She's On The Money - MONEY DIARY: Health Crisis, Homelessness & Now Happier Than Ever

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

This inspirational Money Diarist went from being financially stable, to jobless and homeless with a young family, after her husband was fired due to being deaf. They navigated $30k for medical treatment in the US for their son, and relocating to the other side of Australia. Their journey has been one of so much growth, and she's now running a thriving solo business.  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 another one of our money diaries, where we get to talk with one of our incredible She's On The Money community members all about their journey. Let's jump straight into it because this week I got a message and it went a little bit like this. Hi, Victoria. I went from financially stable to jobless and homeless with my young family after my husband was fired due to being deaf. We navigated $30,000 for medical treatment in the US for our son and relocated to the other side of Australia. It's been a huge journey of so much

growth and I am now running a thriving solo business. I cannot wait to share my unique journey with your community. Money Diarist, I nearly used your name, which is awkward. I'm sorry. Welcome to the show and nice to see you again. Thank you. I'm excited to get into it. A bit nervous. My heart's beating a million miles an hour, but yeah. Oh my gosh. No. For those of you at home, I met this money diarist when I was in Perth actually recently on our International Women's Day tour and her story was just too good not to share. So money diarist, are you ready? Do you want to get into it? Let's get into it. Let's do it. All right. So first question I've got for you is what grade would you give your money habits from an A through to an F?

This took a little bit of thinking, but I think a B plus. I think that's pretty, pretty smack bang in the middle. That's pretty good. Let's learn a bit more about you though. Money Diarist, I want to know, this is, as everybody knows, my favourite question. Can you tell me a little bit more about your money story? I, well, both my husband and I grew up in solo parent households. We have completely different attitudes towards money. So we now, yeah, are married and have three kids, but it's been a bit of a journey to get here. Growing up, my mum raised my sister and I on her own after my dad left with two young, left over two young daughters and a mortgage and $40 to her name. So I learnt

everything I know, I feel like from her and how to live frugally from her. She's an amazing woman and I owe so much of my financial literacy work ethic and knowledge of how to use power tools to her. I love that. You just got to do what you got to do. Like you're a single mum, not absolutely useless. Like you just got to get stuff done. Yeah, yeah.

So we made all of our decisions in our householders, the three of us together. And when we sold our childhood home, we got an offer and mum sat us down and said, you know, this is the offer, this is how much it was. And I was like, no, we can do better than that. We're worth more than that. So mum didn't accept the offer.

And then they came back with another 10,000 or so. And then we accepted that offer. But all of our money decisions were done together. And mum was completely transparent to my sister and I in regards to where we were each week or fortnight with money. And that's how we've sort of raised our children as well. So when we say, oh, we can't really afford that this week, they understand that. but they don't take it as a negative they're like oh okay no worries well let's do this or

let's do this instead so instead we'll go for a bushwalk instead of going to the movies or whatever it is they wanted to do and they're more than happy just to do that or go for a bike ride or whatever it is and yeah I love that do you ever find I feel like a lot of people aren't ready to talk to their kids about money because they just think that their kids aren't old enough or mature enough to understand the concepts. How did you start introducing that to your kids? And how do you think that they conceptualize that? Like, are they taking it well or do they find it a challenge? What is that like? At times it can be challenging because they are kids and at the end of the day, it's all going to be age appropriate. And so our kids are 10, 7 and 5. So the youngest

it's a bit more challenging but I've always loved doing grocery shopping with my kids like a lot of mums can't wait to get out of the house and leave their kids at home but I've always taken them it's absolute chaos um but they've got their own list and I'm like okay let's go we need some pasta and we'll go we'll look at the pasta and usually they just grab whatever's at eyesight and so they've been I've learned how to read the unit prices since a very young age so they can actually see what the cheapest product is by unit price. And they realize that if we spend a little less on those things, then we can spend a little bit more on our annual holiday or on if they want a birthday party, they get a birthday party every second year. So

yeah, we can spend more on the things that they want and that we value as a family and that they value. I feel like that's so important as well. And I feel like grocery shopping is probably a very good gateway to teaching kids about money where you can budget and you can cash flow and you could work out things without, you know, lumping them with the electricity bill or what it's going to cost for medical this month. So I think that that's a very good way of starting it. I want to know now, obviously you said, oh my gosh, I went from financially stable to jobless and now I run my own business. I want to know, what do you do for work? How much money do you guys earn? I do a lot of things. So I run my own solo cleaning business. This financial year,

