She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: Locked down Kiwi

Episode Date: January 10, 2021

It's everyone's favourite part of the pod, so we gave it it's own day. Welcome, friends, to Money Diary Mondays where each week we take a sneak peek into the financial lives of perfect strangers. Strap in, because this is a goodie. Joining you for the very first Money Diary you’ve got Victoria Devine, Ryan Jon and the very shiny, very bright and very new to the SOTM team Jessica Ricci.Do you love the podcast SICK and want more SOTM? Course ya do. Join our Facebook page to share your money wins and money confessions, follow us on Insta for daily inspo to keep you on track and DEFINITELY subscribe to our newsletter, the written recap of the pod's key takeaways, including some bonus bits you won't want to miss.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. My name, as always, is Victoria Devine and I am a financial advisor, a millennial, and I am a woman who is wildly passionate about all things finance. In this Money Diaries episode, you're going to hear about our locked down Kiwi who moved to Australia right before the coronavirus hit, struggled through the entire thing and

has come out the other side on a completely different page. And we're going to hear her story and how her and her partner and young child got through that. Ryan John, as always, is going to be joining me. So Ryan, can you read out the email she sent us last week? my husband daughter and i moved over in february this year from new zealand to melbourne to create a better future for ourselves with better opportunities beautiful a month later we hit lockdown not so beautiful not so beautiful what a disaster we used all of our savings trying to

just get by during the pandemic i was able to get a part-time job and support my little family my husband has machine operating experience but he's had no luck getting a job as so many people had lost their jobs it was really competitive to get new work oh my gosh and because no one's really hiring when no one's all the factories and stuff are closed right oh the worst when i was miserable and stressed i would clean and i would listen to the shiz on the money podcast and wow did it change my look on money and how it had control over me growing up my parents never taught me about money but now my husband finally has a full-time job i work part-time and look after my daughter the rest of the time we save we budget we feel empowered every day knowing we have

extra save for emergencies we want to buy a house and hopefully we'll be able to afford to visit new zealand when we can in the future how exciting so i didn't want to use the term survivor because it just sounds maybe a bit more dramatic dramatic than it really is but but it's totally to come over here without a job and hit a lockdown and everything that's happened to come out the other side i'm a survivor all right maybe using survivor wasn't too dramatic victoria's singing on the podcast you're welcome new year new may is that what we can come to expect in 2021 absolutely so many surprises and more all right i'm gonna call her the locked down kiwi all right lockdown kiwi all right let's give her a bell

hello is this the formerly locked down kiwi oh yes it is oh hello friend hello i'm so nervous why are you nervous i just put my daughter to sleep went into the office which isn't the room she goes into some hoping that she just so you're nervous not because of the money diary you're nervous because of the money diary i'm so nervous because of the money diary in all honesty you should be more nervous that will wake your sleeping child but that is another story okay lockdown kiwi what has your relationship with money been like in the past well my parents never taught me about money my mom didn't really talk to me about it at all neither did my dad and it's not something that I learned in school I was very I'll make the money

I'll spend it and I'll know that I'll get paid again my husband on the other hand he was doing a course in accounting at university and his dad always always talked about it but I never was willing to have conversations with him about it because I didn't want to argue because I've seen that in the past so now we're building a money story together awesome and being pervy what do you do for work now? I work part-time at a Chinese takeaway. We moved over to Australia February the 5th and I was very lucky to go down to my local supermarket and there was a Chinese restaurant outside and I just applied for the job and got it. So I got the job a month after we got here. Oh, winner. You sound really kind so I'd hire you too. So that makes sense to me.

Do you get free prawn crackers? Thank you. Yeah, do you get free prawn crackers? That's Oh, my daughter, every time she comes in, obviously, she's two and a half, doesn't know about money. She goes straight for the prawn crackers. She's genius. Every time. Yeah. Woman after my own heart, honestly. Now, would you be comfortable telling us how much you earn and how much is currently in your bank account?

