Taking Control Of Your Finances In Your 30s

Hello, my name's Santasha Nabananga Bamblet. I'm a proud Order Order Kerni Whoaltbury 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.

Let's get into it.

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

Hello, and welcome to She's on the Money Podcast. Millennials who want financial freedom. Welcome back to another money diary where I get the absolute privilege of sitting down with one of our She's on the Money community members and asking them all the pervy details about their money story.

Like?

I think for me, I didn't fully understand why they did it. But they also went through a period of job loss, mortgage rates being at a in to twenty percent when they bought their home, and just raising three kids with income would have been challenging. But at the same time, they never made us feel like we were going without.

Yeah, so it kind of went on the family. It wasn't there being cheeky or rude. They were kind of like, ah, this is income coming into our business or you know, our home.

Yeah.

I feel like it's a fickle position to be in because I think if you and I sat down and said, you know, if a child owns money, whose is it, I think we'd both be like, well, it's the child's it needs to put in an account for them. But like at the time, I'm sure that that was just maybe not part of the conversation, Like I feel like it wasn't until now that we are really prioritizing creating wealth for future generations through their own savings and their

Probably a D.

So I am really good with budgeting, really good with things on paper, but the adsh side of my brain likes to be the spender in the relationships.

So yeah, it's like having an alter ego. She's a little bit spendy. I get it, I get it. Yeah, money Dorist, I want to know more about your money story. I feel like there's a very interesting story. As you said, you've packed a lot into your thirty six years. Can you tell me a bit more about that journey?

So? I have worked full time since I was about sixteen. The only time that I haven't worked is when I had my daughter and became.

A single mum.

So lived off Senlink benefits for a little while, then met my husband and lost all of those senalink benefits because she was too high. Then lack of childcare I just saw may not work. So we just made it work.

Oh my gosh. I feel like working since sixteen is very relatable for a lot of us. I want to know more about this journey of becoming a single mom, and then not being a single mom and now becoming the breadwinner. What led you to becoming the bread winner in your family.

My husband kept making sacrifices for us when we met. So if that meant I didn't have to find a job, he didn't let me find a job and didn't tell me I needed to find a job. If it meant that we could go away on the weekend or I could see my friends, he wouldn't make it happen. So when he had health issues, I knew that that was my chance to repay the favor. And I was very fortunate to go back to my pre child job. So it was the job that I love and I'll do

Yeah, that's very fair. I want to know a bit more about this. I mean, ADHD is something that I have and I have been working with since I was like seventeen when I found out, and I feel very grateful that I got what I would call an early diagnosis, especially in the space where women are usually either not diagnosed or diagnosed really late. I feel like I've been able to use this as kind of like a superpower. And I know what medication can do, and I know

I found out when I was thirty five. So just before my birthday last year, I found out. I had a performance review with my boss at work and she was diagnosed with ADHD and said, you are literally doing everything that I do. Go and get tested. And I did. And my best friend, who is a GP, said, I can't believe, after all these.

Years, you finally have a diagnosis.

Imagine how how different your life would be if you found out at fifteen or sixteen.

Legitimately, like it's something that now you look back on it, do you go, oh my god, this makes so much more sense, like as to why I struggled in these areas or this was really hard, or I just couldn't seem to catch up with where everybody else was at, Like is that something that you're still, I guess grappling with, because I would be frustrated. Like I even remember when I was diagnosed, albeit very early at seventeen, I still remember being like, are you saying that school wasn't meant

Yeah, one thing for me was the amount of jobs that I went through after I had my daughter. It was a good amount in like five years, and it was just that I didn't feel like I fitted in anywhere.

So that would be my biggest thing.

If I just chosen the industry that I'm in now, straight up, it would be very different to having like thirty jobs over my thirty six years.

But you just don't know what you don't know exactly, like, there's no way that you would have been able to predict that. And obviously, for those of you who don't have ADHD, you might be going, well, how does that impact you? ADHD manifests so differently in women than in men that often we internalize a lot of it and mask our behavior and we just from the outside looking in, you might go, no, she absolutely doesn't have ADHD, and that's us being really good at masking it. I'm interested

Like she said to me, Oh my god, this makes so much sense. Imagine the jobs you could have not done, Imagine the boyfriends you could have not had. She's very straight to the point and very blunt, and that's why we're best friends.

I love her. I love her. What an icon. And now what's life like that you know you have ADHD, like you've obviously been diagnosed, Like, where on this journey are you at?

