Latest / The Curve / RTC69: Changing your money mindset with the friend that paid for Soph’s bus ticket.

Transcript

RTC69: Changing your money mindset with the friend that paid for Soph’s bus ticket. · The Curve

• 0:00
  Welcome to Raising the Curve, a podcast designed to teach you everything you need to know
• 0:05
  to be better with your money.
• 0:07
  And the wise words of Amy Schumer were slipping carrots into the brownie recipe.
• 0:11
  I don't really get the saying.
• 0:14
  It's kind of like eating vegetables that actually taste good, you know, it's still not
• 0:19
  working.
• 0:20
  Are you on the script?
• 0:21
  It's basically like saying, investing in finance can be boring, but it totally doesn't
• 0:26
  need to be.
• 0:27
  Oh, okay, okay, so we're making it fun by putting the carrot, okay, the vegetables
• 0:32
  are good for you.
• 0:33
  It's the brownie recipe.
• 0:34
  Okay, we got there, we got there, okay, okay, well, you've really got a finance mate.
• 0:39
  Yeah, one of us has to.
• 0:41
  This is true.
• 0:42
  Okay, come and learn alongside me from Vick Harris, ex-fun manager, where I'm going
• 0:46
  to ask all the questions that you wish you could, and I'm going to be eating all the
• 0:50
  brownie you wish you could.
• 0:51
  Oh, that's so not the job, Vick.
• 0:54
  Okay, just come and talk and learn and laugh with us, because together we really can
• 0:58
  raise the curve.
• 1:01
  Today we are joined by a very special human, she's a good friend of both of ours, also
• 1:06
  from New Zealand, and her name is Ella Gordon-Latty.
• 1:10
  Now just for a bit of background, so-
• 1:12
  Hi, Ella.
• 1:13
  Messy, hi.
• 1:14
  Hi guys.
• 1:15
  Great to have you here.
• 1:16
  Yeah.
• 1:17
  I just want to give a bit of context so people know that you're not just a mate that we're
• 1:20
  hopping on the podcast with.
• 1:22
  Ella and I used to live together in Auckland, but we actually met in a co-working space a
• 1:27
  few years ago, bonded over our mutual love, wanting to save the planet, Ella's an eco-warrior,
• 1:34
  and then we became friends, and it kind of evolved from there.
• 1:36
  I think it actually might be quite good at all to give a context, you're obviously living
• 1:39
  in Amsterdam now, so we're all on the side of the world, which is ideal for a podcast.
• 1:44
  We're all tied.
• 1:45
  Boiling.
• 1:47
  Okay, we're not complaining.
• 1:48
  No, I'm sorry, I'm not complaining.
• 1:50
  Not complaining.
• 1:51
  It would be awesome for people listening to get a bit of a context for your background.
• 1:55
  What did you study at uni, and then what did you go into from a work perspective before
• 1:59
  we jump into what we're actually going to talk about today?
• 2:02
  Okay.
• 2:03
  Well, thank you for having me on the show, guys, I feel very privileged.
• 2:07
  What did I study?
• 2:08
  Politics and Geography at University, so I did like a double BA, ended up like doing
• 2:13
  my thesis on oil policy, which after I finished uni, I was like, oh, there's actually no
• 2:19
  jobs for this, so that was a bit of a, one of my first money moments.
• 2:24
  But then, yeah, I've been working in startups, but also corporates and more and more, and
• 2:30
  their sustainability space, and then now work in the space between blockchain and climate
• 2:36
  change finance, which sounds all very techy, but I'm not on the tea side.
• 2:41
  I work as a chief of staff, so looking after a company that is doing that, which is, yeah,
• 2:47
  super cool.
• 2:48
  Awesome.
• 2:49
  Can you maybe just give some context as to what that actually means, because lots of people
• 2:52
  don't even know what blockchain is.
• 2:54
  So what is the company in like real high-level terms that you're working for trying to do
• 2:58
  or solve?
• 2:59
  Totally.
• 3:00
  It's a really interesting one, especially on the money topic, is that they've literally
• 3:05
  calculated how much money we need to, it sounds cheesy, but save the planet.
• 3:10
  And we know the money's there, but the money and the nature of money and how it acts,
• 3:17
  and our current way that we invest, et cetera, literally can't get to the front line quick
• 3:21
  enough.
• 3:22
  There's so many reasons for that, but a lot of it is around lack of transparency between
• 3:26
  the people who have money and then the projects in the ground say you're starting a mangrove
• 3:31
  project in Indonesia.
• 3:33
  To get the money, the big large-scale finance that's already earmarked for doing this stuff,
• 3:38
  getting it to the front line is super, super hard.
