She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: A redundancy, two home purchases AND a small business

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

This money story is epic. This weeks diarists parents came to Australia as immigrants and started from absolute scratch, and now our diarist has hustled her way through life, finding herself in a situation where she landed her dream promotion to only be made redundant the next week - which lead her to create her own small business, which you can check out here: https://dispenseaustralia.com/This year our Money Diaries are being brought to you by the legends at Shopback! Check them out at https://app.shopback.com/aus/partner/SOTM and you'll get a cashback bonus when you sign up!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. Welcome back to another one of our Shop Back Money Diaries, where this week we are flipping it around just a little bit, Jess, aren't we? We have not got an email to read you out this week. We have a diarist on the line that I have been snooping on in my DMs, and we thought we'd bring her and share her with you guys because I know her story is honestly so epic. So Jess, you know

nothing about this diarist. It's usually like the tables have been turned, but I'm really excited, Money Diarist. You're on the line. You're already hanging out with us. Hello and welcome to the show. Hi, I'm so excited to be on here. Oh my gosh. I was saying to Jess before that I was so, so excited because your name has been popping up all in the community. I'm obviously not going to name and shame you. No shame, but you know what I mean. Not going to name you, but I've seen you in the group. I've seen you on our Instagram. I see you in my personal DMs. Like you are everywhere. So when you said that you were keen to do a diary, I was like, yes, Jess, let's do this one. So we're both very excited to jump right in. So let's just take it from the top.

Money Diarist, let's ask you the first official She's On The Money money question. What is your attitude towards money? This is such a tough question, but I guess it comes from my money story, which I know you talk about all the time. And my parents are immigrants that came over to Australia with absolutely no money and started from scratch so nothing has ever been handed to me on a silver platter and that's something I'm so grateful for like some of my friends turned 18 and got cars that just wasn't an option for me so I've always known what it's like to start from scratch and to do everything within your own means yeah and they've now got multiple properties and have done so well for themselves but they're really humble

about it and they only buy things with what they have and that's something that I've kind of done too. Oh my gosh to be a little bit pervy what do your parents do for work? So my dad's a cabinet maker and he has his own business which has been phenomenal and my mum looks after kids so I'm one before, which you can imagine being an immigrant, she didn't have any family over here. So she's done family daycare and yeah, done really well from that as well. How cool. I love that. And to hear your dad is a business owner kind of makes a little bit of sense as to where you might have got some of your drive. I'm not going to spoil the question though. So you're going to answer the next one for us. Money Diaries, what do you do for work and how much money do you earn?

so I work in digital marketing and events full-time and I earn $86,000 plus super and I also have a side hustle business called dispense um and that's an econ business that I run as well on the side oh my gosh so you've got your own small business as well I want to ask you I was about to say talk us through how you got there but I have to hold myself back we'll get to that after the structured questions. Very excited about it though. All right. Thank you. All right. Money Dice, what is your big money goal? So, also cutting to the chase, my partner and I have just bought a house that we're moving into in February. Congratulations. How exciting. How old were you?

24 when I bought this house. Oh my gosh. A baby buying property. I love to see it. So, my money goal is learning how to manage money like an adult. Oh my gosh. It sounds like you already know how to manage money like an adult. Like you have a business. I know you own more than one property. Like she's queen. Jess, would you say that she's already managing money like an adult? Adults buy properties. Sorry. She's managing her money arguably better than me. So, I'm impressed. But I feel like I've just had to learn on the fly because no one teaches you anything at school.

No, they literally don't. But trigonometry, bet you got a lot of that. I was so good at maths methods. And then when it came to personal accounting, I was like, who, what, why? What? Alrighty. I'm going to jump in and ask the next question. Do you have any investments? We know you have property, but anything outside of that? Well, this is actually something, well, the business is kind of an investment for us. So, at the start of that, we both put in $10,000, which was a lot of money. That's a lot. Yeah but it's had incredible returns and I guess my attitude to money is that having money in the bank doesn't really return a lot and to make money

you have to spend money which is something I learned quite late but my partner and I have now set up an account that we put $200 into a week and it's joint investing bank account and at the end of the quarter, we choose where we're going to invest it. So, we've got some money at the moment in cryptocurrencies and are also looking to build our share portfolio. I love that you guys are doing that together. How long have you been together, if you don't mind me asking? Six years. Oh, incredible. So, we bought our first property together in Ballarat, like when we'd only been together for a year and we were still at uni. And yeah, he's a lot of the driver of a lot of the decisions that we've made financially. Oh my gosh. So, you're saying you were with

