She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: Baby Budgeting

Episode Date: October 3, 2021

Happy Monday Angels! Our Money Diarist is sharing a very emotional rollercoaster of a story with us today, and announces something very exciting! And tells us all about her in-depth baby budgeting.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 financial advisor Victoria Devine. Toni Lodge, welcome back to another Money Diary, which I'm very excited for. You've been hyping this one up for a little while. Like I always do. You always do. I feel like you always pick the good money diaries and also props to you for doing the inbox for that. I know it is a

massive undertaking. Thank you. So much reading, but you get all the pervy insights to our community, even the ones that maybe don't make the show. Uh-huh. Yeah. And there are a lot and all of them are amazing. Unfortunately, we can't get back to everybody, but if you do have a great money story, we'd love for you to email through on podcast at she's on the money.com.au. We absolutely would. So without further ado, Tony Lodge, could you read out this week's money diarist's email to me all right here we go my parents got married at 19 and 20 had me at 22 and 23 and was studying accounting and law they had built and owned a very successful accounting practice that made us a nice few million my parents worked hard around the clock and deserved

every dollar after a few unfortunate business decisions the business was sold our mortgage was paid off but we had little disposable cash my mom while working with my dad never took a wage or had her super paid amazingly she secretly saved up over a hundred thousand dollars over their 18 years together check you out mama and put a deposit on our new home we had no white goods or furniture but we had a roof over our heads things escalated between my parents and i moved out at almost 17 after dealing with a drug addiction domestic abuse and related mental health illnesses i moved across the state bought a 1972 caravan on an empty block of land and scored a full-time management role but had no access to amenities i found myself having to sell my caravan

and spend the night in my car sleeping next to my two pets i took out my entire super to pay off some debt and moved across the state again from there i met my future forever soulmate who had come from a similar money story now i run a business and work for an agency both in the ndis sector earning anywhere from a thousand to three thousand dollars a week before tax and i know the importance of super thanks to she's on the money what a queen while we haven't been able to get into the housing market yet fate had its way and blessed us with not a home loan but a long-awaited baby boy thanks to you we're on our way to financial freedom oh my gosh what a story i know it takes a few turns but it's very good i did not see any of that coming congratulations

for going through all of that and also welcome to the show thank you i am so excited to be able to share this oh my gosh thank you so much for sharing your story because it sounds like you've been through a lot so much like you're one of those i can already tell you're one of those people that are really old souls, like we're talking just before this episode started recording and I was like, she's an old soul. And now it just makes sense that you've been on such a wild journey. Let's jump straight into the questions that we usually ask our money, Doris, and then we can get into the pervy stuff a little bit later and I can ask about your baby. So first things first what is your attitude towards money um I love money um I definitely I think that's the

most honest answer we've ever had that someone said I love it I love money it's true um it's not so much like I enjoy um being able to put I guess a value on the work that I do um and feel that financially like doing what I love like I love my job I love my business um and I've had that before but it's not financially been something that I can sort of continue so um I'm so so privileged to be able to do a job that I love and be able to survive on on the money like more than survive um so I it's been yeah really positive like obviously from going to having everything to having nothing like um when my parents split up that's when mum bought the house and um okay that makes sense I did have questions about that because I was like yeah that doesn't

make a lot of sense why she would have stashed some cash and then bought another house for both of them but that makes more sense yeah so they split up I think I was about 13 or 14 and then obviously divorced a while later um so that's when mum and I moved into that home and we had nothing and so um I spent my last like 32 dollars on some gourmet pizzas for me and mom and we just sat in the house on the floor um and yeah and like I've always like said growing up you know trying to comfort my mom she did an amazing job as like um after they split up but trying to comfort her that like you know I have when I think of positive and happy memories I think of that like that's the first thing I think of having no money on the floor with like a lamb souvlaki pizza and that's

