She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: Following Your Heart

Episode Date: June 6, 2021

This week's Money Diarist shares her story of following her gut, falling in love, and listening to what the world tells you. We loved getting an insight into a profession that we haven't really explored through our Money Diaries series before, so we hope you absolutely love it! xoxoOur very own money wizard and fearless leader Victoria Devine has written a book! Click here to order!Love the pod but looking for a more hands-on approach to your money? Look no further. Our budgeting & cash flow masterclass is the tool you need to help overhaul your finances for good. Join Victoria as she steps you through your budgeting and cash flow with all of the smarts and none of the intimidating jargon. 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 She's on the money, the podcast for millennials who want financial freedom. Welcome to your Monday morning. I hope you've had a great weekend. I've got Miss Victoria Devine right here with me as always. Hello.

you are so lucky tony lodge i am really lucky i just love waking up on a monday morning seeing your beautiful face oh you are too kind do you want to just share with everybody what you're wearing right now because we're recording remotely i'm wearing my dressing gown it's very cute and what have i got i've got like a big fluffy blanket yeah both of us are looking a little bit tragic but it's the perfect perfect perfect way to sit and listen to this money diary that we've got today I love a love story and this is just that. Is it actually? I'm so excited. Can you please send me the email and let's get into it? All right. When I was 24, I quit my office job and went to France to volunteer in a monastery in France for a year. While I was there, I met a

boy who was also volunteering and was not a monk and we fell in love. When he left the monastery, I had three months left on my visa. I left the monastery too and went to live with him and his family in the netherlands for three months so i could work out if this relationship was worth negotiating such a geographically complicated situation for very quickly we knew the relationship was the real deal and we both realized that parting was not an option so i phoned my mom which is what everyone needs to do in this situation yeah yeah good everyone would do that absolutely she was so scared i would stay in europe and never come home that she who had no savings or any money behind her, went and got a $10,000 personal loan and transferred it all to

me so that we could have the money we needed to purchase for him a working holiday visa, a return flight for Australia, the travel insurance for the year, as well as having $5,000 in his bank account required for him to enter the country on the working holiday visa. Oh my God. When we made it to Australia. When you say mum's really got my back, like you mean mum's really got my back this is what mums are for we made it to australia and we needed to repay my mum and start working on our application for the partnership visa and the cost had gone from three thousand dollars to five thousand dollars just to apply with no guarantee we got a personal loan for the partnership visa as well as consolidating

that leftover credit card debt while we waited for the partnership visa he couldn't do much in the way of work, so we live just off my income. He volunteered and in return had his studies paid for, but we now have both moved and are working part-time. That's so exciting! But he still isn't a citizen yet, so he can't access fee help, so we're paying up front for him to study. Luckily, the citizenship application is only $285, but it's still a big job paperwork-wise. Pretty sure I have the most expensive husband ever. Good thing he's a hundred percent worth it. That's so sweet. Who can say, oh yeah, I met my partner at a monastery. Like I met mine on Tinder. I'm like, what? Well, we need to ask these questions and luckily we've got our money diarist on the line with us. Hi.

Hello. Thank you for being here and sharing your story. What a romance whirlwind. It was rather. that is so sweet oh my gosh from a monastery did you expect to meet someone in a monastery really not no it's not where I go to pick up no I just didn't think you were like oh I'm single I'm gonna go out to the monastery this weekend um and obviously we've got our our questions we always ask our money diarist but I really need to know so you're married now you're together yes yes we've been married for six years six years oh my gosh all right well we've got so many questions because at the end of the day I love love and I also love talking about money so let's talk about money then let's talk about him because that's really fun my favorite things yeah let's

jump straight into the structured questions though first things first what is your attitude towards money well I grew up with my mom just the two of us and she was on center link the whole time so I've definitely learned the value of budgeting um I often actually feel guilty when I make money because I feel like the person I'm making money from could be my mum they might really actually need that money so I've had to deal with those like guilt feelings about having money which I do now that I've grown up and I have a job and I've actually learned to really enjoy what money can give me especially insofar as feeling free to help other people especially my mom give back to her a bit after all she's done for me that's so sweet and I feel like so