I'm expecting the annual business income to be around $40,000, which to some that won't seem like much, but I've created my business to be flexible and to work around our family. So I only work roughly three and a half days a week for 40 weeks of the year. I take all school holidays off and weekends off. Oh, living the dream. I feel like that context is actually so good because I immediately was like, sick, like you're earning money from your own business. And when you gave us a bit more. It's kind of like you're living within the parameters of the lifestyle that you have. I mean, you have three kids, seven, 10 and five. But I think it's just one of those things where how cool is it that you've got this job that's completely flexible to the way you want

to live your life? Yeah, well, we've been living over here for two years now and I had to find something that was flexible around the children as well as my husband's work and also for our location where we live we're 50k from the closest big town so there's not much employment where we live and I don't want to be traveling 100k round trip every single day for work because then we have to look into child care before and after school care and it's just not something that we value losing two hours of the day traveling and not spending time with our children so it works for us but I also do a bit of casual work at the local supermarket doing night fill a few times a month. I do more when we need more, which is really great that they are flexible like

that. So over November and December, I was doing probably three nights a week and that's covered our spending money for our Bali holiday in January, as well as our daughter's school fees. Oh, how good. Yeah, it's awesome. So probably annually I earn about eight to $10,000 with that. And then we've also got rental income, which over the last few years has been positively geared, but unfortunately won't be this year with the rate increases. And then we get roughly $5,000 annually in child support for our oldest. And then my husband is on roughly $80,000. So we estimate our family income to be around $140,000 and I'm also studying full time. How good. I feel like you are an

absolute hustler, like a cleaning business. You're also doing casual work on top of that. A night feel that's tough work because it's nighttime work and you'd be tired. And I'm assuming you've looked after the kids all day or been cleaning all day. I just think that's so admirable. Like get it queen. I love it. I love hearing stories like that. I want to know though, what does your husband do? So 80 grand, that's pretty good income. What kind of role is he in? So he is, he used to be a dairy farmer in Victoria and he moved over to WA. It was the second COVID lockdown he got a job over here and they waited for us to get over in the January of 2021 which was great and we moved over we have secure housing now and we don't pay anything we

pay internet and that is it for our house and we live on campus at yeah it's a government role and he's still farming so yeah how good and that is a very big money win definitely to add into I guess, this conversation that we're having. Housing, my gosh, that costs so much money. So is this why you're able to rent out the house that you currently have because you're not paying anything in rent to live where you're currently living? We actually, that's a two bedroom unit that we own. So we never bought that with the intentions for us to live in. But after my husband lost his job and we lost our housing through that back in Victoria years ago, we wanted something that if we had to live in, that we could, and we would make it work if we had to, because

we wanted a backup. So yeah, that's always been an investment, but it's always been in the back of our minds that if we had to live there, we'd make it work. I feel like that's very admirable and actually really smart, especially when you know what you've been through as well. I think you just get to a point where you're like, I don't care what it is. We're just having a backup plan because that's what's going to make me feel secure. You mentioned in your letter in to us, you said we navigated $30,000 worth of medical treatment in the US for our son. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Because that sounds hectic for a young family of three. Yeah. So our middle child was born with food

allergies. So we recognized that at about six weeks of age, he had head to toe eczema, was red raw bleeding and we'd seen many specialists and he was diagnosed with a dairy allergy which is a bit ironic giving your your husband's a dairy farmer living on a dairy farm yeah so it got more complex as he got older we added in a peanut allergy an egg allergy some tree nuts wheat and cow he was contacted a little bit to cows no and you lived on a dairy farm yeah so my husband would coming from work from milking and have to chuck all his clothes in the machine and shower before he could even hug our son which was what we had to do but like it was awful that yeah like a little boy was screaming for his dad because he'd come home from work and he just had to wait until he

