0:01
Erin, today, I have a very special guest, Jackie Clark is joining me. And Jackie has come from a place of working in this corporate space. She has also written a book which is very, very cool. And the book is, where is it? I've lost the name of it. What is the name of it? Worrying about money.
0:27
I have it all written here, but I just can't seem to put my hands on it stop worrying about money. So I thought this is, that's the book right there. Very cool. It is about stop worrying about money. So, Jackie, thank you for joining me today. Jackie is a trusted advisor. She has been advising to some of Australia's wealthiest families and their businesses, and I thought Jackie would be able to just help us work through how do we stop worrying about money? So Jackie, thank you for joining me. I would love for you introduce yourself to my beautiful audience, and then we're just going to have a conversation about how we stop worrying about money. Wonderful. Well, it's so good to be here, Erin, and I love that we are live with all of your members, which is wonderful. And yeah, absolutely the outcome of today is to help people stop worrying about money. And I wrote the book because I absolutely worried about money. So not unlike you, charted accountant and has spent my career advising people on how to navigate the challenges of wealth or money. And yes, I spent 20 odd years at Deloitte, and a few years before that at PWC. So I spent a lot of years in that kind of really hardcore corporate
1:44
time, or certainly as a partner in that, that was my experience, and stepped out almost six years ago this month. Actually, I can't believe how quickly the time flies. Very happy about that.
1:55
Stepped out to set up my own consulting practice then. But you know that part of this whole evolution, if you like, of life, and certainly somebody who's just sort of into their 50s, is all you know. One of the things I've had to navigate, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners have, is the ups and downs of life. And you know, as much as we think we might have a bit of a plan, there's always a curve ball that comes our way, and whether that's health, relationships, jobs, job security, other issues with family, you name it. I've navigated that, either for myself or certainly for other people multiple times now, and that's really the culmination, or how I got to writing the book stop worrying about money, was to try and put all of that into practice for people so that it wasn't lost with me, you know, sort of in terms of, in a legacy context, is actually trying to help other people, which was the bottom line. There's only so many hours in a day, as we talked about this before, so if I write it down, at least other people can read it and, you know, take something away from it.
2:53
That's amazing. So you have worked with some of Australia's most wealthiest people. What do you think that well, how do they behave differently? To your everyday woman, like, are there things that they do differently, or are there mindset, things that they have, that they do, that us everyday women aren't doing well, perhaps what I could maybe I put it, frame it in this way, the money mistakes that I see the wealthy make, and not dissimilar, right? Yes. And perhaps if we can just talk specifically about women, if that's okay, people listening, they'll be going, that's not me. That's not me. But unfortunately, and whether I like it or not, we have a really serious problem with financial literacy in Australia. So the statistics pretty much say that something like 60% of women, adult women, do not understand basic financial concepts. Pretty alarming. And in my experience, and particularly helping women navigate through divorce, when it comes to that time of working out what your balance sheet is to work, walk up to the lawyer's office, people don't know. And part of this is about someone putting their head in the sand. And when I think so, the top the three biggest money mistakes I talk about, which you would have heard possibly, is the first one is putting your head in the sand. The second one is actually not knowing what your baseline costs are. And the third one, which is the most commonly committed offence, if you like, is wearing and driving your money.
4:25
And I'll talk about that one first, because that's kind of like the easier, yeah, I was going to say, What? What do you mean by that, wearing and driving your money? What does that look I think it starts when you're in your early 20s. And actually, I heard Morgan Housel say this the other day, which I thought, you know, the guy who wrote psychology of money, was very interesting. His take on it, and my my my commentary is, this is one of the single biggest mistakes people make. He has a view that is that because you're still trying to prove who you are when you're younger, you wear the nice clothes and buy the nice car to prove it. Now I'm not saying that people are doing that in their 30.
5:00
And 40s, but what people are doing is spending their money on cars and jewellery and handbags and nice outfits because it's within reach. So whether you've got this much money or this much money, you can always wear and drive your money. Now the difference might be a house seems out of reach. I've got a 27 year old son, who just said to me today, well, I don't know if I can ever buy a house, Mum, and
5:26
perhaps that's a little bit different to when I grew up. There was just this insistence that you needed to buy a house. So every focus went there, whereas I think now it's a bit easier to lease cars. It is easier to do buy now, pay later option. There's a lot more of them. There. Used to only be the Harvey Norman, but now there's so much more flexibility. And so coming back to the mistakes, I think the single one thing is that women delegate financial responsibility elsewhere, and there's a really good reason for it. Erin, so I'm not sort of saying, Hey, why did you do that? I think that when you have young families and you raise kids, and you work, there's only so many hours in a day, and if your spouse takes that on, because you take perhaps the lion's share of other things at home, then it makes sense that you may start to reduce your own literacy because you're handing information off. So you may get out of touch with how much electricity costs in your household. You might be out of touch with how much the internet is costing, until someone says, Hey, what's our balance sheet and what's it going to cost to run this new household of mine?
