She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: A Single Mum On Welfare With A Foot In Each World

Episode Date: May 29, 2022

Today's community member is a single mum who lives on welfare and gets by with a stack of tiny side hustles. She shares her story of battling for custody and keeping her head above water, while trying to prioritise quality care and time with her daughter.Warning: this episode contains discussion of domestic violenceIf you or anyone you know needs support:Phone: 1800RESPECTOr head to: https://www.respect.gov.au/services/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 and She's On The Money are Authorised Representatives of Infocus Securities Australia Proprietary Limited ABN 47 097 797 049 AFSL - AFSL 236523.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Just before we get started, 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. 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 Shop Back Money Diary Monday, one of my favorite days of the week because we get to chat to a gorgeous community member to learn about them, their

story, their money and all of the juicy deets in between. Is Monday really your favorite day of the week, Jess? I mean, look, Mondays in general are the worst, but it's one of my favorite cheese on the money episodes. Okay, that's fair. Now, before we get into today's episode, I did just want to put a little trigger warning on there. We're going to be talking about some difficult things today, including domestic violence. So if you're in a place where hearing about that makes you a little bit uncomfy, give this episode a skip. There's a whole backlog of other episodes that you can listen to and we'll see you on Wednesday instead. All right Jess well let's hear about this week's diarist. Alrighty our diarist says I'm a single mum who lives on

welfare. Three years ago I was sitting across the table from a mortgage broker with 30k ready to buy an investment property but little did I know that there was bub present at this meeting who I was clueless about. Within nine months I was a parent and 30k poorer. I had lost the lot. Jobless and stuck inside thanks to COVID I turned to welfare to support myself and my daughter. After four long years in a domestic violence relationship, in 2022, I was able to walk away with 18K, pay off my debts and be financially free for a while while I battled for custody of my daughter. I am grateful that I can rely on welfare for the next few years to keep us afloat.

Oh my gosh, what a story. Money Dirst, welcome to the show. Let's get straight into it. I would love to know, tell us a little bit about your money story. okay so my money story is a bit like all over the place so growing up like I come from money if that makes sense yeah like my family they're a bit above average so my mom is the first person in her family to break generational poverty very cool and so was my dad but through marriage yeah yeah so then my sister and I we were raised to have everything we wanted basically you could have five Barbie dolls and everything we wanted to eat and go everywhere we want we're on fancy holidays quite often actually but then when I had my daughter I was on the other end of the

spectrum so we live at my parents house and I'm like on the poorer side and then outside my bedroom doors on like the richer side yeah there's a bit all over the place I guess kind of like you got a foot in each world yeah yeah it's it's challenging because I live on a beautiful property with four acres of land but I can't buy her lots of things yeah but she gets lots of things like my mom gives her lots of things that must be really challenging for you kind of like as Jess said having a foot in each world in a way but the next question is what do you do for work and how much money do you earn tell us all about it okay so this is where it gets a little bit like tricky that's all right so like I said I'm on welfare like I buy on Centrelink payments so I started my journey out

on a partnered income that ended I would say maybe August September last year that income ended and then ended up with a tax bill that was for his income not mine so then I had to remediate the situation by going on a single income because yeah so I'm on a parenting pension single because I am a single parent now additional to that income I work for a startup company and I work directly for the CEO casually so I have to split that with my pension because if I earn too much then I don't get the full pension yeah that makes I also have 11 other streams of income 11 I didn't even know that that many I didn't even know that was an option who are you hustle lady I know right so I just started a new job last week in finance which is kind of

interesting yes queen yes yes more women in finance we love this well we're all women oh my gosh how exciting there's only one male and he's like the tech dude yeah all right that's fair he can come he can come as long as he's nice yeah so that's about $25,000 a year and then I do like a like a side gig where like I work for a strata company where I take their bins out once a week it's very odd that pays about two thousand dollars a year hey that's kind of cool I didn't even know that like that makes sense that that's a job yeah because strata has someone doing that is that super easy to do or how did you find that because I feel like there might be some people listening who are like oh two grand a year I'd do that I'll take your bins out for that

