She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: The 24-Year-Old 6 Figure Earner

Episode Date: October 1, 2023

Today we're putting a spotlight on an amazing Money Diarist who has had a relentless work ethic since the day she could start working. This has led her toward cracking six figures at just 24 years of age AND buying her own home and renovating it! It doesn't stop there, today's Money Diarist has educated herself to make the most of her super and start investing in shares! This is one inspiring community member! 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, Our Money Diaries, where I get the absolute privilege of talking to one of our incredible She's On The Money community members. Let's jump straight into it because this week I got this message. Hi V, I'm a 24-year-old six-figure income earner with no university degree. My partner and I have bought a house that's nearly finished being renovated. I've also begun my investment journey, which feels like a big shift for me as I used to feel like it was a form of gambling.

Having experienced family financial trauma, I am so proud of where I am now. Money Diarist, I'm proud of you too. How exciting. And you're only 24. Yeah, thank you. It's been a bit of a journey, but really proud of where we are now. Oh my gosh, I love it so much. Let's dive straight in.

At the start of every episode, I always ask, Money Diarist, what would you give your money habits if I asked you to give them a grade from A through to F? I was having a think about this last night and even though I'm earning really well and I feel like I'm doing really well with the house and things like that, I would still rate my money habits, I think a B plus as I'm sure you'll get into it after, but there's some areas I definitely need to improve. All right. I'm very excited to learn more about that. But as always, I want to ask you my favorite question, money diarist. Can you tell me a little bit more about your money story? So I first started working when I was the legal age. I think that's 13 and nine months. And

I've always had quite a good, strong work ethic. I've always been quite independent with money as possible as I was in just a single earning income. And one of my family members had quite a few of mental illness problems. So I've always kind of just looked after myself and gone, do you know what? I'm just going to work extra hours, even from a young age to just try and save the most I can and take the most pressure off of my family. I always believe that money isn't the most important thing in life, but the thought of not having that additional financial stress is something that I've always wanted to have. So even though it's not the most important thing, and I do prioritize other things, it's definitely one of the priorities, even since I was young,

to kind of, okay, if I work an extra three hours, I can earn this much extra for the week, which then I can either buy something else or I can save that towards a goal. And I've always kind of been money driven, I guess, to a degree. I love that. I feel like knowing that that's one of your mentalities is really powerful as well because you can kind of harness it. And I think sometimes people go, oh, it's only an extra 150 bucks or whatever it might be.

But you're like, that takes so much pressure off. And from little things, those things compound and they actually grow and become really impactful in the larger, I guess, phase of your life. Yeah, exactly that. Tell me a bit more about becoming an adult with that mentality. Like, is that the same today? Yeah, same today. So how my structure works at the moment, I get my base salary, but I also get commission. So I'm very much in the position where I can kind of earn as much as I want to earn to a degree. Of course, there's a bit of luck that comes into it. And obviously I try and keep to

my standard hours, but when I'm at work, I'm just at work and I eliminate all other distractions and I'm going, okay, how can I actually get the most out of these hours, which took me a little while to get there in my adult life. I think, you know, each year is different. If I've got a lot going on in my personal life, you know, last year wasn't as good and I kind of got distracted a bit easier. But this year, especially since we've recently purchased our house, I've just been head down, bum up at work and just trying to smash it out as much as I can. I love that so much. Do you find because you get commissions as a part of your role that you tend to work more hours? Because I feel like if I was working in a role where you said,

oh V, like if you get comms, you, you know, obviously can scale your own income. Does that mean that you're working more hours than you should? Or is that something where you're like, no V, that's one of the benefits. I love that I can put in additional hours. When I first started, I was doing additional hours. I think also that's because I was just kind of a trainee and trying to understand as much as possible. But these days I'm really strict with myself. I won't work an extra hour after work, but if I need to work a little bit through my lunch break, I might, but it's a really day-to-day kind of thing. The majority of time I try and take my full lunch break, go for a walk, clear my mind because, you know, when I'm at work,

like I said, I'm kind of head down, bum up. I know if I go in with that mentality every single day without taking my breaks, I'll just burn myself out. So I'm trying to avoid that as much as possible. I like that. All right. Tell us a little bit more. What do you actually do for work and how much money do you earn? I've worked in recruitment and I've done this for the last three years. My salary is very much commission-based. So last financial year, I'm so, so proud to say that I earned $105,000 plus super. Cracked the six figures. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It was the best feeling ever. When I saw my financial statement at the end of the year, I was like, oh, I'm so happy. Killing it. Oh, it felt so good. And that's on a base salary of $75,000 plus super. So that