• 3:40
  So yeah, blockchain as a technology, very high-level, just offers almost like a transparent
• 3:48
  ledger that everybody sees about transactions that go from person-to-person B, and each
• 3:56
  of the transactions comes with a whole lot of information, and so whoever you are in
• 4:00
  the kind of money chain, you can always trust the counterparty or trust the person doing
• 4:06
  the mangroves.
• 4:07
  So yeah, our company is literally coming up with ways to get that money to the front line.
• 4:13
  Cool, that's so amazing.
• 4:16
  What I really hope to get out of today's episode is I'm going to be really honest about
• 4:20
  my hectic recent financial experience, but also Ella's going to share some similar stories
• 4:27
  and things that's happened to her.
• 4:29
  And what I hope to take away is, because as soon as you decline or you run out of money,
• 4:34
  is this real feeling of hopelessness or, oh, I'm a failed human or, oh, I suck at life,
• 4:40
  and I really think that that needs to change, because we haven't had the train your education
• 4:45
  to know how to be better, and knowing someone like Ella who's incredibly intelligent and
• 4:49
  good at her job, to have similar money issues to me makes me feel a little bit better about
• 4:54
  myself.
• 4:55
  Yeah.
• 4:56
  So hopefully people listening feel the same.
• 4:59
  Basically all three of us were in Italy together, which sounds so bougie and very privileged,
• 5:04
  and we're very lucky to have the opportunity to go to Sicily.
• 5:06
  Yes, yes.
• 5:07
  So we went with 15 of our friends, wild, to this really cool spot, and we were even were
• 5:14
  we.
• 5:15
  Sicily.
• 5:16
  Yeah, okay, thanks.
• 5:17
  Don't ask me anywhere else, anything else.
• 5:19
  And it was super fun.
• 5:20
  We had lots of parties, we had delicious food, it was a really great time, but basically
• 5:24
  just before we were leaving.
• 5:27
  So this would have literally been maybe the day before I went to book my bus to go to the
• 5:31
  airport to meet Vic, to get the plane, to where we were met to meet our friends, and
• 5:35
  I didn't have any money in my account.
• 5:37
  So I messaged Ella, because I feel like people who might have seen this on social media
• 5:41
  might have thought I was exaggerating or faking it or like taking the person like, but
• 5:46
  it was just it's so legit, and that's why I kind of wanted to get Ella wrong.
• 5:50
  I would love to know, when you got that text from me, what were your immediate thoughts,
• 5:54
  feelings, be honest, if you were like, oh, hopeless, I really want you to be brutal here.
• 6:00
  The first thing I felt was like empathy, because I have been in that situation so many times
• 6:09
  before.
• 6:10
  So it's like, for me, it's really tied up in this feeling of shame, and when you see
• 6:15
  that to me, I immediately was like, oh, I really do not want you to feel the way that
• 6:20
  I felt about some of the past, because it can be a very isolating feeling too, like especially
• 6:25
  when you're like, oh my God, how do I tell about this?
• 6:29
  And that also felt almost on it that you asked me, because it shows, I think, how's maybe
• 6:36
  strong up on this?
• 6:37
  I don't know, but you know, it makes you, I know that you trust me and that you know
• 6:43
  that I understand, because I've been in that position so many times before.
• 6:46
  It's quite interesting, because in that moment where I was like, oh God, I need to borrow
• 6:51
  someone's card here.
• 6:52
  The people that flew through my arm is fit, and I thought, I actually can't, like I just
• 6:57
  can't bring myself to be like, hi, can I borrow your card?
• 7:01
  Because I feel like there's just been quite a few times recently where I've either put
• 7:05
  money on the curve card that I've had to then pay back or whatever, and I just didn't
• 7:09
  want to go there again, parents, I know they're not really in a position to help me at the
• 7:16
  moment in general.
• 7:17
  I didn't want them stressing about my finances on top of their own.
• 7:21
  And also I've asked them before, because I've been in the situation many times.
• 7:25
  And I think something with parents, it's like, there's always that little bit of like,
• 7:29
  you feel like you're letting them down, or there's a little bit of judgment, or something
• 7:32
  that you know, you're just like, oh, I'd rather not let you know about this one.
• 7:36
  Yeah.
• 7:37
  I'm going to pretend to be in adults at this point.
• 7:40
  So then I thought, okay, Ella, perfect.
• 7:43
  She, I know, and the reason I messaged you was because I was like, I know that you won't
• 7:47
  judge me for it, for those who are really good with their money.
• 7:52
  You can't even understand the position, because I know for vague, is she kind of a probably,
• 7:57
  I mean, when I told you, what were your initial thoughts feelings, like, how did you feel
• 8:03
  about the whole thing?
• 8:04
  I was coming at it like, how have you not planned for this trip, where literally like that
• 8:11
  was like 24 hours before, and I was like, how are you going to Sicily with no money?
• 8:18
  Like that, I would just not go, do you know what I mean?
• 8:21
  Yeah.