So my husband and I got a joint bank account when we first moved here because during COVID, obviously, people were losing jobs and losing money, not gaining jobs. So we were off mine, and then my husband got a job recently. So we make about $3,000 a fortnight, and my account is $2,500. Awesome. And what is your attitude to money, and what's currently your big money goal? My attitude has drastically changed from being reliant on savings and stress due to COVID's impact on us financially. But now I'm empowered to replenish our savings and more in control since listening to the She's On The Money podcast. Our big savings goal is to own a house and create financial stability for our future here in Australia. Yay! And what's your attitude towards investing and do you currently have any investments?

You guys were the first ones that taught me about investing. I didn't know anything about it. It still scares me because my relationship with money is still mending from spending on our savings. but I know now that I'm more in control of my money and with the knowledge I'm gaining, we'd like to consider trying to micro-invest in the future. That's super exciting. So what debts do you currently have?

So my husband has a student loan in New Zealand that we're currently paying off from our joint account. Other than that, that's it. No credit cards, no personal loans, no finance cards or phones, which we're really proud of. That is epic. Do student loans in New Zealand get a bit complicated when you leave New Zealand? I've heard the interest like triples or something crazy.

So after six months after leaving the country, we do get interest accumulated on his student loan. So it is very hard and it is a big student loan, but we're lucky it's the only thing that we have. Interesting. So what would you say your best money habit is? I've never been into buying things for the sake of it. I find deals and I don't impulse buy. I take photos of things. I look at it for a while. I consider the price and if it's something I want, I buy it. We've never had a credit card or contract for personal loans. However, I did use Afterpay when we were trying to set up our life

here, like furniture, but I always budget for it and I've never had to pay extra from missed payments and we don't use it for things that aren't needed. So it sounds like it was a super handy tool in your situation it was i did listen to all your podcasts about after pay but um we've been really smart about it and it's something that we needed when we were living off our savings yeah and i think that that's actually something that people get a little bit confused about when they do listen to my podcast because i've actually never said get rid of your after pay or never use it i literally just said it is such a bad tool if you're bad at money but if you can use it as a great tool sometimes it's great for cash flow in your situation it sounds like it was something

that really helped you through a time where you actually needed a bit of extra money? Oh, yeah. It was essential. But I do, I see so many people in your group and they're always like, oh, my money goal has been and I achieved this by getting rid of afterpay.

And I think for me, I'm very lucky to have had it. And in the past, we've always used it because we haven't had savings. So we always just put it into our budget for payday. 100%. I think it's a really lucky position to be in that you don't have to use it anymore but knowing that the option is there should you ever need it and you can use it responsibly i think that's great on the flip side of that question what is

your worst money habit oh confession time so i work night and my husband doesn't cook so even though i plan to meal prep i never end up having time because i'm a stay-at-home mom during the day and then i work at night so when it's super late and i get home it's always just takeaways to get But since 2021 has started, I have cooked every meal and I've done well so far. Hey, that is epic. That is actually epic. I'm really excited to hear that because that's not a small feat. I also empathize with you working weird hours because when you and your partner have meals at different times,

it actually throws off everything with shopping and cooking meals and trying to plan ahead. And it's a really tough situation. So hopefully the good 2021 habit continues. continues i've got my fingers crossed and then you have a two-year-old that's fussy oh no that adds even more complexity all right so last and final question if i forced you to give yourself a grade what would you give yourself okay so in new zealand we don't do grades like that but i've talked to my australian family and we've come up with b minus oh my gosh B-minus?

No. B. B. Oh, I was like E. Okay, B-minus sounds reasonable. I didn't even know there was an E, but I have room for improvement, but I'm willing to learn. Okay, you're going to have to help me here.

We actually have a lot of Kiwi listeners. What in Kiwi world would you have graded yourself? Oh, proficient. Proficient. I don't even know what that means. I don't even know what that means. Can I just say, locked down Kiwi, this makes so much sense because we have a lot of New Zealand listeners.

