia which is kind of cool and employees would then couple that with their usual four weeks of annual leave but the amount does differ depending on the state and territory so you do need to look into that because it's literally different everywhere then you've got compassionate leave which is different to carer's leave so this is two full days of paid leave for permanent staffers unpaid for casuals but you can still take it for when an employee's close family member passes away or is struck by a sudden injury or illness or they

kind of just need to be there like I have had friends take compassionate leave for pets and I think that that is so yeah absolutely because for most people they become a part of the family and it's just as bad as a family member passing away so I think that that's me giving you permission to be as crazy a cat lady as I am moving into other types of leave there is community service leave which I think is so cool you get unpaid leave for voluntary emergency activities which is kind of cool and you also get up to 10 days of paid leave for jury service after 10 days it's unpaid have you ever been on a jury yes no no yes no I was I was actually booted no it's not it's not a secret I was booted from the jury wow I know so I went to jury duty this is probably like

two years ago and I probably could have gotten out of it because I run a business and was arguably quite busy but I actually just felt like it would be a really good experience went through it all got to the part where they're like walking us into the supreme court and then the lawyers kicked me off they decided you knew the murderer no we didn't even get the full brief on what the story was they would like apparently they're allowed to just like pick and choose who the jury is i'm sure they can't do that a million times but they looked at me and thought that maybe i wasn't the right fit interesting depending on the crime yeah i got booted anyway my partner sidestep on jury duty guess who got served last week with jury duty notice stevie boy stevie boy yep he is not looking

forward to it wow there you go yeah so we'll keep you updated on steve's jury duty excited obviously that would not be potential yeah i don't even know we're allowed to talk about next leave okay so next type of leave is obviously public holiday leave permanent employees get a paid day off which is important to understand because some companies actually i have heard make you work public holidays so without any benefits without any benefits so do check your employment contract again. I'm going to fall back on this a lot here because in an employment contract between you and your employer, there could be different things that apply to you that aren't mandated by law. Yeah, so you might get like a day in the loo or something

like that. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's important to understand that. And then the last type of leave that I want to talk about is family and domestic violence leave, which is so important to talk about. It's where an employee would receive five days of unpaid for full-time and part-time and casual employees for instance of domestic violence so that's for every kind of that's for every kind of employment and I think it's really important to understand that that exists and it's not because you know I'm expecting that you might use it it's because you might know someone who might need to use it and be educated on it and the more we know my friends the more we can help others yeah wow there's so many different kinds of leave in Australia yeah

there absolutely are and that's why it gets so overwhelming and that's why I thought let's do an entire podcast on them. Yeah, I think this will be a long one. You did touch on it earlier, V, but what happens to your leave if you are a full-timer and you're leaving that company, but you have like three weeks left in leave? Does that get paid out? Yes, my friend, it does. And this is where it gets really confusing because people don't understand their rights. And that's why I wanted to talk about leave specifically. But when you leave a company, your employer is legally obligated, my friends, to pay out all of your remaining annual leave as a part of your final pay. So, this is the same for any annual leave loadings. It will need to be paid out.

For anyone who doesn't know what that means, leave loadings means some employees will be paid an additional 17.5% of their income when they go on annual leave on top of their regular pay. Cool, right? Like bonus for going on a holiday, which is a feature of most modern awards. So, again, you need to understand your personal circumstance to be able to understand this. it's not available for everyone though and whether you receive it or not is entirely dependent on your award rate enterprise agreement or your employment contract so check it my friends side note georgia king it might sound a little bit random but leave loading actually started because of the labor movement in the 1970s to compensate those employees who were working in

industries where taking leave would actually mean they missed out on opportunity to work overtime hours and earn extra income by doing so so that's kind of cool isn't it fun fact fun thanks for thanks for bringing it in yeah I never knew that was a thing in terms of annual leave once again I seem to be quite tied to annual leave I guess it's the main I mean leaves the main leaves we probably should be talking about plants as well which I adore yeah hey who doesn't can workplaces reject your requests for leave I know again when I worked in a big corporation like everyone wanted to go away in summer so we all put in for like two weeks in July and they were like no no you can't do that because then we don't have a marketing team what's the go with

that is that is that allowed you do know that summer in australia is not july just first things first right like you mean european summer because you're bougie okay no problems so title trash yeah cool awesome i just really wanted to point that out because i knew what you meant so yes it does need to be agreed upon between you and your employer you can't just demand to take time off whenever you want usually yes sorry usually there is going to be part of your contract when you start working at a new company that outlines their protocols when it does come to leave but the Fair Work Act which Georgia you actually should be given a hard copy of when you start any new job says that an employer must not unreasonably refuse to agree to a request by the employee

