She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: The only person in the meeting without a degree

Episode Date: May 9, 2021

Happy Monday, friends! The start of a BEAUTIFUL week - and the best way to kick it off is with this legendary money diary. I promise you: this episode will give you the inspo and butt-kicking abilities we ALL need on a Monday morning.Love the pod but looking for a more hands-on approach to your money? Look no further. Our budgeting & cash flow masterclass is the tool you need to help overhaul your finances for good. Join Victoria as she steps you through your budgeting and cash flow with all of the smarts and none of the intimidating jargon. 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. This is one of our money diary episodes. And as always, from now onwards, I'm joined by the beautiful and the radiant Tony Lodge. Hello, Tony. Hello.

Thank you for having me. You are so welcome. And we have a really interesting money diary today, which I know nothing about yet. So Tony, can you read us the email and we'll get straight into it. I am bursting at the seams. This is... Are you actually? Well, you've been talking about it literally all day. And now I feel like you've worked it up. So it better be good. No pressure, my friend. I actually never back anything in. I'm backing this in.

Okay, back it in. It's amazing. Back it in. Let's go. Ready? hi she's on the money gang gang we are a gang i saw your insta post about wanting to chat with someone earning a high salary without a university degree and that's me yes i'm 27 from tassie same and oh my god same oh we're probably a cousin and started working full-time three

weeks after starting year 11 when i was 16 my parents have always owned their own businesses and were always fighting about money. They had a pretty toxic relationship and my siblings and I had a traumatic upbringing. At 18, I started working in a sales call centre with potential to earn uncapped commissions. I worked really hard to earn 85K consistently for all the years that I worked in the role.

That is so much money. Allowing me to buy my first home at 20. 20. 20 to zero. Having not finished year 11 and 12. and escape from my parents, but also for my siblings to escape too. I love that. I'm so proud of her.

That's really special. I transferred to HR and began my career in recruitment and moving from a call centre to a corporate world was a big adjustment for me. The majority of the people I am now working with all have been to uni and have degrees. Take that, uni people. I've struggled with imposter syndrome quite a bit,

often feeling like I'm not smart enough or even proven I deserve a seat at the table. Oh, no, you deserve a seat. And if you don't think that there's a seat for you at the table, go get a chair and just drag it up. Yeah, just like scratch it along the hardwood floors so everybody notices you on the way. Luckily for me, I have an incredibly supportive manager

who believes in me and she reminds me that a piece of paper doesn't prove my worth or value. Absolutely, it does not. Fast forward three years and I'm absolutely loving my career choices. Between my partner and I, we currently have two houses and a block of land. Oh, my gosh. We are saving to build our next house and getting married in Feb 2022.

Oh my gosh, so sweet. I'm going to ask her about her ring. Not bad for a kid from a rural town that only finished grade 10. I love that for her. Let's get her on the phone, Tony. Do you want to give her a buzz? Hello, Money Diarist. Are you ready to talk about your money diary?

Yes, I am. Thank you so much for having me. It's so exciting. Oh my gosh, you've only finished year 10. And I cannot wait to have a chat with you. But in traditional She's On The Money form, we're going to go through our structured questions and then we'll get to lots of questions at the back end of the interview. Are you ready?

Yes, bring it on. Awesome. Could you explain to us what your attitude to money is? Sorry, I've had a think about this and I think it's been a bit of an evolution. So as I said, my parents were always arguing all the time and that was mostly about money. They didn't really teach my siblings and I very good money habits or the value of money. All I knew was I didn't want to be like them, but I just didn't know how. So when I bought my house and moved out of Poland, it was a massive adjustment for me

to learn how to save and budget for myself. And I quickly realized it's not something that you're automatically good at. So I just learned from books and friends and podcasts and trial and error. but today I'm feeling really confident with my approach to money. I've got a colour-coded spreadsheet so that's got my budget on it. I've got clearly defined bank accounts, all my savings. So I feel like I'm in a really good place with my attitude towards money. I feel like you are too.