many people in this situation really feel guilt about then going out and earning your own money when in reality you should absolutely not feel guilty because one you're breaking a bit of a cycle because you're not reliant on that but by earning money you're paying tax which then goes towards making sure other people are actually supported when they need it. And I think that it's, you know, what goes around comes around and there's absolutely no shame in being on Centrelink or relying on it. But there is this really big guilt piece for people who have family members or friends who maybe aren't able to generate an income in the same way that you do. And it's just, it's not fair. Like making money is not something that we should be ashamed of in

any way shape or form all right you said you make money next question is what do you do for work and how much do you earn okay well I said that I met my husband at a monastery so the next piece is I'm a deacon in the Anglican church and probably at the end of this year or early next year I will become a priest in the Anglican church oh my gosh that is so cool wow how did you get into that Um, I think it started at the monastery, just feeling how life-giving it was to be in that world and how significant that sort of community life and dealing with like the really real things in life, how significant that was to me compared to what my office job had been like, which had felt really pointless, just relentless getting up every day to go to work, to come home, to sleep,

to go to work and just thinking what am I doing this for whereas spending time in the monastery with people and with the real things of life made me think I want to do this for the rest of my life and so in the church I can do that I'm actually dealing with what actually is important to people and what is touching them emotionally with life and birth and death and everything the big questions so special do you know what really gets me about that is that such a special job and yet you still feel guilty for earning money from having such a big impact like what like you give so much you should absolutely not feel any level of guilt churches aren't known for having loads of money at least not where I'm working at all right so TLDR to get really rich become a priest is that

where we're going with this no damn damn I thought I had a career change in me but turns out I don't all right next question I haven't told you how much I earn yet and I'm happy to share that yeah no I want to know so I'll make it I'll make it a really full picture oh my gosh I'm the terrible person I'm just so pervy um well I'm only working part-time because there's actually not a lot of churches that can support full-time people out in the country where I live so I'm earning about 28,000 a year and my husband is doing the exact same thing as me so he had the same kind of revelations in the monastery so he's also currently a deacon also planning to be priested next year also working part-time also on the same income um yes so our household income is 56 000 a year but

we also in our work get accommodation provided and our electricity paid so that helps a lot wow yeah that would help a lot but how special to have somebody who's on literally the same page with you emotionally spiritually like career-wise like whoa I feel I have hit the jackpot you literally found your soulmate how cool is that all right what is currently your big money goal my big money goal is actually just to make sure that we are financially secure for the future so I don't have the goal of buying a house because we have accommodation provided for how long we're working, but I do want to have enough behind us to buy a house when we retire. So at the moment, I'm just focusing on investing as much as I can. Wow. I've got so many questions because that's

the next question. Do you currently have investments? If so, what are they? I have some. I opened an investment account with NAB Trade in the height of COVID, so March 2020, which was a really good idea I was about to say oh good idea I only managed to buy two stocks one actual stock and one ETF and then I didn't have a lot of money because we were changing jobs and moving so we needed all the money for the moving but since settling in here and starting to have a proper income coming in again I decided I wanted to get into investing more seriously so I looked up investing podcasts and she's on the money came up and that is how i found you guys so i've been binge listening to she's on the money since probably november last year just it's been

driving my husband crazy because you're just playing in our house all the time i have i have caught up and so thanks to all the education i've been getting from she's on the money i have really resorted out my budget and prioritized and we are now investing $600 a fortnight which is 30% of our income yes that is epic especially you said $56,000 a year combined income and you're investing $1,200 a month who are you this is epic we are motivated oh I love it that is so special and actually takes a lot of motivation and you know self-restriction and you know that's actually really, really impressive. I love that. Let's talk about this in more depth in a moment. Next question. Do you currently have any debts? I have good debt and I have bad debt. I have $50,000

of HECS debt and I have one more subject at uni and then I won't be making any more HECS debt. I actually almost had to pay off the HECS debt because until the end of last year, I was working full-time, similar income, but with them just lowering the threshold, I would have had to start paying it back, but I have also just moved to part-time. So our financial situation hasn't really changed between us, but now I no longer have to pay that back at this time. So that's just going to sit there for now. And I have a little bit of bad debt. About three years ago, we took out a $12,000 unsecured personal loan to buy a car because our car was really letting us down far too often um I didn't understand much about percentage interest rates and things um