I went on airtasker and I found this lady and she's like can you come every week like it is an hour from my house but it's 10 minutes from one of my offices at work yeah so I was like yeah I'll come and so I just take 16 bins out every week at 1k down the driveway each time two in hand like incredible dollars a week that's pays for my petrol like a gym workout as well because you're walking up and back so many times yeah my daughter loves to come and she loves to push the bins up though oh my gosh cute oh my gosh so sweet free labor as well we love to see it yeah Get it. Get her working early. I love that. Yeah. So I also get child support. So that's $4.99 a day.

Is that really all child support is? Yeah. So it's capped at $1,700 a year. That is crazy. Oh, no. I had to pull her out of daycare because it didn't cover the cost of that. Can I ask for a little bit of context? Do you have your daughter full time? I do. Yeah. It blows my mind. And sorry, I know we're getting very off topic and we need to get back to

but it is wild to me that as a full-time carer who is taking on I would assume all of the financial responsibility spoiler alert babies aren't cheap they're very expensive that the most that you can receive is five bucks a day I can't imagine that that's going very far like that is yeah that's insane to me literally blowing my mind right now like I knew that that was a thing and it's one thing to understand it and see it and you know you see posts in our community of people who are going through so many similar things to you money diarist I keep wanting to use people's names because I like I'm that person but it just blows my mind that there's no way of managing that like there's no better way of calculating it like it's just you know and

obviously there's some kind of equation working in the background because like what was it four dollars 25 like that to me is insane oh okay sorry four dollars 99 you big spender you but it just it makes no sense to me that that's the calculation when we could so easily create a really quick budget going all right well nappies on average cost this let's you know even just drop it down to you know the home brand nappies all right what does formula what's the cheapest tin of formula all right on average babies have like maybe two tins a week from what I understand like they don't even do that budget and then split it by half and go all right well you can do half in your partner or ex-partner can do half. And it's just, it makes no sense to me. And it breaks my

heart because there are so many women in this situation and you're clearly a hustler. But then on top of that, you're like, well, I had to pull my kid out of daycare because it just didn't make financial sense. And like, what was daycare costing you a day? $128,000. And you got $499,000 from your partner to help with that. Yeah. Yeah. No. Basically. No, sir. It's a joke. It doesn't matter what I earn because it's based on what he earns and the percentage of care. So I have 100% care to her and he only started paying this six months after we separated. Yeah.

So he's only really paid it from like January. Yeah. So basically nothing and no real support in that way. Yeah. So I pulled her out because she was getting really sick and I just couldn't. It was like $400 a month. Yeah.

She went a total of I think like nine days, like her bookings, and she went three days of that because she was so sick yeah so I'm like we're just gonna stop doing this because it doesn't make sense it doesn't make financial sense so tell me a little bit more about these other streams of income that you have okay so I resell mostly baby things great because I live in a rural area so I go to town quite often I'm on the border of ACT yep so going to ACT there's always stuff on the side of the road and it's like a hobby I used to grab a friend grab my sister and go on my big car when I had a big car and just like put stuff in my car stick in my garage and sell it and then I would use that money to pay for her nappies yeah because I

couldn't afford it especially before I moved here I couldn't afford it and you're saving stuff from landfill as well which is great I feel like you're so resourceful like single mums are another breed like you guys are next level. I love it. Tell us about your other streams. I'm very here for this. They're basically just like surveys, market research, my bins job, any airtasker jobs that come up.

So I'm qualified in business, qualified in childcare, admin, do all those sorts of things. I'm not very creative. So I just do like physical labor, like shovel some dirt and paid $700. Yeah, epic. And then I do card and bank churning as well. What's that?

So it's basically like you open a bank account, you do all the things you need to do, pop some money in there, use it a few times, you gain the benefits of opening the card and then you close it off. Oh, yes, I see. So like credit cards that come with like sign-up bonuses and things like that? Yeah.

