MONEY DIARIES: Big Below Deck Vibes!

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

Let's get into it.

She's on the Money, She's on the Money.

Hello, and welcome to She's on the Money, the podcast for millennials who want financial freedom. Welcome back to another shot back Money Diary Monday, where we chat to a community member about them, their life, their story, their money and all the interesting bits in between. And Victoria, are you surprised to hear that I have a good ear?

No, absolutely not, But I cannot wait because I heard I heard on the grapevine You're.

Gonna love this show. Yeah, that I heard on.

The grape vine that this Money Diary is gonna send blow deck vibes, and we all know how obsessed I am with that show.

So I don't know if that's true or not, but Anna Lisa let.

It slip before and I'm actually like, ooh, alrighty well, let me tell you all about her.

So our diarist says. I'm currently thirty three living in the Gold Coast, but grew up between South Africa, London and California in a relationship, and I work as a physio with a few twists along the way. Three years ago, I took a leap of faith to quit my stable, permanent government job working in Queensland Health to move to on Tieps, France to be a yachty. The rest is history.

Oh my gosh, it does throw below deck vibes, you love fun, money dearrest, welcome to the show.

I am so excited to have you.

Thank you, thanks so much.

Girls, low key, how is Auntie's curse like?

We're going here, You're gonna love it. It's so stunning and it's such a fun area.

Oh my gosh, I have a good time.

I have some offline questions, but we really should get into the money dory because I don't think anyone cares about my travel plans.

All they care about is your money dory.

So let's jump straight into it with the first question, which is always can.

You tell us a little bit about your money story.

Yeah, so I grew up in a single parent family, so you know, we were always conscious of money. So I think my whole life, I've just been you know, a whare of my spending. I've always tried to save. Obviously, going through UNI was really tough. I'm paying those fees. I lived in Melbourne for those three years, so I think, you know, I worked a ton outside of UNI, So I think from you know, from the get going over the last few years coming into physio, I don't know.

Of course, how cool? I love that?

All right?

Next question is what do you do for work and how much money do you own?

So I am a physio. I'm a physiotherapist. I work in Southeast Queensland slash Northern New South Wales. So I have three jobs three three. I know it was four last year, but I had to have down. So I have one kind of full time job in aged care I locom so I do random shifts at one of the local hospitals. And then I'm a sole trader in the disability arena. So I have three and I make about one hundred and forty thousand between those.

Oh my gosh.

Cool we allowed to ask about an old job here, jess? Or do you want me to wait till the end? I commend to the end.

I really want to ask loud.

Yes? Sorry?

Sorry? Sorry?

All right, I want to know. Next question, what is your big money goal. I think it's more of a lifestyle goal for me. So I just want to enjoy my life. I want to be able to live comfortably. I want to be able to have enough money to take you know, a good vacation or to time off during the year to enjoy my life.

I don't want to be one of those people that you know, waits until they're sixty five to be able to take heaps of time off. So I think my money, my financial goal is just being able to have enough money to be comfortable in order to have the lifestyle and the time off and the flexibility that I want, but still able to comfortably manage my mortgage and those you know, those yearly bills.

I love that. That's a good goal. How old do you think you'll when you do want to retire?

I really love what I do, and I'm lucky that it's a job that I can probably do until I retire. There's so many different arenas of physio. I mean, earlier the better, but I'm pretty happy working into my sixties. But that is also being said, like, I want to live a life where I can take time off every single year, every few months. So I'd be happy to work into my sixties. But if I could retire in fifteen years, that would be great too.

That would be an absolute win. That's the ultimate goal, right, Yeah.

But I love what I do, so I never dread going to work. I'm very lucky in that sense that I don't mind working a little bit longer if I can, you enjoy myself along the way.

That's so epic. Next question, do you have any investments. If so, what are they.

My partner and I have invested money in crypto. I would like to expand that a little bit more into other things, maybe the stock market or things like that, but one thing at a time. I need to learn a little bit more about that and how to go about it and the ups and the downs. But yeah, right now, just cryptocurrency.

