Hi, and welcome to this Build Wealth with the Money You Already Have Masterclass. So I often get the question or the comment, I don't have enough money to invest. I don't have, I can't focus on building wealth right now because I'm just focused on just surviving. So I want to bust this common belief and I don't want to call it a myth because that just sounds too dramatic. But what I see a lot is are some of those comments and some of those fears and concerns. But the belief then that follows it is that I need to earn more money or I need to have more money in order to build wealth. That is actually not necessarily the case. Sometimes it could be part of the picture, but it's not the entire picture. So the reality then becomes it— you have to understand how your money is flowing and where your money is going, plus what you want from money for it to actually be able to work to the point where you can build wealth. So I see this a lot also with women who are intelligent. There's a lot of intelligent ladies out there that I talk to, and they just have these, these limiting beliefs, for want of a better word, about what it is that they can do with money and building wealth as a result. And it's nothing to do with discipline. There, there's a lot of guilt around the fact that, oh, I don't do this, or, oh, I don't do that, or I should do this. And then we build all of this, this guilt and shame into it, and then we just freeze as a But there's a lot going on and reasons for that, and some of those are because there's a lot of financial noise and a lot of conflicting advice out there. All these TikTok influencers, everyone's got this new thing that we have to do, and then there's this and then this and then this, and then it just becomes overwhelming. You're like, I don't know what to do, so I'm going to do nothing. Then there's societal expectations. This is where the word should comes in a lot. Oh, I should be, you know, investing in Bitcoin, for example. I should be doing this, or I should be putting more into my retirement super fund. Like, there's all these, all these things that we have that we think we should be doing as a result of what the societal expectation kind of comes, especially around women and the multitude of roles that we, we, we play and all the hats that we wear. And as a result of all of that, then there's a lot of shame and comparison because we see things on, on social media. Like, there's, there's someone I follow who is constantly traveling. They're going to events. They're always doing these things. But there's probably some underlying financial hardship that goes on there. And there's, you know, there's a lot of money that goes into all of that. And we don't necessarily see how people are managing their money. We just see the end result of it. But there's a lot of people out there who are living on credit, on buy now, pay later kind of debt. And that's how they're funding their life. But that's not how you build wealth. So we can't necessarily look at what other people are doing and just assume that they're wealthy because they're not necessarily are. Oh, just adding someone in here. So yeah, so this is why there's a lot of avoidance around it and that feeling of I should already know this. Oh my goodness, I, I, I hear that a lot and it really, that's why I do what I do is to be able to help women understand that there's a lot that goes into the whole concept of wealth and it is not necessarily their fault as such. And it isn't about necessarily discipline. So we'll go through some of this a bit more. Today. So a little bit about my story. These— I was fun digging through some old photos, but I'm first-generation Australian, and by that I mean my parents migrated to Australia. They came from Europe. My mother came from, well, by way of a few other countries, but Austria, and my father from Macedonia. Neither grew up in wealthy families. They came to Australia to make a better life. In my mother's case, she came with her mother, so my grandmother. So I saw a lot of this growing up as well. Then, you know, money was tight for many years and trying to figure out what to do. And then, you know, the way to build wealth, I think, for a lot of the migrants was property. But I saw my dad do this in a way that wasn't— there was no plan really to it. So he struggled financially also then to pay off all the debts. And then when he'd retired and a few years into retirement he basically had to sell a lot of things because he was asset-rich and cash-poor and still had debt, and he was in his, you know, 70s, and it just created quite a lot of mess. So, so there was, there was a lot of that too that I saw growing up as well. So I, I was a good girl. I followed the expectations. I went to university. I, I studied accounting. I worked as a tax accountant for about 6 years, and I was miserable. And then I changed careers much to the fear of my grandmother. She's like, "Oh my goodness." And she'd be saying this to me in German. She's like, "Oh, how will this look? This isn't a good thing on your resume." Anyway, so I had a lot of fear that was imposed upon me with all of this as well. And the idea of kind of trying to do what I wanted to do and money felt complicated. And I got a financial planner because I thought that's what you did. And that all didn't work, which I found out later what my core values were and I understood better why it didn't work. But then I studied financial planning because I was like, I still want to figure this money thing out. So it took me a long time of personal development journey as well as trying to learn about money to understand why it felt complex. And in the process of that, I like things to be simple, which is why I called my business Money Made Simple. I don't, I don't like complexity where it doesn't need to be