She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: Hustlin' Mums

Episode Date: May 2, 2021

Our Money Diarist this week is an amazing example of how far you can come with hard work and smart budgeting! Such an inspiration, and more bank accounts than you can poke a stick at. This weeks' Money Diarist chats with Victoria Devine and Toni Lodge.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 back to another one of our money diary episodes, where this week we speak to an epic money diarist who has three kids having started having children at the age of 17 and she's only 26 now she is beyond impressive she has her own small business but one of the most exciting things about this money diary is not actually the money diary is it tony lodge recently we've had tony

lodge join the team and in joining the team as our executive producer she's one going to be putting our podcast together. That's me. But two, she's going to be joining us every Monday moving forward to help bring to life our money diaries. Yay. Thank you for having me. It's so exciting. I am genuinely so excited about this because you are a vision. You are a glowy human that everybody loves. And she's also really funny guys. Like really, really funny. Please don't put pressure on. No, but like not on TikTok. She's not funny on TikTok. Not funny on TikTok. She tries, but she's not funny on TikTok, but that is okay. And you know what she is? She's also incredibly intelligent so we are so grateful to have her join the team but this is money diaries episode

so let's stop stroking your ego and get into it tony we got sent an email this week do you want to read it out okay hi she's on the money team i'm 26 years old married and a mom of three boys i met my now husband at 14 years old and ended up falling pregnant and giving birth at 17 years old we never had savings and used every last cent of our income each week three years later i had my second child and that's when i started my own business something i could do from home around my kids schedules and made that my full-time employment within a few weeks how good i went on to have my third child and continued to grow my small business but desperately wanted to buy a home no matter how long it took now we have an over-the-top and incredibly detailed budget which

we love to hear money divided into 13 bank accounts 13 including an emergency account something I never thought I could achieve and are well on our way to our savings goal to build our first home later this year crazy to think three years ago we would end our pay weeks with zero dollars to our name and now we have numerous accounts with savings for everything under the sun oh my gosh how good is that that's amazing have you finished the email can we chat to her now? Yes, let's chat. Obviously, we can't use your name and I can't think of a good hustler name yet, but I'm so impressed with your money diary and welcome to the She's on the Money Diaries. Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, I'm so proud of you and I don't even know you.

How good is that? All right, so the way this is going to work, let's jump straight into all those questions that we've got and then we can have a chat about all of it straight after. Is that all right with you yes that sounds great all right as always the first question is what is your attitude towards money so I'm very considerate I want to make sure every last cent counts in our budget I don't like wasting anything but it definitely has not always been that way for so long we just like we live week to week and we did not have any sort of goal or idea what we wanted to do with our money just floated through as long as our bills are paid we were happy but definitely very different now. How good is that I love when people know what their journey

has been like. So satisfying looking back as well. Totally all right and what do you do for work now and how much do you currently earn? So I own a cleaning service cleaning baby equipment I earn about on track about $30,000 this year. Oh how good is that and it's all just like on your terms yes it is i just work from home sometimes i can work an hour a day or several several hours a day and get more work if i need to so it works really well for me around my kids all right all right on to the questions i've got so many questions but on to the actual scheduled questions what is currently your big money goal um definitely to start building a home later this year hopefully we can get to that goal we're on track right now exciting and do you currently

invest? I do, but not the typical way everyone replies to this question. So, I was tossing up between micro-investing or other investing and I kind of had a light bulb moment that the whole reason I want to invest was to set myself up in retirement. So, being sub-employed, it only made sense that I put my money into my super instead to invest. Genius. You've got a plan, girl. She's got a plan. And do you know what? So many small business owners just forget to pay themselves super and they just don't consider it. They're like, oh, I will when I can afford it. And it's like, well, you're going to need to do it now because otherwise it's going to be so much more expensive to think about it later. A hundred percent. Yeah. So smart. I love that. So do

