She's On The Money - MONEY DIARIES: Two immigrants have completely changed their stories and call Australia home

Episode Date: December 5, 2021

Welcome back to another gorgeous Monday, and today we have an absolute banger - starting with a long-distance relationship, no job, no savings but the confidence to build a life together here in Australia - two immigrants are now applying for PR together, together have a six-digit investment portfolio and are planning on purchasing a home together HOW LUCKY WE ARE THEY WANT TO CALL AUSTRALIA HOME.. now let's learn from their story!!Thanks to our friends at Superhero for sponsoring today’s video! They’ve launched a partnership with Qantas Frequent Flyer to allow you to earn Qantas Points on eligible trades and up to 15,000 Bonus Points if you’re new to Superhero. Money win! https://bit.ly/SuperheroxSOTMThe advice shared on She’s on The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She’s on The Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. Victoria Devine is an Authorised Representative of Australia Pacific Funds Management Proprietary Limited ABN 34 132 463 257 - AFSL 339151.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

She's on the money. She's on the money. Hello and welcome to She's on the money, the podcast for millennials who want financial freedom. My name is Toni Lodge and joining me for another Shopback Money Diary is Miss Victoria Devine. Hello. Hello and welcome, but also goodbye, Toni. Well, I mean, the cat's out of the bag.

No. Toni, why is this episode? Obviously, it's going to be a special episode. We say that at the start of every single week. I don't know what it's about yet, but it's an extra special episode. Why? Well, today is my last money diary. Oh, Tony is going on to bigger and better things.

And obviously, we couldn't be more proud of her. And obviously, we've kept her around as long as we have. But it's Tony's last money diary. So, I hope this is a goodie and you've like saved something really special up so that you can blow it out of the water. This is an amazing money diary. You are going to love it. And the roller coaster is just, it's going to be tip top. I promise. All right. All right. Well, let's jump straight in. I cannot wait. Tony, can you read out this week's money diarist's email for me? All right, here we go.

At the age of 25, I finished my bachelor's in physio in my home country, Brazil, and immigrated to Australia to start a new life with my New Zealand partner. that was back in 2019 when we were about ten thousand dollars in personal debt but also really happy that after one year of long distance we could physically be together oh how special i came here to australia with no job no savings and a degree yet to be accredited however confident that my partner and i had a whole future ahead of us two and a half years later here we are two immigrants that just applied for their permanent residency together with a six-digit investment portfolio what an emergency account and looking forward to buying

a home and having kids in the near future hold up in like two years no no i know no i know there are a lot of millennial immigrants in australia such as myself and my partner and i'd love to share my money story with them the story of a girl whose life completely changed for the better when she decided to call this beautiful country home oh and now she's gonna live with us permanently tony i know and actually she mentioned that she lives in sydney and she's about to buy a house so she must be pretty rich probably really rich she married rich tony we were on to her as always our money diarist is on the line and wants to rebut your comment money diarist you didn't just marry rich did you i wish that would be so amazing if he came with you know like he's amazing a little

thing because the guy's handsome and funny the way he is a wonderful partner and also rich but no not not the case you never get the trifecta do you it sounds like you lucked out though for most part oh and it sounds like you don't even need it i just don't allow the man to spend i just don't allow the men to spend that's pretty much all right well money diarist how about we get straight into it i would love to know what is your attitude towards money uh well i believe that now i have a pretty positive attitude towards money it hasn't always been that way though i so growing up my family never had much uh we you know i have from a family with six children and my parents they got separated when my mom, I was still pregnant with my younger sister. And yeah,

luckily, we always had everything that we needed. We always had, you know, a full tummy, a roof over our heads and warm clothes. But we also, you know, didn't have a lot of things. I moved out of home to go to uni when I was 18. So just to add a little bit of context, I grow up in Brazil in a sort of mid-sized city with not much university structure and I went to uni in the capital of the state that was about an hour and 20 minutes drive away from my family's house so I had to move there and I was really privileged that I got a lot of government support to be able to afford accommodation food and also I always worked so yeah during that time was really difficult you know to deal with money because I would look at my bank account and basically if I