someone at uni and you're with them for a year and you were like this is the guy I'm gonna buy a house with him well we it was purely an investment like that was probably the one of the biggest arguments we'd ever had because we were like balarat we walked into houses and he's a cabinet maker so he looks at houses like can't how can we fix this whereas I looked at it like yuck this has disgusting ugly old lady furniture I don't want to buy it literally how I was looking at properties. Yep. I feel you there. And we bought it for $270,000 in 2017 and it's now valued at like 500. Oh, she's a genius. Yeah. Money Doris, I'm assuming that you didn't buy those properties in cash. So you probably have some mortgages, but do you have any other debt?

And can you tell us what debts you do have? I have a $7,000 HECS debt, which I think most people have a HECS debt and two loans. So one for our first property and one for our second, but I've never had a credit card. And that's something I'm hoping I won't need for the time being. Tell me a little bit, I know that this is getting off track, but tell me a little bit about why you've never had a credit card. Is that just because of how you're brought up or was that a conscious decision that you made or was that just coincidence? Like how come? I think there's always been a bit of a negative connotation around credit card debt in the way that I've been brought up. None of my friends really had a credit card. And I've always been taught not to buy things that

you don't have the money for. But I know that now coming into having a house, it might be something that I have to consider when there are such big repayments on the house. And sometimes it might become a way to manage your money. It's just not something I've had to use yet. It's always so interesting talking to people about why they haven't ever gotten into debt because some people will say oh it's because my mum was super against it or they might go oh well actually my mum really loved credit cards and I could see how damaging that was it's so interesting learning people's money stories this is my favorite part of our show all right next question is do you use shopback my savvy friend I love shopback I use it on every single purchase I make and I think that's probably

one of my biggest saving tips is that I always find something that I like and then I have to purchase it online because the process of giving myself that time distance and then having the effort of jumping online seeing if I can find discount codes using Shopback um yeah is amazing and I've now saved over $200 on Shopback which I'm going to use to buy a coffee machine Oh, how exciting. I feel like you sound like a She's On The Money poster child. You're like, I love Shopback. Also, just for the record, for anybody else listening, we just asked that question. Our money darris aren't paid to say that. They just genuinely love Shopback. Every time I ask, I'm like, no, this feels like an ad. It's totally not an ad. I'm like,

what do you use it for? How does it work? Because you guys are such fans of Shopback. I mean, Jess and I are as well. So like we get it. It is not hard to understand. I'm like, do people think that this is placed? It's not placed. Like we are just very excited about them. I have one more hot tip for shop back is tell all your friends because you also get $20 in credit. Yeah, you have the referral. Good shit, how? It builds up. Like you tell three people that's 60 bucks. 100%. And if anyone does want to sign up, we have one that they can use if they want a cheeky $20 in their account, which is SOTM. And then once you've signed up, you can get that code to give to your friends

to earn your own referral credit. Yeah. So, you don't even have to ask, just use SOTM or you can ask your Money Diaries friends for their code because the important thing to remember there is, Jess, we don't get paid for that code when it's used, but you guys do. And I mean, Shopback's probably not going to be all that impressed that we're like, go use your friends don't use ours go use your friends so you guys get more money but like that's kind of how it works we don't get paid for our code so if you ever see a code in the she's on the money community please please please know that when you use it we don't make a dollar we never have and we never will we promise next question money diarist what's your best money habit i feel

like you probably have some hot tips for us given your 25 own two properties and our queen a shop back? What is my money tip? I guess it's always trying to have multiple streams of income. I think whether it's selling things on Facebook marketplace or working one day of waitressing or freelancing, something that's always been really important to me is having multiple streams of income. And that means that I never deny myself the things that I want because for me, that's surplus money. So, you're like a full hustler. I feel like I'm talking to Miss Jessica Ricci because Jess, you're very similar to that, aren't you? I totally understand the, if you're wanting something, making it up with the extra income. I think we're probably similar in the sense of

having, I guess, your salary or your income is what you use as your budget. And then if you want something, you've got to work for it. You've got to earn it. So, I'm obviously a big fan of that mentality. I think it's really admirable. I really like it. But to contrast this and just bring the mood down, guys, what's your worst money habit? Okay. I am so poor with account organization. I would have no idea where my money is going. Oh, what? Why not? And how not? You've managed to buy a house, two houses. You have your own business and you don't know what you're doing with your accounts. How? I have only two. If it was up to me, I would have just the two accounts, the account that I get paid in and the account that I save. And that would be all.

