Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of Money with Alpha. This is going to be a bit of an interesting one. I haven't got my glasses on right now because I do have the video going, but my glasses reflect a bit of green, so I've taken them off. Thankfully, I can still see my notes that I've written because I'm short-sighted, not long-sighted. So if you're watching this on video, you might see me squinting a little bit because I'm trying to figure out where all the buttons are beyond where I can see. But that's, you know, that's how life rolls. I had a stye, which again, if you're on video, you might still be able to see a little bit of. First time I've ever had one. So, and I usually wear contact lenses, so I can't wear them obviously at the moment. So it's life. It's an interesting journey, I tell you. And we're during school holidays at the moment, so there's a lot of juggling going on. So I hope everyone listening is having a good day, week, month, year. It's been an interesting year, I have to say. We're now in quarter 2. So we're in April and yeah, I have to admit, I, I'm I'm waiting for this like Year of the Horse things kind of moving forwards to really kick in. I do feel like there's movement but there's also a lot of chaos. I try not to read the news too much because I think it would be incredibly overwhelming from a chaos perspective, but but it's no getting away from the fact that stuff's happening and you see it. You drive down the road and you see the, the price of fuel at moment. So I wanted to do this episode on things that I'm doing to to reduce costs and things that I'm— behaviors that I have been doing that I now want to communicate a bit more and to why, and some of the things I've been talking with my clients about, about what they can do. So I wanted to share some of these in case they can help you as well. So there's a couple of different areas. I'm going to talk about sort of food for starters, because, you know, we all need to eat and we certainly do not want to go down the path where we're cutting back on nutritious food. Either. So how, you know, ways around that and how to actually kind of keep— I'm going to be sharing some recipes too, because I get asked for my recipes a lot. So I thought I'll talk about what I do in this episode and then I will share the recipes or the link to them so that you can get access to the stuff that I do. And if you want to know a little bit more, or if you happen to live in Brisbane and you would like some sourdough starter, let me know. Happy to share. 'Cause I got the starter from a mom at school as well. So, you know, that's just, that's how the village works. We share things like this with one another. So, and then also being in school holidays, there's also this, you know, how do you do activities and keep your kids occupied? I mean, my daughter at the moment is splashing around in the pool with a friend and it's, even though it's the middle of April, it's still warm enough to swim. So it's an interesting time, I have to admit. But there's been a few activities that we've been doing these holidays which have been sort of low to no cost. Preferably no cost is even better. And then interest rates. I wanted to have a little chat about interest rates and the two sides of the coin that goes with interest rates. That's why I had to write all this stuff down because I was like, there's no way I'm going to remember everything I want to talk about today. So hopefully there's some things in this episode that you can really practically use. I will put a lot in the notes because if you're on the move while you're listening to this and you can't take notes, notes. I still want you to be able to gain the benefit of the knowledge as well, but if you— rather than having to write it down, I will do that for you and put them in the show notes. And feel free to share. That's the other thing too with episodes that I love. I often— I share them with people. I'm like, oh, you really need to listen to this, and oh, this is very timely, have a listen to that. So please feel free to share this with whomever you think might benefit from it. And also, I, I always hear people asking about leaving reviews. If you would like to leave a review, if you liked this episode or other episodes I've done, please do. Apparently it helps more people find it. I don't know exactly how that works, but if you feel inclined to, that would be lovely. So firstly, food I want to talk about. So I've, because I work in the money space, I'm constantly, and it's not, I mean, our cost of food has been on the rise for years. So it's, it's probably going to be a bit more compounded now, unfortunately, but during the COVID crisis, things started happening. So I had already started to adjust what I was doing and I hadn't actually even started my business yet. So. I was just doing this for me, and then I started to share what I was doing with clients. And I was doing cost comparisons. So I'd done this full— I need to refresh it actually, but I'd done this full cost comparison between the traditional supermarkets, like your Coles and Woolies, or what is it, Safeway, whatever it's called elsewhere, and Aldi, and also Costco. And from a cost perspective, Costco came out ahead of all of them. There is, however, a membership fee, which has gone up. So I do need to, to refresh this. Aldi's very cost-effective. It just unfortunately doesn't have the same range of products and also the brands too. So that's sort of where it kind of falls down a little bit. And they also