She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: A breakup and budgeting journey

Episode Date: October 10, 2021

Happy Monday Friends! Our Money Diarist this week is sharing how her breakup and motivation to go on a holiday kicked off her budgeting journey... by accident!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 Toni Lodge and joining me for another Shopback Money Diary is Victoria Devine. Hello. Hello, my friend. How are you?

I'm good, thank you. I'm very excited about this money diary, as always. I don't know what it's about yet, Toni. You always keep the goods to yourself until it's almost too late. I do, but do you want me to read the email? I really want you to read the email out. Let's go. All right, here we go.

after my 11 year relationship ended january 2020 i did up and sold our home while still living in it with my ex took my profit and my dog and started fresh for the first time ever i learned to budget i saved all the money needed to move without dipping into savings oh that's that's actually really impressive i invested in an american classic car and i'm saving to have financial security while i transition to director of the family business solo and buy my own industrial shed this is not where i saw that email going when you said oh i broke up with my partner of 11 years i was like okay cool like no this is a hustler i love this no she's living her best life and we have her on the phone at the moment hello money diarist you didn't even need your partner

i love that well apparently the partner was weighing you down is what i'm hearing seems like it. So let's get straight into a money diary. As always, we've got some structured questions and then I have some perfect questions that I'm going to want to ask you at the end. So first things first, what is your attitude towards money? My attitude towards money is a combination of security and freedom. So if I have money, I have security to know that I can get myself out of trouble. I can take care of my pet. I can make sure I have a roof over my head. Um, and I have the freedom to make whatever choices I want to make. I love that. And I feel like that's so important as well. Has that been something that

you've always had, or is that a newfound view of money or is this just something that's been ingrained in your money story from the beginning? Um, I think a bit of a combination. So I work for my family business my dad has worked ridiculously hard my whole life so I was always used to knowing the money was always there so but the money allowed us to have the life we had but it meant working hard to be able to afford to have that but at the same time the security probably only came for me when I was in my 20s I moved to the UK and there were loads of times like I was only legally supposed to be working for a small period of time so i was yeah i'm a bit cheeky had to make yeah being a bit cheeky and i needed there were times when i run out of money and i remember being

in taxis and going out for the night and only having like five pounds going i don't know how i'm gonna get myself home but i'm gonna go and live my best life anyway oh my gosh i remember being the i think the the nail in the coffin was i was in london i worked in the music industry i was in London and I had to try and get myself back to where I lived which was like two hours train ride away and I literally had one train ticket and I didn't know what trains I was supposed to get on and I had five pounds in my purse and I had to figure out how to get home and I think the fear of running out of money just scared the hell out of me and it's stuck ever since so i always like to see x amount of money in my account it's obsessive and that is okay

because i feel like you've learned from that experience and it's funny because i've actually heard that from a number of people that there's this point in time where it was the line in the sand it was the nah i'm gonna learn how to budget or i'm going to change the way i'm doing this i can't keep doing this um because i'm sure it wasn't the first time that you'd had five pounds in your purse and you went out and found your way home but there's always this line in the sand right where you're like oh this can't keep happening this is too stressful or too much or something has changed and I need to get it together yeah well that was that was a real long time ago and I still didn't learn how to budget after that I just made sure I didn't spend money

you're like I just had more money I just had more money or I was just like I'll just stop buying stuff and make sure that this money stays where it is. And then, yeah, I, that was it. The fear of not being able to get home and this like being secure and knowing I could do what I wanted to do. It, it changed everything. Okay. So what do you do for work and how much money do you earn? I'm an electrician. I'm a trainee. Oh, very cool. Yeah. Um, I'm actually now also a company director um and i currently earn 90 000 plus vehicles and a phone whoa that's awesome yeah so is that working with your family yeah that's working with my family and you're about to become the director of that business is that right as of july 1st i am co-director of the company

oh she's fancy yeah how like i obviously run a business but i don't do that with my family i think i would go up the wall how do you manage that my friend well it's really easy when it's just me and my dad it was harder when actually that ex that i broke up with last year he and i also used to work together so these days it seems easier my dad is incredibly relaxed so he makes it easy yeah that is so nice I feel like my parents would be that way but sorry Alex I feel like if my sister and I went into business together we'd just revert to being that 13 and 16 year old who wanted to bite each other's head off I don't think there's a lot of sisters that could do it I'm not those sisters like I love her dearly now but like that's how it would go if we