so I think it is about 15.69 percent interest and I have been paying off twice as much as I have to so at the moment I have 345 dollars left and I've been paying 200 off a fortnight so within this month. It'll be gone. I'm so happy. Oh my gosh, that is so exciting. So I think I've paid about $10,000 in interest. My $12,000 car has cost me $22,000. Yeah, and that's actually really important to point out because sometimes when we feel desperate, we're like, oh my gosh, the car isn't working. We really need to just go get some finance and get it sorted. We're really not thinking about the interest rate in the back of our heads in the way that we should be. We're just trying to get the car so we can keep on keeping on with life. And then we realized that 15% is

actually ridiculous and quite crippling when it comes to creating financial freedom. And nowadays, 15% is just completely unreasonable for a car loan. Like you probably could have saved up for it. And I know that you have a low income, but it probably would have been a better outcome financially to get Ubers everywhere and save up for it and then pay for it, which sounds wild. but when it comes down to doing the maths on it you wouldn't have thought that that would be a good option because you'd be like oh yeah but uber can be really expensive and it's like yeah but you paid ten thousand dollars in additional interest which didn't just impact you financially i'm assuming that would have weighed on you mentally and spiritually and physically and

just made you feel not great so for me it's about what is actually the best option here and how do we get to the desired outcome without putting future us in the worst position. Yeah, it wasn't even, I didn't even understand it enough for it to weigh on me to begin with. It was only when I started working out when it should be paid off by and getting excited about that. And then the time coming closer and closer and I was nowhere near it being paid off. And I was thinking, what's, what's happening here that I started to get really frustrated with it. Yeah. And that's not fair. And you get caught up in the excitement of buying a new car as well. so you think oh we're gonna buy this new car or second-hand car but it's new to you so it's really

exciting so you're willing to be like oh I don't care how much extra it's going to cost it's not going to end up being that much more but I really want this car and then all of a sudden yeah five years down the line when your loan should be paid off you're like hang on why did that cost me so much more money than it should have yeah it's frustrating all right diving straight into the next question. What is your best money habit? My best money habit at the moment, I would say, is the investing every fortnight, which I think is an on-flow kind of effect from budgeting, which I think I'm pretty good at. I would assume so, given you have mastered paying down this bad debt that you had, as well as investing $600 a fortnight. That is wild. And I think that that

is so cool in contrast what is your worst money habit my worst money habit I think probably buying gifts for other people I don't bother to budget for that I don't bother to say I only think I should spend this much on that person I just if I see something I want to get for them I just want to get it and it drives my husband a little bit crazy um it's probably the thing about our bank account and me that annoys him most so I've been trying really to pull my head in a little bit but it is challenging it's so nice to give though it's just so exciting to feel that you can make someone else smile yeah especially if you are in a position where you see something and you're like that is so perfect that would make their day or they would absolutely adore this I'm I'm a bit

the same but I have learned to put it in my budget so maybe you need to do a little bit of shuffling yes well I'm hoping that when I finish paying off this car loan that money that has been paying off the car can be a wiggle room where I can use it for that yes if I don't then maybe I can just tuck it into say into investing at the last minute yeah absolutely a little bit more flexibility never goes astray and last thing before we go to a little break is what grade would you give yourself if I forced you to give yourself a grade as of right now I actually think I would dare to give myself an A. I wouldn't have before I started the investing though I still felt like I didn't know how to make sure I didn't get myself in the same in the same position that my mum has been in

where you have to depend on Centrelink payments to get by if you can't find work but now that I'm investing every fortnight I feel a lot more secure and a lot more like I've got everything in hand for the future so now I'm very happy to say yeah I feel like it's an A. Oh my gosh that is so cool it is not very common for people on our money diaries to feel confident enough to give themselves an A and I want to ask you so many questions about this right after this quick break. all right i want to dive straight in this is obviously an area that i don't know nearly enough about in all honesty i don't know what it means to start becoming a priest you said you were still studying what are you studying how does that work how does one fall into wanting to

chase a monastery and become a priest and like how did you get there what's your journey okay my journey after i studied a bachelor of arts in french and english at uni i got a job full-time as a crossword compiler which was an amazing job i loved it um but after six months hang on a crossword compiler like you make the crosswords yes like for the paper and stuff that's a job that is so cool what I know which I really how much does a crossword compiler make well it's you kind of you go in and it's that typical situation where you negotiate what you want to be paid and I was fresh out of uni so I wasn't particularly good at it but um I got 38 000 for a starting level newbie and I know that that would have gone up um but that seemed like loads to me

