Hello, my name's Santasha Nabananga Bamblet. I'm a proud your
the Order KERNI Whoalbury and a waddery woman. And before we get started on She's on the Money podcast, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of which this podcast is recorded on a wondery country, acknowledging the elders, the ancestors and the next generation coming through as this podcast is about connecting, empowering, knowledge sharing and the storytelling of you to make a difference for today and lasting impact for tomorrow.
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She's on the Money, She's on the Money.
Hello, and welcome to She's on the Money the podcast Millennials who want financial freedom. Welcome back to another shop back Money Diary Monday, where we get to chat to a community member. I learn about their finances and their life and all of the other fun bits as well. Victoria Jessica, I have a story for you today, do you I do surprise.
I came here not knowing what was going to happen, and now you've got a story. All right, let me tell you all about it.
So our diarist said, when I was sixteen my parents went bankrupt and we lost everything we owned, which shaped my entire relationship with money. My partner and I are engaged in building a house, but it's always in the back of my mind that we might lose everything. My partner came from a low income background, and I'm proud to say that I have helped him lift his financial literacy too.
Also, how wholesome money Diarists. Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much.
Congrats on the house. That's so exciting.
It is very exciting.
We've got some questions about that, but let's dive straight in. I want to know from you. Tell us a little bit about your money story.
Yeah, of course. So the earliest memories I have around money for myself is my parents living paycheck to paycheck. So my parents had their own business. They worked really hard and very long hours, but it was very hard to manage for them. Hearing that they had no money. It was very frequent occurrence in our household, and it was a really big stressor in all of our lives. They did have a business that went into involuntary administration, which sent us bankrupt when I was sixteen, and that
took everything from us, our house our car. It was really brutal, but that set my entire perception of money up to be completely negative. I genuinely felt like there was no way I'd ever be comfortable in life knowing that they worked so hard and got nothing out of it. Oh wow. So fast tracked about mid last year and I was scrolling through Facebook and having to come across the She's on the Money Facebook group. Hi welcome, Peach branding kind of drew me in.
Oh good, good, it's my favorite.
Absolutely and yeah. So I started reading some posts and I felt like I was missing out a lot of cure information. So decided that to go back to episode one and have listened every episode since to catch up.
Oh my gosh, have you actually yes?
Yeah. So I went through like a whole budget overhaul and felt like I was starting to put myself in a lot better a position. We had a hiccup earlier this year when my dad felt very sick and ended up in a coma. He's all good now, thank god I had. But yeah, so that kind of I feel like put me in a bit of a rut. So I feel like I haven't gotten quite back on track to that point since then. But look, they're getting.
There, you're on the way. Oh my gosh, what a money story. I feel like you're really aware of your own money story too, which is quite cool. Yeah, all right, I want to know. I tried to ask you this off air, but just shut it down real quick. What do you do for work and how much money do you earn?
Yeah? So I work in recruitment, which I think is what Jess had previously done as we well. Yes, so, my annual salary is fifty two thousand plus super and that brings in about sixteen hundred dollars a fortnight. However, all of my finances are shared with my fiance, who brings in around eighteen hundred dollars a four night as well.
Oh that's cool. I feel like that's a really good income. Good work. Next question, I have what's your big money goal? What are you currently working towards?
I kind of have three on the go three three, my major one being emergency savings. I really need to build that up and it's something we're working really hard towards. I am, as mentioned earlier, building a house in my partner at the moment, so trying to save up to furnish that house because it will be our first house together, both of us living out of home. And also again as mentioned earlier, we are now engaged, so you can garras.
When's the wedding? Am I allowed to ask about it?
Of course, it's going to be April twenty twenty four. We literally just got engaged. Oh my gosh.
All right, we'll ask about that later in the show. Next question, do you have any investments.
So aside from my superannuation? No, only because I really want to invest, really do so bad, especially after listening to the podcasts, Like I genuinely always thought it was just a fever dream and was for rich people who knew what they were doing their money. No, it's not, it's not. It's not. So ever since sort of educating myself with it, I really want to so bad. But our focus is getting our emergency saving set up first and then that will come after.
