She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: From Bankruptcy to Building Solid Foundations

Episode Date: August 28, 2022

We know you'll love meeting this gorgeous, and totally relatable community member! As a child her family faced bankruptcy and lost everything. Now that she is building a home and she and her fiancée are working hard, and building their financial literacy, how does this early struggle play out in her day to day mindset? Listen in to find out.This year our Money Diaries are being brought to you by the legends at Shopback! Check them out at https://app.shopback.com/aus/partner/SOTM and you'll get a cashback bonus when you sign up!Acknowledgement of Country By Natarsha Bamblett aka Queen Acknowledgements.The advice shared on She’s on The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She’s on The Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are Authorised Representatives of Infocus Securities Australia Proprietary Limited ABN 47 097 797 049 AFSL - AFSL 236523.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, my name is Natasha Nabanunga-Bamblett. I'm a proud Yorta Yorta, Kernai, Wolperi and Awadjeri woman. And before we get started on She's on the Money podcast, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of which this podcast is recorded on Awadjeri country, acknowledging the elders, the ancestors and the next generation coming through. As this podcast is about connecting, empowering, knowledge sharing and the storytelling of you to make a difference for today and lasting impact for tomorrow. Let's get into it. She's on the money. She's on the money.

hello and welcome to she's on the money the podcast for millennials who want financial freedom welcome back to another shop back money diary monday where we get to chat to a community member and learn about their finances and their life and all of the other fun bits as well. Victoria. Jessica. I have a story for you today. Do you? I do. What a surprise. I came here not knowing what was going to happen and now you've got a story. All right, let me tell you all about it. So our diarist said, when I was 16, my parents went bankrupt and we lost everything we owned, which shaped my entire relationship with money. My partner and I are engaged and building a house, but it's always in the back of my mind that we might lose everything. My partner

came from a low income background and I'm proud to say that I have helped him lift his financial literacy too. How wholesome. Money Diarist, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Congrats on the house. That's so exciting. It is very exciting. We've got some questions about that, but let's dive straight in. I want to know from you, tell us a little bit about your money story. Yeah, Of course. So the earliest memories I have around money for myself is my parents living paycheck to paycheck. So my parents had their own business. They worked really hard and very long hours, but it was very hard to manage for them. Hearing that they had no money was very frequent occurrence in our household and it was a really big stressor in all of our lives.

They did have a business that went into involuntary administration, which sent us bankrupt when I was 16, and that took everything from us, our house, our car. It was really brutal, but that set my entire perception of money up to be completely negative. I genuinely felt like there was no way I'd ever be comfortable in life knowing that they worked so hard and got nothing out of it. Oh, wow. So fast-tracked about mid last year, and I was scrolling through Facebook and happened to come across the She's On The Money Facebook group. Hi, welcome. Peach branding kind of drew me in. Oh, good, good. It's my favorite. Absolutely. And yeah, so I started reading some posts and I felt like I was missing out a lot of key information. So I decided that I'd go back to

episode one and have listened every episode since to catch up. Oh my gosh. Have you actually? Yes. Cool. Yeah. So I went through like a whole budget overhaul and felt like I was starting to put myself in a lot better position. We had a hiccup earlier this year where my dad fell very sick and ended up in a coma. So he's all good now, thank God. Oh good. But yeah, so that kind of I feel like put me in a bit of a rut. So I feel like I haven't gotten quite back on track to that point since then, but we're getting there. You're on the way. Oh my gosh, what a money story. I feel like you're really aware of your own money story too, which is quite cool. Yeah. All right. I want to know, I tried to ask you this off air, but just shut it down real quick. What do you do for work

and how much money do you earn? Yeah, so I work in recruitment, which I think is what Jess had previously done as well. Yes, she did. Yes. So my annual salary is $52,000 plus super and that brings in about $1,600 a fortnight. However, all of my finances are shared with my fiance who brings in around $1,800 a fortnight as well. Oh, that's cool. I feel like that's a really good income. Good work. Next question I have, what's your big money goal? What are you currently working towards? I kind of have three on the go. Three? Three. My major one being emergency savings. I really need to build that up and it's something we're working really hard towards. I am, as mentioned earlier, building a house for my partner at the moment. So trying to save up to furnish

