She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: Change your life in only three chapters!

Episode Date: August 29, 2021

Happy Monday Angel Pies! Today our money diarist tells us how she experienced a lot of credit debt in her early 20's, and how she's come out of it to create her own dreams and smash her goals - all after reading three chapters of one book!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 Shop Back Money Diary is Victoria Devine, financial advisor to the stars. Oh my gosh, what a coinkydink. Hey, my clients are all stars. Oh, beautiful. Yeah, you're welcome. Let's do a money diary, Toni. Yeah, okay, great call. Instead of me rattling off your list of qualifications, which can take any amount

of time. And also my clients, which would be a gross misuse of IP. But let's jump straight in. tony can you read this week's money diarist email out all right hi she's on the money team i grew up with no financial literacy credit cards and loans were encouraged to get what i want i made poor financial decisions throughout my early 20s racked up constant debt credit cards loans overpayment from centrelink even my parents told me to consider an interest-free loan and was terrible at paying things off to avoid interest my priorities were partying new clothes and travel despite spending more money than I made. Cue meeting my partner, reading a basic finance book, and then finding this pod. Yay! I now have zero consumer debt. We are in the

process of finalizing our first home build with a 20% deposit. Ooh. I do not own a credit card and now dabbling into investing. Yay! I still make bad money choices often and I am very impulsive with spending sometimes. I'm especially proud of the fact that I'm now teaching my husband about the basics of investing and how we can set up our financial future thank you she's on the money team you have really made such a difference in my life oh my gosh i love this money diary very sweet what a wholesome story i love that and i think it's so relatable as well because so many people would have gone through this and in the last few years kind of like picked up books or podcasts or started to become financially literate and i love it how we've got our money diarist on

the line, of course, to share her side of the story, even though we've kind of just heard it, but the long version. Yeah, the long version. And we get to ask her all the pervy questions, Tony. So let's jump straight into it. Money Diarist, I am so excited that you are here. But first question is, what is your attitude towards money? I would say my attitude towards money is constantly evolving. Up until three years ago, it was terrible I didn't have a clue and I didn't really care about money um but now I would say it is good ish I am much more aware of what's important around money but a lot more I need to implement to say that I'm satisfied with how I am with money does that make sense yes it totally

makes sense now what do you do for work and how much money do you earn so I am a pediatric ICU nurse but I work within another special niche within that my base pay is 86,000 per annum but last financial year I made 102,000 with um penalties and overtime wow get it um and then I also had a bit of a creative side hustle on top of that um and I earned about 12,000 with that last year oh my gosh come on give us the goss what is this creative side hustle so I got into photography um which I absolutely adore but doesn't really um merge well with my current job um so a family newborn photography oh how sweet which is a nice balance to what I do day to day and just like scratch that creative itch as well yeah yeah exactly yeah I love it and what's the

niche in your nursing career? Um, so I transport sick children around the state. So our job is to go, um, go wherever in the state is required to collect sick children, stabilize them and take them to the children's hospital. Oh, that's so special. Yeah. It's awesome. I love it. It's stressful, but so fun as well. Oh my gosh. How fun. All right. I have so many questions, but this isn't like open question time so next question is what is currently your big money goal um my big money goal what's shared goal with my husband I suppose um we are building a house so we've put deposit on a land outside of the city um so our current goal is is that which we have our full deposit for but just kind of saving little bits to check you out nicer um but uh

investing beyond that we um we want to invest and set up our financial future and make our money work for us that's my next big thing yeah I love that so much so do you currently have any debts I have about four thousand dollars owing on my hex which will be gone once I process my current tax return um but other than that no no debts at all how exciting only four thousand dollars left on your hex i imagine it would have been a lot more than that being a nurse yeah it was after all of my postgraduate studies it kind of bumped up quite a bit but um yeah it's nearly all gone so that's really exciting congratulations that's awesome so good thank you how exciting next question do you currently have any investments yes not much so i currently invest five dollars

a day into raise which thank you ryan john i started coffee the coffee yeah so i was spending a lot of money on coffee before um so now i put five dollars a day still treat myself every couple of days but not every day but it adds up quickly hey it does so i started at the start of june and i have about six hundred dollars in there now which is crazy six hundred dollars since june yeah so i i think i put 100 or 150 in initially and then i just get started yeah just to make it just to make it feel comfy yeah no we've all been there i've done that before as well i'm like oh like i'm opening this like micro investing platform but i also don't want to start with just five dollars like i just bump it up a little bit it's cheeky but it makes you feel more

