Alright folks , welcome back to the Property Couch podcast in what is our last of the Winter Series podcast , ben . And today we are talking to someone who bought their first investment property Side Unseen for $69,000 before they went traveling , and the question is do they still have it ?
Oh , it's a good story , Bryce . It's about starting early . There's a big message in here starting early , taking action , never selling . Hang around to the end of the show , because I've got an important announcement . I need your help with something . So what are we waiting for , Bryce ?
Ben does need your help . Folks , Make sure you stick around . Let's rip into the show .
Welcome to the Property Couch where , each week , you get to listen to two of Australia's leading property and money experts Bryce Holdaway , co-host of Location Location , location Australia on FoxTel's Lifestyle Channel and co-host of Escape from the City on the ABC .
And Ben Kingsley , chair of Property Investors Council of Australia and a back-to-back winner of the Property Investment Advisor of the Year Award , and both are partners of the multi-award winning Empower Wealth , co-creators of more the Freelifestyle Design Act , as well as best-selling authors of the Armchair Guide to Property Investing and Make Money Simple Again .
Stay tuned as they bring you the Insiders Guide to Property Finance and Money Management .
All right , ben , we've got a very special guest . Today we're chatting with TPC listener Jodi Paige-Smith . Welcome to the Property Couch , jodi . Hey guys , hello , nice to have you here . Thanks for coming and chatting with us .
We're going to learn a whole bunch of stuff about your particular circumstances and your property portfolio that you've built , but before we do that , let's get to know you a little bit . We always like to start . How was money conversations like for you growing up over the dinner table .
There was no . Well , we grew up in Sydney , western suburbs of Sydney , so not a massive great economic area that we lived in . But my parents we never had any real specific conversations about finances in any way . I remember my mum .
When I first started school she didn't work , and when my brother started school she ended up getting a job and went to work full time . None of my friends Most of my friends' mums didn't work . So that was always a little bit of an uncomfortable situation for me , knowing that my mum worked and their mum didn't .
But so both my parents they worked really hard growing up , but we never went without anything . We had a pretty good childhood , although we lived in a pretty low socioeconomic area .
There was a housing commission unit , big , big complexes that went up when I was young , so our school had a lot of housing commission kids in that school , but we were obviously in that middle class range . We were . You know , there was nothing that we ever went , wanted for , played sports , did everything . But , yeah , no real genuine conversations .
But my parents never held back if we ever had any questions about anything . So we knew we were fairly comfortable , but we weren't obviously not massive overseas holidays or anything like that , but it was a pretty fun childhood .
And what was their main goal Are we talking ? Did they want to be debt free on their family home ? Did they have aspirations of holiday homes or anything like that ? Because obviously back in that generation , to your point to double household income and only the one brother I think I picked up there .
So classic Australian family nucleus in terms of what they look like , but maybe we saw parents where the mother was maybe working part time to supplement the family budget , but here we have two full time workers and effectively a household that's really strong in positive cash flow , I suspect .
Yeah , Well , I know that my mum went . She didn't want to go back to work , and I have a sister as well , so the three of us I'm the eldest . I'm the oldest , then my sister and then brother , all two years apart . I know my mum went back to work through necessity at the time because my dad worked hard .
He worked a couple of jobs at times , had his own businesses and I know they got a massive tax bill at one point . So that's why my mum went to work to cover that tax bill and I remember her saying , and I remember my grandmother saying all the time oh , she's only working for a couple of years until this bill's paid and then she's quitting again .
But she only just retired a couple of years ago . So no , she continued working and that wasn't a short term thing . So it ended up being long term and we did there . I never recall them having any specific goals , for I guess they were just in that generation . They just raised their kids , paid their house off .
No real genuine financial aspirations that I knew of for them at the time . However , later down the track I think it was probably me that spurred them on .
They did end up buying an investment property after I bought one and yeah , I'm there quite comfortable now in retirement and happy , but at the time growing up , I think they just went with the flow like everyone else in our generation and just making ends meet . We did my .
I grew up in the car club so we did lots of traveling and we played a lot of sports . So we did lots of traveling for car rallies and sport , which wouldn't have been cheap . We went to New Zealand . We went to America .
So we did have a couple of overseas holidays when we were later , when we're a little bit older , but other than that it was just pay the mortgage pay for our sport . We went to the local public schools so there was no school fees .
You mentioned before , it was uncomfortable . Like we're the same vintage , jodi , or data , birth very similar . So what was it about uncomfortable ? That mum was working , can you , can you be specific around it ? It was more .
It was not financially uncomfortable . It was emotionally uncomfortable at times , knowing that at the sporting events like my yeah , all the all my friends mums would be there and I went with my friends mum because my mum was at work .
So little things like that was tough at the time , but as an adult I completely appreciate it and I'm very thankful that she worked and instilled good habits in all of us . But that was it . That's what was uncomfortable . It was the emotional uncomfortableness at times of my mum not being there .
And was there any like ? Did your mum express any regret , or discomfort , in fact , or waste , or right through her working career , basically there was got , I have to work because you know ultimately it provides for the family . Or did she start to say , well , wait a minute , we can go to New Zealand , we can go to America , we can start .
You know , we get all of these luxuries because one of the one of the big challenges most households don't realize is three children is expensive to raise , right , I mean , it's very , very difficult to .