that house because it will be our first house together, both of us living at a home. And also again as mentioned earlier we are now engaged so congrats when's the wedding am I allowed to ask about it of course it's going to be April 2024 we literally just got engaged oh my gosh all right well I'll ask about that later in the show next question do you have any investments so aside from my superannuation no only because I really want to invest I really do so bad especially after listening to the podcast, I genuinely always thought it was just a fever dream and was for rich people who knew what they were doing with their money. No, it's not. It's not. So ever since sort of educating myself with it, I really want to so bad, but our focus is getting our

emergency savings set up first and then that will come after. Good. That's the plan. That's how it works. Building a strong financial house. I love it. Next question I have, do you currently have any debts? Yeah. So we are obviously building the house. So currently it's a weird building loan thing. So there are like progress sort of stages where it adds on to more, but that will be a $500,000 loan once construction is complete. So currently we're just doing interest only repayments. We also have one other debt, which we're trying to get rid of, which is a joint car loan. So myself and my partner got a car each a few years back. So that's sitting at $27,000 at the moment for both cars. Okay, cool. Next question I have for you. Do you currently use

Shopback? I have the app. Yes. I scroll it frequently. Cool. I have not yet made my first purchase, but I know what I'm getting. I just haven't committed. I love that. I feel like we should all put more than 24 hours between us and our spending. So that's not a bad thing at all. Absolutely. Next question, my friend, is what is your best money habit? One that I learned completely from She's On The Money was putting time between me and my purchases. Oh, which she's doing with her shop back. I like that.

I like that. Exactly. You're walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Precisely. So that's my best money habit for sure. I love that. All right. Flipping it though, what's your worst money habit?

Yes. So I am horrible at sticking to a budget when it comes to buying things for my family and friends. I don't think that's bad. That's so kind. Look, it is, but gift giving is very much my love language. I love to spoil my friends and family, so set myself a budget, never ever stick to it. And yeah, it's probably my worst habit. Oh gosh. All right. So if we forced you to give yourself a grade when it came to your

money habits, what would you grade yourself? I'd say a C. That's where I'm at right now. What makes up that C and what would it take to get to an A? My emergency savings being built up is one thing. I think if you'd asked me this time last year, I'd probably say a bit higher. But I think since my dad was sick, I went totally off track and I need to redo my budget and cash flow. And I just keep putting it off and putting it off and putting off because it stresses me out. And I think once that's all sort of back in, set in place, it would get me a bit higher and investing would get me to an A. Yeah, cool. You mentioned just then your emergency account and how you're building that up. Have you got a goal number

in mind? If so, what's that and why did you pick that number? Right now, we are wanting to go at around the $10,000 mark. Why that number? Couldn't really tell you. It's just kind of what we became like, do you know what? That feels like a safe amount. We have two dogs. We want to be able to have enough that if they have any emergency vet visits and it's just there and easily attainable and just anything happened with work, we just wanted a little bit of a backup. Couldn't tell you why we got to 10 grand, but we did. No, I love, I love asking because everyone is obviously really different, but the defining, I guess, similarity of literally everyone is like, that's the number that made me feel comfortable. I don't know how you all got to it. I don't know

what your process was, but it's always, that's the number that makes us feel snug. It's the number that makes us feel like we can make decisions and we're not going to find ourselves in a financial pickle. Exactly. All right. Money Diarist, we're going to go to a quick break and straight after, I want to know a little bit more about your family history. Don't go anywhere, guys. Money Diarist, I'm going to throw all the way back to the first question we asked you at the start of the episode, which was, you know, about your money story. And you very clearly were able to articulate what had happened to you and your family having gone through a bankruptcy. But I would love to know a bit more about how that guides the decisions that you make today or how

it's still impacting you? Because I know that's actually quite significant. That's not a little thing to go through and it does leave a little bit of financial trauma for most people. So how's it impacting you now? It really puts a damper on, I feel like, kind of everything. It's just something that is always in the back of my mind. When we're going through our house buying process, our mortgage broker, the whole way through, sort of just kept reiterating, you guys have enough to service this loan like it's absolutely fine you meet the criteria you will be okay but until we got the sort of piece of paper in the mail that says you've been approved the whole time I'm like no it's it's being taken away from us like this is never going to happen yeah it was something that

