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Personal finance expert Tammy Barton, shares life changing money stories and looks at how money can transform every aspect of daily life.
0:00:00
This is a system that's going to support me to do the stuff that I do well by managing around the things that I don't want to put my time and energy and effort into. Yeah, especially when someone else can do it. Exactly. The system as well. I think one of the things that you've done is you've created this system. And so I look at the budget system that you use and I go, this makes sense to me. It's like, you know, when you're driving a car down the highway, you don't look at the dashboard the entire way. You look at the journey in front of you and what you need is a dashboard to look down and go, how much fuel do I have left? How many kilometers is it until my destination and how do I map that out? You glance down at that and so the system that My Budget uses is for me, it's a dashboard while I'm driving the car doing the stuff that I love doing. I can glance down and go, okay that's where I'm at. Great, I'm on track.
0:00:43
Welcome to My Money, My Story, where we chat to some amazing people about their money story and hear just how much money can really impact your life. I'm your host, Tami Barton, founder and director of My Budget. We begin today by acknowledging the Kaurna people, traditional custodians of the land on which we are recording our podcast today. We pay our respects to their elders, past
and present, and we would like to extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Welcome Shane. We have Shane Hatton here today. I said that right, didn't I?
0:01:19
Yes, that's correct, in Adelaide. In Adelaide, how exciting. It's so exciting to be here. And we turned on the weather for you. I know, it was horrible in Melbourne, but it was beautiful in Adelaide, so maybe I'll move here. Oh, well, I was just about to say, maybe you should think about- It doesn't take much, that's a very low bar for me to move to Adelaide.
0:01:32
Well, Adelaide is amazing, so I hope you seriously consider it. And on a serious note, we're here today to hear more about you Shane and your story. Now this is our inaugural podcast, so our very first one, but ladies and gentlemen, I'm very lucky because Shane has his own podcast, which I was very fortunate to be a guest on, and Shane is experienced at this so he might end up guiding me, who knows. But we're here to talk about you today Shane and hear all about your journey and the lessons that you've learnt. And of course, you are one of our valued My Budget clients and hear about that experience as well. But the idea today is to just really unpack your financial journey and let us feel some inspiration because your story is very inspirational.
0:02:18
I have heard it before but this is the best part of my job, people, is talking to my clients. I've loved it from the day I started this business 23 years ago. It's the favorite thing that I get to do and I feel very privileged to be able to do it. So over to you, Shane, let's hear about your story and your journey. Well, I love listening to your stories about the clients as well. I remember when you were on the podcast with me, we were chatting and you were kind of telling story after story about some of the clients you've worked with and it was inspiring. And so for me to be here is a real privilege and so thank you for allowing me to be a part of this story and this journey on the podcast. Where should we start?
0:02:56
Where should we kick off? Well, why don't we start from the beginning about... Well, I was born in Bundaberg. How far back do we want to go? Let's talk about, you know, maybe your relationship with money pre-joining my budget and how you used to think about it, and maybe what led you up to the point of wanting to actually look at your finances and sort them out, regardless of whether you called my budget or you didn't call my budget. It's less about that and more about the way, the journey that you went on to get yourself to a point where you go, I want to transform my money,
because I know that that could transform my life.
0:03:34
Yeah, it's a big question. I mean, we're all kind of a little bit dysfunctional around money, but I should say from the very start so I grew up I grew up in Bundaberg. I'm a Queenslander by birth. I'm Melburnian by choice and Maybe and maybe Adelaide in the near future based on the weather today look I actually should know really from the start of this podcast. I grew up in quite a privileged place I I kind of won the birth lottery I was born into a great household with incredible parents and so so many so much of my story is not the kind of story that is leading me towards having kind of a lot of dysfunction around money. And so I should say that up front. But what I would say, even around that, is that money was not a conversation in our household growing up. I think that would be pretty similar for most people, right?
0:04:17
And it's not for most people. Hardly anyone I know had conversations with money with their parents. Yeah. with their parents. I didn't, none of my friends did, none of my colleagues did. It's just, it was something that we never did. Yeah, but you know what's ironic about this is that my dad worked for a bank. And so even though he worked for a bank, so my parents separated when I was about five years old and they both remarried and my dad moved to Bundaberg, my mom moved to Bundaberg, we were living in Alice Springs at the time and he was working for a bank and so he was an executive, he was a business development officer and doing a lot of kind of their brand shopping for banks. So he was actually doing quite well. And my mum, on the other hand, was working as a teacher's aide and she had a very different experience with work.
0:04:58
And so my dad was very much in this business world. My mum was in this kind of education space. And so they were pretty much worlds apart. And even our family upbringing looked very different. So at my mum's house, we would typically she would cook meals, whereas my dad would kind of just buy lots of ingredients. And he was a great cook, but he would kind of encourage us to cook as well And so I say that is a random thing, but it kind of illustrates We had very two different upbringings growing up, but despite both of them being very different We still in neither household had a lot of conversations where we sat down and talked about money It was just a bit of a it's a bit of a taboo topic Well, it is taboo. Yeah, there's been countless surveys that would that show people would rather talk about sex than talk about money.