That's so exciting. All right. What do you do for work and how much money do you earn? So I work in recruitment and I currently earn just over $90,000 a year plus super. So, what comes into my bank account every fortnight is just over $2,600. That is epic. Oh, my gosh. Not bad.

What do you mean not bad? That's great. That is such good money. And the fact that you're saving and investing, like, oh, I'm so excited about this money diary. All right. So, you obviously have some property already, but what is currently your big money goal? Yeah. So, like I said in the email, we're getting married in February.

So we've got kind of a short-term money goal of saving for that. I don't want to put any of that on credit cards or any loans. I want to pay that in cash. And then long-term, we're saving to build a house on the block that we bought earlier this year. So that's probably three to five years in the future, but we want to be able to pay for most of that with cash as well. Oh, my gosh.

That's so amazing. That is so exciting. So we know you have some property, but do you have any investments? uh yeah so i've got the property so that's only been a rental for about eight months um and maybe about 18 months ago i started investing into spaceships just a little bit of money every week i'm really keen to do a little bit more but um as you say if you're not ready to invest you know long term you shouldn't be putting the money in for a couple of years so i'm holding out until we build the house oh my gosh woman after my own heart she's

really gone through the victoria divine school of finance that's for sure i would not be mad if that existed can you imagine if there was a thing called the victoria divine school of finance should that be our next project oh i'm here for it we're doing it i'm doing it i'm there is that too egotistical oh do you know what i don't even mind no as long as people are saying stuff like this like i'm saving and i'm investing and i've got a plan like i don't care how they learn all right all right do you currently have any debts so yes we have the three mortgages between my partner and I so it's the the sum of um debt that we're in is a large amount it's a bit scary but um we've got a really good future plan um we've got we've both got really good paying jobs

and we have a really good financial planner which we both trust um awesome with our situation so oh my gosh so you've got a financial advisor yes yes we do awesome awesome and how do you think that that has helped your journey um it's just because the clarity like it's so great listening to your podcast and i do my own research but i'm not an expert either um so we can reach out to him and be with him and he can answer all of our questions look at our situation and give us the best advice to set us up for the future yes and the best thing about him is he's just so like he doesn't speak finance jargon um either like he really makes it relatable so we fully understand what we're getting ourselves into and he's been there like I've been working with him for a while

now so he knows my full situation oh my gosh and yeah continue to work with him maybe you'll have to introduce me to this guy's friend all right maybe next time we can do a little like don't put it past me I love Tassie obviously I grew up there and I get back at every possible opportunity. So what is currently your best money habit? So I would say my best money habit is like the way that I budget in terms of my money. It's a little bit extra but I have three different banks that kind of have different accounts in them. So one bank is mortgages and that's where we save in an offset account for our house. Then I've got another bank which is all my um i said important money and um so that's where i've got my emergency account um my you know

weekly expenses like groceries petrol that kind of thing all my money for my bills um go into that bank and then i use up bank for all my fun spending so my weekly allowance and my splurge account and that's where we're saving for the wedding as well oh my god it doesn't sound like you need a financial advisor it sounds like you could be my financial advisor oh my gosh yes and in on the flip side of that what is your worst money habit so as most cheese on the money listeners I love food so I do tend to splurge a little bit not just listeners also the host also the people that work here yeah also the people that work here we also love snacks um but if I had to say anything else it would be I try to make lists of things that I want to buy so I don't kind

of go out and buy them willy-nilly but when I start buying one I want to buy them all so then I end up doing that and I completely drain my kind of splurge account so then it takes a few weeks to build the savings back up there but I tend to just keep on repeating that cycle. And if I forced you to give yourself a grade what money grade would you give yourself? i am gonna give myself an a yes it's been a while back yourself yes i love that i love that i feel like it's been a really long time since a money director has genuinely been like no i'm an a i love this whether they deserve it or not sometimes we're like you definitely deserve an a and they're like oh no i'm a b minus i'm not having it anyway i've got so many questions for you and we'll get