went into business together I feel yeah my sister doesn't have anything to do with the company business i'm not sure how we go out but we don't love you it's that we love you too much we love you from a distance all right money diaries do you currently have a big money goal i do um last year i declared i was going to save a hundred thousand dollars for a deposit and i decided that i wanted to buy an industrial shed yes yeah I figure I can live anywhere but a lot of my customers are based in a certain spot so if I can keep my work where it is I can live anywhere I like oh I love that and how are you tracking for that goal I'm at the halfway mark oh already yeah so 50 grand

yeah oh my gosh congratulations thanks what a hustler I thought you were gonna say yeah like quick week getting there like no halfway okay yeah last year when I when my house sold um I decided I was like I want to I'm going to buy something and I'm going to put down a damn big deposit for that and a friend of mine was like you know a hundred thousand is a lot of money I'm like yep I'm coming for it yes you are and you're already halfway there and I love that this story has already gone from like yeah so there was this time that I had five pounds in my purse and that was literally it to like just a casual 50 g's sitting in my account and also I only recently decided to start saving that like you all right next question do you currently have

any investments I this one's funny I actually have a little bit in spaceship but um my dad's been doing share trading since oh the early 2000s so sorry my dad's been doing share trading since the early 2000s. So I've actually had my eye on a certain stock for the past month. Are you going to divulge what that stock is? I can. It's probably, I think it's controversial. I know a lot of people probably wouldn't agree with the choice. That's why I want to hear it. Yeah. So I'm actually looking at BHP shares. Oh, okay. And why is that? I love asking people when they're being specific about shares about like, why would you look at that? Or what is your motives? Because we're all different. And to be honest, BHP have been a pretty well-performing

share over the last, what, 30, 40 years. So I don't think it's the worst thing to look at. No, it's not. And at the moment, since they had the deal with Woodside, the share started to go down and then obviously everything else in the economy is going down. I chose it because I've been looking last year so when I sold my house I went right sell the house I'm investing I'm going to invest in bank shares but selling a house setting up a whole new life life got away with me and I just didn't so um then I came back to it this year and just couldn't pick anything and I figured you know what you're in a trade you're in an industry stick with something that makes sense to you this I work in industrial electrical so this sort of stuff's probably

more down my alley and a friend of mine said have you looked at doing like bhp or something like that and i went oh okay i'll start looking and that's what planted the seed and then i just spent hours looking see there's always a reason there's never like oh someone just told me to look at it there's always like a background and from my perspective that creates a better long-term strategy because you're going to be more invested in it you're going to be more invested in researching that stock and understanding it and comprehending it in a way that other people might not be as educated because I don't work in that space. You do. So you know what's going on or what might be impacting that industry. So I think it's really important to one, understand why other

people pick things, but also kind of helps you guide into like, ah, well, actually I might pick something that I know really well, because you're usually going to feel a little bit more comfortable with it and the best type of investing is the type that doesn't stress you out exactly when i was looking at like it and all that sort of stuff i'm like i have no idea like let's stick with something you know yes go with what you know i love that next question left field and completely different to what we were just talking about do you currently use shopback i don't i do can have it on my phone i have my ten dollars from you guys thank you um but i don't actually buy lots of stuff i buy parts of my truck and the odd thing off ebay but i don't do heaps of

shopping i love that because that's probably a good money habit for you to have any way to not do too much shopping unlike me who is a very proficient online shopper the postman and i we're on first name basis and my my shop back account's looking rather healthy which is really good but also I mean as much as we love shop back that means I've been a little bit cheeky during lockdown so we'll move on from that so that I don't bury myself and we're gonna ask you what is your best money habit my best money habit not online shopping cool not online shopping although i do i do buy a lot of stuff from america with express post it's not it's not good that's expensive it is and especially when they're car parts it's really expensive expensive and heavy

