She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: Debt free side hustler

Episode Date: February 28, 2021

This week’s Money Diaries episode is one hell of an inspirational story. After struggling with debt in her 20’s, she has since made the best of a challenging situation and used an unlikely source to hustle money. This is her story.Joining you on Money Diaries this week is Victoria Devine and Ryan Jon.Do you love the podcast SICK and want more SOTM? Course ya do. Join our Facebook page to share your money wins and money confessions, follow us on Insta for daily inspo to keep you on track and DEFINITELY subscribe to our newsletter https://www.shesonthemoney.com.au/newsletter the written recap of the pod's key takeaways, including some bonus bits you won't want to miss.Finally, if you're in a money mess and need help untangling the muddle - we've got you sorted - simply record your question and send it through to us at [e-mail] and you may just end up on the podcast!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 another episode of She's on the Money's Money Diaries. The money diary for millennials who want to be a little bit more pervy. so this week we are talking to a debt-free side hustler and ryan and i have literally just finished the interview with her and i could not be more inspired by her story and i'm sure the same is going to be true for you now when she sent through an email to be on the show she actually sent what i would call a minor thesis well she called it an essay she called it an essay it was very very long so instead of getting ryan to read that out for you this week we are just going to jump

straight into an interview and get her to explain her story in her words for you. So let's jump straight in friends. I know this is a goodie. Do you want to describe your family's attitude to money and what you learned about money growing up? Money was never a topic growing up. I just knew we never had much money. I know when I was younger, I'm the oldest, so when I was younger I know we had like a lot of money issues and I just remember that from like occasionally we had to get food boxes from like the salvos or you know that sort of stuff the red cross whatever it is um and yeah my parents were like never great with money um they never talked about it but essentially I just had no money education I just knew we didn't have much money and I had no

idea about money so with that background if we fast forward a few years to the point where I believe your partner lost his job and all of a sudden you guys end up in a whole bunch of debt tell me about where you where you were oh it was extremely stressful um we were fairly new into a relationship um and it was extremely daunting um having to take on that stress of obviously my partner losing his job and then him having to sell his apartment because he couldn't cover the mortgage anymore um i was also severely in debt myself um for very stupid reasons um and how old are you at this stage uh back then i was like 21 22 um yeah yeah my partner is a couple of years older um but it was there was about three or four years there

that were like extremely stressful with money and all we did was argue about money um and it was a really hard time so yeah so we know now that you found you know the debt-free community and you've really changed around can you imagine can you remember this one moment where you thought that's it i'm gonna go pick up a book or i'm done or i needed something's got to give something's got to change what was the what was it yeah that final straw i guess i think i was in quite a positive headspace with money for a little while like in terms of wanting to do better with money but we just couldn't cut up like couldn't cut a break um and then eventually when we did get our break which was my partner finding um full-time work again um and we moved states

that was the moment where i was like okay let's get our butts into gear we've been given this sort of ticket to get ourselves out of trouble financially so I like we might as well grab it by the horns and really focus on getting out of debt and getting ourselves back into a better financial situation because for years we had struggled with you know not being able to do social things um like obviously like defaulting on our credit reports um yeah like pretty much everything that was bad happened to us with money so yeah and what was your first sort of point of call in terms of you know teaching yourself stuff you said that you'd recently found our podcast and you binged it but what else did you find either in terms of you know education or just online

communities what were the things that you found that were quite helpful so I think my first introduction to it all was I don't know I think maybe just doing some googling and then I found through Instagram a lot of like budget accounts and debt-free accounts and I was like whoa this is cool like there's a whole little society in here yeah yeah I didn't know existed and so firstly I was like using that for tips and like using people's budgeting templates and that sort of stuff and then from there it kind of grew there was a couple of people who you know as you'd know within that community there's a few like cult following you know with people that have done different books or different YouTube channels and that sort of stuff so I just sort of kept

reading and watching and what started within the Instagram community really grew into a massive passion for me um and just wanting to learn and consume as much knowledge as possible about money yeah so like not going through it but that's so cool that you've gone through this journey and you I can feel it in your voice that you're speaking so honestly about it um and one of the questions that I have that I think is really important to bring up here actually and it's not related to my usual interview money diary questions but throughout that period how was your mental health oh so bad um I'm quite open and honest about my mental health issues um I've struggled with depression and anxiety for a number of years and that was definitely amplified during those

difficult times when you're in such a negative place financially especially because it's such a taboo topic for people you know I think it really hits some people in the ego and they feel ashamed to talk about when they're struggling with money so yeah it's really a really negative place to be in and I don't think that gets spoken about enough it can really destroy people yeah absolutely and that's just kind of what was sitting in the back of my mind as you were speaking through that because it just compounds mental health yeah so like if if you're prone to it it amplifies it if you you know haven't had mental health issues before and now you're going through pretty significant financial um you know disadvantage you start to develop these you know

