She's On The Money - Money Diaries: Life Is A Rollercoaster

Episode Date: January 15, 2023

Today's Money Diarist left a bad relationship and used to live week to week with her finances. Due to some ongoing mental health struggles, she was recently a patient at a psychiatric hospital. But at the end of last year she was married and is now in a really good place. We can't wait for you to meet this gorgeous and inspirational community member! This episode contains discussions of mental health struggles and eating disorders, if these are difficult topics for you, please check out one of our other episodes. 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. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs.  Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are authorised representatives of Money Sherpa PTY LTD ABN - 321649 27708,  AFSL - 451289.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, my name is Natasha Nabanunga-Bamblett. I'm a proud Yorta Yorta, Kurni, Wolperi and Awadjuri 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 Awadjuri 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 one of our money diaries, where we talk with one of our incredible She's on the Money community members all about their journey. Let's jump straight into this one. We got a message this week and it went a little like this. Hi, She's on the Money. I'd love to share my money story that's interwoven with mental health struggles. I've recently been released from a psychiatric hospital stay, was married at the end of last year and have returned from an extended honeymoon and work break. I used to live week to week and was in a bad relationship, but got out and saved my money. Life is a

rollercoaster and have recently experienced mental health battles and how money interplays into this. Money Diarist, I feel like this is going to be a rollercoaster, as you say, but also really relatable. Thank you. Welcome to the show. Before we start, I do just want to give our friends who are listening a little bit of a content warning that this Money Diary does contain conversation about trauma, depression, and eating disorders. So if that is something that you are not ready to hear right now, or it's not the day for it today, we have a million other podcasts you can go and listen to, and we will see you on another day. but content warning aside, Money Diarist, I'm very excited to have you on the show today.

Thank you. Me too. I'm excited to be here. Oh, how good. All right. We're mixing things up this year and I'm actually starting with our last question. So Money Diarist, do you mind if we dive straight into asking the big hitting questions? Yes. Let's go. Let's go. All right. Money Diarist, I want to know, because we're mixing it up this year, what grade would you give you money habits if we asked you to give yourself a grade from A to F? Oh, I think a C plus. A C plus. Maybe diving into a B minus. Oh, I'm interested to hear more about that. So as always, my favorite now second question is I want to know a little bit more about your money story and your attitude towards money? Yeah. So it has changed a lot over the past few years.

Growing up in my family, we were told never to talk about salary. Don't talk about people's money situation. It was just taboo. It was bad vibes to talk about money. And so I had no financial literacy. We were comfortable, but we weren't living luxuriously. We didn't go overseas. we skimped on food and clothes sometimes you know my parents worked really hard to pay off their mortgage pay our school fees build a new house for us but it definitely we weren't living large that's for sure so my attitude was when I was 14 and got my slip signed off by my parents I got out got a job and just you know wanted my own money and I wanted to buy my own clothes and so i've been a spender ever since i feel like that's relatable for everybody who's grown up in

a similar circumstance i feel like it goes from one end to the spectrum to the other like if you grew up and it was scrimping and saving and you genuinely felt like you were missing out sometimes you end up going all the way to the other end you're like i'm just gonna spend i don't even care i don't want to talk about budget because maybe you don't know enough about it yet but you just go straight to the other end and you just spend spend spend yeah i'll take my seven dollars from Macca's and I'll go buy a new top. That's what I want. And I always strived for a higher salary because I just wanted more and more clothes basically. But it really changed when I left a relationship several years ago and realized I didn't have much to my name actually.

Despite earning okay money, I was living week to week. I didn't have anything to show for it. and when I went through my mental health crisis and it got really bad, I was really lucky that I had changed my ways and I did have some money put aside for that. Oh, smart. So despite what you said before, so you said that you grew up and you didn't really get a financial education, you didn't have much financial literacy because it was taboo to talk about money. I want to dive a little bit deeper into that because I feel like that is really relatable. When you say it was taboo to talk about money, is that because you brought it up one time and got shut down or was it just something that you inherently knew you shouldn't talk about or was it something where