6:32
So so if I can sort of start there, I think the financial accountability thing is something that I feel like I'm on a bit of a soapbox about encouraging women to take up the baton. It's not about delegating, it's not about taking complete control and responsibility. It's actually about, well, sharing if you're in a relationship, but also being on top of it. I think Gemma Mitchell actually said there needs to be two CEOs in a relationship, but then there's one, CFO, and that really resonated with me, like what you're saying about giving away that financial power. It's we need to take back that control. We need to take back the power that we have in the understanding of how to run the household, but then there needs to be somebody that actually implements so having a CEO means you both need to make decisions. You both need to be aware. You both need to understand what's happening, but then somebody goes off and does it. So I really like that you bring that back as well. It's along the same lines of, you need to know what's happening. You need to be aware of what's happening in your house to then be able to contribute, to make decisions. And then if you find yourself divorced, or you've widowed, or whatever that situation looks like, you at least, then know what's happening. You have that baseline. Yeah. So, I mean, let's get back to that, because I think it's critical that people do understand what their baseline of costs are. So I refer to that as the open the front door costs, which is actually, so that's like this. That's like the starting point, which is recognise, if you want to try and reduce your worry about money, the first thing you can do is work out what it costs to live in your your household, your lifestyle, because from there, you can make choices and trade offs. But in the absence of knowing that, and a lot of people, honestly, money comes in, money goes out, it kind of works until it doesn't, until something goes wrong, essentially. But a lot like the amount of women I talked to, where, in fact, I was at a I hosted a lunch, or I was a guest speaker at lunch with 20 odd women just recently, and the amount of women that sort of consistently felt like they just let the money flowed in, that worked, and the money went out. It was all okay. Was
8:44
alarming, actually.
8:47
So how do you know? What's the best way to be able to know what that is? Open the front door, come in the front door, what? How do we do that? How? What's the best way to know what that looks like? Yeah, and look, I try and make this as low key as possible, because you don't want to frighten people off. But my usual recommendation is, you know, sitting down on a Saturday with a cup of tea, and if you still got kids doing sport after that, but otherwise, first thing Saturday morning cuppa in front of the internet banking login, bit of paper beside you. I've got a couple of templates online that people can access, but basically document down there. Just run through a month spending and have a look and see what's going out, and you'll start to get, I mean, a lot of the banking apps now give you summaries anyway, but make sure you look at your main account, make sure you look at your credit cards and start to summarise what's been going out in a month, we'd all love to do the last three months, but just start with the basics and have a look at the first month. And you and I know there's lots of annual costs that don't pop up in that first month, but you can add those later. I think knowing what it costs to open your front door really starts with thinking through your rent or your mortgage. And.
10:00
Then your utilities, like your electricity, gas and so on. Then you get into your internet services, then you get to your subscriptions, then you get to your health insurance. You know, then food. Goodness me, my, my biggest bill is food. Once you get past mortgage, rent, you get some food. I actually looked at mine this morning. I've looked at it for the last three months, I have just put all of our personal finances on Xero. And for me, that just works really easily. I use Xero all the time, and I know it's a subscription cost, but for me, that just means I have clear visibility. I do it all day, every day anyway, but I did it today, and I actually had the conversation with my husband. We've just been in Bali. We've just had major medical expenses for our daughter. We've just had major motorcycle repairs, and we've had a major income protection insurance payment that was a back payment. And so looking at our expenses for these last three months, it was like, oh, man, that is huge. But once I was able to take out those four things that are unusual, then they're not the usual things. The next thing was groceries. And it was like, okay, so this is actually what we're spending. And then the next one was takeaway. And my daughter said to me, oh, but we never read out. We don't do this. And I'm like, Yeah, but look at this. The numbers don't lie. This is what's actually being spent. So
11:24
excuse me,
11:26
I'll cover you there. So very much the same in our house, and like, we've got five sons, as I think, you know, and three and a half at home, so the food Bill's sort of outrageous. But what's interesting is, if I look at the kids spending, I see mega like Uber Eats is just out of control. And a couple of the families that I've spoken to recently doing some sort of financial coaching type work, you see that it just gets it just runs away from you. So it feels like, and this is I had a bit of a wake up call myself. So when I can say to you, I often talk to people about things like subscriptions, okay, and saying, review them regularly if you're not using binge or stand, cut it off and just get it back on. You know, there's no cost to get in or out, just cut it off. But actually one Uber Eats meal in our house is a year subscription to one of those.
12:17
So you blow it really quickly when you're eating out or ordering out. And so that was a bit of a wake up, just my own wake up call, which is saying, Well, realistically, Jackie, if you're giving people advice to get their subscription sorted, have a look at your own, you know, ordering out bill as a comparison. And think, well, do I need that? You know? What can I and I ran into my neighbours the other day, and they were out getting McDonald's delivered, and they're a young couple. And I said, Why don't you guys just go get a roast chicken and salad from down at the shop, you know, just trying to encourage them to save a bit of money. He said to me, Oh, we've already done that four nights this week.
