The Move That Made Homeownership Possible

My name's Tatasha Bamblet. I'm a proud First Nations woman and I'm here to acknowledge country. Te Glenn Young Ganya Niana, kaka ya Ya bin Ah Waka Nian our gay In Nimbini, yak um Jar, dominyamiga Umaga, Ihowaka, Nile, Waman damon Immalan, Bumba bang Gadabomba in and now in Waka ghana on yak rum Jar Watanadaa. Hello, beautiful friends, we gather on the lands of the Aboriginal people. We thank acknowledge and respect the Abiginal people's land that we're gathering on today.

She's on the Money.

She's on the Money. Hello, and welcome to She's on the Money the podcast and let's you be pervy about other people's money habits for the educational purposes of course. Welcome back to another one of our money diaries, brought to you by Sky Wealth, 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 a message and it sounded exactly like this. Hi Victoria, and she's on the money.

Way, absolute pure chaos all the time.

I love that. How old are your boys?

Ten, three and six?

Chaos ages?

Yep, one hundred percent in the best possible way.

But like she's a busy girl, and she's also like, oh, by the way, we're just, you know, managing some renovations. Why don't we open a business? We've got heaps to do. Would you like to do a money diary with me? Because I am very excited to jump right in. Yeah, our life is always full on.

There's always something going on. There's always things happening.

All right, let's dive straight in. My first and always the first question of every money diary is what grade would you give your money habits? If I asked you to give them a grade from A through to F, I would.

Say I sit at a B. I love to budget, but I am not great at sticking to said budget.

You know what, we can't be good at everything, So that's a pretty good place to start. Money diary is my favorite question. Tell me a little bit more about your money story. Where'd you come from? Where are you going?

For me, growing up, money wasn't a big feature.

You know.

I'm sure money at times was tight, but as kids we never really paid attention to it. We lived a pretty comfortable life, but not extravagant by any means. I think. For me, when I started to really think more about it was after my husband and I got married and we came back from our honeymoon and we had fifty dollars in our bank account, absolutely living paycheck to paycheck, And that was the point where I said, I can't

Firstly, how was your honeymoon?

Was it good? That was lovely?

But coming back, were you really stressed? Were you anxious? How are you feeling about it? When you say I couldn't live like this? What does that actually mean?

Well, we were renting, I was only working casually, we were wanting to have kids. We just had a miscarriage just before our wedding, So just before your wedding. Yeah, we were going to be twelve weeks at our wedding and it didn't quite happen that way.

I'm so sorry to hear that.

That's okay, it happens. It's happened since then quite a few times. It's something we've definitely struggled with.

I can absolutely resonate with that, and it's bullshit. It's the worst club to be involved in ever. But at the same time, it's just like, why did it have to happen around your wedding? Like we don't need the sparkle of that taken off as well, Like we're already having a shit time. Why kick us while we're down.

The only upside was that meant I went on our honeymoon and could drink as much as I wanted.

And you needed to do that, So obviously it was really stressful. What did change look like?

It was after we had our first son. I wasn't working, My husband had this job wasn't paying very well. He was paid monthly, so we were on one income and really making things stretch. And we grew up in the sort of western Sydney area and even then, and this is ten years ago, we could see that we were going to really struggle. We both worked in hospitality, so buying a house there just seemed totally out of our reach. So we decided to move to regional New South Wales.

That's kind of exciting, but also a massive move. Like I feel like the level of like reflection you have to do to go hold on, hold on, hold on. I don't know if our future is going to look the way we want it to, and to be not only reflecting on that and going that's pretty terrible like, we don't want that for us, but to actually make the move, Like, I just know so many people who think that way, and they go, well, I live in Sydney.

I was twenty three when I had my eldest, so we were young. None of my friends had kids yet, but all my friends were there, my family was all there, so it was hard to move away from that support network.

Yeah, absolutely it would be.

But working in hospitality is very easy to hop from job to job, and I think we had sort of recognized we'd got to the point where my husband was going to struggle to find work that would allow him to earn more Over the long run. Yeah, it was probably just the trigger. I was living off senilink and one income and making things stretch that just wasn't our thing.

And being in hospitality. I feel like it takes a certain personality type to thrive in that space, and like you're probably good at making friends, So like moving you'd be like, Okay, well I'll get another hospitality job because I'll make friends there when we get there, whereas someone like me, I'd be like, if I move to a foreign town, like I don't even know how I would connect with other people.

