She's On The Money - Would You Buy Property With a Partner After 8 Months? She Did!

Starting point is 00:00:00 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.

Starting point is 00:00:36 hello and welcome to she's on the money the podcast that lets you be pervy on other people's money habits for educational purposes, of course. Welcome back to another one of our money diaries where I get the absolute pleasure of talking to one of our She's On The Money community members all about their money story and journey. Let's jump straight into it because this week I got an email and it sounded exactly like this. Dear She's On The Money, money has been a journey. We've had some wins, some losses, and a whole lot of learning along the way. I've built multiple streams of income, taken risks on businesses, some that worked, some that didn't, and climbed the ranks in my career. Property has been a big part of our story.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Buying, selling, renovating, and navigating the unexpected. Now we're at a crossroad. A potential new investment, big decisions ahead, and the usual mix of excitement and uncertainty. It's never a straight path, but here we go again. Money Diarist, you've left a lot to the imagination. Like, I just have so many questions, but this is so exciting. You can't just say, I have multiple streams of income. I'm like, what? What income? Where, when, why, how? Property, you're doing it again. Doing what again? I just have a lot of questions. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. How fun. All right, let's dive straight in. The first question I ask all of our money

Starting point is 00:02:17 diarists is if I could ask you to give yourself a money grade from A through to F, what would that grade be? I think probably, I'm going to say a B minus. Okay. Let's learn more about that. Can you now dive in and tell me a bit more about your money story? Because I, when I read this, I was like, she's got to be kidding. I need so much more information right now. Sure. So I guess growing up, my parents were business owners, either like running businesses or owning businesses. So that's sort of what I've always known growing up. My mom is one of six and so we have a lot of cousins and my sister and I are the first two of the cousins to

Starting point is 00:02:59 get a tertiary education so that was something that was I'm not going to say forced upon me but my mum really stressed the importance of like getting an education and being able to earn the best income possible and I'm so grateful because in my first year of uni I really wanted to drop out and she said no I think you really need to give it more than six weeks. That's fair mum. Yeah, thanks, mom. Always good with the advice. So yeah, went and got my degree, started working in it soon after. And then I've been working in it since, I want to say 2012. So it's been about 13 years now. Along the way, met my husband in around there. So in 2014. So I was pretty new to my career when we met. Oh, did you meet through your career? No. No.

Starting point is 00:03:46 We actually, I've heard you say this before, he and I met on Tinder. yep same same same queen where all the good men used to be I mean I used to be so embarrassed about that oh my god I same same I told my parents when I like was finally bringing same home I was like we met through friends I'm friends with the internet right I know so like oh we were introduced by a friend of a friend because I don't want to say we met on Tinder because everyone's like oh yeah and you know what it got to a point where I hadn't told a lot of people and then people stop asking right they're like oh Steve and Victoria no worries I ended up telling my parents. But then it comes to my wedding and I had told the celebrant that we

Starting point is 00:04:20 met on Tinder and she makes the comment in her like introduction of the two of us. And she was like, it was the right swipe or something. And I was like, oh no, you did not. But that was really funny. Anyway, that's all right. I'd been talking about it on the internet for ages. Okay, true. So yeah, he's a tradie. And when we met, he was working fly and play out. So he used to do four weeks on one week off which was that's a lot so difficult when you're in a new relationship and when we met he was looking for a house to buy because he had like all this excess income and needed to do something with it and I certainly wasn't in the same sport yeah you're like that's unrelatable but sure oh yes I was making much much less but we after about

Starting point is 00:05:08 eight months together we decided we would buy the house together which is looking back sounds so crazy but you know if you know you know look I'm the same we moved in together at like the 12 month mark and I was like well yeah whatever it is what it is so he had obviously significantly more money saved than me but we decided to buy it together because I was just unsure how we were going to navigate am I going to live with you will I pay you rent who pays what and it just seemed way easier to put our finances together and I said to him you know our borrowing capacity is going to be much higher if we do it together. So we decided to do it together. Not only that, when we put an offer in the house that we bought, he was away on a four week swing. So he hadn't actually seen the

Starting point is 00:05:52 house when we contracted it. Oh my goodness. So the ultimate trust in me to be like, you know, if you think this is it, then let's do it. So we bought that house. That's so stressful. So stressful for us both because there's a lot of pressure on me. I did that with a rental property once with my now husband and the anxiety I felt over a rental property like I cannot imagine how stressed you were you're like um yeah so I tipped your life savings over here you're right with this that's okay if you don't like it bad luck yeah um it's gonna be awkward but anyway we settled when we moved in and we probably lived there for I want to say two and a half years before we kind of thought this isn't quite right in terms of sometimes you just don't know until

Starting point is 00:06:37 you live in a property whether it's right for you or not yeah 100 and it just wasn't quite right a great house good bones but just not quite right for what we wanted so we went overseas on a trip and got engaged ah cute a tinder love story oh the tinder love story when we got back we found another house just around the corner from our current house and i just went and looked at it on a whim at an open home and I fell in love. And I had to persuade my then fiance that it was the right house for us. I finally got him over the line, but it was significantly more expensive. So we had to do a simultaneous settlement so that we had the funds to pour into the next property. And then we found a tenant for our first property and moved into the second property.