you currently have any debts? Zero debt. We've paid off everything we have ever had, really. Oh my gosh. And you're on track to buying your first property. Started having babies in your teenage years and you're killing it oh i love this hold on hold on all right next question what is your best money habit um i'm very frugal i like to make sure i get the best price for anything we purchase that's being food or clothes or furniture i will find the best price that is guaranteed that is good have you got any tips for us how do we implement finding the best price guaranteed uh just take your time don't buy very fast make sure you do lots and lots of research isn't guaranteed you can find something better at a better price. I love that and in contrast

what's your worst money habit? Probably take out. It's just far too easy to drive down to Maccas for dinner when you've had a long day of work and you've got three hungry kids in the car so definitely need to break that habit. I feel like when I become a parent that will absolutely be me. I think there's a lot of people that would relate to that. Yeah yeah yeah. Kids or not. Yeah Yeah, I feel like there's so many people that are always like, oh, my gosh, yeah, when I have kids, I'm never going to feed them non-organic anything and they're only ever going to drink water. And I already know that's not going to be me.

Like, I already know. You have to be realistic. Macca's chips, oh, the kids can have them all the time. Like, I'm already set up. It's not worth the fight at night time. You just have to give them Macca's instead of veggies. Exactly. Save the dishes and save the fights.

Yeah, no, I'm totally for that because I know what I'm like when I'm hankery so therefore I know what my future children are going to be like and I guarantee you it'll be 10 times worse than me so give them the Macca's chips and uh they probably won't get the diet coke I order because I won't allow that oh no water only obviously unless it's a Friday they can have Fanta yeah they can have Fanta on Friday all right and if I asked you to give yourself a grade what would you grade your money habits um probably a B because I definitely have room to improve but I've definitely improved from where we were. Only a B? I just feel like I have so much more to learn especially when we do eventually buy a home there's going to be a

whole new ballpark of bills I don't even know anything about. Oh you're such a grown-up I love you. I love you oh my gosh all right we have so many more questions for you we'll just jump to a quick break and then I'm going to dive straight into them. All right, we are back and I am so excited to ask you some questions. I hope it's not too pervy, but you mentioned before you had your first child at 17, got into a relationship at 14. How old are you now with three children? I'm 26 right now. And so you've now got three kids and what are their ages? Because I'm really bad at that quick maths? So they are nine or almost nine, almost six and almost three. Wow. Oh my gosh. And how does that make you feel when it comes to money? Because obviously having a kid

at 17, I really doubt is a lot of people's plans. It's kind of just something that you go, all right, well, this is happening. We're going to deal with it. But how has that impacted your money story? So it definitely made it more difficult when you did move out. It's hard for anyone financially to move out but then have to throw in the expenses of kids and have to make sure you're responsible right from the start so you don't fall behind. It's hard in that sense but it also gives you a kick up the bum to do the right thing from the start.

So I didn't, like we never fell into big debt or anything in those first years which I know a lot of people do so that kind of helped I guess. Yeah, absolutely. We talk a bit about how FOMO affects our finances and our financial story on She's On The Money, do you feel like because you were younger and having kids, like your friends would have been going out and partying

and like spending a summer in Europe and things, like did you feel like you had to service your family but then also meet the standards of what your friends were up to while you were young as well? Do you feel like that affected you? When I was younger, no, actually, because my husband and I are quite quiet people. We don't party or anything.

But as we got older and we saw all our friends achieve buying homes and having these grand weddings, that was something that we never could achieve as much as we would like to. So I guess it's not when you're younger but definitely as you get older and realise you're falling behind where everyone else is sitting in their life. See, I feel like you've got it right. Like I feel like maybe this is a very backwards opinion but when I'm –

because I'm turning 30 in the next couple of months and I don't have kids and I'm probably a couple of years off kids yet. I feel like when I have kids, you're going to have already gone through that. So you're going to be like laughing at me being older, not having as much energy for these children. You're like, mate, I'm done with that. I had three kids. And your sleepless nights are already gone. Yeah, they're all gone. So you can actually live your best life in the period of time where you can generate great income and like have a work-life balance that works instead of also trying to make it in a career while having a toddler that needs to be dropped off at daycare like your kids are going to be pretty self-sufficient