it you know so yeah I mean it's it's it's it's always been positive like regardless of how much or how little we've had it's always been positive that's so special all right next question for you I really want to know the answer to this one what do you do for work and we kind of know but how much money do you earn um so I'm a support worker so I work with um in the disability and mental health sector. Um, I work with an agency who employs me and obviously pays me. Um, and then I was working with a lot of high risk, um, clients, both to me, like risk to me and risk to the public. So when I got pregnant, they basically said like, we're not letting you work with them. Um, so I have a couple, um, that I still work with that are sort of low risk, but that's when I

needed to shift into something that I was able to sort of manage myself um so I opened up a small business it's just me and I kind of just do like a one-stop shop for NDIS participants so like gardening cooking cleaning support work transport yeah and so I think all up I have like maybe seven or eight clients between the two that I manage um and if I work a full week um it's about three thousand dollars before tax um I obviously don't work a full week the whole year um but then on average it's about a thousand dollars a week that um before tax that I can kind of pull in if that's really honestly it's working about 20 hours a week so how cool yeah and to know that you're doing that and you're obviously quite passionate about it but 20 hours a week and having a bambino makes

life a little bit more flexible which we love all right next structured question what is your big money goal um so it was to buy a house um both my partner and I we wanted to sort of buy something with a bit of land so that you know we can do what we want like he wants motorbikes and I want a horse so obviously living where we do like um sort of well I guess it's metro um Melbourne we we can't afford that and there's not that much around that um would cater to that either so we were thinking of buying um just a investment property to obviously live in for the next 12 24 months um and then move on from there but we can't even get into the housing market so we were just sort of sitting on it renting where we are um we're lucky that our landlord hasn't raised our

rent the whole through the whole covid so we've been really fortunate um and then yeah we were just sort of sitting there just saving as much as we could for as long as we could and then obviously the babies come along so um yeah so I guess like the money goal it's kind of backwards but is to have this baby as cheap as possible yeah hold on hold on so are you pregnant or have you had this baby um I'm pregnant I'm oh so the baby boy hasn't even arrived yet no how hold on how many weeks are you just over 12 weeks oh my gosh that's so exciting oh my gosh and so new yeah like crazy crazy new like we were lucky to find out we found out really really early um and then that kind of stopped because there was so long between when we found out when we

could actually you know tell people be excited yeah so oh my gosh so this is like a baby announcement money diary well yeah it is because someone who's completely anonymous guys having a baby and she's really excited all right back to questions do you currently have any investments I do um I didn't I started listening to she's on the money towards the end of last year and then I made my first investment on spaceship um in January and she's an investor I'm an investor um and that's been like it's like a 29 almost 30 percent return um on those yeah so that's yeah I've just sort of been randomly like I'm not fantastic at you know planning it um every week but I just randomly put some money in there um and then I also just recently opened up um the

shares use portfolio as well and I'm enjoying shares more because it's more interactive because I can kind of go through and pick and like you know just gives me something to do a bit of you know year 11 year 12 economics trading on the ASX I love that we've had so much positive feedback on our community loving the shares use platform so I'm not surprised that you're enjoying it I love it too so flipping away from investments do you have any debts um I don't actually um is she well the most the the reason debt that I had was my laptop and that's because working from home obviously just doing video calls and I'm back at uni too so paid that off I mean I put that on zip pay I paid it off um I think it was like a hundred and something dollars a week minimum so

it was gone within like almost two months I think the only thing I've got is like a two thousand dollar help fee for uni and that's it all right we're talking about buying new laptops before the next question is do you currently use shopback I do oh did you buy a laptop on shopback I did actually hey yeah so I had the same problem Tony I think it was you that on my phone I was just forgetting to use it so when I heard the episode about the chrome extension I was like okay so I jumped on everybody's welcome Tony's like that was me guys that was me so yeah I jumped on and um I shopped back I've used shop back for like buying all the stuff for the baby um yeah and so like I've been able to get a little bit um a little bit back on there

