How Property Flipping Helped Us Build the Life We Actually Wanted

Hello, my name's Santasha Nabananga Bamblet. I'm a proud or

Let's get into it. She's on the Money.

She's on the Money.

Hello, and welcome to She's on the Money the podcasts. It lets you be pervy about other people's money habits for educational purposes of course. Welcome back to another one of our money diaries where I get the absolute pleasure of chatting to one of our incredible She's on the Money community members all about their journey. Let's jump straight into it, because this week I got a message and it went exactly like this, Dear She's on the Money. My husband and I started out in retail flipping homes

Thank you.

I am very excited. But before we get there, I have to ask the same question I ask everybody. If I asked you to give your money habits a grade from A through to F, what would you grave them?

I would grade my money habits a C oh a C.

All right, I need to know so much more about that. Can you tell me a little bit more about your money story?

Absolutely so.

My money story, I guess, starts from when I was a young age. As most people do, I was always a very creative person, and I grew up in a household where my family worked very hard.

For the money and I knew that they did that.

We grew up in regional New South Wales, and I think that my family did a really amazing job at shielding me of the.

Impacts of how hard it was for them to go out and get that money. So that allowed me to grow up with I.

Think that sort of mindset of the money comes but also allow me the space to be creative, which is.

Where my talents were.

So I think that although I'd like maybe not to be so shielded at times, and probably why I give myself such a lower score, I'm very grateful for the journey that that has led me on because it, I guess, goes to show that creative fields often get a bad rap for not being well paid, and I think that it is easier to fall into that because of how hard you have to work at it. But yeah, I think that really it shows that where your passions lie.

Totally tell me a little bit more about life. So you've mentioned in your letter in that your husband and I started in retail. How did you guys meet and were you always on the same money page.

We have always been.

On the same money page in terms of believing that money comes and money goes, and we very much work off the mindset that the money is out there, we just need to go. I'll make it ours in whatever we need to do. So I think yes. In terms of how we got into property, not so much. He was very anti debt, anti loan, didn't want to get involved in any of that, kind of like big debt.

He was had very.

Strong views on that. And I come from the mindset of using other people's money or trying to use other people's money.

To make something of that.

And so I sort of, you know, got in there and slowly but surely chipped away at his beliefs and convinced him to get into property. So we did meet through work in retail and have built what we have today because of the foundations of what we've worked on with our money, and also the skills that we've gained with working through other organizations and that as well.

Love.

So tell me about your first property purchase, Like, how did you say for the deposit? How much did it cost?

All of those So the very first deposit that we saved, we really scratched around so I convinced him to buy a renovation project because that's what I wanted to sort of start with, and so we sold everything we had. We sold one of our cars. We had a really nice big boat that we had imported from the States that were his pride and joy. We also sold that and we just went without for as long as we

So we were able to.

Borrow off that and we bore brought a renovation project to completely strip and do up as our first renovation. We gave ourselves twelve months to do it, and we borrowed my parents' caravan for three of those months and lived in the backyard slowly chipping away it, renovating it to do it up so fully, gutted it, styled it, put it on the market twelve months, pretty much on the dot later, and made a little profit from it, and did it all again.

I love that. So what did you purchase for? And then what did you ultimately sell for?

So the initial purchase price was I think four hundred and thirty thousand for that one, and we sold for six hundred and fifty.

Oh my god. And what do you reckon? You invested over that period of time to get such a good return all up?

It was one hundred and thirty investment.

Oh how good is that?

Yeah? So for our first moie, we were pretty stoked with that.

I find that most people when they do their first rend of if they're like, look, I'm going to start flipping homes, they like completely underestimate how much this is going to cost in time and energy, in effort, in like literally everything, and they blow their budget. And often you see and you'd probably see this as well, people just breaking even and they're like, oh, I'm glad I got out of that. If I do that again, here

So we then use the equity and reborrowed to another one before we'd even sold that one actually, oh my goodness, which was a smaller sort of townhouse project. And we have always just been very open and creative two deals and because there's always a way around. There's always someone that you can find that needs something from a deal,

I love that. So talk to me about you've gone from that first project which you sold for six hundred and fifty five thousand, how many properties have you done now?

I think in total it's we must be on.

Five on five. Yeah, oh my gosh.

We have put a pause on it for the moment and had actually since COVID we'd probably get back into it this year. We'll hope to get back into it this year. But we sold our last one the first weekend of the COVID shutdown.

Oh my goodness, that is good timing to get out because then it like completely dropped and I mean it has recovered since, but like you were probably breathing a sigh of relief that you didn't have to go through home inspections while in lockdown, right.