0:05:42
And why do you think that is, Shane? Why do you think that in your case, your parents didn't talk about it? It was just something that didn't come up? Yeah. Well, I think first and foremost, I mean, I was a child, so we didn't really talk about money. They didn't talk about it that much with me. They may have talked about it with each other, but as a child, I didn't really have any part to play in it until I got my first job. And again, they set me up my own bank account, and we never really talked about it much at all.
0:06:04
But I actually think it was a generational thing, very much so it wasn't something they talked about with their family. And so we kind of pass on some of our dysfunctions at times and I wouldn't say it was an intentional decision, it was just not something that was part of the culture of what they were
doing. And so naturally it didn't come up in our households. And I think as well that it's something that people just assume and parents assume that it's something you'll just get. Yeah. You'll just grasp. You don't need to learn about it. It just should be a part of life like walking or riding a bike.
0:06:37
But actually, in actual fact, money is very complicated. Yeah. And there's not a lot of good systems
or structures to help you learn about money. And certainly not back when we were younger. I know you're a lot younger than me, but there's not a good way to learn about money. So, talk to me now about, okay, so you've got your first job. How was your relationship with money then? Yeah, look, I've been fortunate to have generally a pretty good relationship with money in the sense that I've never been, I've been quite, I guess, frugal with money most of my life, but I would say my relationship with money is the one that I didn't enjoy the relationship that I had with money.
0:07:14
So I didn't love doing a budget, I didn't love talking about money. You know, I kind of just, it was a last priority in all of the list of priority things. And even to be honest, a little bit to this day, I don't love dealing in the space of money. There's other things that I enjoy doing a whole lot more than that. So getting my first job, I guess getting your first paycheck, all those things that go into that, you become aware, oh my gosh, now I've got money, what do I do with it?
0:07:37
And so naturally, when you're a bit younger, you're living at home, you don't have a lot of expenses, you just spend all of your money. And that's pretty much your relationship with it. That is normal. I mean, how exciting is it when you get your first paycheck? I mean, I remember wanting to run out the door and spend all of it. And then I was like, oh, geez, now I've got no money for next week, you know? So that is a very normal thing. And we stumble around it, I think, when we're young. And I think that's even regardless of what you know you don't know. We're just all excited to get a little bit of money in our hot little hands and I think it's the independence. You don't have to ask mum or dad now. I can actually just go to the movies. Oh, I can actually just go away down, you know, for the weekend because I can save my own money and I can spend my own money too and I'm the boss of myself.
0:08:22
I think that's kind of the... I think remnants stay on with that throughout your life, right? Like if you probably ask a lot of people, what does money represent to you? And for lots of people, there's different answers to that. And I would suggest that probably freedom is probably something that comes up quite a lot for people when money comes into the equation. Like my money for me represents freedom to do the things that I want to do, right? Oh, absolutely. And ultimately, there's a certain point where you get a certain amount of money and any more than that just gives you more freedom to make different decisions.
0:08:52
And that's it. That's what it does. But money also can cause a lot of stress. And that's unwanted stress. And the impact that that stress has on the rest of your life is profound. And it's really what inspired me to start my budget because I came across a lot of people who were earning good money. They just didn't know how much they could afford to pay back on debt. They didn't like it. I mean, it's not sexy.
0:09:19
Let's just get that out there. The elephant in the room. It's not the exciting dinner conversation that you want to have. It's not as exciting as hearing about sex or rock and roll. Although I do find it exciting when people go around the dinner table and talk about how much they earn. I find that genuinely very exciting. Other people feel a little less comfortable about that. Yeah, I think because some people feel like that is a reflection of their self-worth.
0:09:42
And it really isn't. It absolutely isn't. I have a number of people that I know and a number of people that work at my budget who may have taken a pay cut because they just want to do something in their life where they get pleasure, where they feel good, like they're making a difference. And the
small pay cut that they may take to change careers is worth it for them.
0:10:06
And they might be learning a whole new skillset. So I think that conversation around what you earn and your self-worth is a really important one because just because you're earning more doesn't make you a better person. In fact, you might be doing some shady things to be in that position, who knows? So I think it's part of it comes down to our self-worth as a human and as a person. So back to your story, I told you earlier before, I could go off track.
0:10:34
I can go off track. So getting back to your story, so tell me you started working and you started earning money and I believe you decided you were gonna start your own business, which is congratulations. It's a huge leap to do that and it's not for everyone. I think sometimes more recently than when I started out, having your own business can be glamorized a little bit. It's actually really freaking tough. It's hard work.
0:11:08
It's tough. The buck stops with you. Everything stops with you and it's a lot of responsibility and accountability and you've got in some cases other people that you're responsible for. So I do always go, well done, such a brave move to do that in lots of ways but in particular financially too because a lot of the time, especially for me when I started out, I didn't earn any money for a number of years. scrimping and saving and I never bought, I bought like two new tops for the whole year and now I feel like I have a parcel arriving every week of something I bought online, but I was in a different situation. So let's go back to where you were at in your mind and in your life and your journey. Yeah, I mean I was looking back through some old moving boxes the other day and I pulled out, do you remember when we used to gather business cards?