additional, what, $30,000 is in my commission. When you say base salary, sometimes these things are different from, I guess, company to company. I know that if you're in real estate and you get paid a base salary, the expectation is that you kind of pay back your base salary and then you earn on top of that. Is this just you get $75,000 as a base just for turning up to work and then anything above and beyond that is cream? Or tell me a bit about how the comms structure works. yeah so like the latter so 75 000 for me just coming to work and then anything on top of that is like an additional very nice little bit on top but with that we are given the expectation that we kind of earn a certain amount for the company but if we don't do that then you know we might go into

performance management but i earned over the kind of threshold that they're wanting you to earn anyway. And majority of people do. It's not very often that people earn less than what's kind of required of them. Yeah, that makes sense. I was like, how does this work? Because often when you have a base salary, there's like base requirements. And if you don't meet them, it can be a little bit worrying. When you say you have a base salary of $75,000, I'm just so pervy when people earn comms because obviously not everything is given. When you're budgeting and doing cash flow and planning, do you just base it on the $75,000 or are you basing it on the $100,000? How does that all work? Well, that's the thing is that I haven't got a set budget and I don't really look into

these things. And that's what I think my worst money habit is, is that I'm earning this money, but I'm not planning where it's going. I've always been a good saver. And I guess that's where my commission comes in, that whatever my commission is for the month, that goes straight into savings but in regards to my budget and kind of cash flow I'm not thinking about those things which is my next goal is to kind of get a bit of control over that all right next goal I want to know what is your big money goal that you're working towards you mentioned that you've already bought a house so what are you currently working towards we really want to finish our renovations because we're doing some this year and we're planning to do some a bit next year obviously

starting to smash out our mortgage. But the goal would be rather than just the house and things like that would be to go on a European trip in the next three years or so. I have been on a holiday for quite some time. So I'd like to save up for that and go there. But ultimately, the long, long term goal is to be financially free. That's quite a while away. That takes ages. I totally get that there are interim goals, my friend, because same. I want to know a little bit more about these renos that you've mentioned. So I've just gone through the process and oh my gosh they blow out so much oh my gosh they do tell me a bit more about your reno journey what it's cost what you'd expected from the beginning like is that big reno is it

a little reno like what does it look like yeah of course so we bought a small little house it was kind of one of those situations where you buy the worst house in a nice street we're in this really cute little area lovely little houses around us but our house was horrendous it's only been rented for the last, I think, 30 years. So you can tell that the people that rented it didn't ridiculously look after it like it was their own, unfortunately. So it has been quite neglected, but we purchased that about a year or so ago now, a bit more soon, about early this year, and that cost us $650,000. And then because we were doing the renovations, we only put the 10% deposit down instead of a full 20%. So we had that extra 10% deposit to put into the renovations,

which hopefully once these are all done which we're putting about 60,000 in this year then we can refinance and hopefully have more equity in the house. Oh love how did you work out that 60 grand worth of I guess renos was going to work out for you like did you go you know to Bunnings and look at all the kitchens or were you online or like where did you start because I found it so overwhelming. It was so overwhelming we started mostly by getting quotes from people who do renovations just to see how much it would cost for them to do it plus the labor because then if that's kind of at the absolute maximum of our range then we kind of know what to stick to roughly so we made sure that all of our quotes had a breakdown for kitchen you know living space

paint absolutely everything we made sure they had that breakdown and then it was just online having a look reading um different forums of people who have renovated their houses is watching different reels of people who do it and put the prices next to it. Yes, I do that on TikTok all the time. Yeah, a bit of a process, but at the moment we're very much like doing well with our budget. So it's looking good at the moment. I'm so envious. I was not so good with my budget when it came to the renos. Let's go to a really quick break because on the flip side, I want to know a little bit more about that budget and also about your debts and investments and to break down that bad money

habit you mentioned just before. Don't go anywhere, guys. All right, Money Diarist, we are back and I'm so pervy on your reno journey. Obviously, when you are, you know, buying your first home, there's not always a lot of room for investing and doing stuff on the side. But I do want to ask anyway, do you have any investments? If so, what are they? Yeah, I do have a few investments. I have my superannuation, which I've slightly increased my risk profile for because I didn't realize until this year that you could actually change your superannuation risk profile. You can and everyone should review it. Yeah. So I've actually made that a little bit more aggressive considering that I'm only 24

