She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: From Loungewear to Paralegal

Episode Date: July 31, 2022

She's a young law student who is in the final year of her degree and works as a paralegal. Today's Money Diarist shares her story of transcending minimum wages and a poor work environment, to starting her own loungewear business on the side of her legal career. She's a real go-getter and we can't wait for you to meet her!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 talk to one of our community members to learn all about them and, more importantly, all about their money. Victoria. Hello. How are you going? I am very excited because you and Annalisa have been talking

about this being an exciting diary, but I don't know why yet. All right, well, let me tell you all about it. Our diarist says, My summarised money story is that I'm 22 in the last year of my law degree and work as a paralegal. I got my first legal job three years ago as a paralegal where I was paid minimum wage for two years. It was a pretty horrible environment and I had a huge mental health crisis.

I have recently gotten a new law job where I'm paid six figures. What? And she's 22. Are you joking? In lockdown, I started investing in shares and built a pretty solid stock portfolio. I also kicked off a huge goal in 2021 by starting a loungewear business. Oh yeah, just because she has so much time. I would love to share my story to the She's On The Money listeners who are also in university

and may feel taken advantage of in the corporate world. uh hello and welcome to the show you absolute hustler thank you hello thank you so much for having me um 22 has a six-figure law job not finished law yet you haven't graduated yet no I only have one semester left one semester you're so close and you have a loungewear business Yes, I do. Who are you? Oh my gosh, I cannot wait to get into this diary. Let's start like we always do though. Money Diarist, can you tell us a little bit about your money story? Yes. So growing up, money wasn't really spoken about in my family. It was something that a lot of the older people sort of kept to themselves and didn't really want to involve the children in. So my brothers and I

knew that money was a thing. We knew that it was around us, but we didn't really get too involved in the big decisions that kind of came about. So as I started to make my own money, I realized that I was really struggling to save it because we weren't really taught how to save or how to invest. It was sort of up to us to decide what we wanted to make with our money. So it wasn't until I got older and I started to read about money and educate myself on things such as investing and salaries and superannuation and what a mortgage is, because a lot of that was sort of shielded growing up. And then I started working in law and I realized like, wow, I'm not actually making a lot of money. Everyone always thought lawyers make a lot of money. And so I sort of thought that

when I started my first law job, we'd get, I guess, a decent hourly rate. But yeah, I started on minimum wage and it was pretty well worked to the bone for a lot of that time. And then, yeah, I started a business last year. I started investing and I started to have a really good relationship with money and got a new job. So yeah. How exciting. I have so many questions that I'm not allowed to ask right now. I am going to save them for later. Money Diarist, tell us, what exactly do you do for work and how much money do you earn? So I work as a paralegal. I am on a $100,000 package. So that is a salary of $85,000 and then plus 17% superannuation. 17% super. You are going to retire at like the age of 12. It's going to be great.

I'm really happy about that. Yeah. And then I also run my e-commerce business that I get about $5,000 to $10,000 from a month. What? Yeah. Depending on how much effort I want to put into the month, considering university as well, I really try to structure my output around how busy life is at the time. So on a good month, I can make $10,000. And if I want to keep scaling that up, I definitely can. Oh my gosh. I am in awe. So tell me about how much hits your personal accounts? Obviously owning a loungewear business, I haven't gotten into it yet, but I will. There's a lot of overheads and stuff like that. When it comes to profit, are you taking a profit as like your salary or what does that look like? At the moment I'm reinvesting what I earn. I'm very

happy with the salary I'm on from my job. So I sort of want to live off that and use the money for my business to continue to upscale and whatnot. But yeah, I haven't exactly allocated myself a salary. I'd love to get into doing that. It's only been operating now for maybe eight months. So I'm still kind of happy. You're still a baby. You're still in startup phase. Yeah. I'd like to enjoy the startup phase. I know it's very hard and the cost of goods has just skyrocketed and I just keep buying stock. So once I sell out, I just keep buying and buying and buying. So it's kind of an ongoing cycle, but yeah, I guess that's something that I do need to work on and kind of be a bit stricter with. So I do get a bit of take home pay from that.

