September 14, 2025 • 58 mins
We’ve all been told property is the “safe” investment. But this week’s Money Diarist learned the hard way that’s not always true. She thought she was making the smart move buying a second investment property. Instead, she ended up with a building so dodgy it dragged her through years of court battles, left her with no rental income, and forced her to sell the first house she loved just to stay afloat. Now she’s picking up the pieces, rebuilding from zero and now has good things coming her way. Listen in to hear the biggest lesson she's learnt.
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Acknowledgement of Country By Nartarsha Bamblett aka Queen Acknowledgements.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Tatasha Bamblet. I'm a proud First Nations
woman and I'm here to acknowledge country t Glenn Young
Ganya Niana, Kaka yah Ya bin Ahaka nian Ar gay
In Mbina yakarum jar dominyamiga Umagahawakawaman damon Imlan Bumba bang
Gadabomba in and now in wakah ghana on yakraum jar Watnadaa. Hello,
(00:22):
beautiful friends, we gather on the lands of the Aboriginal people.
We thank I acknowledge and respect the Aberiginal people's land
that we're gathering on today. Take pleasure in all the
land and respect all that you see. She's on the
Money podcast acknowledges culture, country, community and connections, bringing you
the tools, knowledge and resources for you to thrive.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
She's on the Money.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
She's on the Money. Hello, and welcome to She's on
(01:10):
the Money, the podcast that lets you be pervy about
other people's money habits for educational purposes, of course. Welcome
back to another one of our money daries where we
get the absolute pleasure of talking with one of our
incredible She's on the Money. Can community members all about
their journey. Let's jump straight into it, because this week
I got a message and it sounded exactly like this. Hi,
(01:31):
she's on the money. I always worked hard from a
young age. My husband he joined the navy and I
became a nurse. We purchased our first investment property the
year we got married, and a second investment property the
year our first daughter was born. Then it all fell apart.
The second investment property was a lemon. We were in
(01:51):
court with the builder for five years and lost everything.
But starting from zero again fourteen months ago, we have stay.
We have to one hundred thousand dollars and are now
looking to buy a new investment and forever home money.
Does that sounds like a roller coaster that I don't
want to be on.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
No, I didn't want to be on an either.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It was absolutely awful, non consensual roller coaster. It was
just it was horrific. Oh my god, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
We've come out the other side and ready to start again.
Oh God.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
All right, Well, let's dive straight into it before I
ask you to tell me a little bit more. I
want to know what grade would you give your money
habits if I asked you to give them a grade
from A through to F. I would say, c all right,
that's A I'm in, that's middle ground, that's okay, Yeah,
that's all right. So tell me a bit more about
this money story. I feel like that's a like relatively
stereotypical love story. Met my husband, he went into the navy,
(02:47):
I became a nurse. We had a daughter, Like, how cute?
Tell me more?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, so, gosh, where to start. So I grew up
in like a normal kind of you know ouzsie household.
Parents worked really hard for everything. You know. I worked
from a very young age, you know, doing the paper
round and then baby sitting in the street, and then
you know, I started working at cam Up when I
was fifteen, and that's where I met my husband, packing shelves.
(03:14):
I came up, and then yeah we went off and
you know, went to UNI and got our full time jobs.
And I remember going to like the brick and brack
kind of markets and my dad handing me a book,
you know, the rich Dad, Poor Dad book, and.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that had a
massive viral moment before virality was.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Effense, before all the you know, like you guys came along,
it was that was the Bible Book, and you know,
my parents really valued property and shares, and so we
didn't have a lot of money. We had like a
crappy car and you know, the bare minimum, but they
always had investments and that was kind of really dropped
into me. So I always wanted that for myself. So
(03:58):
kind of going down the line, we got married and
we had saved and got our first investment property in Brisbane.
It was a two bedroom, which was amazing, and then
we kept saving and used the equity off that to
purchase another property, which we thought, you know, perfect, another
two bedroom in our range.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
The stepping stone that was part of the plan.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, well we were building the plan. We'd married, we'd had,
you know, had an investment property, we had our first
daughter bought the second investment property. I mean, all was
going fine. It was rented out, we were having good
rental return on it, no problems. So then we were
holidaying in Hawaii and we get a phone call from
the real estate going the whole place has flooded. No,
(04:44):
And I thought flooded, Like, what do you mean like
a little bit of water And she was like, no,
the furniture is floating. And I was like I don't
understand when you're talking about. We were the bottom unit,
so half of the unit was kind of built into
a hill.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Was that weather related or like did someone flo a bath?
Like how did this flood happen?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, it was rain, so it had come down the
hill and the way that the drainage was done outside
the property, it was draining straight into a.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Door, and that's something the builder absolutely should have factor
it in with their design. That's okay.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So that's where it kind of began. And so it's
kind of in a country town, so we were having
to source water pumps and cup you know, to pump
the water out. And obviously, like I'm on a different
time zone, I'm in Hawaii, you know, this had to
be dealt with there. And then it was so stressful
and so obviously our tenant had to move out straight away. Yeah,
and then when we got down to the nitty gritty
(05:39):
of it, we got an engineer in to have a
look and he was like, I don't think this wall
that's built into the hill is waterproofed. And I was like,
what do you mean? And he's like, the better block
is so damp, and I thought, oh, that's weird.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, because like I don't mean to be offensive. I
haven't asked you what you do for work yet, but like,
why would you know that it was meant to be
waterproof either? Is the builder and the like designer meant
to know? And you're probably like, okay.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So it's dare Well, it gets a bit more deep.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
I'm listening. I'm listening.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Sorry. So then all of a sudden he's looking around.
He's going, I don't think this bathrooms waterproofed either, And
then he went upstairs to the unit above because we
started getting like moisture on the roof in front of
the bedrooms, and he's like, the bathroom above you isn't
waterproofed because the shower was leaking into one of the rooms.
(06:31):
And so then we've got a structural engineer in and
he kind of went through and said, oh my gosh,
before units in this strata a shot, this builder has
just done the dodgy Oh no.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
And waterproofing.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Sorry, isn't that just space.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I know that I've got no idea when it comes
to building, but like waterproofing, I know that's a thing.
I don't know how to do it, but I know
it needs doing.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
One hundred percent. How can you have a wet space
that isn't waterproofed, or have a bil building that's built
into a hill not waterproofed between the building anyway, It
was a nightmare. And so then when we started looking
into it, this builder was in multiple lawsuits with multiple
different people.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
No, and that's like the last thing you want to see,
because you go, this guy, this ain't his first radio.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
He is a total con artist. And then when we
started going down the line, we realized that the real
estate agent that sold it to us was a friend
of his, and the building and pest inspection guy was
a friend of his. And it was just this massive,
big scheme. It was just, you know, we got sucked in.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
So they all still have jobs? Do they all still work?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Well? I got the builder's license revoked.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Oh good job, queen, Yes I did.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
But then you know what he did. He went off
and started building demountables on his property and selling those
which were dodgy.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah, of course he did.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So you know, they find a way. They closed down
their business, open up a new ABN and start summerfresh.
All the organizations and the government everyone protects the builders.
They don't protect the buyer, which is really unfortunate. So
we obviously because it was a new home we had
the new homeowners like the seven year warranty period that
did nothing for us. Long story short, we had to
get all the strata involved and take him to court.
(08:14):
It dragged on actually seven months now I look back
on Oh, and during that time we couldn't sustain having
a property that had no rental income. So we're paying
the mortgage, the strata, the land rates and so we
unfortunately had to sell our first investment property in Brisbane
because I couldn't float them both. But I couldn't sell
(08:37):
this one.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
No, absolutely not. And you had a kid as well,
Like absolutely no.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
So we lost that property, which was really sad because
it'd be worth a lot today.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Do you know what we're not thinking about that there
is a reason this stuff happens, and it's really terrible.
But like, give me ten years and you're going to
come back and be like, oh, guess what we've done.
I know, best thing ever And that's shit because when
the light at the end of the tunnel hasn't been
reached yet, so it does feel like trash. But like
I just I think we need to have a toxic
level of optimism sometimes to help ourselves through these situations.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I'm there now, but you know me. Eighteen months ago
it was in a hole. So we sold that investment property.
We did get a settlement, but it had to be
split between It was for rectification, so they said, this
is what needs to be fixed in each individual unit.
This is how much it will cost to rectify it.
But that was done like, say, three years ago. So
(09:29):
by the time we got the money three years later,
obviously the cost of everything's gone up, the cost of labor,
the cost of the actual building supplies, so it couldn't
cover anything. So our only option was we stripped the
place bare back to its bare bones, and we sold
it as is, and we solved it for half of
(09:50):
what we bought it for. No, but also that's the
best thing, the only way we could do it, because
no one wanted to touch it, because all the locals
knew the builder, they knew that they were buying somewhat lemon.
So we sold it with enough to close the mortgage,
and that left us at zero zero dollars in the bank.
(10:10):
I had a little bit of investments, not much like
five thousand here. Blah blah blah, I had to close
all those pull everything that I had. We had to
borrow twenty grand from my partner's mum just to close it.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
But that's just another level of stress.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, but you know what, like it's done and it's
gone and we started rebuilding financially.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
How bloody is stressful. I'm so sorry you've gone through that.
I wish we could like name and shame and be like,
don't talk to this agent. We don't talk to this
building and past inspector, Like, ill, that's so gross. I'm
really sorry that you've been through that. Tell me a
little bit more about your family though you said we
had our first daughter, Yes, does that mean that there
(10:55):
are more children?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
We have two girls, one is nine and one is
it Oh gorge a and they are a delight. They're
really good girls.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I love that. And then tell me more about this,
Like you met your husband he joined the navy. I
feel like that means that he might have spent a
lot of time away, Like how did that work in
your marriage, especially when you like first got married, Like,
I don't know, I wouldn't love having my husband away
all the time.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
No, I'm needy, you say, really needy too, and I'm
actually looking back on the periods of when he was away.
Was quite dark period, but.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Good to talk about because I'm sure that you're not
the only one that experienced so no.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And I meet so many people you know, with partners
and defense or have their dads been in defense, and
they've got stories growing up of you know, feeling really lonely.
It is really hard because you move away from your family.
So we're originally from Queensland. When he joined the navy,
we obviously moved down to Melbourne, down to Cerberus and
(11:54):
lived down there, which was fun. But then we moved
to Sydney and he went away a lot and deployments
could be anywhere from twelve weeks and the longest one
he did was nine months, and that was when I
was pregnant with my first daughter. So I'm living in Sydney,
I'm pregnant, I'm working full time shiftwork as a.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Nurse, and you're going home and there's nobody to rub
your feet or tell you it's okay, or Fiji strawberry
ice cream or do any of those things that you
deserve when you are pregnant.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Driving myself to the hospital with a breech baby where
I can't breathe, like, do you know? It was a lot.
He came back a week before I had her.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Oh I'm glad. I was about to say, did you
drive yourself to the hospital because you gave birth without him? No?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
No, no, I'm very lucky. But I'm a midwife as well.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
And oh you were prepared. You didn't even need him.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
To need him. But there was a few times where
I was in births with women whose husbands were in
defense and they were just there with their neighbor or
a birth partner.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
But you know what, you're the midwife they needed at
that moment, because you would have been like, I get
a girl, that's my stitch too, let's do this. Yeah,
there would have been some good vibes in those rooms.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah. No, we actually we had fun and we had
to laugh like it is hard. So we had our
first daughter. And then three months later he had to
go on a deployment again, and at this time, so
we packed up. I packed up my life in Sydney,
left all my girlfriends, my beautiful house on the Northern Beaches,
and went back and lived with mum and dad in Brisil,
because like, what was I doing was I'm Mattley sitting
(13:25):
in a house by myself with a newborn, and I
was like, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
You know what, that's the best option and if that's
an opportunity for you, Like, do you know what, your
parents probably loved it.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, so mom and dad loved it because you know,
my daughter was the first grandchild, and obviously my brothers
and sisters were all up there. So no, it was
it was nice. But in a way it was good
because that's when the whole debacle happened, you know, Like
I was up in Brisy, we went over to Hawaii
to visit him on a deployment and that's where it
all fell apart.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So oh how stressful, very stressful.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
But since then we've moved to around a bit. We
moved them back up to Brisbane where we had our
second daughter, which was really lovely, and then we got
posted back to Victoria at the beginning of COVID, which
was like the perfect timing. Moved down there for lockdown,
and then we moved to our current location in Canberra
(14:22):
the week that lockdown ended.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Oh perfect, So you really got to experience Melbourne for
its best.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, it was an interesting time, interesting time. And so
now we're up here and my husband's working here in Canberra.