there. So I spent years trying to figure out money for myself and then I started helping others do it. And that happened by accident as well, because I was just doing my own thing and sharing information and then had people start to ask me for help. And then I don't like repetition too much either. So I like creating systems that I can have things run and they do work on their own as much as possible. So then I created a certain level of systems and processes to help simplify it. So, but that was, that was me as I was about 3 years old there. And that was my first car and I felt very proud of it. But it feels like a long time ago now. So what is the actual problem? Because that's quite often the thing too, is like we launch into, you know, money feels overwhelming or confusing or uncomfortable. But we don't actually really know what the underlying problem is. And we sort of follow this view of, you know, we earn income, we pay bills. If there's anything left over, then we can just maybe go on a holiday or do something. And then generally there's a lot of stress around it, which means there's often not a whole lot left over and we get focused on the leftover bit. It rather than focusing on other things, which is where we shift into that sort of more wealth-building mindset, which is you have income coming in, however that's coming in, whether it's from your business or from an employed or even from investments or inheritances. I've had a few clients recently who've received inheritances and they had no idea what to do with it. So you have— you need some structure and some clarity, and you need to understand what it is that you actually want money for. And what it is that's funding. And then the wealth part is what comes as a result of the work that you do around that structuring and gaining the visibility and the clarity. And what that gives you is choice. That's ultimately what money is there for. It's the tool to help us be able to choose the life that we want for ourselves. And this is why I love working with women, because they see it bigger than just themselves. They see it for themselves, probably almost secondary, or I don't know if there's a third. Anyway, they're not front and center. They're looking at it from their kids' perspective. They look at the impact they can make in the world through their business or through philanthropy. There's, there's like a village mentality there. And that's, that's one of the things I really love when I work with women and money. So the biggest wealth myth, and I'm going to use this word myth here, is that I need more money to start building wealth. When you can start building wealth right now, you just need a little bit more organization around money and clarity about what it is that you actually want to do. And so how do we do this? So you need to be clear on what lifestyle you actually want. What is it that you want money for? I know whenever I ask someone this question, particularly women, they just kind of look at me and go, no one's ever asked me that. I hadn't really thought about it that way. Because we just go about life. We do the thing and we just, we, we just sort of are so focused on just getting through the day, the week. And when you have kids, that adds another level of, of mental overwhelm and adulting and life admin. That we don't ever take that time to pause and think about it. What often happens then though is kids start to grow up a little bit, they go to school, we hit our 40s, and I don't know, something, you know, hormonally in women especially, things change. And we go, I've really got to figure this out. I've got to figure my own life out. I can't, you know, how, how much longer can I wait before I need to look at this? So that's how often I find it's the trigger, but you need to get clear on that first. And from there you can start to set some goals. And then the plans to achieve the goals, and then you need to prioritize them because there's always too many things on our list of to-dos that we can't focus on all of them at once. We get overwhelmed and then we sit in freeze mode. And again, you don't want to sit in freeze mode for too long because when it comes to money, time can be your friend, but it can also be a nemesis as well. So small steps. So this, this is just to give you a bit of an idea of the impact just small things can do. So for example, if you started with $100, you invested $100, and then on top of that, every single month you found $100 to invest. And I've assumed an 8% annual return, which over a 20-year period, which we're looking at here, is pretty conservative. So some years can be higher, some years can be lower, some years could even be negative, but then like evened out over those 20 years, you could realistically expect an 8% return. Again, based on historical, so we can't, You know, history doesn't always foretell the future, but we've, we've got to start somewhere. And what we start with is what we know, which is in the past. So if you look at this over just doing that, you'd get around almost $60,000. If you hadn't done anything, you wouldn't have that money. Then let's dial it up a little bit and we take that, start with that $100 again, start for the first year putting that $100 into an investment account, and then you increase that contribution just by 10% each year. So in the second year it'd be $110., then it'll go to $121 and then so forth and so forth. If you do that over 20 years, look at the difference. It has more than doubled. You haven't doubled what you're putting in, but the value of compounding has really kicked in and you now have $132,000. Like, can you imagine that? If you're in your 40s now, you'd have that in your 60s. Like, that's, that's still doable. There is still time and it doesn't even have to be over 20 years. It could be over 