mental health issues and it just is not fair like and i think that we don't talk about it enough we don't talk about the relationship between money and mental health nearly enough and i think that's something that with she's on the money we're always talking about and trying to get people to see that these things are so closely related and if you can sort money out in someone's family you can have such a big impact it's not just about you know putting food on the table albeit that's so important it's about mental health the mental health of your kids the relationships you have the way you interact in those relationships every single day is impacted by your money story and it just so powerful yeah a hundred percent and that's the thing like when it comes down to like

the basics you really can't survive without money like and especially in this day and age like everything is based around money and what you can afford and if you're drowning in debt and all that sort of stuff so yeah i think it's so important having a good um money and mental health balance because they both affect each other absolutely so you eventually start paying off this debt you get back to you know almost even and tell me about and this is where it starts getting fun and i was like this sounds so cool you're pregnant with the child and you know you become parents but you decide, nah, that doesn't mean I'm not going to keep working. So you start snooping around on Airtasker.

So tell me about that. Yes. So when I, we just, we got out of debt a month after our son was born. That was like our goal of wanting to have a baby. Yeah, how good's that? How good? I'm in my late 30s and we've sort of made that decision of, no, we want to have a baby sooner than later.

So we're like, let's get pregnant and then pay off our debt. and thank god we got it done anyway yeah so airtasker when i went on maternity leave i was at home this is before like payments start and stuff like that um i was sitting at home all the time heavily pregnant and i'm like i surely there's something i can do with my time besides watching trash tv every day um so just for people that don't know can you just quickly in a sentence just describe what Airtasker is in general if people haven't heard of it so Airtasker is essentially um an online platform where you can um offer your services or request other people's services um and then you kind of like bargain with other people and then people select you or you

select people based off you know experience their offer that sort of stuff reviews so yeah Airtasker I was working um as someone offering my services and what were you offering I was offering I've got a history in like design and stuff like that I never worked professionally in design it's what I wanted to do when I graduated from school but I flunked and never did it but I started offering graphic design services and like online administration um services so like transcribing uh data entry that sort of stuff yep and and there is really no job too small for air task i've seen stuff like i've seen stuff that it's like oh i've got a word document can you like save it to a pdf and send it back like really small obscure stuff like that people like i don't

know how to do it i'll pay you four dollars i've got a hundred of them you're like okay i've done one of those jobs before it's like they just don't have the program or the knowledge to do it and they'll pay you 20 bucks to do it what shocks me most about that is they've had the technology ability to download the app and post yeah but they can't just go file save as adobe i'm gonna just not share how to though because i want to keep you in the job my friend yeah you could make a really good youtube video victoria that's just here's how to save a document to a pdf and you'd wipe out a whole industry i'm so sorry please don't do that i'm not mean so what kind of money can you earn obviously it's you know the more hours you spend the more you can

get but how much were you sort of earning keeping in mind you know you are pregnant and trying to keep some kind of calm in your life so it's important to know that air tasker do take out a fee oh what's that fee so say if someone wants to pay you to do a graphic design job for a hundred dollars and you accept that hundred dollar job you may only get paid like eighty dollars because air tasker will take a fee oh wow yeah that's an estimate an estimate it may not be that exactly but yeah at the start um I wasn't making much money because you kind of have to build up you know like a profile and examples and reviews and you know star ratings and stuff um but I think within that financial year I think I made maybe like three grand on Airtasker

that's pretty good for sitting at home watching trash tv and waiting to have a baby I reckon yeah sweet yeah that's it yeah so it's it's a good little earner um but I think the important thing is air tasker led me to doing what I currently do which is what my friend I now work as a freelance designer for a design studio in Brisbane oh my gosh how cool so hang on you used the word flunk before like in high school I wanted to do this but I flunked it now you're doing it like and you're not employed doing it you're a freelancer doing it so you've got your own hustle. What? How cool is that? So you've gone from being like, oh, I love this. I cannot tell you how excited I am about your money story. So you've gone from just having like

not great attitude towards money, not really learning about it growing up, you know, being in some pretty significant debt, having super stressful years to being like a kick-ass mom who is debt-free and runs her own show. That's it. If that's not inspiring, I don't know what he is. I love that. And then I've still, I've got a couple of other side hustles there as well. Of course she does. Yeah, run us through them. What are they? So I've got the freelance job. Then I also do a, cause my background's in cleaning. I worked in housekeeping for like 10 years up until I had my baby. And I now do a local clean for an Airbnb for a local mom. So that's anywhere from like three times a week to a couple of times a month, which is just a little