was to buy a five reais is the currency in Brazil five reais is neck between breaks I wasn't going to have enough money to take the transport to go to see my family in the weekend so you know I had to budget to every single cent but that did teach me a lot and you know I think definitely contributed a lot with the fact that now that I have so much more than I actually need uh we are you know being able to do you know such a good thing out of all that is happening now for me and my partner yeah so now I think the attitude is definitely much more positive because um I really try now to not go back to that situation again where if I look at my bank account you know I only have enough money to really survive until the next week no now things are not that way anymore and

it just feels so good oh what a story money diarist you said in your email to us that you've moved from brazil and you've gotten a uni degree and we don't know much more than that now what do you do for work how much money do you earn so i currently work for new south wales health not as a physio though um and i am an admin officer over there um my permanent position is admin officer At the moment, I'm acting as admin supervisor in the outpatient department. I've been doing that for the last couple of months, covering leave, and I'll probably do it until at least the 31st of December. So my normal wage, like my permanent positions wage, that is $65,000 per year.

Oh, my gosh. And acting as admin supervisor, they paid $70,000 per year. So, at the moment, I'm earning $70,000, a little bit of a pay rise over there. Oh, a win? Yeah, pretty good win. That's definitely, obviously, before tax, but not including superannuation. Oh, great. So, superannuation's on top.

Nice. Yeah, it's a 10% on top. We don't get more than 10%, unfortunately, for New South Wales Health. I'm not complaining, though. That's pretty good. Yeah, I like it. No complaints. And, Cheekily, what does your partner do and how much does he earn?

Oh, wow. I was not prepared for that question. Sorry, you don't have to tell us, but I'm going to ask later about how on earth you have a $100,000 investment portfolio. And I have a sneaky suspicion that was joint. So, like, I need all the details. I need them all. Yeah. So, I'm more than happy to tell you what he does. He's a government employee as well. He is a correctional officer. But the thing is with him he's been working full-time on that job since April this year and he always always always have worked more than one job so the guy is a little bit of a workaholic so yeah um he's normally and for like for some time he he also did like pretty much two full-time jobs at the

same time so yeah he does he works a lot and also he does a lot of overtime as well so when he does over time he gets paid much more like double or whatever that is that they pay um I do I do know how much he's earned from his last tax return uh it was nearly a hundred thousand dollars wow but it's because like you know he doesn't have a bed he's a hustler yeah that's right that that's exactly the word that I was looking for yeah yeah he's a hustler so money diarist what is currently your big money goal yeah so at the moment we are more focused at investing because we still need to figure out a lot of answers about the property buying we definitely want to own property we want to this is something that we want to do even though we really like investing we we definitely

want to own our home you know where we're going to raise our kids and all that stuff however we don't want to own a home in sydney don't get me wrong i love sydney um but we we plan to actually have a family you know in regional new south wales probably it's not um in our plans you know to buy an apartment in sydney yeah so yeah um we at the moment we are more focused on you know achieving our yearly goals like we have the goal of every year a minimum of forty thousand dollars we save and invest um and yeah so about the home we still need to figure out where we're gonna buy we still don't know it's a little bit hard to give up on stable jobs as well yeah for us you know to move away from sydney that is getting it's a little bit tricky at the moment um and

yeah so by the time we have kids though we want to have that all a little bit more sorted um yeah so for now the biggest money goes with it to keep doing you know like good making good decisions and achieving those investment goals and hopefully to buy a home in some time in the future it sounds like you've got it all together and you know what you want and where you're going to invest and what you're going to purchase and how it's all going to work like i cannot wait to hear that you've purchased and you know you're having babies and you're doing all of these things like that's so fun and can i tell you something i'm really here not just like saying it it's it's because of your money podcast really yeah i i know it's a lot of my hard work it's because i sat down i'm starting

i'm going after it i know you're gonna say that as well because you do that's the kind of thing called out by a money diarist i feel like i know you for so long you have no idea because i've listened to the episodes most of them I've listened to them multiple times but yeah I it's because really um I was completely against investing in shares completely against it I was like no way I used to tell my partner I'm not gambling my money I work hard for my money I'm not gonna gamble now I love it I tell everyone to do it I'm like no no don't leave anything I'll tell you about this money podcast, you need to listen to it. Oh my heart. That is honestly so sweet. But yes, I am going to tell you it was you. Like I'm very grateful to be in the position where I have been

