Better Than Yesterday with Osher GünsbergHow Talking about Money can Pay Off, with Sylvia Jeffreys
Sylvia Jeffreys knows the power that lies in asking the right questions about your finances. She's been talking a lot on that topic recently, with some of the best money minds around, as part of her podcast 'The Pay Off'. In this conversation, she shares the best of what she's learned so far, both from the experts and from her own life.
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Money mindset I think plays so much into this how you were brought up and the money relationship that your parents had and then therefore instilled in you. What kind of conversations we're being had around money when you were growing up. This is I think what's stopping a lot of people from talking about it too, is that we're ashamed of maybe X, Y, and Z in our personal finance, and maybe we don't want to talk to someone about the goal that we're working towards because we don't think it stacks up to what someone else is working towards. And so looking at that and being really forgiving of yourself and kind to gentle with yourself, and understanding that probably a lot of other people are feeling the same way, they're just not talking about it.
Good Thanks for downloading the show. This is Better Than Yesterday. Useful tools and useful conversations to help make your day today better than yesterday. Every single episode since twenty and thirteen. Mine as Olsha Gezburg and I've got a question. What happens to you when someone asks you about money? Depending on who you are and who's asking, that answer could vary wildly. You might get self conscious, You might get anxious. You might feel ashamed if you're me, you may be full of regret. You might get totally blank, feel bored. You might have nothing to say at all. You might launch into an impassion ten minute long monologue about your investments in your twenty year plan. We've all got different answers, But I'm going to ask my guest about money today. The way that she answers me, well, it's got to do with stuff she's learned in her own conversations about money. We'll get right to that after the break. Thanksful listening to the show. It's better than yesterday getting some guest Sylvia jeffrees in just a second. Just a heads up here if you want to come to the next Story Club show. It's on the of the July. Marley Silva, Merrick Watts, Phill O'Neil, Nadia Townsend, Zobe Notton Lodge and myself will be at the Factory Theater on the sixth of the July six thirty pm in Merrickfield. Would love to see you there. Jump on the Instagram to see what the show is all about and the linkers in the show notes if you want to get tickets While you're there. There's a link to buy the book. Pre order the book. So what now what? It'll be out on the fifth of Loyalist and i'd really appreciate your help. If you haven't got it yet, please get it. Get to you get five please. I'm recording the audiobook for it tomorrow with Cam. It's gonna be unreal. Can't wait to tell you all about it. So Sylvia Jeffries is my guest today. She's a friend of the show. Are you a friend of the show? Once you go on twice, I guess you are friend of the show. Sylvia Jeffries, she's come here to the house. Before this time we went and did it over at her place at Channel Line Headquarters, North Sydney. And today we're talking all about money because since the last time we spoke, Sylvia has launched her own podcast, The Payoff, which is all about extracting the most useful lessons about money and money management from some of the best financial minds around. And today you're going to hear some of that wisdom and some of the most important and most often repeated bits of advice that her guests have shared with her. More than that, we're going to talk about Sylvia's mindset when it comes to money, her journey, how she dealt with it in the past, and now what she's trying to teach her kids about it. I've got a lot of value out of this conversation with her. I reflected a lot on my own money management or mismanagement, depends on how you look at it. This conversation. It'll definitely get you to reflect on your own journey with money, but it's going to do it in a way that's calm, invites possibility. It does give you some clarity amid all of those weird feelings we spoke about earlier. Enjoyed the chat. The last time we spoke, you were at my house and it was very, very lovely. What's happened since the last time we spoke? You had? You know what plans were there? Well?
Do you know what's so funny? I was just sitting down and writing before I came Upstairsyeah. I was writing an article for nine Honey about hobbies and how I don't have any, and I was just reflecting on this statement from Amy Pohler, who on a late night interview once said, as a working mum, I work and I mum, and that's it, which is the use of mum as a verb to me is just purely beautiful. And I think that word is often overlooked as a doing word because it is. And I get this thing that when people ask me how you been, what's been happening, and all I think is I work and I mum, and there's not a one in between.
I go for runs, you know, in between. That's probably the closest thing I have to a hobby.
Well, I let me, have you already posted the article.
No, I haven't yet.
Okay, good, look, I'll give you a line. My mum was a doctor until you know, right to the then when she got her diagnosis, and she used to say, I'm not saying you are, but she would say, over the age of forty, just you've got to make your body your hobby.
Yeah.
Interesting, Well, that's probably that's probably what I do. I go to the gym a couple of times a week. I'm starting to do the heavyweights because getting close to perimenopause age. So you know, I see it in my algorithm, you've got to do the heavyweights. And I run and sometimes I run with friends, and so I guess that's a hobby question.
And tea that's a hobby. Cycling as a hobby, that is a hobby.
You've got to make your body a hobby.
And she would say, look, yeah, play golf, but don't be driving around. Of course you've got to walk that back. Yeah, okay, whatever it is. No train sets, you know. Yeah, got to get out there and make your body your hobby.
Hitting.
No knitting and you'll be fine. Yeah. No knitting, No, because you're just sitting. Okay, got to keep moving, run and knit. You can join a running slash knitting clob. Yeah, maybe croche is probably better.
At the same time. Do you know what happened recently was my five year old he picked up this visor and because I always wear advisor when I run because my hair short, it like falls out and gets my eyes. I can't bear having my hair in my face. And he associates visors with running. And he got a visor and he said, Mama, I can go for a run with you now. And I was like, all right, let's go. And so we ran like along the beach track for about two and a half k's. We would walk up hills and then we'd run a little bit and stop at every bubbler and you know, it was very stop start, but he just was the happiest I've ever seen him, and it gave me so much mum joy. And we got to the end and I was like, all right, buddy, should we go meet Dadda and he can drive us home? And he goes, no, I want to run all the way back again, and we ran all the way back.