bit of extra pocket money um and then i also do reselling at markets so i do seasonal markets where i resell old clothes of mine or like really cool vintage finds that i pick up um that's another little earner um yeah so and what's your attitude with having a consistent income versus you know keeping it a bit varied and having different things on the go because does that make it mentally stressful or maybe it's mentally stimulating because you're doing lots of different things and uh going to different places where do you find the balance of those i think because i'm not solely relying on this on my income to get us by like it's important to note my partner does work in construction um and he sits on a salary i think he's in a fourth year apprentice now so

his salary is around maybe 70 or 80 000 so that's still a consistent income for us um so yeah my varied freelancing sole trader work um is more so just pocket money and extra savings and i i know the answer to this because you told me in the email but for victoria you went from being in debt and paying the debt off and then i believe any extra money you made from this kind of stuff you saved and started investing where are you at at the moment yeah so my portfolio is i think maybe just under $20,000. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yeah. How good. I want to get a little bit pervy. So you mentioned your partner's income before. What are you earning at the moment? Um, I, my estimate for this financial year is probably around 30,000. It's not huge.

Um, but a portion of that is also JobKeeper. So I was very, very lucky when COVID hit that because i was still employed with my previous employers i did get job keeper on the part-time basis yeah that is awesome yeah you're saying like that's not as good but that is epic given how much you've managed to save and invest like that is such an accomplishment like i'm just looking at this going wow like i have so many questions um between you and your partner how much money is sitting in your bank account right now uh we have 27 000 in our house deposit fund i've got 500 in my business account um we've got roughly a thousand within our like saving spendings account uh sorry our spendings accounts oh we've got our emergency fund but it's depleted

at the moment which kind of makes sense given the current economic crisis which is nice and how do you how how do you feel when making decisions around money nowadays like having been through such a stressful time especially during COVID how how did that make you guys feel it sounds funny but like whenever we get paid every week and I'm like moving all of our money around our accounts I kind of feel empowered because it's not like yeah that's not that's not funny that is the thing totally feel that I don't have to sit down in front of a spreadsheet anymore where I'm like really looking into how we're budgeting and like where the bills are getting paid and like what we might have to push back and that sort of stuff. Like now I can just sit down and go, okay, we pay

the same amount into every single account, every single week, same amount for bills comes out every single week. And like, I, it just feels really good. I love that. You must be so proud of yourself. Yeah. I kind of, I'm kind of, yeah. We'll have more questions with Armani Darius coming up next. what other money habits do you have that you're especially proud of the fact that I think our finances are so streamlined um and we don't have to think about it much anymore um I'm also pretty good I go through phases I've got to admit sometimes like some days I wake up and I'll be like all right i'm gonna target and i'm probably just gonna spend a hundred bucks at target um but we have we have yes um but i feel like i'm very good at putting time between my purchases yes um

i'm also is it jessica that's the one that thinks she can manifest anything on facebook that's jess that is i'm a hundred i'm a hundred percent on that yeah and i'm really explain this to me what You just imagine something's going to appear on Facebook Marketplace. It was on the pod, but you're not listening to her. You were on the show too. No, but I want to hear someone else say this because when I heard it, I was like, this sounds like something Jess has just made up on this spot. No, Jess didn't make it up.

It's a thing. Money, Dyrus, tell it back to me. Manifesting is 100% a thing. To give you an example, I had to set up a little home business, like home study for myself a few weeks ago. I ended up getting a free desk, a free desk chair. i got a brand new computer monitor for like 80 and it was like 350 i think so yeah you just gotta manifest put those vibes out there so we talked about earning extra bits of money from all

the different side hustles and airtasker stuff do you think also not earning more but spending less by doing this and the manifesting and finding those little bargains that's just as big as contributor as the earning has been to get where you are 100 like for us we didn't get out of debt by earning a high income we got out of debt by spending less um budgeting better and like yeah trying to hustle and find like cheaper goods and stuff like that can i just put an exclamation mark right here because we know and from victoria's there's a lot of people that earn a lot of money and are broke and there's a lot of people that don't earn that much you know but are really savvy and they're smart with it and they're by far better off than the people

with the high income so if a lot of people are in a bit of a tough spot or they think oh my industry doesn't actually pay that well well i mean sure in theory it helps to earn a lot more but it's not actually a huge factor it is genuinely what you do with it yeah absolutely it's not what you make it's what you're contributing towards debt reduction and all of the other things around it and there are so many people in our community at the moment that are in the position that you were a couple of years ago and it's so hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you are in it like when you're in the trenches and you just wake up every day and remember that that's the situation and it just feels all overwhelming so to past you and to our community members who