Oh, no, I have struggled connecting to people. I think. No, I made friends going back to work. That's why I went back to work. Initially was just to speak to adults again, and remember that I'm an adult who can speak to other adults. Yeah, it's definitely taken quite a while, and we were fortunate some of my family moved out here after us, so now we have some of them close again, which is fantastic.

How good.

I love that.

So tell me a bit more about you and your husband. What do you guys do for work and how much money do you earn?

So I work for a not for profit in an office based job. That is quite a new role. I've only been in it for six months, my first out of hospitality job, which is very exciting. Oh, congrat And I earn about eighty eight thousand and I do salary package.

Okay, that's nice.

And my husband is still a chef he earns ninety five at the moment. That is a bit of a tricky situation we're going through at the moment.

What does that mean. I've got to be pervy.

I know, you absolutely have to be perty. His workplace has gone into administration as of last week. Yeah, so we are waiting to see if there's a redundancy. We don't know. He super hasn't been paid for some time, so we are very much waiting to see what the outcome is.

Oh my goodness, that is really upsetting, especially like the timing and then also just what do you mean no super has been paid in the recent times? Like is this like for months or the time he's worked for them, or like what most of the.

Time they've made some very small sporadic payment. That is so rude. Yeah, so that's really difficult and it's definitely put us in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment.

Yeah, absolutely, as well as being stressful because in administration, like if they go into administration and they ultimately get shut down completely, like there's nobody to chase for those super payments. Usually no, I've.

Looked into it. I think he will get paid out his annual leave. Yeah, most likely of redundancy because that is government guaranteed, but the super is not. So we do not that.

Oh my goodness. Yes, well, if you need my help, you let me know, my love, Like, I've always got a little bit of fight to give to stuff like that. Now tell me you said earlier, like you know, we moved to regional New South Wales market like hadn't boomed yet, took off, sold that property and then we bought like essentially our forever home and we want our kids to grow up there. I feel like that's the biggest financial goal.

Right now, we are smack bang in the middle of a renovation. Well and actually now I'm hoping we're towards the end of this renovation. Yeah, so we have been working towards this one for a while. We are still trying to have another.

Baby, So yay, four babies.

That is a potential. We have gone through IVF for one of our three, but I do not want to go through IVF again. Financially, I don't want to go through it again. Emotionally, I do not want to go through it again. I definitely feel I am getting older, and I also want to be done with having babies now. I want to move on to that next stage.

You're only thirty five, You're still a child, basically, like people are having babies in their fifties. Now, this will happen, It'll be fine. I'm manifesting this for us.

Yes, so yeah, I don't know if we have any other big gals at the moment. I definitely have been putting a bit into shares, but again I'm sort of pulled back on that in the last month while we wait to know what's happening. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like our our goals are actually probably on pause a moment.

Well, I mean yeah, because like that's a really stressful thing. And like when you told me your income, I'm like, oh, eighty eight and then your husband's on ninety five, Like you're like that's comfortable, especially if you're in regional New South Wales. You already own your property, Like, yes, life is stressful. You've got three young boys. That's really expensive. Like life happens, but like you could totally find a way to have another kid. But then you find out

Yes, yeah, No, we bought this house fully intending to renovate the kitchen that is where we love to be. We did not intend to have to renovate a bathroom or repair the roof. They're the main things that were unintentional. So we have, yeah, spent more than we had want to do. We did have to remortgage to draw out a bit more funds to do it, but I think we will get it done soon and have the little bit of money left over hopefully. Yeah.

And will that make it a little bit more I guess comfortable, given we're just not sure what's happening with your husband's situation in your husband's job.

Yeah, definitely. We've got one big bill left to pay, which is our builder, and that one wasn't a fixed contract, so I had an idea of what worse would be, and we had budgeted for worst case, but it's looking like it will be significantly less than that. That was definitely a relief. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad that you were able to re mortgage and you've gotten access to that cash. Do you also have like an emergency fund and stuff like that set up?

Yeah, We've got about sixteen thousand in an emergency fund, and i've sort of, oh, Alie, worked out a budget on our worst case scenario and how that'll look and how much we'd have to dip into that each week and how long we could live off that. Yeah.