yes um my best habit would be i'm a bit frugal um to the point it's probably a detriment sometimes i'll put things in baskets or write it on a list to buy and then i just go i'll do that tomorrow like wait when my pay goes in i'll do it tomorrow money's sitting there it's not a problem i'll do it tomorrow or i actually i'm amazing if you ever want to know what the cheapest thing to buy the shops would be i can tell you what grocery store to go to to get the best thing what's the top tip this week come on oh actually one friend of mine and i were talking about because i do um i go to the gym a lot and one of my pre-training snacks is like lcms and we've calculated good choice ms from aldi a minimum of 20 cents cheaper per bar depending if you can get

them on sale see so like little things like that we like last year when i had to figure out how to save money i was trying to find ways to save one dollar and two dollars not 40 and 80 yeah but like from the little things big things grow and i feel like that's a very used phrase on this podcast but at the same time it's because it's easier to do that than to look for the big wins right like it's easier to take control of your grocery budget and look for where you can make little sustainable savings because like I'm sure you enjoy your LCM bar from Audi as much as you do from Coles right exactly at 4am they both taste the same I always thought like completely separate I always thought you had to have like proper like protein bars and like pre-training stacks and

you're like LCM bar so maybe I could get into this workout thing maybe I might do this my dietician has me on like, I get to have, um, crumpets and honey or LCMs before training. It's great. Hey, and that's dietitian has given that to me. So that's totally okay. Yeah. That makes it legal. I like it. All right. In comparison to your best money habit, which was the LCM bars, what is your worst money habit? Probably similar that I leave things in shopping carts and I don't go buy things and then I actually really need them and I rush around like an idiot when I need them so I be like why didn't I buy that I really needed it and then instead of buying it online you have to go and buy it from the shop and it's probably more expensive as well instead of yep

yeah I can feel that yeah I feel like I do that as well do you know what the most annoying part about that is as well it's always the essential things that you're like oh I need some new socks or i need something new that i just feel bad buying and then you end up paying more for it because you needed to buy it in person and you didn't actually search out the best deal no i actually feel that whereas if it's something that i didn't need oh i'm so good at those purchases so good yeah all right so next and final question of this series is what grade would you give yourself if we forced you to give yourself a money grade maybe a b i feel like i've still got a really long way to go i'm still learning i still from time to time find i need to like

pull back or take money out of like an odd account um i probably yeah maybe a b i feel like i've come a really long way though so yeah it sounds like it i'm impressed with how far you've even come in the last year. You've gone from having a goal of like, I'm going to have a lofty deposit to having half of it. And as of July 1st, didn't you say you were a company director? Like you're more than a B in my eyes, but we can get into that after this short break. All right, let's get back into the podcast money diarist. I feel like you've had an incredibly interesting journey from living overseas to being with a partner for 11 years. I don't mean to be too pervy, but like, how did your money story change going through a breakup after such a

significant period of time with that person? Um, actually it all came to a head. So we broke up January 1st last year and new year, new me, no partner. Yeah. Um, and we were actually supposed to take a three-week holiday to Japan and while we were on holidays we'd meet with a group of my friends and go snowboarding so we because we'd broken up my friends were like there's no way you're not going on holidays which meant that all of a sudden I had to find a way I couldn't do anything with my plane ticket so I had to spend another thousand dollars on a plane ticket in light of the fact that I knew that like my whole life was about to change so I sat down and because I'm not very good with computers and I've only literally in the past couple months learned how

to add sums on a spreadsheet on excel I literally sat down with pen and paper and started writing down everything and it was the first time I had to budget to make sure that I could afford my whole snowboarding holiday all new accommodation as well as continue to pay for the old accommodation that we couldn't use new plane tickets and then that was it I started budgeting and it just from there by accident by accident I was like hell will come high water I'm going on this Japan holiday I'm going to have an amazing trip with my friends and this is going to be the beginning of something really cool so I did that and when I came back I just continued to stick with the budget and saving and I lots of little things like every week it was like yes I hit that number yes I hit that number