Got it. Interesting. Do you know how much that impacts your credit score though? I'm just being a curvy financial advisor. Oh, really? My credit score is like in the 700 to 800 and I don't have any other loans. I've never bought a house so it's just my phone bill from like three years ago and those all right next money question I want to ask is what is your big money goal so my initial goal was to buy a

house but that uh so far from happening at this moment and that's okay my daughter and I have quite content where we are we're safe now and we're trying to just get on with the day-to-day instead of what could happen further down the track so I have a car that's my first goal my next goal is I'm getting Invisalign yeah so that's about eight thousand epic and then I want to ask you have a lot of income streams but do you have any investments I have super which has literally nothing in it because I had to withdraw for like during COVID yeah I manually put fifty dollars a fortnight in there to can top it up and I didn't get any top-ups during my mat leave or anything like that so it was just nothing for like four years oh my gosh how do you feel about that

it's a bit sad especially when I'm in a household with family members who have like over you know I'd say 120 my mom's got almost a million in super so when she tells me that I'm just like I have like $5,000. Yeah. It's so hard. Yeah. So it's like everything I've worked for in the past, I'd say eight years is gone. Yeah. It's hard because you have to factor into that and we'll dive into this again a little bit later, but you've obviously gone through a little bit of a trauma and I don't think it's a bad thing that you've prioritized your personal safety over some of those other things. Because if you don't have a future, there's no point having money there for it right yeah especially when financial abuse was such a I had such a big presence yeah

and I didn't really know that what it was until my lawyer was pointed out to me yeah yeah and that's the painful part because you probably didn't realize right yeah exactly exactly so we'll get into that straight after the break but next question is do you have any debts I do I owe $8,000 to a family member. They helped me get a car so that it wasn't up for grabs during my custody for my child, which I don't have still. And I'm about to buy a laptop, so it's like a future debt. I need to buy a new one for work because my little MacBook does not cope with all of the systems I'm using for. Yeah, that is fair. There are a lot of them as well. next question when and if you are shopping online are you using shop back I do use shop back

like religiously you're like I do actually religiously tell us how so I buy my petrol on shop back your petrol on shop back what this is new tell us so I haven't heard anyone else do this I'm quite surprised neither have we I don't believe I thought I was across like every possible I thought you were the wizard but I've never heard of petrol please tell me more no so I have a Toyota I bought a Toyota at the beginning of the year so Toyota's a partner Ampol and they have their own discount system but so does Shopback Shopback has Ampol really and I live in an area where there it takes 20 minutes to get from one side to the other like I you know it's very very small place so there's Ampol's like everywhere so how do you do it tell

last like do I just show my shop back at card at Ampol like I don't know I can't work out in my brain how I would facilitate this so I pre-purchase my petrol $25 at a time yep every fortnight weekly if I feel like chucking an extra 25 in but I do it in advance so I always have money for fuel yeah and I always have $25 for the next week so then I go out I fill my car and I either pay the difference or I use two cards and then I get shop back on the petrol card. So I just go and scan my petrol card from the shop back app. You are so smart. I am 100 million percent. Thank you so much. There's a million amp hole around the corner from my house. Literally wild. Catch you with the bowser. All right. Next question. I want to know what is your best money habit? I think education.

like that sounds very privileged but I think I know where everything kind of is in my area again I think that just comes with living in a small area but I know that like I can get nappies from Woolworths instead of I can get them from Big W instead of Woolworths if I wanted to and they're the same price so I don't have to do that extra trip or like I know so my fish tank broke for example I just contacted came out and I was like hey my fish tank broke and they're like okay we'll place it for free instead of just going out and buying wine buying wine yeah you know how to be resourceful yeah I suppose yeah I think that's so smart like that is such a good money win skill because so many of us would just like be like oh fish tank broke like gotta buy a new one like