I was happy with that yeah that's a lot when you're first out of yeah that's great a lot better than six thousand a year which as a student I'd been living on so that job was great and I'm really grateful that it was such a good job because it meant that after six months when I was really hating it that I knew that it wasn't just the wrong job it was the whole office situation was not the job for me so that's why I saved up money so after six months I knew that I didn't want to stay in the job and I spent the following two years still working there and saving all the money I could so that then I could quit and run off to this monastery where I knew there would be people and it would not be an office job it would be a very different place so I was there

as a volunteer so this monastery has a lot of people come for retreats and so I was helping with the cooking and cleaning the rooms and all those sorts of things um yeah so that's how I ended up at the monastery. Did you grow up in quite a religious family? Is that kind of what led you to, to going to a monastery or was it just the first thing that came up online? Like, well, okay. There's a lot of elements to this. Um, my dad is a priest, so yes, but I don't, runs in the family. It does, but I don't really feel like that's why I went to the monastery. Um, I, so I did go to church and I had the priest who was working at the church when he found out I was actually going during uni on a six months exchange to France he said you need to go to this monastery

on a retreat it's amazing and so I said why not so I'd been there already once during uni and it had been an amazing experience so when I was working at this office job feeling like what's the meaning of life why am I bothering to get out of bed in the morning it's so much effort that I thought I'll go back to the last place where I found meaning so I decided to go back and spend a long time there it's interesting knowing I guess where it comes from and you're right it probably isn't because your dad did it it's just more how do you get exposure to things that allow you to experiment there right like I wouldn't have even considered that as an option for me not because of religion or you know the opportunities but I don't know any priests I've

never grown up in that situation where I even knew that monasteries existed to go and have a retreat right? So, it's kind of like, well, where did that pop up for you? How did that happen? And it's, you know, there's always a way in life, right? We always end up where we need to be. And for me, it's just so interesting understanding other people's journeys, not just financially, but what is your story? How did that happen? So, in the monastery, you realized that you wanted to go ahead and, you know, follow that as your actual career path. What were the next steps involved in that? Like, how do you financially support yourself through a role that really relies on volunteer work and living on low incomes and maybe not being able to

support yourself financially in the way that many of us who do work nine to five Monday to Friday can? Well, when I got back to Australia, I lived with my mum for three months and planned what I would do next. So I actually ended up moving down to Tasmania, to Hobart, to move in with my dad. he had a granny flat and I got a job working as a youth minister for a church and admin as well so I was full-time which was excellent it meant that we could work towards paying off some of that loan that my mum had got for me and my husband started coming as well and volunteering because he had nothing else to do and it was also a world that he was interested in so we both were working full-time hours, but he was volunteering. And so to thank him for that, the church paid for his studies at

the time, which was helpful. I had to study as part of my work in order to be trained for that. So I did a diploma in theology, actually a graduate diploma in theology. And then when we finished those, we both wanted to keep studying. So he articulated into a bachelor of theology and I articulated into a masters of divinity. The only difference between theology and divinity really is that I'm doing biblical languages and he isn't. A masters of divinity sounds so fancy. I know. And I'm actually low-key excited that my hood is going to be pink. Yes. Oh my gosh. That is really cool. And I guess what are the next steps? Like once you become a priest what are you going to earn how does that work um and yeah I think it's I think it's

interesting because the she's on the money um family like we're not aligned to any religion we accept absolutely everybody the way that they come but I don't know enough about this and to know a female priest like that's badass that's cool I do find a lot of people like smile at me on the street and that's normal like it's nice for people to smile at you on the street but then they don't look away again I'm like what is it and then I realize I'm wearing my color oh yeah well I guess people look at you and they're like she's a really good person I think they're just thinking she's female is she playing dress-ups no yeah wow but yeah what does it what can it lead to how much can you earn well I don't think loads

It does depend on where in Australia or the world you are, but I am out in the country, so it's not big money out here. So at the moment I'm a deacon. I'm in training really, so I'm on the lowest rung. When I get ordained a priest, I'll still be an assistant priest in another church. I won't be in charge. So that income will go up a bit.

