Hello, my name's Santasha Nabananga Bamblet. I'm a proud yr
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.
Let's get into it.
She's on the Money.
She's on the Money.
Hello and welcome.
She's on the Money, the podcast for millennials who want financial freedom. Welcome back to another one of our money diaries, my favorite episode of the week where we get to talk with 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 an email and it sounded
like this, Hi, She's on the Money team. Three years ago, my husband and I found ourselves drowning in debt after traveling and treating ourselves a little too much with no regrets. We were overwhelmed by the task of sorting out our finances. We have a little boy with special needs who is the center of our world, and in between juggling family life, working part time as a teacher's aid, and terrible surprise tax bills, we've paid off eighty thousand dollars.
Worth of debt in only three years.
We are very close to being debt free and we cannot wait for the next step in our money journey. Money Diarist, you just sound like a queen all round. Not only eighty grand, you're still working, you have a little special boy, Like, what's going on?
How good is that?
Yes, we've been very dissy.
Thank you, Welcome to the show.
I'm very excited to be able to share your story. Do you want to just dive right in? Let's start with the question that I ask every single Mundy Diarist money Dirist before we dive into your story. What grade would you give your money habits if I asked you to grade them from A through to an F.
I think at the moment I would give myself a B.
Minus a B minus.
All right, Well, now my favorite question, let's dive into the juicy stuff. Can you tell us a little bit more about your money story.
Absolutely, so I guess our money story would start when we got married. We got married quite young, and my husband and I have very different money backgrounds. So for me, I remember growing up, I was always very aware of money. My parents worked really hard and they never burdened my brother and I with any challenges they had or anything like that. But I just remember my friends not having a care in the world, And you know, I wanted
to save. I wanted to buy my own things at a young age, and when I got my first part time job, I would always put money aside, even though it was only like twenty dollars a week, and I'd create these little tracking sheets where I could keep track of how much I could save. So that's definitely continued on into my adult life. However, my husband, his family moved countries twice when he was ten and then eighteen. Wow,
So yeah, he's got a very different background. He's just grateful for anything he has, which is such a beautiful attitude. And for him, if his bills are paid, he wants to use the rest of his money to be generous to his friends and family and to enjoy, which I really appreciate, but it's definitely different to my approach, Like
I'm definitely a saver. So yeah, that's how we've kind of had to meet in the middle, and I feel like now we're in a great place where we are able to do that and we share the same money values.
That's really sweet.
Though he sounds like a honey, this is so sidetracked. But everyone wonders, I don't know, how did you meet your husband?
We just met through friends, actually, and it was one of those things where we just connected straight away, got to know each other and just have never spent a moment apart since. Really, like we just really connected and very in love still, which I'm grateful for because we never could have foreseen the challenges that would come our way. And yeah, probably if we did, it would have been a lot more stressful.
Absolutely, when you say challenges, what are we looking at? Are we talking debt? Are we talking family? Tell me a little bit more about that side of your story.
Yeah. So, once we got married, we wanted to travel and we did not have much money, but we would just save up, book a flight, save up, go kind of thing, and we loved that and we had really not a care in the world, like, we didn't care if we came home and we had nothing. We were just enjoying those experiences together and like I said in the intro, like no regrets whatsoever. And a couple of years after we got married, we fell pregnant with our son,
which was a big surprise. And we'd been to America and Singapore and Fiji, and an opportunity came up to go to Europe with one of my husband's best friends, and it was kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity because he'd had two friends pull out. So we were just feeling those spots and a lot of things were already paid for. He just wanted some companies. So I was heavily pregnant, but we were like, we're not passing that up. So obviously amazing experience and so so grateful.