I'm very guilty of that sometimes when I should take things back because I'm like I just I hate asking for a refund I hate doing that you probably surprising coming from me given I'm the most audacious funny person you've probably ever met but I just don't like that interaction but I also know that that's what I should be doing so when people like I'm good at that I'm like I wish I had more of your confidence I hate going up to the front desk yeah it's like bread rolls are cheaper at Coles to buy them individually than they are to pay at Baker's Delight by like 20 cents so really Coles yeah so it's just like knowing like knowing where to go and what to do yeah yeah oh my gosh I love that especially if you have a crying baby oh yeah I was gonna say

that's actually such an important point as well because like mums sometimes just rely on convenience and you're like I can even do this while she's screaming this is great I'm a genius flipping this on its head what is your worst money habit probably food I think everyone likes to well everyone I know at least like a little splurge on food I guess because I'm vegan food's really expensive yes and I choose to eat gluten-free options because I have an autoimmune condition so that it makes it even more expensive but I'm just like oh my god a new vegan thing I have that oh someone's like do you want to go out I'm just like yeah I'll have that I'll have that like yeah it's so hard when it comes to food and then I look at my bank account and I'm like I ate

all that away geez yeah not great but I feel like a lot of us can probably relate to that because I definitely did. The second I see a new plant-based option, I'm like, I'm going to get that. That is great. And gluten-free bread is ridiculously expensive for no good reason. Kind of rude. Money Diarist, last question of the set of questions before we do a bit more of a deep dive is what grade would you give your money habits if we forced you to give yourself a grade? Probably like a B. I'm a really good saver. I save more than 80% of my income every single fortnight yeah I do and I am very frugal so I only buy things and I absolutely want them or I've been thinking about them for a long time and I always maybe it's stingy but when it comes to my

daughter like she she has my family who give her everything she wants so when she wants something it's like either on the cheaper side or I'll pull out something from a storage container and be like here. Yeah. Yeah. Epic. Everything old is new again. Oh my God. Yeah. So I tend not to buy things for her. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. I've heard of, is it toy recycling where you're like, oh, sorry, toy cycling, where you like hide their toys from them and then they think that they're new again. It's like a big part of- You can do that to me with clothes. I feel like I should actually get into the habit of that. Cycle them through. I think it's a Montessori thing where you have a set amount out because kids only focus on a certain number of things at a

time. And then they forget what's put away. And then it's like, it's brand new again. You're right. Like, why would you buy something when you can just pull it out two months later? And they're like, oh my God, this is the best toy ever. You're literally going to be the best mom. I don't want to talk about it. Let's go to a break. And then we're going to deep dive on our money diarist because I just feel like I'm going to look like a terrible future mom. If we continue here. All right. All right, we are back, Money Diarist. You have a really interesting money story that I think a lot of our community can really connect with. You're a single mom. You've been through a lot to get to

this stage. You have a gorgeous two-year-old daughter now. You have 11 streams of income, which is beyond impressive. Obviously, they're all small and all require work and energy and effort and I'm genuinely so impressed, but I want to know a bit more about your situation. In your money diary, you wrote in and said, look, I've gotten out of a domestically violent relationship. How did you decide that now was the time? I just can't, I'm going to go live with my parents. And you know, this is my reality. I guess the option to leave my relationship was forced upon me. So I was the one who ended my relationship because I had put up with over a year of trying to the point where it was like I was just flogging that dead horse I was just

trying for no absolutely no reason just to keep my daughter safe and happy and give her that fairy tale family because I didn't want her to grow up in a broken home and that clouded my judgment on how I felt about the situation for so long so we just kind of came to a flat end like it's quite hard to explain because it all just went like it just everything died off the relationship died off the communication died off the quality of time died off the quality of care for my daughter died off there was a lot of throwing things a lot of shouting a lot of things that just were not sitting well with me to the point where I was like you need to leave and then he took his clothes his ps4 and never came back wow because we lived in a rental I couldn't afford