definitely it kind of just puts a damper on all of the things that should be fun yes so it just kind of makes it in general just feel like things will be taken away so quickly my parents are such hard workers like my dad was working 80 hour weeks it was full-on next level crazy and to sort of have everything just ripped from their hands and just put us back really to nothing just makes it feel like it's it's hard to get somewhere getting any loans and the debt that we went in for our cars my partner and I took out a personal loan for two cars for us because we I just don't have a way of getting public transport where I live there's no public transport we had both got really unreliable cars we just kept cycling through them a thousand dollar cars

here and there it just was never going to work they were just hot messes and it was never good so we needed a car and being able to commit to that and say yeah I'm willing to go into a debt right now was so difficult for me to do because I felt like that's just going to just start the whole process of us being put where they were yeah that must genuinely be so hard because you obviously want to put yourself ahead financially and make good decisions. But at the same time, it's always in the back of your mind that, oh, like that could happen. Should I even bother? Should I do this? Should I do that? And I'm assuming it will at some point, once you get to the point when you're investing, make that a little bit more challenging than it might be for

anyone else. Cause you're like, oh, like the risk feels a lot heavier than it might for other people who have never gone through those circumstances. So it's always really interesting to ask questions like that. I'm always like, oh, how did that work? What does that mean? Because I've met people as well who will say, oh, it doesn't like that was theirs. I know how to avoid that. And they're really confident. It's just like, wow, like the same circumstance can lead to so many different outcomes and why people, you know, organize things for themselves. Yeah, definitely. No, I completely agree. I want to pivot, though. I'm really self-serving today. I'm getting married soon as well. I want

to know, you said you were going to get married in 2024. Have you discussed wedding budgets yet? Very vaguely. Only because I feel like I just don't know how much a wedding costs and I don't want to set a really unrealistic budget that's way too low that just isn't going to be feasible for what we want to do. So I'm kind of in the process of researching that sort of venues that we'd like and things that we would really want to have as a part of our wedding and how much that would cost to give us an accurate budget to work towards. So you're having good, open, honest conversations about it, or I guess, are you on the same page? Yes. Yes, I think we are. I think we are good at being on the same page with these sorts of things typically, but absolutely open on honest

communication. We're both sort of going through research together and really sort of discussing what's super important for me and what's super important for my fiance to sort of, yeah, get to the finer details of what we have to have and what is negotiable to make a budget work. We just don't want to sort of throw out a random figure and say, this is our budget and then start going over and over because we haven't researched it properly. Just going to call myself out here. That's what I did. I was like, oh, I've seen all my clients, you know, have weddings. I'm obviously a financial advisor. I'm really lucky that when I got engaged, a whole heap of people in our community reached out and they're like, oh my God, Victoria, this is how much I spent and this, this, this, and this.

And so my partner and I picked a budget that we thought would work really well, but we hadn't broken it down. And we also had not talked about our values enough. I was just like, oh, that's heaps of money. That'll be right. Not right. Not right. Weddings are expensive. I feel like your process is probably going to be far better than mine because I was shocked at how expensive things can be. And I'm not saying they're overpriced. I think I just hadn't ever conceptualized things like flowers and, you know, we're not doing it, but cutlery hire. I was like, that's a thing. People hire cutlery. It's crazy. So I'm always interested to hear what other people's thought processes are around that because it's stressful as well.

It is very stressful. There's definitely a ton of things that I never would have even considered that very much required, but I'm very lucky that we've got a very good friend who has recently been married. So she's helping me a lot along the way of being like, hey, have you considered this? Because it's going to come up. How good. I love that you've got someone on your team. How did you go about juggling between, you know, you've got your three goals that you mentioned earlier, obviously the wedding and the house, your emergency fund. How did you figure out how to prioritize you know which of those goals you want to achieve fastest or how much