But we got home we had nothing, and I'm like, oh, my goodness, We've got to buy all this stuff for a baby now. But you know that all works out. And then when our son was quite young, I think he was probably about eighteen months, my husband was a subcontractor at the time, and we received some information from our accountant that basically said we had a big tax bill coming of twenty eight thousand dollars. I wouldn't say we were struggling, but we were finding it hard to
make ends meet. We were definitely saving a little bit, but mostly living week to week because I was working, I was home with our son and that was really important for us to have that time with him. So that was quite daunting. That was probably the biggest challenge we've ever faced. And we just kind of looked at each other and we're like, you know, our life's going to
be very different while we pay this off. And we had some beautiful friends who knew what were going through and offered to pay it off for us, but we just felt we needed to do this on our own, and we ended up coming to the decision to move in with my parents, and my parents, you know, did not hesitate for a second. They were more than happy to have us there while we were to pay that debt down.
So tell me a little bit more about how a surprise twenty eight thousand dollars tax debt happens Like that to me is terrifying, Like I hate the idea that one day you wake up and wow, twenty eight thousand dollars is owed, Like what happened was your husband, you know, not paying tax or not paying enough for like got bad advice, like what happened.
So basically what happened was we were always paying tax. I always put aside twenty percent from each of his incomes. That was something we always stressed about a lot. Was this situation that ended up happening At the end of the day, it was just an error. When you work for yourself, I guess your accountant will send you all of your tax return, your income statements, all of those things, and you have to look over it as well as
them and to us. So we're like, yeah, everything's fine, and there was an error in it, unfortunately, so we thought we'd paid quite a lot of tax and GST, but it clearly wasn't enough, and so it wasn't until things were checked at a later date that it was discovered that this mistake had been made. And luckily it wasn't a really really bad situation. You get a payment plan from the ATO, there's no interest or anything like that.
I was about to ask, Yeah, I was about to be like, surely they let you have a payment plan.
Please tell me they do.
Yeah, I know that was my first question. I'm like, what are we going to do and he's like, oh, there's a payment plan. It's eight hundred a month was like the minimum. Don't quote me on that, but it was a lot. So we'd just taken out a car loan of forty grand. No. Yeah, I was a bit hesitant to do that, but we were like, oh, it's you know, a business expense because the car would be used for work. So yeah, well like, oh my goodness. So that plus this is like seventy thousand dollars of
debt pretty much overnight. So yeah, it was daunting.
Oh my gosh. And then what happened?
So you sorted out this payment plan with the atiro started smashing that down at a minimum of eight hundred bucks a month. How long did that take you or is this something that you're still working through? Like where does that additional ten thousand dollars worth of debt come from? When we're talking about that eighty grand that you said that you're in in your letter into the show.
Right, So we found out about the tax debt at the end of twenty twenty, and thankfully our rental lease was up in March, so we just paid the minimum for those couple of months, and we moved in with my parents and we had it all paid off by I think September that year. It was between six and nine months we paid off. So we would do the minimum repayments, but we would just do as much as we could on top of that. Yeah, of course, to
just smash it out. And it's such a daunting amount, Like I feel like, you know, anything from the ATO is daunting, but that was quite confronting.
It's really scary when something like that happens because you also just don't have anything to show for it. You go, oh, but this isn't because of my quote spending habits, So this isn't a car loan, or this isn't something that you know, it was an asset that I could sell and get the tax down, Like I can't do that. I actually have to pay every single dollar of this,
and I don't have any choice. I'm glad they set you up on a payment plan, but even that if feels like a more serious payment plan than paying a bank about k.
Absolutely, there's no flexibility, like you really need to pay that off every month, and like you said, there's no satisfaction at the end of it, it's just off. Now we're at zero great, so yeah.
The worst and you know what, it happens to a lot of people. And that's why I'm so passionate about Like she's on the money stuff, and we obviously do the Business Bible because it is actually on you. And I know that you said, oh, there was an error in it, and like that could have come from anywhere, but it's just you need to be in a position where you can read.
It too and go, actually, that's not quite right.
Even if you didn't know how to submit all of your forms or you didn't know how to do a full tax return yourself. Like I want to put people in the position where they can look at a tax return form and go, oh, actually that doesn't add up, so that they don't end up in your situation because it's trash, Like.