So I wouldn't know of too many three person households where , even in our generation , where the mother didn't work part time If we're talking about typical incomes it's a little bit different if you've got a surgeon or a doctor or someone who is high earning , that you would be able to have three children .
But the classic tipping point for our generation was the third child in , you know , forcing the mother to basically go to work at least part time or in some cases , yeah , and I guess it was .
And we and I say that we never went without a thing . Like we , as I said , we lived . We lived in a .
Well , our school I remember our primary school was classed as a disadvantaged school at one point , because we've certainly weren't disadvantaged in any way , but every excursion that we had , every sporting opportunity that we had , every car rally opportunity that we had , yeah , we went on them .
We didn't miss out on anything , which was great , and I know for a fact , if mum wasn't working , there's no way that would have happened at all .
And my brother didn't play a lot of sport , but my sister certainly did as well , and both of us , anything that we needed or wanted to do , we were able to do it , and I know it was absolutely because mum worked .
So , but it was only when I was older that I could realise the beauty in that , and I was thinking you're too many to start , you need a ride .
So okay , so you weren't having conversations . So then everything was about observation for you , right ? So what , what ?
What were the observations that you internalised that then , when you got your first job or started putting your first budget together or , you know , trying to work out the money game , what were the observations you saw from your parents in that , in that time , and did you copy a lot of them , Did you adapt ?
I guess I I don't really recall . I mean I can remember this is you know , back in days I can remember dad giving mum money for groceries each week . So you know she'd hit hand over the cash and so I would see her I guess not consciously , but I'd see her put that aside and subconsciously I could see her budgeting it and putting it towards different things .
So , and they were both very hard workers . So as soon as I could , as soon as I turned 15 , I got a job . 15 , might have even been younger than that , but soon as I was old enough to be able to work , I did . I went and worked and and managed to save and we had a . I don't know that was through . It was obviously through them .
But I've always been someone pretty determined and I knew I needed to save money . I knew we planned when we were in year 10 , friends of my , my two closest friends . So , sitting in year 10 science class , I can still remember it saying okay , we're going to go to uni , we're going to finish uni and then we're going to go traveling .
So I knew from the moment that I started working I needed to save money because we wanted to travel , we wanted to go overseas .
And we wanted to do it not long after being out of uni .
So I was always a pretty good saver . I guess that's from my parents , but I don't really recall them saying they just kind of motivated me along the side . I remember having a poster on the back of my door and with weekly goals and I'd cross it off each time that amount of money was put into my bank account and then I'd have the bonus down the bottom .
So it always put the absolute minimum in my bank and then , as yeah , if I could put more , then the extras were tallying up down the bottom and it was a good thing to see . So and it motivated me more .
The more I deposited , the more I was motivated to put more in so . There we go . There's the habit building , there's the muscle memory working . So a couple of clues there for , obviously , the community . One is that you set a goal so , which was to travel and travel . You need money .
So you know , obviously the byproduct of action is based on the goal that you were going after . You know , once you finish uni , that you wanted to do this gap year or travel or whatever it is you're going to do , and you just went about doing it and that that is the classic aspiring Australian story . Like you get the , you know you get .
You get to see your parents working pretty hard , Right , and , and obviously you're getting the spoils of that . You're building that sort of same muscle memory and seeing that sort of thing work out . So you're setting yourself up for success in those earlier years by the habits that you're doing .
One thing that popped up for me when you were talking about the money exchange between mum and dad that mean that mum's wage went straight into the mortgage , Did you like ? Was that ever known ? Like that money is just basically paying off debt .
Yeah , well , it's not known . Yeah , because it was to pay that tax bill to start with . So I never really saw it and I guess that was pre . You know , everything was cash , like when , when we went grocery shopping it was with the cash . It was not .
Yeah , I don't recall cards or anything like that because it was so long ago , but but yeah , I guess it did . We never really had any specific conversations about that , so I um yeah . Yeah , the only yeah , no , no , no specific conversations , but I assume that it did .
So give us a little sorry , so give us a little clue about how you then structure your own finances right . So you start young 15 , you're into the job career , tell us a little about . Did you , you know , were you one of these people that set up multiple different accounts for different allocations of expenditure that you're going to have in the future ?
You know sort of the multiple buckets ? Or were you disciplined enough to sort of have one bucket and then , but ineffectively , you're disciplined at spending ? How did you , how did you organize your money ?
Well , back then now I've got a million buckets , but back then , when all I had , when I had no kids , no kids , all it was , it was saving to travel , so I had the one bucket for my savings and then the one , yeah , just spending which I didn't have . I mean , I had a car I had . Like when I was old enough to again , my parents gave us all a car .
We had to work on it . So I had my car . That was really the only expenses that I had . So , and everything else just went into my savings account . Because we knew we wanted to travel . And well , I did , actually before we traveled . And then I did buy .
I did purchase my first property before we traveled as well , but that was again with a bit of help from my parents , because that was , yeah , two big expenses property and traveling . It was too much for a part-time worker to achieve by myself .
So so tell us more about that . So you bought a property , so that obviously you know it sounds like there's a very big saver backstory here . And then you've got priorities around travel , but you bought a property before you went off to travel . Yeah , tell it to live in , to invest in . What was the thought process ?
No , it was purely an investment property . I didn't even lay eyes on it . It was purchased , not interstate , but we lived in Sydney and it was in Tweed Hets , so it was effectively interstate . I bought that . I finished June , the end of 95 , and purchased this property in March 96 . So it was purchased .