0:12:03
And you used to have the little like wallets and you would flick through everyone's business cards that you gather. I was flicking through all these old business cards that I'd found from when I was younger and in there was a business card that I'd printed on my home printer. And at the time, I was doing marketing at university and I wanted to start a business that was helping people in sales. And so I had a business card that I'd mocked up of a business that I wanted to start and I flipped the next page and there was another business, a completely different business that I wanted to start. And then it would have been early 2010, no, it would have been 2008, 2009, I started my own business as a marketing consultant.
0:12:37
So I was working in Queensland at the time and I had no clue where to even start with running a business. And so I naturally just leaned on people who understood what it took to start a business, but I was excited. And so I had full of enthusiasm, lacking a lot of knowledge and wisdom at the time, kicked off this business and essentially it was doing marketing consulting. I remember reaching out to an accountant at the time and look, he basically said, if you're gonna set up a business, set it up as a company, that's what you should be doing, you're gonna work for yourself, this is how it should look.
0:13:07
Just trusted him, I didn't know any better at the time. And in 2010, made the decision to leave Queensland and move to Melbourne. And at the time, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my business. And so, I decided to close my business and take on a job working in an off-profit. And when I closed the business, I thought that that was the end of it. Little did I know that all the accounts had set up everything in their name. It was being all kind of directed to their accounting firm and he went out of business. And unfortunately, I don't know that there was necessarily some
good things that happened in that business.
0:13:37
And as a result, I didn't get any notifications from them until maybe two years later or maybe two and a half years later and when I get contacted by the ATO and by ASIC with all these additional fines and these payments that were outstanding for me from my business in Queensland that had shut down what I thought it would shut down three years earlier. I mean how stressful is that and it was unintentional which by the way a lot of people who find themselves in your situation it's not that they planned that. Yeah. It was these unforeseen circumstances that they didn't see coming, that you didn't see coming. And it creates a level of stress because stress comes when things are out of your control. Yeah.
0:14:17
Okay. So in this case, you had no control over that because you didn't realize that was happening. And then, but you have to, you're the one that has to live with the consequences. Yeah, absolutely. And so tell me about that and what you did and how you felt and the impact that that had on your life. Yeah, I mean, again, I was in such a fortunate place that when this happened, I had family that I could go to. There were people I could reach out to for support. And I know for so many people, even people who were listening to this podcast, no one plans to kind of have financial stress added to their life, if anything, we try to avoid that.
0:14:52
But something could happen that's completely outside of your control and so many people have no one to go to. And I feel so deeply for those people who have, you know, no one that they can reach out to at that time. And so we did have people to go to, which put us in a much better place. But for me, at that moment, looking at all these kind of bills kind of adding up, it wasn't that I was in a place where I go, well, I can't pay this, I'm gonna be on the street, I'm gonna lose my house or anything
like that. It was just that there was so much stress attached to that whilst trying to do everything else in my life at the time that I couldn't do both at the same time.
0:15:25
Yeah, and again, the stories are also different from all of our clients, but they're also similar when it comes to what you're describing right now because you still have your job or your business to run. You still have your children that need to be dropped to netball practice and tennis and football and
whatever. You still have to deal with all of that and then try and sort this out. And it's not about having someone or not someone to go to because, I mean, there are businesses like my budget that you can go to. It's actually going, facing it head-on and going, I just got to sort this out.
0:16:03
And whether or not you do it or someone else does it or someone helps you, it's the, it's like, I got to rip that bandaid off and I've got to just address this head on because it's stressing me out, it's stressing my relationship out. I mean, finances is the number two thing that makes families fall apart in Australia. And it doesn't have to be that way. It does not have to be that way because it can it's something that can be sorted and the situations I mean almost every client I see says is that the worst situation? Yeah. You know like everyone's feeling when I used to see clients it would be oh is this the worst you've ever seen then I'll say absolutely not. Absolutely not because that's how you feel. Yeah. That's how you feel in that moment that you're in the worst situation possible and no one else's could be as bad as yours. But trust me, I've seen it all and I've heard it all and there's nothing to be ashamed about. It's just a matter of going, okay, there is a solution here. There is something I can do about it and it will take my financial stress away and my life will get better because of it.
0:17:15
Yeah, you know what's interesting, what I found is knowing the solutions there is kind of one thing
but there's also, I'm not sure of how often you see this, but there's the tendency to just just procrastinate on that or avoid that and so help is available for everybody and that's the good thing that we, you know, especially places like my budget, there is help available for people but still there's this, I don't know what it is, but there's this fear of, okay, I want to deal with it, it's adding stress to my life, but if I just maybe ignore it long enough, maybe it'll go away, and in fact it gets worse. And so as a result of that, you see this compound effect of some of these things. And so for me at the time, I was working a lot, I was really busy, and it wasn't something that I was looking at going, this is stressful.