• 8:22
  And it was kind of, I wouldn't put myself in that stressful situation, but then we
• 8:29
  are wired differently.
• 8:30
  So it's kind of, I also wanted to commend you for the fact that you reach out for help,
• 8:36
  because that's something that I don't do.
• 8:38
  And it's like whether it's money, work, personal, anything, you are very good at helping
• 8:45
  other people, but also asking for help when you need it.
• 8:48
  I've often wanted to ask you guys about how you view like money in the context of all
• 8:54
  these other factors, like almost holistically, how your kind of money style works, because
• 8:59
  I found that the only way that I've been able to shift some of my mindset around money
• 9:03
  is like, and actually, soft credit to you, inspired me to start journaling.
• 9:08
  But actually like connecting the dots between some of my personality traits and then how
• 9:13
  that's reflected in my money habits.
• 9:16
  And what did you figure out through that journaling process, like with your particular money,
• 9:20
  story or tendencies, like what stuff has kind of come to the surface?
• 9:23
  God bless my parents, but what they didn't put in me or didn't instill in me is like the
• 9:28
  idea of us controlling our money, rather that money controls us, you know, like there
• 9:33
  was always a kind of a fear conversation around money, and that combined with me being
• 9:39
  quite a chronic people pleaser, I realized I kind of existed in this like feast or
• 9:43
  famine mode, you know, like when I've got lots of money, I go and kind of spend it being
• 9:50
  out and about and doing these things quite unconsciously.
• 9:54
  And then all of a sudden, yeah, I didn't run my tank down to empty.
• 10:00
  And it's like, it's almost like I blacked out and spent all my money, and it's because
• 10:04
  I haven't like, I haven't like timed the beast of money that's controlling me, but then
• 10:08
  through journaling, have like tried to resist that relationship and tried to like do things
• 10:13
  like, even if it's just looking at my transaction history, every week, like just that was a mess
• 10:20
  of breakthrough for me, because that all of a sudden, I was like, no, this is my money,
• 10:25
  I've earned it and I can be a bit more conscious around how I spend it.
• 10:30
  That's a really good thing, because yeah, usually you just spend or swipe or tap or whatever,
• 10:34
  and then when you actually go through your transaction history and you go, oh my gosh, I've
• 10:37
  spent that much on that, or that it's like almost, it's home a bit more.
• 10:42
  Yeah, that's amazing.
• 10:43
  And in terms of the feast or famine that you mentioned before, I can cut 100%
• 10:49
  relate to that.
• 10:50
  I don't know, I have the feast or famine, but I also just have this disconnect with my
• 10:53
  spending.
• 10:54
  So for example, before we went on this holiday, I was staying with some family out in the
• 10:59
  country and just out of London, and it was my grandma's birthday and we were going
• 11:05
  to this art exhibition, and there was like six of my cousin's aunties, uncles, whatever,
• 11:10
  and I had about $120 in my account at this point, and I don't know what came over me,
• 11:16
  but I just like swiped my card to pay for everyone, and that's why I had no money, because
• 11:21
  I had decided it was a great idea just to pay for everyone when I totally kind of
• 11:25
  forward to.
• 11:26
  It's stuff like that where I'm like, why on earth did I do that?
• 11:30
  Or recently, one of my friends was having a really shit time, and I knew she was struggling,
• 11:37
  and I seen two flowers which cost $100, and I had just over that in my account.
• 11:42
  It had quite a while to pay today.
• 11:44
  Just things like that where it's like this really, I don't care about money, sort of
• 11:48
  mentality, it's almost like I'm trying to trick myself by being like, oh yeah, I can
• 11:53
  just shout this, I can just pay this, when really I can't, and it's because I want to
• 12:00
  be generous, and it's because I want to not care about money, but I'm not in a position
• 12:04
  financially to do that yet, so it's hard because my personality type wants to be generous
• 12:10
  and frivolous and just like throw caution to the wind, but then I end up in these situations
• 12:16
  where I have to ask other people for help and that's not fair on other people.
• 12:20
  Yeah, so if you're generally like such like a giver anyway, and I'd say you're also
• 12:26
  like saying yes, and I think that's the same thing with me, I'd rather, I put spending
• 12:32
  money on stuff that doesn't even, not that it doesn't matter to me, but to make others
• 12:37
  happy or to do stuff for other people when actually it ends up just kind of hurting
• 12:42
  myself money-wise.
• 12:43
  Yeah, we're the same age, like 32, have you had any situations where that'd been the
• 12:50
  last couple of years, when you were younger or any times where you remember like big financial
• 12:56
  milestones that were not good?
• 12:58
  Things that weren't you ashamed of, or what was for life?
• 13:01
  Yeah, times where maybe you had a bus moment.
• 13:03
  Where do we start ladies?
• 13:07
  How long do we have?