Thankfully , my parents could see where I was going and where I was heading and I was fairly smart with money , so they were prepared to lend me the deposit because I didn't have the deposit for it , because I was saving to go overseas as well .
But they obviously trusted my habits and knew that I could do it and they let me the deposit , bought this property sight unseen . They had a tenant in it . It was very cheap . Well , certainly now you look at the price I paid . It's been big dollars , wasn't it back then Incredibly cheap ?
Yes , I wish I had bought four of them now when you went to France .
Oh , we've got a pause on that . I wish I had bought four of them now , because most of the time the conversation is easy in the rear vision mirror but it's difficult through the front-line screen .
Yes , totally , totally , and I was lucky to have been able to do it at all because , as I said , my parents helped me and paid that deposit back that they lent me and still managed to keep saving . And , yeah , there was a tenant in it , so it already had a tenant in it , so I just kept it . I've never planned on living in it ever . We still own it .
I don't live in it , never have lived in it , but it's just been ticking over in the background .
So what were the influences ? So back then there wasn't a lot of podcasts and that went around there . So here you are , trying to go and spend your time abroad , and oh , by the way , I'll just pause and buy an investment . Who's planning the seats ? Because these got to move for you or is it something that you just you said ?
your parents saw something in you around money , so I'm keen to understand what they saw , but yeah , I can remember asking mum again I guess rewind , if you use . I don't know how old I was , but I remember most of my friends , their parents , all own their own house . We had our house . We moved .
I only lived in two houses so we had a very small house in Blacktown where I was first born . That got too small for the five of us once my brother came along , so we're all it was a two bedroom place . So my parents moved and then we moved not far away and they still live there . So we never moved house , never . My parents will die in that property .
They will never leave that property either . So but I had a couple of friends . They would just shop and change or people would come in and out of the school and I never quite understood why do these people keep moving house ? And I can remember asking my mum why ? Why do they move houses every six months or not six months every year or so ?
And mum said to me well , they must be renting . I saw what's renting . So mum explained to me quite early on , well , the difference between a mortgage and renting . So to me it made sense .
When I was got that bit older I thought well , people are always going to need a place to live , so why don't I look at buying something , never read anything about it , never , obviously no podcast back then . So it just made sense to me . I saw these friends that needed places to live and I thought , well , why can't ? I do it .
And my grandfather lived up in Tweed Heads at the time and I guess he pointed out a couple . I mean , they never lived in , they actually lived in the caravan park around the corner , so they never had a lot of money either . But I knew the properties were cheaper up there and okay , why not ?
And I said to my friends , even when I bought this place , nobody really understood why I was buying it . I said it's a holiday place , so you're going to move there . I said no , it's just a rental place for somebody to live in . So I honestly don't know how I really motivated me to do it , but it just made sense . It's housing .
People need places to live . People are always going to need places to live , so why not be landlord ?
I was still living at home , so clearly your instinctual , which is , it seems to be serving you really well . Do you want to ? We can see the price you paid . Do you want to share with our audience the extraordinary large purchase price that you paid ? Yes , it was $69,000 .
And a rough valuation today of around $400,000 . So the compounding return and your compounding return of around 6.61% which is pretty awesome and a nice healthy rental yield of around 4% at the moment . So it's a good news story and off the back of that , I'm assuming that that set you up to be able to then , you know , release some of that equity .
So tell us about how that evolved .
Yeah , well , that did . Well , as I said , we then went overseas . We're overseas for about a year , came back , got engaged . Got engaged while we were overseas , so then came back and needed a place to live because we were never going to live in Tweethead . So that , of course , gave us the equity to buy a block of land .
So again , I was just at work one day , was working out at Pennrath , and just saw this was pre-internet . So I saw this . I can still picture the ad . Actually just had land , like in this . Just the local paper had land duplex block for sale , cranbrook . So , okay , we'll give that a try . What's that ? 111,000 . So , oh , that's awesome .
I rang up my fiance at the time and said , hey , there's this block of land out here . Like why don't we look at building a duplex on this block ? It'd be awesome ? He's like , okay , I'm clearly the dreamer out of the two of us , dreamer or do or whatever . He just tends to go with the flow most of the time and thankfully he did .
We went out and looked at this block and wasn't really the place we wanted to live . But so , hey , why not perfect place to live , build a duplex , rent half out , live in the other half and give us a bit of a leg up . So , and it did so , that's what we did . So we bought that . What year was that ? So hard to write ? Done so much 1999 .
So we bought that in 1999 , which is when we got married as well . We took a couple of years to build . So we did have to rent a little granny flat for a little while but built that duplex , rented half of it out , lived in the other half .
We were there for a little while until we had kids , and then things kind of stopped for a while after we had kids .
You're going to a world of other priorities , so it's so important , so important to get the dux lined up in the right order right .
Yeah .
So one investment property , a duplex like it's so important because what we see these days is people in hurry to have families without the backbone of an asset behind them and they're just chasing their tail .
Oh yeah .
So it's a credit to you in terms of what you've done there , Jody so well done on that part . So those , but that's not still in the portfolio , or no ? No , it's not . So tell us , talk us through that .
