She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: She's a Nurse In a Jail With Big Goals!

Episode Date: December 4, 2022

When today's Money Diarist was 17, she packed her bags and headed interstate with one suitcase. Now at 25, she's a registered nurse in a jail and is working hard towards her 3 year goal of buying her first home with her partner. Don't miss this interesting story!This year our Money Diaries are being brought to you by the legends at Shopback! Check them out at https://app.shopback.com/aus/partner/SOTM and you'll get a cashback bonus when you sign up!Acknowledgement of Country By Natarsha Bamblett aka Queen Acknowledgements.The advice shared on She's On The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She's On The Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. 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. My name is Victoria Devine and we are back with another Shopback Money Diary, which I am so excited for. As always, we are bringing to the table a very exciting story. And this week, our Money Diarist has written in and said, I moved out of home and interstate at 17 with just one suitcase. I am now 25 years old, working as a registered nurse in a jail. It is now my third year out of uni and I made $98,000 this past financial year. I live with my partner and we have two dogs. This financial year, we've decided to get on board with the first home super saver scheme and contribute an additional

$600 each to our super each fortnight. We have a three-year goal of buying our first home. money diarist what a story oh my gosh welcome to the show thank you hello i am so excited to talk to you i have so many questions from talking about you moving out at 17 to how you're going to make use of the first home super saver scheme are you ready to do a money diary yeah yeah i'm ready oh my gosh all right well let's just jump into it with the first stock standard question can you tell me a little bit more about your money story? Yeah. Okay. So I think the first two money values that I had were instilled on me when I was a child, which is don't spend more than you earn. So if you can't afford to buy something, just don't

buy it. And then the other thing was differentiate between what you want and what you need. Oh, I love that. So growing up, I came from a dual income family. I did gymnastics, piano lessons. My brothers got to do tennis lessons, guitar lessons, saxophone lessons. We got to go on annual family holidays. We went on all the school camps, all the school excursions. We got to do all of those things. But my parents always provided everything that we needed and also all the extracurriculars. But if it came to like things that we wanted, they didn't just go out and splurge on things that we wanted. Like mom would never just go out and take me shopping and be like, okay, go and choose like whatever you want and we'll buy it. It was always like, if you

want something, save it up for your birthdays or Christmas time. And then if you still want it at that time, like a month or two weeks out from that time, let me know. And then you can have that for your birthday or Christmas so I was always taught to like wait for the things that I wanted for special occasions and get them as presents rather than just like getting everything that I wanted so you know all the needs were provided for but the wants were always I was taught to wait and yeah hey that's a pretty good money value to be taught do you feel like you've upheld those as an adult yeah like I feel like as an adult I'm actually very indecisive and I always have to like think about oh do I really want this like think about all the pros and cons and weigh up all the risks

so I'm I think yeah definitely I've brought that up into my adulthood as well oh I love this all right I want to know more next I know you said in your message what you do and what you earn but I want to know, let's answer the question properly. What do you do for work and how much money do you earn? Okay, so I'm a registered nurse. I work in a metropolitan correctional centre. The past financial year I earned $98,000, but that includes overtime and penalty rates as well. So my base is around $75,000, but I got to earn a bit extra due to doing overtime and weekends. What does working in a correctional facility as a nurse actually entail? Because I'm assuming that's quite different to being a nurse in a maternity ward. Yeah, it is different. It's kind of like working in

comparatively to like working as a nurse in like a doctor's clinic. It's called like community style nursing. We work inside a clinic that's situated inside a section of the jail. So we deal, sort of deal with chronic diseases, wound care. We do like pathology. We do a lot of triaging where first responders, if there's an emergency, we deal with a lot of self-harm, a lot of mental health issues, that kind of thing. Wow. And with that, how do, I'm just being really pervy now. How do the people in the correctional facility reach out to, I guess, someone in your position? Do they just get to come into the clinic whenever they want? Do they have to book an appointment? Like how does this work? We have a system, it's called a self-referral system.

So if it's like a non-urgent issue or matter, like for example, someone's like, I've got some rash on my skin. We have like a letterbox at the front of the clinic and they can write on this professional sort of referral that we have and pop it in the letterbox. And then every evening we collect all the, I guess, our letters from the letterbox and then we triage them onto the appropriate wait list depending on what they're requesting. But if it's an emergency, there'll usually be an emergency response called and then we will go out to the wing or if it's like someone collapsed or someone having chest pains or a self-harm, we will take our emergency bag and go directly to them. Yeah. Wow. I had no idea it would be a letterbox system. That's so,

like it's just so interesting learning about how other people's jobs work I'm gonna come back to that I want to know next though money diarist what is your big money goal what are you currently working towards we're currently working towards buying our first house which is very exciting what's that gonna cost when's that gonna happen and how well look we're hoping three years time Look, we kind of are hoping to get something around like between $700,000 and $900,000. So yeah, we're looking to save up about $100,000 for a deposit. And let's be super pervy. I want to know what's your partner do?