That's not fun.
You probably had a million and one other things that twenty eight grand could have gone towards, and unfortunately it didn't exactly.
And that's why I'm so grateful for the podcast, because like before that, we were definitely like the kind of people who thought, Okay, let's just ignore that and hope it goes away. But the podcast has empowered me to, you know, just look at what's happening with our finances, and there's no secrets, there's no room for hiding. It is what it is, and the black and white is right in front of you. So now I have no issue looking through any of those documents and I just
want to be informed about where we're at. Yeah.
I love that so much.
It makes me genuinely so happy because I just look at it and go, all right, well, I've seen people in these situations where the tax thing has scared them off so much that they don't do subcontracting work anymore, or you know, they change roles, or they don't you know, pursue having their own small business anymore because they're like, I'm not smart enough or I'm not good enough, or I was too silly with it and I couldn't be responsible.
When that's not the case at all. It's just about education.
And I'm sure you know, now, money direst You just read through it and you have a look and you go, oh, that doesn't make sense. I'll do a bit more research as to what that means, but it actually is quite logical. You just have to be taught the language, and that's what we're trying to do with She's on them money is like, give you the tools so you can read something and go, oh, that that makes sense. One plus one equals two. No worry, so I can see. So tell me you said that you were very close to
being debt free. What does that mean? How long have we got to go? And what does the journey after that look like?
So we have almost paid off our car. We also had another tax bill after that, twenty eight thousand dollars one which was twelve thousand you know. We paid that off quite quickly as well, and then my husband had no work for six months, so that was really hard. We used up our savings to get through that time. So I feel like it has been like one thing after another. But we're finally in a place where we've moved out of my mum and dads now, and we
are very very very close. I think within the next few weeks we'll have our car paid off, so we'll owe that.
Anah, that's so exciting.
Yeah, thank you.
It feels like that though.
Hey, when it rains, it pause like when one thing happens, I feel like it's a domino effect and you're like, Wow, this must just be an entire season of my life because it's one thing after another, and when it's money stuff.
You're just like, can you give it a rest?
Like I'm done with this, Like I'd like to just feel a little bit comfy for a little bit of time.
Oh, definitely, can definitely relate.
I want to know.
Now you mentioned that you're still working, Tell me what do you do for work? How much money do you earn?
So I am a teacher aid and currently I am just working casually. I went back to work in the middle of twenty twenty two. I was offered a contract three days a week and that was a lifesaver because that was the time when my husband wasn't working much and the last financial year, I think I earned just
eighteen thousand. But this year I've decided to take a break because it's the last year before our beautiful sun goes off to prep So I just really want to have that time with him and have the flexibility to say yes or no to the work depending on what my family's needs are at the time. So very grateful for that.
What will that look like? You mentioned that your son has special needs. What are they and what kind of financial impact does that have.
Yeah, so our son has autism level three and ADHD and that has been a huge challenge for us. It's not what we plan for at all. I don't think anyone does. But he was diagnosed at a young age who were able to access NDIS funding really early on. We did pay out of pocket for therapies for a couple of months, which was obviously hard, but we knew he needed it and it was very beneficial. And now like, obviously all of his therapies and things like that are covered,
which we're so grateful for. But I feel like the financial implications are more just the fact that I can't work full time. I can't even really commit to part time work at the moment because his needs are high and I need to be available for him if he's not able to go to Kindy that day or something like that, because some days he just needs to be at home in his safe space.
Yeah, and that's what I was going to stretch into. I was hoping that you would mention the impact on you not being able to work, and like, obviously that's a choice for a lot of families, but you seem motivated to want to work and get back into the community and do all this stuff. But obviously you're unable to what will that look like when he's at school or is that something that you just don't know yet.