0:17:58
It was stressful by all means, but it was like, okay, well, I don't have time to deal with that now. And as a result of that, it starts to compound really quickly. And all of a sudden, you go, oh, I should have dealt with that early. And now, all of a sudden, I've left it going for too long. And that kind of induces a different kind of shame as well. It's not necessarily a shame that is almost like this feeling of, you know, self-loathing. It's more of the shame of the anger, that self-anger, which is like, I should have done something about that earlier. I should have picked that up earlier.
0:18:26
I should have gone to help earlier. Yeah, and again, as I said, so many similar comments here, the amount of times that our clients have said, I just wish I came and saw you a year ago, or two years ago, five years ago, my life would be completely different now. And it's not, like you say, it's just prioritizing. You go, I'll deal with that later, I'll deal with that later. And then when later comes, you go, oh, geez, would have been so much better if I dealt with it, then I would have been in a different situation.
0:18:56
So back to you again, because I know, like I say, I can talk underwater. Back to you. So where are you at now? Yeah, so in this place, I get all these bills show up in the mail that were unexpected. And again, I could reach out to people for help. But again, even that sense of reaching out to family or friends at those moments, it wasn't like we were struggling financially. It was just this additional thing that was unexpected and unplanned for. And so, as a result of that, it was like, maybe it'll just go away if I don't deal with it. And then it builds up and then you get the stress of not dealing with it. And I was like, I've got to just sort this out. And getting into the detail of my money was never something that I just enjoyed doing. I say this to people, I did marketing at university, I did counselling post-grad and did my masters. I've done all this study and in my life I've not received less than a credit on any of my subjects except for one, was accounting. And I failed it twice, like twice. It is pretty boring. It's a boring subject, but I failed it twice because that was just my experience, my energy, my enthusiasm towards anything relating to money. And so as a result of that, I didn't want to deal with it in a whole lot of ways.
0:20:04
And so I was at that point where I was like, I just want some additional support because I had all these areas in my life where I had great support. So I had a counselor that I was seeing when I needed mental health support. I had friends when I needed kind of like that friendship support. I had family. I had all these kind of channels that I went to the mechanic when my car needed fixing. And I had all these things that would just made perfect sense to me, but I'd never considered, well maybe I need to reach out to someone and have a conversation about financial wellness as well. So why do you think that was not something that popped into your head naturally or organically? Well I think for a lot of people we carry this invisible rule book around in our life and the invisible rule book is full of a set of expectations that we have of the world and of ourselves and so the invisible rules hold this incredible weight when we're unexamined and so we'll have an unexamined invisible rule, which is like, I should have a house by now, or I should have a relationship by now, or I should have all these things, or that particular expectations of the world is that the world should be like this, or other
people should be like that.
0:21:06
And so I think if I was to go back now with the gift of hindsight, I would say that there was internal expectations of myself that people who are great with money don't ask for help. That's an invisible rule because, I mean, why would you ask for help if you're great with money? So asking would just demonstrate to people you're not great with money. But we would never think that about any other context. No, because you think about the greatest performers in the world or anyone who's the greatest in anything in the world, they all have coaches, they all have mentors, they all have people doing the things, helping them to do the things that they might not be great at but better yet Yeah, they have people doing the things that they don't want to do and that's how they become great because they triple down on their strengths and The things that don't give them energy or they don't enjoy they're getting someone else to do which was what what makes them so successful And so great and having those coaches and those mentors make such a huge difference in your life, in all aspects of your life.
0:22:06
So why wouldn't it apply to money? Why wouldn't you, I mean, this is me talking, right? So it sounds like a bit of a sales pitch, but you're convincing. No, I agree. I agree. It's amateur to pro. Like we talked about this idea of like an amateur to a pro goes through the journey of a coach. The coach is the distinction between someone who's doing something as a hobby and someone who wants to do something professionally. And so when it comes to finances, if you want to kind of be an amateur by all means, you can just ignore it, you can let it go. But like, if you want to get good at what you do, why not have someone who can help? Exactly. It's like, I don't know, did you ever play football?
0:22:40
No, I'm not sporting in any way, but I understand the metaphor. Yeah, like going from playing school footy to club, to district, you know, like it's a different level each time you want to step up? Yeah. Do you want to be a track runner for your local athletics club or do you want to get to the Olympics? Yeah. You don't have to get to the Olympics, but you just have to get to a point where your legs go one in front of the other. Yeah.
0:23:06
You know what I mean? What I like about that metaphor is that we imagine that a coach is for someone who's bad to become good. Yes. And sometimes it's about helping a good become better. Absolutely. And so the same with finance and money, we could go, well, my assumption, and to be honest, there is a lot of people who would have assumptions about my budget that, well, you go to my budget if you're bad with money. And as a result of that, that can invoke a whole lot more shame and guilt that goes with it.