Good. That's the plan. That's how it works, building a strong financial house. I love it. Next question I have do you currently have any debts?
Yeah, so we are obviously building a house. So currently it's a weird building loan thing. So there are like progress sort of stages where it adds on to more but that will be a five hundred thousand dollars loan once construction is complete, So currently we're just doing interest only repayments. We also have one other debt which we're trying to get rid of, which is a joint car loan.
So myself and my partner got a car each a few years back, so that's sitting at twenty seven thousand at the moment for both cars.
Okay, cool. Next question I have for you? Do you currently use shop back the app?
Yeah, groll it frequently. Cool. I have not yet for my first purchase, but I know what I'm getting, I just haven't committed.
I love that. I feel like we should all put more than twenty four hours between us and our spending.
So that's not a.
Bad thing at all.
Absolutely.
Next question, my friend, is what is your best money habit?
One that I learned completely from She's on the Money was putting time between me and my purchases.
Ohio, back like back exactly. You're walking the walk, not just talking.
The talk precisely. So that's my best money habit for sure.
I love that alright. Flipping it though, what's your worst money habit?
Yes? So I am horrible at sticking to a budget when it comes to buying things for my family and friends.
I don't think that's bad, that's so kind.
Look it is, but gift giving is very much my love language. I love to spoil my friends and family. So set myself a budget, never ever stick to it, and yeah, it's probably my worst app.
Oh god, all right. So if we forced you to give yourself a grade when it came to your money habits, what would you grade yourself?
I'd say a C. That's where I'm at right now.
What makes up that C? And what would it take to get to an A?
My emergency savings being built up is one thing I think if you'd asked me this time last year, I'd probably say a bit higher. But I think since my dad was sick, I went totally off track and I need to redo my budget and cash flow, and I just keep putting it off and putting it off and putting off because it stresses me out. And I think once that's all sort of back in set in place, it would get me a bit higher and investing would get me to an eight.
Yeah cool. You mentioned just then your emergency account and how you're building that up. Have you got a goal number in mind. If so, what's that and why did you pick that number?
Right now we are wanting to go around the ten thousand dollar mark. Why that number? Couldn't really tell you. It's just kind of what we became, like, do you know what that feels like? A safe amount? We have two dogs. We want to be able to have enough that if they have any emergency, visit and it's just there and easily attainable, and just anything happened with work, we just wanted a little bit of a backup. Couldn't tell you why we got to ten grand, but we did. No.
I love I love asking because everyone is obviously really different, but the defining I guess similarity of literally everyone is like, that's the number that made me feel comfortable. I don't know how you all got to it. I don't know what your process was, but it's always that's the number that makes us feel snug. It's the number that makes us feel like we can make decisions and we're not
going to find ourselves in a financial pickle. Exactly, all right, money diarist, We're going to go to a quick break and straight after I want to know a little bit more about your family history. Don't go anywhere, guys, money diarist. I'm gonna throw all the way back to the first question we asked you at the start of the episode, which was you know about your money story, and you very clearly were able to articulate what had happened to
you and your family having gone through a bankruptcy. But I would love to know a bit more about how that guides the decisions that you make today or how it's still impacting you, because I know that that's actually quite significant, Like that's not a little thing to go through, and it does leave a little bit of financial trauma for most people. So you know, how's it impacting you now?
It really puts a damper on I feel like kind of everything. It's just something that is always in the back of my mind when we're going through our house buying process, our mortgage broken. The whole way through, sort of just kept reiterating you guys have enough to service this loan, like it's absolutely fine, you meet the criteria, you will be okay. But until we got the sort of piece of paper in the mouth that says you've
been approved. If the whole time, I'm like, no, it's being taken away from us, like this is never going to happen. Yeah, it was something that definitely. It kind of just puts a damper on all of the things that should be fun. Yes, So it just kind of makes it in general, just feel like things will be taken away so quickly. My parents are such hard workers,
like my dad was working eighty hour weeks. It was full on, next level crazy, and to sort of have everything just ripped from their hands and just put us back really to nothing, it just makes it feel like it's hard to get somewhere. Getting any loans and the debt that we went in for our cars. My partner and I took out a personal loan for two cars for us because I just don't have a way of getting public transport where I live, there's no public transport.