motivated it does and looking at that number definitely helps me um and then i have got a another account which has no investments but I plan to do it very soon oh exciting yeah how did you decide to make that decision like how did you decide what platform or how you were going to set yourself up I I've been doing a lot of research um I still don't know if I'm making all the right choices with it um but I've just I've done a lot of reading and understanding what brokerage and what like investing means as a whole and that's helped reading has definitely helped me but I still don't feel 100% that I'm making the right choices all of the time but I'm getting there oh my gosh we've all been there but speaking of right choices next question is do you use

shop back when shopping online I do now so I've only just opened my account I actually used the code but forgot to spend the money before it expired oh no um but i think i've earned about 20 in shop back um but i am becoming more conscious of of looking at things through there now all right next question is what is your best money habit i think my best money habit has been talking to my husband about money um and implementing my various bank accounts to divvy up what I need to pay for and what I need to save but I think the biggest thing has actually been sharing my savings account with my husband because it's making me accountable which I wasn't very good at doing that myself so having merged that I don't just go in there all the time

and take little bits out because I'm really conscious of it so that's probably my best habit because I haven't got good self-control so I think sharing has helped accountability partners are really important because if you're one of those people that sneaks money out of savings accounts, if you know somebody else can see it, you are much less likely to dip in and dip out. And you're more likely to think about the decision before you make it, which some of us don't need. But if you do, and I do, I think it's really helpful. And that doesn't just have to be your partner. It could be like telling Tony, like, Hey, Tony, I've got X amount in my savings account. Can you check in on me? Because I think I'm going to dip into it. And Tony can be like,

Victoria, what have you done? And I used to do that with my old housemate because I used to be really cheeky with my savings. I mean, I was still cheeky, but like not as bad, you know, it was just a helpful talk to you. All right. Speaking of good money habits, there's always the opposite of good money habits and that is your worst money habit. So what is your worst money habit uh impulsive impulsivity I am very impulsive with my money I can spend money at the drop of a hat particularly on night shift um yeah absolutely that because I still even though I have done so well to save what I have I still spend recklessly nowhere near as much but I still spend a lot but it seems like um from from the brief amount we know about you from your money diary

entry um it seems like you've come such a long way in terms of your attitude to money given like growing up you were like it was encouraged to put things on a credit card and if that's all your parents know that's all then you know because you don't have anyone else teaching you anything different so i think that even though you might spend a little bit recklessly which you think you can kind of rein in a little bit it seems like you've come so far from the position you could be in imagine if you hadn't done anything about how reckless you've been in the past you wouldn't have saved such a huge deposit for a house like you and your husband wouldn't have such a healthy relationship around money together and all of those things so even though it feels

like you always need to do better you're doing pretty bloody well I think you're doing so well and when we get to the part where I can ask you lots of questions I want to ask all about that but lucky last question of the set of questions we always ask is what grade would you give yourself if we forced you to give yourself a money grade I would give myself a b-minus I it's harsh grade but there's just I feel there's so much room for growth there's so much more I can implement that's going to help us later um so I'm pretty confident in a b-minus oh I love that I think that's really important to be able to see where you're at and see where you're going. Would you have said that you're a B minus three years ago? No, I was a D. I was atrocious. I was not good

with money. But we've grown. I love that you know that you've grown as well. And I think that so many times people just don't have the ability to reflect on what they have gone through and where they are now. And I think that's really special, especially to have a laugh about it. Be like, oh i was a d but now i'm a b minus and yeah that's really special thank you yeah i'm proud of it i love it oh that's great all right i want to ask you all about how you got from a d to a b but i'll do that in a minute all right money diarist i have loved listening to your questions but i want to start with how you've done it and how you got to this point you said a few years ago you weren't so good at money and then you picked up a book and obviously have fallen into the

she's on the money community which I'm really grateful for but what book did you pick up how did you begin this journey and what made you want to pick that book up because money is something that not many of us actually like talking about so taking the first step is really overwhelming but like how'd you get to that point so I distinctly remember it was about four months into my new relationship with my now husband and was sitting out on his balcony having a drink and I don't know how we got onto the topic of money but he somehow mentioned that he had a healthy savings and I was like oh yeah that's attractive I like that yeah and so he never said like a figure but indicated that it was you know around almost six figures healthy nice

Nice. That was him trying to lock you down. So I wasn't very honest in that conversation. I was just overwhelmed and said, oh yeah, I have savings too. And I think I had about a thousand dollars, which was going towards my next holiday. That's still savings. So it was around the time Barefoot Investor came out and there was a lot of discussion happening around that which I wasn't really interested in until I'd had that conversation with my husband um so I read that well I didn't read the whole thing I still haven't but I read the first couple of chapters about creating um various bank accounts and you know

looking into your super and is it working for you um and not having a credit card so as soon as I had read those two two or three chapters I cut up my credit card um and I made a promise to myself that I was going to pay that off first and then start dividing my money accordingly so that's what I did and I managed to get into a really good place with that I love that three chapters of the barefoot investor my book can't do it that quickly guys sorry it might have been more I can't recall I just remember I read enough to know those things and then I didn't go beyond you're like I don't need to know the rest thanks though yeah probably should have maybe I would understand more of investing but I didn't feel ready to learn about investing so I didn't I didn't go into that

