She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: Sheep, Surrogacy, and The $200k Side Hustle

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

This week's amazing money diarist has overcome money anxiety he has held from his childhood after living on a farm through the drought. Now, he's building his dream life with his husband, working on the family farm, creating their own family farm, and accumulating up to $200k per year in side hustles! This money diarist proves that no matter what your relationship was with money, you can always change it to build a better life. 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, 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 my favorite episode of the week, Money Diaries, where I get the absolute pleasure of sitting down with one of our beautiful She's On The Money community members and talking all about their journey. Let's jump straight into it because this week the team got a message and it sounded exactly like this. Hi, Victoria. Growing up, I lived on a farm during the drought, where money was tight and was always told things were too expensive. It made me really anxious as a kid and anxious about money. Now I'm a farmer and I have investments

in shares and farming and multiple side hustles that we make between $100,000 and $200,000 extra per year from. I'm in a same-sex relationship and I'm currently going through the surrogacy process to have a baby. Money diarist, I'm so excited to talk to you. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Oh my gosh, I think you're the first guy that we've had on the pod. How great is this? Well, I'm honoured to be the first, hopefully one of many. It's not because I don't want them, it's because no one's written in. Well, I'm a big fan. We can only share the stories that people want to share with us, you know? Oh my gosh, I'm really, really excited because there's just so much in your story that I want to unpack. Like, that is a lot and you've

condensed it into a very short paragraph and it just leaves a lot of questions. So as always, let's start the podcast in exactly the same way I always do. Money Dyrus, I want to know, what grade would you give your money habits if I asked you to give them a grade from A through to F? I've given this a lot of thought and I think now with the investments I've taken in my own education with finance and everything that I'll be comfortable to give myself an A. And I, oh, I love this. I'm probably not going to fight you at the end. And last week I did fight somebody. So like, this is a really good turnaround for me. I want to know now, you've obviously given us a really good summary of where you've come from, where you are now,

but let's dive in a little bit deeper. I want to know more about your money story. Can you please share whatever you're comfortable with? Yes. So I think it all stems back from my parents split up when I was about five and not that I really remember money before then but after that I remember mum she went to TAFE and got educated and started from basically nothing and I remember you know she rented for ages and then she could afford a house and brought her first house it was such a big milestone and I remember seeing that and I think that's a big sort of role model sort of mentality that I grew up with but in my teenage years both parents remarried and I'd live sort of in between mum and dad each week. But through my teenage years, we went through a decade long

drought, which was a really, really long one for us. And with farming, droughts happen and things happen and you sort of prepare for it. But 10 years is a long time to have minimal income or that sort of thing. So that always sort of made me a little bit anxious about money, I guess. And I was always an anxious kid growing up. I never did school sports or went on school cancer or anything like that. Yeah. Sort of struggled through that. And then I think from all that, even into my adulthood, 18 through to sort of 23, yeah, I couldn't even go into like shops or rarely do the grocery shop. I could do little ones, but there was a couple of times I would get the trolley full and then ditch it through the dog food aisle and run out there

because I couldn't go through the checkout, which is a little bit embarrassing. That's not embarrassing. thing. But it's all part of the journey. And I think that I'm grateful for all those hurdles that I went through along the way. And I think it sort of mold you into the person that you are and how I am with money now. And I'm really thankful for that. I always think, oh, what would life be like with my parents back together again? But I think they weren't happy and it's probably the best thing that happened long-term because I wouldn't be where I am today or where my family are today so but yeah and then after that we lost our house to a fire oh my god and

that was our family farm home and that was a massive thing and I had no control of my anxiety or depression at that stage and that was real rock bottom but then with the rebuild of the house my dad and my grandparents gave me the task of being in charge of the rebuild and I was like no way I could do that how old were you I was about 23 at this stage all right here I am thinking a 12 year old has been tasked with a rebuild sometimes we do require a little bit of additional context sorry about that but yeah so that was a big thing because like no way I could walk into shops and pick out stuff like because I couldn't even do my own shopping let alone walking into a tile shop or anything like that but that really pushed me I'm glad that they did because that's what really

taught me how to sort of control my anxiety and understand those different feelings I was having and I got some help from the doctor and that was a big turning point but I think in a nutshell that's sort of, yeah, my money journey. Oh, I love it. There's so many questions. Tell me about life today. Obviously we're not leaving trolleys of food in the dog food aisle anymore, I'm assuming, but like, tell me, you're obviously a farmer, you have investments and shares and you're, you know, in a beautiful relationship and you're going through the surrogacy process, but like, tell me a little bit more about that part of your life. Cause that's really exciting. It is really exciting. It's amazing to think how far I've come and I've run a mental health