0:23:32
And sometimes it's going, well, I actually want a partner to help me go from good to great. Absolutely. And that is one stigma that we haven't been able to fully shake because people who come to my budget are not bad. They're actually people who just want to do better. They actually have the strength and the courage to go, I know I'm earning good money. In fact, this will probably blow a myth. Clients at my budget earn more than the average Australian. So they have great jobs and they're earning good income and they got there for a reason and for that same reason is why they're going, I know I can be doing better with my money and I should be doing better.
0:24:15
I'm earning this good money, I should be doing better and that's how we get a lot of referrals actually because people say, look at Shane, he's doing so well. He's off to the Gold Coast tonight. He's gone Adelaide, Gold Coast. He's doing so well. But I'm pretty sure I earn more than Shane and I can't get
myself away to a motel for the night. So what am I doing wrong? And then they go, and then Shane says, well, actually, I use my budget. And that's how this ecosystem, that's how the business grew was three word of mouth through exactly that.
0:24:48
But we didn't have podcasts back then. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was saying to some of the team a little bit earlier, like, the reasons in which I joined my budget look actually very different to the reasons that I've stayed for the last decade. Because the reasons I came in was because there was a bit of a turning point or tipping point where this additional stress became more than I wanted to deal with at the time. And that was a catalyst moment, but then having the conversation with someone at my budget meant that I went, oh, actually, once that's resolved, that was very quickly resolved. And now the motivations for this is, okay, well, what's the reasons for staying? And it's the same way, go, how do I get better at this? How do I make this a priority when I can't give it 100% of my time and attention?
0:25:34
Well, I'll find someone who can give it 100% of their time and attention to support that. And we're your partner. Yeah. We're your partner. Thank you for that by the way. No, you're welcome. We're welcome because if you're not successful, we're not successful. If our clients aren't doing great things with their money and not feeling stressed and making sure their bills are paid on time and they're creating savings, you're achieving things that you want to achieve out of your life, then if that's not happening for you as a client, then you'll no longer use the My Budget service and we will no longer exist.
0:26:07
So our whole focus is on our clients. 110% of it is on our clients doing the things that they want to do and everybody's goals are different. Someone might just want to go out for dinner every week and not have to worry about it. They're not saying, I want to have a freehold house and this and that they're just going I just that's what I want That's my goals in life is to not worry about it and not have to use credit cards and that sort of thing So everybody's is different and what about tell me about your financial goals my Goals now look very different to my goals when I joined my budget It's kind of what I saying before Part of the reason why I signed up for my budget looks very different to the reasons why I'm part of it now. So, I mean, maybe if we rewind a bit and go to my goals when I first started, I think there was this really kind of distinct moment. I can still remember getting letters in the mail from the ATO and I called my friend who was in business up in Queensland, he was one of my groomsmen, and I just said to him like, all this stuff has shown up and I was not expecting this, I had really no clue why all of this happened. And I was just looking to him for a bit of advice and he was like, I don't know really what I can do other than just to point you to the ATO to pick up the phone and give them a call.
0:27:22
And I think there was probably two core emotions at that moment. I think the first one was frustration, frustration that something had happened to me that was outside of my control. And you get angry about those moments because you're like, that's so annoying because there was nothing that I could have done to prevent that at the time and yet that was just the situation I had to bear with. And the other one was like an almost another side of frustration where it's like, I don't have the time to deal with this right now. And so as a result of that, you just go, you know what, I'm just not going to deal with it. So again, like you don't want to jump on the phone and sit on hold for three hours trying to sort out fees that were overdue from two years ago when you thought it was resolved.
0:28:05
And so I think early on, my goal was just to remove frustration. It was to remove the friction, remove
the stress, and it was to remove that sense of kind of overwhelming the moment whilst trying to do this and everything else that I had to do at the time. Do you feel like were there times and moments where you felt like, why did I get dealt this rough hand? Yeah. this rough head. Yeah, look, I did. There's definitely moments where you kind of have, you throw yourself a bit of a pity party and you go like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
0:28:36
You know, this is so unfair, life's so unfair, and then you meet somebody else and everything gets put into perspective. And I know that there'll be stories on this podcast, people will be listening to this and who's maybe listened to the episode before me or after me and going like, Shane, your life is very easy comparatively to some of these people. And I kind of recognize that. And I guess the reason why I share it is for people who are listening, who are sitting there going, not every story of my budget is a person who was just spiraling out of control. There are stories of people who just find themselves dealt with a really unfortunate circumstance in a moment of time, who just don't want to deal with things.
0:29:13
And as a result of that, it just adds this unnecessary pressure. I often think about it's like you're carrying around like this lead backpack and everywhere you go it's there or it's literally like another person sitting with you at every conversation. I was listening to someone talk about something recently about grief and he was saying grief pulls up a chair at every table I sit at and I often think I thought about the same thing is true with some of our financial concerns or stresses. Every table you pull up at, it's sitting along beside you. And I think that's partly because money is so intertwined with every single facet of our life. Like it or not, that is just the reality of the situation. And if you're feeling that financial stress or pressure or anger, as you were, it's coming with you everywhere because unfortunately, money is going with us everywhere everything we do cost money and we need to earn money and it's it's very basic in its concept, but it's very stressful as well and So I mean and and well done to you by the way for I mean I was just thinking about it when you were talking just you picking up the phone and calling your friend But that in itself was a step towards you changing your life.