He works full time. I work casually, but I still
I do about three days a week. And yeah, we're
just living our best lives.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
So tell me a bit more about your career, because
when you are married to somebody in defense or married
to someone who has a similar job, there's a lot
of compromise that you would have had to make in
your career and in your life and in the jobs
that you take or can't take to make sure that
his dreams are reality. Right, So you know, I don't
(15:03):
think anyone who's still married to their partner and still
love their partner is like holding any animosity, but it's
still a good conversation to be had. So, how has
this impacted your career and what that looks like for
your income generation.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It actually hasn't, and I think I'm one of the
lucky ones. Like I know, it's a bit like cliche
a nurse and a sailor, but it actually works really well.
Because so I obviously, like before I had the girls,
I was working full time. I did me, he did him,
and that just worked with the girls and having kids
and moving and not having any support network every time
(15:40):
you move, because you're starting from zero with friendships. I'm lucky.
I'm in a job that's really social and you know,
us nurses kind of we will gather together and we
become our own little families, which is lovely, which I've
got here in Canberra. But since I had my first daughter,
I've stayed casual, and I know that has its disadvantages
(16:01):
in regards to obviously like long service and sick leave.
But in the same breath, I do get a twenty
five percent.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Penalty yah, which is you're casual.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So in a way it kind of works out. And
it just means that I work when I want to work,
and I don't work when I want to work, and
I can have the school holidays off, I can have Christmas.
I'm not fighting rosters. I'm not fighting people, you know,
to get time off. And also I think because I
do shift work, those extra penalties stack them, stacks me up.
(16:33):
So I was really quite surprised when I looked at like,
I don't kind of look at how much I earn
over the year. But when I did my tax this year,
my tax consult was like, oh, you've got ninety four
thousand this year, and I was like, what, no way,
excuse me.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
So you're a ninety four thousand dollars earning casual midwife.
Is that correct? Like when you say that you're nurse,
like you're trained as a midwife or you like, what
type of nursing we doing?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Oh, I'm currently an intensive care nurse, so I work
in oh okayo care. So that's what I've done my
whole career. I just got a little bit bored the
year before I had my daughter, so I just decided, Oh,
I'm just going to go off and become a midwife.
It was really hard. It's really like all the nurses
out there that want to become a midwife like, go
for it. But that graduate diploma is hot.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, you're not only at UNI, but you're working and
there's so much involved and you have to be you
have to follow twenty women and be at five of
their appointments and then at their birth, and then after
birth you have to go to appointments. And that's for
twenty women, not just one. So it's like you're working
full time times too.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah that's crazy, and like, don't get me wrong, I'm grateful.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But it's rewarding. But I find my passion is intensive care,
but the hospital that I work at I get to
do both. So I work a lot in intensive care,
but then I kind of can run downstairs and go
to maternity and play down there when they're short, so
I kind of get the best of both worlds.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I kind of would love that. Like I hated giving birth,
ended up in an emergency Caesar, so I just wasn't
actually that good at it. Yeah that's not good. I
mean I also had a posteria labor, which I didn't
know about until like when they were doing a C section,
They're like, no, wonder this hurt you for twenty four
hours while you were refusing all pain relief, Like I
(18:24):
was cooked? Why did you do that? And be like
I didn't know. So he didn't want to come out.
He came out the sunroof, which is absolutely fine, like
and he's maintained that level of bougie since then. But
tell me, I feel like at all intensive care would
be a lot, like mentally physically, Like that just sounds
very demanding.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
A yeah it is. I've done it now for what
fifteen years? It is a lot, because you kind of
you see people at the most vulnerable. You see people
coming to the reality that you know they're coming to
the end of their life. You see massive traumas and
you know, dealing with things like suicide and or just
(19:04):
you know, we've had a lot of young mums recently
that have needed intubation because of flu and COVID and
having you know, little kids like five and eight year
olds in the room balling like it's really really hard.
But again, it's the adrenaline I love. I love the
excitement of a sick patient. I know that sounds odd, no.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
No, no, but like I want you to say that,
Like if I'm in intensive care, I want the nurse
to be like passionate about the stuff she's doing, not
like nonchalant, doesn't want to be here, can't wait for
a break, Like that's not what I want to hear
in ICU.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
No, we get the thrill and the excitement of you know,
hearing that piece. You know, really sick people are coming.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
In, getting stuff done and then debriefing after.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, but saying that, there's a lot of burnout and
I feel like I'm kind of at getting to that point.
So I've actually starting a new role in three weeks
working from home gig, which is amazing because it means
that I can work more hours and longer hours, and
I'll still work in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
I was about to say, and you're still casual, so
you could probably pick up some stuff there and EBB
and flow.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, so I'm going to do the working from home
stuff in the week and then they're on Sunday, go
up and pick up my double time rates.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
And I was about to say, Sunday rays, you can't
give that up.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
That's just the one shift you cannot give up. So yeah,
I'm just kind of diverting a little bit, giving my
physical and mental health a bit of a break.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
No, I think that that's really smart, because that's why
I was like, oh, ad, all intensive care sounds real
heavy like, and don't get me wrong, I think it
takes a very special person. And I'm getting that energy
from you that if I was sick, I want you
to look after me, like I just know I'd be
in good hands. But I just know that that comes
at your own emotional costs and your own burnout, and
like it's really shitty, but like that's the industry because
(20:52):
you know what if nurses, and I don't want nurses
to blourn out like that's awful. But also they're the
types of people that you want in the industry because
they're giving it. Literally they're all and you're kind of like, well,
that's why you guys should get paid more. Like ninety
four thousand dollars a year is great, but it's just
simply not enough from my perspective. So tell me a
little bit more about your next new role that you
(21:13):
start in three weeks work from home. What type of
salary changes a week?
Speaker 2 (21:16):
And I see, so it's only a few extra dollars
an hour, but it just means that I can be
available to do more days. So currently in the hospital,
I do two ten hour night shifts a week.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Oh wow, okay, yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And then I do an eight hour afternoon shift on
a Sunday, and I normally do an overtime, which terrible,
but it's like an eighteen hour solid shift.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Oh my gosh, I would simply pass away. Yeah, and
that's wh I'm feeling a bit burnt out.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, I get that the money's so good that it's
really hard to like say no when they say not
to you. Yeah, So I can only kind of night shifts.
I can only really mentally do two a week, and
then you know, you don't really sleep very well, and
then the day after you're absolutely wrecked, and so you're
kind of losing three four days just for two shifts.
(22:09):
So I thought doing this working from home, so it's
more like a telehealth kind of thing, which I did previously.
So when I was down in Victoria during COVID, I
had a telehealth contract where I could work from home.
And you know, like when I know other people around
the country didn't do this, but in Victoria, if you
test a positive for COVID, you went onto a register
and then a nurse would call you and go through
(22:30):
your symptoms and triase you to say, look, you're safe
to stay at home, or you need to call an
ambulance or you know, or go to your GP. This
is kind of similar, but it's more like a health
hotline where the public have symptoms and they call in
and then we can triage them. And it's to kind
of decrease the foot traffic through emergency departments. And we
(22:52):
still see it. People rock up with a cut on
their finger or still shoulder.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
But then why why like to and this is I
guess why there's this whole side conversation about the urgent
care facilities that are being implemented. I think is maybe
Victoria specific, but across Australia maybe we're getting urgent care
facilities to take the load off the emergency departments. And
they often recommend you can go here and you know what,
if stuff's really bad, we'll take you to the hospital,
(23:20):
which I think is so so smart. Yeah, one hundred percent,
it's wild. And then you've got the little old ladies
who are like, no, it's fine, I feel fine, but
I'm basically having all the symptoms of a stroke. Don't
worry about me, ducky, And you're like, no.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yep, And you know that's so true. Like when I
was doing the COVID hotline, I meant speak to a
man and I wrung him and I said, oh, you know,
I was doing his health check and he says, oh yeah,
I'm at my parents' house and they both have COVID
and I'm peering through the window and I can see
them both like lying on the floor. Oh no. We said, oh, well,
(23:57):
what's what you know, what's their health background? Like, can
you tell me the history and he said, oh, they're
both diabetic. And I said, well, you need to get
off the phone. You need to call an ambulance. I'm
going to call back in half an hour and then
we can go. But you know, like sometimes people are
so nervous to call triple zero to ask for help,
and you get into situations like this where, yeah, you
(24:18):
do get people that will just sit at home and
deteriorate and it would be like the last second before
they call an ambulance. And then you have the other
side where people just I don't know if they just
want some human interaction or it.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Hurts when I press my finger everywhere. That's crazy. That's
because your finger has a cut on it.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, we see it all the time.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
So I don't like that for you, that would be very,
very frustrating. Let's give it a little bit. I want
to talk about your money goals. So obviously you guys
are starting from zero again as of fourteen months ago.
But sorry, if saved one hundred grant so that's pretty impressive. Yeah,
I don't actually know how we did that, but okay,
you did though, Yeah you did though that it's very
(25:00):
very impressive. So talk me through like, what are your
big money goals, because clearly you're working towards them.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So we currently live in Defence Housing and we want
to move back to Queensland to be closer to our family.
My husband is still contracted to Defense for another two
and a bit years, so like, I just want that
forever home. I've always had investment properties, and I've always
lived in Defence Housing where I can't paint the walls,
like and I can't change the carpet and I can't
(25:27):
rent over kitchen, and I just want something that's my
own and I don't care how crappy and run down
it is. I just want a house with some land.
I want chickens, you know.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
I just want the chickens.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, we need the chickens I want. I just I
want space for my girls to run around. So really
that is our big money goal. Is the house. I
really want the house.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I love that, but like, sorry, you're working towards that
very nicely. To have saved one hundred thousand dollars in
fourteen months is actually unheard of. So I don't I
don't know how to tell you this, but I don't
think the house is going to be crappy, like I
know that that's where your bare minimum is starting, but like,
I think we are going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Look, I just obviously like housing prices have just swored
in Queensland since COVID, and so like what we thought
we could aim for seems like it's just in our reach.
I actually spoke with a broker last week. I had
to pull my head out of the sand because I'm
really scared about entering the property market again because I've
(26:31):
been burnt and I have a really big scar and
I'm not fully over it. I wanted to ask you
about that because I was like, why are you going
back into property after property is the thing that burnt you?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
But obviously I get it.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Just want the old Queenslander with a white picket fence.
I know it sounds really silly, but like, I have
everything else. I have the most amazing husband who's my
best friend. We've been together for over twenty years. I
have my two beautiful girls. I have amazic dog. We
have great careers. You know, we have our health. I
just don't have the house. And it's the last piece
of the puzzle. I want the house.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
I get it, I get it. I get it, And
that's where I'm so glad you've engaged with the broker
to start the conversations early, because you can dot all
the i's and cross all the t's and make sure
that everything is where it needs to be before you
even find a house, before you even go down that route.
And like, I feel like when you've been burnt before
you know what you're looking for as well, the red
flags are literally crimson and in the front of your
(27:26):
face and you just take absolutely no crap.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well, I have to say, this is what I truly regret,
and if when people listen to this, I hope that
this is maybe the one thing they take out of it.
Is when I was purchasing that second property, the real
estate guy called me, pushing me to sign the papers
for settlement, and I had the biggest feeling in my
gut that it was wrong. I remember exactly where I
(27:49):
was standing, I remember where I took the phone call.
And sorry, I get a bit emotional because I'm so
angry at myself for not listening to my gut. And
it's the biggest lifeline and I've learned and the most
important one, I think is just to like, don't go
with your head, listen to your gut. It is so
important that gut instinct is built into all of us.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And just something feels off, trust yourself that it feels off.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, one hundred percent. So recently I was dealing with
two brokers and one guy gave me just the ick
and I just said to my husband, I'm not dealing
with him. I flicked him off, engaged with another guy
who was absolutely amazing and was so supportive and listened
to my story and was like, no, I'm here for you.
I'm going to work with you. And he wrung me
(28:35):
yesterday to say we've got pre approval to move ahead.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Ah, that's so exciting. So I love that for you.
And I just know that, Oh it's sunshine and roses
from here on in. Like it's going to be hard,
it's going to be hard, but it's coming.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It's coming. You know. There was so many years that
I was in a dark cave, and now I can
see I'm out, I'm moving forward. Oh. I love that.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Let's go to a really quick break because on the
flip side, I have a lot more questions. I want
to talk about investments, I want to talk about potential
debt and also best in worse money habits, because like,
I'm not gonna lie. We're halfway through this episode and
I already don't believe that you're just to see so
guys don't go anywhere. All right, money DiResta, We are back,
(29:18):
and I am very excited to talk about this. I
want to dive back into the investment side of things
because you and your husband you bought your first investment
property when your daughter was born. You told us, you
know a lot at the start about your money story,
how you got your Rich Dad Poor Dad book, like
your parents kind of drove that. Has property been the
only investment that you've really cared about or invested in?