back to them in just a moment. All right, Marnie Dyrist, thank you so much for sharing those with us. I actually have so many questions for you, but my first question is how? Look, I know that that's probably a little bit frank, but you know, having not finished year 12 and just finished at year 10 and then gone on to have this really great salary, the question isn't how did you do that? it's how are you now so good at money management like where did you learn that you needed all of your bank accounts and you wanted to buy a house and you know what that meant to then you know buy a block of land as well and transform that into an investment property like how have you done that at such a young age having come from a background that didn't teach you that yeah um I think it's

a lot of trial and error and you know looking into not that much error though from the looks of it oh there's definitely been times where you know i have to i would say paycheck to paycheck but i've had very little money in my account um but i think it's just i kind of knew exactly what i wouldn't what i didn't want to be like and so i did everything in my power to be the opposite for that so yeah it was just when i first had the opportunity to be able to earn a lot of money and i realized how much money that was i was like yep first thing i'm going to do is buy a house and get into the market and I did that you know a little while ago now so that my house has gone up in so much value which is amazing and then from there it was it was a good couple of

years probably a few years until I felt like I was kind of confident in how I set up my money and my budget and and that kind of thing so yeah just knowing what what I wanted to be and just working really hard to try and get there. I love that. It makes me so excited that you're just so well set up having started from, you know, I don't want to say a disadvantaged start, but from a start that, you know, didn't teach you the finance skills that I believe everyone deserves. It's also really powerful that you came from such a, well, I mean, like you said in your email, quite a hard environment to grow up in. It's really powerful that you kind of took away from that and went, okay, that's what not to do when I, you know, it comes to controlling my

finances and obviously you and your partner are super open about your finances you've both got you know houses together and separately and things like that what does what does he do for a job if you don't mind me asking i'm pervy yeah of course um he's an electrician by trade but he specializes in installing elevators oh my gosh do you guys still live in tasmania yes we do so they have elevators in tasmania nice i've got everything now yeah but they don't have uber eats oh no we do what oh she's probably from Hobart breaking news you from Hobart yeah yeah up in Launceston we don't have too many questions too personal sorry sorry sorry all right well so we're just like breaking down your exact location but do you know what Hobart's expensive now knowing

if she's living down there Hobart's genuinely expensive to break into the property market there great rental yield too which our money diarist probably is very aware of she's like yes Victoria I know um so while we're on the topic of your partner and to be a little bit pervy because we do love a good pervy money question here yeah like you said you were getting married in 2022 which is very exciting and actually creeping up it's less than a year away now how did you guys go about getting engaged what happened with your ring what happened with all of that because obviously like you seem to have your head screwed on what was that process like um it was a surprise so thank you tell us tell us oh yeah what happened we're both sitting on

the edge of our seats here um so we had a trip planned to Europe which had to get cancelled because of COVID it was going to be my birthday while we were over there so that um was his original plan oh my gosh imagine unfortunately I know but I like his backup plan even better So we went down to a place where I grew up and we went on this really beautiful hike. It was like a 20K hike or something ridiculous. How dare he make you do that before giving you that ring? I can't believe it.

Work it, girl. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, when we got to the end, he got down on one knee and proposed to me. The duck track he'd been carrying around champagne for the entire walk. Oh, my gosh. So sweet.

Yeah. So it was a complete surprise and he saved for the ring and you had literally no idea? Yes, I had no idea. So he told me he'd had it for quite a few months and kept it in the ceiling of the house. Because he knew at the time I would never look. What would you be doing in it?