Yeah, I think we definitely don't know. Luckily, he attends a program one day a week at the school where he'll be attending, and that's why we've moved is to be closer to that. So I'm very confident that he will settle in beautifully because he's kind of familiar with the environment.
Oh that's so good.
Yeah, it's amazing. So I'm really really hoping that once he settled into school next year, I can continue with my teacher aid work and we're just going to have to see how it goes, obviously, but we're in an area where there's a lot of local schools, so I think even if I just do casual for a while, that'll be fine too.
Yeah. How good. I love that you've found something that fits in.
And teachers aids are so undervalued, and I would argue very underpaid given how to work you end up doing, but I think that that's such a special role for someone in your position, where there's that level of flexibility but also you probably have a level of empathy that not a lot of people do because you're going through a situation like you know how to deal with autism and ADHD and probably respond a lot better to those kids than someone who doesn't just have that first hand experience.
So they're lucky to have you too.
Oh, thank you. I love my job. It's amazing and yeah.
It's so sweet.
All right.
I want to know what are your big money goals? What are you and your husband currently working towards.
Well, obviously the first one is being completely debt free for the first time in our whole relationship. I think we'll just soap that in for a little bit.
That's big.
Yeah, are you planning to celebrate? Like, what will we do when we get out of debt? Surely there's something has to be.
Well, I'm going to set aside five hundred dollars and I think we're going to just spend the day together, go out for a lovely lunch and do a little bit of shopping. And I feel like things like that. Last few years, every dollar's counted and we've had to be so careful. So I just want to day where we just do whatever we want. And then get back on track with our goals.
Yeah, I love it, but you do have to celebrate these things. I think that they're so important to celebrate because it's kind of like a pivot point not only in your relationship but in your financial journey. And you want to remember that. You want to be like, remember the time we got out of debt completely, Like that was special? Like that was cool? Yeah, definitely, And what else are you currently working towards apart from the debt free goal?
So we would love to buy a property just to really help our son to have, you know, a home base that he can always come back to and where he feels safe and supported. And obviously we feel that home is where the heart is and we know wherever we move, he'll be okay because he's got us. But we would just love to have that for him where
he can grow up and create memories. And one day, once we're in there, we would love to have a pool for him because water is his favorite thing in the world and I think that would just be amazing to have access to that every day.
That would be so sweet. I love that.
And I know that you're in Queensland, so having a pool in Queensland would be elite.
Like I'm coming over one day.
I want to ask about that because I feel so many of us in different stages of our lives, Like you might be quite young and you're like, I never want to own property?
Was that you?
And then just life has happened and pivoted and you're like, actually, that level of stability and that goal has now become quite attractive. Given our lives are very different to what they were when I was, you know, twenty two and didn't care so much about the property market. Like, at what point did you realize that was like, oh, actually we didn't want this, but now we do.
Absolutely. Yeah, So we were definitely not interested in buying a home. We're kind of like why would we, Like, we can keep traveling, and after having our son, that was definitely a turning point. And I think also the obstacles we've faced over the last few years, we've realized how much we can achieve. I never thought could pay off you know, almost eighty thousand dollars of debt in a couple of years, but that's also shown me, Okay, well we can probably save that much.
Yeah, one hundred percent.
I love your mindset at the moment, because so many people get swallowed by debt and don't see it as an achievement. Like, don't get me wrong, being in debt
it feels awful. But if you can create a plan and you go you know, before you mentioned your tax debt, you had to pay eight hundred dollars a month off, Like, if you can create that type of plan, the second that's paid off, if you can consistently contribute that to now a savings account, like that all becomes yours instead of it becoming the taxman's, instead of it becoming a debt repayment, it's now your money to create financial freedom with.
And I think it's so much easier. And you know, people aren't going to like to hear this, but once you've been in debt and you've seen how much actually goes out and you go fire out, twenty eight thousand dollars is so much money, and then you realize I could create that for myself. I feel like there's a really powerful turning point for us where we go, actually, I'm going to get out of debt and I am
going to turn all of this around. And some of the most incredible journeys I've seen have been from people who have been in debt to people who are now investors or now owning property or you know, absolutely killing it financially because they know what it's like to be on the other end of the scale and they just go never again and they just have this deeper level of motivation. Do you think that's going to be you guys?