at the moment. I've got a long way to go and hopefully it'll even out and should be fine over time. I also have a Raise account and a Spaceship account, which have about $2,000 spread across them I started them when I started listening to the podcast so they're going well I love this yeah yeah and I have a share scheme with the company that I'm working for where they contribute a hundred dollars a month from my paycheck and then I've also started dabbling in the share market myself so I have five investments at the moment some blue chips some on a little bit more of the riskier side which add up to around the eight thousand dollar up oh look at you go yeah something I'm so proud of because this was a huge step for me I always

saw investing as more of something gambling I was never educated on it ever and I just always thought oh my gosh why would you invest like you're throwing your money away you're going to lose it but my partner was into investing when we met a little bit and he kind of taught me about and then obviously listening to the podcast starting to do a bit more of my own research and I kind I've got rid of that stigma. And I thought, oh, just give it a go. I'll just put a little bit into Raise, bit into Spaceship. And then I built that up and I love it now. I'm really interested in it. Yeah, it's great. Oh my gosh. I love it. I feel like Raise and Spaceship are kind of like the gateway drug of the investment community because you end up just going, all right,

well that feels like a little bit less risky, a little bit more controlled. I'll give it a crack. And then it's the gateway. And now you have five different investments. I want to know though, because obviously coming from such a mentality where you're like, look, I really thought that investing was actually a form of gambling. Education is the key here, but how did you then start to pick those five investments? What made you confident enough to pull the trigger and put money in it? Because eight grand, that's a lot of money. It is a lot actually. For the blue chip ones, I just knew companies that I've heard of a lot that I felt were quite stable, did some research into it from the investment side and I felt comfortable with them for the ones that were

on the little bit more of the riskier side there's a couple people at my work that are really really into the share market and they kind of throw around tips between each other and this is when you're like let me in I want to hear your tips exactly that but I wasn't telling anyone that I was kind of into it at the moment because I've had that little bit of a stigma so I was a bit worried so I was just like oh I'll just listen and see what happens and then they were talking about it and one day I was like I'm just gonna try and if I lose money I lose money if I gain money I gain money I just want to give it a go at this point I had my blue chip so I was feeling confident obviously listening to the podcast I understand that it's going to be up and down it's

not going to just keep being up for the duration that I have it and I don't plan on taking anything out anytime soon so I gave it a go and one of them worked a bit more than the other but I feel really confident now that it's not gambling, but I feel really confident now, you know, looking into other stuff and going, oh, I might put a little bit on that and just see what happens, or this is a bit more of a safer option. I'll put a bit more money into that. And yeah, I completely flipped my mentality there. I love it. I think it's so good because so many people do feel that way. And then it's really about education and exposure that makes you understand how it actually all works. You go, wait, this is really different. This is actually

about wealth creation and creating financial freedom. I have another question about investing just because I'm so pervy. So I apologize, but I'm not that sorry. When you did decide to pull the trigger, you bought your blue chip stocks first. How did you pick a platform to invest on? Like what did you pick and why did you pick it? And why did that make the most sense for you? I went with ComSec and that's only simply because my partner had invested in ComSec. I didn't really look into which platform too much. It's just, I knew he was with it. I knew a couple of the people from work were in it. They were with a couple others as well, but I just thought, okay, I'll just. This works. It makes sense. Tried and true. Some other people have done it. So therefore it

can't be that bad. No, I love that. I always ask because there's always a reason why someone picked their platform. It's not, oh V, yeah, so I Googled it and I looked at this chart and it compared it. And so I picked off that. There's always like some other reason that people are like, oh no, I felt comfortable with this. And I just love hearing it. Yeah. That bank with Commonwealth as well. So I was kind of like, oh, okay, that's fine. Easy. All right. I want to know now about debt. You mentioned before that you purchased your home for $650,000, but I want to know what debt are you in? How much and how does it break down? Yep. So I am very proud to say that I don't have any bad debt at all. Very sexy. So I had my year and a half of my university

degree that I started but didn't end up finishing because I absolutely hated it. I paid off that HECS debt. That was kind of my main financial goal before the end of financial year just gone because I understand that it was going up the 7% with inflation. I was like, I do not want to keep paying this off. So you're here telling me like, hey there, 24 and six figures, have no HECS debt. You also have a mortgage, paying for my renovations, going to Europe. I love this. I'm obsessed yeah I think sometimes I don't give myself enough credit I get a bit of imposter syndrome sometimes I'm here to be your like official personal hype girl I'm like get it this is the best ever I just struggle to kind of like it sounds great in my head but it doesn't