I am now at the point where I have realized that I have ADHD and it's not a bad thing. Twelve months ago I went through a bit of a midlife crisis because I was trying to trying to navigate this whole new thing and trying to work out what I was doing good, what I was doing bad. But fortunately for me, the job that I have gives me my little jop I meane hit, So it never really came about in the very random ways that it does.

In my job.

So very cool. I love that you found something that fits with you. So now I want to know what do you do for work? How much are you earning as the breadwinner in your family currently?

So I work for a national equipment hire company. My income at the moment is just over seventy thousand a year, but hopefully in the next felve months will go up to about eighty or ninety.

Yeah cool, Why is that going to go up?

I am doing a leadership program, I cool, will hopefully take over managing an area of my business, which will be really cool.

I love that.

So tell me more about this leadership program. Are your work funding it for you or is this self funded or how did that come about?

No work, work funded, which is amazing.

And they essentially it's a nomination based program where they see good and bad in the business, and it's just a way of getting women especially involved because our industry is very male dominated.

I can imagine equipment higher being quite masculine. Do you work with lots of women like you said that it's a male dominated industry. Is that the same for your workplace or what does that look like day to day?

Yeah, it's definitely the same for my workplace. I have a male boss now I used to have a female boss, and I have a male mechanic and male salespeople, so it is very male dominated. Plus the industries that we deal with where I live are very male dominated as well.

Yeah, wow wow, I feel like that would be a lot as well as going through this ADHD diagnosis, You're just like, oh my gosh, my life has been sent into a spin. No longer do I know exactly who I am. I'm finding out who she is. But there are a lot of people who probably don't understand to this journey to begin with that are surrounding me.

Yeah.

One like, there's just not that level of support you deserve right now. So I definitely can see that money. Diarist, I want to know you set in your email in and I thought this was the sweetest thing ever, and I really want to know more about it, you said starting your masterclass. I was brought to tears by the first module. Now, the first module I really talk about like your money story and what that means to you and how important it is to set goals one. Why

Growing up, I didn't have very good habits around money. So I had my parents who would obviously spend quite big and they would get finance for everything humanly possible that you could imagine. Then, moving eight hundred and something kilometers away from my home and everything that I knew.

Again struggled with what needed to do so for me.

I didn't really understand what values I had around money and what aspect of money needed to change in my life until I met my husband.

And what does that look like?

Now?

We have two amazing little children, and we basically want to give them everything that we can, so we make everything about family. We make sure that we give our kids experiences instead of materialistic things. We make sure that we tell them that we love them. We make sure that we show them how expensive things are. So they can understand the value of money from an early age instead of getting to the point of me where I

Oh, I love this, which is.

Really sweet, Like, you know, I want our kids to have those experiences because I missed out on those as a child.

I feel like now i'm a mum, I can really resonate with that, Like I want Harvey to have everything that I didn't have or you know, experiences that I wasn't able to have. But I mean, this is so lame. But the other day I found on Facebook marketplace these Winnie the Pooh bookends that I remember seeing when I was little, and I don't know how they ended up popping up, but they popped up and I was like, oh my gosh, those are those bookends that I desperately wanted.

We sit down with our kids and we tell them when we're buying something how much it will cost and if we can go to another shop. So when we do wear grocery shopping, we will explain to our daughter, especially that we can buy her a packet of Oreos, which might be three dollars fifty, or we can buy her a packet of the home brand chocolate biscuits that might be a dollar or a dollar fifty. They're essentially the same item, but there's a cheaper way of doing.

It, and you can still have your cake and eat it too.

Yeah, you can still have that treat, but it's not going to be the brand name. But when the brand names are on special, we'll always buy them, and that's their reward.

And it means that probably when you're grocery shopping, she's keeping her eye out and making sure that she's on top of it. And I'm assuming that when you said mainly my daughter. That's just an age, right, Like, that's just because I'm assuming that your son is too young to comprehend this just yet.

My son is three going on I think about thirteen most.

Of the time.

Oh yep, yep.

But he would see monster trucks, excavators, machines and just buy them. He wouldn't care how much they cost.

I feel like that is a male versus female thing. Are you finding that maybe the narrative around money that you're teaching your daughter might not work for your son. Are you going, Oh, my gosh, like I thought I had this nailed. Now I'm going to have to find a different strategy. Like what do you think that will look like?

Yeah, my son is a little negotiator already, so he will always try and negotiate with me when we are at the shops to buy him a truck because he's been good at the shops. So he'll negotiate that. Whereas my daughter, we'll negotiate to a degree, but it'll be something that she really desperately wants to save up for, not an instant reward like he wants.