because some of the stuff like you know sometimes you buy through Kogan and that particular thing that you want doesn't have any cash back um but it's also been handy to use to see the change in prices as well so i can see that if like that item is 80 but six months ago it was like 20 i know that i can kind of wait for it to go back down again she's a wizard yeah i'm exchanging tips all over the place this is why we ask because i know some people will be like what why are you asking her that, but it's such a good money hack and everybody uses it differently. And I am really pervy about how people shop online. I'm the same as Tony, albeit not as intelligent. I hadn't added the Chrome extension until she told me to. And now I have, I find myself just adding it at checkout

instead of having to go back to the app and like redo it. Yeah. I'm a lazy gal. Like that just works for me. Exactly. It does. Right. So I feel like shop back might be your best money habit, but the next question is what is your best money habit um my best money habit definitely is saving um I've always ever since I started working like I was always saving I always had an account that was a non-touchable that I obviously ultimately did end up touching for different reasons for good reasons yeah good reasons um like a holiday to Vietnam like essential yes um well it was visiting family so yes um so yeah definitely saving like I as soon as I get any type of money even if I like sell something online for like 20 bucks I always

save some of it even if it's like just two or three dollars um but I mean especially like with what's been I guess most handy as savings recently is um working through the business obviously I have to pay tax at the end of the year and so um I also listen to the business bible so I was saving the 30% even though I know that like especially sort of this financial year I'm not going to be making anywhere near enough to pay that much tax so I'm still putting it in there and using it as my savings genius extra as well um yeah so it feels so much more empowered when you make decisions like that because tax can be something that as a business owner I can really relate it can be really overwhelming but if you've got this structure where you're like no I put this

amount aside even though in the end of the day and I'm going to claim stuff and I know that maybe that's not what I'll end up paying you always feel so much more confident because you know you're not going to get stung come exactly exactly next question is in comparison to that what is your worst money habit um my worst money habit is I definitely go through phases of spending um I don't necessarily spend on myself um like i will if i do like i'm going to you know best and less or big wk mart and only buying clearance rack items and if the perfect thing is there but it's you know ten dollars and i know that i can get it for cheaper i just won't buy it so that's probably an like i wouldn't say like it's a worse money habit but like i do need to kind of ease up and

allow myself to buy like some socks every now and then um but then on the contrary like it's my partner's birthday coming up and Christmas and so I had no issues dropping like twelve hundred dollars on his presents granted they're for work as well so they're useful for him it's not just stuff um but like he could just casually offhand mention oh like I'd really like that I'm like here you go like you've got it now so yeah so yeah giving is your love language is what we're hearing yes but you also deserve to maybe extend that grace to yourself especially if it means not buying socks my love like yes well I just I budgeted in our because you'll be glad to hear Victoria that um we have a spreadsheet budget for our baby um so I budgeted a new underwear and new

socks and stuff into that spreadsheet so that makes me feel better about it because it technically is for the baby so yeah that's true you definitely do need to do that can I be a little bit pervy here go for it sorry how much do you think this baby is going to cost you like how far down this budgeting route for baby are you so we went um I went through and pretty much added everything I could possibly want onto the spreadsheet and then I went through and obviously took things off as I kind of got a bit more knowledge and like you know you don't need the wipes warmer like that's just ridiculous um so I went through and kind of have started cutting down a lot and we had budgeted obviously for as little as we could and the original list adding everything that I wanted

was four thousand dollars and then um yeah and then after taking everything off I think I got it down to like just over three thousand dollars um and that's like everything that you're gonna need to start oh my gosh everything and so we ended up taking a couple of extra tests that we wanted um done and it still fit under that four thousand dollars and like I want to spend a little bit extra on a pram so i've just taken out like the big full kit of these like um uh the tommy tippy bottles and stuff because i mean i might not need them well then the baby might not like that particular one so i've added you know a hundred dollars of that onto something else and then i've just got fifty dollars to kind of play around a bit um so yeah we're hoping well it's