able to share all that information. And like, that is obviously the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning and I adore it. But if you're giving that information to people who aren't ready to hear it or don't want it or aren't interested or just like, I can do it on my own. Like it's all up to you to actually do something with the information and further educate yourself. Like you can't just go start investing after listening to my podcast. You have to work out what you're going to invest in and how you're going to do that. So my friend, you did a lot of this work, 99.95% of that was you. Oh, thank you. This feels like a really silly next question, but it is in the proper sequence. The question is, do you have any investments? We know the

answer is yes. My friend, what are they? How do they work? Tell us all about it. yeah uh so i have uh actually categorized them to categorize them oh my gosh all right tony grab a chair we'll sit down do you need me to take notes while are you ready okay so um i have so i have the investments that i do myself uh not including my partner um and they are mostly micro investments really so i have about four hundred dollars invested into spaceship and eighteen hundred dollars invested into ray um so my partner got some shares with the company that he used to work for before he became a government employee um and that was about five thousand dollars that he's got and because we do finances together

you know it was like you know let's do uh nearly five thousand dollars for something else that she wants to do so uh we've got uh i've got about four thousand five hundred dollars in common sack pocket at the moment because i wanted to give it a try um that's a split you know i mean they they have a few little etfs there yeah they've got a lot of good options yeah yeah um and so we have our joint share portfolio then uh my partner and i and at the moment that is about 165 000 that's a bit more than you told us it was in your email my friend yeah um it's like trays of course um but you know it's in the green side so far that's overall like you know all together all in that bucket how did you create that portfolio like before you said

you had comsec pocket you're not doing that on comsec pocket are you no no so the that is in common tech but like it's in etfs and like a few vanguard etfs if you watch etfs and a few individual stocks we also have some shares in facebook and some shares in uber that those were the first few couple that we bought because we're like okay we are big fans of facebook and let's do that and now it's and it's more of a really silly but it was like actually not bad because yeah you know they're performing well so i cannot complain but yeah so it's like a mix of you know all those those things um wow 165 000 and that was done um you know we started in january 2020 okay you've got to tell us how are you doing this each month are you investing all of your

income like where is this money coming from especially because you said before like i'm just doing some maths my friend your partner last year had a taxable income of just under a hundred thousand dollars and you had a taxable income of seventy thousand dollars pre-tax how does this add up where is your where is your money coming from so if i do give you all the entire timeline i moved here to i moved to australia to live permanently i've been here before but you know i moved back to to be with him um on february 2019 i couldn't work for three months my three first months here for visa reasons and then I could work full-time after that period of time so then I started looking for jobs. I worked two jobs back then and he also worked two jobs for a

very long time. We had about $9,000 actually worth of debt during that time. We finished paying off their debts probably end of august 2019 and then we started saving wow yeah and then we started saving on a context where we were both working 60 hours per week we didn't even have time to go out for food to travel we didn't have the time and energy to really do anything or to spend the money yeah or to spend the money that's right yeah i think first time that i bought clothes for myself was a couple months ago oh my gosh so it was hard work determination and just both being hustlers it's not just your partner you are as well and i should also actually have mentioned and i'm sorry i forgot to mention that i also have a side hustle on sundays i work on sundays

i've done that for six weeks before lockdown and now i'm back doing that again oh cool yeah um and i've done a little bit of you know like working weekends and that's where my spaceship and haze and raise little investments that's that's where they came from because their money i basically don't spend it you know i just chuck them into those little uh micro investing platforms because i want to see what they're going to do for me and that money i actually plan to get that out to be able to go home once this you know the whole covid situation yeah so it doesn't have to come out of your savings that is right and it doesn't have to come out of our joint money for our future goals you know we can i can actually just get that out of the little extra things so i can still see my

family it's an expensive trip right going to brazil it would be so expensive yeah uh yeah so right now as well um the the visa situation thing um we are very lucky that the visa process that we have to do we don't we didn't need to pay eight thousand dollars in that you know in one go we actually pay 20 and the other 80 is going to go afterwards because the uh my partner is actually the applicant and I am the secondary applicant. And they do this little good thing for the Kiwis here for New Zealanders. Oh, that's cool. You've been sneaky. I love that. Yeah. So, I really love the way that immigration has done that because, you know, it just makes a little bit easier for them as well. Yeah, so much nicer. Your cousins from across the sea.