Yeah . So we bought , we built those , obviously , and it was ticking along nicely . We had our first shot . I was always the main breadwinner back then when I was working full time . Even when I was working part time , I was still earning more than my husband . So , but then , of course , having kids , I wanted the time off , I needed the time off .
So we ended up selling next door Again . Hindsight , that's what I drum into my kids . Oh , our kids are going to have no work with our kids . We just talk about things all the time . So , yeah , I drum into my kids , never , never sell any property , so that's my biggest regret , of course . So we sold next door when we were .
It must have been after , yeah , in between the two kids , in between kids number one and two . But just before we had our first child as well , my husband was got really sick . He was diagnosed with Crohn's disease .
So we had that whole battle going on as well , me wanting time off , him not knowing , and he's an electrician so he has quite a physical job at the time . He does quite a different job now , thankfully , because he's still not very well , but at the time he was on the tool .
So he ended up having quite a lot of time off work which time well , with me going back to work . So he did a bit of the parental duties for a little while while I did go back . And then so we sold next door . Sorry , I got off on a tangent , then there's stories too long . So , yes , we sold next door between our two children .
Then we had our second child and then we moved up to Queensland after that . So that's when we sold the one that we were living in .
But you seem to have repeated the same formula , though , because you've moved to Queensland , you live on the Gold Coast and there's a duplex in that story , isn't there ?
Yes , there is , yes , yes , a subdivision so well , it works so well for us in Sydney . So we thought why don't we do it again ? And when we moved to Queensland we bought acreage property . So it is an acreage property and at the time we couldn't subdivide straightaway . There was a trick around it .
You couldn't subdivide , the property wasn't big enough to subdivide it and sell off vacant land . But the way we could do it was build the house , subdivide afterwards and then they're on two separate titles . So it was a trickier way of doing it and trickier finance to be able to do it , but managed it .
So you had to do it bit by bit by bit and get things revalued each time to get a little bit more money to be able to finish it off and then to pay the subdivision costs , because obviously they're not cheap either . But we had done it before so we knew it worked and that's why we thought we'll try it again .
We built this house not really expecting to stay here , but it works really well for us . So we are still here about seven years later . So we're quite comfortable . We rent next door again .
So it's a classic story here again of you've given yourself choices because you've been able to put the effort in early and so when your husband does get unwell and I know , never , never sell . But that emergency buffer was available there to you to concentrate on the health issues as opposed to concentrating on money .
Like the end of the day , money is not , it's not everything , it's a means to an end , but it's allowed you to basically have some comfort around what was that challenging time ? And then getting over that initial , you know , sort of health hump , you've then been able to sort of refocus .
You've had plenty of time because you started early , which is the other great thing that you did and now you've got this sort of story . So you come out to properties plus your tweed heads property and then you start thinking , all right , well , how many more of these things do I need ?
So did you have any forward thinking or planning around that , or did you go and get some advice around how you were going to organize those things ?
Yeah , no advice at all , Just gut instinct . I think it just worked before and worked again and yeah , which is why we then bought another one . Well , we're currently sitting on one , trying to subdivide it now to do it again . But yeah , no , it's just self motivation . As I said , we don't wear certainly . I'm certainly an action taker .
I will just give anything a go . And I guess I heard you talking to Miller a couple of weeks ago . I was at Miller , I think , and the word you said you know she just didn't have a lot of trust with money . I guess . I'm Australian . I've never seen any really bad times . I have a great faith in the banking system and my parents have .
I know if everything all falls over , I'll just go and move back with mum and dad . I know there's . I will never be homeless , not that that's really ideal with four kids , but I know it's an option . I'll give anything a try , although I have got a bit more less willing to take risks the older that we do get and the more children that we do have .
But interesting part about that is you don't have to take as many aggressive risks . No , that's right . You know like this is a story of both of you and four kids , and you build a multimillion dollar property portfolio with four kids .
Not easy and in my people who start .
You know if they , if they don't plan early or start early with some asset base behind them , it's not going to be possible . But , these days , if you are starting with , ok , we'll just rent a property and then have four kids , you're going to be behind the eight ball because you don't have the equity to draw on . You don't have that ability .
Depending on the timing that you have between the children , you're going to come down to a single income over a period Just not easy , right ? So the probability is a lot lower of those people having success .
But how you engineer success is you look at the pathways that other people have taken and you follow them , and the probability is greater if you buy a property early and you get on the property ladder as an investor straightaway before you then , and then you build off the back of that .
So that's , that's your story , that's my story , that's Jody's story and that's the message we're trying to get out there . There's a lot of noise around . I can't do this now . It's not possible . The deposits are a lot harder . They are , but it doesn't mean you have to buy the deposit for your first home first .
You can potentially think about getting on the ladder and then using that as a stepping stone into the future , and that's that's what we want to tell the community here . There's still hope . It doesn't feel like it Rental crisis , housing affordability but you just got to find a way and you've got to be determined to make it work , absolutely .
Now , jody , we know that . So everything just been just said is just a wonderful credit to you and your action oriented personality . So well done .
The one thing I do know before before we started chatting , is you've got a really strong advocacy for defense and I'd love for you to lean in on that , and I think you might have given us a little clue there with Aaron's health . But why are you so passionate about building the defense part ?
Absolutely . It has saved us so many times and we it's . I can remember we've had it . We found it when we were building the duplex . So forever ago we were around mid twenties we went to a home and building show Never heard a single thing about income protection before and went to this show and actually this is the one thing that Aaron did off his bat .