I love that you're seeing their little personalities come out from one's good at delayed gratification, she's saving up for her overseas holiday, and the others like monster truck right now, right now, mum, yes, all right, let's go to a really quick break on the flip side. I want to know a bit more about debt and your best and worst money habits, and what your financial future looks like.

I think they will always have their own little personalities, but we want to teach them both the same value and whatever that looks like to them, they can make up their own mind. I don't want them to have the same relationship that I've got or that my husband has where he remembers, you know, it was mince and sausages for dinner because it was cheap, whereas and then

Yeah, which is amazing for a kid, But you don't understand what that means in the biggest scheme of things, right, or even how that impacts you now that you're thirty six, right, Yes.

Yeah, the reality for me was I saw it as a treat, but as I got older, I saw it as well. Mum and Dad didn't really want to cook, or it was just convenient for them to go and get takeaway.

So that's what we did.

Whether it cost twenty dollars or thirty dollars, they didn't care because it was convenient.

Yeah, and I feel like all of us put a price on convenience, but often that price eats into our future goals and what we want to create moving forward. You mentioned that your partner had a little bit of a different lifestyle growing up. Is this something that you've sat down with your partner and be like, all right, tell me about your money story. I'll tell you about mine. Like, how do these money conversations come up in your marriage?

Yeah, So we're very fortunate early on that we had good conversations about money. His parents have always been a one income family and it's just always worked well for them, And that was the initial shock for me to begin with, because my mum worked part time and then full time, and my dad always worked full time. If they wanted

It's crazy when you get to sit down with someone and talk about how different your experiences were, because you would you know, if we just put it on paper and don't look at the details here, you would assume that the parents where you have two full time working parents would obviously have the more affluent experiences in life, right, Like you just assume that that's the case, but that's actually not the reality, because it's all about our value system and what we know all about money and how

I was thirty six.

Isn't it liberating? Though?

Is then?

It's so exciting knowing actually I can create the life I deserve, Like I can do that all on my own. It doesn't matter where I've come from, what my story is, what my values were. They can be different, that's right.

Like my kids are obviously quite young, but we are about to take them on their second Gold Coast holiday.

I love that.

So they will go and have a week out at the Gold Coast and absolutely love what they do. And then our next big family holiday will be Japan in a few years.

I love that and know the kids on board. Do they know it's going to be Japan in a few years? Are we like working towards this goal as a family.

My daughter has already got her kimono packed. Basically she is ready.

What a little honey.

She is a little like Harodjooku girl. Basically she loves it.

She's so keen. Oh my gosh, I love this so much. All right, money, dires, I've got to get back to the questions. I want to know, what are your thoughts on investments. Do you currently invest? If not, what's the plan? How does it work? Do you have these conversations with your partner?

Tell me all, I now do invest through my work. We were lucky enough to be able to purchase some shares and I did that last year.

How cool is that?

About a one thousand dollars worth of shares through them, and then through the podcast I downloaded the Shares's app and used the She's on the Money code got the two dollars bonus.

We got our free money.

I love that, and invested some more.

So I'm sitting at about two hundred dollars in that and I regularly put about fifty doll one hundred dollars a month in it.

Oh my gosh, I love this. Who are you?

I'm getting there.

We have a financial planner now as well that managers investments, so we sit down with him probably every six weeks.

Every six weeks. Oh my gosh, he's aggressive. I love it. You are definitely making tracks. Tell me how do you find your financial advisor? And can I be really pervy? How much do you pay him for this pleasure? Because financial advice hard to get can often be not that affordable. What's it costing you?

So?

I have known our financial advisor for nearly twenty five years. He's a very good family friend and never really thought that I would want to trust someone that I know. But my husband was very keen on the idea of trusting someone that we know because they're not going to sugarcoat anything for us. Yeah, it costs us about five grand a year, but it's money well worth spent in the long run.

I agree, And I feel like as an ex financial advisor, it is so hard to articulate to people the value of advice, and you obviously go but v that's five grand a year and money diarist told us so that she's the breadwinner and she's earning seventy thousand dollars, Like that is so much of your budget going towards this? What types of goals are you working with your financial advisor for? Like, how do you see as somebody who

We want to make sure that our kids aren't inheriting any debt so I often say to my husband that despite my parents being mortgage free, I'm still going to inherit the debt, their unsecured personal debt. I will inherit that, and that's my little nest eg that's going to go away.