organization and that sort of pushed my boundaries a bit more and then I met my partner now husband congrats thank you he really brings the best out of me and has really helped me flourish and yeah we lean on each other because you know we both have our things that we struggle with but we sort of lean on each other in those times and you know get through it and we're better off with each other so it's absolutely amazing and yeah now we're about to have a baby I'm so excited for you gone through that whole surrogacy thing. It's been about two years in the making, but we found a surrogate about 12 months ago, which happens to be my partner's cousin. So that was amazing and very, very thankful that we found someone so close that could be our surrogate. And

they've both got sisters and they've both offered their eggs as well. So we've got full blood babies. No, you don't. That makes me so happy. Oh, it makes me want to cry now. When's baby coming? So we're just going through quarantine now. We've got the embryos frozen. So we've done that whole process. And now, yeah, we've got to wait three months and then we can get them tested again and

then we can put them in. So set to put them in in December. So fingers crossed. That's so exciting. You could have a 2024 baby like me. Let's hope so. Oh, we can make our babies be friends. I love this.

This is the best thing in the entire world. I have a lot of questions. let's get back on track because I'm sure that they will hop up as we go. Now, you mentioned, obviously, you're a farmer, but you also have investments and shares in, I guess, in the share market, but also in farming. Tell me what you do for work, but also how much money you earn. Yeah. So me and my partner have the exact same job, which is on the family farm and 44,000 each hits our bank account. And then we've got, yeah, super in tax on top of that. so that's our main job and we're just basically farm hams but we also do all the marketing for

the farm and i'm sort of in charge of the finances and all the budgets and stuff with his mum so that's really cool and then we have a few like little side hustles as well we purchased a farm which we had to go over the top to try and buy because buying a farm is a massive thing and the banks are really easy to get the money how much does the farm cost obviously i'm just being pervy but like we need to know I've never bought a farm yeah this one cost us about eight hundred thousand so it's not as bad as I thought but that's a lot given you both have incomes of forty four thousand dollars like that would have been a stretch hey it was but it was a really really ran down farm and it's about four hundred acres so oh my gosh that cost per square meter is

very sexy yeah that's right so yeah we do that and then on that farm that we brought we have calves so we have like cows and calves and those calves this year we'll get about 40 000 last year we've got about 60 but that's because the price fluctuations that they are now so they've come down so we'll get less for them and then we do some like photography and videography work oh cool i did not expect that that is left field it is but in the um stud stock industry like with the sheep and cattle and stuff we film and take photos and you know then they can sell them online and it's all about the genetics and that type of thing. So niche, but obviously lucrative. Yeah. So we will make between 80 and a hundred K from that this year. And then we have,

oh, there's more. Yeah. There's one more. You'll love this one. Trust me. I'm ready. We have stud border collies. Oh my gosh. I do love this one. So we have border collie work dogs. Each year we'll probably have like one liter. Occasionally we'll have two depending on what's happening but we get about you know 20k from that per year oh my gosh dogs are so expensive but all that will make between 200 and 300 for the year i love this that just built and built and built you went from telling me yeah we have an income each of 44 000 and i'm like oh that's pretty good like you know being on a farm it's always going to be a little bit lower usually family-run businesses oh by the way we bought a farm by the way we make

$40,000 from calves. By the way, we also have a photography and videography business where we make like a hundred grand. Also we breed dogs. We do everything by the way. That farm income is quite low, but we get a lot of bonuses with that. Like, cause we're doing so much off farm work as well. So it's flexible and you know, we get a little bit of fuel here and there on the farm. Yeah. It all works out. You have the same job as your partner. Did you meet your partner at work? Is that how you fell in love? Tell me more about that. No, I run a mental health organization. Because you weren't busy already. So yeah, that makes sense. And through that, I actually ran into him. So that's where that all stemmed from. And then