For Yeah, and talk to me about this conversation, because I feel like this conversation could be really stressful to have, Like, can you tell me how this played out? Because I feel like it happens to a lot of people. Was this something that you foresaw happening or was this something that your husband came home one day and was like, babe, sit down, like what happened in that situation?

He was like, Oh, I have to tell you. I found out something. You can't tell anyone about it yet. Yeah, he found out a few perform the other staff did, so we had a bit of pre warning by a couple of weeks that it was likely to happen. But that's a couple of weeks. It was a stressful conversation. For sure. We are in a very small town now, so everybody definitely for him, job opportunities here are going to be pretty limited.

Yeah, that's really really stressful. All right, let's go to a break because on the flip side, I want to talk to you a bit more about shares and investing because you dangled a carrot earlier and said that you were putting some money in there, and I was like, I really want to ask what I've got a weight, I've got other questions first, So guys, don't go anywhere. We will get to the min a second. All right, money drice, We are back and I get to dive

Yeah, so we're on they dabbling. Literally, we started off with rays and was putting little bits of money in there, occasionally a little lump sum when we'd get a bit extra on tax back. It's only sitting at four thousand at the moment.

That's still very good. Girl. You're thirty five and you're investing, and you have three kids and you're just getting your stuff together like this is good.

Yeah. And then I've just started dabbling in Chaseis and potentially I will move it over. I mean no rush to do so. So that's only got like under one thousand dollars while I just sort of sus it out. I started putting some money aside for each of our kids to invest. I have only just started that, and that is something I've had to stop as well at the moment while we wait and see.

Yeah, of course everything should gone pause, Like we just don't need to be doing anything that could be considered discretionary right now, Like we can catch up later. That is absolutely fine, but we don't need even more financial stress on ourselves during a time where I'm assuming you're pretty stressed.

Yeah, so I'm still putting the money aside, but it's just going into a savings account or an offset account for now while I just wait to see what's what's going.

To happen, work out what's going on, and then we can do that later if we need it. That's absolutely fine, which is honestly pretty good because Chesi's have recently announced and this feels like an ad and I promise it's not. But Chezy's recently announced their kids accounts and they haven't dropped at the time that you and I are recording this, so maybe you're just waiting for that. Like that's great.

Yeah, I started putting a bit in RAYS and then I saw that come out, and I was like, no, maybe I will wait, and yeah, I will just maybe put it all in there once I see it and see what that looks like. So that is a bit exciting.

I love that, And talk to me about superannuation. I feel like that's a stressful topic at the moment as well, So I had to apologize. Feel like I've got you in limbo likera. I'm asking you all about money when you're probably the most stressed about money. So I apologize, but also thank you for being so open with us. Tell me what's in your super and what's in your husband's super, and what are we doing about the fact that he hasn't been paid.

I have just ticked over fifty thousand in mine. Oh no, my husband has seventy, but it should be at ninety. We don't know what's happening with his super yet. I think there's another meeting coming up and we will find out more. I really don't expect he will get everything he's owed. If we're lucky, we might get some of

Yeah, and now I know that you know that your husband's company is going into administration. But one thing I would recommend, so obviously not advice, This is just what I would do in this situation is still going and reporting it to the ATO, so making sure. I don't know if you've done this already, but I would go through the actual proper channel of making a complete report to the ATO to say you are eligible for it,

Yep. Yeah, I think he has reached out. At the time, he was told to wait a week. I don't know why.

Yeah, because his employer doesn't want to have to put that on a balance sheet.

No, but they do have a meeting coming up specifically about super so it will be interesting to see what comes from that. Yeah.

I just I am so critical of these processes. I'm just like one of those people that you know when you're like, oh, she sees the best in everybody. I really do try, but I've seen the worst in everybody too, So I'm always so critical and I'm like, yeah, cool, they're probably going to gaslight him in that meeting and try and make a settlement agreement. But we want full them out. So if you need any help, you reach out,

We have a mortgage that right now is five hundred and forty thousand, and we have a car loan that's we're trying to smash out and that sits at eighteen at the moment.

That's not too bad. Do you know the interest rate on your Carlon?

Hi? Yeah, I do.

It's fixed.

It was a seven year loan and we're on track to pay it off in two years two and a half years.

Oh, how good.

So we're working hard on that. Yeah, and we pay extra off our mortgage each streek to have a bit of a buffer, and so I know that worst comes to worse, I will drop everything back to minimum payments for a bit, yeah, and give us a little bit of more breathing space. Yeah.