How much do they earn? And what does this goal look like when you're budgeting it out? Like, is that $100 a week you're saving? $600 a week? What does it look like? Yeah. Okay. so my partner he is a carpenter and he works for a company at the moment and he's on about

75 000 although next year he is going out on his own and starting his own business oh fun yeah both of us contribute 600 per fortnight into our super accounts that's salary sacrificed um so i think that works out to be around 15 600 each per year or something like that does that is perfect maths and if you times that by two that's 31 200 which means that you are very on track to meet your goal yeah so yeah that's our goal. That's so exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully. All right. Next question I've got for you. Do you currently have any investments? If so, what are they? No, I don't have any investments apart from my super account. Not a bad place to be, especially if you've got a big money goal of saving for a

house. I feel like sometimes it can actually be helpful to turbocharge a goal, achieve that, then get some other structures in place and look at investing later, as much as I talk about it all the time. There's just not enough money to do absolutely everything all the time. Yeah, yeah. No, I've just started reading your investing book and I am really interested in starting. I never even really thought about, like it didn't even cross my mind about investing before I joined the She's On The Money group or started listening to your podcast last year. It makes my heart so happy when people say that because I'm like, oh my gosh, you're going to end up with investments that you might not have had and be hopefully in a

better financial position because you got to hang out with us. How cool is that? Yeah, that's so exciting. I'm so grateful to you. Oh my gosh. No, let's not stroke my ego. Let's go back to the questions. I want to know, do you currently have any debt? If so, what is it? Yes, I do. So I have a car loan. So I got that at the start of last year, so about 18 months ago. It's a five-year loan. So, the loan was $44,000 plus interest. So, the total debt is around $52,000 for five years and I have about $34,500 remaining on that. Can you tell me whether, and I think this is going to confuse a few people, is there a balloon on that debt? No, there's no balloon on that debt. So, when I ask the question, for those of you listening along who might have been like,

why are you talking about balloons when we're talking about debt? A balloon is where you sign up to a car loan, for example, and a money diarist just said, got a car loan, had it for about 18 months. It's a $44,000 car. I'm going to pay off this $52,000 debt, which if you divide that by the five years that you said you were going to pay it off in, that means that you're probably paying around $10,400 each and every single year. However, often loan companies will say, oh my gosh, money diarist, would you prefer lower repayments and a balloon at the end? And you're like, oh yeah, that sounds good. I'd much prefer to pay $5,000 off instead of $10,000 off a year, which means there's a really big payout amount at the end of that five years. So you might have

paid off your loan, but you still have maybe $20,000 at the end to pay it off. And I always find that to be a relatively sticky position to be in because you haven't paid off the asset and you only have a few options. You can either refinance that debt, which, you know, who knows what your cash flow looks like at that point in time, or you can trade in your vehicle and get a new debt, which is what people in the finance industry want you to do because it means that you are staying in the debt ecosystem, benefiting them, and you think that you're in the right position because you never had to pay off the full debt when in reality that doesn't put you ahead. So I'm glad to hear that you don't have a balloon because sometimes they can prove to

be a little bit prickly. Yes. Anyway, that is a side note. Did they offer you a balloon? No. So I specifically chose a car and chose a company that didn't have a balloon because when I went shopping, I decided that after looking at a few cars and looking at my options, I decided that I did not want to have a balloon at the end.

I just wanted to have the full thing paid in five years. Fair. I do have to be really pervy now, though. You can't tell me that you spent $52,000 on a car and not tell me what kind of car it is. What did you buy? I feel like you might be disappointed. Oh, I'm not ever disappointed. I'm just real pervy. I wouldn't know. I couldn't care less. It's all about your money values and what you spend your money on. And it sounds like you've made a decision that's in line with those values. So 10 out of 10, what have you bought? So I got a Honda CR-V. Oh, I thought you were going to tell me it's like something really

disappointing. Like, oh, Victoria, I spent $52,000 on a Toyota Yaris. And I would have been like, babe, like that's not a good deal. Yeah, no, I specifically chose this car because I do want to have it for the next like 15 years. And I know that it will be a good car when I eventually have kids and it will sort of see me out for the, you know, a good chunk of my future. She's a thinker. We'd love to see it. All right. Next question I have is talk to me. Do you use Shopback? Yes, I do use Shopback. So I think so far I've made $144. I love this. What are you buying when you're purchasing things on Shopback? So we went overseas back in August. Most of that comes from booking.com actually from all our accommodation and flights and cook and stuff.