True, true, true. All right. Back on track with questions because I want to keep talking to you but I know we have to smash through these. Yeah. This feels like a silly question, Tony. Marnie Dyrus, do you have any debt? No, because my financial, sorry, I should not say that you are my financial advisor. I feel like you are a little bit,

but you haven't given me a personal financial advice, but you have told me so much. Anyway, well, I should not have debt. If I write, I should pay that first before I invest. So we just paid off. So you're going to become a financial advisor yourself. I can see you as well. Come back for Zella, it's fine.

It sounds like you're probably better at giving investment advice than I am right now. Of course not. No, no, no. Like, I love it. Money Dyrist, next question. Do you use Shopback? I do. I do.

I'm not the kind of person that really shops, as you can tell so far. It's really actually terrible that I don't shop. Sometimes you have to, right? But anyway, when I do, like, especially buying things for the house and Christmas gifts and stuff like that. Yeah. So, I definitely use Shopback. It's really handy. I feel like even someone who is as good at investing and saving as you, that's a tool that people just use because they're being smart with their money. It's not about buying clothes and shoes and being frivolous. It's actually about being a little bit savvy when you do have to buy things online.

That's right. Why not? Get a few dollars back, you know? Genius. Genius. That's money you can invest. Ask our money diaries, Tony. All right. The next question I have for you, Mani Darest, and I feel like we'll learn a lot from this one. What is your best money habit? Best money? Well, I don't spend. You're just really good at saving money. You are who I aspire to be. I'm really good at not spending. I pack my lunches. So before I even leave the house, if I'm tired and I don't cook on the next day, I think, okay, what can be my snack then for lunch? because I know if I, I will spend probably $15 to eat at work. And I'm sorry, I don't want to

speak badly about my workplace, but the food that is no good. That's fair. I feel like that's pretty common, but we still, if we haven't packed lunch, spend $15 on the not good food. Yeah, that is right. Yeah. And it feels, it hurts spending money in terrible food. Totally. Like if it was $15 for like the best meal you've ever had you'd never regret that but if it's bad food you're like oh I could have just done so much better and it's always a stale sandwich or something like it's never something fancy yeah that's right and you know like sometimes it's like literally if I have toast that is not that's money that I'm not spending and it's actually fine you know I know already how toast tastes like you know what I mean it's not going to be disappointing and I'm not

totally yeah and um I also um but I'm actually I'm generally pretty good I do milestone by the way so um we need to so we I we always have our meals my partner and I always have our meal spectacle work exactly because that is all organized um we normally don't have takeaways many times as well once or twice a week um and my partner is really good at uh he's not a very materialistic person so even his phone oh my god for me to convince the man that he needed a new phone because even the battery was not lasting anymore the flip side though we we we do have a few differences the especially cultural differences because he values a lot experiences so if he feels like okay i want to go out tonight and have some fun spend a thousand dollars he doesn't think

that's too much money to spend uh-huh you know wow yeah and yeah if I go out and spend a hundred bucks I'm like oh my god unacceptable unacceptable behavior yeah exactly so to compare that what is your worst money habit I probably have more The Sims expansion packs than I should oh so you like playing the sims that is not what i was expecting absolutely not what i expected you to say so you're you're you're telling us money doris that your worst money habit is that you buy the sims expansion money doris we have that in common i had to buy so during lockdown i had to find something to break up the day and i downloaded the sims on my partner's playstation it's so expensive and then