12:53
Okay, maybe some grocery shopping then. But anyway, yeah, yeah. So that's a starting point, yeah, just having it's like a reality check, because a lot of people avoid it, and particularly executive women, they avoid knowing what's being spent. It's like, I'll fix it with the income. Do you find that a lot of people, yeah, absolutely, I do too, and I think it's potentially a lot of shame or worry around what it is that they are actually spending and if they were to go and look at it, it's like, oh, right, there's that big wake up call, and it's easier just to avoid, yeah, and look, I think that that you can travel along that way until, like, what's happening to a lot of people right now is They're being made redundant, and they're being forced, really, to potentially make a cap on how they spend. But maybe the opportunity here sort of lies back with goal setting. And, you know, we could talk about financial goal setting, but I like to think of putting that in the mix so that you've got some direction on this stuff. Because actually, you're right, if the money's coming in, I think, well, I can have this or have that, or we can eat the $7 blueberries rather than $3 Punnett, all of those types of things, whereas having a financial goal may just help give you a little bit more guidance around those blowouts.
14:17
Yeah. And I think when you're talking about to stop worrying about money. It is, you know, what are the little things that you can do? And I think that awareness piece may seem like a tiny thing, but I think it is actually just really such a big awareness key part to stop worrying about the money. Yeah, look, I met up with a young mum recently, not a young mum, a mum our age, who had young, young sons from a divorce and had been in a financially controlling or coercive relationship, so it was quite difficult for her to get back on her feet, but she said now that she bought a coffee machine in for example, and is taking real pleasure in taking time to have.
15:00
A coffee at home and save herself the seven bucks, because she knows where she needs to get to to start rebuilding post divorce. So, yeah, but, you know, putting it taking the control back. So where do you think? Or, you know, has there been that personal moment for you of going, well, this is, this is why I need to write the book of stop worrying about money. That is there an anxiety piece? Is there something that was the trigger for you to to go? Well, I know, as accountants, we see this sort of thing all the time, but from personal experience, did you have that moment where you go? I need to do something about this. Yeah, look, there's been a few moments probably the most distinct one, and so often, you're often writing from experience, so it's something that's happened and you've worked your way through it, or that's how I wrote my book anyway. But I think that the most defining moment for me, the most obvious one, is going through divorce in my late, late 30s,
16:02
and with at that stage, three young kids and a big, fancy job, it was a huge wake up call. My parents always joked, you know, that Jacqueline, they used to say, had her first dollar until she got divorced. I was clearly a saver, and so that kind of rocked my foundations in lots of different ways. And I rented like this might sound like complete privilege, but I just moved out of home, got married, moved into an apartment that we bought, you know, and life went on. I had to rent for the first time in my life. So that was a big wake up call. And I think subsequent to that, there's been other things where so I was ground zero at 40, basically starting again and everything from, you know, buying Ikea furniture, trying to make life as normal as I could for my kids. But the sort of other end of that for me was when I was contemplating exiting the Deloitte partnership.
16:56
Then, in coming into my late 40s, a decade later, my main thing was I always wanted to support my children's education. I felt like my mum and dad kind of blue collar. They gave me what I think was a good education. So I wanted to continue that for my kids, even though
17:13
I'd made that arrangement, I guess, with my first husband that we were going to, you know, put the kids through school, that his mind changed on that down the track. But that's another story. So but I continue to support a private school education for my kids, and I wanted to make sure that I kind of had that banked, if you like, before I finished that particular role with Deloitte. So for me, one of the planning things around leaving that executive career was just making sure that my kids education was paid for. And the other side of that is I was really anxious about how to protect my kids and so making sure that, you know, I think about safety nets. So at the time, having the job where I could afford to have the right levels of insurance to cover my income, to provide just little things like that. I call them safety nets, but along the way, having income protection, which, for example, I don't have any more, but I don't need it in the same way I did when my kids were younger and at school. So, you know, things change with life, but having the right life insurance, having a current will in place, you know, making sure that they sort of framework around me was supportive enough, should I disappear that my kids would be looked after. I think that was the most important thing. It still is. The most important thing to me is there's just little machinations or things have shifted, and it does need regular review, like every time something changes, I'm encouraging people to make sure they get their wills updated, but equally, like you were talking about insurance policies before, just making sure that they are current and reflective of your needs now and in the future at this point in time, rather than relying on whatever you've been doing for the last five years, because I guarantee you it's out of date. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you talk about money stories. So what is one belief that you had, personally, that you needed to unlearn. Oh, well, the first one was, you can't get ahead without lots of debt.
19:10
Yes, yes, I came from a generation, well, a generation, but
19:16
we were absolutely all about carrying loads of debt. So I'm really only at the other end of that now saying, Okay, I don't want to do it this way anymore. So it's taken a long time to wean me off that
19:30
perhaps I also wasn't I didn't grow up in a household of abundance, but it wasn't scarcity mindset either. So perhaps I was a bit more mid range. I know a lot of people who kind of grew up one way or the other, I definitely felt quite mid range, like nothing was ever a struggle, but everything was relatively simple, if that makes sense, what's different about where I'm at now, and perhaps I think about things like the cars that I might have bought when my dad was live my parents.