• 13:09
  Okay, I'll go backwards chronologically, like recently I've gone through a break up
• 13:14
  and that changes your economic situation, and I had to move into a new flat, put down
• 13:21
  two months with rent, a neuro, and then yeah, I literally, I literally could not buy
• 13:29
  food for myself, and do you know what I did?
• 13:32
  I went to my office, and I just ate out of the office like a week before I called my
• 13:38
  parents and said like, hey guys, I kind of need to buy some new sheets, and if you want
• 13:43
  things.
• 13:44
  So this is the office.
• 13:45
  And they pleased them.
• 13:46
  They were like, oh my god, of course, you know, we know you can pay us back, but I was,
• 13:51
  yeah, I had to take a good hard look in the mirror and be like, you're a 32 year old woman,
• 13:56
  living overseas, and this is what it's come to.
• 14:00
  This is what it's come to.
• 14:02
  Okay, and in the moment we had to call your parents, did you feel ashamed?
• 14:06
  And do you kind of like, oh, it's my parents, I know they're not going to judge me for
• 14:09
  it.
• 14:10
  I, yeah, I definitely felt ashamed, but it's really interesting, I think, reflecting on my
• 14:16
  money position now, so I would say now I'm a liquid.
• 14:21
  What does a liquid mean?
• 14:23
  You can't get it out straight away.
• 14:24
  Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, got it.
• 14:26
  So you're not in this position like me where you can just like sell your shares.
• 14:30
  Which I think is such an interesting conversation.
• 14:32
  Have about this idea of balance.
• 14:33
  They're like, when you, still you tie up, I've
• 14:36
  tied up my money in like a property and some other investments, but I did not do that
• 14:42
  the whole time.
• 14:43
  I was like so scared, you know, like, my gosh, buying a house, like all of those big money
• 14:48
  moments that were like on paper look awesome because I've got some assets.
• 14:53
  I was not doing that in a particularly empowered way, but I'm really happy I did it, right?
• 14:58
  I like took the leap to go and do it.
• 15:00
  But I almost felt that asking my parents for money now was actually okay because they
• 15:05
  know that I've done some of the work to have other forms of wealth, if that makes sense,
• 15:12
  even though it's not, I don't have money now, but I'm like, guys, I've done some good stuff
• 15:16
  and I think they really appreciated that.
• 15:19
  And that's what, so when you said you revealed that you've actually got all this other investment,
• 15:25
  I felt that was a really interesting conversation to have because you might be ashamed because
• 15:30
  you don't have just money in the bank now, but you've got all this other money that's
• 15:34
  amazing.
• 15:35
  Yeah, and I think that was the biggest thing for me and we're at the airport and you were
• 15:39
  like, can you help me sell some of my shares and share these?
• 15:42
  Because I didn't even know what to sell, I'd never sold them before.
• 15:46
  Yeah, and I saw your account and I was kind of like, what are you complaining about?
• 15:51
  I was like, oh my gosh, I was like, girl, you've got money, you know, like I wasn't,
• 15:56
  sorry, that sounds unsympathetic because you literally had no money in your bank account.
• 16:01
  I was like, and this whole conversation as well is like, there's a lot of people listening
• 16:06
  that are probably like, I don't even have money in shares that I can tap into or liquid
• 16:09
  money that I'd be able to access.
• 16:11
  It's, you know, like you said, it might be tied up in property or things you can't access
• 16:14
  quickly when you need it.
• 16:16
  And this is why we always harp on about having money in emergency fund because there will
• 16:23
  be dire times like this throughout a lot of people's lives where you need to access money
• 16:28
  quickly, whether it's a trap for Sicily or whether it's a root canal or anything.
• 16:36
  Firstly, I appreciate you being honest and being like, you have money because I didn't think that.
• 16:41
  I honestly didn't think that because we've been harping on about investing for the long term
• 16:46
  and invest for five, 10, 20, 30 years. So in my mind, because I'm an extreme person,
• 16:52
  I put that money in there genuinely not planning on touching it for 20 years.
• 16:56
  What I've invested in are like long-term investments. They're things that I believe in and I want
• 17:01
  to leave. I'm not planning on taking that money out in six months. That's not how you've taught me
• 17:06
  to invest. And so in my mind, I didn't have any money because I was trying to train my mindset to
• 17:12
  be like, pretend that that's not yours because it's otherwise I'm going to constantly dip into it,
• 17:18
  like I did with my emergency fund for non-emergencies. And I think that's great.
• 17:22
  The fact that you have that mindset is so good because you shouldn't.
• 17:26
  I mean, it's easy to say that, but life throws us lemons sometimes and we do need to dip into
• 17:35
  our investments, but having that mindset. And it's really important to be strict with yourself.
• 17:40
  Yeah, maybe Sicily wasn't a time to dip into your investments.