Starting point is 00:07:26 How cool. It was really cool. And I was like, wow, I can't believe I just found my dream house. I'd like to 25 years old how good it was a quite a big home and we intended on filling it with children and then we sort of ran into some unforeseen fertility issues where that just wasn't really happening and being in the house sort of reminded me of what wasn't happening so oh that's so stressful and so shitty like you don't need your home to be that reminder I know and it was just like oh this is the time that we had planned to have a family but now we might not get one. Also it was like significantly more expensive and sorry I've missed a step in amongst that the tenants that

Starting point is 00:08:09 were living in our first property trashed it. Oh and you're going through all this stuff and like fertility we should talk about it more but like when you're going through this you wouldn't have been telling people it would have been like this secret struggle like and then someone trashes your property you're probably like I want to trash you. That's right and ultimately I had to go to QCAT, which is the Queensland court, to get them out of the property because they refused to leave. Jeez Louise. They stopped paying rent. They trashed the property. So when they finally got out, it was like a big money pit really. Oh my God. I actually just can't fathom how people do that. Like I just, it is unimaginable to me. Like I'm the type of person who goes around my

Starting point is 00:08:51 hotel room as I'm leaving and picks up the towels because I'm so worried that they're going to be like she left the towels on the ground and the idea that you trash someone's house like absolutely not oh I know so at that time we're having like quite a few issues and then I just said to my husband let's just get rid of this house if we're not going to have kids let's go traveling so we're going to sell our house we're going to sell our rental pull whatever money was left go on a trip COVID-19 we're not going anywhere you stuck at home we're stuck at home in this house that we don't want to be in anymore no so anyway I was like let's go ahead whatever someone this house is perfect for someone let's sell it and we ended up selling it I did the whole show we didn't get

Starting point is 00:09:39 a real estate agent I did all the open homes I did the listing oh my god what was that like It was kind of chaotic, but given what I do for work, I was okay with it. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, it saved us a ton on real estate commission. Don't, you know, like I don't recommend it's pretty stressful, but it did save us a ton and at the time it worked for us. Yeah. Cool. We ended up selling that house. Sorry, I need to backtrack. I need to backtrack. I have to ask. So

Starting point is 00:10:03 you decided to do all of this. Did you need any licenses or you can just put your house on the market? Just DIY? You can do that yourself. There's a few companies that do and it's like sell my home and they help you with like real estate packages and you pay in amounts to them for photos and that type of thing. Yeah, perfect. Okay, all right. Yeah, I was like, what about the contracts?

Starting point is 00:10:23 What about when you find a buyer? I wouldn't even know how to sell my house. With the contracts, again, because of what I do for work, I was comfortable with that, but I accept that not everybody is. Yeah, okay. So proceed with caution. Yes, correct. That's my advice.

Starting point is 00:10:35 So we sold that house and we pretty much just sold it for what we bought it for because no one really wanted to spend money. You just wanted to get rid of it as well. absolutely and I was just happy to break even and call it a day we sold our other property for more than we bought it for so we made a little bit on it after we cleaned it up and renovated it and we just did like a cosmetic renovation enough to sell it and we made a little bit of money on it and then we also came into a little bit of money at that time which we had intended to put towards traveling obviously not happening so then once we sold all these properties my husband's like

Starting point is 00:11:11 where are we going to go he's lived in a queenslander his whole life so a big timber home with a beautiful deck etc etc it's his dream he finds this queenslander in this dream suburb so good he's like well we've got all this cash and we're not going anywhere should we do it and yeah we ended up doing it luckily we bought in a really like we're so fortunate to have bought in the market that we bought in where house prices were significantly lower than they are now so yeah 100% we bought for $375,000 oh my goodness yep and then because my husband's a jack-of-all-trades master of some not all we were able to do a pretty decent size reno on the house a lot of him doing it himself so that saved us a heap of money so since the renovation we had our house valued

Starting point is 00:12:04 recently and it was valued at 950 000 sorry what i know crazy 950 from what 385 be for real 375 i know 375 no illegal so good gave my husband a huge head about how his skills oh yeah well do you know what let him keep that because like next time you want to renovate something you'll be like but you're so good at it remember how you did that yeah just you let him keep that so we have quite a bit of equity in our home. And because we applied some of that money that we made from our first investment property and some of the money that we came into, our mortgage was pretty low. So we only owe $400,000 on our house and we borrowed some to do the renovation. So yeah, we owe $400,000. It's worth $950,000. That's so good.