to take their paid annual leave. It just needs to work for both parties so that the whole team isn't off at the same time or that some employees don't miss crucial moments in their company's calendar if they're in an industry where certain times of the year are really important and this does happen for me Georgia so I obviously don't have accounting as a part of my business anymore but when I did you best believe that June 30 end of financial year was massive therefore we had in our employment contracts at that point what we called a blackout period because we were so busy that we genuinely as a business could not afford for people to take time off in July August and so we don't have that anymore because I don't have any more accounts on my team but it's something

that you know understand what your contract is before signing it because you're going to look like a silly billy if you go and ask your employer for leave during July if they've got a blackout in your contract you're essentially saying you never read it yeah can you contest um lines in your contract you can absolutely go back so I think something that's really important is when a contract put in front of you. It's an agreement by both people and whilst most employers are not that flexible on their contracts, it's absolutely worthy of a conversation or a negotiation if something doesn't actually work for you. So I'm not saying go back and be like, I don't like the salary, you need to pay me double or hey, well, I don't want to work 38 hours, I want to work three

for that entire salary. But if there's something in it that you want to flag or chat about, you are well within your rights to have those things changed really good example of that is actually when you start a new job right let's use you as an example Georgia you might go and start a full-time job with someone and they might have a non-compete so therefore you might not be able to do another job while working for them therefore you couldn't hang out with me and do the podcast right so you have to really understand what that contract means because you might shoot yourself in the foot and end up not being able to do something that you really wanted to when if you just negotiated in the first place it would have been fine yeah yeah and those contracts shouldn't be too

complicated if they're they're for the layman yeah they they are written quite simply they do look like intimidating contracts because they are black and white and long and boring but at the end of the day it should have different areas and you know that's what the she's on the money community is for post your queries my little friends you're right we'll approve them now but i also wanted to ask you about companies determining when you can take your leave which is kind of what we just touched on but i know again when when i worked in that corporation they mandated um a two-week shutdown over the christmas period so that that's allowed yeah so under the fairway act of 2009 any employer can make their employees take annual leave for a period of any shutdown over christmas

so the act does make it pretty clear that employees must have the leave accumulated so if your boss has been asking you to take unpaid leave they do actually require your consent to do that sometimes employees actually allow their employees paid leave before they've actually accrued it as well so they kind of like bank it and get it in advance so you're not out of pocket and then the employee won't be allowed any additional leave until they've accrued enough to kind of like pay back what they're owed if that makes sense which I think is kind of cool because it means that the business can still function but if you don't have any leave and it's a forced leave period you're not you know financially stuck yeah yeah perfect let's talk

about freelancers. I know obviously we have a lot of side hustlers in our community who will be wondering if they should be receiving any of these perks. What's the go? This is a little bit of a sticky one. It's a little bit interesting and I know that we have so many freelancing kings and queens in our community. So I hope your ears are pricking up at this question but sorry short answer is no. You don't actually receive any of those perks that come with working in a company when you're a freelancer. You're essentially your own little company. So invoice the business you are working for and then it's up to you how to pay yourself super and pay your taxes and give yourself leave and it's super important when working out what your rates are as a freelancer

that you actually take that into consideration so it's important that you actually build that into your fee be that hourly rates or projects rates etc etc but obviously a perk of being a freelancer is that you actually get to determine the hours that you do work and where you work them and who you work them for but it does mean a little more though and a little bit of bookkeeping is going to go a long way I promise you to make sure that you are actually making enough to make being a freelancer justifiable any hot tips for freelancers out there that are just like I want to make money but I don't know how like from Vicky Day herself in terms of running a small business of one confidence is key my friends absolutely embrace confidence and remember that you have a

lot of skills to bring to the table and that there is always someone that is going to need those skills. So I think it's about working out what you're good at. And I don't know, I think there's something about understanding that you don't have to have the biggest business in the world for it to be a productive business that contributes to you having a better lifestyle. So many people talk to me, they're like, oh my gosh, Victoria, I don't have enough to invest. And it's like, well, I get that, you know, lots of us are under financial pressure, but if you are so desperate to invest and you're so excited about it, you're going to find a way to make $500 extra a month in income so that you can do something that's super in line with your goals and values if that

means taking on more hours at work or doing flat pack ikea construction or pet sitting or you know doing even small jobs or surveys online like heaps of our community are side hustlers and i love them for it i thought you'd also add in there v the classic victoria divine slogan fake rich real poor later no not that one sorry um wildly passionate no not that one either um god what is it i've lost it oh no know your worth and then add tax i do like that i thought that was pretty good that's been flying around the internet for some years now i actually thought you were going to say bougie because i say that a lot you've got a lot of catchphrases and sorry there's nothing wrong with that so do you i feel like we all do but we're podcasters so we get called out for it