Five one year old case.
Yeah, it was amazing and it's it is the best five k's I've ever run.
And I love that. I guess it is let's call it a hobby. Running is my hobby.
I guess that by doing that, I'm doing something that I can, you know, get him involved in and maybe set some good examples for him as well in terms of exercise and looking after yourself. And for me it's a mental healthy And we've spoken about this before. Running is like my absolute circuit breaker when I'm having a bad day, and so hopefully he gets something positive out of that.
But it's something I can do with him now, and I love that.
What a fantastic what a fantastic memory to Bill, What a great thing to model, and what a fun thing to do. Yeah, I mean, he's going to really fuck up your Strava. You're going to have Oh I like com on buddy.
Oh no, I didn't record that, right, Yeah, yeah, No, that's not a run for I'm just an other account. Yeah, it can just be under his name account exactly for him up. Yeah, you can't mess with my stats.
You ever have those end of your titles you go, oh, it's like he was a ten thousand still he's a ten thousand kilometer cyclist. To get ten thousand a year cycling, wow, and he's still doing it. He's like ten years of it.
Incredible.
What that's a lot, a lot of volume.
Yeah, he doesn't need a five year old sewing.
Down, but I do love that. And maybe it's the visor, maybe something in the visor, but the whole is perhaps why the hobby is a thing, is it is an identity aside from the job and the mummy.
And the mumming exactly. You need something in between.
Yes, it also helps, and it's one of the things that I would always talk about when it's if you're looking for the motivation of something. I'm the kind of person who I'm the kind of person who gets up in the morning and trains, all right, I would I have kettlebells downstairs. I'm kind of not gone to the gym at the moment because it's just too inconsistent. But I'm the kind of person who gets up at five, go downstairs, and I's wing kettle bells. That's great, And you tell yourself that for a couple of weeks, and then soon enough, I'm going to bed. Why because I get up in the morning and do kettle bells and it starts to become part of your identity. So it's a part of your identity that is purely for you and for something you enjoy, and it's not one of the other two things. You can kind of get lost in it.
And you know, a lot of people bag out people for posting their stratostats on Instagram and things like that, but I get it because it is it is that thing that gives you joy in life and a non social media sharing the things that you enjoy and not everyone needs to know how fast or slow is probably the better word. I run okay over ten k's or whatever, But I guess it is. It's a big part of who you are and what you do that sparks joy in inverted comments. Ye, in your life, in between the working and the parenting and the folding of laundry and the stacking of the dishwasher and everything else, it's that bit that you know gives you some freedom and some joy and some space.
It's important, it is. And that's also I find a lot where the answers to questions show up. Does that happen for.
You all the time?
Yeah, I do a lot of I mean, I mostly listen to podcasts on my runs these days, because for me it feels like two birds one stone. I'm learning while I'm running, and you know, you're trying to maximize your time in life. But I do do a lot of thinking, and it is when I get clarity on a lot of things. It's when I do have ideas. It's when I think about guests for podcasts or for Today Extra or things like that. It stimulates your brain in a way that nothing else can, that's for sure.
So was it you know, on a run when you were thinking about I'm going to I'm going to get into the world of financial podcast.
Well, it's probably listening.
It was on a run listening to a lot of financial podcasts, all right, I think that definitely played into it, but it was also it was being on Today Extra and speaking almost on a weekly basis for a period of time. There about this generational wealth gap that is really evident in our society right now and is highly emotive as well. Younger generations feel like they're being locked out and are really upset about it for good reason, and then older generations. Sometimes some people in the older generations think, well, we had big challenges too, you know, it's not just them who've had it hard, and so you've got both sides kind of in this tug of war on this issue. So anyway, there's a lot there to explore. I genuinely do think that young Australians face really high and unique hurdles to financial independence and financial security in the long term. There's no doubt, and you only have to look in the news today. The average or the median capital city collective price in Australia has now hit them one million dollar month. It's almost one million dollars for the average house in Brisbane, which is now the second most expensive city in Australia. Sydney is the second least affordable city in the world. So like we are it's not just something of our imagination among young people in Australia.
This is a real issue.
It has really gotten away from us, and so there's so much to address, I think, in this issue. But what I really wanted to do was not just explore the issue, but find some people who are really smart in this area, who can offer some practical solutions and maybe some ideas about how to work within the current goalposts in a different and more creative way than perhaps our parents did.
Because anyone would argue that the argument on the other side is that well everyone is and always has been, operating within the goalposts that have been set up and cracky. At the story Club show at Your Minder the other night, we were driving in there and I turned to Zoe, who was the co founder. We were driving up together. I said, like, thirty years ago, you could own a house in Sydney and have bought a weekend or up here on one kind of middle class income wage like a teacher or a train driver or someone who just you know, that kind of thing, and that was fine, and it was a very common thing to have a shack or a small house either on the central Coast or south of Sydney or in Queensland down on the Goldie like everybody. My folks did not, but we were uncommon ones. But he heard of an apartment on the Goldie and they did that with one wage, and they were operating within the rules of the time. And then the rules of the time shifted quite significantly, and the promise of what you get if you work hard and apply yourself has verry has changed a lot.
And I think what you say there is a big part of why this discussion is so emotive, because it's this concept of if you work hard, you will achieve your goals, and a lot of people don't feel that that is a reality anymore. You can work hard, and you can work hard, and that home ownership is still going to be out of reach because in Sydney, you know, the average price is now close to all according to this stat that came out today, is close to one point five million. That's around thirteen times the average salary. You know, our parents were buying homes at about three or four times the average salary. And yes they had insane interest rates back then, but the principle was so much more achievable, and therefore the idea of saving for a deposit was so much more achievable as well. So it is way out of whack with salaries and wages at the moment, and that's where there is a huge hurdle for young people.