20:00
Has just passed away in the last two years, and my dad would never have bought a nice car, you know, whereas I thought I've earned the money I can buy the nice car, aka wearing and driving your money.
20:13
So I think I've shifted on that a lot now also, if that makes sense, but kind of the cascade of worries from or stories, if you like, is the habits at home. You know? It's like the one packet of Tim Tams a week type thing. That's all you get. We didn't even have Tim Tams. We had, like Scotch finger biscuits, which I'd probably be happy to eat right now, but can't eat them anymore, or shouldn't. Shouldn't eat them anymore. Yes, yeah, yeah. And it's, I talk a lot about that seven out of 10 life, and so it's not rock bottom, but it's also not a great existence. I suppose you're just settling, you're just making do. And I think you know, when we're talking about these money stories, a lot of that impacts that seven out of 10 life, as in, you just settle debt. Is part of it. This is how you grew up. This is what's happened. This is just how life has to be, and we just settle for average, and we're not we're not super broke, we're not super poor, but we still have this worry and this heaviness about money. And I think that, you know, you talk about those emotions that come with this worry. So how do we move through that? What what, you know, apart from that practical stuff of, you know, opening the front door, what does that cost, or stepping through the front door, what are some of the other emotional things that you see coming up with money? Well, we did talk a little bit about, I think choices and trade offs are a critical aspect of this. So we did talk a little bit about financial goal setting, and all I can think of, for me is creating a bit of a North Star.
21:54
In fact, if you step back, financial independence is something that was important to me and probably became more it was always important growing up to me for some reason. I don't know what drove that, but I think post a divorce or some other type of setback, it's the kind of thing that you take really seriously. So getting yourself independent, what does that mean? What does that look like? How does that feel? And I don't think money doesn't equal success either, and perhaps I thought it might have when I was younger. So I think that, yep, I think that's shifted. It's kind of like confessions,
22:30
yes, I bought the car, yes, I did it, yeah. So I think you can
22:34
these things can happen along the way, but I think what's important is that we also adjust. And so finding my North Star around how I want to live my life has been more important than the earning of the money, certainly addressing some of the behaviours around how I spend it as well, but wanting to be financially independent, so not really being reliant on anyone or anything, necessarily. And that goes also to things like how you manage your assets and different types of income. So what comes from personal exertion, whether what comes from investments and trying to build like I've started, I've been on this journey for a while now, but trying to replace myself. So rather than it being all about my income earning and income earning potential is what other sources of income or revenue can I generate from other assets or investments and structuring things differently? So it's it is a bit of a lifelong process, there's no doubt about it, but I see a lot of young people getting right onto this now, and I think it's because it's in absence of getting loaded up with debt in property that my generation might have done more. So they're thinking much more differently. It's kind of like the ETF bandwagon, but yeah. Anyway, just I'm interested in seeing the difference, or shifts, certainly, with kids all in their 20s in our household, how they're looking at it a bit differently. So how do you help navigate the kids do that or through that space? Because I find my son in particular, he's very much spend, spend, spend everything he gets. He just spends and has that real impulse, instant gratification, like the Uber Eats. They just like, oh, well, let's just get Uber Eats to do it. And they, they don't have that concept of, well, what's the real cost? What's the underlying cost of it? So how do you help navigate, like those our kids through this financial space so that they don't have the worry about money as they grow up. Yeah, that's a, that's a really loaded question. Erin, I think there's a whole book in that. You know that kids and money is the biggest chapter in my book, because it was the last one I kept writing because I was thinking, I don't have all the answers to this yet. Of course, I don't, but wanting to navigate a couple of things. So I think a big challenge we have with our kids is that they are entitled. And you might go, my kids aren't entitled. People listening might say, my kids aren't entitled. And I say, oh, did did you buy them their first mobile phone? I.
25:00
Do you pay for the mobile phone contract? Did you help them get their first car? Did you pay for driving lessons or take them or drive like you start rattling off the things that we provide them with, and you start and that starts to shape up, quite entitled, actually. So there's an expectation where you have to create some boundary. And I think Erin even part of the basic steps here, what are the boundaries we create around things like covering the kids car insurance or helping them out with cars like, where's our boundaries? Is it an age thing? Like we decided at 21 that the kids get their own 21 kids get their own phone contract. Now you might be choking thinking, God, that's late, or whatever. We have a boundary, which is, I think, really helpful. But the other bigger problem we've got is, I call it the case of affluenza, which is the families tend to be more affluent now, just generally. So the baseline of expenditure, I was about to say, expectation, is much higher, which is where I think the entitlement comes from. It's not a criticism. It's actually just a recognition that there's a higher baseline of costs that are kind of almost given now, and it goes a long way to think about housing that's provided to kids up to their 30s now. Like a lot of kids, if they're not living at home, parents are helping buy houses with as well. There's reverse mortgages going on. There's all sorts of things happening in that space that you know, my parents would never have contemplated. So I do think I often come back to the five year question. It sounds like so boring, but actually there's a lot of positive about the five year question, which is, where do you see yourself in five years? And I think trying to get kids to elevate out of the here and now with, like, with your son with the burning a hole in his pocket type thing is, how do you try and create the stretch goal or something of interest that's down the track, and it might be his trip to Bali, a self funded trip to Bali, or it might be more, in our case, it'd be trying to get kids to fund a ski trip or something like that.