15 years. The point is, is to get started and to consistently do it so that you actually have the benefit of that compounding. I just, it's so like, I mean, my daughter is nearly 11 and so there's a lot of learning going on at the moment and I'm already starting to see the idea of compounding to her so that she can start to understand it because just that one concept makes such a difference and it's underplayed. Like it's not used enough because it's too simple and it helps almost too much. For you to be self-sufficient financially and wealth-wise, but it's, it really does have, it can be that simple and it can be those small steps. So I always like to talk about what investing actually is because I think sometimes there's a little bit of this like, oh my gosh, it's this amazingly complex thing that only a very select few people in the world can really understand. Those people sitting in those big buildings in, you know, the financial district, they get it. But how could I possibly get that? It is not that difficult really. So I just want to break that down. So investing is where you buy an asset that you know is likely to, or you think is likely to increase in value over time. So I'm not talking about a car here. Cars depreciate or decline in value. So whether it's a house or a share in a company, even gold to a certain extent, something that will increase over time. The next part of this is that it provides a return. So a dividend payment, rental payment, that's something that gold will not do. It won't be giving you any kind of income returns, but an investment property will do that. Shares that pay out dividends will do that. Any other kind of investment where you're going to anticipate that the price increases and that you also are going to receive some income. That is what is considered something that's, that's an investment. Lots of different ways to invest as well, which again creates a bit of confusion and overwhelm. So we have superannuation for, for the Australians. That's our retirement system. So if you've got money sitting inside super, you are already an investor. There are choices. There's so many more choices now that you can make inside super than you ever could before, which does also add a little bit to the complexity, but there's, you can directly invest in shares inside your super fund now. A lot of super funds will offer that. You can change your portfolios. You can stick with one of the existing portfolios. If you just want to stay in a balanced fund, that is fine. Like it's, you don't have to constantly be tweaking it. It should be more of a set and forget kind of thing, but you can make adjustments as you start to get older as to what sort of level of aggressive portfolio you are in. If it's a good super fund, it will let you know. There are some really good tools out there these days that actually help you find and assess the different super funds, but that's not the point of today, so I won't go down that rabbit hole. Property, I've already spoken about. And when I talk about commercial, that is like business property, like buying property where— and that is a bigger financial investment. You can invest into commercial property through ETFs, which I'm going to talk about down here. Residential property is literally just like buying a house. And sometimes if that feels out of reach too, there's also what they call like brick investing, where people can buy bricks in a house. So you're essentially pooling funds with other people to be able to, to buy either a single property or a inside a fund so that you can still get access to, to property itself. There's even micro investing, which I'm going to talk about shortly as well, that I was listening to recently, and they actually pool funds from their investors and physically go and buy a house. So you will have a portion of that actual physical property, but then you also don't have to manage all of the finding tenants, doing repairs and maintenance, getting your landlord insurance, paying rates, all of this. Like, there's, there's so many different ways to do it now that doesn't have to be that much of a huge financial drain. You can buy shares in a company— shares, stocks, same thing. You can buy bundles of assets. This is my favorite personally. So not necessarily the managed funds so much, but ETFs, which is Exchange Traded Funds, where you're basically taking a whole like industry and they've bundled it all into one sort of share or one sort of group. You can buy a share in that particular industry or country or, you know, there's so many different ways to invest in ETFs now and they're very low cost. The fees from a fees perspective, very low cost. Foreign exchange is a bit trickier. I would highly recommend if you do go down that path, you need to know what you're doing. Then there's digital assets, and I use the word assets a little bit loosely. There's cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum and Dogecoin. I don't know, there's even— Trump has his own coin now. NFTs is non-fungible tokens. That is something even more that I don't really understand. You can buy a pixel in a painting. Yeah, so if that's an area that you want to pursue, go for it. That's not my area of expertise at all. And then there's other things like gold and silver. Probably seeing them in the news a lot lately, but they're more likely to be capital investments, not necessarily for income. And you know, there's, there's ups and downs in terms of reasons to invest in those, which I won't necessarily go into today either. But these are all the different ways that you can invest. Micro investing is a really good way to get started if you don't do anything else, at least start with, I'd suggest, with microinvesting. I have two different microinvesting accounts myself in addition to the