don't have— they have some organic products. Like, I try to eat as organic as possible and fresh produce. I, I go to a spray-free farmers market so that at least the cost is a bit lower than the organic stuff. But it's, it still doesn't have the pesticides because the other thing I discovered on a little bit of a sidebar, is even though something is marked as certified organic, there are still— I think it was a list of like 25 pesticides that were still legally able to be used and still be classified as organic. So I prefer spray-free in general, and I also try and grow my own food. Not the easiest thing in the world. I've had an armyworm infestation in my veggie pod, which I'm very annoyed about, but I think hopefully, touch wood, I'm getting on top of it. Anyway, I digress. So I mainly shop at Aldi and Costco. I tend to go to Costco. It was every 3 months, but because I'm getting more things from there and more people, like more household, like my husband is eating more of the stuff I'm buying from there and I'm cooking a bit more, I tend to go every 2 months now. Also because Costco is not close to me. So I've got one that's 35 minutes away, but I have to go over a toll bridge and another one that's 45 minutes away, but I don't have to go over a toll bridge. I actually did run the numbers between the two and it is actually still cheaper, although now with the fuel price that probably will have changed. But at the time I did my analysis— yes, I'm a bit of a numbers geek— it was still cheaper to go over the bridge and travel the 35 minutes than it was to do the 45-minute. But either way, I do it every 2 months just so that I, you know, don't have to go— I'm planning ahead so I don't have to do this every week or every few weeks. So I actually have— and this is something that I found really handy because when you go to Costco, if you haven't been before, Apart from the fact that it's this big warehouse, it can be a little overwhelming and there's so many products. And if you go with kids, like I go with my daughter, she's like, oh, I want this, mama. Oh, I want that. And it's like, no, no, I'm not spending $20 and buying 10 packets of this thing for you to try it and not like it. So if you go, I think it's before 4 o'clock and especially on a weekend in the morning is better. They have samples so you can try stuff first and see if you actually like it. The other thing to remember as well is that if your kids go off the thing that they absolutely loved and had to have, make sure it's something that you will eat. Because I don't eat meat, so anything that's meat-related, I'm like, will my husband eat it? Yes, no? If it's a no, I don't get it. So I was like, no, no, you're gonna go off this at some point because there's like 10 packets of this thing and you'll probably get sick of it after 2. So just keep that in mind. And the other thing I do as well is it does add up really quickly. So when you do go to Costco, like, I'll walk out of there spending like $500 to $700 which is like, holy moly. But like I said, that was an every 2 to 3 months shop and I'm buying different things each time. But I actually have in my notes section of my phone my Costco list, and I will actually tick the things that I need for that specific trip. Otherwise what will happen is, which has happened to me, I'm there and I'm like, oh, I'm only here every few months, I will get some more like tomato paste. I get home, I already have a little carton of tomato paste, so now I've got 2 cartons of the thing. So So it's hard to keep track of what you've got sometimes because I'm not going to do a, you know, grocery stock take in the pantry before I go. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But I have a list and then I'm very clear I want to stick to that list, otherwise it can go absolutely nuts. So that's the one caveat with Costco. Aldi obviously is a little bit easier because they're everywhere. I've got one I can cycle to and I still have a list to make sure that I try and stay on path because all of those things that they have in their catalogs every week that they stick in the middle of the store can be very distracting. And it's like putting candy at the checkout. It's very easy to just go, oh, well, just get this, and oh, look at that, they don't have this, they only have this once a year, I'm gonna get that. So trying to stay focused is my message there. Bread is something that I actually started making my own bread about 3 years ago, possibly— oh, so probably about 4, maybe about 4 years ago now, mainly because like post-COVID getting raw ingredients for things, or the, the bakery that I— because I, I get spelt sourdough. So, and the— hey, the cost of spelt has gone up quite a lot. One place that I've been to was trying to charge $12 for it, and I was like, whoa, no, not for a loaf of bread. And then even the, the bakery that I use, or I've been going to, and they've been inching it up, and it's now at $9 a loaf. And I costed it out, I can still make it for $5.50 a loaf. So I'm like, nah, I'm making it. It's like almost half the price. And it has taken me a while to perfect the process, which is why I'm going to write it down for you so that you don't have to make— spend a year making mistakes like I did to try and get it right. So, but now I make it maybe once or twice a week depending on how much bread gets eaten in the house. I don't eat a huge amount of bread and neither does my daughter, but my husband does. So yeah, I'll— and sometimes I will supplement with the bakery stuff if I just