And when I've done money diaries with people from New Zealand, I always get to this question and kind of have to explain it. And I'm always sitting in my office going like, why don't they understand this? And no one ever said, oh, we don't have that grading system in New Zealand. No, we don't. Oh, my gosh. All right.

If I was weird or awkward to any other Kiwi money diaries over the last six months, this is why. Sorry. What are the other grades? There's proficient and what sits around that? Basic is obviously like. Oh, my gosh. Imagine being called basic by your country.

Yeah, basic, proficient, advanced. We can go up to like the 100% mark, so we do percentages. Oh, okay. All right. Well, I wouldn't want to be called basic. Thanks for your exam, guys. Ryan, you are basic. Lockdown Kiwi, we have lots of questions that we'll get to,

but first we just need to take this quick break for our sponsors. All right, we've just heard all the details from the Lockdown Kiwi. who's still on the phone thank you so much for joining us thank you first of all as someone who lives in melbourne grew up in melbourne and is a proud melbournian i actually hate that you moved here this year because i'm like oh don't don't hate my town so because it's been really cool i promise yeah so my first question is did you ever kind of regret moving here because new zealand's had such a great run with covid and melbourne really hasn't jacinda i don't love her what she did for New Zealand back home was incredible however I just haven't had a chance to see

Melbourne obviously we had the 5k limit and then we had the 25k limit it's been really scary my daughter's not old enough to wear a mask nor will she wear one taking her out of the house was always hard we haven't been able to experience anything but it's given me more time to clean around the and listen to the podcast hey like I'm not mad about that but I am a little bit upset for you because there is so much here that there is to see and I'm sure you'll be able to see it soon I think I would really like to understand like if other people are going through this situation and you've obviously kind of come out the other side in a way and you did find employment and you have got some nice savings in your account now like what advice would you give them so I have this

Calculer, which is like dyslexia, but with money. And I always had this mindset with my husband, let's not talk about money because I've only seen arguments come out of it. I think that listening to the podcast, I felt more empowered to take control. I've always been the one paying the bills, but I never understood the value of money. So I think that he's always positive to the negatives. Obviously coronavirus hit everybody in different ways but we can all say it's been a rough year. I think if you look at the positives and figure out how to readjust yourself to that you can see where your future is and see how you want your life to be. I want my daughter more than anything to have knowledge of money now that I do and I don't want her money to be the way that

mine was i should have learned earlier it should be taught in school it should be something that our parents are able to talk about and hopefully in the future it's something that we can adjust so that our kids grow up with learning the value of the dollar learning how to save learning where to put money and what they want to do with money and how it cannot be in control of us we could be in control of it yeah i still i love that too i used to whinge about this all the time and i know money and maths obviously have similarities but are different topics but it's so different but how often do you think in high school when am i going to actually use this stuff and then you never get taught about what credit card interest is how to pay your taxes all this

basic stuff that you need but you learn about algebraic equations and you just think isn't that time better spent elsewhere on money stuff does that annoy you victoria well i can calculate the circumference of a circle so how's that going for you well i've never used that skill but i can do it yeah um v what's your thoughts on with our lockdown kiwi said there that she in her mind associated talking with money with fighting with money they were the same thing and is it just a learned experience like that's what you see so that's what you assume has to happen yeah that's a learned experience i'm assuming that you grew up in a situation where every conversation around money would have elicited an emotional response by the people that were

talking about it and therefore you have just learned that that's what money does to people and that's how it works and i think that that's just an outcome that you see and everybody knows that what you learn you often learn from your parents and i was reading a great study the other day actually and i'll try and link it in our facebook group just purely because i think you guys will be interested in it but money stories and money behaviors are ingrained from the age of seven well that's where we start to get our unconscious biases when it comes to money and everybody's saying oh yeah why don't you start teaching money to you know year 11 and 12 students when they're 17, 18, about to come into the real world.

And it's like, well, no, we actually need to be teaching five and six-year-olds how money works and, you know, what a credit card is and why that's not a great option in comparison to cash if you're, you know, just doing the daily shopping. And I think that that would have come from that stage of your life growing up and you just don't notice it.