other investing that I do. I also have a sub-account for my daughter, so I've got a microinvesting account for her in addition to another investing account that I have for her. So I am a big believer in making small changes do bigger things. And I initially started with microinvesting as a bit of an experiment just to see, because I just did roundups. So every time I make a purchase, it rounds up my purchase. Puts it off to the side. When it reaches, I think, about $10, it then invests it. And it's an app that does it automatically. The one that I use is Raise, but there are others out there. And, and it's amazing. It's— I've now got over $10,000 sitting in that account. And after about 6 years, I upped it to $10 a month. And just by adding the $10 a month made it increase exponentially. Like instead of waiting a year for it to go up $1,000, it went up like $1,500 instead. So it really does. It works quite well. So it's— but the micro investing is small amounts, so we're talking, you know, like $5, $10. You can buy a portion of a share, or you can buy just one share depending on which platform you use as to how they operate. But it is a lot easier to access trading— or not trading, but investing— through micro investing if that is more appealing to start with. And from there you can build. Once you build your knowledge and your confidence, you can grow with the actions that you take. It's just understanding what you're doing first and that it doesn't have to be big. Now the wealth gap. So the difference between this side and this time is really just being able to have visibility of your money, a way to structure what you're doing. So having a bit of a system and then doing it consistently. And it really does come down to consistency. I've automated what I do now to the point where I don't have to think about it. The only thing I have to do is make sure I keep the right amount of money in my account that when it automatically comes out, because I, I operate quite leanly in my my transaction account, and I did bounce it a couple of times until I got into the habit of making sure I left enough in there for the right time of the month. But now it's just— it just does its own thing, and I don't have to think about it. I just look at it every few months and go, okay, cool, and reinvest dividends until I'm old enough to the point where I'm going to need that money or need at least the income it's producing. I'm just letting it tick away. I'm not overcomplicating it. I'm not stressing about it.. And it feels good to know that it's happening as well. So it could be any amount that you can manage. If it's micro investing, you could do $10 a month to start with and then gradually build from there. So as part of all of this, there is a solution to the initial problem that I was talking about, and that is to have a system. I've created an app called Prosperous. I'm actually wearing my Prosperous shirt today. I can't really see it though. And that's, that's the, that's the systemized part where it will automatically pull in banking data. It will categorize everything so you can see your money's going, then it'll allow you to start connecting your net worth to that and give you some scenarios so that you can play around with it before you actually have to do anything or make any decisions. You can see what the impact of those decisions will be. But then on top of that, I've created a community that allows, that provides support, some accountability if you want it, and ongoing guidance. And it's called Her Prosperity Collective. I'll tell you a little bit more about that. So it is, it is a monthly membership, but it's there to help you organize your finances, build wealth intentionally, and in a way that's actually for you and aligned with what you want to achieve, and allow you to feel a bit more calm and confident about money. And knowing that you can ask the question whenever you need to ask it, rather than trying to figure out who to ask. And if there's topics in there and there's issues that I can't answer, I have a, a group of professionals that I work with that I will bring in to help answer those questions. So inside, there's monthly masterclasses delivered by me. I will bring in guest experts when there's the need for it, for if there, you know, there's, there's topics that I can't answer. In addition to that, we're doing live Q&A sessions. You can ask questions either live in the session or send them in if you can't attend, but everything will be recorded. And it's a supportive community, so you can communicate with other women who are like-minded if you want to, or you can just stay on the fringes and just absorb the information that you want until you build up some confidence to engage. There's no, no no forcing into that. But there's going to be tools and frameworks. The Prosperous app is included in this. There's, you know, I want you to have everything at your fingertips. And there'll be other tools and templates and calculators and things that I've created that you have access to everything. There'll be some accountability and guidance. The accountability part, again, is as much or as little as you like, and the guidance is always available. So moving from overwhelm to clarity is really, really important. That switch, that clarity is a game changer. I've seen this happen over and over again, and that leads you to go from avoidance to confidence. So, you know, now you have the clarity, you can have more confidence in the actions that you need to take, and you've got the direction. So you're no longer feeling uncertain and stuck in that procrastination state. So if you'd want to continue on this particular journey that I've been on, you've been on with me for the last sort of half hour or so, then you're welcome to find out a bit more about Her Prosperity