you just never talked about money in general? I don't know. How did that come to be the situation in your family? I think it was a mixture of my parents and their backgrounds. I come from a second generation immigrant family and I think there was this, I don't know how it's called, like you'd have the evil eye on you if you talked about money, that stigma. And I did ask one day, how much does daddy make? And I was told no. That is so rude, money diarist. You can't believe you'd even try. So growing up, you said that you didn't have a lot of financial literacy and then you got to a point where you had some money put aside. How did that come to be? Like, did you just know that you needed it? Did you get to a point where you, you know, you felt,

oh my gosh, I never have any cash. Like, where were we? How did that work? It was basically that. So I left that relationship, moved back home. So I had the opportunity to save a little bit more and I just started making small goals. So at first it was, okay, I'm going to get this promotion and with the extra money, the difference between my salary and the new salary that I was getting, I'd put that away into a little fund and maybe at the end of my contract, I'll go on a nice holiday or something. I didn't end up going on that holiday because I got promoted again. And it's just this job hopping since then. And I've always just put money away and aside. I got married last year. Congratulations. Congratulations. Same.

congratulations to you too yeah we have matching wedding years yes we do and I was putting money away for that anyway so I used your trick and I read it from your book where you have the different accounts for different oh yeah yeah yeah yes so I had a little emergency fund and then my wedding and honeymoon fund and it just was automated and flowed through there yeah no that makes absolute absolute sense. I want to ask a little bit more about the mental health side of things, but we might come back to that because right now I want to know, because you keep saying, oh, I got a promotion, I did this. I want to know, how much money do you earn and what do you do for work? So I work in the tertiary education sector and currently I earn about

$140,000 a year. Oh my gosh, that is a very good innings. And to give us a little bit of context, How old are you, Money Diarist? I am, I have to look at the date, 32. Oh my gosh. Why is it like that? The other day, somebody asked me how old I was and I told them I was 30 and I'm not. I'm 31 and my next birthday is 32. So I've been 31 for a while. And am I now at the age where I'm lying about my age? No, it's because we skipped two years because of COVID. That's a good point. I didn't even have a 30th birthday. So in my head, I'm still 29 this is great this is great I'm going with that so you earn $140,000 a year what were your salaries before that so you said before something along the lines of like I worked

at McDonald's for my $7 an hour how do we go from earning $7 an hour at McDonald's all the way up to $140,000 because that's a that's a little bit of a jump my friend it's incremental I was 14 when I was earning $7 an hour. So it's been a good over a decade, over 15 years. The salary that I was on when I left that relationship was about 90K, I think. And just from there, I just applied for promotions and incrementally just gone up. Wow. So $90,000 as a salary when exiting a relationship I'm going to assume puts you in an okay financial position to go you know what I don't want to be in this relationship anymore yeah I don't know enough about your history and we can jump into it a little bit here what were your circumstances when you left that relationship

because I know it wasn't a good one and how did finances and mental health play into that yeah the mental health aspect has always been there for me so I've always struggled with mental health issues we fought a lot about money actually and he was very secretive and closed off about his earnings and money and really maintained that I had to be independent and pay for my own stuff even when we were together for a few years it wasn't my values it wasn't the way I wanted to be in a relationship I'm not saying he had to pay for me all the time but it just it was very rigid and not collaborative. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so I guess we were living quite a expensive lifestyle. You know, the city that I live in is not cheap and we were renting in

quite an expensive suburb and going out all the time and buying, you know, clothes and stuff and yeah. So you said before that mental health was playing into that and obviously the way that he was approaching money wasn't aligned to your values of wanting to be a bit more collaborative what does that do to your mental health during that time because I feel like that would weigh quite as somebody who also experiences mental health issues ongoing like that would play a lot into from my perspective maybe my self-confidence and my self-worth and how did that I guess impact you personally not what it would have done to me it definitely impacted my confidence my self-esteem my security in the relationship it made me really insecure sad

depressed it didn't feel like it was a fair standing between us and I think it just really dissolved my confidence in terms of our future together yeah no and that's really common I find it really interesting having these conversations because sometimes you'll talk to a couple right and they'll say no we have completely separate funds and like we don't we don't mix money at all and you go wow I couldn't do that but like good for you or maybe you talk to a couple and they go yep like absolutely everything is shared we only have one bank account between the two of us and that's what works for us. And you might flip around and go, wow, that wouldn't work for me. And I think that the thing that is consistent in those conversations is it seems that both