No, that's okay. Eight months in, not many small businesses are churning a profit to the point where you could potentially pay yourself. Like my friend, it took me quite literally years before I was profiting off my businesses. And even now it's like, well, what can we take? What do we reinvest? how does this work? What does this look like? So to be a little bit more pervy, how much hits your bank account each and every single month? So every fortnight I get paid and I take home $2,300. That is good. I feel like for 22, you are making bank. And then to think you've got a small business on the side of this, I'm still like, what? This is epic. All right. I feel like you've probably got a really good answer to this. So what is your big money goal? What are we

working towards? At the moment, it's working towards my first property, which I hope to get in the next year. I have no doubt she'll get that in the next year, Jessica. I recently met with a broker in regards to getting a loan. So I was really happy with how that meeting went. I'm kind of just now waiting for the market to settle down a bit. Are you looking at doing that by yourself or with a partner or a guarantor? So my boyfriend and I are happy to do property together, but we've also discussed the possibility of both of us purchasing our own at the same time and potentially seeing how that goes but the broker was very adamant on just doing it together and yeah they always are it does my head in Jess you had an experience like that recently didn't

you yeah I think like as much as a broker is definitely an expert in their field something like property is something that also is very personal. And if buying separately is what feels right for you guys, I would encourage you to look at both your options. Like definitely take what the broker is saying under advisement. But if you're in a position and that's what you want, then it's also definitely something you shouldn't table just because somebody else told you to. Yeah. I think a broker is a really important person in that property journey where they actually have to, or you actually have to vibe with them and feel like they're on your journey and want the best for you, not necessarily what's the easiest loan to process. And obviously the

easiest loan to process would be the one where you both buy together and it's all vanilla and easy and she earns this and then your borrowing capacity is higher. And like that's the dream client for a broker, I suppose. But it makes me a bit worried that they're pushing you or you feel like maybe they're leaning towards one way or the other because it's just not how it should work. It should really be about you as the individual and putting you in the best possible position as well as you being young, like you're 22. Like I want to see you do it on your own first. All right. Next question, Money Diarist. Tell us about investments. Do you have any? If so, what are they? Yes. So I invest in the stock market and I have about 15,000 in shares that

I've selected myself. And then I've got ETFs. So I've got about $3,000 in those. And then I've got another raise account, which has $2,000. So my whole portfolio is about $20,000 altogether. Oh my gosh. How is she 22, Jessica? I can't. At 22, I was up to my eyeballs in debt and definitely didn't even know where to start when it came to investing. So you are miles ahead. I feel like I know the answer to this, but Money Diaries, do you have any debts? I don't have any debt other than my HECS debt. And what's your HECS debt sitting on, given you're a lawyer? I feel like it should be healthy. So because I do two degrees, it's quite a bit of a lump sum. At the moment, it's just under $50,000.

But once I get through this degree, I also have to go to the College of Law. Yeah. And that's an additional $10,000 on top of that. But it'll all be worth it in the long term because you're already working in this space. And had you not been studying it, I doubt you would have flown as far as you have this early on. Absolutely. And I think now that I'm actually paying my HECS off slowly, it feels a little less daunting

because I can see that money slowly chipping away and it feels like it's actually getting somewhere now. It's not just sitting there and not getting touched and accruing interest. I feel like that's actually a really good point you bring up because a lot of people that I speak to about HECS that are most worried about it are still uni students or people that don't have an income where they're paying a lot off. So it does feel really overwhelming. You do really feel it when indexation is applied. Whereas if you are paying it off and you are a full-time wage earning employee, it's far less daunting. And I guess the advice there would be, it's okay,

it gets better. Uni does feel really overwhelming because all it does is stack up year on year. And You've been doing it for five years, so it probably felt really overwhelming until this point. But I think that that's a really good thing to bring up right now because a lot of people feel that. Money Diarist, the next question, especially in e-commerce, I want to know, do you use ShopBack? I have ShopBack.