Why is it not up to you? I have a partner who is anal about her money organization. So now I have automatic transfers that go into only our joint account. So my money is a mess and our joint money is immaculate. Oh, gorgeous. I love that. How do you manage money in your business then? So we have a separate account that's just our business account and the money that goes into there has stayed there. So all we've done with that is pay ourselves off and we make dispense purchases. So product, supply, postage, all purchases related to the business come out of the business account and don't come out of that account. Yeah. I think that's really smart. One of the biggest, I guess, faux pas that I see small business owners doing

in their businesses is actually spending their personal money and not creating that division and understanding it and just having a separate business account one for accounting purposes but two to make sure that you know what profit you're making you know what costs are there because if you're using your personal debit card because you went to the shops and you're like oh I need to pick up a couple of more postage packs to send out like that money just disappears like you forget to transfer it or you forget to claim it at tax time like just have separate business and personal accounts please. And thank goodness because if we got to tax time being last year was our first tax time with a business and if we didn't have a separate account it would have been

an absolute disaster. Yeah look I've seen it be really messy and having to print out all of your bank statements for 12 months and try and remember what they were and see Officeworks pop up and you're like that was probably work but then you can't find the receipt so you can't claim it That is stressful. No one needs to put themselves through that. Have good account keeping from the start. Money Diarist, I'm going to hook you up with our Budget and Cashflow Masterclass so that you can do that and get all of your accounts in order so that your personal accounts can look as squeaky clean and supreme as your shared accounts. Thank you. But we will get to that after. We'll take this conversation offline. But I have one more

question before we go to a very quick break and then get to deep dive into the super pervy stuff. And the question is, what grade would you give your money habits if we forced you to give yourself a grade? I would give myself a B plus. There is room for improvement. Where? What improvement? I want to be more in tune with where my money is going.

I think I'm so bad at that and I'm going to learn that it's detrimental to me. And I want to also be less conservative with my money. I think investing for me has always seemed risky, but it's something that I need to be more open to and just having more education about where to be putting my money. Yeah, that's absolutely fair. I think it's one of those things where we can never judge somebody else. And if I looked at your personal situation was like, wow, money dosed, bought their first property at 20, another one at 24.

Like, it sounds like you're really, really good at money, but you're still like, look, I might be good at saving and hustling and getting there. and, you know, looking like we've got the big ticket things off, but you're like, I still don't know how to manage my finances when it comes to different bank accounts. Or I don't really know what shares to pick, or I don't know how to invest solidly. I just think that everybody has such a different journey. And externally, I'm sure you look so fancy. Like your friends would be like, oh my gosh, money artist is so good at money. She owns so many properties and inside you're like, no, I don't even know which bank account my pay is in right now. Like it's,

it's actually so interesting learning about people's money stories and how it works because it's not always what it seems from the outside. That's exactly right. I'm good at saving but not knowing what to do with that money. All right. Let's go to a really quick break and then we'll jump into the pervy stuff. All right. We are back, Money Diarist. You are, in my opinion, still a baby. You are 25 years old. You own two properties and you have started your own business. can you tell us about the process of starting your own business like why did you do it how did you do it what were the I guess gateways to beginning that process if you always had that dream like tell us the nitty-gritty about this I'm so excited to share this story um and I guess

it all just happened really naturally I don't know how to explain it but you know how they say if things are meant to be, they happen. It was kind of that situation. So I was about three years out of uni working at a marketing agency and I work in digital marketing and events. So when COVID hit, that was quite a big hit for our business, especially all the events and all the photo shoots went down the drain. And after having the most incredible review with my company and actually getting a pay rise. A month later, I was made redundant, which, as you can imagine, broke my heart. You wouldn't have seen it coming either because you were like, they're clearly financially stable. I got a pay rise like I'm killing it to go to,

hey, money diarist, by the way, you don't have a job anymore. Honestly, it was so unexpected. And it was just a Zoom call. So, my face was on camera and they were like, unfortunately, we can't keep you on. that is so ruthless like oh look I understand during COVID that it wasn't going to be anything other than a zoom call but like it was honestly the most awful moment of my whole life and then um after that JobKeeper came out so this was just ties getting cut straight away before JobKeeper was even announced and then they called me and they said look we don't know if we'll be eligible for JobKeeper but can you take five weeks of your annual leave and then at the end of that period