Normally it's me saying hey , hey , look at this , look at this , whereas this was something he said hey , jody , come over here , have a look , have a look at this . And it was just an insurance broker there talking about income protection .
And yeah , and his words were I can still remember him saying so you ensure your house , you ensure your car , you ensure all these expensive assets , but honestly , how are you going to pay for them ? If , what's the point of ensuring them ? If you lose your income , you can't continue to pay for them , so it's useless paying the insurance on them .
You should be ensuring yourself and it's the best thing that we ever did , and at the time , as I said , we were mid twenties People . I would then go and tell everybody that hey , look , you should look into this , look into this .
And no one would listen to me , but I think they thought I was trying to spruke something to them and they'd never got it until now . They're older than they understand , but we claimed on it . So we have had our policy since we were about , as I said , mid twenties . Aaron was diagnosed with Crohn's at 30 .
He was off work for at least three months and if we didn't have income protection then we would have had to have sold something , as we said before . At least we did have other options , but I'm glad we didn't . We got through that stage . I also claimed for it a few years ago when I ruptured my Achilles .
I was off work again only a couple of months , but again claimed it then . Now I'm sounding like we're really I don't know hyperclinical or what , but I'm not no , no , no .
It's an asset , right , and it's an asset you never want to call on .
It's an asset . Oh , it's not , that's right it is , but we have called on it and we have needed it , so yeah .
But it's not very sexy , jodie , to talk about income protection insurance or , oh gosh , tpd or what , yeah . But here's the deal , and the learning is this for the community is the whole reason that you're investing in property is to self-fund some form of retirement right which allows you to have assets providing income rather than personal exertion .
But during the accumulation phase , that personal exertion is so incredibly critical and for most of us we can . We'll be thankful that we don't have to worry and but also take it a little bit for granted , but that if , as you've just described , if , if either of those two incomes were taken away , the house of cards come falling down pretty quickly , right ?
So it is a very difficult conversation to have to .
People say , yeah , by the way , you got to have this boring conversation around something that you hope that you're never going to have to draw upon , but ultimately , it is the safety net that gives you security and peace of mind that , okay , I am taking above average risks in in terms of doing something that not a lot of people are prepared to do , which is
buy assets outside of their family home . So it kind of makes sense that you have that , that safety net and it's been .
it has it's been an absolute godsend , especially in the last year because I've had shoulder surgery , so I'm recovering . I've been off work since December , and which is timed with all these interest rate rises , and if I didn't have income protection , we would have had to have had a big fire sale of something .
We would have had to have sold something , but thankfully we haven't , and you know we had all those buffers beforehand . So it's just , it's saved . It's saved our all , our homes , thankfully .
A few things there buffers , defence , cash like management .
Now you're obviously a user of the more platform . You've got all the information in that . That's how we know so much , obviously , of your story as well . So it's to that point around buffers and to that point around cash flow and management . I'm looking at your annual surplus , right , and it's not a huge amount . You know , and your your .
Your level of buffers in terms of the savings ratio that you've got isn't Exorbitant , but you've got to . What you have got is you've got the confidence in the experience You've been here before . You've got the defense in place .
So , even though you know we're talking about an annual surplus of just under that sort of 10,000 mark , call it , and you know the buffer that's sort of gonna keep you in play for at least a minimum six months without any material changes .
You're confident in the knowledge that you do have these assets behind you , right , and and ultimately there is that , that peace of mind , knowing and as well you can also cut back at . You know I've looked in here and you've done the right thing . You've got a central and discretionary spending broken out .
So you also know that you could use the money stretch tool to sort of stress test how much money and how long it's going to last If things get worse . So so you're doing all again . It's the habits and the behaviors . It's doing all those right things . So my next question really relates to We've obviously you've done a plan as well , and so what ?
What motivated you for , for that final plan ? Was it about landing the plane ? About how many of these things Do we need , or when can we retire ? What was the main reason for sort of putting a proper professional plan in place ?
Yeah , I guess it was more peace of mind to know that we were doing the right thing . As I said , I've never really short of listening to your podcast . I never really did any , but we'd already purchased Lots of properties prior to listening to you , so I never really did any reading on property or Anything .
I did a bit of reading in the share market , but nothing about property . So I thought we were on track what we'd been doing . But I guess we just wanted confirmation to know that yeah , we will be right . And it was good to see the , to see on paper that , yes , we will be comfortable in retirement , which was the reason that we .
That's right and confirmation is one of the main reasons probably in the top four or five as to why people get a Professional plan right . So one is that confirmation . Two is just basically knowing that we can afford this three years .
I want to fix bad property advice like you know , that's probably what the ones early on Didn't realize that all these assets that we have bought , you know the opportunity coughed with that . So you know and , yeah , a lot of people are then motivated by you know You're a goals-orientated person . You have lists and you know you want to tick those goals off .
So one of the other big motivations is around , you know , being able to hit the hit , the milestones that you said you were going to hit . And then the final one is about sequencing . It's about getting them in the right order and making sure that you're optimizing to that position .
So when you did , you know , get some validation , what , what were some of the key takeaways that you did get from when you ? You know you got to see your models and your cash flow story and you got to add in , you know , the kids , school expenses and all those other things .