parties in that relationship have the same value set. So they want to share their finances or they've come to the conclusion that separate finances works for them. But from your perspective or what I'm picking up on here is that it actually wasn't your values and you wanted to share and he was maybe being a little bit distant, which obviously is going to play into you feeling insecure and you not feeling like you want to, you know, you're not feeling that committed in the relationship, which makes you not feel like a good person. So how did you come to the conclusion that, all right, well, our values are not the same. This is impacting me in a way that is irreparable and I don't want to be in this relationship anymore. How did you make that

decision? Because just because you're in a bad relationship, it doesn't mean that you don't like the person anymore right like at what point did you decide all right over and out my friend yeah I think it was the point where we were no longer communicating civilly about it and it was the point where there was no compromise whatsoever when I wanted to talk about our future and possibly having a joint fund to pay for joint bills or joint groceries and that kind of stuff it was not on. It was absolutely shut down. And I just, I didn't want to be in a relationship with someone who didn't value my opinion or respect my opinion or even want to work with me on it anymore. So I think that was amongst other things, obviously, but that was one of

the tipping points, I think. It makes my heart really happy to hear you say like, no, I don't want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't have the same values as me. And that to me, is really important. But I want to know, talk me through what happened when you did move out. You moved back in with your parents. Obviously, like, if you've been in a relationship with somebody, moving back in with your parents can feel like a step backwards. Talk me through that process and how you felt. I know you said you saved money, but it doesn't always mean you were super happy to be there, right? No. I mean, I love my parents. I adore my parents too. Adore them. Like, love spending time with them. Should I move back in

with them? Absolutely not. Yeah. I felt a bit defeated about it, but I gave myself a goal. I said, look, I'll move back home. I'll save some money. I'll go on a nice trip. And then I can think about moving out with a friend maybe in the next year or so. So I had something in my future that I was looking forward to. And I never ended up doing that because I met my husband, my future husband-to-be back then. Things moved pretty fast with him, I will say. Just because we were so aligned, like we have the same money, like thoughts, ethos in everything, not just financial, but we just clicked. When you know you know money, Doris, when you know you know, that was like Steve and I, zero to 5,000 overnight, basically. When you know you know. Yeah. So I want to know,

you obviously saved and wanted to go on a trip and then you met your partner, but what are your current big money goals? What are we currently working towards? Because you got married last year and that's usually a pretty big money goal to tick off the list. That was the money goal, the wedding and the extended honeymoon, which was also a big money chunk. Money chunk, I like that. Yep. But the next plan is, I've got two, it's to buy my own investment property because my husband had one prior to us getting married. So we're paying that off together to buy my own. And I want to set up investment accounts for my future children oh I love this so that you know when they get to 18 or whenever they can either put down a deposit on a house or something or go for a nice

big trip I love this all right so you want to invest for your children's future but I want to know do you currently invest for yourself I do yes tell me about it how when where why when did you start? I started when I started listening to you actually on this podcast. I have a six park account. Yes, queen. And I have around, as I checked this morning, 23,000. Oh, who are you? That is an epic amount to have invested. She's on the money's podcast. It's only three. How good. Oh my gosh. I love that. And do you have any other investments? You've got six park, but are you dabbling in anything else? Or talk to me about your super. Yes, I've got $143,294 in my super. And you're 32 and you've got $140,000 in super. That is epic. But also you did say you

work in the tertiary sector, which means that you have a very, very sexy superannuation guarantee, which is what is yours because they vary? 17%. Yeah. So you get 17% super. That is very, very nice. I'm very envious, so envious that I have to go to a break to calm down. And then when we get back, I'm going to go through debt and talking about your best and worst habits and diving a little bit more into how you got through your mental health issues. Don't go anywhere, guys. All right, money diarist, we are back and we have been talking literally everything from you getting married in 2022 to mental health issues to you earning 17.5% super, which is definitely big dog energy. I actually want to railroad this conversation slightly. How did you save up for