Yeah, well it was very interesting. I mean, in hindsight, you know, if we had kept it, it would have been a really good same position. But it worked for us, and we were able to sort of pull all of our money out of the property and invest that into the business.

That we have now.

I love that, So talk to me more about the business that you have now, because it's come from being property flippers, hasn't it.

Yeah, that's right.

So we were involved in aging our properties for sale, so we really sort of impact in how that made to the presentation and to the engagement and that of people buying. So it really did impact our prices in most of our deals, and so being able to help other people that are on that same trajectory in terms of their renovations or their builds is really nice. But

I love that so much. So getting back into the nitty gritty questions, what is your official job title now and how much money do you earn? So I'm self employed obviously as a company creative director, and my base salary I pay myself is one hundred and fifty K plus bonus, and then also have a fifty percent profit share on the profits of the business as well. Oh how good. So what would your tax return come out to on average each year tax route?

I think the last one was around one hundred and fifty thousand.

Yeah, so when you talk about bonus and stuff, that's not very regular because if your base is one p fifty and then bonus plus profit shared, does that mean like it's not there yet or like I'm just trying to engauge, like how much you get to take home?

Yes, absolutely, so it's sort of anything from three to five hundred, three hundred and five hundred thousand.

We do invest a lot back.

Into the business, yeah, fair as most small businesses do. Right, Like I feel like everyone's like, oh my god, is that all profit? And then it's like no, no, that all has to go back into inventory and stock and staff and logistics and all of the boring stuff.

Yes.

Yeah, and we have in the last five years, we have very strategically we invested much of it back, so we sort of say feed the beast.

Yeah, one hundred percent.

So between furniture and team member investment has been a big one for us this year.

Yeah, totally. And is your husband employed by that business as well or is oh cool? And are you both earning about the same Yes, awesome, how good? All right, tell me a little bit more. You've obviously got some good income in addition to building a really solid business. What are your big money goals at the moment? Is to get into another property to flip or are there other things going on?

Yeah? Absolutely, So we have been working very hard.

Also, everything that we do, all the way that we manage our money is very sort of structured, and we have been working on the last few years to strategically create investment money. So we're looking at a commercial investment to support our business.

In warehousing, that's one of our biggest costs.

Yeah, that would be one of the hardest things, right because like, if you're doing property styling, I'm assuming you have a lot of big, large, bulky items to store.

Absolutely, how are.

You managing that at the moment?

Well, the good thing is that it's always in and out, So if we have a full warehouse, then we're not necessarily doing that.

Great, Oh thank you God, Like I can't imagine. You're like, yeah, so I just have to store like seven couches, Like, oh.

Yeah, we know.

We're talking hundreds, oh my goodness, hundreds of it. So if they're obviously all out, but like what if not even half of them are back, where are we keeping like fifty couches?

So we have around twenty two hundred squamen is warehousing and that means that at Christmas time, especially when the market sort of slows right down and a lot of things come back, we are very full.

Yeah wow, oh my goodness. And obviously purchasing or like going down the commercial route would make a lot of sense in that aspect because you're probably paying a lot of rench to somebody else at this point, that's right.

Yeah, So we're currently exploring that option as well as some other sort of share avenues as well, just to start to get that money working a little bit harder from our savings.

So so good, All right, let's go to a really quick break and on the flip side, I want to talk a little bit more about investments and then debt and your best and worst money habits, So guys don't go anywhere, all right, money diarist, We are back, and you mentioned before that you are trying to free up some cash to make some more investments, and I want to know more about that what investment strategy are you planning on implementing over the next few.

Years, So particularly real estate. That's obviously really.

I did not see this coming from you. That is actually so crazy.

Yeah, so commercial real estate is one of our big strategies that we want to get into and also some back into what we're passionate about and where it all started in that residential sector as well. I really like the concept of having residential properties to rent that provide that.

Sort of cash balance and flow there.

So love And are you like, do you have any other investments in any other areas currently?

No?

Cool? Very cool? Do you pay yourself super as a small business?

Absolutely?

So you do have other investments? Oh well sorry, yes, So talk to me about how you're handling your SUPER, because I feel like small business owners always overlook paying themselves SUPER and then it's ten years down the road and they're like, I wish I started this earlier when you were setting up your business. And obviously you guys are able to take out some like nice profits to have I would say, a relatively comfortable lifestyle. When did super enter the chat?

So we'll be.

Honest, we did not pay SUPER in the first year and.

A half neither did I do not worry. You actually have no money, so like.

Cut no money, we were out.

Yeah, like we felt broke because we were in the first year.

Yes, yep, because we were that's one hundred percent right. But by second year we knew how important it was. We knew we needed to get our ball rolling, so we doubled it up when we could, and now we just consistently pay.