i wanted the christmas pack and i wanted the pets pack and i wanted to be able to go different places like it's expensive isn't it people don't want this to thank you i've been hard that's like my dirty little secret i've never told anybody and here's me just playing this That is right. I have the hobby of a 12-year-old. Okay, guys. I am just, I'm so really speechless and I can't believe that that's what you've both just said. If you do it on the PlayStation, you can visit my house and I can visit your house. Like you can come into my world. It's good. Please, please let me. Yeah, no, but I, and I want them all. That's the problem. I can always

justify play you know buying more the sim stuff you know always and they they're so smart like they break everything down you know it's fifty dollars each x i have old expansion packs guys no but like also sometimes they bundle them so sometimes you can get like a few expansion packs in a bundle and then you find yourself spending more money than you wanted to spend because it was just good value okay well i really want the sim city living and get together but i i really just need seasons as well like there's a lot to it guys yeah yeah yeah and I got on a point that I cannot bundle anymore because you need to bundle you need an expansion a game stuff and um a stuff pack and I already have all the expansions that was what is mad of me so I need to pay the full

price for the game stuff and now I'm waiting for it to go and to sell actually if I can buy some I can't believe this it's turned into sims on the money honestly I don't know what's going on I think that this is um is actually not that uncommon um like I feel like I've got a couple of girlfriends and it's like all our sneaky little like I don't know we we spend a lot of money on it and it's actually quite funny because um I'm probably sending our money diarist down the rabbit hole she didn't need to but did you know like on etsy you can buy houses like you can buy like houses that people have designed and like you can have them imported into your into your world so you can like buy a house that like someone else has done so you

don't always have to like rely on the sims houses or the ones that you design yeah i know about the ones for free that people share but i did not know you can buy oh no you can buy them yeah With new items and stuff. Oh, my God. Yeah. It's important to have hobbies. I'll give you that. Thanks.

Thank you, Tony. Thank you for your support. I'm trying. I'm trying. Halloween has just gone. Maybe we should have dressed up as, like, the Sims characters and gotten little headbands, which you can also buy on Etsy. You have gotten so distracted about the Sims chat.

You haven't asked our money diary about her grade. I'm sorry. Am I the only person concentrating now? I think you're the only one that cares. We're going to take this offline. Tony, what's the last question that we needed to ask? Money, Doris, if we had to force you to give your money habits a grade, what would you give yourself? I would give myself an A. I think I would give you. Yes. I love it when people give themselves an A. I would give you an A plus though. Not what? Not an A plus, yeah.

No, no. You know why? I think I think mostly because we still need to get sort of all this, you know, property goals and stuff like that. I think those are things for us to still definitely have our minds more clear about those things. I'm listening to the property playbook, of course. Great. And learning and learning everything about it. Yeah. I think it's because right now, until our permanent residency is granted as well, we it's just like, you know, we still cannot do it. It is just too expensive as a foreign here. I could have, I think, my name just on the title, not on the loan. And I'm not doing that. I'm only going for it if I can do 100% of the, you know, the whole thing.

So, yeah, so I think that's also as well why we still have so many other things to sort out. And obviously also because we still need to get, you know, probably more regional new softwares to decide where we want to move to, jobs and all this other stuff. So, yeah, that's why not an A+. But, yeah, hopefully one day. well maybe who spent less money on sims expansion packs we could probably call you an a plus but let's talk about the sims a lot more right after this okay i'm sorry i'm sorry all right we'll talk about it after the break jumping back into it money diarist i feel like we have everything in common now and i'm very very excited about this but i'd love to know how you've gone

essentially from zero to $165,000 in a investment portfolio and how you were confident to go from being that person that said, no, investing is gambling. And now you're literally one of the biggest advocates of it. Like how has that happened? What was your first step? And what can people listening to this money diary learn so that they can essentially copy you? Because we all want to be you at this point oh um obviously we i don't think we have only made good decisions you know in this process i am i think the conservative paddle you know with my partner he's the one that wants to take all the risks and you know so confident about everything and i'm always the person and i'm like okay let's have a look at that does that sound like a good

idea really and all that stuff um i think once i started listening to um shoes on the money and and I started reading about, you know, ETS, shares, how does it work? I remember that there was an episode that you have recorded about the myths of investing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that one was like, oh, my God, like everything that people used to say, you know, and they were basically all myths. Really, yeah, she's right.