Absolutely?
Yeah.
It's created big motivation for us to work out what we want to do, and it's been, like you said, very empowering to know that we can achieve our goals and to just put that into action, make it practical and make it happen.
I love it.
All right, let's go to a really quick break and on the flip side, I've got a lot of questions for you, So guys, don't go anywhere, all right, money, dirist, We are back and I want to talk about investments. Do you have any If you don't, what's the plan for the future.
So at the moment, I have between four and five thousand in my super and I have four hundred dollars in Charez eas so I just kind of contribute a little bit each week to that, which is exciting.
I love that you're on this journey, but you're also like no and prioritizing investing. Tell me why you picked Chazi's and I guess how you got started. Did you just put some.
Cash on there? And then how did you pick which investments?
I feel like that's the biggest question from our community at the moment.
Yeah, I'm still definitely working it out how to choose wisely and all of those things. But I think just listening to the podcast, obviously chazys Is mentioned a lot and having access to the free ten dollars, I was like, I'm not going to turn away free money.
It's free money. Hey, yeah, yeah, exactly.
So I did that and I just kind of thought, oh, let's just have a look and you know, if it goes nowhere, it's okay, it's ten dollars.
So yeah, and it was free ten dollars.
Obviously not super educated in this at all, but I get little dividends paid back into my account from certain ones that I've invested in, So you know, at the moment, it's not the right time in our life for me to be putting a lot into that, but I'm like, Okay,
I can see this actually works. I've learned from the podcast that you know, if I just keep my money in there, just keep chipping away at it, popping what we can afford in each week, it will grow and I'll have something to show for it in the future.
Yes, I love that, and I feel like sometimes people just go, oh, it's not worth it. I don't have heaps and heaps of money, but you can see that you've learned the process, you've learned the plan, you've seen the dividends, and it kind of proves to you that it's possible.
And that you can do it.
You don't need to be, you know, a stockbreaking genius to be able to jump in on the action. You can just go all right, this works, and at some point in your life you can turn that up.
But I'm sure that'll be after you buy property. But that's so exciting.
I'm glad I asked about it because it's just very relatable to be.
At that stage.
Yes, definitely.
Next question I have is how much debt are you still in? What does that look like? And do you have any other debts floating around?
So we have no other debts apart from the car loan, and we've got ten thousand dollars owing on that and that is due to finish dune next year, so when we pay it off, we'll be paying it off about a year early.
Oh exciting.
Congrats And how did you end up paying it off early? Are you just smashing down the debt or is that just part of the plan, Like, how did you decide, all right.
We're going to get rid of this before the time is up.
We have just been saving. We haven't done extra payments just because it was a little bit tricky with the way the loan is set up. So we've just made extra payments into our savings account that we will just do one final payment very soon and just finish that off.
Ah. How exciting.
All right, you have gone from being eighty thousand dollars in debt to now only ten thousand dollars, but with a plan to get rid of it. What do you think your best money habit is? We need to learn from you, my friend.
So I would say my best man habit is, I'm really good at budgeting, and you know, I know what's coming in and coming out at any given time of the week or whatever. So I have a you know, general budget that we stick to, but I always check each week you know, do we have something extra, Do we have a wedding coming up that I need to put aside money for a gift for whatever. So I do have a lot of different accounts, like we've got
gift fund, regio fund, all different accounts like that. But for me, it's just so good to have it all separated and I can see what we've got for each necessary item.
Yeah, that's so exciting. I love budgeting as well. I am biased, but I would say that's one of my best skills because it's automated. Do you automate your budget or is this something that you go in and manually change things and flip them around?
Like?
What does that budgeting process look like?