that on my own of course so then I had to leave and I had to take everything we owned with me yeah that's a lot to carry that's a lot to go through it was quite hard it took over six months to sell everything I owned in a storage unit plus paying for storage and I didn't want to go back to my family I didn't have anywhere else to go either and that person kept showing up at my house and demanding to see my child and that was just too much so I got a lawyer involved which is very fair and a very intelligent step how did that go for you that was difficult I guess because I had gone from having a lot of savings to having no savings to having my own money which he wasn't able to access which is another issue of our relationship to then having to give it all

away and not have any safety net and not have any things for myself we also live in a small area like I said every time I call up there would be like okay let me take your name down here's my name let me take his name down here's his name oh sorry conflict of interest we can't help you oh sorry conflict of interest we can't help you so I kept getting roadblocks and that's because your partner had spoken to that lawyer, right? Yes. And was that a strategy he had implemented on purpose or was that a strategy that he'd just had a chat with a few lawyers? Because I know that in situations like that, sometimes one party will inquire with a lawyer to block the other party out from using them. I think it's a bit of both. I mean, we suspect that he

did a lot of manipulation, but we also don't think he is smart enough to manipulate. wait. So it's a bit of like a... Don't give him credit where it's not due. Yeah. It's more of an assumption, I suppose. I want to ask a little bit about your being on welfare because we actually put out, I don't remember if you responded specifically to this post potentially, but we wanted to talk to a diarist who was living off of welfare because I think that there's a really big stigma attached to people who utilise welfare resources. And I think that often people carry shame with them, that they absolutely just shouldn't have to. I want to know for you, how did you feel going from obviously an incredibly challenging situation?

You said you didn't want to move back in with your parents. You maybe felt a little bit stuck. Did you experience any of those feelings and how did you kind of move past them? I definitely did experience some stigma with being on welfare because my family are very against welfare so both of my parents parents have been on welfare basically their whole life especially my dad's family I don't think they've ever worked a day in their life so my mom especially she looked down on welfare and I didn't want her to look down on me but as our relationship started to mend itself by having my daughter by being in the house by talking to her about what actually goes on in my life, what I think,

what I feel, being diagnosed with the exact same autoimmune condition, it opened up her eyes to what my life can be now that I'm on welfare because I have stability. I have the option to stay in bed an extra bit longer. I have the option to go to the park for five hours instead of one. Like it helped her see the benefit, although she still does see the downfall. and I think when I tell people like oh I'm on welfare no you can't get a colon no you can't get a home loan so it stopped me progressing in my future as well yeah of course yeah it's a bit

I don't know it's hard to tell people when they're like oh what do you do and I'm like I'm a stay at home mum because they're like oh you're a stay at home mum it's like actually my daughter and I are both the happiest we have been in our entire lives and she's safe because I don't have to leave because I can stay home. Yeah. And I think that that's so important to point out as well, because for a lot of people who are on welfare, it's not a choice. Like you didn't choose to go down this route. Like I'm sure in a perfect world, that is not how you wanted it to work out, but it is how it works out. And I'm genuinely so grateful we live in a country where we have that support that you can stay at home and it sounds like you are an absolute hustler as well. So I don't think that's

going to be your reality forever. So it's so nice that you've got that bridging finance in a way to go, do you know what, here's this, so you can get on your feet and you can have the stability and then you can thrive later. And I think that that's, you know, the way a lot of our community sees welfare and sees that thing, like whether you're on youth allowance or, you know, a parenting pension or a disability payment, like most of us are in that situation because it's just the situation. It is what it is. And that's great. Let's also work on ourselves and work out where we actually want to be. Because I think that there's this stigma when you say welfare that you go, oh, well, you just must be a dole bludger when that's actually not the case at all. It's

so situational. And I feel like too many people just assume the worst the second you say that word. And that's not what that means at all. Like the idea that welfare exists and this beautiful mum got out of a financially and, you know, domestically violent situation and now can support her child, I'm all for it. Yeah, a thousand percent. And it doesn't mean that you have to sit there forever either. You said just before that, you know, you kind of had to put your career on hold. What do you want your future to look like? What are your plans? So I guess like, as I said before, I'm just like starting to dip my toes in finance. So I started looking into personal finance for myself and so I made a shift it's very interesting shift and I was