It doesn't make any sense thinking that way. Oh, I'm so glad. yeah so that gave me everything that you said was like it's very inspirational to me and it made so much sense that i started reading and i love the money smart um website that you always recommend as well so you know it's so good isn't it so good yeah i read a lot from there you know and the community as well this is on the money community um reading about everyone's experiences and sharing ideas and all that stuff so i think i the only thing that made me insecure before was really thinking that investing in shares was the same as gambling and when i once i understood

that no it's not it's actually not even close to gambling it's like so so so different obviously there are risks i'm not saying that there aren't there aren't risks and also as i said we did make a few a couple of stupid decisions my partner for example you know shares in one company that the thing just completely crashed a couple a few days after and there was like three thousand dollars there and now we're still down uh fifteen hundred uh fifteen hundred dollars we're still down you know like we're still losing one thousand five hundred dollars so um and yeah so there were a few mistakes in in the way as well but i think overall we are learning a lot and you know we are actually doing things as lowly and as we can um i think that there's not just one company that he

really believes on and um that we have a little bit more money invested on that one but our money is really split you know across many different things so it's like um exactly for the to diversify it a lot and try to reduce the risk and all that stuff so yeah and obviously it's been something that we are doing consistently as well i think that's what what you always say you know um to consistently doing it so we we never wait like oh now we have fifty thousand dollars let's invest no we every every month we are doing a little bit you know so to anybody that's listening that is feeling how you felt before you started investing what is the what is the biggest piece of advice that you would give because there's lots of people that are listening that

are probably thinking oh no i still think it's gambling or i still think that it's too risky would you just say listen to that podcast or absolutely first thing first thing listen to it and listen to it actually hear what she's saying you know like don't just listen to it but pay attention on everything that it's being said to you um and that definitely the first thing and then go to the money smart website please it's so nice so easy easy to understand as well everything is written there for you um search search the words that you don't understand and then if you think okay i think now i'm ready to invest two thousand dollars maybe you know have a look at um something that that looks pretty interesting like victoria mentions has mentioned before about

the blue chip companies right maybe have a look at an etf that has a bunch of blue chip companies and it's performing well for a long period of time maybe give it a try a couple thousand dollars you know and wait some time and see what happens and you're probably going to see your money growing so yeah and that's going to motivate you yes when you see your money working for you girl yeah that's when you're like I need it working harder and that's when you think I'm not going to buy that you know blouse that costs 30 dollars I already have so many in my wardrobe I cannot justify that 30 bucks I better as well invest that that's the advice I need for myself right now, honestly. Going back to work after lockdown, I've been like, maybe I do need a

couple of new tops to make me feel excited about going back to the office. But life is now as well, you know. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Money Diarist, I have another question you mentioned before the break that your partner and you have very different backgrounds. Like for you, spending a hundred dollars is massive and it feels like a lot and you feel guilty if it's not on the sims and your partner can go out and potentially spend a thousand dollars in a night and he's like no that's a good night like I deserve that and he's budgeted for it but I'm assuming you couldn't comprehend that how are you dealing with those different money stories in your relationship that was one of the biggest challenges in our relationship was dealing with the you know

the perspective on the on these things we have a few things that are amazing and make us as strong as a couple like we have the same goals you know we both want to own a home one day we both enjoy investing we both want to have kids and all that stuff but you know we had those differences we had to change the way that we do our finances a couple times until we got to the point now where we both have a little bit of freedom you know we hope we both we have our joint finances but we both also have money that he spends the way that he prefers and I spend the way that I prefer and to me it took a long time as well and a few therapy sessions to get on a point where i actually trust that he's going to continue committing with what he has told me that he will be doing

not that he had that he went before and you know we spend all our money no really not but just because you know those couple times that he went out with his friends and spent more than i thought it was reasonable to me to for me to build the trust again and like okay he's not going to do that again it took a while and it took changing our finances set up a few times my partner comes from um he has a money story that is very similar to mine um yeah a little bit similar to mine i wouldn't say very similar actually um his family also they didn't have much either four kids he grew up in a tiny city in new zealand mom working in the weekend so she could stay with kids during the week and dad working during the week and then you know he has memories of like not

