At 18, this week’s Money Diarist was approached at work by a man who told her she could make serious money at a club. Plot twist: it was a strip club.
She went from earning almost nothing to making hundreds of dollars an hour, and at one point tracked nearly $200,000 in cash earnings over a relatively short period. The problem? She was spending almost as quickly as she could earn it. Then life changed completely. She left the industry, became a mum in her early twenties and went from being fiercely financially independent to relying almost entirely on her partner. When that relationship eventually ended, she realised she had no savings, barely any super, very little career history and, at one point, just $11 to her name.Now 32, remarried with three children, she’s rebuilt things very differently. She earns $120,000 across two jobs, has helped turn her husband’s sole trader business into a company, started her own business, bought land for their future home and completely overhauled the way they manage money. It’s chaotic, incredibly candid and a pretty fascinating look at what happens when you’ve experienced both extremes of money, from earning thousands in a night to having almost nothing of your own. And perhaps the biggest lesson? Making a lot of money and actually building financial security are two very different things.