explaining it to my current CEO and she's like I don't get it so I worked in child care for eight years I worked on the floor with children every day I then ran my own center and then got pregnant after a year and a half of being with somebody and then by the time she was three months he was gone so I was like I can't cope being with the children it's too triggering considering we do the same job there's a lot of downfalls to being with children all day every day when you're just not mentally coping yeah I went and looked for an alternative job which was in admin so I had done my business certificate and I started working admin and then my boss was like telling me all about how they split the costs of like the parents and the children and what room gets what and I

found that really interesting so then I started my personal finance journey so then I decided at the beginning of the year that I would try out working in finance I started studying in finance and I guess that's where I'm going to go with my career I've gone away from working in a school age environment and child care environment to working more with my mind and less with my body and I think having an autoimmune condition I can't do the long hours I don't have the energy to be with other people's children I barely have enough for myself after I've been with my daughter all day so that's where my life's gonna go so I'm more focused on being happy being present and because my case is not officially closed so he's gone don't know where he went he just

disappeared he lives 20 minutes down the road which is very scary so he couldn't show up and just take my daughter whenever he wants so I just want to try and be present and yeah that's why I guess I stayed on welfare because although I love to work and I love to learn if I want to have an extra day to just be with her then I can and I won't regret it if something were to happen yeah wow thank you for sharing that that's really challenging to think that that's overlaid onto your decision to go do you know what I just want to stay here doing this for now to be present for my daughter it's a very special decision to be able to make and I'm sure that she is absolutely thrilled by that decision. Her mum is around all the time. She's like, this is the best. I am

living my best life. But what will it mean in the future? You said your case isn't closed. Is that circumstance going to change significantly maybe once it is? It's hard to say because I don't know if her father will return. Like, like I said, he lives very close. He, you know, he's always on the topic of like for her he can just show up and take her the case is not officially closed no letter saying hey you're going to full-time parent it's just an expectation that I do and I have done it since the day she was born so if he was to show up that would be a lot of money to fork out as well like they told me last year that if I was to go to court I'd probably not win I'd probably end up with shared care and it would cost me a hundred thousand dollars and

if I'm not showing that I'm being true to supporting their relationship I then have to pay his bill as well yeah wow yeah and lawyers are not cheap my lawyer is like 550 an hour and she charges every six minutes yeah for her time yeah that's crazy yeah so I have to keep in mind that if he was to return it's not just a emotional thing it's also a financial thing he'll be able to come after everything I now own he'll be able to get my daughter he'll be like I'll be up for thousands of dollars possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars if it goes to court so I just want to be present and be with her until that happens that's such a hard decision to make but I'm really proud that you're so clear on what you are doing because I think historically when

I've spoken to people about similar situations they're just like I just don't know what I want to do and you seem so clear that you're like I just want to spend as much time with my daughter and just be present. I think that that's such a beautiful space to be in during a time where you arguably have a lot of turmoil surrounding you. Like that's a lot to deal with, but I think you're doing a very beautiful job, my friend. Thank you. All right, Jess, I think unfortunately that is all we have time for today at Money Diarist. I have adored learning about your story. Thank you for sharing so much of yourself and your daughter's story with us. I think it's been so powerful to understand where you're coming from and how things are benefiting you, but also how it's so

challenging. I feel like so many people in our community are really going to resonate with this story or even just have a better understanding of people in your position. So I'm really grateful that you were here today to share that with us. So thank you. Jess, can you wrap the boring but important stuff? Of course. Don't forget, guys, the advice shared on She's on the Money is generally 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 a financial decision. And we promise Victoria Devine and She's on the Money are authorised representatives of Infocus Securities Australia Proprietary Limited, ABN 47097797049, AFSL 236523.

See you on Wednesday, guys. Bye. Thanks for watching!