Yeah, so it's money diarist, our lockdown Kiwi. Have you unlearned this? Does that make sense? Like in the last year or so? Are you in the process of unlearning it? Well, here's the thing. my husband and I we don't fight about money so it's definitely ingrained for me when I was little um I think now that we're able to have the conversation then we both see where we want

our money to go we both see how much we want to save and you know he used to talk to me about money and I used to let it go straight over my head I used to think yeah yeah sure but if he says we want to save for a house and we want to save this much I think oh my god that's never gonna happen now that I'm starting to understand it myself knowing that we never thought about it anyway it wasn't my experience and that we've continued to have educated conversations and aren't having fights about it it was never a worry for myself would you say that you're on the same page as your partner when it comes to financial goals a million percent yes I think back in New Zealand we didn't necessarily have the finances and when we came over here and used all of our

savings it created a very emotional um bond where my money was always oh how are we going to spend this we've got savings but we've got all the stuff to get you know lockdown we can't do anything online shopping we couldn't get the basics for our daughter because everyone was buying everything up online oh yeah yeah so that was another challenge that hit us really hard but definitely our goals for the future and and finding little things that we can get now it's really exciting I love that and I think that's really important to note as well and like I'm gonna make some assumptions here that it has potentially brought you and your husband a little bit closer together which is a really great outcome of sharing money goals and sharing your finances because it's just a deeper

level of understanding one another and I think that's actually awesome definitely I liked when you said that when you want to buy something you just take a photo of it oh i loved that too i just forgot about that until now i'm glad you brought that back up because yeah v you often say 24 hours between your purchases i feel like there's a lot of different variations of how can i just delay this somehow yeah and so where did you pick up that tip and how well has that been working for you so far i always just grab things off the shelf if i know i need it for my daughter do the same for my husband but for me i've always double thought about things because i've always had the basics it's the things that aren't what's the last thing you took a photo of yeah what's i mean

i don't want to say show us oh my god show me your photo album it's always going to be tamer oh i love that i'm i'm actually a bit the same i'm not going to say that i do that but i am good at screenshotting things that i think i want so that i think i'll save them for later and now 90 of my camera roll is just screenshots of things i think i wanted in the moment and now have completely forgotten about oh you didn't get them no I didn't I feel like I always screenshot it for later and I tell myself I'll come back to it and then I completely forget to come back to it and I think it's a dead giveaway that I didn't need that thing in the first place to be honest V did you have any other questions I don't think so I'm just really grateful for your story to be

honest and I think that it's such a good one for us to all learn about and you know I love that you've come out the other side of it and you're really setting great financial goals with your partner and that your daughter's going to learn about money and i just i love the impact that she's on the money has had on you but also just that it seems to be extending to a completely different generation now which is awesome and i've definitely told my mom you know she's like oh how do i get an up bank oh my gosh i love that saving then that is on the group and she'll always say what does this mean ashley i'm like i'm getting it like i don't know let me read it What are you talking about?

Yeah. Now that your partner's got a new job and you guys are on your feet, we'd love to give you the budgeting and cash flow masterclass as well because I think it's the start of a new year, new job. It's a great time to set yourselves up and see where you can get to in the next 12 months, 24 months, few years. So we'd love to send you that for free as well. Really?

Yeah, of course. I think that you guys absolutely deserve it and I think it'll put you in a position where you feel even more in control of your money and I think that, you know, I'd just be excited for you to do it to be honest definitely learning some tips of how other people um say I've heard that people use percentages of your pay and stuff like that I'm using the templates at the moment I know that's easier for me I have it right above my light switch I always highlight it and I never take it out of the saving if you're highlighted it why would

you want to think oh my gosh but I've spent that so why not so oh my gosh more tips more knowledge oh I can't wait I feel like we need to just keep your number for you to be the poster girl and read the ad for the course yeah you're going to be the she's on the money poster girl ambassador absolutely anytime

well thank you so so much for joining us I am really grateful for your story and I'm so glad that you are a part of our community thank you so much Thank you.