you're right give us all right guys um okay well there's been a lot to take in this episode we've spoken about a lot of numbers a lot of different types of leaves so hopefully you guys are taking notes you can go back listen again we will definitely respect that decision but v was there anything else you wanted to add before we scoot across to today's listener question yeah absolutely i'd like to apologize to all the people that thought that when we were talking about leaves we were going to talk about plants because i too love plants and for those fellow plant lovers out there i have recently become a parent of a thai consolation monstera so if you know what i'm talking about you know what i'm talking about but no plants are expensive so

maybe that could be a topic no we're not we're not having a plan like it would be my dream come true but like as the proud parent of a thai consolation monstera i have absolutely no intention no i have no intention of sharing how much i paid for that leaf all right but the other thing I wanted to add to just like round out the whole chat was that obviously COVID has thrown so many of our employment statuses out of whack and some of us who were formerly full-time are now part-time and some have taken pay cuts and some of you have lost your jobs completely so if you want to know more about your rights and more about the laws when it does come to COVID and the workplace I really really encourage you to go and have a bit of a read of the Australian Government's

Fair Work website which we are going to link in the show notes as it is super useful and super easy to understand. Beautiful. Listener question time. I work full-time and this year our team was reduced by about 60% yet we're still managing the same workload. Obviously I'm incredibly grateful to be employed and I know I'm in a very privileged position but I feel burnt out I need a break. The problem is my boss is extremely highly strung and is hard to approach about these kind of things. She's under a lot of pressure I know and she has said no to some of my colleagues requests for leave recently because we've been so busy. My question is how do I approach this? I know I deserve a break but I also know how lucky I am to have a job and I don't want to get in her bad

books for asking for time off. Thanks for your help. Oh Fi, horrible bosses. Where on earth does this listener start? Look that seemed arguably more dramatic than I had expected you to feel after listening to that but I think it's a massive issue right? Like this is going to be something that so many of us have gone through I'm assuming because so many people have been cut during COVID therefore the workload has been put on others but I think my advice here is literally take leave if you need leave burnout is arguably going to be even worse than you taking a mental health day which is exactly what it sounds like you need you need a mental health day you need a few mental health days I think that you need to just ask and if your boss is highly strung as she explained I

I think it would be just around talking about how busy you've been lately, what you've been contributing and the fact that you want to continue to contribute and just reminding them of that, albeit you should never have to do that. Like as someone who does employ people, I would be horrified if someone had to come to me and say, hey, Victoria, I need to take leave for all of these reasons and really justify it. And Georgia, you would know I'm the first person that is like, oh, cool. You need some time off.

No problems. Take it. Like I don't even ask because it is literally not my business, but not all bosses are like that. So I think it's really important that if you do need to ask for leave, maybe frame it so that you're stroking your boss's ego at the same time, even though you shouldn't have to do that. Like, is that really bad advice?

No, I don't know. That's terrible advice. I think it's just more around just saying you need to take some time off because you feel like you're approaching burnout and you really want to still be able to contribute and, you know, hold the team up, et cetera. So I do feel like this is terrible advice for me. but I also know that sometimes there's no real diplomatic way around it. Like some people just have bosses that are really hard to deal with. I'd argue that maybe you need to reconsider who

you work for, what you do, but that's probably a conversation for another day. Yeah. So she said that her boss rejected a couple of her colleagues requests for leave, but I feel like that sounds dodgy. Like surely, I mean, depending on where she works, hopefully there would be an HR department that she could go to if she does have that conversation and it doesn't go well or if there is no HR department then perhaps the Fair Work Ombudsman could provide answers. I don't know. What does she do there, V?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's where you really need to understand your rights and even just ask your boss why they've been rejected. If you are really busy and your colleague has said, ah, I really want to go on a holiday, like your boss is well within her rights or their rights, I've assumed they're female, let's start assuming

that all may let's start assuming that all bosses and CEOs are female let's make that movement but I don't know why we assumed that that's kind of cool but she's a bad boss so maybe it's not cool oh my god what have we done what have we done Georgia okay back to what we're talking about I think it's about understanding why because if you've said I really need to go on holiday but your boss has said I'm really busy and if you leave my business my business is not going to be profitable and I can't pay you that's a very different story than someone approaching and saying, hey, I need a few days off. I'm going to burn out. I think honesty is the best policy in these situations. And if the leave was rejected because they just wanted a holiday and your boss