(29:39):
Like what does that side of your life look like?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
To be honest, I never really understood shares or you know,
like in what an investment portfolio was kind of until
I stumbled upon your podcast a few years ago.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I'm glad we.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Met YEP during COVID.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
During COVID we've been friends for ages.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Y have fun in Melbourne. So like, obviously my dad
had given me the Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and I
read it and I understood that was all property driven,
like by a property and news echuding blah blah blah.
And then he gave me the Barefoot Investor Book and
I read that and I did all the things. I
opened up fifty nine G accounts but had no clue
what to do with them. And they still sit there,
(30:20):
and I again, I don't know what to do with them.
They're just there.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
And it doesn't work for everybody. I'm not gonna lie now.
I know that you earn what you earn, and I'm
assuming your husband probably earned slightly more than you because
I didn't ask. That method actually probably doesn't work for
your lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I don't know what to do with it. And this
is why I say I'm a seved because my husband's
had a good income from the very beginning. I've never
really budgeted.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Can I be pervy? What kind of income are we talking?
He's currently on one point thirty Yeah, good, great. I
kind of just maybe once a year, this is really bad.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
I probably should do this more often. Once a year,
I kind of like go through my bank account and
look at all our outgoings and just make like an estimate.
And I just kind of chuck, like, oh, five hundred
bucks a fortnight in the Bill's account, and hope for
the best. It's kind of worked, which kind of makes
sense if you've never been taught, Like, and that's really hard,
and like, please don't get me wrong, like Scott Papers
(31:14):
done so many good things for this industry, and like
I swear like I still see people down at the
supermarket or like at the shops with their like spend splurge.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Like written on the cards.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, I still see that.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
It's so cute. Like it is so cute and if
it works for you, like I love that. But there
is something about percentage based budgeting that just doesn't align
with my values. Because you know, if I'm putting like
ten percent into my splurge account, well I'm not gonna lie,
Like I just don't spend that like and I'm not.
I come across as I look sometimes like I'm expensive
(31:49):
to maintain, but I'm really not when it comes down
to it. So I never know what I meant to
be doing with that, and it just isn't going to
work for me. And then also the percentages, especially in
twenty twenty five, actually don't work for us. We are
on average spending fifty percent of our income on our accommodation.
So like the fact that that doesn't account for any flexibility.
(32:11):
You go, well, how do I on my income using
this bucket method? Make it work? And it does work
for some people, but it doesn't work for others, and
that's why I kind of like don't like percentage based budgeting.
I am going to actually set you up, so you
and I we're going to do my budget and cash
Flow masterclass or my now new money masterclass together. I'm
going to send you a log in after this, but
(32:32):
I have done all of the spreadsheets and you don't
have to do any of the work. All I need
you to do is put in your incomes and put
in your expenses and it will spit out This is
how much you spend on a week, or you can
like categorize it however you want. It might be week, month, year, whatever.
This is how much the kids cost. This is how
much your house is. This is how much you have
left over for savings, and it will tell you which
bank accounts it needs to go into on a weekly
(32:54):
or monthly basis, depending on what you want. So I'm
going to set you up with that because if you're saying, oh,
I sometimes do this, yeah, this girl's going to take
it to another level, also low key. I made it
so it's esthetically pleasing, it's going to be pretty, it's
peak well, I love but it's one of those things
where the dual budget won. It'll be your husband's income
and also your income, and it will show you how
(33:15):
that breaks up and what that looks like at a
top level without you having to do any of the
background calculations, without being like, okay, well now I know
of my expenses, because I feel like that has always
been the block with budgeting, right, So like I could
be like money, do I sit down, Let's do you budget?
And you're like, okay, well, I can go through my
bank statements. I can tell you what I earn, I
can tell you what I spend. But then it's the
(33:37):
function of actually facilitating making sure that you have enough
by a specific date for your car registration, to make
sure that you know, if we're working backwards on a
savings goal, and let's say I know you've got one
hundred grand saved, maybe you want one hundred and twenty.
I know, and I can give you a date that
you will have that you don't have to do the maths.
So I think that that I mean, I'm biased. I
(33:57):
made my own system, but it was based on the
fact that none of the other systems were working for me.
And I was a financial advisor and I wanted something
for my clients that made sense. But I took the
stress off them by doing the hard yards, Like that's
what worked.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
I think I've just had and I my head in
the sand, and I just kind of avoid it because
it's I'm not a numbers person, like I'm a practical,
hands on, task orientate a person when it comes to numbers.
Like this morning, I was at my daughter's school or
like you know that was showings around the classroom.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
And oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
She was like, Mum, we have to do this timestable quiz.
And I just looked at my husband and I was like,
I'm out, Like, don't even ask me what five times
five is. I can't do it, Like numbers is not
like don't work for me and percentages and I just
don't understand it. So I kind of just ignore it
and hope.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
And that's why I do all the hard work in
this It's all calculated in the background. You also can't
break it because I locked it so you can try,
but I have locked it down pretty securely. You can't
move anything around, so the calculations are always going to
be correct. Because I'm the worst. I was like backspace
something and forget I backspaced it, or delete something by
so you can't do it. I just won't let it happen. Well, anyway,
(35:06):
I feel like I'm trying to sell you on. Of
course I've already given you so like we'll move on
from this. But I'm excited because I think it'll work.
I think it'll work really well. Money diarist talk to
me about superannuation as a casual employee. What's your super
looking like? Is that a priority? Is it something you
haven't looked at yet? Is defense really good? When it
(35:27):
comes to super?
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Super is something my dad has again drummed into me.
So I remember, like back, you know, I don't know
that two thousands, the government was like matching dollar for
dollar that you put into your super. And so even
though I was like only earning like three hundred dollars
a week, it came out or whatever. He always was like,
you put twenty dollars into your super. And it's kind
(35:50):
of carried on with me through life, and I always
have put like an extra five or seven percent in
so my super at the moment in it one hundred
and ninety.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Oh okay, queen, and you're thirty eight. You were running
rings around the competition. You're like, oh, I'm not doing
that well financially. Sorry, what's sit down. I know it's hard.
You don't feel like you're in control. I can tell
that you don't feel like you're in control, but like,
I think that you've got this handled a little bit
more than you think you do.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Yeah. I feel like because I've got a few little
investments here and there, but it's nothing big. So I've
got one hundred and ninety. My husband's of Lely Defense,
so his is quite good. He's got five hundred and seventy.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Okay, no worries. That's more than what most people retire with.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, So that's why we've kind of stayed in because
obviously the perks of just the super alone keeps us
ticking over.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Did you say before, I'm just doing some background thinking.
Did you say before that you were making voluntary contributions
to superannuation. Yeah, you can probably pull some of that
out if hypothetically you wanted to pull that out for
the first home Super Saver scheme to top up your
house deposit. Hypothetically, if that was interesting, can I to you,
Because but we're not first home buyers, I would have
(37:03):
a look at the rules and regulations around that because
they are a little bit more flexible. You have to
have not purchased a house within a certain period of time.
Talk to you broker, Talk to your broker and see
what that looks like. Because also if you've experienced financial distress,
sometimes they are a little bit flexy on that. And
I'm pretty sure we could write a pretty good user
(37:23):
case for you.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Well that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I mean, if you get told no, I'm glad you asked.
If you get told yes, you owe me a fee.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Definitely I would owe you a fee.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
No, but it would definitely be worth looking into and
just going, well, what does that look like? What's the
flexibility here? Is there any because sometimes it will just
be a hard no because you know, you might have
too much in terms of assets or income or whatever
that looks like.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
But there's always a question, Yeah, okay, we'll do I'll
ask him this week.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
But when it comes to super you guys are looking
pretty good, like having more than what that's like seven
hundred and something like great, fantastic, Like we are on
the route to being comfortable in retirement irrespective of the
investments that ultimately were lemons.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, and that's I guess that kind of was the
only kind of security I had in the back of
my head, was like the money is there, Like, you know,
if we're in a scenario and we have to be
in a defense rental for the rest of our lives,
at least we know that when we get to retirement
that we are going to be okay.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Yeah, So tell me about these little investments that you're like, oh,
they don't really count, but I know they count, So
tell me a little bit about those I have too.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
So I was listening back in Melbourne. I was listening
to your podcast and you were speaking to Grant Hackett
about through Generation.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Life his investment bonds.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yep. So I at that time I opened to children
investment bonds for my daughters. I was putting money into
it every year. Obviously, once we lost the house, I
kind of stopped. I wasn't focusing on it. So each
girl has five grand in their little investment bombs sitting there,
(39:07):
and I do intend to start putting back into it.
I just need to kind of figure out how that looks.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
You can't pour from an empty cup though, and like
it's nice to have things for your kids. Please don't
get me wrong, that's incredible. They're way above and beyond
what other people would be at. But like you need
to set yourselves up financially, Like the best investment you
can make is in yourselves, and then if we've got
some extra fantastic, the kids can have their own investments,
but like you come first, one thousand percent.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah, so I kind of put everything on hold once
that will happen because I really just wanted to focus
on building a deposit and every penny that I could
find going into that.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
That's so good. You've really been around a while because
that episode is so old, but it was really great.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
I really like just kind of pushed me into I
always wanted to do something for them. I had bank
accounts where like I was getting you know, my relatives
would just go, oh, look here's money for their birthday
and buy them they want, well, they have everything. So
I was just chucking it into like a savings account,
was doing nothing, and then that episode came on and
I was like, oh, this one is for me and
so yeah, I ran a lot of the life and
(40:11):
spoke to them and got it all set up and
it was really great.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
And their gorged there.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Obviously not advice because that would be illegal for me
to give and I wouldn't do that. But I can
share my personal experiences and that is what I set
up for my own child, Harvey. So Harvey has a
childbuilder as well, and it just to us makes sense,
like from a tax perspective, from just a structure perspective,
like there are lots of different options. And listen, this
is just like a side note for everybody listening, please
(40:36):
listen to our Investing for Kids episodes because there are
lots of different options. This is just one that might work.
And apparently for money Durist and die it works. Well.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah, so I have those. And then just before we
lost the property, I had put some money into EFT
so like just the global one hundred about two grand
or something, and then I forgot about it and then
remembered at the start of the year I had that
sitting there, and then I think maybe it was in
April this year when Old Donald brought in his tariffs
(41:07):
and dumped the stock market I just said to my husband.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
I think that's a good opportunity.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
It was I just put five grand in there.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Oh my god. I didn't have any free cash at
the time, and I was like, I would love to
have some free cash right now, but all of my
stuff is tied up, and I'm watching this opportunity go past.
So tell me what's that worth?
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Now?
Speaker 3 (41:27):
If you put five grand in nine somethink nine So envious,
that's very nice.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
So I've made two and a half really on it currently.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
So these aren't little investments. That's good, that's so good.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
So they are the two kind of investments I have.
I did have a spaceship account back in the day,
but obviously, like I had to pull the money out
of that. But I just this week downloaded the Chaer's
Ease app to think, maybe I I'm in a position
where I'm like, do I just pull every single penny
to put into this deposit or do I put fifty
(42:03):
bucks a week into a Cheesy's account or into you
know to buy more FT's or you know, share. I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
I wish I could give you an answer to that,
but that would constitute financial advice. I think It's really
around your time frames, right, So when we talk to
people who are like, oh, I don't know how to
split it, it's really about, Okay, well, what would that
extra fifty bucks a week be doing towards your house deposit?
And then once you've got the house, will you have
the free cash flow to then invest a little bit more.
You've got to ask yourself a heap of questions around,
(42:31):
like does that suit your lifestyle? You know, are we
aggressively saving as much as possible towards the house or
maybe are we happy to put that off another few
months because we are also investing at the same time.
I think it's totally up to you.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
I think, and again listening to my gut, and this
is probably why I haven't done it, and I haven't
been putting extra into the Girl's Childbuilders, and is just
because I know that really we should put you and
it's only for a short period of time, putting everything
we have into getting the right to it so that
we can get that house. And then you know, once
(43:03):
we rent it out and you know we're getting that
rental return, we'll definitely have the cash flow to then
to invest. So I know the answer. I think I
just doubt myself, and I think a lot of people do.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Oh, we all do. And that's why you need to
do the Money master class because that's going to show
you exactly what that looks like. And then you can
kind of like key in a few things and be like, oh, oh,
what if I because I also have investment buckets in
there as well, what if I put fifty bucks a
week into this? And it will show you what amount
that would equal and then you can decide. So instead
of just going should I shouldn't, I like, let's just
(43:35):
get the numbers on a paper. Do you want this
or that? And you'll be like, oh, okay, that or this?