• 17:44
  But this is why we say have emergency funds because then you don't feel as guilty.
• 17:49
  And like the flip side of that is what if your investments, like hats off to your investments
• 17:55
  are done fantastically well. We're going to get there in a second and I have a moment of being
• 17:59
  proud of myself. But yeah, what if you didn't have an alert to text? What if you didn't have
• 18:07
  parenthesis? Parents, she's these account. And I think this whole conversation comes back to
• 18:14
  planning and having a plan in process because we could have avoided the situation.
• 18:21
  I love it. You say where that's where you could have avoided it. All three of us could have
• 18:25
  avoided the situation and future situations that might arise if we have a plan in place.
• 18:30
  And we know, okay, look, I'm going to London. I'm going to Sicily. I am going on any holiday
• 18:36
  or you know, and I need this amount of money. Okay, let's work backwards and figure out how much
• 18:41
  do I need to save in order to have that. And I think this is how you live your life in general,
• 18:46
  is you know, yeah, I think it's just like very like you work in a different way. You know,
• 18:53
  I'm very much a planner and I like systems and like schedules and I'm very boring and I'm very
• 18:57
  fancy. Whereas you are the complete opposite in every single way and that's why I love you.
• 19:01
  And that permeates into our behaviors around money. And I think it's like to avoid these kind of
• 19:06
  situations. Maybe there's parts of our behavior when it comes to money that could be improved or
• 19:13
  changed. But I think you almost need to have a moment like this to realize, okay, now I need to
• 19:18
  change. Do you know what I mean? It's kind of, you know, it's great to realize. I have sunk,
• 19:24
  I'm at the bottom of the ship. I'm like, I want to ship to waterfall. I'm going down.
• 19:30
  That what are you reckon? Because I've often thought about the relationship that I have with
• 19:37
  money and like just in the journaling, reflecting on what my parents did or didn't reveal to me about
• 19:43
  money and that, you know, money in our household was like this kind of, I don't know, I was just
• 19:48
  always a really attention-filled conversation or whatever. But how should parents or like how
• 19:55
  concurrence input or I'm just kind of always want to like what better job could they have done,
• 20:01
  you know, to give me a good money mindset? Because it's, yeah, it's feel like it's a consistent
• 20:06
  thing across a lot of my girlfriends as well when I talk to them about how they were told about
• 20:11
  money. And it feels like a lot of it just wasn't there. And I don't know whether that's like a male
• 20:17
  female thing. But I also haven't talked to a friend ever who was like, yeah, no, I was really set
• 20:23
  up for success by my parents. And I always want to like, what is the, what does the moderate model
• 20:28
  look like? There's so many different aspects that come into your money behavior, not just how
• 20:35
  your parents talked about money. Do you know what I mean? It's like all other parts of your
• 20:38
  personality as well, play self-worth as well. Totally, like things like that, like even, you know,
• 20:44
  people might have an aversion to spend money on themselves or they might feel like they have to
• 20:48
  give money to their community rather than keeping it for themselves. There's so many things that
• 20:53
  that play into how you spend, how you save, how you invest. And also we go through different
• 20:57
  life stages, like you said, you've just gone through a breakout that's been a huge shock in terms
• 21:01
  of, you know, your financial situation. And you could have never planned for that. You know, taking
• 21:07
  each day as it comes, but I guess like having that insurance in terms of a little pool of money
• 21:13
  shouldn't anything go wrong. If I think about the feeling that I have when I've got like an emergency
• 21:20
  fund sitting there, even if it's, you know, without whatever size, I feel on top of the world,
• 21:27
  I'm literally like, I am crushing the game. Actually saying, but I can't remember because it's so
• 21:32
  long ago. I'm exactly saying, you know, when we have a low balance in the curve account, it's like,
• 21:37
  do not come near me. I am not in a good mood. Stressed out like any little thing will trigger me.
• 21:43
  I've noticed that. And I'm like, okay, cool. I'm going to set up an emergency fund for our business
• 21:48
  account because I know that it affects my stress levels. And so, you know, so it's kind of I guess
• 21:53
  just being aware and identifying how money impacts you and your behavior and vice versa. And
• 22:02
  just focusing on little improvements, it doesn't have to be a complete overhaul.
• 22:06
  I think my sister's quite like you when we were younger. Yeah. She would be like, I've got no money
• 22:11
  in my bank account. And I'm like, what do you mean you have no money? That would spin me into
• 22:17
  absolute financial mess having no money. Like I always had a buffer. And I think for me personally,
• 22:22
  even if it was $100 when I was younger, but. But then what about people like myself who did
• 22:27
  have a $5,000 emergency fund? Yeah. And have been dipping into it across the last six months.