27:00
So how do you engage them in what does that look like in five years from now? Might be a good way to bring them back to the here and now,
27:07
but also this wearing and driving your money thing, because it's that easy money mistake. It's like that kind of simple offence to commit. How do you step out of that and find something that's more significant that can kind of encourage or direct the kids and look, like, to be fair, when you're going through and, like, I remember going through university and then getting out and you get your first paycheck, and you want to spend all of it because, like, Finally, I've got financial independence, yay. Except I'm still living at home. Mom and Dad helped with the car, you know. So it's a little bit of a fool's paradise, that part of it, but definitely starting with a bigger horizon. And again, the goal setting, I think, is an opportunity to engage the 20 year olds in our households. And I suppose that is also the same for women who are going through this midlife space of finding themselves again, finding what lights them up, doing the things that they want to do is that the suggestion of, you know, looking maybe five years in front and seeing where they want to be, and then working backwards to work out, well, what do I need to do in order to get to that? Yeah, that's a, I think that's a great way of looking at it. And the other thing is, who do you have around you? So we talked about business coach or personal coaches before we went live, and I talk about the personal finance village and making sure I have the Who do I have around me that can guide me in these kind of emotional things that are going to separate themselves from maybe, you know, being in my shoes, but at least be able to get in my shoes enough to give me some good guidance. So thinking about, who do you have in your camp that can actually support you in some of the decision making, because, like, let's face it, you want to wear it to accountants talking about money, right? It's like, it's, you know, it's almost a Hail Mary. So what?
28:56
Who do you need to have around you? And if your husband has an accountant, do you have one? Do you have somebody you've got great rapport with? Do you have a financial advisor? Do you have a lawyer? Do you have a coach? Do you have a psychologist? Like, who are the people around you, sort of helping you plan that thing out? And if this is not good, if you're not good at this, go find somebody who is somebody who can, like, I know with my coach that catching up every month, like I see that appointment in my diary, I'm like, what you know, what were the things I needed to do, get my actions organised. It's really helpful. But that accountability, if I can't provide it to myself, at least I can engage somebody who can. And I'd probably actually say I'm quite good at being accountable, but I love having somebody else there to support me. So I actually think having that village around you is a great way to
29:47
get to the destination, if you like, of or, you know, enjoying the journey more. Perhaps I agree totally. I'm the same with my coach that the people around me, they are the ones that elevate me.
30:00
And help to keep me accountable, because we get so emotional. We get emotionally attached to things that are happening. Having that independent person who can be the logical reason is really powerful in order to help us stay on track to what those goals are. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And also keeps you coming back. I'm working with some at the moment that will do anything to get off course as like, but where is X or where is y? And actually, it's really valuable, because when you sit back and it's like, investing in yourself as well, like, we're not all particularly great at that. I think you and I sort of covered this in a way at the start, which was, there's so many things going on in our lives, it's easy to miss looking after yours truly, and so engaging a coach or even a psychologist, somebody a counsellor, whoever is somebody that you're working with, I think can really help you stick with progressing yourself forward, you know, get you, lift you A little bit out and above the day to day, so that you can look ahead. Yeah, you mentioned before that you worked with a lady who had been in a relationship like financial coercion and that sort of thing. Yeah, I imagine that that would be a huge worry about money, a stress about money. How do you or what do you what do you suggest that women who are in that, maybe financial coercive relationship or situation, they are absolutely worrying about money. What are the steps that they can do in order to help move them through this space? Yeah, look at
31:41
it's a terrible situation to be in, and there are a lot of government resources out there to help people. Obviously, I want to say, get out. Like, get out now. Now that's not easy, because usually the structure that the abusers have put in place mean that you can't in fact, you're probably limited access to cash flow. I even talk about people setting up side hustles, like picking up the ironing in the street, locally, on your advertising, on the Facebook page, whatever it might be, where you can get a little bit of cash building up on the side, just to help you build again, a safety net so that you can then exit. And there are lots of places that you can go to. But you know, the sad thing Erin is financial abuse often happens to executive women. Now you're like most people would hear this, going, really, that the smart women? Yeah, the smart one. And it's just naturally a function, I think, of our dedication to the job, which is doing the best job we can, and navigating that hierarchy and looking after a home. And then you delegate financial stuff, or it gets taken from you because you may be better at doing the job and this, that and the other. And before you know it, you've perhaps lost a bit of perspective on what is happening from a cash flow
32:56