And I think that that's really helpful to have something
right in front of you that goes, well, this is
the decision.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Do you like it? No?
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Okay, I'm going to change it.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
No.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
That sounds really good because that's where my head's add
It's just like a big jumble of what ifs, and
you know, money flying around and I need it to
be structured. So I think that would be perfect totally.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
So tell me, are there any other investments floating around? No,
that's more than I thought there would be I'm not
gonna lie.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
No, it's just honestly, just the two the kids and
the eft's at the moment.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, so talk to me about debt. Do you have
any debt? If so, what does that look like?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Okay, So I went back and did another post grad
last year, specifically for intensive care. So I have like
twelve hundred dollars in a hex debt, which I'm big dog,
you know. So when I get my tax back, I
think I'll just dump it on it and just get
(44:37):
rid of it.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
But you should have got a nice little twenty percent
discount on that too, cheers elbow because he has the
twenty percent hex.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
So yeah, I don't know. Yeah, has that been applied yet?
It will have just been applied. I'll have to go
back in and check it. Yeah, maybe I won't pay
it until the twenty percent.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Oh no, no, no, do not pay it until you've
got that discount.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Okay, good to know. Yes, so I have that. We've
owned both our cars. We've never I don't believe in
taking out loans for anything besides property. So we've owned
both of our cars outright, saying that my car I
had a problem like the air bags. So there was
an air bag light and I couldn't fix it, and
the dealership was telling me it was going to cost
(45:16):
me thousands to replace these air bags, and I thought, oh,
I can't deal with it.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
What a coincidence you also have a new car to
sell me. That's crazy that you would push me down
that one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So I took my car back to Queensland to my
husband's dad and I think, can you try and fix it?
And in the meantime, we were kind of stuck because
we only had one car, and so reluctantly we got
anvated lease cars through my husband's work, so fifty percent
of it is pre tax and fifty percent of its
post tax and we have that four three years, so
(45:45):
we've got it for another eighteen months. But then my
wonderful father in law fixed the car within a few days.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
He did because he doesn't work for their car dealership.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yep. So we potentially have two of our own cars
and anovated lease.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
But that doesn't mean you can't dispose of one of
those cars and get some cash. And like, I think,
the other question I have around that novated least is
what's happening at the end Are you giving the car back?
Are you buying the car out? What would that look like?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
I don't particularly want the car, and I don't think
the balloon payment at the end is worse. Yep, you
know the car, so probably yeah, we'd probably just send
them back and say bye.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Look, the only good thing about that car is it's
got heated seats and in camera it is freezing. So
that's the cherry on top for that car. And my
girls love the sunroof.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Yeah, that door, that makes it fancy. When I was little,
anybody who had a sunroof, Yes, they think that we
are balling, so but yeah you are. You are you
have a sunroof? Like you got good super like girl,
I think you are doing okay, like ask your kids.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Yeah. So besides that, we do have a credit card.
It's only got a six thousand dollar limit and we
hardly use it, so it's at zero. I just it's
there for an emergency, but we don't have any I
love this for you, but I don't believe in it,
Like I'm really like, I'm one of those people like
if someone buys me something, I'll like send them money
(47:08):
straight away.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Like I don't like owing anybody anything. I don't know
what it is, but it just I have an aversion
to it as well. It literally makes me feel sick.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
It like it gives me the eck when people try
and pay for me for things, and I just know
I've got it. My dad always said to me, like,
you know, like it's lovely to be in a relationship
and but you always have to be financially independent for yourself.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Icon. Dad is an icon.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
He is the best. He's really feminist all my money
habits and pushed me into property and pushed me into
super and pushed me into investing and get it. So yeah,
no debt, thankfully.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I adore this. So tell me, what do you think
your best money habit is.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
I don't know. I'm not materialistic, so I don't really.
The older I get, the less I want, Like I
don't want stuff like in my twenties, like I wanted
the best makeup and a nice car and all this,
and now I just want to build wealth, So I
guess I don't know. I love doing a bit of
overtime and getting extra money to put in my savings.
(48:12):
That's what makes me happy.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
Your work ethic, Like, let's talk about the fact that
you know what you and your husband have in super
so you're across all of that. All your numbers have
been real clean, like you're not like, oh, I think
I have about no no, no, Like she knows what's
going on. Like I know that you said you're not
on top of budgeting, which I think might be your worst.
I don't know what you're going to say, but we'll
get there. But like you're also investing, like girl, there
(48:34):
are a lot of good money habits that you've set up.
And talk to me slightly off topic, but what do
you teach your kids about money? Because I have a
sneaky suspicion you might be a cookie cutter version of
your dad.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah. I well, my older daughter who kind of understands
because she's she's always saying when are we going to
buy her forever home? Like when do we get a
forever home? My room's going to look like the sentence,
you know, because she's used to moving all the time.
So they're good little savers. I've told them, you know,
like you know, like they've got their money boxes in
their room, and you know, they know that they've got
(49:08):
like a little bank account where I put money and
and I just, you know, try and say to them,
you know, you need to save for the bigger picture,
Like everyone wants an instant gratification. And I think it's
so easy because I'm My younger daughter was like, oh Mom,
I really want this. Can't you just get it on Amazon?
It will be here tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I'm just like, it's a good point, babe. It's a
very good point. I could, but I'm not going to.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
One hundred percent. And I always try and deal, like
give them cash so they you know, like they know
that you just it's not like a card that just
with inevitable money, you know, like never ending money. I
don't know, just being honest and present with them really.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
And I love this. It's something that I've been thinking
about a lot now that I have a child. I'm
just like, how am I going to do this? Like
what does this look like? And in twenty twenty five
when money is all digital, Like how do you teach
them the value of money at the same time as
trying to also teach them to keep up Like, yes,
(50:06):
she's right, we do have Amazon, but that's instant versus
delayed gratification. And there's a bigger conversation around that and
like how much money do you have? And yeah, it's
it's an interesting and fickle conversation to have because like
there's no one size fits all approach.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
I find it hard as well, because like obviously, like
I grew up in a family four you know, my
mom had like just a part time job, and my
dad worked full time and did overtime on a Saturday.
You know, we really didn't have much. You know, we
went out and played in the street. We didn't have computers,
we didn't like, we didn't have anything fancy. We didn't
go on trips to the snow, you know. So and
(50:43):
I kind of feel like I'm in a way making
up for that. So my girls say, oh, Mom, can
I have that? Like, of course you can. Like I
want to give them everything, and sometimes I think I'm
teaching them nothing. Like my daughter the other day went, Mom,
I'd really love a tamagotchi, and I was like, yeah,
let's go to Kma. That's me and pot her tamagotchi
(51:04):
for fifty dollars. And now she's obsessed and wants a
two hundred dollars tamagotchi. And I'm really reeling it back
and I'm like, no, let's count our pennies. We're gonna save.
She wants to now do jobs around the house to
kind of like earn a bit of extra cash.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
And it's hard though, because like that's not so. I
was like, oh, I'm going to be fine, like I'm
always going to say no, like I'm pretty good at
this and my kid's only eighteen months old. But when
he looks at me and he goes one more, I go,
oh my god, yeah, you can't have fifty or you're like,
who was going to tell me that I would become
such a push.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
I know because I was very much like you know,
I was brought up to just like suck it up,
drink some man, get with it. Life is tough, push
you way through, and it's worked for me, and like
I've been very successful in life besides that lemon. But
I know my kids come to me and I my
mom said no, no, no, no, no all my life.
(51:59):
So I feel like I'm rebelling and I just go yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes yeah yep.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
That's literally me.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
So yeah, it is a tough one. But I'm learning
slowly to try and teach them that, like you just
can't want something and it just lands on your lap.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Would you say that's your worst money habit could be.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yeah. The other day they swindled me at the corner shop.
I've taken my older one to the physio because she's
done her ankle at netball. And she said, oh, well,
if we're really good, can we go into the IgA
and get a lolly? And I said, yeah, of course
she can. And she swindled me into a twenty dollar
plushy toy. And I was like, how did it go
(52:37):
from you can have something for under two dollars.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
And I spend twenty bucks? Yeah, this woman, she smart.
She is to hit her up, give her my details
because I'd like to know how to do that with
lots of people I don't know.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
She's got the art of persuasion, and I just can't
say no to them.
Speaker 3 (52:52):
I like, how we all and this seems to be
a common theme in my friend group, we all say
that we're swindled by our kids.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
I walked out and I was it's like I tapped
my card and I was like, twenty dollars. What was
twenty dollars? And then I looked at it she got
chacky little monkey, but she got it and she won
and it worked and she I love it. Money Diarist,
Now that we've talked, I think we need to reflect
a little bit on this sea because like you said,
look I'm a sea, and I was like, okay at
(53:19):
the start, like I can see how that might happen,
a little bit skeptical because you have saved one hundred grand.
I was, I can't be that bad at money, right,
and then like take yourself out of this story, right.
So gorgeous couple met. He was in the navy, she's
a nurse. They've got two beautiful kids. It fell apart.
The investment property didn't work out. It was a lemon.
But they've been rebuilding. They have like seven hundred grand
(53:40):
to their name in superanuation. Like they've saved one hundred
grand over the last fourteen months. They're not really sure
how they did it, but they have done it. They're
starting to look at their forever home, like they're able
to buy their kids twenty dollars off plushies when it
makes sense to do so, so, like they're giving their
kids the life that you know they want to give
their kids. The kids actually have childbuilders. They've got their
(54:01):
own investment bonds, and you contribute to them when you can,
as you should. This couple, she's dabbling in investments. She's
got like some ETFs. You know, she's got another five
grand that she decided to drop when Trump was jumping
up and down about the tariffs. Like the wife get this,
She went back and did this postgraduate intensive care unit
so that she could get paid more. And she's only
(54:23):
got twelve hundred bucks left on her hex. Like, how
good is that? She's probably gonna be able to pay
it off with her tax money if she wants to
downloaded chairs is doesn't know if she's going to invest
more or like buy her dream house sooner. But what
a conundrum to be in. How good love this money
decision that they're making. But then when I spoke to her,
she's like, oh, yeah, also, by the way, we own
(54:43):
our cars out right, we do have an ovated lease.
But it's making sense still able to save one hundred grand.
But then she goes, yeah, I think I'm only a
c at money. Does that make sense to you if
you put it like that?
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Maybe not?
Speaker 3 (54:56):
Yes, not making sense to me either. And I know,
you know what I'm gonna blame this. You said you
weren't a maths person. I get it, you just miscalculated.
You're like a yes, you could get up and at
it with budgeting a little bit more Like you said
that you weren't as on top of that, and I
feel like that's probably what's leading you to feel a
little bit out of control. But like, sorry, when I
asked about debt, you have a credit card you don't
(55:16):
even use. It's just there for emergencies. But you've also
got a heap of cash, so you probably don't even
need it. Like there's just a lot going on here
that makes sense. And like, yes, you had an investment
property that was a lemon, but you're also only thirty eight. Yeah,
like we're doing well.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
Thank you. Yeah. I guess, look, I guess if you
put it all together, maybe it presents a bit better
than it does in my head. I think a lot
of the investment stuff, I do it, but I don't
fully understand it. And I think maybe that's okay.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
You're on the journey.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
That's why I feel like maybe I rate myself as
a C because I feel like I just kind of
jump on things and kind of start it and then hope.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
For the best. Strategy has been working so far. I mean, yes,
the property got screwed over, but it wasn't because you
didn't do due diligence. It was because other people screwed you.
Like when you start to dig into it, you're like
I did my building and past inspection, and the first
thing I thought was like, oh my god, like he
deserves to be sued, but he was in cohots. They
all were like that was structured to take advantage of you.
(56:20):
It was never structured for you to be successful. And
I'm really sorry you were never going to be successful
with that, no matter how hard you tried. And I
think the best thing we learned was you just need
to listen to your gut a little bit more expensive lesson.
I wish you didn't have to learn it that way,
but I mean, we we've come this farst so let's
just commit to it. Yes, Money Diarist, this has been
(56:40):
an absolute pleasure. I have loved this Money Diary. From
talking about you being a midwife, to losing your house
to talking about ETFs and investment bonds. There's just been
a lot going on in this conversation. And I know
the community is going to have loved this episode as
much as I have, so thank you so much for
spending so much time with me. It has been a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (56:59):
Thanks for having me. And yeah, it's been really enjoyable
and it's actually got me excited about my financial future.