Starting point is 00:12:52 And we don't really have any other debts. We did have a small car loan that we just paid off. Yeah, cool. And so now you're 34. So that's kind of like a nearly 10 year journey of like buying your first property and like going in and around. And like, I feel like you're in a great position now. I've just got a few questions and I hope they're not too pervy. You did mention like we had some fertility issues. Is that something that you're like, okay, cool. Like we just decided that we're just not having kids and now you're, it's just the two of you and you're trying to work out what life looks like moving forward or what's the go there? No. So we were lucky enough to, I found an amazing doctor in my hometown who helped me or helped us through that fertility

Starting point is 00:13:34 journey. And we've now got two little boys. Ah, how good. And you know what? I think it's so beautiful hearing stories like that. You were so down in the dumps about it that you literally sold your house because you didn't want to be there because it was a reminder of the fact that you weren't having a baby and then now you have two babies in your now probably even more dream home absolutely and they're like honestly the best thing I ever did so I'm so glad that we were able to get there oh my god I'm so excited to hear like that's literally the best like ah I was like do I ask don't I ask like and then I was like hold on earlier we were talking about daycare I know that this woman has kids so good all right I need to now know what do you do for

Starting point is 00:14:17 work how much money are you earning so I am a lawyer and I earn about 120,000 cool very cool and when it comes to being a lawyer are you in property law because you told me that you understood the contracts or is that just a benefit of being a lawyer like you just get to understand all of it? Well, I mean, it's somewhat a benefit. I don't profess to be an expert in property, but I did at the start of my career, I did a lot of conveyancing and property related more. So you're fine. It was subject matter that I felt comfortable with. Oh, how good. I don't want to be too pervy, but is your husband on a similar income? He is quite a bit more than me. So he's on about $150,000.

Starting point is 00:15:00 And he's still doing FIFO? No, he doesn't do FIFO anymore. He works in town. So I know he'd never work away from our boys. Yeah, how good. I was going to be like, is FIFO really hard still? Like, what's that look like? That's so nice to have that income and not have to do FIFO. Absolutely. And he's pretty high up in his area now.

Starting point is 00:15:17 So, yeah. You've said, obviously, fertility was a big part of it. And I'm sure for a while there, that was a pretty big money goal, especially because you said you had to find a very probably expensive fertility doctor. You've bought and sold your dream property. you've then bought another beautiful Queenslander and you're sitting on a very nice amount of equity. What are your big money goals? What are you currently working towards? Because I feel like for a lot of like people listening to this are going to be like, she's achieved all the things

Starting point is 00:15:43 that were my money goals. Oh, look, the list of goals are endless. But at the moment, there is a house in our street. It's actually right next door to us, another Queenslander. Oh my God. My husband and I, I guess, really, really want to buy it. We used to have really lovely neighbors there it was bought by an investor and it's just like been pretty like renters in and out changing over very frequently and we would love to buy it and either let's be in control of who's renting it or do something like an Airbnb sort of setup oh hey that would be cool wouldn't it especially being next door you could do all the turnovers yourself absolutely oh she's savvy and that would be like an investment property for you guys maybe

Starting point is 00:16:27 Yes, correct. I'm into the spreadsheet, so I've had a look at it all. Yeah, love. Tell me a bit more about this travel goal of yours because it was sidelined because of COVID. But if you were buying and selling during COVID, I'm just doing some maths, and then you had two kids. I don't know when you fit that travel in. Did that ever happen and is it a goal? It's still definitely a goal. Probably the length and destination slightly different with two small children but we're actually going overseas in August this year and taking both our boys so we're super excited about that oh exciting where are you going we're going to Japan oh my gosh how good we're really excited and the weather over there at that time

Starting point is 00:17:10 of year will be gorgeous well it'll be very similar to where we are in Queensland so I think we'll be used to everyone says it's too hot but I think we'll be fine but you're from Queensland no you're fine you're absolutely fine I go to Queensland and I think it's too hot so I have no chance in August in Japan I mean you're probably right but we are used to it right it's like the frog in the boiling pot of water like you just get used to it you absolutely do I love that all right let's go to a really quick break and on the flip side I actually have a lot of questions for you so guys don't go anywhere all right money diarist we are back and we are talking about your journey