thing in your home. And then slowly, over time, little controls come in place till the point where you're almost living off an allowance and you're signing documents, perhaps that you don't agree or you don't want to sign for credit cards or credit card debt that you don't want your name against, but you feel like you've got no choice in your relationship. You've got young kids. You know, it's amazing how quickly the world can get small for you, and so planning an exit is critical and getting help. And there are lots of resources now out there to help with that. But interestingly or sadly, it is a lot of smart executive women. It happens to so you know, a little side hustle of any kind, even five up putting yourself, whatever type of skills you've got, any kind of skills, advertise them, something. We can just get a little earner going. The other thing I say to people, if you can, we've all got phones now. Just make sure your phone, your iCloud accounts, not connected, but getting photos of key documents and understanding where things are at if you don't try and find out discretely, because people get left in really big holes. It's really sad, and I suppose we see that a lot, don't we, in that accounting world, when you're dealing with a marriage breakdown or situation like that, that the the partner doesn't have any idea, like there may be a director or a shareholder of a company, and the company may be trading insolvently, yet their name is on it and they have no idea what's going on. So I think that that that is really important to make sure that you are aware as best you can of what's going on. And if you're not aware, then it's about, well, how do I become aware? Who do I need to talk to? What do I need to do? What is the support around me? Yeah, in order to get that information, and then you can make your decision 100% it goes back to that personal finance village, which is, who have you got around you that you can trust, that is usually independent of your spouse, even in a good marriage, have people that you've got good rapport with, you know the person that you could ring at 10 o'clock at night, God forbid, something's gone wrong, and you can ring them and say, Can you help me?
34:58
I think that's really important for.
35:00
All of us to start working, not being lazy, or putting those things on the back burner. I think about these as, like, significant priorities for you
35:08
in life. So it's just just another one of those things. I think coming back from any of those situations is the more information, it's information is power.
35:17
Yeah. And how do you suggest, like, if there is a conversation that needs to happen with a couple or in a business about these difficult money conversations, what do you suggest we what is the way that we talk about those so we we alleviate that stress to do with money? Well, I mean, of course you can have independent representation if you're not capable of it yourself. So it's a nice way to do it, I think making sure I had a I had a couple recently where the husband wanted to make an investment, so the house was in the wife's name, and he wanted to secure a mortgage over the wife's house. Now, the wife had this one asset, which is the house. The husband had other things. And I was like, Can we please make sure, like, even though the bank says you have to have independent financial counsel before you sign off on these loans, I just wasn't. So I just wanted to make sure that the wife in this case knew what she was signing up for, but following the process. Like, we're also trusting but follow the process through and when the monies are being repaid, that the loan is then the mortgage is dealt with properly and closed out with the bank, rather than sort of going blindly. Because you mentioned that thing about directorships like that is probably the single greatest thing that most people do in relationships. You set up companies. You set up trusts, Trustee companies, husbands and wives put their names on things half the time. People wouldn't have a clue what this I see it all the time too. It's quite funny.
36:44
And I say funny because I think people go into it in a trusting way, not thinking anything's ever going to go wrong. It's not so much about that, I guess, is going back to being keeping yourself accountable and being aware, so that you know what you've signed and you know how to get in and how to get out of the situation you're in. Well, that's that whole financial independence, right? Of being able you know you are, you're the author of your book, you're the author of your story. You need to maintain that power. You need to be in control. And then it's about, Well, who do you let into that space? How do you let that in? Doesn't mean you don't love that person any less. It doesn't mean that you've got a bad relationship. But you also need to make sure that you are looked after. And I think when you bring it back to that, how to stop stressing about money and the worry that money provides. These are the things that you can do to preempt that stress and the worry. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we've got to take our head out of the sand, essentially, and look up, smell the roses and get into it. There's just, there's no other way to avoid it. And you, if you keep kicking the can down the road, it's gonna come and hit you in the head at some point. And I just try and encourage people to do it now, face face it. Now. Please face it now. I can see some train wrecks in front of me with friends, clients, family, where one spouse will just say, I don't want to know. Like, literally, you get the hand. You say, I know that you don't. But there's real serious risk or exposure here that I'd like you to understand. Just understand, yeah, yeah. And you have seen success up close with yourself being a partner in Deloitte, is that right? But then also dealing with very successful people where it like do you see you know that success enoughness, or do you see people still driving, still wanting, still needing more. Are they in that space? Like these people that are affluent and have a lot of money? Like, I see a lot of women that are coming through that feel like they're just getting by week to week to week to week. Like, are you seeing there's people in the other space that they are keep chasing there's never enough.
39:02
Yeah, this is interesting. I guess, working with a lot of entrepreneurs, the purpose becomes the generating of revenue. So the purpose in life becomes the generating of revenue. You know, if someone's earns a million dollars, or someone's got a billion dollars, they want to if they've got two, they want four.