I have unfortunately not used it yet. Hey, I mean, she did the first step, Jess. Yeah, that's the hardest one. Yep, I have it and I love looking at the deals on it. And I think that when I know I'm going to be buying something, I will be looking at it and seeing if I can get a shot back on it. But I just haven't been able to do that yet. So it will happen soon. That is fair. Next question. I feel like she's going to have some really good ones for us, Jess. What's your best money habit? I really think there's a few. One is just I always allocate my

money when I get paid. And I like to make sure that I've always allocated the same amount of money, no matter how much I'm earning. And then whatever's left over from that now with this high paying job, I can save more. So I like to try to live off the same amounts of money that I've kind of continued to live off for the last year or two, because I found that that amount is quite good for my lifestyle. And I always like to use my money to make more money. For example, you know, when I make a lot of sales in my business, I would like to reinvest that into new stock. Or when I get paid, I like to reinvest that into shares if I can that month. So generally, I'm always looking at ways I can push my money into the right direction that will help me,

even with big purchases and stuff like that. I love that. I feel like you're going to make a lot of people feel like, whoa, this is a lot. And we'll talk about that after. Next question. what is your worst money habit? I love nice things. I love fashion. Same queen, don't worry. I absolutely love feeling good in what I'm wearing. And people who know me, they know that I love to dress up. And I claim that. People will come over and raid my wardrobe because I've got all these nice dresses in there. And I guess I will always value wanting those things in my life because that's just something that I enjoy and that makes me happy. But in saying that, you know, when I want to buy something, I also can hire outdresses. So I can also buy a dress and make

money on it. And that's what I do because I do also do that slightly on the side with everything else. Oh, so you have a third job. You're hiring all of your dresses out. That is a lot of logistics. Jess does that a little bit. And there's a lot of postage and back and forth and communication? Like where are you finding the time for this, my friend? You know what? Instagram is great. Instagram, you get a message, you can pick up your phone and reply to them straight away. And that's how I run my e-commerce business. That's how I run my dress high business. And it just works because I'm the type of person who doesn't like to take ages to reply. I'm a very quick replier because if I don't reply straight away, I'll probably forget about it.

and I guess seeing if there's a notification on Instagram always keeps me in the loop of have I missed something or have I you know got a message to reply to I think it's easy to fit that in while working because you can kind of just if you can you know sneak off go on your phone reply to a message get back to work so that's really helped me in managing that when it comes to dealing with you know messages and correspondence and emails and stuff I love that I feel like you're just always switched on. I am so beyond impressed. I want to know, though, before we go to a very quick break, what grade would you give yourself if you were forced to give yourself a money grade? I think I would give myself a B+.

I am throwing that straight in the bin. That is, no, that's not acceptable in my books. I think that I have a lot to learn. For example, I need to learn more about tax as a small business owner. I do not think I understand tax as well as I should. I think I've kind of put it off a bit being a sole trader and it scares me. And I think that once I work that out, maybe I'll re-evaluate. But right now I think I definitely need to teach myself more on how I can be more tax savvy in that way. All right. All right. I'll let that go if that's the justification, because that is very important. I thought you were grading your personal money habits and I was going to be like, sir, please sit down. But no, I really like that you're quite switched on about what you

want to learn and what you want to grow in. So let's talk about all of that after this really quick break. All right, Money Diarist, I want to kind of start at the start. You said that when you were younger and you kind of first started earning your own money, you really struggled to save because it wasn't something that you were necessarily taught as a child. Skip forward to now and you have fantastic money habits. You own a business. You're obviously saving a lot. At what point did that change occur for you? How did you figure out how to set those savings goals and meet them? Because I think that that's something that a lot of people really struggle with. Yeah, absolutely. And I did really struggle with it. So when I was at uni in