genuinely couldn't afford you to take that time off because it would be so detrimental to the business, then that makes sense. And your employer is actually well within their rights to reject it based on that. Obviously, they can't consistently use that excuse, but I would genuinely just have a conversation with my boss and just approach it as as pragmatically as possible just it is what it is I'm going to need some days off for this maybe work with them and say when would be the best time for me to take this off in the next month or the next you know few weeks how does this work how can we make this work and I'm sure that your boss would hopefully be super understanding of that because it is very different to asking to go on a holiday tomorrow as well like if you're

you are planning for it absolutely especially when everybody is under so much pressure like COVID has sent our world into an absolute spin and it is overwhelming for owners of businesses as well as employees as well as people who have you know completely suffered horribly from this but I think it's really important to understand that you know your boss is probably feeling a little bit stressed as well so maybe just needs you to approach it in a different way empathy is key here my friends hi i'm 22 and soon to graduate and this is my money diary now let's take a sneak peek into the financial lives of perfect strangers it's time for money diaries getting towards this time

of the year my dad owns a farm so we all head out and help him on that we've been able to give him a little bit of money every year and he'll put that into crops or sheep or lambs or anything like that and then we sort of earn the profit off that. I never looked at what dad did as investing and saving. It was only that when dad told me about a friend that he had who his father put two dollars for example into Commonwealth Bank shares when he was born and then this friend apparently makes a ridiculous amount of dividends from that and when he told me that I was like oh that is awesome I can't believe that you can do that so that's why I started saving as much as I do because I'm really into that lifestyle that your money can work for you I suppose. What does

she do to earn money, how much does she earn and how much is sitting in her bank account right now? I am a student studying nursing and I currently work across three different healthcare facilities as the personal care assistant. I earn around about $18,000 to $20,000 a year with that one. Once I graduate in 2021, I've got a graduate year at a small regional hospital where I hope to earn between $50,000 to $60,000 a year. I have $21,600 in a house deposit savings account and then I have usually around about $5,000 in an emergency account so that sort of fluctuates if I need to take anything out or can add some more in sometimes and then I have a holiday savings account and just a savings account for things for say if I break my phone that I can save and buy

another phone or something like that I've sort of said to myself look I know that I can live off eighteen thousand dollars sort of thing so if I like you always talk about lifestyle creep I'm just like I've got to try not to do it because if you know I might all of a sudden be making all this money compared to what I usually make. And I'll just go out and splurge on silly things. So it's just more so trying to stick to what I do now so that I don't overspend because I sort of want to buy a house in the next two to three years if I can. So I'd have to stick to how I'm sort of going now to be able to do that. What is her attitude towards investing? Does she invest? I do invest. So I invested at the start of this year, once I got the guts up to do it,

because I was so nervous. I put $5,000 around about into a share portfolio. And then I also do raise, invest. And when it gets to a certain amount, then I'll pull that out and pop it into my larger portfolio. I tried to diversify that portfolio too. So we'll see how that goes. What happens to the money once it hits her account? I put only $20 into my stock account so that when it builds up as well as raise, then eventually I can start reinvesting. Then I put $50 into the $5,000 emergency fund. I do $50 to my super account just because it's been so slow growing as a uni student so I'm trying to contribute more to it and then I put $90 to that holiday saving account and then whatever's left over I sort of go oh well I'll

halve that and put half of it into the house deposit account. What is her best money habit? I'm a meticulous planner so it's really helped actually a few times because going on holidays is sort of like a value for me because I love the experience. So I've planned really far in advance to go on certain holidays. And for example, like I booked Airbnb, it might've been two years in advance. I don't know how it worked, but because he hadn't set his prices that far in the future, he said that it automatically reset to the lowest cost of all the Airbnbs in Queenstown or in New Zealand or something like that so we booked this amazing apartment style Airbnb for a quarter of the price it was so good and what's her worst money habit it would either be

that I spend too much on food at the supermarket or it would be that although like I don't really spend that much on myself once or twice a year I'll just load up in my iconic account or ASOS account and buy a little bit too much. What is her big money goal? My big money goal is to buy property. And what grade would she give her money habits? I would give myself a B only because I do need to spend more time sitting down and going through and planning out a more set in stone budget and that will come I suppose when I get a more consistent income because it's a bit hard to do it now 22 and soon to graduate VD what did you think I really liked that because it actually reminded me of my mom is that bad so my mom grew up with a farming family and she used