Yeah , it was . Again , as you said , it was just validation , knowing and relief to know that , yes , we will , we will get there comfortably . My husband was probably a little bit more relieved than me , though , because he would . I was hoping for you more property , like more , yeah , let's , let's buy some more .
But , um , he was happy to hear that I know you're on track , but I was a little disappointed . I clearly like buying property . So I was slightly disappointed but yeah , very happy and my husband was peace of mind .
There's a couple things in that , too . Right , because you can continue to buy more property right . That's , that's , that's the thing . But the the peace of mind comes from the fact that Jobs done , retire at the debt and we actually have defined what we want in Lifestyle design and we're actually going to achieve that .
But you can actually Increase the amount of passive income that you get , but it also comes with increased risk , right , and so it just . It just depends on where you are on the spectrum , and it sounds like you and Aaron are having those conversations and I'm sure that it shall come up for you over the journey . But it's , it's , it's not it's all it's .
All it's giving you Is confirmation that everything's okay as it is but if you want a bigger Amount of income will . Then you throw more leverage into the mix or you want to actually get to the finish line Potentially quicker or retire earlier . These are the levers that you get to have those conversations around . So I'm sure that's a .
I'd love to be Part of those conversations .
Yeah , jodi , I'll give you an idea , you've got four kids to buy . You can still go off and buy property , but just make sure you teach them how to fish right .
I've said that we need , for we need five one for us and then one each . My son is already on his way to um . He'll be buying a property . I think before us at this rate is I saw it on the Tweethead's .
The Tweethead is a totally different place now , jodi , than when you took that .
That's right . We talk about that a lot , saying oh , if we had have listened to you at the time , there's no way we would have bought it . It was completely the wrong place wrong , wrong property , wrong place to buy . But I guess it's like anything 25 years later , of course , it's going to appreciate .
Well , the Gold Coast is now the sixth largest population center in the country . Doesn't look like losing that mantle anytime soon , so there's a lot of people going there , hey , um , it's been a wonderful chat . I'm interested in finding out Interest rates . You hinted at it before . There's been a period of interest rates in this winter series .
We've been trying to get inside people's Mindsets around . Okay , all right , you're carrying some debt and and , and the interest rates of that you know the tightest cycle that we've seen for some time . How is , how is that played on your psychology and what have you done to make sure both eyes sleep at night ?
Yeah , it's . It's obviously been tough because we have quite a few mortgages but we did have . You know our rents were decent enough To cover the first few . Anyway . We were Didn't really notice the first few too much . The last , the last couple , that's been pushing things a little bit tighter .
We've just cut back , obviously as much as we , as much as we can and Obviously can't work anymore . Normally I would be at work and I'd work a few extra shifts because I do only work part-time so I haven't been able to do that . But thankfully income protection has been Constantly being played , being paid . But yeah , just cutting back as much as we can .
We didn't we do our annual trip to New Zealand to go skiing with all our family love have fallen in love with skiing , so we had to cut that out this year and that's probably covered things . Yeah , that's made things a little bit easier but yeah , thankfully our rents were were pretty decent to start with .
And that vision helps with those decisions too , isn't it ? Because when you , when you sort of take away traditions of going to New Zealand , it sounds difficult . But if you've got , if you've got a vision or an iron prize or a bigger goal , it certainly makes helping those decisions easy . We'll go next year or the year after .
It's not like it's the as disappointing as it is in the moment . It's not like you don't get those opportunities again in the future .
Yeah , look , I mean , you mentioned something interesting that I wanted to come back on , which was the multiple . You now have multiple accounts .
And where is it million .
Now tell me about the logic behind having all of those . I mean , I'm assuming that you are they all offset buckets that are attached to the master loan , or Honestly , I'm not of a lot .
Not a lot of them are . We've tried , obviously we've been in , we've had mortgages Most of my life . We've tried , we've gone through the line of credit mortgages . We've gone through so many different things . We've tried the credit card and the credit card sweep and I just I don't have enough vision on that .
I just I need to be it's very old school and probably not making the most of interest savings , but I have to have accounts that I can see . It needs to be a lot more visible for me . So we do . We do have multiple accounts where money goes , and and it's right .
Yes , I'm lazy money . Maybe I have to take that offline with you and take you through the whole program again . Yeah , I like saying the gut . I don't like saying banks get more money than they need to because , yeah , but I but I appreciate where you're going with it in terms of .
You know , number one thing is you do have to have confidence , like if you're not . If you're not , you don't have line of sight or visibility on what you're doing .
You'll make irrational decisions , and so you know that that trade-off of Probably not getting the benefit of you know that money sitting in an account where it's not offset Versus when it is offset , that'll be in probably the small thousands each year . But yeah , point is not making you make an irrational decision to think that we can't afford one of them .
We've got to sell them so as well . So but that is interesting . I want to .
Maybe I'll pick that up with you offline because I mean , certainly most of it is Sitting in that account , it's just yeah each time I kind of shuffle it out a little bit and majority certainly sitting there . But yes , we've , We've found that that works for us and we've been too scared to change it because we know that it works .
All right . My final question to my final question to you , jody , is around . Okay , you grew up with a sister and a brother . You grew up watching your parents do the same thing . You've took a certain takeaways for yourself in terms of how you've gone on with things . What's the your brother and sister done , I mean , without giving too much away , have they ?
Are they good money managers ? Have they been able to develop their the similar habit ? Or are we just like chalk and cheese , like me and my brother might be as well , even though we grew up in the same household .