I started helping them out with their marketing because I had a camera. And then from there, they offered me a job. And a husband, it seems. Yes. And I left my family farm to come over here, which was a huge thing, but I wouldn't change it for the world because life is about happiness, isn't it? Oh, a hundred percent. even though it was a big thing moving from my family farm but I've come to this family and it is absolutely amazing and I love working here oh my gosh I love this so much this is like one of my favorite stories ever one because I like dogs but two I just love love like the best I want to

know now you have obviously some big money commitments and some great income coming in but what are your big money goals at the moment what are you currently working towards yeah so number one's that baby. So doing surrogacy isn't cheap. I was going to ask, I was like, I hope this comes up in the money goals. Yeah. Yeah. So that's our short term one. So we've spent about 23,000 on that so far. Can we break that down actually? Because I feel like in Australia, I know a little bit about it because I have a number of friends who have gone through the surrogacy journey, same as you, like same sex couples. Like you just don't have an option to have a genetically yours baby unless you use that route, right? $23,000 though is so much money, especially given you're

not allowed to pay your surrogate in Australia. So where's that 23 coming from? What's that made up of? Yeah. So that's a lot of like blood tests and stuff at the start. And then my sister donated the eggs. So that whole process is in that as well. That's pretty much everything 23K up until embryos frozen we've still got to pay for the surrogate for that sort of side of things so we've allowed about 30 but i'm not actually sure if that's going to blow over or not well you never know right yeah there's no black and white you don't know how many times you got to do it and yeah there's so many what ifs so we've got spare money there ready just in case because yeah nothing's standing in the way but from that the next thing is we're actually starting to build a

house as well and this is on the farm and we want to pay that off as much as possible and then our huge money goal that we always dream of is having our investment portfolio but with that investment portfolio help people with it so help friends and family in times of need you're like the best human i've ever met i've got um a couple of cousins that are going through some ivf stuff at the moment and i think one of them's up to about nine or ten goes at it and it's just the financial burden on that on top of the stress but i'd love to be able to help people out with things like that. Yeah. So that's our ultimate goal. Oh my gosh. I love this. You have such clarity on your goals, baby, build house, investment portfolio, but one that helps others.

Like who are you apart from the best human ever? Like, oh, I'm so envious. I actually have heaps of questions, but let's go to a really quick break and we'll get to them on the flip side. all right money diarist we are back and i am so excited to i guess learn more about you learn more about your family and what you're doing it's time to talk about our investments we left the other half of the episode with you saying i want to create an investment portfolio that helps other people and we already know from what you wrote in you said i have investments in shares and farming Talk to me about those investments. What are they?

How are they broken up? How did you get into them? Yeah. So I've currently got about 70,000 in shares. We've pulled a lot of money out of that because we're about to build a house and stuff. And then we pulled money out of it to buy the farm as well. So that's that. And how I got into buying shares for the first time through my teenage years because of the

drought and everything, any birthday money or I did some wool classing or whatever, I would save all that money. And I turned 18, I had 10 grand, which is huge. That's heaps of money, especially for such a young age. It was amazing. I didn't spend a thing though. And I went down and caught up with one of my friends that's a financial advisor. He offered me a free little chat and teach me about the stock market.

Oh, I love that. And that's where it started from. And then from there, we've got two farms as well. So now we've managed to buy a couple. on the first one there's no debt on that at the moment and on the second farm we've got about 550k worth of debt do you want to know how much they're worth of course i do i'm pervy technically you're anonymous to everybody else i'm gonna ask the questions that are totally inappropriate to ask somebody that you sit next to on a bus like yeah how much debt have you got babe yeah so on the

one of the farms is 1.39 mil and the other one's 1.24. Slay. I need to stop saying slay, but I'm not going to. It's unrelatable, but it's been a lot of hard work and time on top of that for it to grow in value. So it's not just capital we've put in, it's just grown over time. Of course. So tell me how old you are now because you had your first $10,000 and you started investing at 18. Where are we now? I just turned 30. no you didn't you've done all of that and you've just turned 30 in the bin straight in the bin unrelatable content yeah exactly i said unrelatable in a nice way though like how cool is this like i love this story i love that you're a farmer and you know you've written in and said hey i'm a

farmer i have investments in shares and farming also i'm in a same-sex relationship and i'm going through this surrogacy journey i just don't think a lot of people would have expected that like it's not a twist. It's not a turn. It's like your journey, but it's more, I think we have this preconceived idea of what farming looks like. And you've obviously thrown that on its head and you're like, oh, well, by the way, I also, you know, have calves and I also have dogs and I've found all of these additional revenue streams to add to my life so that I can create the life I deserve because there are a lot of farmers having come from, I grew up in Tasmania and my family owned farms. My grandparents always had a border collie, which is why I was like, ah, I love this.

they're always really inspirational names like Bob the dog. I feel like that's very farm. But growing up there, you kind of just have this preconceived idea that, yep, you earn $44,000 if you live on a family farm. That's it though. Like that's all you do. You know, you might be given a paddock and you could do your own sheep or something. And that's like a couple of thousand dollars extra a year, but it's definitely not like $40,000 from calves or, you know, picking up another photography and videography business. You grew up in farming. So how did you get this, I guess, work-life balance, but also this, I guess, motivation to do all of these additional things? Is this what your parents did? Like, where does this come from, my friend?