We had both got really unreliable cars. We just kept cycling through them, a thousand dollar cars here and there. It just was never going to work. They were just not messes and it was never good. So we needed a car. And being able to commit to that and say, yeah, I'm willing to go into a debt right now was so difficult for me to do because I felt like that's just going to just start the whole process of us being put where they were.
Yeah, that must genuinely be so hard, because you obviously want to put yourself ahead financially and make good decisions, But at the same time, it's always in the back of your mind to that, oh, like that could happen. Should I even bother? Should I do this? Should I do that? And I'm assuming it will at some point
once you get to the point when you're investing. Make that a little bit more challenging than it might be for anyone else, because you're like, oh, like the risk feels a lot heavier than it might for other people who have never gone through those circumstances. So it's always really interesting to ask questions like that. I'm always like, oh, how did that work? What does that mean? Because I've met people as well who will say, oh, it doesn't like that was theirs. I know how to avoid that,
and they're really confident. It's just like, wow, like the same circumstance can lead to so many different outcomes and way people, you know, organize things for themselves.
Yeah, definitely, No, I completely agree.
I want to pivot though I'm really self serving today I'm getting married soon as well. I want to know you said you were going to get married in twenty twenty four. Have you discussed wedding budgets yet?
Very vaguely, only because I feel like I've just I don't know how much a wedding costs, and I don't want to set a really unrealistic budget that's way too low that just isn't going to be feasible for what we want to do. So I'm kind of in the process of researching that sort of venues that we'd like and things that we would really want to have as a part of our wedding, and how much that would cost to give us an accurate budget to work towards.
So you're having good, open, honest conversations about it, or I guess, are you on the same page?
Yes, Yes, I think we are. I think we are good at being on the same page with these sorts of things typically, but absolutely open and honest communication. We're both sort of going through research together and really sort of discussing what's super important for me and what's super important for my fiance to sort of, yeah, get to the final details of what we have to have and
what is negotiable to make a budget work. We just don't want to sort of throw out a random figure and say this is our budget and then start going over and over because we haven't researched it.
Probably just going to call myself out here, and that's what I did. I was like, Oh, I've seen all my clients, you know, have weddings. I'm obviously a financial advisor. I'm really lucky that when I got engaged, ah eve if people in our community reached out and they're like, oh my god, Victoria, this is how much I spent and this, this and this, and so my partner and I picked a budget that we thought would work really well, but we hadn't broken it down, and we also had
not talked about our values enough. I was just like, oh, that's heaps of money. That'll be right, Not right, No.
Right, weddings are expensive.
Yeah, I feel like your process is probably going to be far better than mine, because I was shocked at how expensive things can be. And I'm not saying they're overpriced. I think I just hadn't ever conceptualized things like flowers and you know, we're not doing it, but cutlery higher. I was like, that's a thing people higher cutlery. It's crazy. So I'm always interested to hear what other people's thought processes are around that because it's stressful as well.
Because it is very stressful, there's definitely a ton of things that I never would have even concerned that that very much require. But I'm very lucky that we've got a very good friend who has recently been married, So she's helping me a lot along the way of being like, hey, have you considered this? It's going to come up?
How good? I love that you've got someone on your team.
How did you go about juggling between you know, you've got your three goals that you mentioned earlier, obviously the wedding and the house, your emergency fund. How did you figure out how to prioritize you know, which of those goals you want to achieve fastest, or how much money you're allocating to each of those things, because they're all, I would say, relatively short term goals, like you're building the house now, your wedding's in a couple of years. How did you figure it all out?
Is it bad to say I haven't really?
No, that's honest.