looking like we can get it under four thousand dollars and that's pretty much from birth to like six months so oh my god yeah yeah I agree so to wrap this part of the pod what would you grade yourself if I forced you to give yourself a money grade um I'm gonna give myself a b plus um just because I know that like I have a lot of good money habits um but like for example I would like to be able to fully commit to you know having even just five dollars a week just constantly invest in that into each of my portfolios um I want to be able to I guess like crunch down on what I am spending and what I'm not spending because I know that when I have leftover allocated spending money like I could be saving it too but I might be spending it on something silly so like

just kind of going back and realigning my values um because they've changed a lot and right now the only value I have is the baby so that's like yeah I guess I kind of just need to kind of disperse that out a little bit rather than just focusing on the one thing so but it kind of makes sense that that's where your priorities are right yeah that's the biggest thing in your life yeah and from what we've already learned about you you seem super savvy super switched on super organized you know I think a b plus is more than fair if anything it might be a little bit low but i think that your goal is to invest a little bit more um consistently i think that's a great goal yeah i absolutely agree and money dice we have so many questions and we will get back to

them right after this quick break okay let's jump back into this we haven't touched on it yet but it did come up in your money story you had a journey we could say of a money story like you've gone from you know wealth to not having wealth to you know living out of your car with your pets to now finding the love of your life how has that impacted your money story now as an adult and as a future new mom um it's it's honestly been crazy like if I could have a chance to go back can change anything like I definitely it's cliche but I wouldn't um I can pinpoint different behaviors that I have today and I can pinpoint the lessons that they came from and what I learned it's definitely like when I was growing up obviously both parents being accountants my

mom had a background in law um I was given really good foundations for money habits like I was saving at two years old you know birthday money you know it got split up I had a savings account yeah it was really cute like my parents did an amazing job especially when i was really young being able to sort of stabilize um my future and like when i was 16 i you know was super excited to get heaps of different cards like for my wallet and stuff so like i got you know my ing account swapped over so i could have a card to access it and like just stuff like that like it was um I had really good foundations and that I think is ultimately what stabilized my view on money and you know I've never been a frivolous spender um I've never you know not saved I've

always worked at least three jobs up until I was you know up here in Melbourne um and so I've been taught the value of money both as a dollar value but also as what it can bring and what it can do to people too um and yeah the reason why I said like right at the beginning was that I love money is because I love how I'm able to sort of view it and I don't let it control my life but I also don't feel like I'm out of control like knowing that we can have pretty much any emergency happen to us right now and we're going to be okay we have enough money like that's like I'm an incredibly anxious person and it's just I've had no anxiety the past you know 12 months since having these savings I'm just like I don't feel like anything can you know scare me like that's such a weight

off your shoulders definitely and like because a couple of months ago I had a car accident and my car got written off and I didn't have yeah I only had third-party insurance um on it and it was lucky that I did you know we were sort of thinking well we have a Great Dane now too so we've got oh so cool yeah so we're like we you know we needed to get a bigger car anyway so we were looking at it we were looking at you know like a Toyota Kluger and we're like it's just you know expensive we were looking at getting into a loan I was like you know what I'm gonna get this is a car I want and I've got a 2002 Toyota Camry wagon fits the dogs will fit the baby and I think it costs like five thousand dollars and that all came out of our savings so instead of yeah instead of

going into debt um getting a loan and you know financing and stuff like that just decisions like that that um money decisions that are going to serve you for the long term and yeah I think that too many times people really undervalue those decisions go oh but that's not what I really want I should just get what I really want when in reality that's given you financial freedom in the long term because you're not stressed about something and yeah I think that's so special um how old are you at the moment money diarist uh 21 almost 22 oh my gosh you're a baby yeah in your email you said that you both you and your partner had quite a similar money story do you think that that's made it easier because you can understand each other's background and go I know what you've