your wedding and what were your wedding values? Because I feel like I'm still in this bubble of really enjoying absorbing other people's wedding content and their budgets and how they did it. Talk to me about it. How long were you engaged? Like all of that information, I'm going to need it right now. So we got engaged at the end of 2020. We were supposed to get married in 21 but COVID life so we were engaged for two years as soon as we got engaged I cordoned off a little bank account and I just started throwing money into it sat down with my husband first and we worked out our maximum limit and then I went away and organized it all basically so you are also the resident wedding planner i like this i was i was we did sit down and i said

what's most important to you and he said music and food and i went okay what's most important to me flowers and venue and dresses and then we went and sourced proposals for those big ticket items and then came back together saw how much was left in our pot basically of our budget and then did the rest. Yeah. Epic. Can I be really pervy and ask what your wedding cost? You know what? I don't know exactly. Neither do I. Neither do I because my head is buried in the sand. Let's call it an approximate amount. Like was it a $5,000 wedding? Was it a $50,000 wedding? My cap originally was about 25. Yep. I think it probably creeped closer to 30 maybe. That's still under of the average for Australia. So you must have been a pretty good little wedding planner.

Yeah. So I want to know, how did you come to that budget of $25,000? Like you sat down with your husband and you just said, hey, I think 25 grand is good. Or did you kind of do some research on flowers and, you know, the food and the music that was important to you was going to cost and then work backwards. Like how did you come up with the number? Because it's interesting how everybody comes up with them in a different way. I think I researched the venue first because I knew that was going to be the big ticket item, the most important and the most expensive. I knew what the flowers would roughly cost and how much

I was willing to give to flowers. And then I kind of went to my husband and said, this is what it's going to cost for these items. I think we should set X amount. And then he balked and was like, no. And then I talked him through all of the line items basically. Yes. Yeah. Oh, how interesting. Oh my gosh. The way that you're smiling when we talk about your husband means that I know you married the right person, which is really, really sweet. But I want to go back. We were talking earlier about, you know, we've put a trigger warning on this episode. We talked about, you know, trauma and depression and eating disorders and all of those things. Like

they just like, it sounds awful, but they just don't leave you. Like as somebody who has experienced an eating disorder and also has depression and is on an ongoing management plan for depression, I'm assuming that you might be in a really similar position. Wedding planning can be stressful. How did all of this play into, you know, your depression and the eating disorder you had and managing stressful situations? And now what I'm assuming is a relatively stressful job, like you don't earn $140,000 and have no pressure on you. So talk me through I guess how all of that plays into your money story yeah I think it wasn't so much the planning a wedding that was stressful because I'm a good planner and I had it all done in a few

weeks anyway it was more so COVID coming in and disrupting my plans and when I wanted to get married and all of my other plans that I wanted to do after that my job is also really stressful and I think I just got into a spiral where everything fed off one another and I just broke down and that's when I had to go into the psychiatric facility and I was really grateful that I had some savings behind me so that I could one pay for the facility pay for the health insurance to go into the facility but also to be able to take some time off work as well and I think that's really important that everybody has you know a little emergency fund or just a little bit of something because you never know what's going to happen in life in that year I had deaths

in the family I had you know as you say wedding stress and trying to plan replan a postponed wedding I have a quite a very stressful job I do like it but it does play on my mental health especially. And it all just fed into one big depression monster and I needed to take some time off. How did you get to a point where you were happy to accept the help? So I feel like a lot of us get to this point of burnout and everything becomes all consuming and we bury our heads in the sand. But I feel like you've done it, we won't say the right way, but in a way that's put you in the best possible position to be your best self and I think often psychiatric help and going especially into a psychiatric hospital is often shrouded with you know judgment

and feeling like that's a level of defeat and I don't believe that for a second but how did you go do you know what this is what I need because a lot of people that that is suggested to say oh absolutely not and they just continue struggling on what point did you have to get to to go yep that's absolutely what we need to do and I'm really happy to I got to a really low point I was having suicidal ideation and suicidal thoughts and it was actually my husband and my psychologist so my psychiatric team that said think about yourself think about your husband and they really just talked me into it I did need talking into it yeah yeah that's what real support is often about. Yeah. It was really me just opening my ears, if you will, and listening