0:30:25
What do I do? You're talking it out. Some people don't talk it out. Some people, like you said earlier, don't have someone to actually call. So I just want to say well done to you because, and sometimes clients say to me, I thank you, Tammy, and I say, no, you did all this. You did this. You changed your own life.
0:30:42
We just helped you along the way. We were just your partner, but you're the one that actually did this. So well done for, and taking that first step and calling your friend. And then how did you feel when you rang the ATO? Yeah, ringing that was just a painful situation. It compounded all the issues. But probably sitting on hold for like half an hour. But look, doing something to take this proactive action was always going to feel a lot better, like it was actually something was happening. The other thing I think that we probably haven't touched on, which is an important one, and I'm in a position where I'm married and there's another person...
0:31:16
Congratulations. Thank you, thank you. We're about to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary in April. But we... there's another part to this story and I'm conscious of how much I share because it's not just my story to tell, there's her story that's a part of this. And from my perspective, there's also this element of when you have situations that happen to you as a spouse that influences and impacts your partner, there's another layer of emotion that gets attached to that. And so I'm sure there'll be people who are in relationships that are listening to this and one person might be dealing
with the financial stress of that and wanting to in some ways protect their partner from that because of that additional shame or frustration or anger that sits around that.
0:31:54
And I guess the important part of that is to recognise that even that plays into some of the stories as to why people don't reach out. Yes. And thank you so much for bringing that up because that is very common. We see that a lot There's normally in a relationship one person is looking after the finances It's not ordinarily a joint effort And then the person that is looking after the finances wants to do their part in doing a good job And then they feel like they've failed. Yeah, but if I need to get someone to help me that this is my job in our relationship Which is it not as another story we tell ourself, right? Because that is not true.
0:32:30
That is not true at all. You could be doing a lot more for your relationship if you didn't have to worry about that. Think about it in that context and through that lens because we see that a lot. And in fact, when couples come together and they get on the same page with their finances, it eliminates so many other problems in their relationship. Just getting on the same page with money. I had a client who was a police officer here in Adelaide and one of our staff was over from Melbourne working in our office here. Our office was in a 40-kilometer zone and she was taking the back streets after she left work and she got pulled over.
0:33:10
She didn't realize it was a 60-kilometer zone. on with his own. So she thought, I'll just flick my hair around and see if I can get out of this fine. As she was flicking her hair around, the police officer saw that my budget logo on her shirt and said, do you work for my budget? She said, yeah, I do. He said, you guys got me my sex life back. So getting your finances sorted can also get you your sex life back, right? She got off the fine too, by the way. That's the side note, but that's what he told her.
0:33:41
And it just, when you remove that stress, it makes your relationship so much better when you're on the same page, and you're open and you're communicating it, and you're about money, and you're not hiding anything either. And it's like anything, you don't want to hide anything from your partner if you can help it. And so it's the same with finances. Yeah, it does touch every area of your life, right?
0:34:02
Like money is one of those things that has its kind of roots in every single part of your life. If you're having a hard time with money at home and you show up to work, you carry those with you. It pulls up a chair at the table. If there's financial concerns or challenges, it shows up in your relationships
with family, with a spouse, with children. It shows up everywhere. And especially like borrowing money from family and friends. I mean that is, in my experience, that is one of the hardest situations because you've got this big emotional connection. When you borrowed it from a bank, you go, well, you know, they're a big bank and they're charging me interest or what have you. But when you borrowed it from grandma and you sit down with grandma every Sunday at lunch, you don't like, you know, you can feel awkward about looking grandma in the eye when you know, you know, maybe you haven't paid her back or you haven't stuck to your end of the bargain or whatever. You just feel bad in the first place that grandma's taken her money out of our life savings to loan to you for whatever reason.
0:34:55
And I just think there's that extra emotional connection. But certainly money and relationships, they're so intertwined. And if you can get your money sorted together, that helps your relationship. It doesn't make it worse, let's put it that way. Yeah, yeah, agreed. I wanna talk a little bit and let the listeners know a little bit about what you do, Shane. So talk to us about what you do day to day
because it's fantastic and I wish there was more people like yourself in the world.
0:35:26
So talk to us about what you do every day because you're out there helping a lot of people too. Yeah, look, I have the privilege of being able to work for myself and that's something that I've always wanted to do and aspired to do and now the privilege of being able to do that is absolute, yeah, it's a real joy. And so I would say primarily I'm an author. So I write, I write about leadership, I write about culture. We've got Shane's book here guys, so a plug, Let's Talk Culture. And Shane generously sent me a copy of this which I have, unfortunately I haven't read yet but I intend to.