at that point so I feel like you might feel a little bit behind but I guarantee everything's going to come to a grinding halt for a lot of those friends and you'll end up being the ones that are like yeah see cool we're just popping off for the weekend um we're having a great time have fun picking up your four-year-old from daycare at 40 Victoria yeah it's what's going to happen I definitely I definitely talk to my husband a lot that all the things all places we're going to go to when the kids are growing up, all the travel we're going to do and be a lot more financially stable when we go travel. We don't have to get credit cards to travel or anything like that. Oh my gosh, that is so true though. Like I hate that you said you felt behind. I was

like, no, I feel like you're exactly on track. Like you sound like a really level-headed person. How do you talk to your kids about money? So we're quite open. So they know our budget. We talk with them when I'm working it out. They sit with me and they look at it. They obviously don't understand but they are understanding that we need a budget so we can pay our bills and they're watching us grow our savings to buy a home and they're eagerly waiting for us to get to that goal just as much as we are so I think it's going to help them when they get older it's like having a little fan club of people who are cheering you on to buy your first home I feel like we'd all achieve a goal much quicker if we all had a little fan club yeah I had like a visual thing on our

whiteboard of where we go like how far we have achieved and the boys like definitely make sure we don't fall behind or skip a week of savings because they can see that so you don't want to disappoint them. Oh that's so sweet I love that and to be pervy again what does your partner do and how much does your partner earn? So he works in customer service and he earns about $55,000 a year. That's pretty good that's pretty good and is he the same age as you you met at 14 yeah? Yes. Yes, he is the same age as me. That is so sweet.

You guys are killing it. I know. I love love stories as well. I love when people are like, oh, yeah, we met at school and now we have three kids. Like, it's so sweet. So how do between you, you guys meet your joint money goals? Like, have you always been on the same page about money goals?

Obviously, you said that a home is something that you're working towards. Do you have the same money values or is that something that you come up against? Or, you know, talk to me about that. my husband and I are definitely on the same track have the same goals of mine so I sit down and write the budget and my husband's definitely with me agrees with the goals we want to achieve and agrees with the amount we put into each account and we have a joint account so all our money just goes into one account or massively transferred to each account so all pretty happy and find it very easy to handle i guess so you said that you've got 13 bank accounts like how do you

prioritize what goes where and is that kind of how you manage exactly what's where or like what's your what's your thinking behind that so we have a very detailed budget we actually downloaded one from money smart and it is amazing to get all the details i need um and we deposit all our income into one joint account from there we have automatic transfers into 13 different accounts for all the different bills so we have accounts for savings and slurred and groceries and school and daycare and utilities and kids dentals and you name it we have an account for it so then we know like when money comes out of the account we're not going to take money from another account it's all evenly spread out yeah that's so good and do you feel like that actually just

keeps you more on track because there's not just one big pot of money that you can be tempted to dip into yes yes absolutely previously we had a bank account where um all our money was going to one bills account we would call it but it's so easy to actually spend more on like a celebration than we expected like a kid's birthday and then that takes from our rego for instance and then we'll get to the day rego's due and you're like oh my god there's not enough money in here now Oh, that's so stressful too, especially with three kids. That's a lot to deal with. How do kids – I obviously don't have children.

We've recently done an episode on having children and the costs associated with giving birth, not actually bringing up children. But, like, what does that look like on a weekly or monthly basis? Like, what do kids on average, I guess, cost, especially three of them? They're expensive. I can imagine. Yeah, that's a lot of tiny teddies.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the biggest expense is daycare because our kids go, our children kids go to a public school and just the amount they spend on daycare for the month is enough to cover their entire expenses for the public school for the year. What? Oh.