Oh, he designed it himself. Yeah, it's beautiful. Oh, my gosh. Can you imagine? That's such a lovely story. I just wanted to be really pervy. I was like, she's getting married. she would have had a proposal let's ask because i'm always so interested in that journey and just

you know have you did you guys have conversations about marriage and what that looks like and you know the financial aspects of that yeah definitely i think um we were both our relationship started really slow um for the first six months because i think we really wanted to get to know each other properly um and i think that both of us it was really important that our partner was in a good financial situation as well which we both came into it um like that and spoke about the future and that kind of thing we did speak about engagement rings and like i said i didn't really want to be a part of the process but it was important to me that he didn't go out and splurge on something that was ridiculously expensive because we have these goals that we

want yeah as much as i would love a big um flashy ring and it is i think big and flashy enough for me anyway um that's not I suppose what we value yeah and it's nice to ask these questions too because it's not often that you know if your friend gets engaged you don't go how much was your ring did you guys talk about the money values you had together before you got engaged like that's why I really like this podcast and the I guess anonymity that you have so I can ask that and we can listen is if we're friends and most people would be quite offended if you like if someone went oh I'm I'm engaged and you went how much was your ring and did you talk about it yeah oh my gosh how offensive like I don't know it's not coming from a malicious place you are a

bit pervy but you never get to ask those questions in real life so let's ask them here um and how's wedding planning going what's the budget for that look like so um weddings are expensive oh my gosh I know so initially we had a figure in mind and then um hang on tell us the figure this is the sheet you don't just go oh we're thinking about a number my love what was that number so the figure was 20 000 yeah that's a pretty good budget that's big that's substantial for sure yeah um but then and we had a really clear picture of what we wanted for the wedding as well so that made it really easy um i went away and contacted like a whole heap of different venues and vendors um and spoke with them and got prices so when I added it up and I mean we're not

doing anything super extra like the wedding is just going to be super laid back and kind of picnic festival-y style two trucks um Tony and I will send you our address you can send the invite right on over we don't need plus ones we'll just go together yeah we'll actually just go together So don't worry, that'll cost one for us. I would love that. But, yeah, it adds up really quickly. So that quickly went over that $20,000 limit. And when I sat down with my partner, we went through everything line by line

and we thought what we were wanting to pay for everything was really justifiable. But, you know, when you add it all up, it went over that. So it's probably going to be around $25,000 now. that's still under the average of $34,000 for a wedding here in Australia so I don't think it's that bad no I think it's pretty good and like I said we want to pay for all of it in cash we don't want to put anything on credit or anything like that so yeah I'm happy with that figure you're like a dream like what everybody listening is like she's making this up I bet you it sounds

like it's me with a voice decoder on like it doesn't sound like it's real it's actually genuinely so so impressive are you proud of yourself yeah I think um I think I am I do often kind of struggle with a bit of imposter syndrome sometimes um but when especially when you read that email back to me I was like oh she's cool a hundred percent and and like you said in the email you know oh I've got a I've got mentors that tell me a piece of paper doesn't mean anything and I will tell you firsthand this is my experience I've got the piece of paper and I still struggle with imposter syndrome every single day I don't I don't oh my gosh me too you know it's it's not only that it doesn't make a difference as in like if you're good at the job you're going to get it

but it doesn't make you feel more confident and especially as a as a female often females that you see larger numbers of imposter syndrome and people experiencing those feelings and every day for me at least once a day that there's a second of me going oh I'm so lucky to be here when no I've actually worked really hard so you should be really proud of yourself because your background and what you've been able to achieve is just is so impressive like oh it is it is so impressive and I think you touched on something that's really important here as well Tony it's not luck no you worked really hard for this and imposter syndrome is something that I suffer from massively I'm always like oh thanks and I guess it's why I can't really get behind myself when I get

you know obviously we know that I have a few awards and stuff like that but when it happens I'm so bad at celebrating those things with my team with my family with my friends because I'm always like oh yeah I got this and then in the back of my head I'm like yeah but they made a mistake like they didn't they didn't mean it or most recently I got an award and I was like oh yeah like it's really cool but I don't know why I got it like I don't get it at all and I really need to pull my own head in because it's cool and we really should back ourselves and we really should have this idea of ourselves that is true and correct like I'm so impressed with your story and it has nothing to do with luck and you're absolutely not an imposter like it breaks