No, definitely not. Like, well, especially my dad and my grandparents, they're like, you know, you work on the farm, you don't have time for anything else. Like, it's big hours. But because of the drought and everything, I really wanted to be able to sort of help the farm if things got bad again and that's sort of where my savings sort of come into play because if I could build off some off-farm income I might be able to bail the farm out if we got into some real issues and I was really scared that we'd lose our farm like especially our own farm because that's you know where I grew up my parents grew up my grandpa grew up so it's a big thing for our family and if I can financially back that if I ever had to that sort of was always

my goals so that's why yeah it's always in the back of my mind to make money elsewhere and it's really important to have that work-life balance and it is really tricky not to get burnt out and that is something that I've really really focused on because I used to get burnt out a lot and it wasn't until meeting my husband now that he sat me down one day and he goes you need to just stop and you need to make sure you look after yourself because you can't get burnt out every week because you work really hard and you get a lot done, but then you're out for like four days because you're bedridden or in hospital or whatever it may be. So it's a learning curve, but yeah. So yeah. He sounds like a good egg. I think I like him. I think we can keep him.

Yeah. I found my Steve. Yeah, you found your Steve. Does he make you tea and toast on the weekends? He does. Yeah. Oh yeah. All right. Well, you definitely have found your Steve. That's amazing. I love it. All right. Tell me a little bit more, I guess, about debt. So you mentioned before that you have $550,000 in debt on one of your farms and obviously that's valued at a lot more. Is there any other debt sitting around that you haven't shared? Do you have any hex debt from studying anything or anything else sitting there that I'm unaware of at this point? No, there's just that debt. But with the house build, that debt will blow up a little bit to about a mil. Houses are expensive.

They are. And they've really gone up in the last sort of 12 months with everything going on as well. So what we initially got a quote on has blown out even more. So we've got some cash there ready to go in that. And is this house, obviously a million dollars is a lot of money. Is this kind of like your family home forever? Or is this like a house that you're like, all right, we'll build this on the farm and maybe we won't live here forever? Or what does that actually look like? What's the future of, I guess, in a way asking about your career as well as your home? So yeah, we are building it on the farm. So you can't really just sell a house on a farm. So it's there forever kind of thing. So that's why we're sort of spending the money now. We've done

all the hard yards to get to this point and we've ticked all the boxes. We've budgeted forever to get to this point now and our stars have aligned to have this baby and we want to have a nice house to bring our baby home to. So we've worked really hard to get to this point and yeah, it's our forever home. So we're making sure we spend the money where it's needed and make sure it's good. Yeah. That's why I was asking. Cause I was like, if you're building a home on the family farm, you can't exactly sell that. Who else lives on the family farm? Obviously there's probably another house that you're currently living in, but who else lives there? What does that look like long-term? So the house that we're living in now, it's just like a little cottage on

the farm, me and my husband. And then there is a couple of other houses on the farm as well. Like his parents live in the main farm house and then one of the sisters is in the other one, but there's six kids in his family so oh i love that yeah it's such a beautiful family but they like live in the local town and around so everyone's like still here so yeah it's pretty cool but yeah so we're just in that little cottage at the moment which is really lucky to live there because we don't have to pay rent or anything yeah that's a money win yeah it is a money win um but we just have to pay the electricity bill and that's it how often do you get to do family dinners because i feel like that's a big farm thing obviously they happen in the main farmhouse so how often is that

happening? Or I'd say at least once a week, we'll have a little catch up here. But even like lunchtimes here, it's such a buzz because with six kids, you could imagine how many grandkids in that are here as well. That's the best and they're going to get another one soon. Yeah. So they're always here helping us on the farm and on the days that they don't have childcare or at kindy or whatever, they're all out here. So lunchtime is definitely a buzz around here. It's amazing. I love it. I have so many questions, but I actually want to ask about childcare. You said earlier that you and your partner essentially work and earn the same amount of income because you both work on the family farm. What is the plan when you have a newborn?