So tell me a bit about this mortgage. You owe one hundred and forty thousand dollars. What did you purchase your property for and when?

So we bought this house twenty twenty four for six hundred and.

Eighty Okay, hey, that's really good.

Yeah, this is our second house. So we bought a house when we first moved out here and did quite well from that, so that definitely helped us. We moved a little bit more regionally for this one so we could go a bit bigger, bigger blocker land, a bigger house. Yeah, that's worked.

Out quite well. So tell me a little bit more about that, because you said you bought before the market boomed and did well, what did you purchase that house for and then how much did you sell it for? I'm just so pervy. I'm so sorry, but also I'm not sorry. Please tell me, No, we.

Bought it was when the market was starting to take off. We were going to open homes and people were making offers there on their first open house. Oh my goodness, yes, So I saw this house. I rang the real estate agent. I was like, I want to see this house VAP this weekend on Sunday. He showed us to it on the Sunday. We made our offer on the Sunday. It was accepted on the Sunday.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah. It was really close to where we were renting. It was in our price range. So we bought it for three hundred and eighty Yeah in twenty eighteen.

How good? And then when did you sell it? And for how much?

For so last year we sold it for seven hundred and.

Five stop it. That is literally so cool. Did you see that type of property price increase coming? Because like that would have blocked you out of the market. There is no way that like had you moved out like in twenty twenty four, purchasing for seven hundred grand wouldn't have been on the cards.

We didn't buy it with the thought about where it would head. We bought it because it was. It didn't tick all our boxes. We would have loved an extra bathroom and an extra bedroom. And all these things. But at the time it was in our price range. It was close to a good school. We didn't have school age children then, but we were not far off it,

Yeah, that's so good. So you basically walked away with a three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars profit. Did that then become the deposit or what did you do with that cash?

So we put most of it into the deposit for this house. We held back some for the renovation, yep, and then we re mortgaged to get back a bit more. Again. Yeah, well everything when it's once we realized how much it's going to cost.

Yeah, it's wild, isn't it. And you go, oh, this is worst case scenario. Yeah, we'll budget for that because we're trying to be really smart. And then it's like the worst, worst, worst case scenario and you're like, excuse me, but that's not what I signed up for. But we're already too deep. We don't have a bathroom now, we removed it before we realized that the worst was happening.

Yes, for a while we were without bathroom, without kitchen. Oh no, we still lived in the house while we did all this. Yes, we are ready for it to be finished.

Oh my gosh.

And what does that timeline look like? Are you most there?

Yeah, it's the kitchen's mostly done, the laundry is done. We're just finishing up the bathroom. And it's an on suite, so we have another bathroom.

So that is not not the end of it.

Definitely wasn't my priority. This bathroom had a leak that meant the whole bathroom had to be gutted and replaced.

How frustrated. So not what we wanted to do, No, absolutely not. But then once you start digging you find these things like you can't actually afford to not replace them, because that if you just pretended that didn't happen, you'd end up with a bigger problem down the road.

Yes, so we bit the bullet on that one, and we're not doing anything fancy for that bathroom. Our priority was the kitchen. That's where we've put the things we love and we've made it what we want. But the bathroom we are just happy to keep it simple, basic, as cheap as we could do it in a way that still means it's quality and hopefully we're not leak again.

Yeah, and it's nice to use and like there's no issues. You mentioned earlier that like this is the home you basically want to stay in forever, which is very very cool. Are there any things you want to change after that? You're like, nope, once we're locked in for all of that, Like we're good to go. We don't need to change anything else. We might buy a new couch down the road.

Or it's a slippery slope, then there's always something you look at and think, well, maybe a little like patio would be nice out there, and then I'd love to paint the outside of the house.

Yeah, it is a slippery slope, isn't it.

This is the big renovation. I don't think anything else we do will compare to how big this is. It'll be little bits and pieces down the road, but definitely nothing planned.

Yeah, and they could be expensive, but they're not going to be like a bathroom that you cut then you find out there's a leak and then you have to spend more money. It will be like a let's go get some quotes because we'd love a really nice patio area, and then you get your quotes and you save up for it, and then you can pay for it. At that point, I feel like that becomes a much easier process.

Yes, yeah, I mean unless the other bathroom leaks, which we will keep an eye on, we're.