Yeah, a little bit more than what's needed.

Oh good, good, All right. To talk to me about debt, you said at the start, like getting your husband to purchase his first like property with you was really hard because he was really averse to debt. Talk to me about the debts that you currently have and how you guys feel about them.

Personal debt is only we only have our mortgage. Business wise, company wise, we have obviously a lot between vehicle lines, mostly vehicles actually, and some furniture loans. But yeah, besides that, our loans are obviously a lot bigger now because you know, when you have multiple trucks and vehicles, those loans are not cheap to come by.

The Yeah, because we're not. Just to be clear for everybody playing along at home, you didn't go out and by yourself a ferrari. We're talking about vehicles to transport furniture for your business, am I right? Yes, that's yeah, because some small business owners have a luxury vehicle inside their business.

Yes.

And I'm very well aware because he did also sell a sports cub when we got into I'm very well aware and reminded very regularly that I owe him both a boat and a sports car.

Okay, yeah, I mean they're both very good goals, so I'm thinking big yeah.

Absolutely so.

No, we haven't treated ourselves to any kind of luxury things at this point. Even our house is although it's renovated, we did have kept one of our renovation projects.

No, I love that. I think it's important.

Yeah, so it is. Apart from those loans. We try not to.

We try, but if we're going to get into debt for something, that it is for something that's going to work towards achieving our long term goals financially. And I think that that his mindset now he can really see the power of that. I know that when we did first start in the business, we were using a lot of the business's cash, so reinvesting a lot of the cash because we couldn't get loans.

Yeah.

Absolutely, You've got to prove yourself in a way. That's the hardest period of business, right where you're like, I have no track record, but I promise I'm good at what I do.

That's right, And it's hard to particularly with the loans that we have. They're not just regular like it feels that you have to really tell people. But you know, we want furniture, but this is what it does, and.

Yeah, it's actually an asset for our business in the same way like a beauty therapist would buy a laser machine. We need to actually look at this and what even like depreciation on these pieces of furniture looks like. So I'm assuming that there are a lot of spreadsheets.

There's a lot of spreadsheets, and we both really enjoy them, and he actually is extremely good at spreadsheets, thank goodness. But yes, there's a lot of debt there, but it works for the business.

Yeah, awesome.

Yeah, so it's been a very interesting journey, I suppose from that mindset totally.

So talk to me about what you think your best money habit is.

My best money habit would be saving I always put money aside of my personal gym habits my personal care, my personal development. So I'm very good at that, and yeah, I think that that's really paid off.

I adore that. So tell me on the flip side, what do you think your worst money habit is the same?

The same.

I think that I'm such a good save us sometimes and I focus so much on saving that I forget.

To maybe reward myself with my own money.

I mean, that's not the worst thing in the entire world. But at the start of this episode you did say, look, bet, I reckon my money story and like my money grade is a C. But then you're like, oh, I've flipped properties, Like we really are responsible with our income, Like you know, we pay ourselves well because the business is doing well, but like I mean, we don't take a lot of profit out and this is how we're reinvesting, and this is how we're thinking of like investing into the business.

We could upgrade that to a B.

Perhaps, Yeah, Like, I mean that's fair, But why are you being so harsh on yourself? Is the real question here?

Sure, there's this always something that you can learn, especially with money, we're really not educated with, like what are the best decisions for multiple scenarios? I don't think so, even as an adult with so many different opinions, you know, it's hard to really be confident that you know what you're doing is the best for what you've got there.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

I think just being like open to having all of those different things sometimes can make me be a little bit harsh on how and grading myself.

I feel like the more successful people get, the harsher they are on themselves because they're like, oh, like I didn't know this, and I thought I was good, and then like two years later you're like, oh, my goodness, like what else don't I know? So I feel like it kind of makes sense if you went back in time, what is one piece of advice that you wish, like younger you had when you were starting your property styling business.

Younger me had probably would have been to be okay with failing forward.

Just lean into that, lean into that little bit more earlier on.

Yeah, fair, fair, be it with money.

And other business decisions, and just kind of laugh in general. Just be really comfortable with that failing forward and don't let it get you down so much when it does happen.

I feel like that's the hardest thing though, Like we all don't want to fail, but if you don't fail, you don't learn, and if you don't learn, you don't grow, and that's like the worst outcome.

Absolutely, it's worse than the failure in itself.

Right exactly. Oh my goodness, I wish we had so much more time because this has been so fun. But thank you so much for doing a money story. It has been an absolute delight getting to know you and your business and what's going on, because I feel like we've all learned a lot from it. So thank you.

You're very welcome. Thank you so much for listening to me.

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