being able to go to a birthday of one of his little friends because the parents couldn't buy a gift and he was going to be embarrassed if he went without taking a gift so for him growing up was not like with abundance either but he started uh he went to army when he was 17 and that was you know a pretty good wage for a 17 year old and he stayed for a few years and he didn't have expenses pretty much so it was like a out of their paycheck a little bit of money for the accommodation a little contribution that they used to do and a little bit for food and when they were doing missions overseas he wouldn't even get that charge from him everything was on the government so um yeah so he didn't have even the occasions to spend as well because they

couldn't really go out partying all the time or anything like that yeah so um but once he left he's blew all that money and now he's seen as well everything that we are building together so i think for him it's the motivation comes a lot from that because uh two years and eight months ago before i moved in um everything was just a mess and now we actually have a structure for stuff and i said about i don't let the man spend but i'm actually um it's something that i work with myself so i am not the controlling person that is controlling what he does you know what me. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I think what I'm most impressed with is you just told me a lot about your partner's money story. And I don't think a lot of people actually know their partner's money

story so deeply like to know, yeah, actually part of his money story was not being able to go to a party. And that was, you know, something that has shaped him. And this is how he spent money when he was 18. And then this is how it changed. Like, to be honest, I don't like I've spoken a lot with my partner about money stories, but I just don't have those pinpoint details like you have where I've been able to go, okay, I can see it from his perspective. And maybe that's because our upbringing was relatively similar. So there's never been that need of, you know, having that conversation, but I'm just so impressed that you know so much about that. And you're like, no, I know what I need as well. You mentioned going to therapy and getting through those things

and that being a really pivotal part of your relationship. And now once you've gone through all that you're obviously absolutely flying together and it doesn't mean you don't you know have stumbling blocks or have things that you're like oh he still grinds my gears on that but like you clearly have a mutual respect for one another that's really beautiful like that is so cool thank you um yeah i it definitely it's been a long way i think i think it's because uh the one year of long distance relationship was amazing for us in terms of communication yeah because we had nothing else you know like we could only talk and we used to have like three hours conversations nearly every day um and trying to work around um as well our schedulers and the fact that

Brazil is 13 hours behind Australia time-wise so you've got to be really committed to that relationship to make it work so now we've built a really strong friendship and so every problem every problem that we have and everything that happens we do talk a lot you know we do and we had so many conversations about that because to me it was a non-negotiable you know what I mean like living life always fighting about that I wasn't going to be able to live that way always having arguments about the same thing and I think it feels a little bit the same way you know like we needed to get to the same page about that subject and now I think we are and obviously if we need to reshape things again we've done it once why not we can do it again probably

i love that so you're saying to make my relationship stronger i've got to send steve away at least as far as brazil yeah all right i'll take that to the poor man you don't i'll take that under consideration i'll keep the pets for the year he can go live his best life over there i think it's a genius move that'll only make us stronger It's still not the best destination at the moment. I love my country, don't get me wrong. And for everyone listening, really go, go to visit Brazil. It's amazing.

But for living, don't do that to Bruce, Steve. Oh, okay, all right. It's not the best of the moment and for a lot of reasons. Well, I would love to visit Brazil one day. I know Steve already has and he loved it. So hopefully he can take me back. Amazing, how cool. um so just very quickly obviously you mentioned in your email that you're going through the visa

process and I understand it's a little bit different for your partner and you because um he's a Kiwi and obviously we've got some you know close friendship there with our mates from across the ditch um but how has that been for you has it been really difficult and really hard because there was times when you probably couldn't work full-time and stuff like that yeah so in terms of visa um first time that i came to australia i came on a student visa i stayed for three semesters and i came with a scholarship from the brazilian government and that was the biggest money win of my life oh my gosh yes it was amazing they paid for the whole thing the whole thing i did three semesters of uni it was one semester of english and two