could yeah give him a cuddle no that's the worst so what happened he had a severe anaphylactic reaction to cheese. He ate about two grams of cheese in our home. So we were told constantly that strict avoidance was all we could do for food allergies in Australia, which we thought that's not good enough. Our child just had an anaphylactic reaction that required two EpiPens in 10 minutes. We lived 20 minutes out of town. Three ambulances show up at our house. His lips went blue it was just awful so traumatizing not just for him myself but also his older sister who is an amazing advocate for him and she's been there for every reaction that he's had and calmed him down and she always makes sure that whatever he's touching or if someone offers him food that

he can eat it she's she's amazing but it just being told strict avoidance is all we could do just didn't sit right with me knowing that this is our lifestyle being on a farm and around cows and he was three years old at the time saying I want to be a dairy farmer like dad and it broke our heart thinking well that's not an option yeah oh my yeah and then the more we think about like you probably couldn't be in the army or you couldn't be a chef you couldn't be a pilot like there were so many things you probably couldn't do because you know like if he's a pilot he's flying a plane if he were to have an allergic reaction or anaphylactic reaction then everyone's at risk and it was just it was heartbreaking so we yeah my ADHD hyperfocus

brain did its thing and 3am one morning I discovered oral immunotherapy that was offered in the US as well as some other countries but the US was just something that we could probably make work and so we found a doctor in Atlanta in Georgia who would take him on for six weeks and then yeah the planning went from there and it was going to be about ten thousand dollars for the treatment cost plus all the travel expenses we couldn't afford the whole family to go it just wasn't going to work our youngest was only nine months old then and he had his own health issues my husband was working couldn't afford to take six weeks off so we thought that I would just go on my own with him yeah so we made it work we crowdfunded the ten thousand dollars for

their treatment cost which I was really hesitant doing in the beginning because I just thought there's a lot more children and people out there in the world that need that help and I didn't feel like we need that but a friend sort of said people aren't going to help you if they don't want to or if they can't afford to. 100% and trauma is not comparable like you can't compare your trauma to somebody else's trauma and say they've got it worse therefore I should not be looked after like and I think that that's a really good point right you could put up a million go fund me's that doesn't force people to contribute to them and I think if people resonate with it like it just makes sense yeah so it was our little community in victoria was

absolutely amazing like blew us away and the local lions club donated quite a substantial amount we held a community walk and like barbecue events we held a movie fundraiser event we did some raffles a lot of local businesses donated to the raffle and just everyone got behind us, a local newspaper published an article about us and I was on the radio station and it was absolutely amazing. So I can't believe we did it. And I'm so grateful that for everybody that helped us out. That's so wild. I love that story because it's about tenacity as much as it's about finding the solution. But my question is, how is your son now? He's amazing. So he's in grade two now. He is safe to go to school. And that was our biggest concern is that it would be a lot of

stress on the teacher the staff at the school the other parents making sure that everything in the lunch boxes were safe for him because he was contact allergic to dairy as well so at school he's thriving he's happy he's now eating dairy every day what so you can now eat dairy after going through that that is wild yeah so he can touch cows we also found out he had a horse allergy and dust mites dogs and cats so working through that but he yeah can touch cows now and hug them and he feeds the calves and he's eating peanuts. And we found out actually over there that he no longer had an egg allergy, but because he was classed as high risk, no one in Australia here would even challenge it. So it took us having to go over there to find out that he