How did you peak crypto?

My partner's idea.

Seems to be the way.

Yeah, but I'm pretty happy with the decision. It was a mutual decision. You know, we're in a position where we have a little bit of disposable income, so if we lose it all, you know, it's not the end of the world. If something comes from it, fantastic. You know. We live within our means and we don't put in to crypto what we aren't willing to lose. So you know, see how things go in the next few years. Good time to buy hippeak.

Next question is do you have any dates?

Yes, I owe a few thousand dollars for we just were renovating. I have seven grand left to pay for my Ikia kitchen.

Exciting.

Yes, yeah, that's zero percent interest for the first year, so I'm happy just to pay it off little by little in the next year. But yeah, that's it, just the just the kitchen.

How good?

And a mortgage as well?

Did you say the more?

I was about to say, how good? And what's the debt on the property you're renovating.

Yeah, luckily not too much more than we would have liked to have spend. But that's just the market at this point. But yeah, we were very lucky finding the place that we live where we live. Yeah, we were happy with the price considering the market.

So yeah, epic.

And does your partner have any debt or is it just the kitchen and the mortgage between the two of you?

Yeah, just that airpic all right. Next question is do you shot back?

Is that like the where you go to a shop, Like you go to a shop and you kind of put it on credit and then you can pay it back.

We're about to blow your mind absolutely, Okay, Jess, what's shot back?

So shot back is a plug in. They also have an app. It's a cash back site, so when you shop online and sometimes in store as well, you essentially get cash back on the purchases you make. So they get essentially what you could look at as a commission from the platform for sending you there, and then they share that with you.

So it's a really good way if you.

Are an online shopping to make a little bit of extra money back.

Oh no, I don't. I don't do a lot of online shopping, so I don't know if that's worth it for me. I don't know something i'd not heard about.

So there you are right now, you know.

Yeah, we'll look into him more, you know, all right?

Next question is what is your best money habit?

M best money habit is also probably tied to my worst money habit. I think my best money habit is I just enjoy my life. You know. I save enough to be able to go on holidays, go out for drinks, go for dinner with friends, like, I'm not too stressed.

Now, tell us how does it link to your worst money habit? What is that I probably spend a little bit too much on takeaway and dinners.

I think I could probably pull back on some of that disposable spending of drinks and eating out. So something that I can easily pull back on, and that's something that, Yeah, it could definitely work on some of those social activities or just takeaway things like that could improve a little. But I do enjoy my life and at this point, twenty bucks here and there and takeaway is not the end of the world.

It's finding the balance, right, like the things that you enjoy, the goals that you have, and if it's within your means, it's definitely not the worst thing.

Yeah, exactly, all right.

The last question in the structured questions that we always ask money diarists is what grade would you give yourself if we forced you to give yourself a grade?

Is that like out of five stars?

It could be five stars, it could be ABCDFG, it could be anything.

Probably probably at this point four stars. I've been really good this last few years about saving. We knew we wanted to buy a house, we knew you were probably gonna have to renovate. So I think my saving has really gotten quite good. But I think I could still improve, like learning a little bit more about financial literacy, investments, Yeah, just those little things that are kind of the next level of financial literacy I think I could improve on.

How good?

All right, Well, I cannot wait to get into boat chat, and we will do that after this really quick break.

We are back money diarist.

I need to know, Jess said, I had to wait until this segment of the show to ask you, can you tell us about being a yochtie, like how much.

Do you earn? How much do you actually have to spend? And what's it like?

It was the hardest job of my entire life. I definitely earned every single penny on the job. So I worked on an eighty foot boat. She was about one hundred years old. She was actually a warship. She was a hospital at one point. What. Yeah, it was really an old historical boat. And it was awesome because you could see like old photos of it. It used to be a gunship, so old photos of it in the war, and with all the old navy guys and stuff on,

Oh my gosh, how much did you earn doing that?

I was a green stew so it was my very first yachting job, my first and last. I'm trying to remember what I earned. It wasn't very much. I think I was on about twelve hundred euros a month.