oh it does feel good I don't know it's hard to explain I guess I like that I just feel like I have imposter syndrome sometimes be like oh yeah it's good but you know I'm sure I could be doing more of this we all think that though right the grass is always greener on the other side and imposter syndrome is something I can definitely relate to because I get it all the time and it's like the dumbest thing in the entire world because like I know what I've done like I know that I'm a good person doing good things at the end of the day that's all that matters it doesn't matter what I've achieved or what I haven't achieved I look at it and I go I'm a good person doing good things no one is actually going to come for me and kick me out and be like you don't know what

you're talking about, like, you know, get out, you're not a good person, but it's something that I think we should actually talk a lot more about because it doesn't matter whether it's your career or whether it's your investing journey or you've bought your first house. Like how many times do we just gaslight ourselves into thinking it's not good enough? You're like, oh, I bought my first house, but I live in it. I don't have an investment property. And you're like, wait, what? Like, where's this mentality coming from? Or you look at it and you go, I've started investing. You know, I've really thought about this. I have, you know, my blue chip stocks. I have rays. I have a spaceship. I'm actually doing a really good job. It's only eight grand though. That's not very good.

Like, why do we do this to ourselves? I know. I have no idea why. And to be honest, I think it's like majority of female thing as well. Oh yeah. It's not a male thing. A hundred percent. Like everyone I speak to, they're like, oh yeah, you know, this is so great about me. This is so great about me. People at work and I'm just sitting there like, oh yeah, I guess. No, absolutely not. We need to start talking to ourselves as though we're our own best friends because like I would never talk to my friends or anybody like, oh my gosh, yeah, you're right. That's not that good. Like I'm here going, holy moly, you're 24. You've done all of this good stuff. Like talk to yourself that way. Just go, oh, what would Victoria say to me? And

then say that because that's going to put you in a better position. Yeah. Okay. That's my new goal. That's what I'm going to do all the time now. All right. Earlier in the episode, you mentioned that you think that your worst money habit is that you earn a lot of money, but you're not really sure where it's going. Let's talk a bit more about that. But first, I want to know what is your best money habit, do you think? I am a good saver. If I have a goal, I will absolutely work so hard, smash it out. And once my money is in that savings account, I will not touch it. I will starve and I will not touch it. I've got my emergency account, which is good, but I will never, ever, ever touch it until obviously I've achieved that goal and

paying for it. So I'd say saving is a really good money habit for me. I love that. I think that that's really clear. Tell me a little bit more about this worst money habit. You said it was earning money. You're not really sure where it's going or what it's doing, but you're good at saving. How does that work? What I'm doing at the moment or when I was saving kind of for my bigger money goals is I would just put in a figure out when I want to achieve this goal by kind of break it down in months as to how long it would take me you know when I want to do it how much it'll cost me and kind of figure out the monthly amount I would need to put into my savings and then I would just do that and I just put that in and the rest of the money would be between my other accounts

I have an emergency account which is good but my other accounts that kind of just sit there and I'll just you know once one goes low I'll keep topping it up with the other but there's no thought actually behind it and I'll just kind of like oh yeah food shopping not thinking about it swipe my card I don't go shopping much but if I did you know I look at the price and if I can afford it I'll just swipe my cards like I don't really have much thought process behind you know this is my budget for food this is my budget for eating out this is my budget for absolutely anything like I don't have that thought process behind it which I really want to get like I want to make a budget I want to be so organized in that space I've just I've tried in the past like

a few years ago and I just had no success at all and I think that was I was younger obviously but I just I don't know why I've just I really want to get there I feel like that's really relatable though because I look at it and go you know everyone budgets in a different way like budgeting means something different to absolutely everybody and from my perspective looking at you know you from the outside in and having had this really beautiful conversation I go well does she really need a strict budget like she's achieved the goal of buying her house she's investing she's doing all of these things what do you think you'd achieve if you had a budget set in place and were more organized I think it would be good for my saving habits because I think I could probably