Yeah , no chalk and cheese . My Sister's pretty good . She's probably Um well in terms of property purchase , says she's between me and my brother . My brother is Terrible with money he's . He's the youngest . I don't know I thought was um being the baby of the family , not that he's that much younger , but no , he's . He's really not good at all .
My sister she did . She was similar to me . She came into some um little bit of money in her 20s and so she did the same thing bought an investment property before um . She bought her property to live in and they still they now have their own owner occupied property as well as a couple of investment properties . Um .
So it's like I spurred my Parents and my sister on to to do .
How many do the folks buy in the end ?
just the one or they ended up only buying one .
Yes , that's okay Most people do yeah 70 , 2.5 percent or their events only buy , but it's complimentary to obviously their super now and yes , yeah , absolutely it's a nice closing of the loop there too , jody , because you got the parents , helped you to buy tweet heads and now , all of a sudden , you've learned all these skills over the journey and then they're
leaning on you to buy that which will , which will mean their retirement is significantly better than had they not made that decision , so that might that probably feels like a nice loop for you .
Yeah , it does , it really does . Yeah , it is great to see that .
Hey , my final question for you is , um , around the lessons that you want our community to to understand about your story . Right , because it's um , you know , we put the call out . Only a few people put their hands up and , to be honest , um , ben and I Constantly trying to see how we can get more , more ladies to put their hands up and tell their story .
Because we put the call out , lots of fellas put the hand up .
We understand our audience is is about 65 percent males , but we we want to hear stories from from ladies , because recently , having a conversation with one of one of our internal team and um , she was talking to me about Females and investing and I just said the same thing I'd love for more Females to put their hand up and share their story .
So you've been brave and Transparent and authentic . So what is it about your story that you wanted our audience to hear ?
I just want people to know that it does work . So we obviously started quite young , quite early , but it just ticked over in the background while we still got on with life and it's just , it's worked . It's been the stepping stone each time and obviously , as you keep saying , the sooner you start the better . But it really does work .
And the most important thing is , yes , get that income protection . I just I don't understand why not everybody has it . It's tax deduction , it's that peace of mind . It's so so , so , so important . It's more important than anything else , any other insurances that you ever have . You just you need to have that peace of mind .
Yeah . So I think the stats are still one in three of us will be diagnosed with a serious illness before the age of 65 . One in two of us , so 50% of us , will be diagnosed with a serious illness by the age of 80 . So I'm in it .
So you want it in the early years where you're able to be gainfully employed , to be able to generate the income , and then later in life you're hoping that you're passive .
So I've been able to scale most of mine back because obviously the portfolio of properties are doing the work , so I don't have the same level of insurance policies anymore and because obviously your premiums go through the roof at my age . So I've been able to keep scaling those back because I've done the work early .
But I didn't know that was going to be the case . I didn't know that I was going to be one of the two that didn't get diagnosed before the age of you know , sort of 50 , 52 or whatever I am . So that's you know , that's part of that particular story . So I think it's a really , really great message , as is , you know , starting early that's great .
But we've also had someone on the summer series is started in their fifties . Yeah , sorry , winter series and done you know , done , done it in you know . So . So it's just about starting , yeah , and it's about , well , we , we wanted to start yesterday , but because you didn't get a chance to say , you say they start today .
Yeah , pretty simple .
Right .
Oh , well done . You're a story that started out with an incredible background , uncomfortable , you know , with mum working . Then you've you've moved into state . You had weekly goals on the back of your door means that and and it sort of highlights the power of writing stuff down right . Because , here you are .
You know , you've designed it in your mind first , and then you've executed in real life second , and then you've taken action . I mean the biggest . You said it to quote you you're an action taker .
So you're you're a , you're a credit to your , to your family and and we certainly appreciate you coming in and sharing your story on behalf of everyone here with property catch , thanks for coming on our winter series .
No , thanks for having me , it's been good .
Thanks , jody . Well Ben , what an incredible story .
Oh , wonderful .
Action taking action orientation , someone who's prepared to have to quote Jody lower socio-economic start and then just build it out in a portfolio and navigate some family health issues . That I just love that chat .
Yeah , Look , it shows again A bit of a theme running through here . It does take effort , Like you can't just sit on a couch and build a multimillion dollar property portfolio Just one of those things I got notes here about . Yeah , there's a bit of discipline , there's planning to become , there's planning to action .
Starting earlier did set up the opportunity for that as well and a massive story around defense . You know , and understanding that , you know you've got to make sure you mitigate as much of the risk as possible .
There's always risk in property investing , and so that was a great story where it was called upon and it meant that we actually didn't have to sell any of the investment property and we're still continuing to build them and they're continuing to do that compounding and that heavy lifting over time .
So I've just got so much out of that from Jody , so I want to thank her for coming on to the show . It was just a . It was a ripper .
We get some feedback from our team too , ben , that in times when cost crunch is interesting , people are actually thinking the defense is one of the first places that they might start sort of trimming and sure , if you don't have to call on it's a great call , but it's not a risk that you'd want to take .
It's not a risk that we'd want to encourage anyone to take . It's very difficult to have . You know , talk about negotiation , talk about properties , talk about planning , talk about investments every move they're fun . But just to say I'll slow the conversation down and talk about defense .