my first year, I picked up the infamous Barefoot Investor. I gave it a read. And I think that while I don't necessarily follow it strictly, it definitely ticked something off in my brain that meant that I understood how money was talked about. I knew what it meant to invest money. I knew what it meant to, I guess, be open about money because in my family, money was a very sacred thing that no one touched on yep and when I read that I then I guess looked around and I came across she's on the money and I started listening to the podcast and I actually downloaded the savings guide I think on the website yes and I actually used that as a visual so when I would get paid I would just like cross out like oh you know put 123 dollars in this week or you know

$300 the next week, depending on like, you know, expenses and stuff. But yeah, that visual actually helped me stay on track. And that is what helped me save my first $10,000 when I was earning not a lot of money at the time. So yeah, that really helped. Oh my gosh, that makes me feel so excited that we got to be a part of that change for you. And if anyone does want to download the savings trackers, we have them for $1,000, $5,000, $10,000 and $20,000. We'll put a link to the website in the show notes where you can check those out. I am obsessed with that. It makes me so happy that that is the case. But I do want to touch on something that I know a few people are going to be thinking, and that's privilege. So you are obviously in this epic position. You are making

bank. You are 22. You have a loungewear business. How does privilege impact your life? Is this something, obviously, you said your parents didn't teach you how to save or invest, but what circumstances are surrounding you that enable you to be this super productive person that I know a lot of people are going to be like oh my gosh I wish I could be like her but I have to do x y and z and I just can't do that because I don't want people to look at your diary and go oh my gosh like I'm not doing enough because they are but you're probably in a situation I'm assuming where this is possible for you whereas it's not always possible for everyone. Definitely so I live at home. I don't pay really any rent. I buy my own groceries and stuff, but I guess I don't really

have that one overarching big cost that I'm making every week towards my living, which I'm very appreciative of. And I suppose when you are wanting to save, not having those out payments coming out every week really does help you and I tried to use that as best as possible for my situation earlier on and I think where I where I am and being able to kind of store all of my stock in a spare room has also meant that I don't have to have a warehouse yeah and I'm very grateful for that as well so you know I didn't get any handouts from my family and I think a lot of people assumed that I did because I started a business and you're in uni and you aren't getting paid much but I've always had the goal of wanting to start a business and I would put a hundred

dollars to five hundred dollars or whatever into a separate account and if people are wanting to start a business I really encourage doing the same even if you can't put that much money put fifty dollars in and just build it up until you are ready to start the business that you want to do because I had that account building for maybe two years and really let me buy my first big stock and I could you know spend two thousand dollars on a bunch of stuff but also I started really small and I keep scaling up and I think you know even with my loungewear business I did pre-orders for some of it smart I couldn't fork out that amount of money at the time and I had to do pre-orders and yeah it was difficult because you're relying on a manufacturer to make goods after you've

received payment and people want their stuff straight away yeah so that was a massive learning curve but definitely being from a home where I'm not paying rent and I'm not paying a mortgage right now I'm very lucky for that how did you learn how to run a business because you're young right you are so young but you know so much about what you're doing and I like I wouldn't know how to I wouldn't even know where to begin with something like finding manufacturers or you know looking after those logistical things like setting up pre-orders and mitigating expectations of clients who want things immediately how did you learn all of this information is there a resource that people can kind of look to if they are wanting to do the same kind of thing that you've done

What helped me was having business people that I looked up to and sort of looking at how they do things, how they run a business and following a similar blueprint. There wasn't really one resource that I went to. I kind of knew that if I wanted to do e-commerce, I would have to open a Shopify store. And then when I opened a Shopify store, I looked on YouTube, how to build it, how to make it and whatnot. And then, you know, other loungewear businesses around me were doing pre-orders or they were doing drops or they were marketing their products a certain way and taking product photos a certain way. And I think that because Instagram is such a big marketplace for small businesses, looking at how other people were doing theirs helped me sort of think about that.