So I don't want that for my kids.

Yeah, that's very fair. And have you done I guess the full suite has. He looked at your superannuations, he looked at your insurances, like, tell me a bit more about this investing plan.

Yeah, so we had to be very transparent, looked at everything. He sat me down and said, no more weekday coffees, no more unnecessary spending, no more ten trips a week to the shops because you've forgot one thing and you've gone and bought thirty other things.

I feel like that's such an ADHD thing, though, So like having a financial advisor when you're a little bit neurospy, seat very good idea.

Yeah.

He is very honest and loves giving me advice. And because I know him, he will compare me to his wife, who I also know, So I don't feel like I'm doing something wrong when I know that other people essentially have the same experience.

Yeah, I feel like that shared experience really helps. And I mean that's the crux of Sheese on the Money, right, Like, we all love sharing our experience because we know a problem shared is a problem halved. But then also how validating is that when you hear a money story and you're like, oh my gosh, that's me or oh my gosh, like I totally have been there, like one sharing it it makes you feel lighter. But then also by sharing it, you're validating the experiences of others, Like I don't want

We have two personal loans.

We went through a period where we weren't earning enough and I fell into the trap of getting personal loans to help bump up the income that we were missing out on. So now our plan is to get rid of them. As quickly as possible, because again financial advisor has told us any overtime or extra money that we get and we don't have a plan for it should be going on that loan. And that was a big mindset change for my husband and I because we were, well, when it's gone, it's gone, Like what if we need

Yeah, exactly. That's why we're going to establish an emergency fund and have a pool. That makes sense to you. I feel like that must be something that you look at and you said, look, unfortunately, we went through a period and like I fell into the trap. I don't know if I would call that falling into a trap because you said that you weren't earning enough to keep up with expenses. So tell me a bit more about

No, was to pay out one of our cars, so it didn't get repossessed, and it was to pay out a few other little debts that we had, So there was smaller debts that we need to pay out, but bulk of it went on when we needed new appliances, so we needed.

Yeah, and they're necessities.

Yeah, so a lot of necessity items. But at the same time I look at it and go, I can't believe that we didn't even have a thousand dollars sitting there to go and get a new fridge that we needed.

But is that now our mindset shift? You're like, oh my gosh, we've come so far, Like now that wouldn't even be something that we comprehend.

Yeah, so funny enough. My husband this morning wrung.

Me and said, hey, we need a new dishwasher, and I'm like, yep, no problems. Let's go down to the shop this afternoon and have a look at how much they cost, and when we get back from our holiday we'll go.

And buy one.

How good are you looking at that?

Going?

Wow, that's knew me like, who is she?

Yes?

I love that? And is that going to become I guess a big goal that you work towards and go all right, well, you know, dishwash is going to cost us five hundred bucks. That's another thing to put on the list that we're going to work towards. But we're not just going to get it immediately.

On debt, Yeah, one hundred percent.

Like we are fortunate that we do get over time and I get on call allowances. So when I do those extras, I have that, well, this weekend that I'm working is going to pay for this item that we really want.

Yeah.

Wow, I love that, and I feel like that's so exciting. Tell me a bit more about how much have you got to go on these debts, Like how much is left on each of them.

So with our personal loans, we've got about twenty five thousands left. The plan is to just look at doubling the repayments over the next couple of weeks and seeing how quickly we can smash them out.

Yeah, it's pretty challenging.

I feel like it's exciting. I know it feels challenging and it feels overwhelming. But for me, when I was paying off my debt, and when I worked with clients who were doing the same thing, having a plan and going all right, let's break it down, let's go all right, we've got twenty five thousand dollars, how much can we pay off each month? You know, you might go, we can pay five hundred dollars off each month, and you kind of extrapolate that out and put a date on it,

Yeah, that's what our plan is. So once their personal ends are gone, the repayment for those is essentially half of our more inter repayment. So we will then look at allocating that money to the mortgage to get rid of that.

Yeah. See that's sexy as hell. I love that. Tell me about this mortgage. What's your mortgage, how much is it for and when did you buy?

We bought in twenty twenty two. Our mortgage was two hundred and eighty thousand, and we spent two hundred and fifty on our house and had thirty thousand left to do some lovely little upgrades that our very old house needed were I think just over two hundred and sixty thousand.

Oh that's exciting.

Yeah, but the plan is we all just smash it out. We pay it weekly because it is much better in the long run.

Interest is calculated daily.

Yep, that's a hack.

Did you learn that from your financial advisor?