to the very heartfelt and sincere wishes of my family, my husband and my friends to say, it's okay to take a break, take a break. 100% it is. And I'm so glad that you were surrounded by that support during that period of time, because it can be such a challenging thing. how was it coming out how was it coming out and having to go back into real life like get back into work and get back into life and you know obviously finish the wedding planning which you obviously have done what was that transition like it was really weird i will say but it was really gentle and soft i had really great friends and family and even my colleagues and my work was really supportive. So I'm really grateful that everybody was so understanding. It really made

me rethink the stigma around mental health that I shouldn't be so ashamed. No, you shouldn't. Feeling a lot of shame. Yeah. But everyone was just so understanding and empathetic and compassionate. It was really touching. Oh, I love that. I love that that's your experience of it. Because I think if people are listening to this and they're just at that point, or maybe they don't have the support that you had. There's nothing to be worried about. In fact, you will find the support the more you seek it. And I feel like at times like that, you often don't want to put your hand up and say you're drowning. And a lot of people only say that they are drowning once they have pulled themselves out of the water, but you don't have to. Like we can

actually all be in it together and be really supportive during a period of time like this. And I think that's one thing that I know this shouldn't come as a surprise, but it's really shocking to me especially having been through mental health issues how supportive people are when you go oh I'm just having a bit of a rough time and they go oh Victoria well and you go oh that's not how I thought the conversation would go because I think in that moment you really feel like a burden and you're not you're not a burden at all absolutely I feel the same way as you do I'd say 9.9 times out of 10 when I have a conversation with someone about mental health they are understanding and they say oh me too and then we just have that shared understanding

it's really great it's only that 0.1 0.01 percent where it goes haywire yeah 100 percent all right i want to get back on track or more on track with money diaries so let's segue back into the structured questions we haven't asked about debt we've talked about investment we've talked about your money goals I want to know do you have any debt if so what is it I don't myself though my husband has a mortgage it's our mortgage now so we're paying that off yep for his property but I don't have any other debts apart from that I paid off my hex debt completely last year which is really great really freeing it's so freeing it's nice to see my pay packet go up slightly and then be taken back for tax, but we won't talk about that part. At least you don't see some of it

just going towards HECS. I totally get it. I totally get that. All right. I want to know a bit about your shopping habits as well. What do you think is your best money habit? I set up accounts for each of my goals and requirements. So I had my wedding and honeymoon fund, which I'm now converting into investment property fund, bills, spending and emergency. and once I put those automatically into there I lock them away like I don't dip back into them and when I am feeling particularly impulsive which I was during when my mental health was at its worst because I was just using that crutch you know shopping to make myself feel better I would like give all of my accounts to my husband and be like don't give me any money

I love that. That's a very good level of self-awareness. Yes. I'll be like, oh, I'm feeling spendy today. Can you just take? Just hide my money for right now. Yes. Love.

Would you say that's your worst money habit? If not, what is it? That's probably my worst money habit is the impulsive shopping. But I feel like you're self-aware of that in that you literally have strategies to make sure that that's not happening. How good is that? Yes, it is. I should give myself props for that.

I'm going to give you props for that. I really, really like that. You're like, all right, well, if I'm feeling a bit spendy, this is what I do instead of just going, yeah, I get really spendy and I don't have a strategy to deal with this. Like that is very not head in the sand behavior. We like to see that over at She's On The Money. I'm going to wrap this up because I am very aware that I have been talking to you for a long time and I'm so, so grateful of it. But at the very start of the episode, I asked you to grade yourself and your money habits and you gave me a C plus. And throughout this money diary, you've told me a lot about your investment and your savings and how you paid for

your wedding and how you're saving for an investment property and you have a banking and cash flow plan and that, you know, obviously you're quite self-aware when it comes to spending. Do you still think you're a C plus? Probably not. What would you give your spending habits if we now asked you to give yourself a grade? I'd say we're creeping up to B+. I like this. I like this a lot. And do you know what it shows me? It shows me that the more money conversations we have, the more likely we are to be kind on ourselves when it comes to money habits. So this has been good. This has been really good. Money Diarist, thank you so much for joining us for a Money Diary. I feel like I've learned a lot. I also feel like I've related a lot

to a lot of your story. So thank you for joining us. I know that this is going to go down so well in the community. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Of course. All right, guys, we will see you on Wednesday. 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. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs. Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are authorised representatives of Money Sherpa PTY LTD ABN 321 649 27708 AFSL 451 289.

Thank you.