How much is daycare per month? So each day is $115 and they go three days a week. $115 a day to go to daycare? yeah and we're not even like in a capital city or anything like that which is even more expensive oh my gosh i've i always end up really shocked about the cost of daycare which at the same time as going you know what that's ridiculous like that's so much money you can also see on the flip side you're like you know what it's my child and they're being looked after but the amount that daycare workers do not get paid is not reflective of the amount of money that parents are paying

for them to go to daycare and you know what else baffles me about this is that is a cost this is all personal opinion so please don't take it as advice my friends what it costs for a child to go to daycare to me in my opinion is directly related to your ability to produce an income as a parent so given it is a work-related cost why is it not tax deductible oh interesting imagine if you could claim daycare on tax how much easier life would be like I'm not even asking for daycare to be brought down just let me claim it on tax I think as well because um being able to send your kids to daycare and correct me if I'm wrong gives you a sense of independence and your own identity to be able to work or whether that's time that you spend being able to go to the gym or do your own

stuff whatever it is like all that life admin that kind of pops up that you've got to do and you need that spare time just to be your own person it's it would be really like liberating to be able to do your own thing but I mean absolutely it's very expensive to be able to do it but $115 a day that's like more than $300 a week that's what some people are making in a week which makes it completely unequitable to be sending kids to daycare sometimes no wonder women are put in a position where they have to choose between well do I just stay home because then I don't have to outlay that money. Exactly. What if you have three kids under four and none of them

are at school? Yeah. That would be so expensive and it feels so harsh to be having to make decisions like that. Yeah. I really respect you. Yeah, no, that's no easy feat for sure. It was definitely a decision we put off

for a long time because of how expensive it is but last year during COVID they made free childcare so that definitely got us to put our youngest into daycare because i relished that and then um i realized how much i needed that because i was so much more productive at work having no children home yeah absolutely couldn't call now after that i know that you mentioned a little bit about like what your business is before but could you talk a bit more about what your small business is and how many start that as a

mom of three yeah that's huge um so i own a business cleaning all things baby equipment it's a nice easy job to do from home I started I previously worked in a pharmacy and then I was having a really hard time working there I had such bad anxiety having to think about even going to work and then my eldest son got really sick and was in hospital and I had to call in say call in sick say I wasn't going to come in for a couple weeks and the moment I hung up I I was on such a relief from my constant anxiety that I knew that was it. You had to go. Yes, I wrote my resignation email within 30 minutes.

Oh, my gosh. You were like, actually, you know how I said a couple of weeks? I kind of meant ever. Yeah. I'm not coming back. Yeah, so I was trying to push up the bum to get a small business going and I had been thinking about this for ages. So I just thought, what the hell, I'll do it now.

and it's ended up working out really well because there's no one in our area that's serviced this need. But that would be booming, right? Because surely like stuff like prams and high chairs get absolutely filthy, yeah. Yes, absolutely. And there's so many of them all around Australia now ever since I signed my business.

So it's definitely something that is very needed everywhere. Yeah, absolutely. What a good idea as well. She's a genius. Yeah. That's so niche but also I love that she can just do it from home. You don't even have to go to other people's places to do it. Yeah, and also you could do it at your own pace.

As long as people had things when they needed it, you could kind of sit at home and go like, oh, I don't have time for that right now, I'll do it in a second, you know, no deadline of, yeah, amazing. I love that. I could do that, but I'm too over the top of a like, oh, I need to get this done. We're the same, so I don't know why I even said that.

Don't worry. Like, I totally get it. It's good in theory, but then you, yeah, no, it's not how it works. But that's okay. That's a conversation to have over on the business Bible. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Money Diarist, it has been so, so lovely to have a chat with you today. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I'm so excited that we get to have these

conversations each and every single week with members of our community where they get to share their story and we get to, you know, know all the pervy details about how they live their money lives. Thank you for having me. It's really nice to chat. Okay. But just before we head off, we'd like to acknowledge and pay respect to Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples the traditional custodians of the lands the waterways and the skies all across australia we thank you for sharing and for caring for the land on which we are able to learn we power respects to elders past and present and we share our friendship and our kindness 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 and we promise victoria divine is an authorized representative of australia pacific funds management proprietary limited abn 34132463257 afsl 339151 and thanks to the team of audio wizards putting together today's podcast i'm actually that's me that's you you're thanking yourself thank you you're welcome you are so good tony oh my god tony i love your hair Thank you, Tony. It's beautiful. Well, the people on TikTok don't, but speaking of social media,

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Send us stuff. Send us stuff. We have the blue tick. We're legit. it we're at she's on the money a us and don't forget to rate review subscribe whatever you do on whatever podcast platform you find us on see you next week guys