could now eat eggs. So yeah, he's so happy, thriving, he's growing, which he didn't grow for so long because he was on so many steroids and yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, I love that. And I feel like that's been a really good sidetrack, but I am going to get back on track. I just, I love hearing stories like that. And I think everyone in our community would have been pervy and want to know, well, how did you do it? Obviously 30 grand is a lot of money. How did you raise that? What did that look like? So thank you so much for sharing that. All right. Next question before we go to a really quick break, I want to know what are you currently working towards? What is currently your big money goal? So a big money goal would be to buy an investment

property in the town that we live in in case anything were to happen with employment my husband's employment here we would then have a backup plan and then our children would be able to finish their schooling here instead of moving to a different town which with the housing crisis a lot of families unfortunately have had to do here so that's our yeah big money goal I like that well let's go to a really quick break and I have a whole heap more questions for you right after this. All right, Money Diaries, we are back. You dropped before that you have an investment property. So I want to know more about investments. What current investments do you have? And can you tell us a little bit about them? Yeah, so we have that investment property and we've had that, I

think, about four years now. So that was just what we could afford to buy at that time. We also have both of our super. So my husband's is quite substantial, but mine's only just hit 20k. But my goal is to contribute more than the 10.5% of that through my business income, which I think I've already contributed about 5,000 this year. So pretty stoked with that. Five grand and you've made 40. What? That is so good. I just feel like so many small business owners completely neglect their super. So it's very sexy to hear that you're caring about it. That's one thing that I've really been on top of that I've wanted to do that from day one, I was like, I need to do this for myself. And then when I hear of anyone else starting a cleaning

business or any small business, I'm like, make sure you look after yourself and you pay your super because that's really important. A hundred percent. I went on a rant yesterday with somebody because I went and spoke at an event for small business owners. And as you guys know, small business is something I'm so passionate about. And I was like, why are we in this position where small business owners are taking on so much more risk than people who are employed PAYG, right? Like it's such a burden. We put ourselves out there so that we can earn our own money. We work so much over time. We go above and beyond. And then we shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to retirement time because we don't have what somebody who is in a salary PAYG job who just

had their guaranteed super being paid each and every single month. We don't have that because we tried to reinvest back into our business, not realizing that it stops us from getting ahead. So I'm just, I love what you're saying. I'm just so wildly passionate about people putting themselves ahead and putting themselves in the best possible position. Cause it's like, we didn't come this far to only come this far, my friends. So we also have an investment bond set up for our eldest child. When our middle child turns eight in June we'll start his and then same for our youngest when he turns eight so we contribute $50 a fortnight to these with the intentions that in the minimum 10 years or more depending on what

they're doing with their lives they'll have a little nest egg to start their lives whether that's for a car or house deposits or if hopefully not one of my children are 20 years old and pregnant and having a child like me they have something there to help themselves out with that Oh, I love that. Can you tell me a little bit more about your decision to get into an investment bond? I feel like there's so many options out there when it comes to saving for children and investing for your kid's future. What led you down the path of going, you know what, an investment bond is the right decision for us? I didn't do my research at all. I saw a post on Facebook, someone else doing it. I was like, yeah, what the heck? Okay. All right. Great. Great. Solid

research. I mean, Glenn James from My Millennial Money is a really big advocate of investment bonds and I talk about the benefits of them on the pod. So, I mean, the Facebook post got you there, but I mean, I wouldn't fall for everything you say on Facebook. So maybe we need to talk together about this after, all right? But let's move on in questions. I want to know, do you have any debt? If so, what is it? Sorry, we do have more investments. Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry. I just moved on. I moved on. Tell me, what are your investments? We also have a block of land in Victoria that we sort of willy-nilly put a $1,000 deposit on

before the subdivision was completed and then two years later it titled and we sort of thought about pulling out but our mortgage broker says that would be silly and we've probably just made about $100,000 by waiting the two years for it to title. So we thought, why not? We'll build our forever home here

and we bought it and then a few months later we found out we're moving state. so it's just a vacant lot now that's being used as a parking lot by the trainees that are building all the other houses around yeah are you charging them for that well I'm actually I'm really tempted yeah absolutely if they're using your property it is not a free car park my friend well it's saving us having to mow that part of the lot because it's yeah it's all crushed down and all muddy so I guess oh yeah totally totally make money though bad bank money. Yeah. I've also got an emergency fund in Offset against the block of land. And