You know it understandably get a few yawns , but it's affected you personally , within your own family . We've clearly seen that . It's affected Jody in her family . So , folks , hopefully that was just a timely reminder of something that doesn't get a lot of airtime anywhere , but the importance of it was just enormous .
Or just it threatens to unwind all the great work that's done and all the hard effort that goes into starting a portfolio and building .
You know , grabbing the first property , grabbing the second property , if you have a , you know a significant impact on cashflow and you aren't , you aren't able to work , you unwind all of that , whereas if you can hold on to those assets through this insurance programs that are available , so income protection like total and permanent disability , those types of insurance
policies , I know in the planning work that we do , it's mandatory to offer and build that into the models , because then it's up to the client to basically choose whether they want it or not and you take it and then ultimately build off the back of that .
So Jody is a perfect example of where they've claimed on it a couple of times and it's been very , very helpful for them to be able to maintain their portfolio . And again in another 25 years it's going to be amazing , like their story is going to be amazing . There's not going to be any more of this . Never sell .
You know , I wish I never sold that property right , because she didn't have to , because she had insurance . She mitigated her risk where she could and I think that's a great story , jody , you're a legend .
Thank you for coming on and sharing your story . I reckon that's going to benefit a whole bunch of people , so we are very , very grateful .
Hey , ben , you hinted at the top of the show that you want to lean in and get some help here , and just to let folks know , as we come out of winter series next week , you and I are doing a half yearly update , pop your market outlook .
So stick around for that , but as a I guess , something that you've been working on a fair bit of late and you want some help , don't you ?
I do so . Pipa , which is the Property Investment Professionals of Australia so that's the peak association for people who work in the property investment industry , of which our businesses are member are releasing their ninth annual market sentiment survey . So it's property investment sentiment survey . Why is it important ? It's super important for a couple of reasons .
The first one is it assesses attitudes , you know , in terms of how people are feeling about the market today . But it also gives us clues on actions that they're also taking , and we are currently in a situation where we've got governments of the day looking at implementing further restrictive measures that are potentially going to impact the supply of property .
So we take this information vital information and then we feed it back into the governments and the regulators so it allows us to do the advocacy work . So I work hand in glove as the chair of PIPA , which is the Property Investors Council of Australia .
So that's available for you and I , as property investors , also working with trade , to just basically put a voice and a message out there to allow governments to understand this is the potential impact . You do this . This is what the market is telling you they're going to do . So we want this to be the biggest ever survey .
So we've , I think , our biggest ever we had around 2000 . We can get over 2000 survey responses and it's meaningful for everyone involved .
If you've got an asset like we've , got research out of the US that talks about rental caps and rental freezes , it doesn't actually just affect the rental market , the actual value loss to the economy and to that localized economy , stamp duty and builders and . Well , the actual value of those properties don't grow .
So if you're even a known , a rockie pie and you've got a rental cap or a rental freeze in , say , victoria , guess what ? It's going to stagnate the growth of your property . So that is obviously really concerning for economic mobility , all of those other things .
So that's why these surveys are really important , because it's not just us telling them what we're hearing anecdotally . We've actually got the hard evidence in everyone completing a survey . So we're going to obviously send out an information email out to everyone over the next couple of days , but it's only open for a short window .
So , like any of these types of good surveys , they only have a short window that allows us to fill them in . So as soon as you get the link , or if you've got time now , jump into the show description .
We've got a link there right now where you can go on and have a look at that survey monkey from the property investments professionals of Australia and fill in that survey .
And we will be forever grateful because obviously the advocacy work that we're doing on your behalf is only going to benefit everyone , including the tenants , because there'll be more supply , we'll reduce homelessness . So hopefully , from your point of view . Please do what you can to complete that survey .
Yeah , folks , it's kind of just saying , if you're the type of person that says , yes , I'll get around to that and you don't , we're leaning in to say , please , the only way that we can get a voice is by hearing from you , so that there's a representation of many , many voices across the country . And , as Ben said , I filled in the survey myself .
There are some very considered questions around . Next step , what you're thinking . It allows people , policy makers , to actually get a little insight into the psyche of a property investor , which is unique and different .
So if you filled it in last year , you filled in the year before , you'll notice there is a deviation from the questions for the last couple of years . Just to lean in and dive in on that . So it's super , super important . So , as simple as it can be , wherever you're listening in the show notes , there will be a link . Please take the time to fill it out .
It's never been more critical for you to fill out that form .
Thanks , mate . Thanks for that opportunity and , obviously , if you've ever given your value , this is a way in which you can favour . Because we want to continue to make sure that there's adequate available supply of rental properties across the country , and this is one of the important ways in which we can advocate .
So thank you very much for allowing me to share that important update .
And thanks to all of our contributors on the Winter Series . They've been incredible stories . Obviously , you've found them highly beneficial . Hopefully , the conversation starter is encouraging you to have conversations with your loved ones . As you heard from Jodi in today's episode , she's having conversations with her kids .
It is beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are going to be property owners and they understand all of the concepts because she has conversations with them .
So the mission of the Winter Series , the mission of talking to all of our guests , is just to get you to do two things Not having conversations and taking action , and hopefully Jodi's inspired you to do that today . So well done , jodi . That was an incredible story , mate , but until next week then .
Knowledge is empowering Bryce , but only if you act nice . See you guys next week .
Hey folks , bryce here again . I just wanted to catch you real quick before you go .
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