I understand why, and I see, you know, with g she's twenty one and I've been living at home. I was living with my girlfriend at that time. I've been living out over for two years by then, and I was late, you know. But when I did move at home when I was nineteen, I lived three k's from my family. Yeah, not forty k's from my family. I don't think if Jim moved down, unless she moved in with eight people, she should be able to live anywhere near her uni, her work, or her friends. So who's going to do that. Who's going to distance themselves and you know, from their community and what keeps them safe and what thrives them and nourishes them. It's not going to happen.
Well.
People will stay at home with their parents longer, right, And there is obviously an increasing number of people who are relying on the bank of mum and dad. Not everyone has that luxury, and then you have issues developing. This is something I've spoken to some of my guests about on the payoff these other issues at the other end, where some parents are being too generous, you know, God loved them, you know, trying to give their kids a leg up and end up getting themselves into financial stress. And we know that women over the age of fifty five are the most likely to the fastest rising group of homelessness in Australia. So you've got issues at every end of the scale here because of the disparity between generations at the moment.
There's so many other factors when you think about it as well. If I like when I moved out at nineteen, it was an important lesson for me to learn. Oh oh, I can't brush my teeth because I don't have toothpaste. I don't have toothpast because I haven't brought any I haven't born it because I haven't got any money. Ah right, better sort this out. The consequences for not getting your shit together around your money are immediate. Yeah, though that kind of rubber band or the bottom isn't ever really there. Sometimes if the kids never leave home, and what does that do if you're you know, it's a bit old school. They leave home straight into a marital home. What does that do for someone.
Who you're kind of missing that stage of life where you're out there really without a parachute, learning everything the hard way, right, Yeah.
Yeah. What was your money story like when you're a young woman when you started working.
Well, my first experience with that was I was seventeen when I went on my gap year. So as soon as I finished school in Queensland, a lot of us finished when we were seventeen, and I went straight tot.
A lot smarter, exactly. We're just far more advanced and more mature.
Exactly generally exactly.
So yeah, So I moved to England as a seventeen year old, turned eighteen in the April of my gap year and worked in a school, earning eighty eight pounds a week, which was technically I was being reimbursed expenses and so sort of scraping through on a pittance. And I think my memory, obviously of my gap year is at times hazy for obvious reasons. But I think I only had to call my mum once for a lifeline, for a can you to send me a little bit of money? And I think it was halfway through my summer Kentiquy tour, calling from a phone in Corfu. I was going to say yeah, but yeah I did, I mean geez. I learned some really hard lessons on budgeting on that trip. But then when I came home. It wasn't long after that that I moved in with a friend for a while, and I kind of went in and out of mum's place for a few years. But I was working in pubs. I was working at nine really early on, as soon as I started UNI as well, so I had a part time job there, so I was managing my own budget very early. But I also as soon as I turned fourteen nine months, I went and got a job at Macer's right. Because we didn't have many like luxuries in our family growing up and third child, youngest of nine cousins, I wore a lot of hand me downs, but I loved clothes, so I wanted to be able to buy my own clothes and it so I went straight and got a job. And that's probably not great because I didn't really learn to say very well. I spent a lot of what I earned. I was never going beyond my means, but I didn't have good practices with savings and I look back on that and I think, oh, that's probably an area I could have done better at.
It was a couple of times my phone got cut off, a couple of times my power got cut off early on as a consequence of like, oh, craker, haven't very mismanaged bills. My filing system involved putting the unopened envelope in a drawer and it got cut off, then it was time to pay. Yeah, that was how I kind of did it. But there was a point that showed up. It was once. It wasn't until I got to Channel V, to be honest, and I started working in television, and even then it wasn't for a lot of money, but I stopped worrying about my phone getting cut off. And that is a danger period then, because you've now got this ballast that can absorb silly decisions. And that's where I really needed to have kind of habits you're probably talking about, but I didn't.
Yeah, I think it's funny, isn't. I mean it's these are things that you kind of look back on now and you can see them for what they were. And I think probably for most of my life, I've been afraid of debt and afraid of financial risk. Investment like, investing was never a part of my plan in my twenties. It was something for rich people. You know, investing is for rich people, for people who have bucket loads of spare money. I can see now I'm thirty nine that investing isn't just for rich people. It's something you could start when you're twenty one with fifty dollars or one hundred dollars a month and start putting it away, you know, just automatically send that off into an account to invest, and over the next thirty years you're going to reap the rewards of that, right, But none of that was on my horizon when I was twenty and especially in my late twenties living in Bondai in a bachelorette pad with a couple of girlfriends, living our best lives.
You know.
I did have a credit card for a period of time living in Bondai, which was for those months when I just went a little bit over. I had a very firm limit on it. It was only a small one, but that was probably the worst of my money management. But I was in a bit of a yolo period of my life. I would describe it as and again I could have been much smarter with how I was prioritizing my money, and in hindsight, I have some regrets over that, but thankfully I was able to get on top of it easily because I kept a.
Very firm limit on that.
But I think that goes back to me being afraid of money growing up, being afraid of debt, being afraid of risk.
Brought it on.
Oh, just desperate for financial security, I think, and my mum modeled that to me.
She was very frugal.
She had to watch every penny and she did and she was very open with us about that when we were growing up too, so I was very aware of, I guess, what it was to budget for a family and what it is to meet your bills and your responsibilities, and you know, that was really stressful for her at times, but she got us through without ever having to pull the ripcord. You know, we were always comfortable and we were always given every opportunity in life as a result of that because Mum made sure that we had the space for that. So and how to prioritize, you know, the really important things in life as well. So so I guess through osmosis maybe that's where.
That comes from.
She worked and she mummed, she worked, and she mum mommed hard.
She mummed really hard.