I don't automate it. I probably could. I like to just do it myself and know it's done correctly. Though.
Oh that's definitely a thing that's good.
Yeah, So I just go through, you know, when the pay comes in, I'm like, okay, cool, let's distribute those necessary funds to those accounts.
So yeah, no, it makes absolute sense. Flipping the narrative though, what's your worst money habit?
So I asked my husband this because I wasn't sure what to say, and he answered very quickly that I definitely don't treat myself enough. That's been a bit of an issue for us.
Oh what a honey.
He's always saying, like, just go and get your nails done, just do this. But I think I definitely have a little bit of an obsessive personality. And I'm like, no, I either do it every week or I don't do it at all, Like I'm either budgeting for this or I'm not.
So yeah, I'm like that. I'm an all in kind of girly like it's all or nothing for me. Like if I am getting my lashes done, I'm getting them every two weeks and we are committed.
To the cause I don't want them one off.
Because I feel like I'll get used to them, Like if I budgeted just once, I'll be like, well now, I don't want to get rid of them, like if I can't thought it ongoing, like I can't afford it because I can't afford it mentally to be taken off me.
Yes, I'm the same, Like it's easier to not do it than to miss out one time.
Yep, No, I agree.
It's so silly though, hey, because you're like, oh, but like getting your nails done once should be a little treaty treat exactly.
So yeah, that's definitely my worst money habit. I think I still stress. I still have that scarcity mindset of oh my goodness, like there's a bit of trauma bay, I think from what we've gone through. So yeah, I think I still think, oh no, we're going to get another tax bill, but it's all done. My husband has a wager's job now, so it's not going to happen.
Oh okay, So that really takes the pressure off, especially that side of things. And also the stability is probably very attractive. Hey oh yes, definitely, subcontracting can be quite tough because albeit really good rates, it's not consistent.
Yes, exactly like he was earning such good money, but I would prefer a consistent pay each week any day. Then, yeah, you sporadic payments?
Well literally all right, money dis At the very start of the show, you said you thought you're a B minus and I'm hearing a lot about how good you are with money and you're smashing down debt and like basically being a queen juggling family life and work and your husband's work and everything else in between. Do you still think you're a B minus. If so, why if not, what do you think you are now?
Look, I probably could be a little bit more generous with myself. I think I'm definitely in the B range. Like, I'm still working on getting our budget to the best it can be, so you know, I feel like we've got a bit more room for improvement, and I think, you know, what we've achieved has been amazing. But I think once we get to that next stage and I can see that we're able to say, for a home and pay a deposit, then I'll definitely put myself up into that A range.
I love it well.
I can take you immediately to at least a B plus, maybe an A minus because I'm going to give you my money masterclass.
You've said a couple of times that you want.
To just get a little bit more on top of your budgeting, and like, I don't mean to be biased, but I'm pretty good at it, and it made a whole money masterclass so that I can basically do it
for you. And if you love a spreadsheet, this one is all automated for you and then obviously has a whole heap of like videos to get back on top of it, and at this point, I feel like they might be really constructive for you and your husband to sit down and do because it goes through a lot about like money stories and money mindsets, so that this next chapter of your money life can be, you know, starting exactly on the same page and maybe having deeper
discussions about you know, where he's come from, because you mentioned before he moves countries twice, and you know you're meeting in the middle. I reckon we could make that middle a little bit clearer so that you can both be super excited for the next chapter ahead. So I'm going to give that to you because I just think it's gonna help.
Thank you so much. I'm so excited.
Well after the show, I'm gonna slip into your emails and make sure all of that is set up. But I'm excited that you think that you're on the way and that we are both on the same page. But Moneys, unfortunately, that is all we have time for today. It has been an absolute pleasure getting to know you. And as I said at the very start, before we even started recording, you just look so familiar and you sound so familiar.
So I am convinced.
We've cross paths before, but I know the community is going to love your story as much as I have loved hearing it, so thank you so much for sharing it.
It has been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
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