Oh that's not that much, isn't.

No, we were technically not a charter boat. So if you say, work on a charter boat where they're renting it out to new guests every week or every fortnight, you're going to make a ton of money and tips. That's where a lot of the money is.

That's what I was going to ask.

I'm thinking, this is going to be like below deck and then every week you go down below deck and you count you tips.

Yeah.

No, it's like that on a lot of the other boats. But because we were a private boat, we got a little bit of tips, but it was more.

We got to go.

Hiking with the families, We got to go to dinner with the families. You got to go like tubing and swinging from like the boat swings, and it was a really like boat to work on.

Enjoy being there instead of being like yeah all the time, I mean, yeah, doing that and getting to hang out with a billion dollar family, that's pretty good. Yeah.

What's the worst?

Yeah, get literally getting paid to hang out with billionaires like that's her job.

Yess.

Well, we definitely had to clean their toilets and stuff, so kept you humble. Yeah, but it was great. But you know, you didn't have to pay for rent. You'd never had to pay for food. You always had Seven Star food leftovers that you could always eat.

Oh my gosh, how cool.

Yeah, so it was amazing. Would probably have continued to do it had my personal situation at home been a little bit different, I probably would have done another season or two and gone to maybe a charter boat where you can make more money. But you know some of my friends, they are making thousands of dollars of tips in a fortnight.

Wow, had a fine today's job. Because I'm sure there's probably some people listening, going, I can do I want to do that? Yeah, yeah, what I did.

I'm really lucky I had a British passport or have a British passport, so it was quite easy for me. I didn't have to worry about the visa side of things. But you do have to get a work visa for wherever you want to get a boat, whether America can be a little bit tougher to do that. So I started in the Mediterranean, so I just went to France. I did my training over there. You have to do like a week long like fire rescue basic safety skills course,

Yeah, you have to really hustle up a job, don't you.

Yeah, you definitely have to work for it. There are also other like job agency like yachting agencies that you can sign up for, but as a Green stewardess, there's not that many jobs that I was offered through there. It was more you have to like just meet people. It's all about who you know.

Yeah, so you ended up lucking out and finding a boat with an.

H Yeah, it was amazing.

Are you still in contact with the family, Like, do you contact them? Like you spend so much time with them if you're going hiking and hanging out with them, is that an ongoing relationship.

Or is it like Noah, it was just fleeting.

I was only there for a season, so I didn't spend you know, I was only there for six months, so I don't personally, but I know a lot of the staff who were there, Like some of the people on the boat had been there twenty years. Oh my god, that family was like family to them. So yeah, a lot of the people on the boat, I think, do keep in contact with some of them.

That's so sweet.

Yeah, you're still their employee, so you have to tread carefully in those kind of scenarios.

Yeah, of course, of course was that ever Really, I guess hard to manage being so on all the time. Like, one of the things that I really value, love you, Jess, is being able to go home and just like curl up in my bed and ignore absolutely everyone. You then having to like share rooms and like be with your co workers twenty four seven, Like, how did you distance yourself?

You live in each other's pockets. I was in a like a three bed little dorm room, and I kid you not. There was one single bed and like a bunk bed, two little bunk beds. I think we had like a foot and a half of space between the beds. We had a tiny room, but we did ever own bathroom. I was very lucky. I adored the people that I shared a room with. But yeah, you live in each

And did you ever get to swap your like if you were rusted on service and someone else was on laundry, were you allowed to be like, hey, like can I have your I'll do your laundry? If you do my service.

You could kind of tell the chief stews like, oh, I don't really want to do service, like I'd prefer to do laundry. We had a girl who was one of the other stews. She loved doing service, so that was really good. I had had a lot of hospitality jobs before being a stewardess, so I was very happy just to do house keeping the laundry where she really

Yeah, how cool.

Yeah, it was awesome.

So I tell us about the nitty gritty. Did they tip you when you left?