Speaker 3 (57:05):
Now.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
I feel like good things are coming my way.
Speaker 3 (57:08):
They are thousand percent are Oh my gosh, I have
loved this.
Speaker 2 (57:12):
Thank you.
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(00:22):
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Speaker 2 (00:45):
She's on the Money.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
She's on the Money. Hello, and welcome to She's on
(01:10):
the Money, the podcast that lets you be pervy about
other people's money habits for educational purposes, of course. Welcome
back to another one of our money daries where we
get the absolute pleasure of talking with one of our
incredible She's on the Money. Can community members all about
their journey. Let's jump straight into it, because this week
I got a message and it sounded exactly like this. Hi,
(01:31):
she's on the money. I always worked hard from a
young age. My husband he joined the navy and I
became a nurse. We purchased our first investment property the
year we got married, and a second investment property the
year our first daughter was born. Then it all fell apart.
The second investment property was a lemon. We were in
(01:51):
court with the builder for five years and lost everything.
But starting from zero again fourteen months ago, we have stay.
We have to one hundred thousand dollars and are now
looking to buy a new investment and forever home money.
Does that sounds like a roller coaster that I don't
want to be on.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
No, I didn't want to be on an either.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It was absolutely awful, non consensual roller coaster. It was
just it was horrific. Oh my god, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
We've come out the other side and ready to start again.
Oh God.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
All right, Well, let's dive straight into it before I
ask you to tell me a little bit more. I
want to know what grade would you give your money
habits if I asked you to give them a grade
from A through to F. I would say, c all right,
that's A I'm in, that's middle ground, that's okay, Yeah,
that's all right. So tell me a bit more about
this money story. I feel like that's a like relatively
stereotypical love story. Met my husband, he went into the navy,
(02:47):
I became a nurse. We had a daughter, Like, how cute?
Tell me more?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, so, gosh, where to start. So I grew up
in like a normal kind of you know ouzsie household.
Parents worked really hard for everything. You know. I worked
from a very young age, you know, doing the paper
round and then baby sitting in the street, and then
you know, I started working at cam Up when I
was fifteen, and that's where I met my husband, packing shelves.
(03:14):
I came up, and then yeah we went off and
you know, went to UNI and got our full time jobs.
And I remember going to like the brick and brack
kind of markets and my dad handing me a book,
you know, the rich Dad, Poor Dad book, and.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that had a
massive viral moment before virality was.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Effense, before all the you know, like you guys came along,
it was that was the Bible Book, and you know,
my parents really valued property and shares, and so we
didn't have a lot of money. We had like a
crappy car and you know, the bare minimum, but they
always had investments and that was kind of really dropped
into me. So I always wanted that for myself. So
(03:58):
kind of going down the line, we got married and
we had saved and got our first investment property in Brisbane.
It was a two bedroom, which was amazing, and then
we kept saving and used the equity off that to
purchase another property, which we thought, you know, perfect, another
two bedroom in our range.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
The stepping stone that was part of the plan.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, well we were building the plan. We'd married, we'd had,
you know, had an investment property, we had our first
daughter bought the second investment property. I mean, all was
going fine. It was rented out, we were having good
rental return on it, no problems. So then we were
holidaying in Hawaii and we get a phone call from
the real estate going the whole place has flooded. No,
(04:44):
And I thought flooded, Like, what do you mean like
a little bit of water And she was like, no,
the furniture is floating. And I was like I don't
understand when you're talking about. We were the bottom unit,
so half of the unit was kind of built into
a hill.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Was that weather related or like did someone flo a bath?
Like how did this flood happen?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, it was rain, so it had come down the
hill and the way that the drainage was done outside
the property, it was draining straight into a.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Door, and that's something the builder absolutely should have factor
it in with their design. That's okay.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So that's where it kind of began. And so it's
kind of in a country town, so we were having
to source water pumps and cup you know, to pump
the water out. And obviously, like I'm on a different
time zone, I'm in Hawaii, you know, this had to
be dealt with there. And then it was so stressful
and so obviously our tenant had to move out straight away. Yeah,
and then when we got down to the nitty gritty
(05:39):
of it, we got an engineer in to have a
look and he was like, I don't think this wall
that's built into the hill is waterproofed. And I was like,
what do you mean? And he's like, the better block
is so damp, and I thought, oh, that's weird.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, because like I don't mean to be offensive. I
haven't asked you what you do for work yet, but like,
why would you know that it was meant to be
waterproof either? Is the builder and the like designer meant
to know? And you're probably like, okay.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So it's dare Well, it gets a bit more deep.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
I'm listening. I'm listening.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Sorry. So then all of a sudden he's looking around.
He's going, I don't think this bathrooms waterproofed either, And
then he went upstairs to the unit above because we
started getting like moisture on the roof in front of
the bedrooms, and he's like, the bathroom above you isn't
waterproofed because the shower was leaking into one of the rooms.
(06:31):
And so then we've got a structural engineer in and
he kind of went through and said, oh my gosh,
before units in this strata a shot, this builder has
just done the dodgy Oh no.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
And waterproofing.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Sorry, isn't that just space.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I know that I've got no idea when it comes
to building, but like waterproofing, I know that's a thing.
I don't know how to do it, but I know
it needs doing.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
One hundred percent. How can you have a wet space
that isn't waterproofed, or have a bil building that's built
into a hill not waterproofed between the building anyway, It
was a nightmare. And so then when we started looking
into it, this builder was in multiple lawsuits with multiple
different people.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
No, and that's like the last thing you want to see,
because you go, this guy, this ain't his first radio.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
He is a total con artist. And then when we
started going down the line, we realized that the real
estate agent that sold it to us was a friend
of his, and the building and pest inspection guy was
a friend of his. And it was just this massive,
big scheme. It was just, you know, we got sucked in.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
So they all still have jobs? Do they all still work?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Well? I got the builder's license revoked.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Oh good job, queen, Yes I did.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
But then you know what he did. He went off
and started building demountables on his property and selling those
which were dodgy.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah, of course he did.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So you know, they find a way. They closed down
their business, open up a new ABN and start summerfresh.
All the organizations and the government everyone protects the builders.
They don't protect the buyer, which is really unfortunate. So
we obviously because it was a new home we had
the new homeowners like the seven year warranty period that
did nothing for us. Long story short, we had to
get all the strata involved and take him to court.
(08:14):
It dragged on actually seven months now I look back
on Oh, and during that time we couldn't sustain having
a property that had no rental income. So we're paying
the mortgage, the strata, the land rates and so we
unfortunately had to sell our first investment property in Brisbane
because I couldn't float them both. But I couldn't sell
(08:37):
this one.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
No, absolutely not. And you had a kid as well,
Like absolutely no.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
So we lost that property, which was really sad because
it'd be worth a lot today.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Do you know what we're not thinking about that there
is a reason this stuff happens, and it's really terrible.
But like, give me ten years and you're going to
come back and be like, oh, guess what we've done.
I know, best thing ever And that's shit because when
the light at the end of the tunnel hasn't been
reached yet, so it does feel like trash. But like
I just I think we need to have a toxic
level of optimism sometimes to help ourselves through these situations.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I'm there now, but you know me. Eighteen months ago
it was in a hole. So we sold that investment property.
We did get a settlement, but it had to be
split between It was for rectification, so they said, this
is what needs to be fixed in each individual unit.
This is how much it will cost to rectify it.
But that was done like, say, three years ago. So
(09:29):
by the time we got the money three years later,
obviously the cost of everything's gone up, the cost of labor,
the cost of the actual building supplies, so it couldn't
cover anything. So our only option was we stripped the
place bare back to its bare bones, and we sold
it as is, and we solved it for half of
(09:50):
what we bought it for. No, but also that's the
best thing, the only way we could do it, because
no one wanted to touch it, because all the locals
knew the builder, they knew that they were buying somewhat lemon.
So we sold it with enough to close the mortgage,
and that left us at zero zero dollars in the bank.
(10:10):
I had a little bit of investments, not much like
five thousand here. Blah blah blah, I had to close
all those pull everything that I had. We had to
borrow twenty grand from my partner's mum just to close it.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
But that's just another level of stress.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, but you know what, like it's done and it's
gone and we started rebuilding financially.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
How bloody is stressful. I'm so sorry you've gone through that.
I wish we could like name and shame and be like,
don't talk to this agent. We don't talk to this
building and past inspector, Like, ill, that's so gross. I'm
really sorry that you've been through that. Tell me a
little bit more about your family though you said we
had our first daughter, Yes, does that mean that there
(10:55):
are more children?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
We have two girls, one is nine and one is
it Oh gorge a and they are a delight. They're
really good girls.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I love that. And then tell me more about this,
Like you met your husband he joined the navy. I
feel like that means that he might have spent a
lot of time away, Like how did that work in
your marriage, especially when you like first got married, Like,
I don't know, I wouldn't love having my husband away
all the time.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
No, I'm needy, you say, really needy too, and I'm
actually looking back on the periods of when he was away.
Was quite dark period, but.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Good to talk about because I'm sure that you're not
the only one that experienced so no.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And I meet so many people you know, with partners
and defense or have their dads been in defense, and
they've got stories growing up of you know, feeling really lonely.
It is really hard because you move away from your family.
So we're originally from Queensland. When he joined the navy,
we obviously moved down to Melbourne, down to Cerberus and
(11:54):
lived down there, which was fun. But then we moved
to Sydney and he went away a lot and deployments
could be anywhere from twelve weeks and the longest one
he did was nine months, and that was when I
was pregnant with my first daughter. So I'm living in Sydney,
I'm pregnant, I'm working full time shiftwork as a.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Nurse, and you're going home and there's nobody to rub
your feet or tell you it's okay, or Fiji strawberry
ice cream or do any of those things that you
deserve when you are pregnant.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Driving myself to the hospital with a breech baby where
I can't breathe, like, do you know? It was a lot.
He came back a week before I had her.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Oh I'm glad. I was about to say, did you
drive yourself to the hospital because you gave birth without him? No?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
No, no, I'm very lucky. But I'm a midwife as well.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
And oh you were prepared. You didn't even need him.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
To need him. But there was a few times where
I was in births with women whose husbands were in
defense and they were just there with their neighbor or
a birth partner.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
But you know what, you're the midwife they needed at
that moment, because you would have been like, I get
a girl, that's my stitch too, let's do this. Yeah,
there would have been some good vibes in those rooms.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah. No, we actually we had fun and we had
to laugh like it is hard. So we had our
first daughter. And then three months later he had to
go on a deployment again, and at this time, so
we packed up. I packed up my life in Sydney,
left all my girlfriends, my beautiful house on the Northern Beaches,
and went back and lived with mum and dad in Brisil,
because like, what was I doing was I'm Mattley sitting
(13:25):
in a house by myself with a newborn, and I
was like, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
You know what, that's the best option and if that's
an opportunity for you, Like, do you know what, your
parents probably loved it.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, so mom and dad loved it because you know,
my daughter was the first grandchild, and obviously my brothers
and sisters were all up there. So no, it was
it was nice. But in a way it was good
because that's when the whole debacle happened, you know, Like
I was up in Brisy, we went over to Hawaii
to visit him on a deployment and that's where it
all fell apart.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So oh how stressful, very stressful.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
But since then we've moved to around a bit. We
moved them back up to Brisbane where we had our
second daughter, which was really lovely, and then we got
posted back to Victoria at the beginning of COVID, which
was like the perfect timing. Moved down there for lockdown,
and then we moved to our current location in Canberra
(14:22):
the week that lockdown ended.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Oh perfect, So you really got to experience Melbourne for
its best.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, it was an interesting time, interesting time. And so
now we're up here and my husband's working here in Canberra.
He works full time. I work casually, but I still
I do about three days a week. And yeah, we're
just living our best lives.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
So tell me a bit more about your career, because
when you are married to somebody in defense or married
to someone who has a similar job, there's a lot
of compromise that you would have had to make in
your career and in your life and in the jobs
that you take or can't take to make sure that
his dreams are reality. Right, So you know, I don't
(15:03):
think anyone who's still married to their partner and still
love their partner is like holding any animosity, but it's
still a good conversation to be had. So, how has
this impacted your career and what that looks like for
your income generation.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It actually hasn't, and I think I'm one of the
lucky ones. Like I know, it's a bit like cliche
a nurse and a sailor, but it actually works really well.