Yeah, yeah, the same with the same with you know, my mom had four four kids and I was doing it alone from when the eldest was thirteen, and she worked so hard man and gave us the opportunities, like if we were interested in something and showed interest, she would go, Okay, you get to go, give it a go, and understood you talk about investing, but understood investing in your kid's interest in what engages them has such a compounding effect in their life. You want to with me, for we're going to with music, Like you really want to learn this, You're going to Okay, I'll buy the instrument, all right, you're going to practice, you're gonna do it? Okay, okay, great? What did you play guitar at first? Then bass and then everything else? But that's what led to everything, right, and that the idea of performance, in connecting with people through performance was it but her belief in me to do that and she did it with at my brothers. Whatever we were kind of into. She worked to the point where like and if we weren't interested in it, you know, it's okay, I wanted to give you that. Yeah, and investing. Can you also talking about investing. When it came to sending Jeta, we managed to get her into a Fancays school in area. So the reason we lived in the apartment for.
Those years, Yeah, sacrifices priorities.
Is that really it's kind of the last financial decision you can really make to influence the outcome in life. Really after their eighteen that's on them. But we looked at at that as an investment. Absolutely looked at that as an investment. It's not always about index funds.
And exactly you know, yeah.
That sort of thing. It's investing in your kid's future and investing in the outcomes that they might have, that they might be independent themselves one day for sure. When you you mentioned the late twenties period and whether that's yet to come for you or it's in your past, whether.
My late twenties are in my past.
Well, yeah, as far as money management goes, yes, there's always there's always money to party at some point, Like there's always.
Going to go and have Sunday afternoon drinks down at the North Bonda RSL with your mates.
You know you're not going to pass that up.
No, you always find the money somewhere to pay for a couple of points or you know whatever. Extracurricular Yeah, I guess I could stretch.
You to that rose, couple of roses.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just yeah, sure. I mean there's under session, Okay, we can split a capture and then the days it's midnight.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
But do you know, like back in that stage of my life, no one in my circle was talking about their financial goals. No one was talking And maybe I don't know where the line is here with men and women. I know, certainly more now in my age bracket, you get more men talking over a barbecue about what they've invested in or what's happening in the market with X, Y and Z, and not so much with women. But it is starting among my friendship circle now, And I feel like we should have been having these conversations twenty years ago because it would have given a lot of us more of a head start with some things they are And now that I understand more about this area of life as well, I can see the benefits of being a part of this conversation in your twenties.
And that's again another part.
Another reason for the podcast is opening up the conversation around money, which is so orkies and so uncomfortable for so many people to others who might not be having these conversations with their friends or their family because it isn't a natural part of a conversation for a lot of people, even in this day and age when but I think also younger generations have no option but to talk about it because things are so different. They have to be honest about what goals they're setting financially and what they're hoping to achieve and what they're doing with the extra one hundred dollars. I know, and that seems like a hard thing for a lot of people in a cost of living crisis. But if you've got to spend one hundred dollars every week, what do you do with it? And what's the best way to get something out of that in the long term?
Seventeen legue multi that ends on Hina the outcome of Singapore and Match.
Put it all in.
You don't understand how hard this will payoff, Jeffrey, how much I'm going to pay out exactly going to get back one before and more the conversation around money as men talking about investing. It's only now that you speak about it. I so resisted it, or I was so. I was bored by people who started to talk like that. Yeah, because that represented to me, you don't care about this moment. All you want to do is show that you're better than me. I was a very different place in my life. But I found it just so crass. And it was never the idea of I'm doing this now so that when I'm sixty, I don't have to work too hard and me and my kids would be fine. It was not that at all. It felt really like a pissing context.
Oh, I get it.
I hated it. So I didn't want to ever talk about it or know anything about it.
Yeah, that's just for the finance bros. You know that kind of chat.
And they were always tall and hot.
Yeah, gray suits called.
It John, Yes, they all rode.
I know the guy.
Yeah, I went to his wedding. He's a lovely guy.
Page it by the way, that one.
But yeah, I always found it. I didn't never understand. I didn't see it through the lens of that was available to me. So I felt it was like, no, I'm excluded from this. People talk about real estate trying to buy. I had two bass guitars stolen after a gig once, and I was I was unemployed. I'm playing in an Originals band in Brisbane at from the back of the Gabba Hotel? What do I do now? How do I I can't even play? I haven't going to get a guitar. I actually ended up taking a personal line, that's right. I took a person alone. Yeah, eighteen percent or two interest.
For that, but it was the only way to get back out there and working.
Yeah, it took a long time. And then when I hear the ads not on this podcast, but when I hear the ads for your paycheck is yours dot com or whatever, It's like, noop, don't do ever do that because that's such slippery slope. Sure is those sort of things? What kind of things should people in your conversations you had on your show, what kind of things do you look do you want people to look out for as a try to struggle for answers?
Yeah, well, I mean we sort of look at this from every angle. We've looked at it from a Okay, if you can't get into the property market, what are some creative ways to do that. We spoke to Alice Stotz from Domain about that and she covers off the rent vesting co ownership and how to set up a contract for that as well to protect yourself into the future. We've got an upcoming interview with Jessica Irvine from Combank, who is the Queen of budgeting, and she's got some really great advice in there on how to crunch down your debt first and the steps that you need to take for financial security. If you are in that position where you were, where you feel like the debt is insurmountable and you've got to crunch that before you do anything else, then she's got great tips on that front. And then how to set up a really healthy looking budget that allows you to understand where every dollar is going. And it sounds really boring and tedious, but she makes it pretty good, pretty fun, pretty engaging, and it gives you, I think, more than anything, a sense of control over your money. And that's the topic we just did this week, which dropped is with clinical psychologist Rebecca Ray because money mindset, I think plays so much into this. How you were brought up and the money relationship that your parents had and then therefore instilled in you what kind of conversations we're being had around money when you were growing up. And she talks around the shame that a lot of us carry around money, and this is I think what's stopping a lot of people from talking about it too, is that we're ashamed of maybe X, Y, and z in our personal finance, and maybe we don't want to talk to someone about the goal that we're working towards because we don't think it stacks up to what someone else is working towards. And so looking at that and being really forgiving of yourself and kind to gentle with yourself, and understanding that probably a lot of other people are feeling the same way, they're just not talking about it. So and also entering a relationship with a new person, and how to set up your financial boundaries and goals and ensure that you're on the same page with all of that stuff, because that's so crucial as well. So look, we look at it from every people in the world of investment, people in the world of property, people in the world of self improvement as well, negotiating at work all of.