Starting point is 00:17:50 mainly in property which has been really cool you've clearly made some good money i mean it's not cash in your hands but you are sitting on some really nice equity inside the property that you're currently in and i would say as much as it's your family home i can see that you're seeing it as an investment and we've just been talking about you potentially purchasing the house next store to you as an investment and I'm assuming that you're probably going to use some of the equity in the house that you currently live in to get into that property but talk to me about your thoughts on investments like what investments do you hold what's the plan what does the future look like so I guess other than like our superannuation and I salary sacrifice into my

Starting point is 00:18:33 super very sexy and my husband does the same it's just a little amount like every dollar counts we don't have like an investment portfolio per se. So that is something that we've talked about and we have gone back and forth about whether that's in property or whether we want to have a share portfolio or something similar. My husband's rationale is that if we buy property, we have something to hand down to our kids because they might never be able to get into real estate. Very valid. That's sort of why we've been looking at the housing store and other properties, investment properties, and thinking about how we could use those to have an income stream.

Starting point is 00:19:15 But I am still interested in just having a small share portfolio. So I did, after listening, actually downloaded some of the apps that you recommended. I just had some small amounts in there that are just sitting there, not really doing anything. So I started, but I would say that we're deep in that. Dipping our toes in the water. I love that. What made you want to salary sacrifice more to your superannuation? Well, my employer pays over and above what they're required to, but they will only do that if we meet the percentage over and above the standard. So you're like, no brainer, free money.

Starting point is 00:19:52 Yeah, I salary sacrifice 3% and they give me an extra 3%. Excuse me, I would like to go back to full-time employment if that's the case. Like, that's a good deal. So good. So is your super looking incredibly healthy at this point? I think it's okay. I mean, early days in my career, I was not earning all that much. So what I was adding to my super was not that great. It's definitely improved the further I've gotten to my career, but also I've been on two stints of maternity leave. So there's been times where

Starting point is 00:20:23 I haven't been earning, but it's currently sitting at about $130,000. Oh, you are doing well. You are fine. That is good. But like, I think that that's the way for a lot of women who have invested a lot of time in tertiary study and then, you know, probably taking on grad jobs and then working your way up. Like it does take a bit and then you start earning a lot. And then I think employers know that. And that's why sometimes obviously really great benefit is having additional super, but I think a lot of them know like, oh, we probably should kick this up a little bit for them because most of them are going to be behind. So that is, I would like to say kind of them, but it's also a very good employment benefit.

Starting point is 00:21:03 So tell me a bit more about debt. You mentioned before you currently owe $400,000 on your property at the moment and it's worth $950,000, which is a money win. Do you have any other debt? We have a credit card that's probably got like, I just booked accommodation for Japan. So it's probably got like $800. Yeah, cool. And how do you feel about debt? Like, is that something that when you were taking on your mortgage, was that stressful? Are you like, oh no, I get it. Like, it's fine. Like, I'm not worried. I don't worry about debt that's attached to property. And I think that's just because I'm experienced in property, but I feel like credit card and personal loans, I think they can spiral really quickly. So there is an element of fear attached

Starting point is 00:21:48 to those I think and I've obviously everyone would but I would prefer not to have them because the benefit you know doesn't outweigh the risk whereas with property I think you've got something solid that you can always if you needed to and hopefully in the right market your your asset is at least equal to your debt yeah totally and I feel like it's wealth generating at the end of the day like if you get it you're like cool like I could sell it for what it's worth but a personal loan does feel terrifying. I mean, as someone who was in personal debt, it is terrifying even once you've got it. Now, I feel like to get into property, to be able to flip these properties and get to where you are today, you would have had to have some good money habits. Can you tell me

Starting point is 00:22:32 what you think your best money habit is? I really thought about this because I was trying to figure out what a good money habit is for me. And I think it's so simple, but it's so effective we have a billing account that's pretty much it so i love this i have a spreadsheet where i've got every bill that we have to pay the frequency in which we have to pay it added it all together and divided it into a weekly payment so my income or my wage goes straight into our billing account and then i've figured out how much we need to top it up from my husband's wage and the money just goes straight into our billing account it means we always know that any bill that comes in there's money there to pay it and it means that whatever's left even though we probably