haven't had time. But I've got through— it takes, it's a 24-hour process, but I've gone through how to actually make it work. I actually just made, or refreshed, my starter this morning, and then I will start the bread-making process tonight at about, yeah, 8 or 9 o'clock, and then it'll proof overnight. I'll do a couple of my folds. Anyway, I won't go into the detail of it, but if you want it, you can read the recipe and my, my notes on how to do it. But it does cost, and I buy spelt flour in 12.5 kilo bag, and it comes down to about $4 a kilo. And I use about half a kilo in my bread. So that's, that's pretty— and then all the other ingredients and electricity and all of that that goes into it is what kind of gets it up to like the $5.50. And there's usually a little bit of extra flour I have to use when I'm doing some of the proofing so it doesn't stick. But it's still, it's, it's quite cost effective to do it that way. So when I actually had somebody ask me recently, oh, are you, you know, buying flour in bulk? And I was Yes, but I always do. So this is not a change in behavior, this is just a normal state for me. And if you're looking to try and find where to buy them, the European delis are actually the— well, deli— the European, like, foods places have it actually for the best price. So we've got a couple. I do what I call my wog shopping every sort of, again, about 2 months, and I'll go and I'll get some of the products and produce that I can't get anywhere else. But the, the Wogs— and I, I am a Wog, so I use that term very lovingly— they like to buy stuff in bulk. So if you go to their, their food sort of grocery stores, you can buy stuff in bulk. So that's another way to look at it. If you can't get to a Costco, just look for one of those European food markets. So that's the bread. I've been making my own face cream now for over a year, and I absolutely love it. I'm constantly— and I'm, I'm trying I'm going to say this in a, in a somewhat like humble way, but I'm often kind of said, oh, I love your skin, looks so like clean. I mean, that is also the fact that I mainly only drink water and I eat very healthily. But I've been using my own face cream now for, for over a year, and I'll put the recipe for that in there as well. But it's, it's not tallow, this one. If you're like, I'm— I don't have a, a non sort of— I don't have a vegan one because of my philosophy, although I do like the fact that it's vegan. But I just love the fact it's based on aloe vera gel, which is so calming and cooling and smooth and sort of like nourishing for the skin. And I don't have water in mine. I live in a very humid environment. We have maybe 2 months, if that, of the year where it gets a little bit dry, in which case sometimes I'll add a bit of a face oil to it. But for most of the part, most of our our year, it's very humid, so I actually don't want a face cream with water in it because it makes me sweat. So my face cream is specifically designed for our climate, but you can always add a little bit of like jojoba oil or rosehip oil to this if you want to make it a little bit more sort of moisturizing, I suppose, for dry skin. But I will put my recipe in there for that, and it is— oh, I love it. I've been making my shampoo for almost a year now as well. It is Castile soap, like unscented Castile soap base, the Dr. Bronner's. And the ingredients I get from— there's a couple of different places. Some, some things I do have to get from Amazon because I can't find it elsewhere. But there's a website called Vitalia, v-i-t-a-l-i-a.com, I think it is. I'll put that in the notes too. They have really good products as well and well priced too, for like shea butters and even the aloe vera gel. The aloe vera gel I do get from Amazon because I don't want it to have all these other additives in it. The only thing mine's got in it is, I think, some glycerin in addition the aloe vera. Because even though a lot of them say like 99.9% aloe vera, they've got like 3 or 4 other ingredients in there. And I just want it as pure as possible because I'm adding my own stuff to it to make my face cream. So anyway, back to the shampoo. So I'll put the recipe for that one. And then this one is a like a vitality one. So because perimenopause/menopause is happening, I've been, you know, hormonally going nuts. Hair loss, all the kind of beautiful wonderful things that go with getting older. So I wanted one that was actually going to encourage hair growth. And it's been doing a really good job of that. So that's the one I'm going to— I'll put the recipe in there for that one because that's the one that I use. If you have dry hair, however, I would not suggest using it. I tried using it on my daughter's hair and her hair turned out like an afro. She has quite dry hair. So this is only for if you've got fine hair. I make my own yogurt. I did actually invest in a Wahlstead yogurt maker for this. I found it, it was on sale through Kitchen Warehouse. And because I wanted— because I have some dairy issues, like digesting— I don't know why, but specifically Australian-made dairy. But A2 milk, I'm better at digesting. So, and I can't find A2 milk yogurt, and I love just Greek-style yogurt. So I've been making my own yogurt based on it with A2 milk in that. And it's actually a lot cheaper to buy it that way as well because yogurts have gotten expensive. I went to buy just a little tub of it just to, as the initial starter when I first started it. And and I was, when I was looking at all the yogurt tubs, I was going, holy moly, yogurt's