It really and you mentioned the shame like the story that we have from when we're a kid. How in the conversations you've had, what do you think, what do you even start with getting your story together about and just at least having a look at it where it was and where you might like it to be.
I mean, this is definitely a question for Rebecca Ray, who's the qualified psychologist authority.
It's your podcast. This is how podcasts work. I have a thing, I have artworks before.
It belongs to me. The answer belongs to me.
It's what applies to a lot of things in life. Speaking to Rebecca, her take on it was basically, you have to be more forgiving and you have to be more accepting of yourself and not be so hard on yourself. But basically, she said, confronting those issues and taking actions and taking steps towards what you want to achieve is the way you're going to get over that feeling of shame. But I would definitely encourage people to listen to her views on that, because I'm not qualified to give anyone advice in terms of psychology. But it applies to a lot of things in life. You know, we beat ourselves up over so many things. In life, and I think so much of that is unjustified, and she unpacks a lot of that in that conversation.
One of the reasons that we can often get into trouble with money, While we can get into trouble with either saving for something or not saving for something because it seems so insurmountable, it's because emotion is often involved in spending. Yes, I don't feel very good right now. You know it's going to make me feel good. This thing that I just were instagram that I didn't know existed a minute ago, but now I'm convinced. I can't live without.
Put it in a basket.
I have to open it and I have to click at it. And yeah, why not for equal payments? That sounds great bush.
To dopamine hit.
Yeah, yeah, How can we insulate ourselves from emotion playing with the plans that we have and the budgets that we are trying to keep together?
Yeah, well that's one for Jessica Irvine.
So let me just deflect to all of my very smart guests, who is very good at being specific around what you're working towards and setting those goals and sticking to them. She uses every highlighter under the sun to really get down in the weeds of your budget.
That involves office works and then me just going, you know what, I really need a cross cut paper sder.
Seriously, office works is her happy place and.
I should probably there just invest in West Farmers that.
It's a slippery slope, you know, once it's starting.
You never go back exactly get you so plenty of different different colored highlighted well and there are so many ways to do this, but that's her method and it helps her to see very clearly which bucket, you know, is taking more than it's fair share from her budget month to month. And I think being really and this is something I'm starting to do a lot more, is being really specific about ou as a family financial goals too. What are we working towards, What do we hope for this to look like by the time we're sixty, At what point do we want to retire? Because this is sort of part of the theme that keeps emerging too, is that what you should be working towards in life is what is enough for you. And you have to be really clear in your definition of what is enough, what's going to make you happy. For some people, it's going to be owning the home that they can bring their family up in. For other people, it's going to be going to Europe once a year. For other people, it's going to be I don't know, having a vintage car or something.
You know.
For some people, it's just you know, meeting the rent and having some flexibility to maybe travel a little bit on the.
Side, I don't know.
Everyone has different different goals in life, and I think the key is being really clear around what that goal is and knowing how you're going to get to it, because that way, you feel like you're in control of your money and you're not just rolling with what comes in month to month and seeing where you land.
Just taking a moment from Sylvia, whose podcast is called The Payoff, you can find it where you're found on this podcast. We've got to play some ads. We'll be right back. As a journalist, and you mentioned earlier in the conversation, there is a growing gap in our country between people who don't worry about the phone bill and people who are still prepaid month to month, week to week and don't know where it's going to come from next month. That to me, I think is a challenge our country's really going to have to have a look at, isn't it.
Well?
This is something I spoke to Alice Stultz about. Is this concept which has been brought up in the newspapers recently of Sydney becoming a city without grandchildren. Oh my god, because people having children? Yeah, will if you're having if you're starting a family and you're trying to set yourself up, how could you afford and you're on the average salary, how can you afford to raise children in Sydney the second least affordable city in the world, And so people are moving further out. I mean, this is part of the reason why house prices are rising so fast in Brisbane, because people are moving north, or they're moving to the Central Coast or whatever. They're just getting out of the places that are far too expensive. And so then you've got the grandparents in Sydney left behind, who therefore lose access to the grandkids. And then the parents in the middle lose access to the grandparents who support their village and their support network. And that's kind of the demographic shift that we're looking at as a result of that financial disparity.
As you said that, I don't feel tears coming to my eyes of how awful it is to make a kin munity split itself apart. Long it does like these are bigger things than just captaal gains tax and frankin credits and negative gearing. This is what keeps us as a community feeling like we belong with each other.
Yeah, it's a big shift.
And what's interesting in Australia in terms of housing supply and we all know supply is a big issue here and increasing it is critical to bringing down prices or at least slowing the growth of prices, is that we are a really undense nation. Our capital city is compared to other capital cities across the world, are not dense, and we still expect huge blocks of land in this country and so there need to be big opportunities, I think to grow these kind of mini cities and definitely increase the density. And you know, I think people are really open to living to living in apartments and that sort of life so long as there's enough green space around. But at the moment that's not even really an option for a lot of people because the prices are so high in Sydney. So so there are a lot of demographic shifts that are happening as a result of.
This, and how that affects politics as well, because people tend to get more conservative as they get older, so the capital cities start to become overall way more conservative. What is that? What does that do for policy? As far as housing developments in western New South Wales or northern Queensland. That's wow. I had along all of this, I had a really transformative experience just a bit over ten twelve years ago when I went to business school. I was in Amsterdam. And have you been to Amsterdam.