save more or put more money towards a mortgage or more money towards you know a holiday in the future rather than not thinking about and not having that structure, a bit of control would be nice. And I don't feel like I have that control over what's coming in, what's going out. Now you've got a mortgage is important too. Yeah. And I'm such an organized person and this is not on brand with what I'm like. This doesn't suit the vibe. Like this doesn't pass the vibe check. No, I love that. And I think it's important because we want every dollar that comes into our account to be working as hard as we do for it and sometimes if we don't have enough clarity or structure it's just not it just

comes in and it just does whatever it needs to do but it's not working hard I just have so many questions about this because I just think it's so relatable I want to ask another one about the budgeting aspect you said you tried a couple of years ago and it didn't work what did you try and why do you think it didn't work so my cousin is like the queen of budgeting she is like down to the scent absolutely crazy I love so I was like okay can I sit down with you can you show me how to do it run me through it and I did it for a few months and I just completely got not couldn't be bothered but I just lost that want to do it and I guess that being strict with myself for doing it and then since then I just haven't really tried again so I think also how she kind of had it laid

out. She had it on Excel spreadsheets, which was great, but I think it really suited her. And obviously she's only thinking from her. Whereas for me, I tried making it better for me and making it a bit prettier and things like that. So then I kind of wanted to do it, but it just didn't stick. I need to know when you did it on Excel spreadsheets, did it then become a super manual process? Like every single week or month, you'd have to go in and actually like look at the spreadsheet and then implement that in your banking system and then switch things around. So it was like a lot of work or was it something where you just had your finger on the pulse every month? Yeah, it was definitely more on the manual side and

especially because I'm not an Excel whiz in the slightest. So I had all my notes for how to do things and how to add your formulas and things like that. But then I would just, it slipped my mind or I'd have to Google it each month to make sure I'm doing the right thing. And it just got way too manual for something that should just be a quick number in, number in. I totally get it. like, obviously you're not in this situation, but I have ADHD. So if it becomes a manual process, it's not happening. Like I won't do it. It has to be taken off me. I don't often do this, but I'm going to gift you my budgeting cashflow masterclass or the new money masterclass, because it is all automated. And if you're not a spreadsheet girly, I was explaining it to someone

the other day and they were like, I don't get Excel or, you know, Google sheets fee. Like it doesn't work. I'm like, it's actually kind of like a software inside Excel that I've built because I am a spreadsheet girly and I am a nerd. But what you do is you put all of your budget in and then it tells you what you need to automate in your banking system. So you just set up direct debits and yeah, you just reflect your budget in your direct debits. And then your job is to just like check in every month, make sure that, you know, if there's a new expense that you forgot about that's included, but like that's the extent of the budgeting, if that makes sense. So I can't wait to hear what you think of it because I think it's going to really, really work.

Oh, thank you so much. No, no, no. I just think after this conversation, I'm like, this is going to work so well for you. I'm going to give it to you. I'll also pop a cheeky little discount in the show notes for anyone who wants to join as well, because obviously if I'm talking about it, you might go, they like, what about us? I just think it'll work so well, especially because I was like, oh, like why didn't it work? And you can like share it with your cousin. I'll allow that. I think that's fair because I think she'll be really impressed if she's a spreadsheet girl. like me. But last question I've got for you. Obviously, you said that your money habits are

B plus and, you know, you really want to work on your budgeting. But from my perspective, you're already killing it. After this conversation, do you think you're still a B plus? And if so, that's fine. But if not, like, why have you changed? But also, what could you do to get to that A plus, I guess, credit? I would maybe shift myself up to an A minus. Oh, I love this. Yeah, I think, like you said, I just need to give myself a bit more credit and go, you know, even though I feel like I can be doing more to just sit back and reflect and go, but you know what I've done so well so far. 100%.

Yeah. Like I'm proud of what I've achieved and I guess I need to think about that a bit more, but to get to that A plus, I would say the budget side of things would definitely give me a bit more control. So that would 100% assist me in getting to that A plus level. And then also I'd like to continue to add to my investments and kind of build that portfolio so that hopefully one day I can be financially free or as close to it as possible. Adore. Oh my gosh, I wish we had more time to chat, but unfortunately that is all we have time for today. So Mandy

Doris, thank you for joining us. Thank you for this chat. I feel like I'm now your personal hype girl as I am for absolutely everybody in our community, but I have adored this. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's been so nice to finally meet you. I was so looking forward to this. Oh my gosh, I love that so much. We're like besties who hadn't met yet. Maybe one day. Next time you come to Western Australia, I'll make sure to come. I'm in. 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.