Because so I obviously, like before I had the girls,
I was working full time. I did me, he did him,
and that just worked with the girls and having kids
and moving and not having any support network every time
(15:40):
you move, because you're starting from zero with friendships. I'm lucky.
I'm in a job that's really social and you know,
us nurses kind of we will gather together and we
become our own little families, which is lovely, which I've
got here in Canberra. But since I had my first daughter,
I've stayed casual, and I know that has its disadvantages
(16:01):
in regards to obviously like long service and sick leave.
But in the same breath, I do get a twenty
five percent.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Penalty yah, which is you're casual.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So in a way it kind of works out. And
it just means that I work when I want to work,
and I don't work when I want to work, and
I can have the school holidays off, I can have Christmas.
I'm not fighting rosters. I'm not fighting people, you know,
to get time off. And also I think because I
do shift work, those extra penalties stack them, stacks me up.
(16:33):
So I was really quite surprised when I looked at like,
I don't kind of look at how much I earn
over the year. But when I did my tax this year,
my tax consult was like, oh, you've got ninety four
thousand this year, and I was like, what, no way,
excuse me.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
So you're a ninety four thousand dollars earning casual midwife.
Is that correct? Like when you say that you're nurse,
like you're trained as a midwife or you like, what
type of nursing we doing?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Oh, I'm currently an intensive care nurse, so I work
in oh okayo care. So that's what I've done my
whole career. I just got a little bit bored the
year before I had my daughter, so I just decided, Oh,
I'm just going to go off and become a midwife.
It was really hard. It's really like all the nurses
out there that want to become a midwife like, go
for it. But that graduate diploma is hot.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, you're not only at UNI, but you're working and
there's so much involved and you have to be you
have to follow twenty women and be at five of
their appointments and then at their birth, and then after
birth you have to go to appointments. And that's for
twenty women, not just one. So it's like you're working
full time times too.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah that's crazy, and like, don't get me wrong, I'm grateful.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But it's rewarding. But I find my passion is intensive care,
but the hospital that I work at I get to
do both. So I work a lot in intensive care,
but then I kind of can run downstairs and go
to maternity and play down there when they're short, so
I kind of get the best of both worlds.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I kind of would love that. Like I hated giving birth,
ended up in an emergency Caesar, so I just wasn't
actually that good at it. Yeah that's not good. I
mean I also had a posteria labor, which I didn't
know about until like when they were doing a C section,
They're like, no, wonder this hurt you for twenty four
hours while you were refusing all pain relief, Like I
(18:24):
was cooked? Why did you do that? And be like
I didn't know. So he didn't want to come out.
He came out the sunroof, which is absolutely fine, like
and he's maintained that level of bougie since then. But
tell me, I feel like at all intensive care would
be a lot, like mentally physically, Like that just sounds
very demanding.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
A yeah it is. I've done it now for what
fifteen years? It is a lot, because you kind of
you see people at the most vulnerable. You see people
coming to the reality that you know they're coming to
the end of their life. You see massive traumas and
you know, dealing with things like suicide and or just
(19:04):
you know, we've had a lot of young mums recently
that have needed intubation because of flu and COVID and
having you know, little kids like five and eight year
olds in the room balling like it's really really hard.
But again, it's the adrenaline I love. I love the
excitement of a sick patient. I know that sounds odd, no.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
No, no, but like I want you to say that,
Like if I'm in intensive care, I want the nurse
to be like passionate about the stuff she's doing, not
like nonchalant, doesn't want to be here, can't wait for
a break, Like that's not what I want to hear
in ICU.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
No, we get the thrill and the excitement of you know,
hearing that piece. You know, really sick people are coming.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
In, getting stuff done and then debriefing after.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, but saying that, there's a lot of burnout and
I feel like I'm kind of at getting to that point.
So I've actually starting a new role in three weeks
working from home gig, which is amazing because it means
that I can work more hours and longer hours, and
I'll still work in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
I was about to say, and you're still casual, so
you could probably pick up some stuff there and EBB
and flow.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, so I'm going to do the working from home
stuff in the week and then they're on Sunday, go
up and pick up my double time rates.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
And I was about to say, Sunday rays, you can't
give that up.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
That's just the one shift you cannot give up. So yeah,
I'm just kind of diverting a little bit, giving my
physical and mental health a bit of a break.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
No, I think that that's really smart, because that's why
I was like, oh, ad, all intensive care sounds real
heavy like, and don't get me wrong, I think it
takes a very special person. And I'm getting that energy
from you that if I was sick, I want you
to look after me, like I just know I'd be
in good hands. But I just know that that comes
at your own emotional costs and your own burnout, and
like it's really shitty, but like that's the industry because
(20:52):
you know what if nurses, and I don't want nurses
to blourn out like that's awful. But also they're the
types of people that you want in the industry because
they're giving it. Literally they're all and you're kind of like, well,
that's why you guys should get paid more. Like ninety
four thousand dollars a year is great, but it's just
simply not enough from my perspective. So tell me a
little bit more about your next new role that you
(21:13):
start in three weeks work from home. What type of
salary changes a week?
Speaker 2 (21:16):
And I see, so it's only a few extra dollars
an hour, but it just means that I can be
available to do more days. So currently in the hospital,
I do two ten hour night shifts a week.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Oh wow, okay, yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And then I do an eight hour afternoon shift on
a Sunday, and I normally do an overtime, which terrible,
but it's like an eighteen hour solid shift.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Oh my gosh, I would simply pass away. Yeah, and
that's wh I'm feeling a bit burnt out.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, I get that the money's so good that it's
really hard to like say no when they say not
to you. Yeah, So I can only kind of night shifts.
I can only really mentally do two a week, and
then you know, you don't really sleep very well, and
then the day after you're absolutely wrecked, and so you're
kind of losing three four days just for two shifts.
(22:09):
So I thought doing this working from home, so it's
more like a telehealth kind of thing, which I did previously.
So when I was down in Victoria during COVID, I
had a telehealth contract where I could work from home.
And you know, like when I know other people around
the country didn't do this, but in Victoria, if you
test a positive for COVID, you went onto a register
and then a nurse would call you and go through
(22:30):
your symptoms and triase you to say, look, you're safe
to stay at home, or you need to call an
ambulance or you know, or go to your GP. This
is kind of similar, but it's more like a health
hotline where the public have symptoms and they call in
and then we can triage them. And it's to kind
of decrease the foot traffic through emergency departments. And we
(22:52):
still see it. People rock up with a cut on
their finger or still shoulder.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
But then why why like to and this is I
guess why there's this whole side conversation about the urgent
care facilities that are being implemented. I think is maybe
Victoria specific, but across Australia maybe we're getting urgent care
facilities to take the load off the emergency departments. And
they often recommend you can go here and you know what,
if stuff's really bad, we'll take you to the hospital,
(23:20):
which I think is so so smart. Yeah, one hundred percent,
it's wild. And then you've got the little old ladies
who are like, no, it's fine, I feel fine, but
I'm basically having all the symptoms of a stroke. Don't
worry about me, ducky, And you're like, no.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yep, And you know that's so true. Like when I
was doing the COVID hotline, I meant speak to a
man and I wrung him and I said, oh, you know,
I was doing his health check and he says, oh yeah,
I'm at my parents' house and they both have COVID
and I'm peering through the window and I can see
them both like lying on the floor. Oh no. We said, oh, well,
(23:57):
what's what you know, what's their health background? Like, can
you tell me the history and he said, oh, they're
both diabetic. And I said, well, you need to get
off the phone. You need to call an ambulance. I'm
going to call back in half an hour and then
we can go. But you know, like sometimes people are
so nervous to call triple zero to ask for help,
and you get into situations like this where, yeah, you
(24:18):
do get people that will just sit at home and
deteriorate and it would be like the last second before
they call an ambulance. And then you have the other
side where people just I don't know if they just
want some human interaction or it.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Hurts when I press my finger everywhere. That's crazy. That's
because your finger has a cut on it.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, we see it all the time.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
So I don't like that for you, that would be very,
very frustrating. Let's give it a little bit. I want
to talk about your money goals. So obviously you guys
are starting from zero again as of fourteen months ago.
But sorry, if saved one hundred grant so that's pretty impressive. Yeah,
I don't actually know how we did that, but okay,
you did though, Yeah you did though that it's very
(25:00):
very impressive. So talk me through like, what are your
big money goals, because clearly you're working towards them.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So we currently live in Defence Housing and we want
to move back to Queensland to be closer to our family.
My husband is still contracted to Defense for another two
and a bit years, so like, I just want that
forever home. I've always had investment properties, and I've always
lived in Defence Housing where I can't paint the walls,
like and I can't change the carpet and I can't
(25:27):
rent over kitchen, and I just want something that's my
own and I don't care how crappy and run down
it is. I just want a house with some land.
I want chickens, you know.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
I just want the chickens.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, we need the chickens I want. I just I
want space for my girls to run around. So really
that is our big money goal. Is the house. I
really want the house.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I love that, but like, sorry, you're working towards that
very nicely. To have saved one hundred thousand dollars in
fourteen months is actually unheard of. So I don't I
don't know how to tell you this, but I don't
think the house is going to be crappy, like I
know that that's where your bare minimum is starting, but like,
I think we are going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Look, I just obviously like housing prices have just swored
in Queensland since COVID, and so like what we thought
we could aim for seems like it's just in our reach.
I actually spoke with a broker last week. I had
to pull my head out of the sand because I'm
really scared about entering the property market again because I've
(26:31):
been burnt and I have a really big scar and
I'm not fully over it. I wanted to ask you
about that because I was like, why are you going
back into property after property is the thing that burnt you?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
But obviously I get it.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Just want the old Queenslander with a white picket fence.
I know it sounds really silly, but like, I have
everything else. I have the most amazing husband who's my
best friend. We've been together for over twenty years. I
have my two beautiful girls. I have amazic dog. We
have great careers. You know, we have our health. I
just don't have the house. And it's the last piece
of the puzzle. I want the house.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
I get it, I get it. I get it, And
that's where I'm so glad you've engaged with the broker
to start the conversations early, because you can dot all
the i's and cross all the t's and make sure
that everything is where it needs to be before you
even find a house, before you even go down that route.
And like, I feel like when you've been burnt before
you know what you're looking for as well, the red
flags are literally crimson and in the front of your
(27:26):
face and you just take absolutely no crap.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well, I have to say, this is what I truly regret,
and if when people listen to this, I hope that
this is maybe the one thing they take out of it.
Is when I was purchasing that second property, the real
estate guy called me, pushing me to sign the papers
for settlement, and I had the biggest feeling in my
gut that it was wrong. I remember exactly where I
(27:49):
was standing, I remember where I took the phone call.
And sorry, I get a bit emotional because I'm so
angry at myself for not listening to my gut. And
it's the biggest lifeline and I've learned and the most
important one, I think is just to like, don't go
with your head, listen to your gut. It is so
important that gut instinct is built into all of us.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And just something feels off, trust yourself that it feels off.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, one hundred percent. So recently I was dealing with
two brokers and one guy gave me just the ick
and I just said to my husband, I'm not dealing
with him. I flicked him off, engaged with another guy
who was absolutely amazing and was so supportive and listened
to my story and was like, no, I'm here for you.
I'm going to work with you. And he wrung me
(28:35):
yesterday to say we've got pre approval to move ahead.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Ah, that's so exciting. So I love that for you.
And I just know that, Oh it's sunshine and roses
from here on in. Like it's going to be hard,
it's going to be hard, but it's coming.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It's coming. You know. There was so many years that
I was in a dark cave, and now I can
see I'm out, I'm moving forward. Oh. I love that.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Let's go to a really quick break because on the
flip side, I have a lot more questions. I want
to talk about investments, I want to talk about potential
debt and also best in worse money habits, because like,
I'm not gonna lie. We're halfway through this episode and
I already don't believe that you're just to see so
guys don't go anywhere. All right, money DiResta, We are back,
(29:18):
and I am very excited to talk about this. I
want to dive back into the investment side of things
because you and your husband you bought your first investment
property when your daughter was born. You told us, you
know a lot at the start about your money story,
how you got your Rich Dad Poor Dad book, like
your parents kind of drove that. Has property been the
only investment that you've really cared about or invested in?
(29:39):
Like what does that side of your life look like?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
To be honest, I never really understood shares or you know,
like in what an investment portfolio was kind of until
I stumbled upon your podcast a few years ago.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
I'm glad we.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Met YEP during COVID.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
During COVID we've been friends for ages.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Y have fun in Melbourne. So like, obviously my dad
had given me the Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and I
read it and I understood that was all property driven,
like by a property and news echuding blah blah blah.