to invest in sheep and invest in really yeah and I think that's something that a lot of farming families don't understand is that's an investment like my mom grew up on a farm that farmed poppies and so if they looked after that farm and you know helped nurture it and tend to it they would actually get paid a part of what that crop was so you know it's there's risk in return like what if the crop goes to seed and it doesn't actually be fulfilled and you can't sell it same with like cows like what if they don't produce the milk etc I think it's just a really good lesson in investment from a different point of view like if you are from a farming family like your parents might say, hey, well, we'll give you some lambs, bring them up. Or, hey, do you want to put some

money into this? Like that's literally your parents teaching you to invest in a way that they fully understand. And I think that that is so awesome. And it sounds like she's got some pretty good money values. I actually found this really relatable, not personally, but more in terms of she clearly has goals. Like she sounded set. She said that she had her savings account. she said she had an emergency account she said she had a holiday account and that she only earned between 18 and 20 000 a year and that just tells me that you can save on any budget you can save on any income if that's what your heart desires now i'm not gonna get on my high horse and say oh my gosh there might be some privilege here there always is privilege in every single situation

whether she's living at home or not but her plan as she said was to continue to live off 18 000 a year-ish once she gets her full-time job because she's soon to graduate georgia and i think that that's a really great goal and i genuinely felt like maybe she was a little bit harsh on herself i thought she was very harsh on herself with the b like goodness she's got it all sorted with all of those yeah 100 i wanted to ask you v because she did mention she is slightly worried about lifestyle creep when she does jump up to that higher pay yeah any tips there being aware of lifestyle creep is the first way to make sure that it doesn't happen too badly but I also think it's not the worst thing in the entire world like if you are earning more and you want to be able to

I won't use the term treat yourself but I'm going to use the term treat yourself if you want to increase your lifestyle then you are absolutely more than welcome to so my advice is never live on as little money as possible like live on money that makes you happy and actually helps you align to your goals and values. If you want to be saving and investing, obviously you need to make that a priority. And it sounds like that's her priority, which is why she's trying so hard to stick to the $18,000 budget for living expenses, which makes sense. But I also think we kind of just need to be nice to ourselves. If you want to spend a little bit more because you are now working full time and you are earning a bit more, I think you're well within your rights to. Celebrate it a little

for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Just make sure it's in the budget, my friends. Exactly right. Another question for you Bea. She wanted to buy a home in the next two to three years. Do you think that is a achievable goal? That's actually a really important question Georgia because I actually don't know how much she is planning on spending on a house. Like if she's going to buy a $200,000 property then sure she's well on the way. If her plan is to buy a $2 million property well that's completely unreasonable to think she could achieve that goal. It's actually quite coincidental you mention that because i have a blog post actually coming up on our website this week that i have written about how i'm actually budgeting for my very first house which hopefully georgia will

happen in the not so near future very exciting but saving isn't all sunshine and roses and people think that maybe because i run a finance podcast i must just be really good at it and i promise you i'm not so yeah i've written a blog on that and like spoiler alert i do talk about my favorite budgeting app pocketbook which you guys would be pretty familiar with if you are in our facebook group because i praise them all the time yeah love it i will hopefully she can read that blog when it goes up hopefully this we're gonna send sometime this week i reckon we're gonna send it to her the only other couple of things i wanted to mention she spends too much on food she says but you know don't we all uh and she also mentioned that once or twice a year she

goes wild on Aesop and the iconic but Aesop or Aesos my friend did I say oh my god I mean someone's obviously got expensive taste I don't really use Aesos but I do love Aesop soap but point there was maybe listen to our sales episode because there are ways you can use those websites and save money am I right Victoria you're always right good throwback yeah well anything else you wanted to add for 22 and soon to graduate I don't think so I still just think that she was being really harsh on herself with a B but again yeah each to their own maybe she feels like she's got lots to learn yeah okay with that V I think it's probably time to wrap the show up here I agree but just before we head off we would like to acknowledge and pay respects to Australia's

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples 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 on which we are able to learn we pay our respects to elders past and present and we share our friendship and our kindness 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 or any other decision let's be honest really and we promise victoria to find is an authorized representative of australia pacific funds management proprietary limited abn 34132463257 afsl 339151 and thank you to ryan

John, our producer, for splicing it all together into something that is, you know, remotely pleasurable to listen to. Yeah, it's kind of kind of him to always make us sound much better than we actually are. Cheers, Ryan. But before we wrap this all up completely, we would love if you joined our Facebook group where our community shares money, tips and tricks

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that little vodka pasta recipe in there I mean we probably should have put that earlier in the show if you're still listening have an absolutely fab Wednesday you're our favorite listeners you're our favorite listener see you guys bye