money you're allocating to each of those things because they're all I would say relatively short term goals like you're building the house now your wedding's in a couple of years how did you figure it all out is it bad to say I haven't really no that's honest look I don't know I feel like I just sort of sat down and said okay these are the things that we need to work on let's just make sure that they're all happening. I think emergency savings is our top priority based on the fact that we have two dogs. They're my little babies. So I just really need to make sure that they are always well cared for. And if anything were to go wrong, I want them to be okay. Obviously, the work that my partner and I do is quite stable all throughout COVID. Both my

partner and I have jobs that are very much stable and we can do throughout the pandemic and we never lost employment, which we are so privileged to say. I know that it was very hard for a lot of people, but we were very, very lucky. So our employment being quite stable was something that meant that our priorities more so lied in making sure our pets were okay. If our cars were to break down, which were our sole means of getting absolutely anywhere, that we would have the ability to do that. So that's why our emergency savings was first. House and wedding. Wedding is something that as horrible as it would be if we had to push it back it could get pushed back it's it's not going to be the end of the world and our house we kind of put that in the middle just

because it's going to come up earlier than the wedding but also we're going to need a bed we're going to need a couch it's probably going to also need a fridge like it's just basic things that yeah we we feel like it's probably going to be required to to live yeah but it's all things that need to be taken into consideration right and they can start adding up and feel all consuming and overwhelming i want to go back to the wedding conversation jess sorry sorry you got engaged recently that's one so fun one um how did he ask in a nutshell jess is going to kill me for not asking finance questions it's fine in a nutshell i thought i was surprising him with the puppy of his dreams he's always wanted a bernie's mountain dog oh my gosh i have always wanted a bernie's

mountain dog i have one now i thought i was surprising him with yeah the bernie's mountain dog puppy of his dreams we were driving there he took a wrong turn turns out my best friends had told him I was surprising him with this puppy and instead we showed up with a giant box with a bell on it and a massive picnic set up and she was in the box and oh my heart that is so sweet yeah it was the most exciting thing ever and bawled my eyes out for a very long time oh my gosh so you didn't know your proposal was coming at all. No, I had no inkling, which shocked me to my core because my partner cannot keep a secret to save his life. Oh, so that's what I'm trying to get to. How did you guys pay for the ring? Like, how does that happen? Exactly. So all of our funds

are shared, which is why I didn't see it coming. He had asked me one week, hey, can I just give my mom and dad a hand with some rent money? I was like, yeah, of course. So he took it out of the savings. It was only like $300. So sneaky. Yeah. So $300 each account, wrote rent money on the description. And then that was his deposit for the ring and it was being custom made. So he didn't have to pay the last part of it until it was finished. So he reached out to my best friend. He's like, look, this is a massive ask. Can you pay for it the day that I propose I'm going to pay it back to you? I just don't want it to come out of our account. Oh, I love that. And she's so beautiful. And she said, of course I can. And I bawled her eyes out the whole time speaking to

him as well. She was very excited. Yeah. So she paid for it. And then as soon as he proposed, we just transferred it over. So I didn't see anything. Oh my gosh. That's a good way to keep a secret if you've got someone on your team. Yes. I wouldn't have even known. Jess, what questions have you got? I'm sure that they're better than mine. Your partner sounds like such a dream. And I love how you said in your write-in to us that you were helping to kind of lift his level of financial literacy. We love to see it, first of all. But I wanted to know, like, how are you going about that? Because we've spoken to people in the past when there's been discrepancies in people's levels of financial literacy, which is so okay because we all, you know, we get what we get and

we do the best we can with what we have. But sometimes people can be a little bit resistant because it makes them feel like they weren't as educated or, you know, it can make people feel lesser than sometimes when they have to learn something from someone that they know personally. How have you guys gone through that? Is he receptive? Have you had to be conscious of certain things? What does that look like for you guys? I think the very first time I approached him about sort of helping him learn something, it was actually investment related. He was a little apprehensive definitely on the side of I don't want to feel like you're telling me what I don't know something like in the sense of not in a territorial kind of way but more so like

do you think I don't know what I'm doing like yeah do you think I don't have an idea he definitely knew more than I did before I even started listening to the podcast and when I asked him to start doing it I sent him a podcast link and said hey I want you to listen to this purely based on I want you to be on the same understanding of I am I want you to look at it the same way that I'm looking at it and teach me what I'm missing what did you not hear in this that you know and we sort of came at it in more of like a team way and saying that hey let's brainstorm and mind map this together and work out what you have that I don't who are you guys you're wizards yeah he's brilliant I love him he is we love him too he is very smart yeah very receptive to anything