yeah did you find it a bit confronting given your whole life you know the things that your parents had taught you were almost the opposite of what you were reading you're like hang on something's amiss here this isn't what I know it actually made me feel quite angry um I just I felt like I'd been cheated that whole important we're not cheated but you know there's there's so much importance around money and what it does for you for your whole life and I just felt like I didn't I didn't learn any of that at home and I certainly didn't learn any of that at school which they should um I just yeah I just felt really mad that I just wasn't aware of interest rates I remember having a credit card and I'm pretty sure the interest was about 15 percent or something and

I never paid that off on time and I never knew I never thought about the implications of that which is just it just made me so furious that it had taken me that long to get to a point where I understood yeah and it's not uncommon unfortunately the amount of people that I speak to I'm like okay cool so you've got a credit card what's the interest rate of that oh I don't know I've got no idea and I'm like what do you mean and they're like oh like I just got the one that my girlfriend had or I just got the one that my bank had like you know it's a credit card you're like there's a difference like there's a massive difference between paying 15% like you had and some credit cards go all the way up to 24 percent like what and you don't know a lot yeah and it baffles me

but it also makes a lot of sense because if you've never learned why would you know like a credit cards at all like as you get older we open bank accounts you get a credit card right like those two things go hand in hand how old were you when you got your first credit card 19 so I'd moved away from home quite a few hours away from home um and I wasn't earning a great deal and so I got a credit card because that meant I could still do what I wanted to do or so I thought well I did but then I had the debt and how did you like was it a really easy process to apply and do you remember what the limit on that credit card was it was only 1800 or 2000 I never went with a high limit um but no it was very easy i got it instantly yeah which is scary it's a slippery slope as well

because you look at it and so many times i meet people and i speak to people who are in debt or who do have a credit card and they're like yeah but it's such a low limit like it's only two grand it'd be really easy to pay that back off but money diarist i'm assuming when you first moved out of home in a way two thousand dollars out of a monthly paycheck would have been a very significant chunk right like we're not talking oh okay no problems I'll just pay that off and I still have 99% of my salary left right yeah I was only earning about $500 a week um work like bartending around you so that was your entire monthly salary that you were borrowing which I think is important to put in context as well because too many times do we say oh it's not that high of a limit you're

like yeah but that's your entire monthly salary like that would require significant sacrifice to pay off all in one month. Right. And I would argue that that was impossible for you or is that? Yeah. And I never did it. And I also never made it a priority because I didn't think about it. Yeah. So, so growing up, what, I just have so many questions. I'm sorry. So growing up, is this something that you saw your parents doing? Is this something that was encouraged? Like, do you think that this has been ingrained or was it just a lack of knowing and a lack of education or is this something that you just grew up with and knew that debt was easy or yeah what did that look like for you I think it's a combination of the both um I grew up we didn't talk about money

really um but I know mum put everything on her credit card you know we went shopping for clothes went grocery shopping she talked about buying things it was like yeah I'll just put it on the credit card I'll just put on the credit card and never really talked about the ramifications of that yeah um so I never thought any differently so when I got a credit card I was like yeah I'll just put on the credit card I want a new dress and just put it on the credit card and and yeah so I I kind of learned those habits and then developed those habits some more as I as I was away from home yeah and I think that that's one of those things where we just don't realize how ingrained it is to just go yeah well that's normal whereas we might speak to people whose parents had

just never had a credit card and they might not have even discussed it but they're still scared of them they're like oh yeah but they're kind of like the unknown so you got comfortable with them just purely by exposure not even someone saying that this is good or this is bad you've just seen them around so therefore you are comfortable with them my next question goes back you said at the time he was i'm assuming your boyfriend maybe not your boyfriend yet because it would only be in four months but you were probably telling your girlfriends that he was your boyfriend. You started having money conversations about savings and you mentioned in the first part of our chat that that kind of made you uncomfortable and maybe you weren't super

truthful in that conversation. How did you start having positive money conversations with your partner? Because you've gone from saying, okay, cool. Like I've got this really great relationship. I'm open about my savings with my partner, but at the beginning I wasn't. How do we all learn from you and take those steps from maybe not being super truthful about how much savings we have all the way through to having that partner be really helpful on our journey I think obviously talking about it in the first instance was the catalyst for me but I think moving in together having some shared expenses and then as a couple having bigger and bigger goals and I think that started changing how I viewed money in our relationship I'm also quite fiercely independent