Yes?

Yeah, I feel like that's such a financial advisor thing to say. So mortgages, and this isn't for you, because you clearly know this is for everyone listening. Your mortgage is calculated, or the amount that you owe on your mortgage is calculated daily. So every single day, the bank does some maths in the background and calculates exactly what you owe, and at the end of the month they're like, well, you owe X, but if you broke up that x that you're paying at the end of the month on

I think a rough calculation was about ten years. But we want to have our mortgage paid out by probably twenty thirty four.

Oh my gosh, that's so soon for a mortgage. Have we got a big plan for that? Is your advisor going, heck, yes, we can do this.

Yeah, we are just going to keep throwing everything humanly possible that we've got urt favorite the mortgage, get it out of the way as quickly as possible, and hopefully look at retiring by the time we're fifty five.

Is that not iconic? I feel like I heard in your voice earlier when we're talking about dirt you were like, yeah, we have like these personal loans, and I could feel the disenchantment, But at the same time you're literally like, Okay, cool, So we actually have a really big plan for that, and we're actually going to be doubling our payments and our mortgage. By the way, there's a plan to get out of debt by twenty thirty five and retire early. Like what in the dream life? Like that's so exciting?

Is it not?

It is.

I don't think we could have done it if we did this inner city like we do live regionally. But it works for us because this is where we have work, this is where our kids have grown up.

That's ho for us.

It works, But you know, I dearly if we did live elsewhere, we'd have the same goals.

I love this so much. All right, I want to know you've obviously recently worked out that you're ADHD, and obviously that impacts your money story significantly, So I don't know, what do you think your best money habit is?

Best money habit would be never paying full price for anything. I only buy clothes when.

They're on a sale.

I love this.

We have an op shop in our town that has really good designer pieces, and I will only go through there once a month and have a look and see what's in there. Normally some of it's brand new.

With tags, so oh my gosh, amazing.

I've never really overspent necessities that I need. And the biggest thing that my husband taught me was when you're buying things in like the Good Guys or Half Norman, the ticketed price is never the final price. There is always room for negotiation.

I love that that's words to live by. There is always room for negotiation. I don't care what it is we're negotiating it.

Yeah, negotiation isn't my strong point, but I do like taking my husband because he feels.

Good when he gets that negotiation.

Of course I love that. And also I mean, does that not make you a great negotiator because you brought the right tools to the conversation, Like I don't have to be good at it. If I brought the right tools and the tools is my husband ten out of ten?

Exactly?

Tell me a bit more about what you think your worst money, how it is worst that.

Is probably looking at something and that impulsive purchase. So I will go and pick up stuff off the rack. I will go and order something that I've seen pop up with a sponsored post on Facebook and go, oh, yeah, I definitely needed.

This, Yeah, victim of the algorithm. Same.

Sometimes I'll use it, sometimes I won't. So I'm trying to get into the habit of giving myself that twenty four hour.

Calling off period.

Yes, so I will save it and then if I come back to it in twenty four hours, then it's a definite need to discuss purchase.

If I don't come back to it in twenty four hours.

I go, oh, it was just my ADHD wanting shiny things.

Oh my gosh, I know we like bower birds. We literally are like, oh, shiny, I need it, like anything on TikTok. I'm like, oh, I definitely need that. Like do you find I don't know. I feel like this is a millennial ADHD thing. Is your phone full of screenshots of things that you think you might need later. Yes, it's like a graveyard of all of the thoughts I've had while scrolling or doom scrolling the internet. Like, I actually am embarrassed. I'm going to go find how many

That's your neurospicy.

Brain exactly, Oh my gosh. All right, well, it has been so good chatting to you. I feel like I've learned a lot. But I want to kind of bring something up, the elephant in the room. At the start of this money Darry, you told me you were a D. You said, look, I really reckon, I'm a d I've

I think I'd probably move myself up to like a C plus or a B minus, But there's always m for improvement because you're never perfect.

No nobody is perfect. But I want to know what would it take if I said, or money, darist, what would it take to get to an A What types of money behaviors or changes do you think you would have to make?

Think for me not having any unsecured depth and anything that isn't an asset.

I love that, But that's a plan and you've literally got a time and a date for it, So we're well on the way to being a money darist. It has been an absolute pleasure having a chat with you. I have adored this. I feel like it's so relatable, especially to me, like we're both a little bit neurospiasy, but also to the community. I adore having these conversations, and I just know that the community is going to go, oh, this money darist was a cracker. This was a good one.

Thank you.

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