Starting point is 00:23:14 don't want to spend it all it's safe for us to spend it yeah yeah yeah that feels good i mean it's not how i deal with money but that feels like a really simple system to be like this means that my bills are paid and i'm not in a financial pickle absolutely and then at the moment like we have a savings goal where we're saving for our holiday so some of that money goes into another account and they're all offset accounts on our mortgage so while my money's sitting there it's offsetting our mortgage and we put a little bit away for our holidays so that when holiday time comes I don't feel like I need to slap my credit card yeah love I love that so much do you have bad money habits if so what's the worst like my husband and I are really bad at saying should we

Starting point is 00:24:00 buy this and one of us will say no we don't need that and then the next day be like oh let's just get it let's just get it let's do it let's just do it let's just do it why not example flights to Japan should we go to Japan and my husband's like well you're on maternity leave do you think we should and then the next day he said I thought about it let's just do it I kind of love that though like it's not as though you're being super financially irresponsible like you have a mortgage you've achieved all of these things and kind of set yourselves up so it's not the end of the world like these decisions that you're making they are big but like they're not at the cost of your future wealth in the grand scheme of things no not pouring our wealth down the drain definitely

Starting point is 00:24:42 not but we are just like we could probably say oh we don't really need that right now let's just not buy it I kind of like that though you know when you want it you want it you see you'd be fun people to hang out with I feel because I'd be like oh what have you guys been up to and you'd be like oh we just booked Japan I'd be like we caught up last week you said nothing about Japan right well it's funny you should say that because just before it started raining my husband and I got we've ordered and have a pool fiberglass pool sitting in our front yard because we're installing the pool and we were like our son really loves swimming and we were like should we get a pool he really likes to swim should we get a pool yeah we're getting it let's

Starting point is 00:25:20 do it so you have impulse bought a pool and flights to Japan in the last month I like this right I mean I would love to say it's like unrelatable but like I don't even have anywhere to put a pool but like don't put it past me because I would do it I once impulse bought a spa an inflatable one on the internet I will find space yeah I like this like you are my people that just sounds really fun we do have to keep each other in check though because like our spending like we would enable each other so I think that we need to just be careful because otherwise we both might end up in japan or somewhere else not bad not bad we've had a chat and at the start you said v i reckon i'm a b minus tell me what it would take for you guys to get from a b minus to

Starting point is 00:26:05 an a i think like starting on some investments so something that is like making us some money while we invest into it which maybe whether that's property or something else i'm not sure but I think if we had some investments, I'd feel more financially secure. And I would really love to have like a passive income stream. And I think hearing you read the letter at the start where we talked about like businesses and some failures along the way, my husband is the eternal like looking for the next good deal. I kind of like that. That's me. I'm always like open to a business idea. Like I swear at the team, I'm every day, I'm like, so what about this? And they're like sit down stop it this is me to my husband no that's the stupidest idea ever and he

Starting point is 00:26:52 comes back again and he really thought about it though because I think it could work I like how committed we are to it though and then the week after when we've decided it's a bad idea I'm not admitting to you that it's a bad idea I'm just going to stop talking about it yeah I'll come up with the next big thing yeah I'm working on it stop asking so I think if we had a passive income that would make me feel more secure as well and better about our financial habits totally and I don't think that's far away. Cause you guys are talking about like setting up an Airbnb and like organizing all of this other stuff that is going to ultimately put you in a really good position. Like, I think this is a very fun money story. Like I love that you're like, yeah, like we had

Starting point is 00:27:31 some fertility issues and we sold the house and I was like, Oh, that's so hard. And then you have two boys, like that's the best. Like, and the journey, I don't know, the financial journey is such that you can't predict it. Like, you know, you said that you were 25 when you bought that house and then you were trying to make babies and fill the house full of babies you wouldn't have predicted that you would have had to throw money into that part of your life at any point like it doesn't ever become someone's goal it just is a spanner in the works do you think that your fertility journey in a way has shaped the financial decisions that you've made I think definitely because I don't think that we would have owned any other property after that but now

Starting point is 00:28:13 I've got to provide for them and my focus is them so I'm probably a little less frivolous a bit more safe because I want to give them the best life possible totally and I love that I think that that is really really cool money diarist I wish we had more time this has been so beautiful to have this chat with you I've adored it I feel like we could be best friends on the outside so I hope that at some point you and I can cross paths actually in person as opposed to via video call so till then thank you so much for this I know that everybody listening is going to have loved it as much as I did. Thank you so much for having me. No, of course. Thank you. The advice shared on She's on the Money is general in nature and does not consider your

Starting point is 00:28:58 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 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.

She's On The Money - Would You Buy Property With a Partner After 8 Months? She Did!

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