And then he gave me the Barefoot Investor Book and
I read that and I did all the things. I
opened up fifty nine G accounts but had no clue
what to do with them. And they still sit there,
(30:20):
and I again, I don't know what to do with them.
They're just there.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
And it doesn't work for everybody. I'm not gonna lie now.
I know that you earn what you earn, and I'm
assuming your husband probably earned slightly more than you because
I didn't ask. That method actually probably doesn't work for
your lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I don't know what to do with it. And this
is why I say I'm a seved because my husband's
had a good income from the very beginning. I've never
really budgeted.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Can I be pervy? What kind of income are we talking?
He's currently on one point thirty Yeah, good, great. I
kind of just maybe once a year, this is really bad.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
I probably should do this more often. Once a year,
I kind of like go through my bank account and
look at all our outgoings and just make like an estimate.
And I just kind of chuck, like, oh, five hundred
bucks a fortnight in the Bill's account, and hope for
the best. It's kind of worked, which kind of makes
sense if you've never been taught, Like, and that's really hard,
and like, please don't get me wrong, like Scott Papers
(31:14):
done so many good things for this industry, and like
I swear like I still see people down at the
supermarket or like at the shops with their like spend splurge.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Like written on the cards.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, I still see that.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
It's so cute. Like it is so cute and if
it works for you, like I love that. But there
is something about percentage based budgeting that just doesn't align
with my values. Because you know, if I'm putting like
ten percent into my splurge account, well I'm not gonna lie,
Like I just don't spend that like and I'm not.
I come across as I look sometimes like I'm expensive
(31:49):
to maintain, but I'm really not when it comes down
to it. So I never know what I meant to
be doing with that, and it just isn't going to
work for me. And then also the percentages, especially in
twenty twenty five, actually don't work for us. We are
on average spending fifty percent of our income on our accommodation.
So like the fact that that doesn't account for any flexibility.
(32:11):
You go, well, how do I on my income using
this bucket method? Make it work? And it does work
for some people, but it doesn't work for others, and
that's why I kind of like don't like percentage based budgeting.
I am going to actually set you up, so you
and I we're going to do my budget and cash
Flow masterclass or my now new money masterclass together. I'm
going to send you a log in after this, but
(32:32):
I have done all of the spreadsheets and you don't
have to do any of the work. All I need
you to do is put in your incomes and put
in your expenses and it will spit out This is
how much you spend on a week, or you can
like categorize it however you want. It might be week, month, year, whatever.
This is how much the kids cost. This is how
much your house is. This is how much you have
left over for savings, and it will tell you which
bank accounts it needs to go into on a weekly
(32:54):
or monthly basis, depending on what you want. So I'm
going to set you up with that because if you're saying, oh,
I sometimes do this, yeah, this girl's going to take
it to another level, also low key. I made it
so it's esthetically pleasing, it's going to be pretty, it's
peak well, I love but it's one of those things
where the dual budget won. It'll be your husband's income
and also your income, and it will show you how
(33:15):
that breaks up and what that looks like at a
top level without you having to do any of the
background calculations, without being like, okay, well now I know
of my expenses, because I feel like that has always
been the block with budgeting, right, So like I could
be like money, do I sit down, Let's do you budget?
And you're like, okay, well, I can go through my
bank statements. I can tell you what I earn, I
can tell you what I spend. But then it's the
(33:37):
function of actually facilitating making sure that you have enough
by a specific date for your car registration, to make
sure that you know, if we're working backwards on a
savings goal, and let's say I know you've got one
hundred grand saved, maybe you want one hundred and twenty.
I know, and I can give you a date that
you will have that you don't have to do the maths.
So I think that that I mean, I'm biased. I
(33:57):
made my own system, but it was based on the
fact that none of the other systems were working for me.
And I was a financial advisor and I wanted something
for my clients that made sense. But I took the
stress off them by doing the hard yards, Like that's
what worked.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
I think I've just had and I my head in
the sand, and I just kind of avoid it because
it's I'm not a numbers person, like I'm a practical,
hands on, task orientate a person when it comes to numbers.
Like this morning, I was at my daughter's school or
like you know that was showings around the classroom.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
And oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
She was like, Mum, we have to do this timestable quiz.
And I just looked at my husband and I was like,
I'm out, Like, don't even ask me what five times
five is. I can't do it, Like numbers is not
like don't work for me and percentages and I just
don't understand it. So I kind of just ignore it
and hope.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
And that's why I do all the hard work in
this It's all calculated in the background. You also can't
break it because I locked it so you can try,
but I have locked it down pretty securely. You can't
move anything around, so the calculations are always going to
be correct. Because I'm the worst. I was like backspace
something and forget I backspaced it, or delete something by
so you can't do it. I just won't let it happen. Well, anyway,
(35:06):
I feel like I'm trying to sell you on. Of
course I've already given you so like we'll move on
from this. But I'm excited because I think it'll work.
I think it'll work really well. Money diarist talk to
me about superannuation as a casual employee. What's your super
looking like? Is that a priority? Is it something you
haven't looked at yet? Is defense really good? When it
(35:27):
comes to super?
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Super is something my dad has again drummed into me.
So I remember, like back, you know, I don't know
that two thousands, the government was like matching dollar for
dollar that you put into your super. And so even
though I was like only earning like three hundred dollars
a week, it came out or whatever. He always was like,
you put twenty dollars into your super. And it's kind
(35:50):
of carried on with me through life, and I always
have put like an extra five or seven percent in
so my super at the moment in it one hundred
and ninety.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Oh okay, queen, and you're thirty eight. You were running
rings around the competition. You're like, oh, I'm not doing
that well financially. Sorry, what's sit down. I know it's hard.
You don't feel like you're in control. I can tell
that you don't feel like you're in control, but like,
I think that you've got this handled a little bit
more than you think you do.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Yeah. I feel like because I've got a few little
investments here and there, but it's nothing big. So I've
got one hundred and ninety. My husband's of Lely Defense,
so his is quite good. He's got five hundred and seventy.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Okay, no worries. That's more than what most people retire with.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, So that's why we've kind of stayed in because
obviously the perks of just the super alone keeps us
ticking over.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Did you say before, I'm just doing some background thinking.
Did you say before that you were making voluntary contributions
to superannuation. Yeah, you can probably pull some of that
out if hypothetically you wanted to pull that out for
the first home Super Saver scheme to top up your
house deposit. Hypothetically, if that was interesting, can I to you,
Because but we're not first home buyers, I would have
(37:03):
a look at the rules and regulations around that because
they are a little bit more flexible. You have to
have not purchased a house within a certain period of time.
Talk to you broker, Talk to your broker and see
what that looks like. Because also if you've experienced financial distress,
sometimes they are a little bit flexy on that. And
I'm pretty sure we could write a pretty good user
(37:23):
case for you.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Well that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I mean, if you get told no, I'm glad you asked.
If you get told yes, you owe me a fee.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Definitely I would owe you a fee.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
No, but it would definitely be worth looking into and
just going, well, what does that look like? What's the
flexibility here? Is there any because sometimes it will just
be a hard no because you know, you might have
too much in terms of assets or income or whatever
that looks like.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
But there's always a question, Yeah, okay, we'll do I'll
ask him this week.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
But when it comes to super you guys are looking
pretty good, like having more than what that's like seven
hundred and something like great, fantastic, Like we are on
the route to being comfortable in retirement irrespective of the
investments that ultimately were lemons.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, and that's I guess that kind of was the
only kind of security I had in the back of
my head, was like the money is there, Like, you know,
if we're in a scenario and we have to be
in a defense rental for the rest of our lives,
at least we know that when we get to retirement
that we are going to be okay.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Yeah, So tell me about these little investments that you're like, oh,
they don't really count, but I know they count, So
tell me a little bit about those I have too.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
So I was listening back in Melbourne. I was listening
to your podcast and you were speaking to Grant Hackett
about through Generation.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Life his investment bonds.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yep. So I at that time I opened to children
investment bonds for my daughters. I was putting money into
it every year. Obviously, once we lost the house, I
kind of stopped. I wasn't focusing on it. So each
girl has five grand in their little investment bombs sitting there,
(39:07):
and I do intend to start putting back into it.
I just need to kind of figure out how that looks.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
You can't pour from an empty cup though, and like
it's nice to have things for your kids. Please don't
get me wrong, that's incredible. They're way above and beyond
what other people would be at. But like you need
to set yourselves up financially, Like the best investment you
can make is in yourselves, and then if we've got
some extra fantastic, the kids can have their own investments,
but like you come first, one thousand percent.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah, so I kind of put everything on hold once
that will happen because I really just wanted to focus
on building a deposit and every penny that I could
find going into that.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
That's so good. You've really been around a while because
that episode is so old, but it was really great.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
I really like just kind of pushed me into I
always wanted to do something for them. I had bank
accounts where like I was getting you know, my relatives
would just go, oh, look here's money for their birthday
and buy them they want, well, they have everything. So
I was just chucking it into like a savings account,
was doing nothing, and then that episode came on and
I was like, oh, this one is for me and
so yeah, I ran a lot of the life and
(40:11):
spoke to them and got it all set up and
it was really great.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
And their gorged there.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Obviously not advice because that would be illegal for me
to give and I wouldn't do that. But I can
share my personal experiences and that is what I set
up for my own child, Harvey. So Harvey has a
childbuilder as well, and it just to us makes sense,
like from a tax perspective, from just a structure perspective,
like there are lots of different options. And listen, this
is just like a side note for everybody listening, please
(40:36):
listen to our Investing for Kids episodes because there are
lots of different options. This is just one that might work.
And apparently for money Durist and die it works. Well.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah, so I have those. And then just before we
lost the property, I had put some money into EFT
so like just the global one hundred about two grand
or something, and then I forgot about it and then
remembered at the start of the year I had that
sitting there, and then I think maybe it was in
April this year when Old Donald brought in his tariffs
(41:07):
and dumped the stock market I just said to my husband.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
I think that's a good opportunity.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
It was I just put five grand in there.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Oh my god. I didn't have any free cash at
the time, and I was like, I would love to
have some free cash right now, but all of my
stuff is tied up, and I'm watching this opportunity go past.
So tell me what's that worth?
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Now?
Speaker 3 (41:27):
If you put five grand in nine somethink nine So envious,
that's very nice.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
So I've made two and a half really on it currently.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
So these aren't little investments. That's good, that's so good.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
So they are the two kind of investments I have.
I did have a spaceship account back in the day,
but obviously, like I had to pull the money out
of that. But I just this week downloaded the Chaer's
Ease app to think, maybe I I'm in a position
where I'm like, do I just pull every single penny
to put into this deposit or do I put fifty
(42:03):
bucks a week into a Cheesy's account or into you
know to buy more FT's or you know, share. I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
I wish I could give you an answer to that,
but that would constitute financial advice. I think It's really
around your time frames, right, So when we talk to
people who are like, oh, I don't know how to
split it, it's really about, Okay, well, what would that
extra fifty bucks a week be doing towards your house deposit?
And then once you've got the house, will you have
the free cash flow to then invest a little bit more.
You've got to ask yourself a heap of questions around,
(42:31):
like does that suit your lifestyle? You know, are we
aggressively saving as much as possible towards the house or
maybe are we happy to put that off another few
months because we are also investing at the same time.
I think it's totally up to you.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
I think, and again listening to my gut, and this
is probably why I haven't done it, and I haven't
been putting extra into the Girl's Childbuilders, and is just
because I know that really we should put you and
it's only for a short period of time, putting everything
we have into getting the right to it so that
we can get that house. And then you know, once
(43:03):
we rent it out and you know we're getting that
rental return, we'll definitely have the cash flow to then
to invest. So I know the answer. I think I
just doubt myself, and I think a lot of people do.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Oh, we all do. And that's why you need to
do the Money master class because that's going to show
you exactly what that looks like. And then you can
kind of like key in a few things and be like, oh, oh,
what if I because I also have investment buckets in
there as well, what if I put fifty bucks a
week into this? And it will show you what amount
that would equal and then you can decide. So instead
of just going should I shouldn't, I like, let's just
(43:35):
get the numbers on a paper. Do you want this
or that? And you'll be like, oh, okay, that or this?
And I think that that's really helpful to have something
right in front of you that goes, well, this is
the decision.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Do you like it? No?