and I actually reached out to one of the people I look up to who she is the co-owner of Booby Tate and I just DM'd her and I was like hey how do I find people to make clothes and she actually replied and was like hey just you know start typing in stuff on Google and look for this type of composition and I was like well how do I how do I even design clothes I don't know and I think when I found a manufacturer I was able to kind of work with them because they were so experienced and this is their expertise so I would kind of like send them a design that I would make on canva and then they would be like okay but send this to us with these colors or what pantones do you want to use and I'm like what is a pantone and I think definitely giving myself the opportunity

to just give it a go and not want anything to be perfect straight away helped because when I'd make a mistake I'd learn to not do that again yeah what a legend that the co-owner of booby tape was it that she shared that information with you because I can understand that for some people it's like a conflicting thing right where you don't necessarily want to share who you use with a you know with someone because ultimately you know they're a competitor or something like that it's really cool to see a fellow female lifting up someone else who's trying to do their own thing in that space. Yeah, what a queen. I feel like it's so cagey and I see this on TikTok all the time, right? Where people are like, don't reach out to me and ask these questions, like do your own

research and rah, rah, rah. And it's kind of like, okay, I fully understand that. And I'm very much like subscribed to the notion of do your own research and work all of this out. But I think there's a very big difference between, hey, I'm really serious. I'd just love to have a chat with you, Jess, about what you do in your role. And it's really about how you operate and how you approach that circumstance because we get it all the time. People will just randomly DM us and I'll be like, you don't even follow me and you're asking how to create a podcast. I'm not going to spend a whole heap of time telling you all the ins and outs of how this works and what this means and how to start and how to begin and whatnot if you don't even engage with my content. Like,

clearly you're just after one thing and it's to not do the work. Whereas I think you can tell a genuine follower if they, you know, follow you and have interacted with a few things and then they're like, hey, Jess, I was just wondering, you can always politely decline or, you know, send them in a different direction and be like, oh, this is where I started. You don't always have to give away, and I don't think anyone should have to give away, quote, their manufacturer details because that's proprietary information. But we can all help other women and go, oh, oh, this is how I started or this is how I did my research. And to be honest, I do think that sometimes that load can be quite heavy and it's not another business owner's job to do that and

they can politely decline. But in your circumstance, you reached out to someone you really looked up to and given your beautiful email, I'm sure you were very polite and very kind and very like, hey, like I really look up to you. Is there any information or advice you have? And I always respond so well to messages like that because like, I want to see other women be successful. I want to see you fly. And at the end of the day, I could give you every single step it took me to create She's On The Money. And it's actually about whether you're willing to do the work or not. Like I could tell you, Money Diaries, my supplier and what I do and how I set up a Shopify store and what steps there were. But most people aren't willing to actually do the work because they

think there's some kind of magic wand that doesn't include the hours of background coding and working out how to implement something on Shopify or I do all of my websites, money diarists, so I get it. It is so challenging, but it's so rewarding. But I think the really big hurdle there is most people aren't willing to do that work. They just want to be given the magic wand or the magic answer of, oh my gosh, this is the supplier. And then they think they've hit the goldmine. Like that's not it. It's all about marketing and branding and what you're doing on socials and how that works and what your website looks like and what your flows look like and what remarketing are you doing? There's so much to it that I don't think people understand the work that's involved.