my heart a little bit that I know so many people in our community suffer with this and you know it's probably something I want to have a deeper conversation about because it is deep and it is meaningful and it is impactful if we can start backing ourselves in a better way yeah I completely agree because it's so important to be able to not be cocky and not be not be rude about it but just to be proud ourselves and back ourselves in it's so powerful and if a friend told you that they won an award how excited would you be for them yeah exactly and we should be doing that to ourselves exactly and so should you my friend I feel like you are so impressive but what is you know a lot of people listening to this um are going to have listened and been like oh wow

I didn't grow up with that situation and you know I'm not in a better situation now because of it like what is the first step that you really took that helped you get on the right path to being able to be what I would deem to be relatively financially secure for your age oh that's a really good question oh thank you I thought of it myself um I think well I didn't necessarily have the best um role models currently and like I love both of my parents they they were good they did the best that they could do what they had I suppose at the time but there were other people in my life that I could look to and be like yep I want to be more like them um and just because you you know might not have the best um start you don't

have to follow that path you know you can make a conscious decision about where you want your life to go um and there'll be people out there that will support you and that will believe in you and will invest time in you to be able to do that and i've been really lucky um you know in my personal life and throughout my career um i've had amazing managers that have invested a lot of time and effort um into me because they could see how hard i would work um and how how much i really wanted to do my best at everything that i did oh you're gonna make tony cry she's across the room with her hand on her chest being like oh my gosh i just want you to ring me every morning and be like you can do it babe we can do more morning group pep talks i like it we can jump in here and be like

all right so hype us up my friend. Here we go here we go. But I love this I absolutely love this and I think it is really powerful especially when it comes to financial literacy and I'm very very grateful that you you know are sharing this story with us and knowing that you're from Tasmania and knowing you know that's obviously very close to my heart because I grew up there but then also knowing you didn't finish year 10 or you did finish year 10 you didn't do secondary what do you call it VCE that's in Victoria HSC college yeah so you didn't do college and then you've made it in an area that usually requires the degree I'm just so genuinely proud of you and proud that you're a part of our community and that you get to be one of the role models for the people listening to

our show like it's just so special that these stories get to be out there now and I want to just say thanks for joining us and thanks for you know sharing your story because it genuinely is really special to us oh thank you so much for having me i'm glad that um i got the opportunity to do this and hopefully inspire other people that um you know might not have finished or like i said high school or college or gone to university that there are still opportunities out there oh you absolutely have you absolutely have and i think that it's so important so thank you so much for joining us today okay so just before we head off we'd like to acknowledge and pay respect to Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,

the traditional custodians of the lands, the waterways and the skies all across Australia. We thank you for sharing and for caring for the land on which we are able to learn. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and we share our friendship and our kindness. The advice shared on She's on the Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances.

Nuh-uh. She's on the Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. And we promise, Victoria Devine is an authorised representative of Australia Pacific Funds Management, Proprietary Limited, ABN 34132463257, AFSL 339151. And yeah, thanks to our team of audio wizards, who is actually Tony as well. It's just me. It's just us.

It's like three kids in a trench coat. Yeah, I'm actually really excited. And I think that's something to celebrate, right? We have a full-time audio engineer, producer, co-host, everything all in one now. Oh, I am a wizard. You are a wizard, Harry. You're a wizard, Tony. Not as attractive as Harry.

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gonna afford the birthday parties honestly imagine if you had a hundred thousand people calling up to sleep on your couch after a night out or something yeah it's not gonna happen anyway you're welcome if you need to but maybe not a hundred thousand others anyway don't forget to rate, review, subscribe on whatever app you use. We appreciate literally every single thing you guys do for us. See you next week. Bye.