semesters of uni and uni fees for international students you have heard already how expensive that is yeah just the english course it was twenty thousand dollars just the english school and the brazilian government covered all of that everything everything your accommodation and everything in terms of accommodation and food and transport they gave us uh it was four hundred and twenty dollars per week wow you could use that money to pay for you know rent and food and we could work 20 hours you know on the student visa that we had was the graduate visa we could actually work as well 20 hours and I did a little bit of working back then yeah so I have had the experience of living here with as a student visa but I know how privileged I was that I didn't have

to worry about bills paying uni paying school and all that stuff and then after the three semesters going back to Brazil we reconnected when I was in Brazil so that's why one year of long distance I was in Brazil for two years after my exchange but we were together for one year of this time because we were connected started talking and then all that stuff yeah and then when I came back I came on a visit to visit to apply a family visa with him when I was in Australia so I couldn't work for those three first months for that reason and then after that I could already work full-time I didn't have Medicare though until we applied the permanent residency oh wow yeah so um obviously not complain at all you know paying for health insurance that's absolutely totally fine since

we applied the permanent residency two months ago now I have Medicare and all that so really not complaining and now also to mention that we have the very privileged situation where my first family visa was like not even four hundred dollars it was really cheap yeah as a family member of a New Zealand citizen and now when we applied for the PR it was we paid the 20% first so for the two of us together that was I think nearly two thousand dollars something like that and then the next part the next 80% that will be another nearly six grand I think it's so expensive yeah but you know you're talking about basically the citizenship of a country like Australia for two people I know it's expensive and I know it's really difficult to go through

immigration that part I am still living because I was one of those unlucky unlucky people that the the fire is probably on the bottom of the drawer somewhere and i'm still on a bridging visa so i applied for permanent residency before my new zealand family visa even got granted and yeah and that that uh those delays and stuff and i understand i appreciate how busy the department is but you know those delays they do cause you a lot of anxiety as well because my life with my partner you know like my entire life yeah i'm not even willing to go to my country to visit because I cannot be stuck there because my entire life is here so you know it does cause you um being an immigrant you have a few difficult things that you go through that nobody knows kind

of like the anxiety about the immigration is part of it and obviously you know missing your family the whole time so two years and a month wow yeah so that sounds really hard yeah it's uh it's a little bit difficult I think but at the same time I do acknowledge you know all my privilege around all those things oh yeah but at the same time you've worked so hard for this and that's a level of stress and anxiety that I can't understand because I've never been in that situation but I can't imagine being like okay well if I do want to go see my family then I could get stuck there and I could actually not be able to return and there's obviously a lot to that like it's it's in a way not fair, especially because you're doing the process properly and you're going

through it and you're willing to pay for it and you're contributing to our economy and you're contributing to our society. And like, we're so lucky to have people like you wanting to live with us. Like, how cool is that? That people like you are like, no, we want to come and live in your country and do what we do. Like, we're the lucky ones. Oh, thank you. That's really, really nice to hear but you know um on that note i always i've never felt discriminated in australia which is very privileged as well so yeah to me um and you know i even in terms of workplace i did hear one or two comments a few times you know about um yeah because i do work for government right in the public hospital so sometimes you come across one or two things but overall really like i feel like

Brazilians are really welcome into Australia like we feel really welcome here and yeah we have a lifestyle that's quite similar to the Australian lifestyle living outside going to the beach doing barbecues and all that stuff so it was not hard for me to decide living here I and I know how lucky I am seriously to be you know so privileged to live in this country it's amazing country to live in oh well we're lucky to have you but unfortunately I do think that that is all we have time for today so just before we head off we'd like to acknowledge and pay respect to australia's aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples they're 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 respects to elders past and present and we share our friendship and our kindness the advice shared on she's on the money is generally 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 any financial decision. And we promise that Victoria Devine is an authorised representative of Australia Pacific Funds Management,

Proprietary Limited, ABN 34132463257, AFSL 339151. I'll see you next week, guys. But, Tony, we'll see you round. Bye. Bye. Bye. oh no I'm just I'm so upset I finally remembered all those numbers and now I don't need to read them again all right well I can get you in for guest episodes you can just do the ends

see you next week guys