are currently in this situation what would you say to them just like stick to your guns I feel like if you're on a lower income like I've worked in housekeeping for 10 years that's not a high income um it might take longer but you just have to persevere because I constantly got stuck in that trap of I'm not getting anywhere with paying this debt off and then I create more debt um because I'd give in on myself um so yeah I think it's just yeah you really got to persevere yeah absolutely it just takes a little bit of a longer time but you'll get there and once you get there it's like you you won't even know yourself once you get there what is the one thing that you wish you'd found earlier in this journey that could have helped you is it a budgeting tool is it just

believing in yourself is it you know air tasker like what's the one thing you wish you know when you were really in the trenches of it you wish you had it goes back even further than that I wish that like I got taught about money and handling money when I was in school like that's what it comes down to I think um or even when I freshly got out of school like I just wish that somebody grabbed me and was like stop getting credit cards stop getting personal loans but I think it's just I don't think it's any particular thing I just think it's overall money literacy and education because I feel like if you have that education and understanding you're less likely to get yourself in like precarious situations with money I couldn't agree more I absolutely couldn't agree

more and hopefully with where she's on the money is going we will find our way and weasel our way into the education system somehow I'm putting it out to the universe my friend yeah I'm gonna manifest it yes so what are you currently saving for what are your big money goals you mentioned before you had a home deposit account what are we what are we looking forward to in the future yeah so uh semi short-term goal I guess with the house um we want to get a 20 deposit for that um and we're hoping to get that within the next two years or so for me personally my biggest goal and this has been since the start is creating a passive income through my investments so I want to eventually one day be living off um my dividends and stuff like that so that's like for me that's

more important than a house so yeah absolutely sounds like you are well sounds familiar I don't know who else would have that goal so so how would you rate yourself if I forced you to give yourself a financial rating I feel like from where I've come to where we are now I would say an A I honestly think the only thing holding me back from an A plus is the fact that I am a little bit of a gambler and sometimes I do take riskier options with investing and stuff like that. Do you mean gambling in terms of risky investments or do you mean on the dogs? A bit of both. Fair. It's probably the same with shopping and that sort of stuff. I feel like sometimes I can be a little bit irresponsible

with money and that's just an old habit I think but yeah I feel like an A because I'm constantly wanting to learn more and constantly wanting to set myself and my family up for a better future so and I'm just so passionate about money so yeah that is such a nice way to wrap it and I would absolutely agree with the A for yourself well thank you so so much for having a chat with us today I'm honestly so grateful to get this story out there and I know that there are going to be so many people listening who are going to be so inspired by your story and yeah you're killing it and I am so glad that you are here oh thank you so much that really means a lot Ryan that was literally one of the most inspiring money diaries I think we've done today what a legend I actually

am so proud of her even though I didn't do it yeah you're impressed by her yeah I was very impressed by her but unfortunately that is all we have time for today but before we head off we'd like to acknowledge and pay respects to Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples the traditional custodians of the lands the waterways and the skies all across Australia we thank you for sharing and for caring on the land which we are able to learn we pay our respects to elders past and present and we share our friendship and our kindness now friends the advice shared on she's on the money is always general in nature and it doesn't ever actually consider your personal circumstances I am really sorry about that she's on the money exists purely

for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or a financial decision. Now, I am still actually an Authorised Representative of Australia Pacific Funds Management, Proprietary Limited, ABN 34132463257, AFSL 339151. And as always, thank you so much to our producer angels, Bec and Ryan, for pulling this all together. If you yourself think you've got a great money diary

or money story to share, feel free to send me an email, ryan.john at she's on the money.com.au and i know a lot of people love to share their great news which is excellent but don't feel like you have to have finished your story you might be in the middle of the train wreck right now i would love that i would love to hear it like i don't love that you're there but i want to be a part of that journey and maybe we've got some tips or tricks or you could inspire someone who's going through that to know that they're not alone yeah and a lot of people message and say oh it'd be great to hear some different pieces and as you can understand And you don't really want to shout from the rooftops if you're in a bad spot.

But if you sort of flick the mindset and go, hey, maybe these guys can help and get some advice. Maybe people are in a similar situation. Feel free to reach out and we'd love to have a chat. So ryan.john at shizonthemoney.com.au Also, if you haven't already, check out the Facebook group. There's now 140,000 people there. Or jump on our Instagram as well.

There's heaps of great tips and stuff there as well. Have a great week, everyone. We'll chat to you on Wednesday. See you on Wednesday. Bye. We'll be right back.