You do get a tip at the end of season, so it was nice. We had a few little guests here and there. It was more friends of the owners, and they would tip you on our boat, not that much, a few hundred bucks each at the end of the season. It's kind of an incentive to stay on that one boat the whole season. So for your bigger tip, you have to wait till the very end of the season and then you get tipped. I think I got a few thousand dollars, maybe three thousand dollars at the end of that.

Thank you, We'll take that.

Yeah, I was happy with that. I mean, no complaints. Granted, I was definitely you know, I was on a lower earning boat because one I was agreen stew Two I wasn't too picky about my mind, just wanted it for the experience. And three we weren't a charter boat, so we had the owners on board most of the time. If you do work on a charter boat, you'll earn literally like six times the amount.

Wow.

So it's really you know, if you're in it to make make kind of money and make bank, which you absolutely can work on a charter boat, you're gonna I don't know how you would work Tripoli as hard, but you do, you really, really really you earn every single penny that you make. It's really tough.

I have to ask, though, I didn't grow up in a family with a yacht. Yes, no, definitely mention it first as peasants over here, a season?

What does that mean?

So is that like a family goes and like spends a season on the boat like or is it like a week or is it a month? Is it like an entire year, Like how does it work? Do these people just go stay on this super yacht yea summer yep yep.

So generally, I mean not that I'm like, yeah, a nodle about this, but you would generally have your like your Mediterranean season, and that may be from you know, May until October, and you would generally be around, you know, around Europe, so whether that be like Croatia or you know, France, Italy that area for their summer, and then you would generally the flip side of the year, you would be most of the boats would generally be around Florida and the Bahamas, so you would do like a US season.

And these families just stay on the boat year round. Is that so?

Yeah, we had maybe four or five primary guests, like primary flicks, there was all one family, but they kind of used it like a time share. So one of the siblings and her family and her guests. They would maybe come on for three weeks and then you might get like a week off. You'd have to flip the boat. You'd have to clear out everything to a deep, clean, big detail of the whole boat, and then you might have like another extension of the family. You may have

That would be so challenging.

You're going at one hundred percent one hundred miles an hour for weeks on end.

Yeah, just to impress them. Oh my gosh.

Also flipping it entire like resetting an entire boat, every fire boat. It's giving me really strong flashbacks, like when my mum would have people come over to the house and she'd be like, we musculan everything and you're like shoving things into cupboards, and but you guys are doing it.

On like another whole level.

Literally right, No shoving things into cupboards on the super yocht.

No, you're detailing the cupboards and you're folding every single you have to like fold and color coordinate all the rags. Everything was clean with like Q tips.

What clean with Q tips? Not just your years. I'm going to get now, I'm going to get slammed for that. Obviously, you should put Q tips in your ears. Children don't do that. But oh my gosh, that is wild.

It's interesting to ask pervy questions about how the other half live because it's just.

So foreign to me.

Yeah, let me tell ya, Like I've into France, I've into the south of France. I'm very very lucky and grateful for that experience. But yeah, I stayed in hostels, So when you said bunk beds, I was like, yeah, I get vug beds.

Yeah, we get vung beds.

Yeah. It was nice because like we had to try out some of the beds and make sure. You know, before the season like officially started, we had detailed everything and we had to make sure that everything flowed perfectly in the rooms. So our chiefs do it that. Okay, everyone pick a room. You have to spend a night or two in there. Make sure the air con works, make sure the TVs work, make sure the music works,

Don't mind if I do.

Back to bunk beds after that.

I'm happy to test anybody's guest cabins on their super yachts.

Yeah, if anyone needs a hand, you just call me.

I've got your back, yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, my goshene as well.

Putting out the vibes put vibest vibes. That is the coolest story ever. Thank you so much for coming to share it.

So interesting.

Thank you so much for coming. I've super appreciated it. What an absolute dream. But as always I do think that's all we have time for today, jessg Ricci.

It short was, But don't forget, guys, that the advice sheared on Shees on the Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. Ches On the Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or a financial decision.

See you on Wednesday, guys. Bye,