0:35:56
That's perfect. I intend to. Christmas holidays are coming up. Perfect, perfect. Yeah, so I write and as a result of that I get to take what I write about and I get to go and talk to people all over the world about that. So I talk about leadership and culture. And it's called, sorry, it's called Let's Talk Culture. Yeah. So I talk about culture and communication and I work with people one-on-one as a coach and so we're having a lot of these same conversations with people about internal stories that we tell ourselves and, you know, in the language of Brene Brown, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and they can either be helpful or unhelpful.
0:36:25
And one of the things I get to do is I actually work with a lot of people as a coach to help them understand their strengths. And this is what I've loved about this conversation so far is that we've talked about my budget and my relationship with my budget, how I came into it, which was essentially just an unfortunate circumstance that prompted this conversation to remove some of the financial stress. But the reason I stayed is actually looking very different. And one of the things that I often talk to my clients about and the people that I work with as a coach, is I always say that your best effort is spent on the things that you do naturally really well, your strengths, investing in your strengths and leveraging your strengths.
0:36:58
And the stuff that you don't do well, that's the stuff that you either need to do a couple of things. One, you need to delegate if you can, if you can get rid of it, you delegate it. Or the two that I found are most important is what doesn't come naturally to you, one, put systems in place around that to make sure that you're supported in that. And the second is to build complementary partnerships.
0:37:16
So people find people that are great at what you need. And so one of the reasons we stayed out of my budget, so my budget was helpful at the start to kind of alleviate some of that initial stress. And then I looked at the system and I went, this is a system that's going to support me to do the stuff that I do well by managing around the things that I don't want to put my time and energy and effort into. Yeah, especially when someone else can do it. Exactly. The system as well. I think one of the things that you've done is you've created this system.
0:37:43
And so I look at the budget system that you use and I go, this makes sense to me. It's like, you know, when you're driving a car down the highway, you don't look at the dashboard the entire way, you look at the journey in front of you. And what you need is a dashboard to look down and go, how much fuel do I have left? How many kilometres is it until my destination? And how do I map that out? You glance down at that. And so the system that My Budget uses is for me, it's a dashboard while I'm driving the car, doing the stuff that I love doing, I can glance down and go, okay, that's where I'm at.
0:38:10
Great, I'm on track, know exactly where we're going. And the second part of that is the complimentary partnerships which is finding people who can dedicate their time to this. I don't have the time to dedicate, to sit down Monday to Friday and spend my entire time tracking every single transaction, every single bill. And so I get to do the stuff I love doing and allow someone else who loves doing that to enjoy doing that. Yeah, exactly.
0:38:34
And I think what we're talking about now with the dashboard, and it's a great analogy with your finances, but as you were talking, I could relate to so many parts of my own life where I think, you know, I do this really well, but I don't do that well. And I need to find someone to help me do the bits that I don't do well so I can concentrate and triple down on the places where I'm good. But I think one of the places where I struggle and I think other people struggle is that trust.
0:39:03
How do you trust? So I guess handing over your finances to someone else, it takes trust but how do you know and how does that feel? And even delegating other things, like you've got to find that person or that partnership that you trust. And so talk to me about that, because I think that's a big thing. Well, there'll be people who are listening to this that are self-employed and maybe they're employing people as well, even people who are running businesses.
0:39:30
And you will- Or they could be managers and leaders and have to delegate. Exactly, exactly. And you'll get to a point where you recognise you just can't do it all. Like, well, you can do it all, but you can't do it all at once. And so the challenge then is you have to let go of some things and deciding what to let go of is really important. One of the challenges of letting go is that you have to trust the
person that you let go of something in trust to, that they're not going to break it or misuse it or break that sense of trust that you have. And unfortunately, I came from this pre-existing relationship with my former accountant that had already severed a bit of that trust.
0:40:03
Yes. So for me, coming into a conversation, I had almost some kind of walls up, a little bit of a few barriers up just going, okay, is this real? Is this the real deal? Can I trust this? And I've never ever felt since I've picked up the phone and talked to someone that there was ever that sense of misuse or mistrust that was ever in any kind of the tone of the conversations. And I've talked to a few of the kind of my budget team in my interactions, and not one person I've talked to has ever said that they don't love working on my budget. It's, look, Tammy, I'll be honest, it's culty. It's just always a little bit culty.
0:40:38
There's something in the water. There's something in the water. But every person I talk to is always the most empathetic, compassionate, understanding conversations. And as a result of that, it creates a sense of safety. And what we know from all of the work that we do is that when you have safety, you can build trust. And I think for people who are concerned about that, just allowing yourself the exposure to the people can help create that safety, which can allow for that trust. Yeah. And thank you for saying that, because I absolutely feel like everybody who works at my wants to be there because they like the idea of it actually doing every day something that's making a difference in someone's life. They don't just clock in and clock off at their job. They get to talk to real people and they get to make a real difference in real people's lives and I think that's so rewarding in itself because if you like what you do and you feel a sense of purpose then that changes everything and you know that because you've written a book about culture.