Look, I don't know. I feel like I just sort of sat down and said, Okay, these are the things that we need to work on. Let's just make sure that they're all happening. I think emergency savings is our top priority based on the fact that we have two dogs then my little babies, so I just really need to make sure that they are always all cared for and if anything were to go wrong, I want them
to be okay. Obviously, the work that my partner and I do is quite stable all throughout COVID that both my partner and I have jobs that are very much stable and we can do throughout the pandemic, and we never lost employment, which we are so privileged to say. We know that it was very hard for a lot of people, but we were very very lucky. So our employment being quite stable was something that meant that our priority is more so light in making sure our pets
were okay. If our cars were to break down, which were our sole means of getting absolutely anywhere, that we would have the ability to do that. So that's why our emergency savings was first. House and wedding. Wedding is something that, as horrible as it would be, if we had to push it back, it could get pushed back. It's not going to be the end of the world and our house we kind of put that in the middle just because it's going to come up earlier than
the wedding. But also we're going to need a bed, We're going to need a cat. It's probably gonna also need a fridge. Like, it's just basic things that, yeah, we feel like it's probably gonna be required to live.
Yeah, but it's all things that need to be taken into consideration, right, and they can start adding up and feel all consuming and overwhelming. I want to go back to the wedding conversation. Jess. Sorry, sorry you got engaged recently. That's one so fun one. How did you ask? In a nutshell, Jess is going to kill me for not asking fin next questions.
It's fine. In a nutshell, I thought I was surprising him with the puppy of his dreams. He's always wanted a Bernie's Mountain dog.
Oh my gosh, I've always wanted a Bernie's Mountain dog.
I have one now.
Oh so cute.
I thought I was surprising him with, Yeah, the Bernie's Mountain Dog, puppy of his dreams. We were driving there, he took a wrong turn. Turns out my best friends had told him I was surprising him with this stubby and instead we showed up with a giant box with a bowl on it and a massive picnic setup, and she was in the box and it was so useful. Yeah, it was the most exciting thing ever and bore my eyes up very long time.
Oh my gosh, So you didn't know your proposal was coming at all?
No, I had no inkling, which shocked me to my core because my partner cannot keep a secret to save his life.
Oh so that's what I'm trying to get too. How did you guys pay for the ring?
Like?
How well?
That happened exactly.
So all of our funds are shared, which is why I didn't see it coming. He had asked me one week, Hey, can I just give my mom and dad a hand with some rent money? I was like, yeah, of course, So he took it out of the savings. It was only like three hundred dollars nicky years, So three hundred dollars is a cat wrote rent money on the description, and then that was his deposit for the ring, and it was being custom made, so he didn't have to pay the last part of it until it was finished.
So he reached out to my best friend. He's like, look, this is a massive ask. Can you pay for it the day that I propose, I'm going to pay it back to you. I just don't want it to come out of our account.
Oh.
I love that, And she's so beautiful, and she said, of course I can, and I bought her eyes up the whole time speaking to him as well. She's very excited. Yeah, so she paid for it, and then as soon as he proposed, we just transferred it over so I didn't see anything.
Oh my gosh, that's a good way to keep a secret if you've got someone on your team. Yes, I wouldn't have even known. Jess, what questions have you got. I'm sure that they're better than mine.
Your partner sounds like such a dream. And I love how you said in your right into us that you were helping to kind of lift his level of financial literacy. We love to see it, first of all, but I wanted to know how are you going about that, because we've spoken to people in the past when there's been discrepancies in people's levels of financial literacy, which is so okay because we all, you know, we get what we get and we do the best we can with what
we have. But sometimes people can be a little bit resistant because it makes them feel like they weren't as educated or you know, it can make people feel lesser than sometimes when they have to learn something from someone that they know personally. How have you guys gone through that? Is he receptive? Have he had to be conscious of certain things? What does that look like for you guys?
I think the very first time I approach him about sort of helping him learn something it was actually investment related. He was a little apprehensive, definitely on the side of I don't want to feel like you're telling me what I don't know, something like in the sense of not in a territorial kind of way, but more so like do you think I don't know what I'm doing? Like?
Do you think I don't have an idea? He definitely knew more than I did before I even started listening to the podcast, and when I asked him to start doing it, I sent him a podcast link and said, hey, I want you to listen to this purely based on I want you to be on the same understanding of I am. I want you to look at it the same way that I'm looking at it and teach me what I'm missing. What did you not hear in this
that you know? And we sort of came at it and more of like a team way and saying that, Hey, let's brainstorm and mine at this together and work out what you have that I don't.