been through because it was really hard for me as well yeah definitely um in a lot of ways it's made it easier um but we also he's got a bit of a mind frame of like we've got the money now I've never had you know a 75 inch tv so let's buy one so we bought one um I've never had a Weber barbecue so let's buy one so we bought one and so like it's it's like that is that we're kind of like you know where we both sort of get in the mind frame of like well you know what what if one day and you know we should not be spending this much and doing that but every now and then we're just like why like we know that we're okay we know that our you know future for at least for the next year is pretty stable and pretty secure like we're both essential workers so even if covid you know hits

the roof again like more than what it is at the moment we know that we're safe um so yeah if we've been able to kind of or he's been able to kind of be like oh but we can you know wouldn't it be nice to have that kind of luxury that we've never had before so but in saying that we both drive like 20 year old cars and you know so like it's just small stuff like that that we've never had before um he's been able to be like it's okay to spend it like let's just let's buy it and i'm like yeah okay so yeah but it's really empowering that you've both gone through you know a pretty crazy life to get to where you're at now and you can look at each other and go you know what we've never had that barbecue before we've never had that telly like let's just do it because we love

each other and we've got money and we're safe and there's just nothing better than feeling really safe with the person that you that you love both you know literally safe but also financially safe and like you said having that weight off your shoulders of feeling anxious about oh my gosh if that bill's more expensive than we think it might be we actually can't swing it this month and um i think that most people listening everybody listening can relate to that that has gone through a period in their life where they've gone we don't know what will happen if that bill's more than we're expecting yeah and like I'm more so take management of the finances in terms of paying bills and everything he's very much just like I don't even want to hear about it

I've got too much to think about like just tell me what you need and I'll just do it cool well I've been listening to this podcast so yeah and I'm like you should listen to it he goes I don't want to like you're in control of it like I trust you to deal with it I was like okay um but it's been really cool too to sort of see the progress um of because when we first met neither of us had any money like we were dirt broke and so for my birthday one year the first year he'd bought me um a bamboo um doona from kmart and then year just gone he bought me an adares one that was you know ducked down so yeah look at the glow up yeah even in like that sort of 12 month different yeah I'm just like I'm really living it up now like we've got you know duck down feather

um alternative not not actual ducks I have to say that now um you know pillows and duna covers like duna inserts and everything so we're yeah definitely oh my gosh that's so special though and I love that you guys have gotten to go on that journey as well together and not done this on your own and like what you've built who you've built together and now you're building a little family as well which is so exciting um I'm a massive pet person so you said before you have a great dame what are your other pets um so I've got a great dame he's almost 12 months old um we've got a labrador yeah um he's trouble he's just he's ended up chewing I left the house for like five minutes to go drop off a dish to my neighbor and he chewed the doorframe um yeah so

we're we're dealing with that at the moment but um yeah but he's very cute he's very cute and very cuddly that always makes up for it exactly for it exactly um i've got a six-year-old labrador um so i've had him for almost five years i got him when he was about 18 months old um and then i also have a cat as well who's a couple of years old that i've had since so he actually he was my first one so um they all live together very peacefully and you know it's yeah it's quite nice and how do you budget for pets because pets are actually really expensive as someone who also has three pets I have two cats and one dog their vet bills their food bills all of that really adds up how do you swindle that into your budget sure so when we started um like I said I didn't have very much

money when my partner and I first met so he was really good um when when we first started living together um we also had a housemate and then another housemate as well um who didn't pay bills it was just me and the original housemate that would pay the rent and bills and it kind of balanced out because she wanted that person there and I wanted this person there um so in order to feel like he was contributing like he would be you know when my dog got sick he would go halves in the vet bill and stuff like that which I never yeah I never asked for and he was just really good with that um and now that we have it all together um we have a savings account so we have our own separate savings account and spendings account and then we have a joint expenses for our rent