So if they really think that giving a woman a tip on Instagram is going to sabotage their business, they've got rocks in their head from my perspective. Definitely. And I think I was very aware of how important marketing was in having a flourishing business. And so I did really want to reach out to influencers and a lot of influencers reached out to me and I would have people just reach out and be like, Hey, can I get free hoodies? And they don't even follow my business. And it's just not it. Like, don't do that. If you want to be a good influencer, be passionate about a business and don't be in it to get free products if that's all you're wanting because your role in this relationship is to be a tool for marketing as well and if you

aren't passionate about connecting with your followers you might not be good at that and I've kind of learned how to assess whether someone is a good fit for my brand as well I don't really do influencers much anymore, but I do a lot of business collaboration. So I reach out to like other business owners and people who I look up to and it's so far worked and they've actually agreed to collaborating with me. So I think, yeah, it's just test and fail. The influencer space is really interesting because I think as you touched on before with the rise of social media and people being able to replicate, you know, businesses that

you can look at the marketing of a similar business and see what they're doing. I think a lot of people have seen influencers doing their thing and have gone, oh, I want free stuff. And they've kind of tried to replicate that without putting in that time to build community or to create content that's authentic to the brand. So it's really interesting that that was your experience. With these business partnerships that you're doing, what does that look like? Is it co-branded product or is it giveaways? What kind of things are you doing to work with these other small businesses? So I only reach out to businesses that I'm genuinely passionate about. I have done three business collaborations. I reached out to a business person that I really

looked up to who had other businesses such as a candle business. And essentially, I sort of wanted to create a unique product with them. So her and I discussed colors for these candles that would complement my limited edition slippers. And I proposed to her, we're selling this in a bundle. And I really didn't expect any reply when I first emailed her. And when she replied to me, I screamed. I was like beyond happy. It was such a business win because I had previously gone to this person's seminars and watched them talk about business. So it was really crazy to me that I was able to collaborate with them and now I've got a really good relationship with them and they just emailed me last night asking what are we going to do next we love working with you I love

that that's massive to take that step into not only reaching out but proposing something different and something that you're not sure if they're going to pick it up like where did you get this confidence my friend I think I saw somewhere to be delusional and I I was like, you know what? I'm just going to give it a go because if I don't do this, what's the worst that's going to happen? They might not reply. They don't know who I am. And I have like personal goals. And one of my personal goals was to work with this person. And I was just happy that they even replied to me in the first case. And we've, you know, since done four business collaborations and I've just recently done another one with Bang & Body

and they are amazing to work with as well and so we're going to do another bundle together so I guess me as a business owner I look at all the businesses that I see align with my own and being allowed to a business I like to bring out products that relate to self-care that relate to I guess looking after yourself and relaxing. So that aligns with all of the brands that I reach out to. I love that. I feel like I'm just in awe. You're like 22 and absolutely killing it and have this business brain. But I love that comment of I read somewhere to be delusional. Like that's me. I'm delusional all the time. Ask Jess. I'm often like, yeah, but what if it happened though? Like we should just try. And I think that's it, right? Like how are you going to be successful if you

don't just give it a crack. Like give it a try. The worst thing that someone can say is no or just not reply. And whatever, that says more about them than it does about you, right? Absolutely. And when you're reaching out to businesses that you truly look up to, it makes it so much more rewarding when you actually come out of that with a really strong business relationship and you're surrounded by people who are like-minded and they understand how things work and they appreciate how you do business and you appreciate how they do business and you learn off each other. And it's just amazing. I love that so much. It makes me so happy, especially knowing in the background who you're working with and collaborating with, like

our money diarist isn't talking about some random business owner you've never heard about. Like we're talking about people that you definitely have heard about and you're basically still a baby. I cannot wait for you to check in with us in five years, in 10 years and be like, this is where I'm at. Or Jess, you'll probably be too big and important and powerful business lady as to ever spend time with us. Be so busy. Exactly. Oh, my gosh. I feel like that is unfortunately all we have time for today. Thank you so much for joining us. I feel like our community is going to learn genuinely so much from you. Thank you so much for having me. And I hope that at least one person from this could learn something. And if there's anything that you

are holding back and you want to do just do it that's all oh my gosh yes i'm that one person i took a lot from this but jess it is time can you wrap the boring but important stuff of course 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 divine and she's on the money are authorized representatives of in focus securities australia Proprietary Limited, ABN 47097 797 049 AFSL 236523. See you on Wednesday, guys. Bye.