• 22:33
  And now don't have one. I think actually I know the answer to that. And it's because I'm spending
• 22:37
  unconsciously. It's because I don't have a budget. I don't have any plan in place. I haven't looked at
• 22:42
  my in Cummings and outgoing and forget out what is realistic in all areas and what I need to pull back
• 22:49
  on. And it's something that we get asked all the time by the Cook community is like, how do you
• 22:53
  balance future me with currently? And it's so hard. It is hard. You know, of course we want to
• 23:00
  travel to every amazing country and live our lives or we're young. We don't have kids or whatever.
• 23:04
  But there is a balance between, you know, sending yourself into a spiral of financial stress
• 23:10
  because you can't afford those trips. Sorry. And I'm not saying this. I'm just saying I'm
• 23:15
  using that extreme as an example. It isn't extreme. And I didn't even really enjoy the trip
• 23:19
  because I was so stressed out. And there's a balance between being like, okay, maybe I'll pull back
• 23:23
  on that a bit and save a bit of money so that that doesn't happen or that I have a good
• 23:28
  retirement or a good future or whatever or I can afford a house in a few years or whatever it is
• 23:33
  is like so that you can actually, because if I had not gone on that trip, which I should have not
• 23:37
  gone, let's be honest. I'm glad you came. I know, but I shouldn't have gone. And then, you know,
• 23:43
  maybe it's in two months time, I say up for a trip that I'm excited for that I can afford.
• 23:50
  Rather than just doing it to try to keep up with the crowd and feeling uncomfortable the entire
• 23:55
  time and looking at the bill and thinking, fuck everyone's hoarding shots and I kind of
• 23:58
  afford that. Because the whole time I was thinking, because I don't drink wine, everyone was pulling
• 24:03
  all this wine and drinking. And I'm aware that I'm going to have to split the bill and blah, blah,
• 24:07
  blah. And so it was actually stressful on the holiday, you know, but I should have just not gone.
• 24:13
  It's almost saying no to things now, so you can say yes to more things in the future.
• 24:17
  We can't say yes to everything because it's expensive to live in the world right now.
• 24:23
  And like you said, you want to go and you want to enjoy it. So save up for it. And then you'll feel
• 24:27
  way more stoked going and enjoying it and knowing that you've saved and you can afford it and you can
• 24:33
  really enjoy it and make the most of it rather than doing kind of like a half hour.
• 24:38
  But it's not so easy to sit here and be like, you should have done this and you should have
• 24:41
  done that. It's more what have you learnt from this and what are you going to take forward in terms of
• 24:47
  your financial habits? I'm not going to lie to you. I'm 100% rely on you.
• 24:52
  Well, I thank for you, personally. My first tip would be to build up that emergency fund,
• 24:58
  ACM. I appreciate it. I know. What about I've got an idea because we're not doing a joint account.
• 25:08
  That's not where I was though. The good notes on option. No, I was going to say,
• 25:13
  can we talk about the investing side for a second because what we missed out is that I had about
• 25:20
  21,000 in my savings of my shares' account. My actual portfolio had grown by 37%, which is amazing.
• 25:27
  And then when I decided what to sell, you told me, look at the shares that are doing well,
• 25:33
  like any of them and cash out on those. Don't take the ones that have lost money.
• 25:38
  So I looked at the Netflix and my Netflix shares had gone up 127%, which is wild. So I bought
• 25:46
  them in June last year and they'd gone up so much. So I'd basically doubled my money in a year.
• 25:52
  So I put 3,000 New Zealand dollars in. I think it was 1,500 USD and then it was at 3,000 USD. So I
• 25:59
  essentially made 3,000 New Zealand dollars, pulled that out, felt okay about it because I hadn't lost
• 26:04
  money. So can we just give me a pat on the back? No, no, that's amazing. When I mean, we're not
• 26:09
  condoning short-term investing, but in this case, you did very well. But me,
• 26:15
  piece of my suitcase, you're like, oh gosh, just give me a pat on the back. Just give me a
• 26:18
  bloody loan. I was actually like, wow, go you. And also that you listen and invest and
• 26:25
  taking up, selling the stocks that have done well, all that, I'm like, yeah. Thank you, I just
• 26:28
  needed a bit of credit for that. But secondly, so going back to the emergency fund situation,
• 26:34
  do you think it would be a good idea for me to pull more money out of my shares,
• 26:38
  create an emergency fund that's not earning money in the stock market. But as there is my buffer,
• 26:45
  or can I just leave that in the stock market and slowly drip out of that as my emergency fund.