and bills and food and our baby and our big savings I guess um so when we put our big savings accounts together that was originally for the house and it still is um but we're a little bit more lenient with it now so in order to keep us both comfortable because we're obviously saving as much as we can now so that we can continue to spend when I'm not working and my partner is needing to pretty much put his entire wage into keeping us alive um yeah so yeah so we've been more lenient with it now and so when um you know our dogs have to go to the vet or they need worming tablets or they need um like our grey jane's getting de-sexed in the next six months um so that's all going to come out of that big savings account so we contribute to that as much

as we can um and like i said that is our house deposit account but we are able to kind of use that emergency yeah exactly i like that and i kind of knew if i asked someone who had such a comprehensive baby budget after 12 weeks that they probably would have really thought about their pets but yes one of those things where you just don't realize how expensive they are until have them yeah well like our great dane he eats 800 grams of food a day so we get a 20 bag yeah we get a 20 kilo bag of dog food and he's through that before the end of the month and we were spending a lot of money on it and then i ended up finding this big like bulk warehouse in new south wales so we get 20 kilos for like a hundred dollars delivered oh that's so good yeah so it's

i mean it's it's not a huge impact but when you know you've got to buy both the dogs and they're both a hundred dollars each bag and then you've it's also worming in free time it's just like yeah it totally adds up and i find it's really interesting because i'm such a pet person and now with three i obviously see how much that impacts our budget but when i got bailey who is my oldest cat he has just turned 10 um i've had him for the last nine years and he saw me through university and every relationship i've ever had poor cat um but i remember when i got him I was dirt broke in uni and like I knew that I needed a cat mentally to get through what I was going through and like it was just one of those periods of time where I literally remember having

about $300 in my account and Bailey was a rescue and he cost me $250 and I remember driving him home and I was so happy and I was a bit freaked out because I had less than $100 in my account and I was like, oh my gosh, like this is so stressful, but I knew ultimately I'd done the right thing. And, you know, I couldn't afford the expensive cat food for him. And I remember when I was, um, you know, I would have been your age, I would have been like 2021 and I got this cat and I was like, all right, well, you're going to eat supermarket food, but I promise one day I'll get you the bougie stuff. And now he eats like a little King, but it's, it's a funny part of my money story because I look back and I go, I knew what I needed. I knew what I could afford. And I

did that and I made it fit my budget and I just don't think that there's any shame in what that that looks like and I'm very lucky now that he's a fancy boy and eats his royal canon cat food but like he used to eat home brand cat food he was fine and we were really happy together but I think it's such a journey to go through that knowing you know pets are expensive but when they are a key value of yours you just make it happen yeah exactly and I mean like my my dog on my cat my cat less so because he caused a lot of troubles in the beginning um but like when I got my dog like my Labrador again he saw me through a lot of stuff to the point where I was like I loved them so much more than I loved myself I didn't trust anybody to look after them and so

I was like you know I can't let anything happen to me I can't do anything to myself I can't you know put myself at risk because I don't trust anybody to look after them so I have to stay here I have to wake up every morning I have to feed them like and that was the only thing that got me through for so long because I was just like that's they are the most important thing in my world and I don't want anything to ever happen to them so I'm the only one that I that's how I feel about my pets as well like they are literally family and that's when I get so confused and obviously everybody's budget is different and we all have different values and we all have different priorities but when people say oh I yeah I don't have a pet they just don't fit in

my budget I'm like oh okay I don't understand that mentality but all right we might have like 20 packets of me garang home brand noodles in our cupboard but our dog eats well like yeah literally me um money diarist one of the things that I have loved about your money story is your mindset and even in what as I said before some of the darkest times to other people were actually your favorite memories how have you created this mindset like where does that come from and how do we as the she's on the money family learn from that so we can take a leaf out of your book and maybe be a bit more positive about our situations sure um it's it's difficult because like i said my parents separated um the reason why they separated um was like they you know growing