gone up. Cause I haven't bought it in so long cause I can't really eat it. So yeah, so making my own now is, is a lot more cost effective. Cause I think I spend $2.50 on a liter of A2 milk and it makes 8 little tubs of yogurt. So that, yeah. Extremely cost-effective that way. I do cook quite a bit. So for those who don't like cooking, I have actually discovered— my daughter got this out of the library at school. It's the Nicole McGuire, the one who does the Simple Home Edit. She has the Simple Dinner Edit. It's actually really, really good, simple, easy, fast cookbook. And there's recipes in here that I've made over and over again. If you're looking at this on video, I have like, I don't know, 15 different tabs there. This is just for the ones I make regularly. And it's really, really good. I've been— if I can't decide what to make for dinner, I'll just dig into this and I'll usually have most of the ingredients unless it's the fresh stuff. Like if I have to— if I'm making a butter chicken for my husband and daughter, I have to go buy the chicken. Or if there's any like the fresh produce stuff, then I'll have to go buy that. But it's really, really good. Most of the stuff that you'll need is already in your pantry. Simple, not complex. I do love Jamie Oliver, but I find his recipes a bit complicated for me. And yeah, so I do tend to just like bulk cook. So I'll spend, so like a Sunday afternoon and do a cook-up, and I'll make all, you know, like a lasagna, and then I'll chop it up for my daughter for lunch. I'll make like a muesli slice, and that'll be morning tea, or I'll make cookies, or I'll do— I will do a big, like, I'll cook usually 3 or 4 things. So at the end of the day, like Oh my God, but then I don't have to cook for a month. And I'll put stuff in the freezer as well. So I've got lots of little Tupperwares containers and things like that. So if you can— and do things that you can cook easily from, like you would get takeout, things like butter chicken. There's a really good recipe in this book for Singapore noodles. I've made it a number of times. I buy these, they're actually— oh, what's the— it's a type of bean, mung bean, mung bean noodles from one of the delis here. So it's also got protein in it. And then I add prawns to it. It's gluten-free, it's dairy-free. Yeah, it's, it's a really, really good meal. Everybody I've made it for loves it. And that's a really good, a nice and easy one that you can do, and it makes quite a lot in one go. So you've got like a, like a decent— so maybe 4 to 6 portions with one, one cook. So that— yeah, so if you can try and find things that you can cook more than— like, you've made fried rice or, you know, I'm trying to think, even omelets. Like, we'll often do omelets if I can't think of anything, or I have my own pre-mixed breadcrumbs. So I've just taken some breadcrumbs and I've added like, I don't know, 10 or so different sort of herbs and spices. So, you know, onion powder, garlic powder, ginger powder, cumin, paprika, salt, pepper. What else do I put in there? Turmeric. Yeah, I'm trying to think of any others. Basically any kind of spice. I just put it in a Tupperware. I just like shake it up. And I I cut up some— I just get some frozen barramundi from, from Aldi. I take the skin off, chop it up. I cover it in this, in that mix, like toss it, and then I put it in the fridge for about half an hour. And then I just like, you know, flash fry it. And then some little tortillas that you can get, little like street tacos with some, you know, some corn, tinned corn, some red cabbage, a bit of chipotle sauce. Some coriander, cut some in the garden, and then I just make little fish tacos. That's another, that's another favorite. So there's, there's a few things that you can do to just keep the meals really nice but simple and not like time-consuming and too hard to cook. It's just, it's just the ideas more than anything, which is where recipe books like this come in handy. So because eating out is one I see with a lot of clients that it adds up very easily and very quickly. Fuel, of course, a big topic at the moment. So what I've been doing is I have an app called Petrol Spy. It's really, really good, and it shows you like in a map. You can be anywhere and you can set your, your regular city, but you can be like, if you've got a hire car or you're driving somewhere and you want to find petrol, Petrol Spy will just— you just tell it where your location is and it will show you the petrol price of all the places around you. So you can pick— obviously you don't want to drive too far, otherwise it negates, you know, the point of, of of getting cheaper fuel because you've got to drive too far to spend too much fuel to get there. But you can see which ones are near you that are the cheapest. So that's, that's a really good one. I try and bike places if I can. Like the other day, my daughter and I, we went, we went into the city to see— and that sort of leads into my next one, which is school holidays. Our Brisbane City Council put on a whole lot of free stuff. We went to a circus at City Hall. So we rode our bikes to the train station, we caught the train in, and in Queensland— and this is something that is really nice we have 50-cent fares now which makes it so affordable. Like, it was literally like $2 in transport for return for my daughter and I to go see a free circus. And it was, it was really, it was really nice. So riding our bikes places if we can. I ride my bike up to the local shopping center, to the supermarket, to Aldi, to the