and I wanted to get a house and we wanted to build a house or buy a house and I wanted to contribute a good chunk and be like yes I did that like I made it I made a difference in this um and so I guess that stubborn side of me also helped that along um but I think it was it was moving in together it was having shared accounts it was having the shared goals um and then wanting to be an equal in that yeah and also kind of having nowhere to hide in that instance kind of being like okay we're really committing to each other now we're moving in together this is a safe space when some people don't ever experience that you know safe space with their partner to be honest about it which is when you know debt kind of snowballs out of control which you know we've

seen on money diaries before. And I think it's just really great that instead of feeling confronted by what your now husband was saying, you were kind of like, okay, this is like the kick in the bottom that I needed to make sure that I am really taking control of, of my money. And even though I don't have any prior knowledge, I'm going to, I'm going to read the first three chapters of this book. And I think it's a really good example that you actually don't need to dive in boots and all you don't need to read every single finance book out there in fact it only takes the first three chapters of the barefoot investor guys like you don't even need to do that much but it's all about being open to learning and wanting to change and I guess that's what I'm getting out of this like

you've come from a money story that you weren't super proud of and you wanted to change and you changed it but I'm sure that maybe like two years before changing your money story you didn't know you wanted to change it it was just really normal and I think that we all get at some point slapped with a catalyst that goes oh i want to change and i don't know where to start and hopefully the she's on the money community can be a safe place to land and learn about those things and know that we're not all on the same page yet but we're all in the same book so we'll get there at some point and i'm really really proud that you've changed it and you seem so positive about it and i love it but it's so relatable and i think that's why i was so excited to hear your money diary like when

Tony read out the letter I was like yes like it's time we had one that 99% of our community can go yeah that's me because it was me as well like I remember being in uni and finishing uni and getting my first grad job and I remember thinking I was earning so much money like I was making according to Victoria Devine at 22 bank but in reality I was earning minimum wage um and I was in a grad role but I went and got a credit card and exactly the same as you my first credit cards limit was $2,000 and it just snowballed from there. And then I ended up wanting to do some further study and study overseas. And I needed to take personal loan out because I definitely didn't have savings to be able to afford that. And then came the personal loan. And from there,

it kind of just went from strength to strength. And, you know, in the same way that I harp on about investing being a good thing because of compounding interest, if you look at a compound interest graph and how attractive that is. And I've shared a lot of them, so it's not hard to find one. Take that, flip it upside down. That's how debt works. It compounds. Any interest rate compounds in exactly the same way that investments do, but we don't pay attention and we just don't see it that way. And we don't see how scary that can be. And the longer you leave it, the harder it is to pay off. And I don't think that people understand that. And I definitely didn't, which is why I ended up in such a pickle but now I'm grateful that I'm in the position I'm in and I'm

obviously not in that money story or mind frame anymore and I do have I would say a really good money story I mean if you ask Tony maybe I am really good at online shopping and also in the office but I'm working on it and I'm working on it with the community and I'm so so so grateful that you're a part of it because you're one of those people that is the positive cheerleader for everybody else in our community just growing and doing their own thing and finding their own way because we all have a money story and I think that's yeah that's so special it really is and I just hope that this gives somebody that little bit of inspiration to start because it was so it was so simple for me I implemented small changes and

all of a sudden look at that glow up you know three yeah yeah it just blows my mind because it felt so slow going. I love it. But it does feel really slow going. And the same as you guys fell into that credit card hole at like 21, cause I moved out of home and I was living with my boyfriend and I felt invincible. And you know, it was not very long ago that I realized, you know, a thousand dollars, isn't a lot of money to have, but it's a lot of money to owe. And yeah, I mean, But it's one of those things you think, oh, $1,000 is not that much, but it turns into a lot. I'm going to put that quote on a little inspo board

and chuck it on the gram, Tony. See how many likes it gets. Please tag me. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll give you full credit. We can put it on our money, Dara's fridge. We can make stickers with it. We can make, like, phone backgrounds.

It's inspirational. I finally made it, guys. I have an inspirational quote. I love that. I haven't even read the first three chapters of The Barefoot Investor and look at me going. Oh, look at her grow. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Funding Diarist. I feel like this story has been a

really positive, happy one that we can all learn from, but also all relate to because I've been there. You've obviously been there. Tony, she's got her quote about the thousand dollars. And I just feel like it's one of those ones where you go, just start. Like starting doesn't have to be overwhelming. It doesn't have to be doing a course in personal finance. It could be just picking up the book and reading the first chapter and seeing how you feel about it and yeah i hope that more people do that i'm sure more people will do that because you shared this with us so thank you so much no thank you it's been a pleasure thank you so much again but as always 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 any financial decision and we promise that victoria Devine is an authorized representative of Australia Pacific Funds Management, Proprietary Limited, ABN 34132463257, AFSL 339151. See you next week, guys. Bye.