On the afore mentioned kentiquy to You probably.
Don't remember that vague. I was a very sober person by the time. Yeah, I'm very grateful.
That's good.
But I stayed in the in the Canal Ring, in the ancient city like seven hundred years old, and it is the most densely populated part of the world, and it is hundreds of hundreds of years old, and the houses are smaller than this studio. Yeah, okay, And I remember I stayed airbnb someone's house. They were the creative director for a Dutch design magazine, so you can imagine the kind of that was just going on holidays. They wanted you know a month. I was every month they wanted someone to take care of the place.
Is.
You can imagine the kind of stuff this person would have in the house, right you talked about concept of enough. They had a cupboard which is probably this wide. They had two suits and three empty coat hangers that they probably had taken on holiday with them. They had four cups, four plates, full bowls, a fridge about this big.
Wow.
That was it? Like, it wasn't I have a cinema room. I only have thish and I have that and there's the blah blah. No. It was like, no, that and it blew my mind. Oh wow, you could be this high profile person and your home and what is in your home doesn't have to it's so simple show to who else is going to see it? Well, I don't know, this is this level of my success. It was beautiful, you know, but it wasn't ostentatious. No, yeah, and it really kind of I came home, I had this massive fridge sold it. I was like, okay, I'm fine. It really changed how I thought about things. And the community was really beautiful. Everybody knew each other. Everyone you can there's something that's to be said you kind of mind your business, mind yourself a bit. When you're that close to everyone, you know you've got to you can't be an asshole. You kin't got to be nice to your neighbors. You have to figure out how to get along with the people upstairs and downstairs. You've got to be cool. And that's makes us as a community better anyway, the high identity. We were in the Gold Coast the other week since the mullet.
And I was wondering what had happened.
You know, we used to drive north and where they'd ask you for your COVID thing so you could get leans in the window with a pair of clippers. Now yeah right, calling over there. And then as you're coming past billing you may pass there was a barber in the surf shop and more, and I decided to get matching my onnes.
I love that. Ah, he's daddy's boy. That's so cooin. You can take the boy out of Queensland.
You mentioned a couple of guests you've had so far. What are the key messages do you think that keep coming up again and again and again.
I mean one of them is time in the market, not timing the market. This is something that just about every guest has spoken about. And you know, one of our guests, Molly Benjamin from Ladies Finance Club, who's built this great network of women who want to improve their financial literacy, and one who set up themselves set themselves up for long term financial security. It's not about getting rich quick, it's about a long term plan for financial security. And she, among other guests, talks about the virtues of time in the market, So putting that amount of money away every month, flexing that investment muscle in order to achieve steady gains over the long term. We're not talking about like a three hundred percent gain overnight from in video or whatever it is, and like make high five to anyone who invested in in video.
But but this is all about.
Just flexing that regular investment muscle for long term gains. To see, it's like super annum. It's what your superannuation effectively does, right, diversifying across a broad range of assets over the long term, minimize risk, and give yourself some comfortable growth over the long term. So that's what people keep coming back to a lot. The other is this concept of enough and knowing what your goals are and being really defined in that and being really specific about that. But I guess, you know, on the whole, it's also sort of for young people, it's getting creative in this new new world that we exist in, finding new ways to set yourself up, whether it's rent investing or long term ETF investing or whatever it is that works for you and your own financial circumstances. But I think also on the whole, let's open up this conversation and not be afraid. I know it's crass and it's icky for me talking about money. It's not something I have really ever enjoyed talking about, but I think it's necessary. I think it's necessary in this world, particularly for young people in their twenties and thirties, to start chatting to their friends about what they're saving for right now, about what they want to achieve in the next ten years, about what debt they might be carrying, and do you have any advice or tips for how to get rid of that? Because it reduces a shame, it makes it democratizes investment. It opens up so many conversations that can put you in the right direction in the long term as well. And this is another thing that's come up from several of our guests is the lack of of financial education in the schooling system. That there's a real gap there, I think for teaching kids about the magic of compound interest, about how investing works. Because for those of us who didn't grow up in a family where investment was part of the language or part of the conversation on a regular basis, it seems like something for other people, like investing the share market, all of it feels like something for someone else who grew up in another part of this country, probably close to the harbor, and their dads taught them how to do it from a young age or whatever. They have access to something that we don't have access to. Right, But it's not that. It's not that, and there are new ways to invest that have made it so much more accessible to the average person who doesn't have time to watch the market every day or to research every company that they might have an interest in as well. There are new ways that have democratized in investing on the whole, and so many Australians have felt locked out of that conversation. And I agree with many of our guests that there is a real lack of that education in high school. I remember doing one lesson on it and I did like the basic maths at high school journalists.
So which I go figure I wasn't very good at maths.
My ego wouldn't let me take it.
Yeah, I did the basic maths, and I do remember having one lesson on compound interest and thinking this is interesting, but this will never apply to my life, maybe other than super anuation.
You know, so next you know.
So, I think that there is definitely a gap there for there to be more financial literacy built into the curriculum.
Oh man, if people understood it has superannuation work, they wouldn't be taken money out of it together the dentist.
That's right, No way, that's right.
Because you're it's around COVID. I think when people were talking, oh you can take money, are you're super to get by? Yeah, And it was a couple of stories like for every five hundred bucks you take out, yeah, if you're twenty by the time you're sixty, it's that it's huge.
Yeah, it's huge.
Yeah, it's like the guy who paid when bitcoin was a dollar, a guy who paid ten bitcoined by a pizza look at it like that.
Yeah, it really it's like a it's a snowballing effect, right, So if you're taking money out of that, you were depriving yourself of big gains in the long term.