then I've got my own emergency funds in my business account. And I have a whopping $27 in shares. Oh, big dog energy is tenderless of that from using the SOTM code. It is. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Good, good, good. I love to see it. How did you pick your first shares on shares? My first one was actually cochlear because my husband is deaf. He doesn't have a cochlear implant. He wears hearing aids, but I thought, yeah, that was something that, and also elders because yeah, farming. I love this. Oh yeah, my first two. Yeah. Value investing through and through. All right, Money Durst, I want to know, I feel like you've grown up super savvy and super thrifty and been able to save. So what is your best money habit, do you think? Probably frugality.

So I research every big purchase to the point that if I don't need it right now, I'll crack sheets and close my hundred tabs and then come back to it when we desperately need that item um it yeah it could be a good thing and a bad thing at the same time but at least I go into every big money decision with the knowledge and the research and everyone else's opinions which can be annoying but the kids also wear a lot of hand-me-downs and cheap kmart clothes off the one dollar rack and secondhand clothes they've got some good quality clothes like country road and the likes but I usually buy them on sale or on secondhand Facebook groups and food is obviously one of our biggest expenses living technically clusters remotely and in Western Australia which

food can be very expensive with three kids I don't eat meat but the rest of the family does so whatever meat I do buy is always marked down and we have a big deep freezer so everything gets stored in there. And we generally can stretch 250 grams of mince to get two nights out of that by bulking it up with veggies and lentils and beans and all of that sort of stuff. Oh my gosh, that is super good. 250 grams would be like, I don't know, two meals, right, usually. But being able to stretch that that far, what a queen. I love this. I feel like we need to make like a She's on the Money cookbook where everybody sends in their best frugal recipes that are like tried and true because you can google frugal recipe and you're just not sure if it's going

to work out but like we trust the community to provide right so I feel like we might need your recipe at some point in the near future to flip this though I need to know what is your worst money habit my worst money habit is probably the few nights a week my husband and I text each other before we get home from work saying snacks which then means one of us ends up down at the local IGA five minutes before they close, panic buying aisle two, and we come home with $30 worth of lolly chocolate chips, ice cream and whatever else. Fair. Usually it's after a long, hard day or the kids have just been a bit challenging. And if my mom's listening to this, she's rolling her eyes because she knows how bad we are at this. I feel like that's not the worst money habit to

have in the world, but maybe, maybe we need to put that into the budget for the groceries. yeah but also wanting to provide everything we possibly can for our children and give them every experience possible it's not always the worst thing but it can be when it comes to having five nights a week after school completely booked out with activities for three kids between swimming netball football basketball violin and everything else and then we look at the budget and we're like oh can we actually really afford all of this so now we've had to put limits on it that we only do one thing a season and maximum of three things a year for each child. So we're working on that slowly. But like wanting to give your kids the world, that is not a bad money habit. Like that

is a very wholesome habit. And I will, I will get behind that one for you. Money Diarist, it has been gorgeous talking to you, but now we've had a chat. I feel like you're a queen. You have a block of land. You have an investment property. You have investment bonds set up for your kids. You have an emergency fund. You have your own business. You do multiple things. Like you said you're a B plus do you really think you're a B plus yes I still probably believe I'm a B plus like I feel like our family has achieved a lot and I am proud of us but at the same time we know how things can quickly change so even though today we can be a B plus tomorrow we could be an F because anything could happen so I believe that yeah by educating yourself on

financial literacy, having an emergency fund. They're both equally important because at the end of the day, as women, a man is not a plan. So. No, it's not. Absolutely not. You've got to have something. Yeah. Absolutely not. But it sounds like you've got your own plan going on somewhere else. So I am very proud of you. Money Diarist, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your diary with us. I think this one is going to hit the ground running and people are going to love it. So I really appreciate it. Thank you. 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.