and I think as well he came from a very low income household as well so he was very receptive to learning more if it was going to put us in a better position cool he's on board once I sort of explained I'm listening to this because I want us to be in a good spot I want to invest I want to understand money and how it all works he's like yeah cool I'm on board whatever you whatever you want to do what a honey I actually adore that you're just on the same page about that stuff because so many people aren't or so many people are just really apprehensive because they think the conversations are too hard to have or they feel overwhelming or they're just, you know, it never feels like the right time. So I just, I'm loving this conversation of like, oh no,

we're on the same page. I made him listen to this podcast and now we're on the same page and we have these chat like that. So good. I want that for everybody. Very privileged. I definitely understand that. Not everyone's as lucky and I'm very, very, very lucky that I am. No, it is very, very cool. One last question from me, and now it's my turn to be a little bit self-serving. You're building a house. What did that process look like for you? How did you decide to build rather than purchasing something that was established? I think one of the major things is that my partner came from a low-income household.

I came from a very rocky financial household. We never had the brand new house. We never had the exciting new finishes, like what we had dreamt of. that was never a thing in either our lives so apart from the fact that prices were going sky high when we were looking at buying or building with established homes we seemed to find that it was staying a little bit more consistent with building so that was the first indicator for us to start leaning towards building over buying established but I think the major kicker was definitely we want the house that's the brand new the shiny the everything that we picked that's

perfect for us compared to something that was made for someone else and we're just sort of fitting into it. How did you find the process of picking everything out like if you wanted it to be exactly yours did you have a lot of fun picking your finishes and I always think about how you know how when you build there's tiers so you can get like your standard door handles or your slightly bougier. Did you find that there are a lot of those and did it eat into your budget like did you find it hard to I guess balance what you wanted that would be me what you could afford because I'd be like give me all those shiny things please yeah that would be me as well exactly I think we went in presuming well we were told that to expect to spend about 30 grand on

upgrades because that includes things like your air conditioning your flooring everything like that that's not included in our base quote so we went in with that idea that it was going to be about 30 grand when we went in we tried as best we could to stick to that budget and came in 10 grand under so we spent 20 grand at selections oh my gosh we picked a builder that had a lot of good standard inclusions that were what we knew we would want to pick so when choosing our builders we found some had very limited standard inclusions that were just completely opposite style of what we would want anyway and that we would have to spend a lot upgrading to get what we want so we went with someone that yeah had good standard inclusions went and looked at their like discovery

sale centers as well so you can look at your options for selections before you even pick your builder at a lot of builders so we did that and picked one that we were like yep this is where we want to go enjoyed the process so much designing that sort of stuff and picking all the finishings for the home was yeah the most exciting part oh it's amazing jess is just like taking notes being like i'm writing down discovery sale center she's like i'm gonna google that later Victoria do you want to come oh my gosh how exciting though that you're building your own home did you ever think that that was going to become the reality for you never not even in my wildest dreams I just entirely felt like if I am not working the 80 hours my dad did how would I

ever have a chance like this is not ever going to happen for us my partner was also not earning a lot of money when we first got together we got together eight years ago I was 14 he was 16 oh my gosh babies little babies so when we got together we both worked in Maccas it was yeah good it was nothing that was ever going to set us up to build a house and to be where we are right now is insane never ever ever expected to be in this point oh my gosh I am so proud of you look what you did how exciting is that? What a queen. Oh my gosh. But Jess, I think we're out of time. Money, Doris, thank you so much for joining us. It has been an absolute pleasure hanging out with you and learning about your money story. Thank you so much for having me. I have had a wonderful time.

Oh my gosh. All right, Jess, it is time. Can you wrap the boring but important stuff pretty, please? Yes, guys. Don't forget 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 a financial decision. And we promise Victoria Devine and She's on the Money are authorised representatives of Infocus Securities Australia Proprietary Limited, ABN 47097797049, AFSL 236523. See you on Wednesday, guys. Bye.

Thanks for watching!