so oh I love that and I mean it's it's come from a journey where you know no one wants to be forced into budgeting off the back of a relationship breaking up but at the same time i feel like there's always as i was saying at the start of this podcast there's usually a trigger point for these things there's usually something that happens that forces you down that road and then you find yourself on that path thinking maybe it's going to be sucky or like oh my god i have to budget or i have to do this and you're like i feel really empowered i feel really in control what is this what do you mean so how did you feel going through that like starting the journey of budgeting were you like oh I really don't want to have to do this but this is the only way it's going to work

or were you like yes I'm in control like what did that look like for you? It was so empowering it felt like I finally knew like I years earlier my previous partner had got me to try and do barefoot investing style bank setup and I remember I dug my heels in the hallway because I just didn't feel comfortable and so last year I rearranged all the bank accounts and it just actually felt really empowering I felt like I finally knew where I stood I knew what I had I knew what I could have going forward so that and I was determined that when we finally sold the house that I would have all the money I needed to move out pay rent and still continue to pay my mortgage in the crossover pay all that stuff and I was not going to touch anything else

I wasn't going to touch the house funds I just felt so good going I built this this was because I did yeah yeah it's like learning a whole new part about without sounding cheesy it is like finding a whole new part of your personality um as you grow up and you're like wow I actually do really care about how I've grown and how I'm changing and it's really really cool that you found that yourself and you're like oh I didn't want to do this because I wasn't ready and now I am ready and it feels awesome yeah I was not ready beforehand at all it was it wasn't I literally dug my heels in so hard but last year there was just this point I had so many friends and family to support me and I just knew no matter what I did that the only way to move on from where

I came from was to do it myself and so to come out the other side moving to my own apartment on my own I was just like yeah I did this this was all me oh I love that so much and money diarist I want to be really perfect because I love banking structures and understanding how people do what and like I obviously have my budget and cash flow masterclass so I've created a system that I think works but how do you manage your accounts like what accounts do you have what do you use them for can you tell us I think I have about nine so obviously my main account then I have my emergency fund um I have one for luxury so that's if my current partner and I want to go out for dinner or something during the week or if like i need that pair of socks or luxury is not buying essentials

my friend no it's not but it's i don't like dipping into other accounts for that no i get that it's often a mental barrier i get it then i have like um my hair and botox account because that is one that i can't skip over very powerful yes oh yeah very important i have a share account so i money that goes into an account to get put towards shares every week i have bottle money so my partner and i if we ever end up cans or bottles we put all the money into that account together oh we don't have that in victoria i've seen that before i am literally envious of that because i feel like we'd have less bottles and cans and stuff on the street in melbourne if that was a thing it's so good i mean i understand the theory you've already paid the 10 cents you're just getting the 10 cents back

but it's literally it's like tax money everyone seems to think it's free money it's a little bit like that you're just rearranging the money back around so but it makes you feel good because not only have you done something good for the environment but you get you know a couple of dollars here and there makes a difference exactly and it goes into a different account so i want to hear a money diarist who's done that as like a full side hustle and see how much money they get from it i reckon there's somebody out there who's made a killing yeah well we had it when i was a kid but it's gone like it left through most of my life and it only came back in the past few years so i don't understand why we had it it went away it came back so what other bank accounts do you

have you've got your bottles one and i went on a tangent i do apologize i've got a rego account because i've got a couple of vehicles so i need to make sure i have money and my american car the rojo is really expensive oh she's fancy i assumed you might have been a little bit of a car friend based on the fact that you order car parts from the us we're learning yeah that was kind of part of that i guess you could probably also call that an investment i bought it and imported it um with my current partner at the end of last year it was a partially an investment decision a personal decision and a business decision i'm actually going to use it as my work vehicle um can you tell us what type of car it is so i can google it it's a 1965 chevy c10

it's an american pickup truck oh very cool it's big and it's amazing and you're an electrician as well you'd look so fancy coming over to my house to fix my my life honestly well that's it i remember someone once saying the best marketing you can get is the one that you don't pay for um give people a reason to talk about you and i've always wanted an old car and so i thought you know what what's better than a chic electrician driving a really cool old car um i actually adore this and you're like super fit you're gonna get out of the car and people are gonna be like who is she what does she do for a living i get out a car and people are just like whoa is this yours yes yes and they're too busy looking at the truck to actually i'm like okay what do you want done