And while we're on the subject of money, we need to play some commercials, so we'll be back in a minute with Sylvie Jeffreys. What have you learned about I mean, this is why we're saying stuffed on climate because well that's a tomorrow problem. Yeah right, yeah, same with this, This is all a tomorrow yes. So what have you learned from your guests about thinking about Our brains are not very good at thinking past I don't know, the next week.
Maybe, do you know what?
I really genuinely believe there is a shift in the younger generations. I think there are more They are way more aware of this stuff than perhaps you and I were.
And I'm sort of on the I'm a millennial, but.
I think gen Z I think they have to be really financially literate. I think they're really aware of the challenges they're up against. So I think maybe they're more conscious of these things than you or I had to be in our early twenties. And there is research that shows that gen zs are more aware of their superannuation than previous generations, so that's comforting. There is also some data which one guest brought up that shows that gen z are very reliant on things like have to pay. So you know, there are sort of two sides to it. But I do firmly believe that younger generations are much better at thinking about the long term of their finances than previous generations because they have to be They have to be aware, and they have to be across it. Because setting themselves up for their first home by the time they have of their first child, if they even are going to do that, because so many of them are putting that off as a milestone or not doing it at all, the birth rate is in decline. I think they have to be more conscious of these things, and so they sort of naturally are.
My friend Luke Hagey, he's a stand up. When he and his wife first got pregnant, he's a laborer and he's like, Bevans have heaps of kids and they seem to be doing fine. We'll be all right. Bevans is very in Queensland word for became bogue and sometime around when the comedy company started using that word on national television. But it's always been a ken or BEVs watch out for they shot up to your party parties over Yeah, cops wont to show up of the kimil BEVs have gone. There were bad news. But yeah. The idea was that as a certain class of kid that we were with, the kind of school we went to, went to one of the schools in the city in Brisain. No, no, no, you don't think about having children until you can make sure there is this, that that, and he transcends. I was talking him at the time, like aren't you worried about this? That and the other? Still carrying that, He's like, mate, you know there's free healthcare. We're going to be all right, We'll figure it out. And he was right. He was right to a point. You know, obviously you don't want to be feeding two minute noodles to your child for the first ten years. You do want to have don't let it stop you.
You don't need to have all your ducks in a row. And you know, buying your first home. The average age of the first home buyer now is much higher than it obviously was a decade ago. The home ownership among twenty to thirty year olds is in decline, so these things are going to come later. It's no wonder, you know, people are putting off having children and some people choosing not to have them at all.
It's really expected.
That's like I forget.
We spoke to Georgie Dan about the cost of having a child, and I mean, there's no way to obviously put a figure on that, but it is really expensive. And she said something like eighty percent of the people they pold say that they need two incomes to full time incomes to survive, and so that means you have to pay for childcare, and of course in many cases, the cost of that cancels out the second income. So it's really it's a really challenging thing in this environment.
I lived in America for a long time and my brother and his husband are still over there, and real estate there is not jiggered like it is here, So homes don't appreciate. Yeah, like you can flip a house, but they don't flip it for they don't flip it for ninety percent. They flip it for five or ten percent. That's it. So because the housing market doesn't increase like that, and it's a lot to do with how much as a country they back themselves on innovation. People's investment looks like, who's got a good idea, let's invest in that idea. I wonder what might happen in our country if we started to look outside our major investment being the one that we live in, if we started to look for other places where similar, similar gains might be made to invest in the ideas about country. I wonder what might happen if if we did something like.
That, investing in innovation.
In ideas, in innovation, Yeah, because that's where, to be honest, like, that's where you get your ten x, twenty x, hundred X. That's where those guys and that was I found it so fascinating. It's like, tell how much you're doing some ofvia, we're interested in it. Oh my god, let me introduce you to this person here. That's because they they want to invest in ideas, because it's those conversations that like it. Just remember me. If you guys ever need anything, to come back and talk to me. All right, Yeah, because that's where they get their hundred X. That's where they put zeros on their initial investment. It's not in the house. But here sometimes I think we might have just we might have nailed the foot to the floor with Oh, it's got to be about the household.
We're obsessed with property ownership in Australia. It is it is the great Australian dream, right to own a home, and you know, for good reason as well, because there's a lot of security that comes with that into the long term, especially if you're not buying your first time until you're fifty. Are you going to be done paying that mortgage when you retire? Are you still going to have mortgage repayments into retirement and how are you going to manage that?
Yeah?
Well no, I'm just saying that these are considerations that people have going into, you know, into later home ownership, right, and so you have to maybe think differently around how you are setting yourself up for the long term. But we are obsessed with property and this is why people don't want to let go of this idea of home ownership because a they say it's safe as houses for a reason, it is a solid investment in this country, and b it gives you long term security knowing that you own the roof over your head. The rental market is so tough right now, and imagine being in your seventies and being kicked out of your rental and having to start again. You know, there's a lot of anxiety that comes with that concept. So that's why I think so many and we're all just sort of condition to see it as a big tick, a big life bucket list tick. You know, I got the house next, I'll have the kids next, I don't know whatever, get a holiday house or something. I don't know what's the natural progression, but we are so conditioned to feel as though that is one of life's big achievements that you must tick off. So it's very hard for people to shift their mentality around that.
Where there are people who live in Brooklyn or whatever whose grandparents have never owned, have rented their entire lives, and that's just a part of what life is, and their investments look very different over there. When it comes to shedding your own stories about life, try not to infect your kids with it. That's a tough part about being a parent. How are you or how do you start to instill these ideas in your kids and what kind of things are you moving towards there.
We're very conscious of saying no, and how we say no to things. You know, if they're asking for something, it's just no, not today, you don't need that today, Or no, we've run out of money today because we got you in ice block this morning, and so that's the budget for today or this week. No, there's no space for that. Maybe let's talk about it next week, and things like that.