• 26:50
  So it's still, you know, like, what would be the best way to go about that? Well, this is not advice,
• 26:56
  because we don't go to jail. I would say it's always good to have that emergency fund,
• 27:01
  not in the stock market. Not in the stock market, definitely, because if the stock market
• 27:06
  absolutely went down the toilet and I couldn't get money out. Well, that's the thing, you're lucky
• 27:10
  that your Netflix has done so well. You know, imagine being in that situation at the airport,
• 27:14
  and you know, the stock market had fallen 30% and you're sitting there and all your stocks are
• 27:19
  down and you have to take it out, you're being a even worse financial situation. So it's really
• 27:25
  important to know that's why we say invest for longer than, you know, say five years and having
• 27:31
  that investment time horizon, because you don't want to have to get in these situations where you
• 27:36
  have to take your money out and they haven't done well. But you were lucky and very skilled investor
• 27:42
  that they had done well. Yes. So, so have a plan. So for Allora and I, what would be,
• 27:49
  sorry, I'm dragging you into my high plus money. I am so happy to be part of this team,
• 27:53
  I need as much as I can get girls. We're not giving advice. We're not giving advice,
• 27:58
  education, education. Nothing we say here is advice. So for the ones that are in the
• 28:04
  help us out of the scary financial bucket, so Allora and I are trying to crawl out,
• 28:09
  what are some key things that we should be doing, learning, starting to improve our situation?
• 28:16
  Well, I would be putting away even $10 a week, even the little list amount that you can work with
• 28:22
  right now. I'd be putting that into a bank account that you cannot see. So another bank account
• 28:28
  that you don't have access to that's not in the same bank account is all your other transactions.
• 28:35
  It's separate so you don't see it. So it's kind of out of sight out of mind and just wait for that
• 28:39
  to build up until you are comfortable with an appropriate level of a safety net amount, whether
• 28:45
  it's, you know, a one month salary, three month salary, whatever you feel like, yep, okay,
• 28:50
  this is all right. If I ever get into a dire situation again, this money will be able to help me
• 28:54
  out. Then you can get back to contributing to investments, but I think that is really key because
• 29:01
  you don't want to get into another situation where you have to take money out of your shazies.
• 29:04
  Yeah. Because it might not have done well. You want that money to grow. And so therefore
• 29:09
  you have a big pool of money when you retire. But I think the key thing is here, this whole
• 29:14
  conversation is that we need to plan. So for the next holiday, it's almost taking half an hour
• 29:21
  and sitting down and going realistically, how much is it going to cost and how much do I need
• 29:27
  to go there and enjoy myself? Can I afford it? No, okay, cool. I'll save money for the next trip.
• 29:34
  I think the thing is what I need is an end goal. Like I need to be like, this is what I want to
• 29:41
  have saved in 30 years. Slash invested, grow on whatever and work backwards because
• 29:47
  if I look at my investments or my money or whatever and I'm someone saying, hey, do you want to go
• 29:52
  out for dinner next week or hey, do you want to, whatever it is, something that I'm going to enjoy
• 29:57
  that is not an investment. I need to know that by spending that, it's affecting the end goal
• 30:04
  or not to be able to make a decision if I want to do it or not. I think I love that.
• 30:09
  Because that's my problem. I don't have the end goal of what that dinner is going to accrue to
• 30:14
  or mean for me in the long term because I've made no plan. Do you know what I mean? So say, for
• 30:19
  example, some friends of mine are going to Rome in August and I really want to go and I've done,
• 30:24
  I have looked at, okay, it's probably going to cost me about this much. And the best thing with that
• 30:29
  is then to add 20%. Yes, okay. So just been a big because people always underestimate holidays
• 30:36
  and they always underestimate the change in the currency or a little thing like,
• 30:40
  Uber's might be more expensive in that country or you know, little things like that. So I always say
• 30:44
  add 20% and hey, if it comes out cheaper, you can spend that money, something else, but.
• 30:48
  Also say I was saying, I've got three, I don't know, it's going to cost me $3,000. If I knew,
• 30:55
  if I go and spend that money now, it's going to mean that I'm going to have this much less in the long
• 31:00
  term, I would be like, what's more important to me? But because I have no context for that,
• 31:05
  I'm not making those decisions properly. That's so interesting. So because that was some of the
• 31:10
  like journaling work that I was doing was actually from like not just a money perspective, but from
• 31:16
  a life perspective, like asking myself those questions of like, where do I want to be in five years?
• 31:21
  Where do I want to be in 10 years? Where do I want to be in 30 years? And it was like only after
• 31:26
  figuring out what I wanted my life to look like, you know, and actually like, imagine it and
• 31:32
  be like, cool, this is where I want to be. Only then was I, I felt war and control of my money
• 31:39
  story then because I actually knew what I'm kind of working towards or what I'm investing for.
• 31:44
  Totally. And maybe it's a case of sort of like setting up a Rome bank account, setting up a,
• 31:52
  I don't know, a moving home bank account, all those kind of things, a Christmas bank account.