activities yeah 144 bucks is a fancy dinner out that is definitely worth using it for yeah 10 out of 10 all right on to other good money habits I want to know what do you think your best money habit is so I've actually got a couple of good ones so because I work in a jail it is actually quite a lot of effort to go out and buy lunch or go out and get lunch because we have to like we have to sign in we have to get our keys out we have to get our alarm out we have to get our bags checked get our bodies scanned so a good habit because of that is I always bring my lunch to work oh I love this but not the reasons why I feel like I hate going through airport security yeah and you've just explained that you have to do that every day for work yeah yeah so because of

that I'm saving money on lunch because I'm always bringing lunch yeah that is very fair all right turning the table around I want to know what is your worst money habit my friend okay so it's actually something I used to do but I am really working on before I read your first book I just had two bank accounts which was I just had my spendings and my savings account and so each fortnight I would just put like I don't know like six or seven hundred dollars just into my savings account but I never really had like a clear goal of what I wanted to do with that it was just sort of sitting there and so then towards the end of each fortnight when like something would pop up like a friend would say oh do you want to you know go out for dinner or go for brunch or something

I'll look at my account and be like, oh, I don't have much left in my spendings. I'll just transfer from my savings. And so I went through like a vicious cycle of transferring back and forth from spendings to savings. Super common. But since reading your first book, I actually have now set up my bank accounts the way that you suggested and it's really working out for me. Oh, I love to hear that. Obviously, I'm a bit biased. I do think that system works because not only did I create it, but I use it all the time. But it's honestly so fun to hear that other people are using it. How long did it take you to set all of that up and kind of get into the swing of it? Not long, maybe like a couple of days. Oh, that's so quick and it's going well thus far. I

love to hear it. Yeah, it's going really well. Yeah. Oh my gosh. All right. Well, last question before we go to a really quick break, because I have a billion questions for you. What grade would you give your money habits if we forced you to give yourself a grade? I would say a B. Why would you say a B and what would it take to get you to an A plus? I would say a B because I think I have some good money habits and I think that like I kind of have clear goals and I know what I want and I'm kind of good at organizing my money and my choices. But I think to get to an A, I would probably need to start investing and just taking it to the next level. Oh, I feel like that's really achievable though. So it's not as though you need to

overcome heaps of adversity to get there. I love that. And it sounds like you're on exactly the right path. Thank you. Oh my gosh. All right. Let's go to a really quick break because I want to know a little bit more about your money story. You mentioned that you moved out of home and interstate at 17 with just one suitcase. So don't go anywhere. We're going to dive into that right after this quick break. All right, Money Diarist, I want to jump back into it ASAP because I feel like in our first set of questions, we really didn't cover this at all, but you wrote it as the first sentence in your message to us. You said, I moved out of home and interstate at 17 with just one

suitcase. What happened? Why? When? Where? How? Give us some context because it sounds like now you're absolutely flourishing but that doesn't sound like a story where you would expect to be in the position you are in today. Am I right? Yeah that's right. Yeah look it's actually not as gloomy as like it kind of sounds. Oh you just tried to click bait me. I see you. I see you trying to get on the show, trying to get on the show by giving me a juicy story and then tell me it's not so juicy. But let us know what happened. Yeah. So I finished high school when I was 17 and then my parents sort of pushed me to move out. They were like, you know, like, it's time for you to move on. It'd be really great for you to go to this uni. It's, you know,

across the state, you know, we've kind of already enrolled you. Oh my gosh. This is not the story I expected yeah so yeah this was like so I finished high school in like November and then by February the following year I had moved interstate and I flew because I was going to be living in dorms at uni so all I could take was one 20 kilo suitcase and that's kind of how I started yeah living in a different state from my parents and I have not moved back oh my gosh that's such a big move you're now 25 you work in a in a jail did you ever think that as a nurse that's where you saw yourself like I feel like that's quite niche nursing if I'm honest look I didn't even know it was a thing neither did I until you wrote into me until in my final