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Okay, I'm going to change it.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
No.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
That sounds really good because that's where my head's add
It's just like a big jumble of what ifs, and
you know, money flying around and I need it to
be structured. So I think that would be perfect totally.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
So tell me, are there any other investments floating around? No,
that's more than I thought there would be I'm not
gonna lie.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
No, it's just honestly, just the two the kids and
the eft's at the moment.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, so talk to me about debt. Do you have
any debt? If so, what does that look like?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Okay, So I went back and did another post grad
last year, specifically for intensive care. So I have like
twelve hundred dollars in a hex debt, which I'm big dog,
you know. So when I get my tax back, I
think I'll just dump it on it and just get
(44:37):
rid of it.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
But you should have got a nice little twenty percent
discount on that too, cheers elbow because he has the
twenty percent hex.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
So yeah, I don't know. Yeah, has that been applied yet?
It will have just been applied. I'll have to go
back in and check it. Yeah, maybe I won't pay
it until the twenty percent.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Oh no, no, no, do not pay it until you've
got that discount.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Okay, good to know. Yes, so I have that. We've
owned both our cars. We've never I don't believe in
taking out loans for anything besides property. So we've owned
both of our cars outright, saying that my car I
had a problem like the air bags. So there was
an air bag light and I couldn't fix it, and
the dealership was telling me it was going to cost
(45:16):
me thousands to replace these air bags, and I thought, oh,
I can't deal with it.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
What a coincidence you also have a new car to
sell me. That's crazy that you would push me down
that one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So I took my car back to Queensland to my
husband's dad and I think, can you try and fix it?
And in the meantime, we were kind of stuck because
we only had one car, and so reluctantly we got
anvated lease cars through my husband's work, so fifty percent
of it is pre tax and fifty percent of its
post tax and we have that four three years, so
(45:45):
we've got it for another eighteen months. But then my
wonderful father in law fixed the car within a few days.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
He did because he doesn't work for their car dealership.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yep. So we potentially have two of our own cars
and anovated lease.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
But that doesn't mean you can't dispose of one of
those cars and get some cash. And like, I think,
the other question I have around that novated least is
what's happening at the end Are you giving the car back?
Are you buying the car out? What would that look like?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
I don't particularly want the car, and I don't think
the balloon payment at the end is worse. Yep, you
know the car, so probably yeah, we'd probably just send
them back and say bye.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Look, the only good thing about that car is it's
got heated seats and in camera it is freezing. So
that's the cherry on top for that car. And my
girls love the sunroof.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Yeah, that door, that makes it fancy. When I was little,
anybody who had a sunroof, Yes, they think that we
are balling, so but yeah you are. You are you
have a sunroof? Like you got good super like girl,
I think you are doing okay, like ask your kids.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Yeah. So besides that, we do have a credit card.
It's only got a six thousand dollar limit and we
hardly use it, so it's at zero. I just it's
there for an emergency, but we don't have any I
love this for you, but I don't believe in it,
Like I'm really like, I'm one of those people like
if someone buys me something, I'll like send them money
(47:08):
straight away.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Like I don't like owing anybody anything. I don't know
what it is, but it just I have an aversion
to it as well. It literally makes me feel sick.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
It like it gives me the eck when people try
and pay for me for things, and I just know
I've got it. My dad always said to me, like,
you know, like it's lovely to be in a relationship
and but you always have to be financially independent for yourself.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Icon. Dad is an icon.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
He is the best. He's really feminist all my money
habits and pushed me into property and pushed me into
super and pushed me into investing and get it. So yeah,
no debt, thankfully.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I adore this. So tell me, what do you think
your best money habit is.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
I don't know. I'm not materialistic, so I don't really.
The older I get, the less I want, Like I
don't want stuff like in my twenties, like I wanted
the best makeup and a nice car and all this,
and now I just want to build wealth, So I
guess I don't know. I love doing a bit of
overtime and getting extra money to put in my savings.
(48:12):
That's what makes me happy.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
Your work ethic, Like, let's talk about the fact that
you know what you and your husband have in super
so you're across all of that. All your numbers have
been real clean, like you're not like, oh, I think
I have about no no, no, Like she knows what's
going on. Like I know that you said you're not
on top of budgeting, which I think might be your worst.
I don't know what you're going to say, but we'll
get there. But like you're also investing, like girl, there
(48:34):
are a lot of good money habits that you've set up.
And talk to me slightly off topic, but what do
you teach your kids about money? Because I have a
sneaky suspicion you might be a cookie cutter version of
your dad.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah. I well, my older daughter who kind of understands
because she's she's always saying when are we going to
buy her forever home? Like when do we get a
forever home? My room's going to look like the sentence,
you know, because she's used to moving all the time.
So they're good little savers. I've told them, you know,
like you know, like they've got their money boxes in
their room, and you know, they know that they've got
(49:08):
like a little bank account where I put money and
and I just, you know, try and say to them,
you know, you need to save for the bigger picture,
Like everyone wants an instant gratification. And I think it's
so easy because I'm My younger daughter was like, oh Mom,
I really want this. Can't you just get it on Amazon?
It will be here tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I'm just like, it's a good point, babe. It's a
very good point. I could, but I'm not going to.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
One hundred percent. And I always try and deal, like
give them cash so they you know, like they know
that you just it's not like a card that just
with inevitable money, you know, like never ending money. I
don't know, just being honest and present with them really.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
And I love this. It's something that I've been thinking
about a lot now that I have a child. I'm
just like, how am I going to do this? Like
what does this look like? And in twenty twenty five
when money is all digital, Like how do you teach
them the value of money at the same time as
trying to also teach them to keep up Like, yes,
(50:06):
she's right, we do have Amazon, but that's instant versus
delayed gratification. And there's a bigger conversation around that and
like how much money do you have? And yeah, it's
it's an interesting and fickle conversation to have because like
there's no one size fits all approach.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
I find it hard as well, because like obviously, like
I grew up in a family four you know, my
mom had like just a part time job, and my
dad worked full time and did overtime on a Saturday.
You know, we really didn't have much. You know, we
went out and played in the street. We didn't have computers,
we didn't like, we didn't have anything fancy. We didn't
go on trips to the snow, you know. So and
(50:43):
I kind of feel like I'm in a way making
up for that. So my girls say, oh, Mom, can
I have that? Like, of course you can. Like I
want to give them everything, and sometimes I think I'm
teaching them nothing. Like my daughter the other day went, Mom,
I'd really love a tamagotchi, and I was like, yeah,
let's go to Kma. That's me and pot her tamagotchi
(51:04):
for fifty dollars. And now she's obsessed and wants a
two hundred dollars tamagotchi. And I'm really reeling it back
and I'm like, no, let's count our pennies. We're gonna save.
She wants to now do jobs around the house to
kind of like earn a bit of extra cash.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
And it's hard though, because like that's not so. I
was like, oh, I'm going to be fine, like I'm
always going to say no, like I'm pretty good at
this and my kid's only eighteen months old. But when
he looks at me and he goes one more, I go,
oh my god, yeah, you can't have fifty or you're like,
who was going to tell me that I would become
such a push.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
I know because I was very much like you know,
I was brought up to just like suck it up,
drink some man, get with it. Life is tough, push
you way through, and it's worked for me, and like
I've been very successful in life besides that lemon. But
I know my kids come to me and I my
mom said no, no, no, no, no all my life.
(51:59):
So I feel like I'm rebelling and I just go yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes yeah yep.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
That's literally me.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
So yeah, it is a tough one. But I'm learning
slowly to try and teach them that, like you just
can't want something and it just lands on your lap.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Would you say that's your worst money habit could be.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yeah. The other day they swindled me at the corner shop.
I've taken my older one to the physio because she's
done her ankle at netball. And she said, oh, well,
if we're really good, can we go into the IgA
and get a lolly? And I said, yeah, of course
she can. And she swindled me into a twenty dollar
plushy toy. And I was like, how did it go
(52:37):
from you can have something for under two dollars.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
And I spend twenty bucks? Yeah, this woman, she smart.
She is to hit her up, give her my details
because I'd like to know how to do that with
lots of people I don't know.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
She's got the art of persuasion, and I just can't
say no to them.
Speaker 3 (52:52):
I like, how we all and this seems to be
a common theme in my friend group, we all say
that we're swindled by our kids.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
I walked out and I was it's like I tapped
my card and I was like, twenty dollars. What was
twenty dollars? And then I looked at it she got
chacky little monkey, but she got it and she won
and it worked and she I love it. Money Diarist,
Now that we've talked, I think we need to reflect
a little bit on this sea because like you said,
look I'm a sea, and I was like, okay at
(53:19):
the start, like I can see how that might happen,
a little bit skeptical because you have saved one hundred grand.
I was, I can't be that bad at money, right,
and then like take yourself out of this story, right.
So gorgeous couple met. He was in the navy, she's
a nurse. They've got two beautiful kids. It fell apart.
The investment property didn't work out. It was a lemon.
But they've been rebuilding. They have like seven hundred grand
(53:40):
to their name in superanuation. Like they've saved one hundred
grand over the last fourteen months. They're not really sure
how they did it, but they have done it. They're
starting to look at their forever home, like they're able
to buy their kids twenty dollars off plushies when it
makes sense to do so, so, like they're giving their
kids the life that you know they want to give
their kids. The kids actually have childbuilders. They've got their
(54:01):
own investment bonds, and you contribute to them when you can,
as you should. This couple, she's dabbling in investments. She's
got like some ETFs. You know, she's got another five
grand that she decided to drop when Trump was jumping
up and down about the tariffs. Like the wife get this,
She went back and did this postgraduate intensive care unit
so that she could get paid more. And she's only
(54:23):
got twelve hundred bucks left on her hex. Like, how
good is that? She's probably gonna be able to pay
it off with her tax money if she wants to
downloaded chairs is doesn't know if she's going to invest
more or like buy her dream house sooner. But what
a conundrum to be in. How good love this money
decision that they're making. But then when I spoke to her,
she's like, oh, yeah, also, by the way, we own
(54:43):
our cars out right, we do have an ovated lease.
But it's making sense still able to save one hundred grand.
But then she goes, yeah, I think I'm only a
c at money. Does that make sense to you if
you put it like that?
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Maybe not?
Speaker 3 (54:56):
Yes, not making sense to me either. And I know,
you know what I'm gonna blame this. You said you
weren't a maths person. I get it, you just miscalculated.
You're like a yes, you could get up and at
it with budgeting a little bit more Like you said
that you weren't as on top of that, and I
feel like that's probably what's leading you to feel a
little bit out of control. But like, sorry, when I
asked about debt, you have a credit card you don't
(55:16):
even use. It's just there for emergencies. But you've also
got a heap of cash, so you probably don't even
need it. Like there's just a lot going on here
that makes sense. And like, yes, you had an investment
property that was a lemon, but you're also only thirty eight. Yeah,
like we're doing well.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
Thank you. Yeah. I guess, look, I guess if you
put it all together, maybe it presents a bit better
than it does in my head. I think a lot
of the investment stuff, I do it, but I don't
fully understand it. And I think maybe that's okay.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
You're on the journey.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
That's why I feel like maybe I rate myself as
a C because I feel like I just kind of
jump on things and kind of start it and then hope.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
For the best. Strategy has been working so far. I mean, yes,
the property got screwed over, but it wasn't because you
didn't do due diligence. It was because other people screwed you.
Like when you start to dig into it, you're like
I did my building and past inspection, and the first
thing I thought was like, oh my god, like he
deserves to be sued, but he was in cohots. They
all were like that was structured to take advantage of you.
(56:20):
It was never structured for you to be successful. And
I'm really sorry you were never going to be successful
with that, no matter how hard you tried. And I
think the best thing we learned was you just need
to listen to your gut a little bit more expensive lesson.
I wish you didn't have to learn it that way,
but I mean, we we've come this farst so let's
just commit to it. Yes, Money Diarist, this has been
(56:40):
an absolute pleasure. I have loved this Money Diary. From
talking about you being a midwife, to losing your house
to talking about ETFs and investment bonds. There's just been
a lot going on in this conversation. And I know
the community is going to have loved this episode as
much as I have, so thank you so much for
spending so much time with me. It has been a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (56:59):
Thanks for having me. And yeah, it's been really enjoyable
and it's actually got me excited about my financial future.
Speaker 3 (57:05):
Now.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
I feel like good things are coming my way.
Speaker 3 (57:08):
They are thousand percent are Oh my gosh, I have
loved this.
Speaker 2 (57:12):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (57:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (57:37):
Advice tailored towards your needs.
Speaker 4 (57:39):
Victoria Divine and She's on the Money are authorized representatives
of Money showper pty LTD ABN three two one IS
six four nine two seven seven zero eight AFSL four
five one two eight nine
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