How are we looking after this newborn when it comes to like care and distribution of care? Because a farm, like, I don't know if you know this, but they don't stop. So what's the plan? Yeah, well, this has actually been a lot of discussion lately and a lot to think about. There is a childcare in town, which is 10 minutes away. Oh, easy. Yeah, it is. But it's really hard to get into because it's a really small town and there's only a certain amount of kids and that that they can handle.

So as soon as we know that we're pregnant, we have to put our name on the list apparently. So that's what I did. It's actually terrifying. They were like, do you know what you're having? And I was like, no, let's call it Baby Divine. Can Baby Divine be on the list for August next year? And they were like, yeah, no worries. It's crazy.

It is. It is. So yeah, we'll do that. And whatever days we get, we'll get. besides that on the farm here we're lucky that we have his parents they're happy to help out and sometimes like if i'm doing the financials like the budgets and like all that sort of stuff i can sort of hopefully look after a baby and do all that at the same time in the house i don't know i think i'm going to be able to do it at the same time every other parent right now is rolling their

eyes at us because we don't have kids yet but like we'll see how it goes you know yolo the way it's gonna work out right it's gonna work out surely i love it all right i want to know next I feel like you have some very good money habits to share with us so what do you think is your best money habit probably our best is living below our means and like we've never really been big spenders or anything like that but yeah just keeping ourselves in check with all that and with that I think communication is a really important thing in our relationship and we're very clear on our goals and we talk about money all the time like whenever we have a bath we talk about money it's weird I don't know but it just works it sounds like my house it's so fine like

I totally get that okay so I just did this cool thing with our budget and Steve's like do you want to talk about a dinner and I'll be like yeah and he'll be like that wasn't me asking if you want to talk about it at dinner I was asking if that was your plan I'm like yes sit down so I think communication is one of our good traits I love that flip it though what's your worst or our worst is probably the bakery. I always end up at the bakery. What are we buying at the bakery? Like a little veggie pie. That's so amazing. Or a spinach and feta sausage roll. I agree.

Yeah. So like we're always doing filming jobs and stuff. So we're on the road a lot going to other farms and we happen to drive past it all the time. So just pop in and- Oh no, look, there's the bakery again. I didn't know if you know this, but as a country kid, if you drive past the KFC and don't stop in for some salty chips. It's illegal. So I think food's probably our downfall, but it's in our budget. We make sure we accommodate for it and it's not stressful at all, but it's just one of those things that we could cut back if we could. But I think we all deserve a little treaty treat. And also we laid down the law before. It's actually illegal not to stop. So I'm not going

to jail. You're like, you're going to have a baby soon. I'm going to have a baby soon. Like we can't be living that convict life. Like it's just not going to work. So I love it. Oh my gosh. The next question I always ask Money Dice, now that we've talked, like, do you think that your money grade at the start of this episode is reflective? I already know the answer, but I'm going to ask anyway. Do you think it's reflective, but also what do you think it would take to get from an A to an A plus? I think it is. And like I said before, like all the education and stuff, it's not easy getting to that point. And it's been a long journey to get there. And like no one should compare themselves to each other and that type

of thing. I'm happy with that. But to get to an A+, probably have all those goals ticked off and we can be helping people as much as possible. And I think once we get to that, we can put that plus sign on there. I love that. I feel like that is obviously written in the stars though. Like it's not just written in the stars, it's written in your financial plan. Like you're going to get there. Like you were so clear on your, I guess, money goals and what you were working towards when I asked you were like oh yep there's actually three clear ones and I was like okay slay like I love this I'm so excited sadly that's all we've got time for today but like I have adored this chat learning a little bit more about you about your journey thank you so much for being

so open about it not just about your income but just what that surrogacy journey looks like and costs and it can be so hard in Australia because obviously it's not paid so you do have to find someone who is arguably incredibly generous and charitable who's willing to give something like that up like it's crazy to think in 2023 like we can't find quite easier way to do it but like I adore that a same-sex couple can have a genetically related baby with somebody who's already in their family like oh it just makes my heart so happy yeah oh it's amazing it's just weird hearing you say all that because it's just incredible and I can't believe it's actually happening. Please message me. I want to be updated. I've nominated myself as Baby Updates,

but that is so exciting. Thank you so much, Money Dyrus. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me, Victoria. 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.