like what's the job and they're too busy wanting to talk about the truck i'm like okay but i'm on the clock so whatever you want to do i was gonna say that's when you start charging by the hour okay i'm already on the clock guys i actually love when people take control of their own budget and cash flow journey and i guess that's what my next question leads into i know that lots of people who listen to our podcast are really wanting to get into that and they just haven't taken the plunge yet or it's all overwhelming like where did you start like if we haven't done any of this yet how can we start to take control of our banking structure and make it work for us like you've made it work for you I had to find a way to like I needed to see what

was going out and how much and to where and then for me I needed to make sure that I allocated all of those amounts to go to those places and then it meant that I could see what was left and then I would know if I was either dipping into what was left or if it was all being moved across into like my savings that I wasn't going to touch at all so for me literally breaking it down into really tiny amounts so I had on I had paper all over my bed at the time and I still do it sitting whatever works for you honestly whatever works I oh gosh I'm getting better though I made a spreadsheet for my accountant this year for my tax receipts he was very impressed who is she she's a new woman yeah a little bit but like just have it all written down so that you know like

these are all of my bills that come in quarterly and these are this is my rego that I need to pay and so to me I had to literally break it down every week and just shoot all the money away so that I saw what was left I think that's really important and what was the first thing you did was it sitting down and doing all those pieces of paper that you had across your bed or was it checking out your bank like did you change banks are there anything or tips and tricks that really helped you along that journey that we should know about it was at the time and I even have I remember I took a an insta story at the time because I had my mortgage with one bank I have my credit card with a different bank and I have more my personal banking with a third bank and I remember taking a

photo of all three I had three computer screens up with all three banks open and saying I'm taking control of this so I literally had to sit down with all the computer screens and I wrote it all down it was like okay this is what's all in these accounts this is and I had to write down and look at everything and see where everything was so we love that yeah and then I just made a plan like this is this is what I can reasonably say so what's my goal can I push this a little bit I do overtime so any overtime would immediately get pushed into an account oh nice when I got um I got a pay rise at the end of last year. I actually didn't even touch it. I immediately made it. So it went into my, like my savings, my future account. And so I've never seen any of my pay

rise. It immediately goes into a savings account and I've never touched it. So she's not got any type of lifestyle creep, Tony. You're better than a bee. How have we let you grade yourself only a bee? This is, it sounds like you've gone on such an amazing journey and how cool that we're a part of it yeah thank you I started listening to you guys last year and was like oh my god how have I not been listening to this stuff before look how much I'm learning oh I love that and I love that people like you are in our community and doing good things and getting on the right paths and it's just I love being able to ask you questions about like okay how did you start budgeting because it is different for everybody like there's no right there's no wrong it's what's

going to work for you. And if it's pieces of paper across your bed that works for you, like I am so here for it. You don't have to be a spreadsheet wizard. Some people break up their money into envelopes and literally run an envelope system. Some people do what you're doing and have different bank accounts. Other people, you know, outsource it and get their partner to take their debit card off them. Like there are different ways that you can do this. You just need to find the right thing for you. And I think it's just so special that our community trusts us enough to share those things with us so that we can learn from you like how cool I love that I don't know what car you drive so if you see that car driving around just assume there is she's on the money person and give

them a little bit of a wave the amount of times that I've since listened to you guys I've gone back to friends like friends that were there to support me and teach me to adult last year when I had to that I've gone back I heard on this podcast they're like oh my god what is she listening to she knows less stuff about finance all of a sudden she's better than this than we are it's like cut to that tiktok sound am i better than everybody else and now you're on the podcast sharing your own tips how cool i know it's amazing i'm so lucky that you want to share this journey with our community and honestly you have been a dream to have a chat with i feel like i am on a high at the end of this so thank you so so much for

joining us money diarist oh thank you thank you for letting me share but as always that is all we have time for today so just before we head off we'd like to acknowledge and pay respect to australia's aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples they're the traditional custodians of the lands the waterways and the skies all across australia we thank you for sharing and for caring for the land 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 generally 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

and we promise that victoria divine is an authorized representative of australia pacific Funds Management, Pty Ltd, ABN 34132463257, AFSL 339151. See you next week, guys. Bye.