we'll see what we can do if we can keep you on what can happen what the COVID situation has developed into anyway so I did that what other option did I have and in that time I was thinking about all these ideas that I could be doing um to make some money in that time but what it really taught me is that you can't really rely on other people for your income and having something to back you and support you is so important and is why I've always tried to have some sort of side hustle or backup option because feeling so secure in a role and then having it taken away from you really teaches you that lesson the hard way I suppose. Yeah it would have been a rude and unexpected shock like I can't imagine anybody in an employed situation would go oh well I'll come

to work tomorrow and I won't have a job anymore and I mean that would be heartbreaking I can't imagine how you felt because you know if you're employed you're employed for a million different reasons right like we're employed because we need income but we're also employees a lot of the time because we want that security we want the security of a consistent paycheck and you know small business doesn't afford you that exactly and at the time it was really rough because my dad was having quadruple bypass which was really unexpected and when we went into hospital this is where the idea came from there were these automatic sanitizer dispensers and this was right at the start of COVID and when my partner and I walked in we thought how cool would this

be if every business could have one of these things that automatically dispenses hand sanitizer and then we did some research online and found some suppliers we got about 10 to 15 different samples sent over and we were testing them and trialing them and then we're like wow this is a really cool idea and because my mum is also a family day carer we got the kids to test them these automatic dispensers because they're so quick to use and they were like wow this is awesome and all the mums loved them and everyone wanted them and we're like hey this is a pretty cool idea so after trialing them for about six months we made the plunge of investing quite a significant amount of money about 10k into this business. Wow that's so much money given you were

made redundant and had no job security. So much money and it was so scary for me because like I said I'm really conservative with my money but we thought at the end of the day the worst thing that could happen is we'd sell them on marketplace or eBay for the cost that we bought them and yeah okay fine so that was kind of our backup plan if it didn't work um and then it took off like it really took off we got we really lucked out with some um influencers that we worked with And I did the whole lot myself working in digital marketing. So, I set up a website. I leaned on fellow Money Diary friends to do my graphic design work for me. And yeah, it all panned out. Oh my gosh, how sweet. I absolutely love that. And the thing that I love is that you've taken

the skills and tools and things that you've learned in your day job and been like, I can actually apply these to my own business. And I think so many of us could do that. Like you go to work every single day and do that for somebody else. Maybe you could do it for yourself. And if you've got an idea like that, like yours is absolutely taken off. We'll obviously give you a plug through She's On The Money when your episode comes out because you mentioned it a couple of times, but it is so cool. And I'm just so in awe of people who are like, no, I'm going to get it for myself. I'm going to set it up. Is this something that you think is going to become your full-time gig? Like are you going back to work? Like tell us about

what the future of dispense looks like. It's such an interesting concept because it worked out really well before because my partner was working in cabinet making for himself. And then when COVID hit, he had to go work for somebody else because of the fact that he couldn't quote or install jobs, which was really difficult. So at the moment, all I have to do is pack the orders and then he takes them to the post office and it's quite an easy process. Oh, how good. Yeah, it works out really well but now that it's ramped up it can be difficult to manage yeah absolutely my ideal scenario would be three days in the office and two days working for myself because I need that stability yeah but I love the business so yeah how exciting yeah and so are there other

products coming out are you looking at expanding anything I want to know all the nitty-gritty Because I love small business and seeing you guys thrive. So we've been working with the local business to create the soap that we have. And right now we're looking at an alternative with dissolvable soap. So it's better for the environment. Oh, I've seen similar things. And you can drop it in and it makes foaming soap. So we've been investing quite a bit of money in looking into that technology and seeing

if that's something that we can replicate and testing it in all of our dispensers to make sure it'll work because it's more cost effective. It's better for the environment. There's less packaging and we really want to keep taking it further. So, the first step was making a black version when we first had a white version. I did see that. That is very sleek. She would look very bougie on someone's kitchen bench or bathroom bench. I think it's very along the lines of Jessica Richie's style. I've also seen on your Instagram and, you know, this complete side note, people like labeling them. And Jessica is a wizard with a cricket. So like, I just feel like this is a Jessica product. They're very cute, very minimal. I was looking at them like I definitely should

buy one for my house. So jump on their Instagram and check them out. They're super cute. They are. Now we speak about the process of finding suppliers and how hard it can be over on the Business Bible podcast. But Marnie Doris, can you talk us through a little bit about even how to start. Like if I have been sitting at home and I am listening to this pod now and I'm like, oh, I should look at it. Do you just Google it? Do you just look it up? Do you find it on Instagram? Like where would you say a small business owner who wants to potentially create their own product should start looking or what due diligence do we need to do? Well, I guess the first part is finding out if the product exists. So for us,