Deferring the gratification deferring.
Yeah, But for me, it's more showing that mommy and Daddy have a budget and we can't just buy everything that's in front of us, and we have to figure out what we prioritize this week or this month, or this year or whatever. And the other thing we've done, which I've spoken about, is setting them up and this sounds this sounds a bit extra, but it's basically a bit like a Dolomite's account that you or I probably had as kids growing up in primary school. We've set them up with little kids investment accounts, and so we just chuck a bit of pocket money in there each month, if we've got it, will chuck it in. Or if they get some money for their birthday from a family member or for Christmas, we put it in there, and eventually when they're a little bit older, we'll show them that this amount of money has gone in each month or whatever, and this is how it's grown with compound interest, and so they can understand the concept of how that works, and then.
We'll figure out what we do with that down the track. We don't.
That's a conversation for another day, but at least that hopefully gives them a tool to understand how compound interest works and also flexing the savings muscle each week and the impacts of that. So one of our guests on the podcast, Chris Breichy, he is the founder of stock spot, and he has similar accounts for his kids, and he's already speaking to his six year old son about it and showing him that, look, you've got money in Disney, and so every time your friends stream on Disney, the share price will go up and you'll get some dividends. You'll see the rewards of that. And so six year old kids off to school, hustling his kids in the play his mates in the playground, saying can everyone stream Disney on the weekend because I'm going.
To disneyl it is yeah, yeah, she's living. It's really interesting weeks of cast members.
See yeah, see you've just got to be on the on the cell.
So anyway, So these are some of the things where we're thinking about with the kids to try to in small ways teach them about saving and being disciplined with money.
And there's also the work ethic that you demonstrate to them.
Well, they see that every day. Yeah we're out the door.
They think everyone they must think everyone's mummy and daddy works on TV because there's mum and there's dad, right, But yeah, but they see that every day, and you know that comes with a certain level of mum guild obviously, which I know I shouldn't say that I have, but of.
Course I do.
But I love my job and I hope that they see that I love my job and that, you know, the gratification of having a job that you enjoy so much.
You try to at all times go why or there's a purpose to this, doing this with a purpose. And even though I'm you know, you know, hustling this guest for the you know today extra or I'm doing this at work, I'm writing this article for nine holy all is is to do this thing for these people. And that's what I'm really doing today. I just happened to like it.
Yeah, I just happened to have a really good time while I'm doing it.
And that's fine. Yeah, it's not It's not me, it's it's Scott Galloway, who I love.
I love Scott Galloway's great.
He's my dream guest by the way, for the podcast if you're if you're listening.
And both right, Yeah, spending twenties, just trying everything until you find something that when you show but it doesn't feel like work. Yes, do that.
Yeah. His booked The Algebra of Wealth.
It's great, is really that's one of the books that has helped me to understand this world so well.
He's a he's a great brain.
Really really really good and like have you got the White Whale? Have you got Scott Pape?
He gets a lot of emails from a lot of people.
So anyway, again, Scott Pape, if you're listening, we're coming for you too.
The White for a reason, Like he's an extraordinary.
He's an amazing human being, extraordinary.
And he's helped a lot of people.
He has, and I.
Really think it is somebody like that, someone like yourself, with enough upward pressure, uput market pressure. I mean the stuff. There's no like the work that he has done changed in many ways, change the way banks. You know, you just pointed out going just so this means so you know, for every ten grand you put in a bank, they take this much. But how what? Yeah, like, I didn't know any of that before I read that book, and he's sold four hundred thousand. A lot of people now know this stuff. So sure people in that position can do a lot as far as financial literacy, and a lot of about upward pressure on the way the companies were put also government policy, and absolutely I'm glad you made the show.
Oh thank you.
Enjoy doing it?
I loving it.
I love like how good is it to sit down opposite someone who I mean sorry that you know, I hope I've met your expectations. But but to sit across someone who you really enjoy chatting to, and to have forty five oddmitutes without someone telling you a rap, and to really drill down on a topic and get so much out of them.
I love it.
You know, I just love extracting information from people. And it's kind of self indulgent taking up all that time from very busy, smart people, but I love it.
They get something out of it too, I hope, So they wouldn't show up if they didn't want to.
Well, it's you know, everyone I've asked so far has said yes and come on board. So we're very We're very fortunate.
It is tricky that you and I have made a career in an industry with which kind of hijacks the way that people get complicated ideas across each other's, across the bridge between them, in that the amount of nuance and context it takes to understand something difficult cannot be said in a SoundBite or three minutess It takes an hour, sometimes it takes five hours. That's to speed that our brains work and the ability for emotions to catch up with our understanding of something. We can't do it in that amount of time. We pretend we can.
People like, there's such a hunger for more context in this world, and both platforms sit by compliment one another. There's a space for all of this new media, I think, to sit alongside each other and to compliment each other, loving vertical integration.
You go here, Jeffrey. We bring him in the Discovery with the Day Extra, and then we put them taken to the podcast, and then we feed them from there onto the nine honey, and then maybe they become an SMA subscriber and then boom, we've got the subscription money.
This is the point of the big beautiful company that is nine ushah see, welcome to the family.
You get it, Me too, Me too.
That was Sylvia Jeffery as you can find her podcast, It's called the Payoff Where you found this for your podcast? If you want to watch our conversation, you can on nine now. I can't afford Steve Britton. He's the guy that does the voice servers for Channel nine, but I can pretend to be him. Not very well on the block forty sorry not just get carried away. Yeah, you can watch it on the nine now. Apple put a link in the show notes, which is also where you can get tickets to Story Club Comes see Us Live sixth of the July Factory Theater, and where you can pre order the book. So what now what? And when you do so, take a screenshot of you buying the book the results page or whatever said it to me and I'll email you something to say thank you very much. I'll be back here on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend. Bye