year of nursing I had I think it was like my second or third last placement I had three weeks at a juvenile centre. And I absolutely loved it. I love the team. I love the staff. I loved the sort of work that they did. And the manager at the time wrote me a letter of recommendation for my new grad to apply with Justice Health. So that's, yeah, kind of what I did. Oh my gosh, how exciting. I feel like that's such a special area to be in as well, because not only is it confronting and I would argue quite diverse in the issues that you would see because it's not just a GP clinic right you akin to like oh it's like kind of being a nurse in a GP setting but it's not really because you've got emergency and then you've got mental health on top

of that like yeah is this something that you had to get extra training for or like how many different areas of your nursing degree are you using at the moment yeah so what I found is that like I pretty much learned most of what I know on the job like yes at uni I learned like all the theory and that kind of thing at uni but when I started the job was when I really learned sort of everything yeah so I've been given lots of opportunities through my work as well so I've become an authorised nurse immuniser so I've done the immunisation course I've done pathology so I can take bloods and I've done like CPR assessor course so I can assess people doing CPR. I've done like preceptor course so where I can sort of nurture and be that support person for new staff coming on.

So I've been given lots of opportunities through my job at the moment to sort of expand my skills as well. Yeah, wow. I feel like that's such a diverse space to go into because obviously it's kind of like its own ecosystem in a way. It's not necessarily you going, oh my gosh, this is a particular area of nursing I want. Like you would just get exposed to so much. In saying that, I feel like that might weigh heavily on your own mental health. How does that work? How are you looking after yourself in what I would argue is a relatively taxing mentally job? Yeah. So I think one of the good things about where I work is that because I have to go specifically into work I can sort of differentiate home and work because I'm actually going to work and work's there and then

I'm leaving it there and then coming home yeah and the other thing is because it's a jail we're not allowed to take our phones in with us so while I'm at work I don't have any access to the outside world my phone's left in my car and then when I finish work I go to my car and then that's when I sort of switch from, you know, home me to work me. Yeah. I feel like that's honestly so interesting because it's not something that I've been confronted with before. This is going to be a left field question, but if I'm thinking it, I'm assuming a lot of other people are thinking it as well. Does the idea that, you know, people in jail have potentially done some things that you might not agree with ever impact your ability to look after them? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like sort of we

try not to know exactly what they've done, but of course you get some high profile people in there and I mean, and word spreads fast and you kind of find out what they've done. But I just sort of see it as I'm just there to look after their healthcare and, you know, it actually, it doesn't affect me or matter what they've done because at that moment I'm just there to look at them as you know a patient and how I can help them with their health care at that time. Yeah and I think that that's a really important delineation to make because I think I would really struggle in that circumstance to be like oh I need to help you but I don't really want to because you don't sound like the kindest human. On the other side of this money diarist I feel like the other concern I have

because we're basically best friends now is you're going to work every day in a jail how are you keeping safe like is this something that your job is a little bit more risky because of its location or is there extra security or how does that work for you? Yeah so with our job we will never be just alone one-on-one with a patient so we have officers around us at all times so it'll never just be a nurse and a patient it will be a nurse an officer and a patient at all times so whenever we go even if we go to an emergency we can't get to the patient even if they're you know needing CPR on the ground until an officer is present so it's always safety first right and we also carry a duress alarm on us so that's attached to a belt on us and that's a tilt alarm as well so

if you bend over that alarm will go off so if you're in a sticky situation you can sort of discreetly use that as well oh my god what how does that work so what happens if you just you know bend over to pick up the pen you dropped I would do that three million times a day yeah so we kind of learn to bend with our knees when you first start there it's often set off a false alarm quite a lot which is quite annoying for them but yeah it happens quite a lot and especially going to the toilet as well you know yeah so we do like the way I wear mine is I don't have my belt looped around through my pants I just have it sitting on top of my pants and then so like sounds weird but when I go to the toilet I just sort of lift up and hold my belt yeah okay that makes sense

so it doesn't tilt. So what you're saying is if this tilts, you will literally have an alarm go off that I'm assuming is a silent alarm that then says you're in trouble and need a hand. That's right. And then you'll have like a team of officers running to the toilet or running to wherever you are to see what's going on. Oh my gosh. One, I would be in trouble all the time. But two, that's kind of intelligent that you can just set it off by tipping over. yeah yeah you can also set it off by pressing the big red button that would help too but i just have this idea in my head that if ever you were in a pickle you would just play dead and it would work for you like that's that's great all right i'm gonna take this places that it shouldn't go for

a money diary so i think we might leave it there money diarist thank you so much for your story not only have i learned a lot about the correctional facility that you work in i feel like i've learned a lot about you and your goals and what you're working towards. And I just feel like this has been a really interesting money diary. So thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Oh my gosh. Well, unfortunately, guys, that is all we have time for today. We will see you guys 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.