Not manifesting that. Let's not talk about that. That's not a good idea. So Money direst you guys obviously have done it really well. I want to know, do you have any personal insurances? Like, you've set all of this up, You've worked really hard, You've literally moved to regional New South Wales to build your wealth. How are you protecting it?

Yeah, when we bought our first house, we did go and set up some insurances. I think at the moment we have life, TPD and income cover. I actually had a meeting today two you go look at changing those moving with someone else who were a bit more comfortable with, who might explain it a little bit better. And my husband has quite a few health concerns. That mean I am really keen on making sure we're covered for most of our worst case scenarios.

Well, yeah, your husband's a chef, so if he can't go to work, that's really really physically demanding. How did you work out that you wanted to update all of that? Like, and where did you go? What did you do?

It's something that has been on my mind for a long time, mainly because I keep getting annual reminders to go talk too out previous people and I just kept pretending I didn't see it.

Yeah I didn't see that either. That's crazy.

So quite a few annual reminders have come and gone. I was on a bit of momentum of getting things done and just booked it in. Yeah.

Good.

It actually makes me so happy when people are like, oh, it was on my to do list and I got it done. The annual reminder reminds me of my personal insurances, which I do have to go an update. Not gonna lie like mine aed you for a little bit of a refresh. But my trigger, like every time I think that is when I get any voice, I'm like, oh that's you again. Oh I still haven't updated again? Great, no worries. That would probably be one of my worst habits at the moment. Now I want to ask you

I like to sit down and make a bit of a plan about where our money's going to go, and when things happen like now, I will immediately sit down and I'll rework our budget for our worst case and maybe a medium case scenario, and work out how we can cut things that aren't necessary. Yep, I would say that, And yeah, slowly putting away money here and there is probably my best money habit.

And what would you say is your worst.

I'm very good at putting the money away, and certain things I can put it away. I cannot touch it unless it's for the thing it's for. But I can be very good at deciding to treat myself. Yeah, when there's a sale on Yeah, I can creatively reassign some money that was meant for something else, and I like that.

Yeah, a little creative reassignment that feels a lot more official. Like that means that we probably should do it.

Well, you know, I might buy a gift for myself and then I would say, well, that could come from the account for gifts, because it's a gift.

That may for me, Like if you were born today, it would actually be your birthday, So you deserve a present, absolutely, but you weren't, so you still deserve a present because it's disappointing finding out that it's not your birthday.

Yes, so that's definitely I think I could definitely get better having a bit of self control and sticking to what I actually said in place.

That's fair, But I feel like you're doing a really good job. Like, let's remind you that you are bringing up three young boys in a pretty chaotic economy, and you are going through some pretty stressful money stuff at the moment, and you seem to be holding it all together very well. Might I add, like kudos to you. You're like, no, no, no, we're not bearing our heads in the sand. I'm going to do a budget, and

I love this.

Yeah, it soothed me a bit to be able to sit down and just think about the money side of it, or just think about focus on one thing because there's only so much we have control of at the moment.

Yeah, so tell me. At the start of the episode, you said, I reckon, I'm a b but like, you've achieved a lot, and you've made a lot of sacrifices, and you've made a lot of decisions that have obviously helped you financially to be in a comfortable position, so comfortable that you can genuinely consider having a fourth child, which is really really cool. What would it take to get you to an a like, what does that actually look like in your universe?

I think making a budget that I can stick to that I know I will not spend over my designated categories, getting better sorting the life insurance. You know we're headed that way, so that's probably a positive.

Yeah, you're on it, You're on it.

Yeah, I definitely think focusing more on shares and paying off our house and just putting us into a position where I feel a bit more comfortable at the moment.

That's a very good reason. I'm going to give you my money a master class, just because I know that the budget and cash flow system in there really help. I cannot stop you from dipping into different accounts, but what I can do is give you a bit more structure so it looks a bit more obvious when you are dipping into accounts. And we can't be as crafty or as sneaky because we're predicting things. It's not just

Love a spreadsheet.

Yeah, and you know what, I'm biased. I made this one. I made it aesthetic. I put in a mortgage calculator so you can even play around with what would it look like if I dropped my mortgage or payments to the minimum, not the additional that you're doing, and it will update your budget immediately because it's all like coded in the background to show you what that would look like. Love, you don't have to go, oh yeah, I'm obsessed, like that's very self involved with me to say anyway, money dirist,

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