0:41:40
But it goes back to the values of the company and the values of why I started this business. If you
go back to those three main core values, it's we care and we don't just care about our clients, we care about each other. It's in my budget family. Second core value is make a difference and the third core value is financial responsibility. And they are not core values that I expect you to walk in the door and adopt. I expect that they are in you. I don't have to drag them out of you. So when you come for a job at my budget, I look for those things. We look for those things. And they come naturally to you. And it's okay if you don't fit that culture. That's all right. There's lots of other places for you to work, but you will stick out like a sore thumb. I've employed people who have great skill sets, but they just didn't really care and you can't teach someone to care.
0:42:29
So thank you for bringing that up and acknowledging the people at my budget because they really give a shit about the work that they do. They care so much about our clients and I feel so proud when I walk around and I hear them on the phones to our clients. I can vouch for that. Making a difference. So thank you. Thank you for bringing this up. Now, there's something that you didn't mention, well I mentioned it earlier, but it's your podcast. So congratulations on that. Talk to us about your podcast because some of the listeners here might want to jump on and listen to your podcast and I love the name of it too.
0:43:02
Yeah, Phone Calls with Clever People and I can definitely vouch that it's Clever People because I've had yourself on the podcast and it was a fantastic conversation. So if someone is looking, that's a great place to start is to hear some more of your client stories for people that are doing it. The podcast for me is just another channel, another avenue where I get to be able to do what I love, which is just helping people become better leaders. And a part of that is by learning from really clever people. And the clever for me is not assigned to some specific group of people.
0:43:29
I would suggest every single person has a little cleverness within them that's waiting to be drawn out. And so there's some stories in there of people that are really clever people. And I think that the word clever you can be clever in so many different ways and it doesn't necessarily mean In academia at all a lot of people think oh my grades are X. I mustn't be clever But I see these I see people doing amazing things and they're just so clever Yet they you know, they struggle to write a document. Yeah, but they're doing this really clever stuff. So congratulations and you should feel really proud and putting out that positive energy into the world and sharing inspirational stories like the way that you have been.
0:44:13
Yeah, you should be. Thank you. I appreciate that a lot. And I love having you on because you're an expert at this. I'm a novice. No way. This has been a great conversation. I'm interested as we start to wrap up, what does the journey ahead look like for you? It's a great question.
0:44:37
I mean it's huge and for me, I think everything that I do is about helping people step up and lead and so I've found that when you invest in leaders, you can multiply your impact and so for me, I want to continue doing the thing that I love which is working for myself, developing leaders, getting out and helping people become more effective at what they do. And as a result of that, I think it helps me to live kind of an energized life. And I think when you're putting that out there and you're helping so many people, so many people must just feel grateful to have met you and have you in their life and helping them along in their journey. How does gratitude play a part in your life? What are the things that you are most grateful for in your life?
0:45:24
Yeah, I think gratitude, it almost kind of gets the focus off yourself for a moment and allows you to
see other things in perspective. And it reminds me a little bit of going back to my journey of even when times were really tough, I'm always recognising that there are other people who have a much more, you know, a much harder story. And so gratitude allows me to be content with what I have and to be really grateful for that. And to be honest, I'm actually really grateful. I know this is a new podcast for you. I'm grateful for this conversation because a lot of people are not talking about money. And by having more conversations about it, we open up the conversation and we allow other people to be a part of it.
0:46:02
And in doing that, it's transformational. So thank you. No, thank you, Shane, because it takes courage to step forward and be authentic the way that you have been today and real about your situation. And I really wish you well on your journey. I know you're going to be super successful. You've got a great energy and a great vibe. So if there's anything more that myself or the team here at My Budget could be doing for you, please reach out and I mean that sincerely.
0:46:30
I'm happy to help in any way possible. And just to wrap up our amazing conversation that we've had today, I'm going to ask you a question. If you could create your own billboard or a sandwich board, what would it say? If there was a message that you wanted to get out to the world? It's such a big one. I've got so many. Mine would be like double-sided in like 12-point font on it. But if I could boil it down to the essence of this, based on even the conversation we've had today, I think that the greatest gift we can give other people is to really see them, see them where they're at, see them in their challenges, see them and reach out a hand to help them.
0:47:09
But I reckon the greatest gift that we can give ourselves is the courage to be seen and allow other people to see us. And so those two together, I think, are powerful stories for being seen and to see others to help us move forward through challenging times and through good times as well. I love that. I'm getting shivers up my back, people. That was just a brilliant way to end the podcast. Thank you again, Shane, and enjoy the Gold Coats. Sammy, thank you to you and your team. It's been an absolute delight to be with you.
0:47:34
Thanks for joining us today. To hear more about our stories and budgeting tips, head to mybudget.com.au to check out our resources there. We've got free budget plans that you can download, and if you're interested in taking that next step so you can start living your life free from money worries, just give us a call and book in your free appointment. It won't cost you anything but your time. My Budget Australian Financial Services Licence and Australian Credit Licence, number 391759.
0:48:03
number 391759.