I don't know exactly how much. And then once we get sent off and given our own parishes to be in charge of the income will increase again but I don't know that a full-time income would be too much more than 60,000 might be a bit but also it's likely that my husband and I will just keep working part-time because a lot of the parishes like rely on the money that the parishioners put in the plate and obviously religion and parishes are shrinking and the congregation's getting older So a lot of parishes don't have the money to support a priest full-time, but very, very happy working part-time each.

We're obviously managing on the income at the moment and it'll only go up a bit. And to be honest, what do I want money for? I'd love tons of money in my investment account so that I could retire, but I'm already working part-time. That's like four days off a week. I feel semi-retired already. It's great. Yeah, that's so special.

And something that's sitting in the back of my mind at the moment is that so many times people think that to be happy, they need to chase a higher income because that's going to award them with a better lifestyle. And you're here saying, hey, my combined household income is $56,000 and we are so happy and so fulfilled and doing things that we love. And it's not actually money that awards us these luxuries. It's knowing who you are and what you want to do with your life and feeling like you've had an impact. and I think that that's you know such a special narrative to come out of this money diary and yeah I'm really grateful that you wanted to share that story with us and that we got to have a chat with you thank you thank you so what happens when you and your partner both become priests and you know you have your own parishes will that mean that you are separated or like will you get

parishes close by like how does all of that get worked and allocated that is the hope that we will get parishes close to each other, close enough that we will at least be able to live together. But we have a very good bishop out here and he is going to make sure that we don't get separated. So we feel pretty confident. It's just a matter of waiting until parishes are available, but lots of priests are retiring right now. So chances are pretty good. That's a week, that's an opportunity. And how does that work? So you're a priest, but you're allowed to be married, which I grew up and I had a Catholic education and that was absolutely not the case for the priests. So can you give us a little bit of an insight about how

that works for your space? So in the Anglican church, it's a bit different from the Catholic church. The Anglican church has, it's kind of walks down the middle as much as it can. So there is parts of the Anglican church that are more Catholic in style and parts that are more protestant in style so you get quite a diverse range and some people who are ordained will call themselves ministers or pastors and other people call themselves priests it kind of just depends on where you sit on the spectrum between protestant and more catholic and they are allowed to have married priests that's quite acceptable and a lot of australia is allowed to have female priests although there are certain places where I would not be allowed to work like Sydney oh wow really

why is that they're just a bit more conservative um there are different ways of interpreting parts of the bible and they interpret them one way and other parts interpret them differently so yeah good thing I don't want to work in Sydney that's so interesting and to be honest I'm just not educated enough in this space to have any level of opinion but I love learning about it And I'm just really grateful that you wanted to share that story with us and what goes on. And I think it's really special. And to be honest, I love that we've been able to share a story that is, you know, not the

norm, right? Like, it's not like I didn't know that during like throughout She's On The Money, I have someone who's, you know, going to become a priest listening to our podcast and that resonates. And to me, that's really special. It's been really fun because you've had some really interesting money diarists, which are from a very different world from me. And I've really enjoyed listening to them. and I really love how open and supportive you are of everyone and I never felt like oh no but that's

not my world they they're in a different world I always felt like oh it's so open so it's really nice that I can be on as well especially after the money diary I listened to last week um yeah it's just really really nice to have that it's crazy diversity we've gone from having people who were sex workers to literally a priest like if you say that we aren't inclusive it cheats on the money you're wrong you're wrong we don't care what you do and that's just it right like we actually do not care what you do as long as you are a kind person and you are being nice and you are having an impact on the world in a good way like I don't care what you do how you generate income as long as your relationship with yourself is positive and that is what's I guess the most

important thing to me like I literally couldn't care what you do and how you do it as long as you are happy. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. And guys, that is actually all we have time for today. But 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 Victoria Devine is an authorised representative of Australia Pacific Funds Management, Proprietary Limited, ABN 34132463257, AFSL 339151. And as always, we would adore it if you joined our Facebook group where our community shares money tips and tricks every single day free of judgment search she's on the money on facebook and join us and if facebook's not you think that is fine we are all over the gram and all over the tiktok we are at she's on the money aus and if you've got a money diary that you would love to share please please please email it through to hello at she's on the money.com.au and we'll see

you next week see you guys bye Thanks for watching!