a touchless soap dispenser was so different but it makes so much sense um so we started looking online and seeing if any other businesses in australia were doing it and it was quite a like a empty area that we could we could fill um so we went we yeah we literally did just google it at the beginning and we saw people who were already doing it and we got some samples sent over from overseas of course um and we got about 10 cent over we decided which ones which parts of ones that we liked which parts of ones that we didn't and we worked on developing a model that we we really loved something that looked really sleek but was also really practical and then of course we had to do all the logistical things so setting it up setting up a business name for it

registering it for GST, which we actually made a big mistake on because we didn't think it would make $75,000. So, we didn't register it for GST. Wait. So, you're saying that your small business you launched during COVID has made more than $75,000? That's incredible. That's so exciting. I didn't want to ask because I was like, oh, we're plugging her business and I'm going to post about it. She doesn't need to share the financial side of that. But yes, how epic is that? Which we absolutely were not expecting. We would have been happy to have made, you know, $20,000 from it and it would have been a huge money win for us. So, for it to take off like that was crazy. How cool. I'm so proud. I shouldn't be

proud because I just feel like I've had nothing to do with this. But like I'm so proud to know that you're part of our community and like it's going so well. It makes me so happy. Like it fills my heart so much when we get to talk to money diarists about their successes or even just what they're going through because you go, oh my gosh, how have you done that? And like, what did that look like? And I've said on the business Bible before, like GST is really important and there's, yeah, it's really important, but it's also a really rude shock when you have to add it on and you haven't set the expectation with your clients to begin with. I can see your face because we're on Zoom. Talk me through how that process went and how that impacted your business.

So, like I said, I'm a hustler, but I do not understand what I'm doing and I'm learning as I go, which is probably not the right way. No, no, that is absolutely the right way. Fly by the seat of your pants, fake it till you make it because the older you get, the more you realize that nobody actually has any idea what they're doing either. So, it's fine. and you learn from your mistakes like I really stuffed it up the first time but now I know what to do next time which I think is a really important lesson so when we went to do our GST our accountant was like do you have a tax file number for your business I was like here's my tax file number she was like no that's not your tax file number you should have one for your

business and I was like I don't have one she said did you register it for GST and I was like no why would I do that you silly rabbit and yeah so that obviously created a lot of problems for us and we had to pay quite a lot of GST which we hadn't accounted for at the beginning because that's just something that we didn't even know that if you earn over $75,000 you have to be charging GST so that was a rude awakening yeah and GST for those of you following along is 10% and it is a goods and services tax and if you set it up from the very beginning you just collect it during the sale of your product and you go okay cool and GST is 10% and then the total comes to $100 and the client pays it and you put your $10 to the side for the government and it's like you

never got it but if you didn't register that 10% is 10% of your profit that you now have to pay to the government because you didn't collect it from your clients so you would have had to pay that personally, didn't you? That's right. And there's just so much stuff that you don't even think about. All these businesses are doing discount codes for every influencer they have, and then they're doing free shipping. And then we got to the end of it and we're like, oops, what have we done when we had to pay another 10% in GST? Yeah. And it's so much money as well. And even just setting up affiliate codes and getting to work with influencers. How's your experience with that been? I know that people following the She's On The Money podcast and listening have probably

had some level of experience with influencers. How's that gone from a business side of things? It's been really challenging, I guess, because I understand how influencer works from my industry. It was a little bit easier for me. And because I was targeting mummy bloggers, I guess some of them were nicer towards me. And I did get returned, but you just don't know what you're going to get when you look at them online. Sometimes you look at an influencer and they've got hundreds of thousands of followers and you think you're going to get the most amazing results and they're just a complete flop. And then you'll get someone with 15,000 followers and they'll be incredible. So you really learn. And I think in your life, relationships are so important, whether it's

your career, your business, whatever you're doing, if you're a good person, people will do nice things back. Yeah, 100%. That's something I've really learned and something I really value. Oh, I love that story. And as I said before, I'm just so grateful that you wanted to share your story with us and be part of our community. And when you slid into my DMs, I literally jumped for joy because I was like, oh my gosh, I feel like I already know her. Like, let's get you on the show. So thank you so much for joining us. But I do think that 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 cheese on the money is generally nature and does not consider your individual circumstances cheese on the money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or a financial decision and we promise victoria divine is an authorized representative of australia pacific funds management proprietary limited abm 34132463257 afsl 339151 see you next week guys