Who are you guys? Your wizards?
Yeah, he's brilliant. I love him.
We love him too.
He's very smart, Yeah, very receptive to anything. And I think as well, he came from a very low income household as well, so he was very receptive to learning more if it was going to put us in a better position. Call. He's on board. Once I sort of explained I'm listening to this because I want us to be in a good spot. I want to invest, I want to understand money and how it all works. He's like, yeah, cool, I'm on board whatever you want to do.
What a honey. I actually adore that you're just on the same page about that stuff, because so many people aren't, or so many people are just really apprehensive because they think the conversations are too hard to have, or they feel overwhelming, or they just you know, it never feels like the right time. So I just I'm loving this conversation of like, oh no, we're on the same page. I made him listen this podcast and now we're on the same page and we have these chats like that's so good.
I want that for everybody very privileged. I definitely understand that not everyone's as lucky, and I'm very, very very lucky that I am.
No, it is very very cool.
One last question from me, and now it's my turn to be a little bit self serving. You're building a house.
What process looked like for you?
How did you decide to build rather than purchasing something that was established.
I think one of the major things is that my partner came from a low income household. I came from a very rocky financial household. We never had the brand new house, We never had the exciting new finishes like what we had dreamt of. That was never a thing in either of our lives. So apart from the fact that prices were going sky high, when we were looking at buying or building with established homes, we seemed to find that it was staying a little bit more consistent
with building. So that was the first indicator for us to start leaning towards building over being established. But I think the major kicker was definitely we want the house that's the brand new, the shiny, the everything that we picked that's perfect for us, compared to something that was made for someone else and we're just sort of fitting into it.
How did you find the process of picking everything out, like if you wanted it to be exactly yours? Did you have a lot of fun and picking your finishes? And I always think about how you know how when you build there's tears so you can get like your standard door handles or your did you find that there are a lot of those? And did it eat into your budget? Like did you find it hard to I
guess balance what you want? It would be me what you could afford because give me all the shiny things, please, Yeah, that would be me as well.
Exactly. I think we went in presuming, well, we were told that to expect to spend about thirty grand on upgrades, because that includes things like you're air conditioning, you're flooring, everything like that that's not included in our base quote. So we went in with that idea that it was going to be about thirty grand. When we went in We tried as best we could stick to that budget and came in twen grand on us. So we spent twenty grand at selections.
Oh my gosh.
We picked a builder that had a lot of good standard inclusions that were what we knew we would want to pick. So when choosing our builders, we found some had very limited standard inclusions that were just completely opposite style of what we would want anyway, and that we would have to spend a lot upgrading to get what we want. So we went with someone that had good standard inclusions, went and looked at their Discovery sales centers as well, so you can look at your options for
selections before you even picked your builder. At a lot of builders. So we did that and picked one that we were like, yeah, this is where we want to go. Enjoyed the process so much, designing that sort of stuff and picking all the finishings for the home was Yeah, the most exciting part was amazing.
Jess is just like taking notes. It was running down a Discovery sales She's like, I'm going to google that later. Becauere Do you want to come? Oh my gosh, how exciting though that you're building your own home. Did you ever think that that was going to become the reality for you.
Never, not even in my wireless dreams. I just entirely felt like, if I am not working the eighty hours my dad did, how would I ever have a chance like this is not ever going to happen for us. My partner was also not learning a lot of money when we first got together. We got together eight years ago. I was fourteen, he was sixteen. Oh my gosh, baby little babies. So when we got together we both worked in Maccis. It was good. It was nothing that was
ever going to set us up. To build a house and to be where we are right now is insane, never ever ever expected to be in this point.
Oh my gosh, I am so proud of you. Look what you did. How exciting me?
Is that?
What a queen? Oh my gosh, but Jess, I think we're out of time. Money Dores, thank you so much for joining us. It has been an absolute pleasure hanging out with you and learning about your money story.
Thank you so much for having me. I have had a wonderful time.
Oh my gosh. All right, yes it is time. Can you rub the boring but important stuff pretty please?
Yes? Guys, don't forget the advice sheared 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
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See you on Wednesday. Guys. Bye,