apart whatnot my dad wanted to move overseas with his charity um I was actually supposed to move overseas with him and he I think it was about a week or two weeks before I was supposed to move over to um the same country as him in a in an Asian country as well um it actually came out that he'd had an affair and I had a brother um wow yeah and so that was that split things up so that was quite traumatic having put all of like I'd signed out of school and everything like I'd put all my trust into him as a father to look after me and to then drop that bomb that was difficult to then be like okay well I don't actually have that person in my life anymore and obviously it um it severed a really important figure in my life um so happy to say now though

that we have a great relationship like I went overseas to visit my brother to meet him for the first time um obviously before COVID it was kind of we I would go there once a year they would come here um yeah and so like that was really important to me it took it took seven or eight years for us to be able to actually get to that point understandably that is a very very large shock yeah um but I was also really lucky that my dad and I had this one significant mutual friend who was kind of the mediator between us that helped him understand how I felt and helped me understand how he felt um so that was that was a key point that I was really lucky to have is that there was somebody that was non-biased and mutual in the middle that was really looking after both of us

yeah and so that was um I think like honestly that has been the most significant um thing that had happened that allowed me to kind of have a different view because I had to come to terms of okay well um even though like my parents were together for so long and you know he made a poor decision and he had a family at the end of the day it's his life it's not him and his wife and his child's life like he has to make the right decision for himself and if that was the right decision for him at that time then I had to accept that regardless of you know unfortunately it did hurt us but like it um I had to accept that because if I wanted to make a decision that he didn't agree with I would still make that decision so yeah um it was just hard because I was so young

but being able to sort of take that time and not be forced you know my parents not staying together and trying to work it out like not be forced to kind of be in that fighting and stuff like that um that really helped me to be able to develop um i guess healthy rebonding skills so um i think that was yeah probably the biggest thing was being able to have that significant person have that long time to create that bond and you know i kind of look at it as if to say if i can forgive him and move on and you know we we don't argue like we have a fantastic relationship i kind of can implement that into other aspects of life too and decide from wow yeah aside from sort of studying mental health and psychology and stuff like I find myself when I need to have a discussion

or we're having a disagreement with you know me and my partner or like me and my mom or whatever I can sit down and actually like not retaliate like for example when I was moving um when I was in the caravan and I had to actually leave that property the person that um I was having this quite intense argument with um instead of me retaliating to the things that were said i was just like i understand how you're feeling i understand that i've made you feel that way like and i was just you know there was no point in me fighting fire with fire i knew that it was gonna end eventually and you know i wish i could have said things but it was just there was no point and so i think yeah definitely like not retaliating to things that don't need to be

retaliated because you can't argue with someone that's said in their way so yeah i hope that kind of answers to your question um I think that's really insightful and as I said before my friend you are wise beyond your years and we are so lucky to have been allowed to share your money story and your journey even if it included a secret brother that you didn't know about and you just threw that on us at the last minute of your money diary thank you for that I think that's really interesting if I'm being honest like that's such a pivotal piece yeah um being really pervy though how old was this brother when you found out about them um just just under two I think or just over two so it had been about three years um that they'd been seeing each other wow yeah um well probably longer

in seeing each other because um they he like my dad had been going overseas for about 10 years um actually it would have been about six years at that time um and so they you know they knew each other quite well um I've never really wanted to know the reasons behind it or anything like that um yeah so because I just feel like it's just unnecessary it's just not helpful yeah exactly um so yeah it was just yeah almost just over two almost three I think when we found out so it had been it had been quite quite some time and my parents were still um that means that my parents were still together when it happened they weren't separated oh wow so that obviously contributed towards your parents divorce and all of that coming out wow what a story and to have gone

through all of that thank you so much for sharing that with us that is yeah so open and so special and I'm so grateful that each and every single week we get to talk to people like you and that you're so trusting of us sharing that story on your behalf because you know those words are special in that journey is something that i think a lot of us can learn from i hope that i can take a little bit more of your mindset on and your old worldliness which i you know i really admire so as always that is all we have time for today and 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, Proprietary Limited, ABN 34132463257, AFSL 339151. See you next Money Diary, guys. Bye.