39:21
I do see that a lot, and I think a lot of people's purpose getting out of bed is to make more. And so, you know, I've got clients in their 70s who just still want to make deals, even if they might be, you know, their mind might be going or whatever it might be, they still want to make, be making deals. So I forget what the question was, actually, but I was, I was off on a tangent there somewhere just thinking about the drive of people with a lot of money still wanting to make more. And if I've worked with some of the wealthiest individuals in Australia, and they are so driven to make more, it's never about,
39:56
I think it's about that's how they keep busy. You.
40:00
Yeah, because I've definitely been someone who's driven to stay busy by working, not, not by tending my garden, which I don't have, or whatever it might be, or even by travelling, like even with travelling a lot, it's still not quite the same. You don't get the same kick out of it. Maybe that you do is winning a new business, or setting up a new business, or putting up a, you know, 25 storey tower in the city of Sydney, wherever it might be in the world, some people just stay driven on that track. But there is a trade off, and it comes at the absence of something else. And I did hear a great story about someone like Elon Musk, and okay, probably not the best person to be talking about right now, but he's somebody a young
40:41
female entrepreneur was admiring where he was at, but it was predominantly about wealth. And he says, You don't want to be you don't want to live this life. And you see in the press today, for example, like his daughter has literally changed her name twice and has completely cut him off. And I think that's where he was going. But the life of this sort of serial entrepreneur is very tied up, and there's that they have nothing else in their life, and this is all success this way, but there's nothing else. And that's the trade off, which is, do you want to what are your values? We haven't really talked about financial just life values, but thinking about family, thinking about career, thinking about what does success look like. How do you spend your time? Health, fitness, something there suffers. You can't do all of it and generate 123, million, billion dollars worth of wealth. It just doesn't work that
41:31
way. You know, people say married to the job. There's a reason
41:36
you talk about legacy is more than money. So that sort of leads into this space of you know that values, what values do you want to pass on to people through their wealth? What does that look like? Yeah, and look where the biggest mistakes I've seen the wealthiest families make, and so I'm coming from this angle, because there's two types of legacy. The first one is often around the family name. So how can this continue for the next 100, 200 years? There's that bit and instilling that value in family members is quite tricky. And I think from the from birth right through, you need to be engaged in that story and why that's important. But the challenge often comes in the network and the relationships that you as a founder say have. So a lot of founders have great people around them, but they take them with them all the way, and then if you're the next generation who's supporting you, and what I see is a lot of the network that surrounds the founders, or the current wealth managers, if you like, is they don't have the same network around the next generation. So they don't have the same sounding boards. They don't have the same personal finance village. It's not meant to be the same. They don't have one at all. It's non existent because the control is still often done at the seven year old level in Australia, for example, 70 or 80 or even 90. Look at Rupert Murdoch. But you know, that's kind of the level in which a lot of it's done in Australia. So it's, it's a really tricky one around legacy, because it's not just a name. There's so much more to it. And very quickly, what happens is, as generations or more generations get involved in wealth is they tend to split off because it becomes too complicated to manage. And if you're not set on the same goal and call it a North Star. If it North Star is about the name and the brand and protection of that, that's one thing. But if it's about something over here, then you've got no chance.
43:31
Yeah,
43:33
what's
43:35
one money myth that you would like to disappear? Or one thing about the way we think about money? Oh, that's a good question.
43:45
Actually,
43:47
the most important one is you can turn it around. So actually being bad at it or having made mistakes is not a recipe for continued mistakes. I believe there's a genuine opportunity for anyone to turn around a bad money story or experience. Yeah, so there's lots of myths about money and it won't buy you happiness. Guarantee you, I've worked with the wealthiest people in this country and in Asia, it does not buy happiness. In fact, it's probably inverse relationship. The more you have potentially. It just depends what you do with it, and how you spend your time. But yeah, definitely coming back from mistakes, rebuilding from setbacks, divorce, death, whatever it might be, can't rebuild from death, but if your significant other or somebody has there is an opportunity to come back from that. So I think that's more like a parting message actually, is sharing with people that you can get back on track. Yeah, I always say
44:42
money doesn't buy happiness, but it gives you choice and freedom, yeah, and so then you can choose what it is that you want to do. So it's not necessarily buying the happiness, but it buys you that choice, and it buys you the freedom for then you to be able to do whatever it is that you want.