library, to the deli. Like, I try and, I try and bike as much as I can, which of course now it's getting cooler, it makes easier. And the public transport thing, that really works best, I think, in Queensland. We were in Sydney last week visiting some friends who'd come out from Canada, and I was— I'm always amazed at how expensive public transport is in Sydney. It cost my daughter just— it was just like $17 one way from the airport into the city. I was like, holy crap. And I haven't even seen that because I had an Opal card for her, but I haven't even seen what it is on my credit card. But I remember the last time we went to Sydney, I spent about $120 on just day-to-day transport for like 3 days. I thought, that's it, that's nuts. So that only— that public transport recommendation is probably best if you live in Queensland. To the school holidays, again, look at your local city councils. They're putting all sorts of things on local community areas. Like, I live Bayside in Brisbane and the Wynnum Manly, like, Bayside area, they do like— we have free movies in the park. I don't know I think it's monthly. We've got the farmers market, we've got the Brisbane City Council does scooter clinics. My daughter did one of those on Tuesday. So we go there and they have somebody showing them how to like do tricks on their scooters. And then there's scooter parks, obviously. Then, so now of course my daughter's got into scootering because she's, you know, a little bit more confident with it. We go once a week. So they're really nice things. So just check out, you know, your, your local sort of, and your mum's groups as well, because there'll be things that people will list on there that you can do for free. And then, so last one I'll talk about is interest rates. So there is still a bit of variability in the interest rate space. So I would suggest if you haven't already speak to a good broker, an independent broker. If you would like a few recommendations, please let me know. Cause I, I know some really good brokers. And I recommend them quite regularly. So it really just depends on like what you're looking for. And I do a bit of like personality matching sometimes as well, because that's important when you're dealing with money. But yeah, so just see what you could do from a refinancing perspective. The flip side of interest rates when you're paying for like home loans is if you are wanting to sort of, if you've got money that you're looking to do something with. So if, for example, your home loan rate is say 6%. You can leave extra money if you have an offset account sitting in your offset account. But then if you are lucky enough to either have a very low or no home loan, the interest rates on the other side of earning interest are actually doing quite well at the moment. There's, there's, you know, there's lots of different options. There's things where you can earn sort of, sort of, I think I'm in one at the moment, which is like 7.75% per annum. That's obviously variable depending on what the RBA interest rates are doing. But it's important to recognize that there's two sides to the interest rate coin. So, but if you're paying interest on a home loan, if you're paying interest on either buy now, pay later or credit card, please pay that off as quickly as possible. Those interest rates are killers. They will keep you in a cycle of debt. So please prioritize paying that off and then go back to looking at, can you make extra repayments on your home loan? Can you utilize an offset account? Can you, if you don't have an offset account, can you make repayments fortnightly rather than monthly? Because that actually does make a difference. So, and this is where like talk to a mortgage broker because they'll know all the different levers to pull and the things that you can do, especially from a refinancing perspective. So definitely better to not avoid doing something like about that and actually talk to someone because you never know what's possible. The amount of times I've had clients come back to me and go, oh, I'm so glad you recommended I talk to so-and-so because they've saved me this, we're doing this, we're doing this. And now I'm, you know, I'm looking at paying my home loan off sooner. I had a client recently, we did, we ran some numbers in terms of amounts of repayments, and by just doing a little bit extra, it was like, it was literally going to halve their loan from like 22 years down to 11. And they didn't have an offset, so we then looked at paying the interest fortnightly. That was going to chop another 2.8 years off their loan, so they're going to be able to pay this thing off in like, I think it was I know it was about 7.5 or 7 point— anyway, it dramatically reduced it. Like, it is, it is incredibly worth looking at this sort of thing because you could really be debt-free or own your own home a lot faster, or at least get some equity in it if that's what you want to do something with. So that was a lot there. So I spoke about food, I spoke about fuel, and I spoke about interest rates. And I'm going to put a whole bunch of stuff— I might just put a link there, and then I might just put it on a page so that you can sort of see it all so you're not like trying to click on multiple links. But yeah, hopefully you found that useful. Please let me know if you have any questions or if there's any other topic— or there are any other topics that you would like me to cover, any burning questions. And I will leave it there for today because that was a lot, and enjoy the rest of your week.