• 31:59
  And you literally, right, this is how much I need in each of these bank accounts,
• 32:03
  you know, then you can actually see it accumulating and get excited and be like, cool, I'm halfway
• 32:07
  to that goal. I'm like, you know, that kind of stuff because otherwise it can get all just
• 32:11
  mush mashed into all your other bank accounts and savings accounts. If I am being truly honest,
• 32:17
  and I don't know if you feel the same, Ella, hearing that I feel in my heart and my head, yes,
• 32:23
  cool, I'm going to do it. Yay. However, I know, but I honestly, I still have the, I don't know where to start
• 32:29
  and I don't know how to do it well. And I don't want to spend all this time and energy trying
• 32:36
  and not doing it properly. Yeah. So I'm not going to lie to you. I am 100% relying on the money
• 32:42
  reset to direct me for this. Yeah, no pressure. But I've never been taught. And like,
• 32:48
  Alice, at the beginning of this, what compareants do to help their kids not end up in similar
• 32:53
  situations to how we are at 32 and still having the same annoying patterns play out. Yeah.
• 32:59
  I've never been taught better. And I honestly wouldn't know where to start. And I also don't have
• 33:02
  the time or energy to Google for hours on end trying to figure out or read 5,000 books. So
• 33:09
  I'm personally really looking forward to sitting down, spending two weeks knowing that this is my
• 33:14
  two weeks to sort myself out. Yeah. Learn what I need to put in place and actually do it and have
• 33:19
  accountability because within those two weeks, I'm just by the end of it, I have to have a plan
• 33:24
  and know what I'm doing in a budget and everything. And I feel really excited about that. I feel
• 33:29
  even just at ease knowing that I'm going to be doing something productive. There's this whole
• 33:35
  like school of thought around any like healing of trauma of any kind, big T little T,
• 33:41
  but there's just so much evidence that when you do like healing in a community group or like with
• 33:46
  others, the you know, the impacts are massive. And I sometimes I view like being so terrible with
• 33:53
  money at times. It's like I'm having to like heal from this money story that I had and come into
• 33:59
  a new one. And that's what's so epic about the curve. It's like, oh my god, I can actually finally
• 34:04
  talk about this stuff with people. And then actually we can together build a new story about how
• 34:10
  we want to be with money with the guidance and education, not advice, but education from someone
• 34:19
  who is, you know, obviously you're my friend, but like father people feel is also their friend
• 34:26
  who we can like look up to and you can kind of, yeah, be like our money mentor. Our money
• 34:31
  news. I love that money news. I'm going to say money mother, but no, no, I'm like, that's not
• 34:38
  meant no, no, no, you're so modest with this kind of thing. And I have to bang you over the head
• 34:43
  with it to be like, it's okay to be confident in an area. If someone said to me, oh, so if he's
• 34:48
  my like content news, I'd be like, yeah, I'm good at that. Yeah. And I know I'm good at that.
• 34:54
  And you know you're good with money. So you don't need to play it down as if it makes you arrogant
• 34:58
  because it doesn't. It's actually thank God for you. And Ella, what you just said was the most
• 35:03
  beautiful Ella the way and I love that. And I think that's what I'm excited about is that
• 35:06
  when I put this out firstly on Instagram to the curve community, the amount of people that were
• 35:12
  like me too, I'm a 30 year old single mother who just had to ask their mother for XYZ or holy
• 35:18
  shirt, I can't resonate with this more like the amount of stories was overwhelming. I spent
• 35:22
  like the entire week visiting messages to people. And I think having a group of us together
• 35:28
  who are all committed to changing that mindset, that money story with actionable tips,
• 35:33
  tricks and a plan in place is going to be so empowering and actually really cool. Maybe
• 35:38
  it's since you've been here. Oh, we'll give you like all free access just as like a thank you
• 35:43
  thought. Yes. Oh, but you have to promise to be there and commit to it because you know when
• 35:49
  you get something for free, you kind of value it less. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Thanks. You have to
• 35:53
  pretend like you spent 250 hours on it. I cannot wait like even the idea now of like the fact
• 35:59
  what you're talking about, setting up different bank accounts. And it's like an Excel overlay.
• 36:03
  Yeah. I'm like, oh, thank God there's a plan. Yeah. And it means that we will be able to
• 36:08
  afford so many more trips to Sicily. And have so many more fun memories and not be stressed out
• 36:14
  by our financial situation. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. All that. Thank you so much,
• 36:20
  Al, for your time. I know you're incredibly busy managing many people doing all the things.
• 36:25
  Can you message me your account so I can transfer the money for the bus? Thank you so much for
• 36:31
  listening to Raising the Curve. These conversations are designed to teach you everything that you need
• 36:36
  to know to be better with your money from saving to investing to talking to your friends about your
• 36:41
  salaries. And if you liked what you heard, we would love it. If you could hit subscribe button,
• 36:45
  please. Or spare a yet. Leave a review. It'll only take five seconds and it would really make our
• 36:52
  week. Oh yeah. Our month. Okay. Lots of love. See you soon. Bye.