45:00
Do. So it's sort of a bit of a different spin, as in, it doesn't buy you happiness, but it does give you the ability to do these other things, which you can then choose how that want, how you want that to happen. Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. What do you reckon is the most underrated money skill? Like we talked earlier about that financial literacy,
45:21
what do you see is the most undervalued skill, money skill that we have, or women in particular? Yeah, that's great. That's a that's a really good one. It's actually just awareness around the price of things, so you don't have to, for example, reading the AFR, which is something I might suggest to someone who's trying to build their general financial literacy, reading AFR and understanding how ETFs work or how bonds work isn't the same thing. If you're not a deep expert, like being aware of it isn't the same thing. But if you actually know how much thing costs, how much things cost, you are miles ahead, because our brains can kind of bring those things together in ways. So I think that's underrated. Knowing what it costs to live in detail is incredibly powerful. So it's kind of like, you know, they'd say, Don't sweat the small stuff, but actually there's a really big opportunity to be in control by knowing this stuff. You know, we all people get caught up in the big picture and knowing where we get all that stuff, but actually knowing in the detail can be really valuable. So don't, I think, don't underestimate knowing what a kilo of I feel at stake is what to you know, two litre bottle of milk is knowing that stuff is important. There's a difference between walking down the street and going into a not a 711 but an equivalent store, versus making your way the extra 500 metres or a kilometre to a bigger supermarket brand to get a more competitive price. It's just being out, which then comes back to that intention of how you spend your money. What are your financial goals? How do you are you interested or committed to those goals? What are you prepared to do in order to achieve them. And if you don't know the cost of things, then you're just giving away free money effectively. Well, I think now too that we tap for just about everything I have. It's like, Have you ever driven on the road and you've gone through a lot and you thought, was I like, was that green? Like, just that moment when you probably just knew a podcast and you're driving, and it can be like that. You can tap and walk out of a store and think I can actually even check if that added up, right? And I remember, not just recently, going to a restaurant, at a restaurant I go to regularly, and paying the bill and then doing the I went back the next morning because it's open for coffee as well, and actually looked at them menu just to check the because I was doing the maths going that that can't be right. And in the end, I actually did have to ask them, and it was like an extra bottle of wine that was on the bill. But again, just that little the awareness from anyway, I say it's underrated, because people cast off those things too easily. And actually think it's, it's critical to know. And I think with kids, back to where we had, you know, we're talking about your son again, is them being aware of those things as a starting point makes a huge difference? Yeah, yeah,
48:12
you have
48:15
moved yourself from divorce now, partner now, not partner consulting. Are there still things that you worry about money, even though you're a money expert? I think it's, ah, do I Yes? Yes, there are still things, and it's more tied to
48:33
maybe my next book, which is how to retire right, or how to work on a path to when is, how do you navigate the right combination? Because I don't think people are going to retire like, I'm not going to retire like, God help me. I worry more about one of my hobbies. I
48:51
don't think pickleball counts when you're 90. But anyway, I could say pickleball, but I don't think that's quite right. Anyway, it is what it is. I think I'm getting more engaged in a journey now than perhaps a destination. And I think it's very natural, progressively, in a career scenario like I had at Deloitte, you just go through these steps all the time, and it's almost always about new roles, new roles, more income, etc, etc. What was when I was there? Perhaps not the same now with the way things are going. But yeah, I think I still, I think I worry more now for the kids and just how they're going to get that right in the absence of us stepping in and helping, which our parents didn't do.
49:30
So, you know, I can always find something to worry about when it comes to money. But the bottom line is, I think with the planning and setting my own goals around it, it eases that massively.
49:41
That's so good. And so just as we wrap up, what is a message that you want to say to women who are worrying about money, what do they need to do to stop worrying about money? Other than get your book, which I will put the link in the in the comments for everybody. But what are those?
50:00
Things. What's that final message that you want to share with women about money? Yeah, thanks, Erin. Look, if they've taken anything away from today, I'm all about getting your financial house in order. And really that comes down to knowing what it costs to open your front door. And if you do that, I'll be very happy, because I think once people do that, everything springboards off that. And we could, I could say, Yes, the one thing is financial goals, whatever it might be, but actually knowing what it costs to open your front door is super empowering, and every decision can flow from that. So yeah, I love that. I think we just don't give enough credit to those small, micro, individual decisions that don't seem very much, but really they are the thing that are the drivers. Because if we put all of those things together, that's what makes the big picture. So I love that. How much does it cost you to open the front door? That is just so powerful. So your book, stop worrying about money. Where can people find you? How can they connect with you? What does that look like? Yeah, probably the easiest way is on link tree. I've got that on there. People can. It's complicated scanning, maybe when we're live like this, but find me on link tree. I've actually set up sub state, so I've got a master class running on there, on financial goal setting right now, all for free. So you can kind of find me that way. That's probably the easiest way. The books are now in audiobook just as of two months ago. So people have downloaded
51:28
it, but
51:29
you gotta listen to me for like seven hours. Good luck. I'm awful. I got the hot tip from a friend on the weekend who thought I was speaking really fast. Didn't realise he had it on three times or something, so
51:41
it only took him four hours, something silly, like it was quite funny anyway. But yes, you can I'm easy to find. I'm everywhere. Instagram. Jackie Clark, triple zero, but yeah, I'm easy to find. Perfect. Well, I will put all the links, and I'll put everything in the show notes and and just, yeah, share it everywhere. I absolutely love having these conversations, because I think the more we talk about money, the more we normalise it, the more we normalise that we all make mistakes with you know, we should be further along than what we think we should be. It's just normal. It's just part of it, but we just need to start from where we're at now. And I just, I really love that whole what is that cost to open the front door like that is so powerful. So thank you so much for sharing. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate your time, and I will put all the details there. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you. You
52:40
you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai