#425 w. Jessica Brady

Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to share with you a story of a client that we work with recently. I feel like money's one of these things that we don't really talk about too much. So it's hard to know what smart people are actually doing out there. So today and over the next few weeks, I'm going to be unpacking some stories about what people are at, de-identifying and getting right into some of the numbers, what they chose to do as a result of going through a planning process and what the financial impact and upside of those choices actually were.

This client was super early on in their money journey, but by making a few small tweaks that they got a tax saving of $6,000 in 12 months and added to an upside of $12,000 in terms of what they got out of their existing money.

This client was really early on in their money journey. They were really just getting started, but they made some small tweaks to what they had in place to create a $6,000 annual tax saving and squeeze an extra 12 grand out of the money that they already had. So this client was 33. She was earning an income of $120,000 a year, saving it just on $1,000 a month. And her asset position was 210 K, including her super fun. So fairly early on in the piece.

She came to us suffering with information overload. It was like she wanted to be smart, but there was so much noise out there about what she should and shouldn't be doing. She felt overwhelmed that she was worried about making a mistake that would then end up setting it back. What she really wanted was to get into the property market, to get her foot onto the property ladder as a big goal for her.

After going through the planning process, there were a few things that she chose to do, but the big one centered around her main goal of purchasing an investment property. She was purchasing a property. After going through the planning process, she decided that it was going to be much better for her to do that as an investment over the long term. But in order to get into the property market in the shortest amount of time, she decided to leverage the first home super saver scheme. The first home super saver scheme allows you to make tax deductible

contributions to your super fun and then take the money out to use that as a deposit to buy your first home. Yes, you do need to live in the property for a period of time, but that had the extra advantage for her of allowing her to access some of the first homebuyer concessions that she could get to again mean that she could shorten up the timeframe to get into the property market.

At the same time, she set up an automated banking system to make it easy to save, plus also to give her some confidence so that when she did ultimately purchase her investment property that she was rock solid on her numbers so that she could do that with a ton of confidence. After doing that,

And after making sure she had a bit of cash aside for an emergency fund, she also had some surplus cash left over. So she decided to invest into a share portfolio through a micro investing platform. She did that knowing that even though she wanted to buy a property in a relatively short amount of time and that it was possible that the investment markets would go down just before she bought and therefore her deposit would go down with it.

she figured that she wanted to take the upside and she was prepared that if the market did really go south that she could let the money remain invested and in fact actually add more to that money so that when markets eventually recovered she her deposit actually grew up and then she potentially would be able to buy an even bigger property or use an even bigger deposit to keep her debt levels lower.

In this episode of the Mo Money podcast, we chat to Jessica Brady, who's a registered financial advisor and the founder of the greenhouse project. We chat to Jess about money mindset and some of the limiting beliefs that hold so many people back when it comes to money and trying to unpack why it is that when everyone knows what you need to do,

to get ahead with money that more people don't have more money. This episode is perfect for anyone that wants more confidence in what they're doing with their money, less stress and better results. Welcome to Mo Money, where we bring you practical tips, hacks, strategies and the knowledge to level up your money game and replace your salary by investing.

Well, look, we haven't had a guest on the podcast for a while, mainly because we're maybe not organized enough or maybe not confident enough in our tech abilities, but here we are. We made it and I'm so pumped that it's you, Jess. Welcome. Thank you. Do you want to maybe start for anyone that's been living under rock, not across the financial powerhouse that is Jessica Brady? Give us a bit of that story.

Ben, you're making me laugh before you and kick off. Laugh, laugh, and swear. Oh my God, um, sure. So you already know this story. So it feels funny looking at someone telling them about you and you know that they're in it. Yeah, well, you know, as well. Um, I've been in financial services 18 years, which is scary to say. Uh, and so I've had a lot of different iterations, but I guess the stuff that's most important to note is that I'm a licensed financial advisor. I used to do one on one advice.

but i just spent i actually just got really sad and sick of telling people that they weren't ready for full advice yet and i didn't know what to do with them and so i decided in 2022 to sell out of my business and start in 2023 online money programs because frankly what i realized was there was so much repetition in terms of what i was teaching my one-on-one clients and i kept thinking to myself

If I could just record this and give it to people, it would just make it much more accessible and affordable. And so in February of 2023, I launched the greenhouse money-growing program, which is a 10-week program, which is on demand, which is lovely. So it means people can watch at their leisure and then I do a weekly community call because what I didn't want was people to just learn in a vacuum and not be able to have any interaction to kind of clarify stuff.

And so that's been going really well over on that three times a year. I have an ongoing monthly accountability community called Evergreen Money Club. And this year, because I'm wild and mad and don't like rest, I launched the Financially Fierce Podcast.

Yeah, that's a little bit about me. That was super exciting. Thanks. So there's obviously you've gone on quite the journey, sought out to do one-on-one advice with people, saw a bigger opportunity. I'd love to hear a little bit more around like what's shaped your view on money to date, even as a child, what was that like? What was that journey from

little Jess saw the way through to today. Yeah. And I think that's such a good call out to go back to when you're little, because we know that there's a lot of data and research and evidence that shows that your beliefs are formed when you're little. And I think that's a really good reminder if you have little people in your life that sheltering them or thinking you're doing the right thing by not, you know, including them in money conversations actually is not helpful because they're learning about money, whether you realize it or not. So look for me, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon, frankly, anywhere near me.

Um, my mum became a widow at 25 and I was four months old. And so, you know, by 25, not a lot of people have amassed, yeah, a huge amount of wealth. Um, and, you know, it would have been really bloody hard. I can't even, I can't even comprehend a 25 year old new mum widow. And so, you know, I was acutely aware from a very young age that we didn't have any money. You know, money doesn't go on trees, Jess. We can't afford that, Jess. I'm so sorry. We can't do that, darling. And I think I knew from like,

age seven, I want this life. I want to, you know, be in third hand clothes all the time. And, you know, just knowing, I just was acutely aware that we were poor. And it's a really, it's a really strange environment to grow up in. Or be it, I grew up in an environment where everyone was poor, which I think is helpful because, you know,

There's not huge wealth next door, like we're all just were poor together. But you know, I just talk about this a lot of hated, muffty days, you know, the days at school where you could wear whatever hated that because I was like, oh God, I have to wear my crap clothes. And what really instilled in me was a huge level of or desire for security. And so I was very, very good at earning money. You know, my parents sent me out, my mum remarried and had two more little boys. My mum and dad sent me out at, I don't know, 14 and nine months or whenever it was legally allowed to go and get a job.

And job I got. In fact, I think I got three. I ended school with about nine grand in my bank account, which 20 years ago is a fair work of cash. But I had a huge need for control. So I didn't want to invest it because that was too scary. And I do want to buy things for myself because that was a waste of money. And so I had quite a scarcity based mindset. And I just wanted to have

Comfort and the safety of money sitting nicely where I could see it in my bank account And it took a lot of undoing and still lives if I'm honest within me and requires me You know to make sure that I check myself and say hey like often and it's a really clever Evolutionary mechanism to keep you safe It's like your brain's like oh that feels a bit scary and our natural inclination with money is to go or then I won't do it But instead what I like for people to recognize is actually this is a really smart safety mechanism and

But you just need to say to yourself like you're safe. It's okay, but you got to go forward. You got to keep moving. So I think there's that comfort in the know-know and I think it applies with money, but it applies to a lot of areas of life, relationships, career, your finances that you know what you know and what you've done and that feels good.

Saving money in a bank account feels good because you can see it sitting there. You understand it. It's not going anywhere. But if you stick to that, then it does stop you from getting growth. It stops you from playing a bigger game. Like if you never make that career move, then you can still sit in your job and you're going to be comfortable with that because you're a pro at what you're doing. But it stops you from taking the next level to giving yourself the opportunity to actually reach your potential as well.

What's interesting is, even as you say that, it requires someone to fundamentally change their thinking to take that leap. I assume that you've changed your ways with your own personal finances and going from looking at it into a bank account to

investing or, you know, understanding what, what was that? Because we have these conversations all the time with people and people who earn, you know, maybe not so much money and people who earn a lot of money. And there is just this fear, like, what would you say or what were the things that you did to be able to break through, essentially, or change your mindset?

It's a funny one because I worked in corporate, so I worked for some of the big banks, I worked for an investment bank for a long time, and I worked in the financial advice community, but I wasn't giving advice for the first part of my career. I'd done all the studies, and I saw all the businesses, and I was like, I've got this. I'm smart and capable.

You are a Spartan, Katie. Exactly right. Thanks, team. And I found this book years ago, and I was on a weekend away with some girlfriends, and it was called Money a Love Story by Katie Nordstrom. I think, go on Google, I'm not sure if that's exactly how you say your name. Sorry, Katie, for listening.

And it asked me these questions that I found wildly confronting, because up until that point, all of the things that I'd learned and studied and talked about were much more numbers-based, and we forget that behind spreadsheets and modeling and investment strategies are humans who are complicated, often contradictory,

beings. And it was the first one that got me to really, you know, I did the exercises and I found it really confronting to be like, shit, I think I'm good with money. But actually, I'm still holding a lot of this baggage. And I don't know if you ever fully, fully let it go. But I think you then can start to see and notice behavior loops and patterns and and thoughts that can really derail you. And I think, you know, I've worked with hundreds of people like, you know, you have no matter their income.

Everyone has a story and a belief system about money and everyone that I've met, let's call it 99.9% of people have got quite negative self-limiting beliefs.

Yeah, and that works in, again, a lot of areas. We were just at last week had a big business power thing, and it's like all these different business owners. And I spent a lot of time being working with this business coach for almost a decade now and talking to him. You won an award, didn't you, Ben? I heard it from the inside. I heard it from the ear. Look at you. Someone texted me to tell me they were also there.

Right. There you go. Yeah. So that community is across hundreds of different businesses and they do different exercises to identify some of those limiting beliefs. And one of the things that they talk about is this permission number that you have in business. And they say, like, what's your ideal lifestyle? Like what's your target for how much money you want to be making business owners have a lot of influence on not complete influence, which that would be nice. But a lot of influence on

how much money they earn. And so often, for years, I didn't know why they asked the question, but I was chatting to the coach one day and he said that that's your internal permission. Number when someone says that it's 100,000 or 200,000 or 500,000 or a million, that there is a limit to how much people think that they are entitled to earn or to have. And that applies, obviously, can apply across a lot of different areas. But I think it's to your point that

These days, it's all out there in the public sphere, what you need to do to get ahead with your money. You need to spend less than you earn, save a bit of money. You also need to invest that money. Even when it comes to investing, it's like, we know the stats and there's a lot of different ways to be right. And this is not advice and you should seek that out. But the index funds perform best more than 80% of the time. So if we know that we need to just save a bit of money, invest a bit of money, we know what investments are best. It's like, why isn't everybody wealthy already? Why is that just? Because we're human.

I mean, we all know how to be fit.

Don't you know how to be fit? Why don't we all have six guys? I mean, Ben's looking quite famous. And before we started this recording, Ben said that he needed to go and get more carbs, which I've never heard anyone say in the history of health related. Are for my health, you got a bowl before you're skilled. Is that it? Oh my God, see, I'm so far removed. But I think it's such a good analogy for knowing and doing it different, because otherwise we'd all,

have rocking six packs and we would all be so fit and instead we're staring down the barrel of an epidemic of health issues as well. We can know what to do. We can learn the skills. We can listen to podcasts. Doing it is a whole different ballgame and human beings are funny. I think we need to have accountability. It's why the personal training industry exists. I know how to get up and do the thing. It's cold and dark and rainy. Am I going to get up and do the thing?

Well, probably not unless I know someone sitting there waiting for me. So I think that is for a lot of people where they get stuck. The starting is hard and the need for validation. Hey, you're on the right track. You're not mucking anything up because ultimately this is a life skill that so many people feel they completely missed. And I'm like, listen,

This is not your fault. It's not a genetic trait that you either inherited or you didn't. You didn't probably learn anything about this at school. The parents or the people that you had in your world might have done this wildly well or terribly. And if they didn't have the knowledge or the skillset to pass on to you, that is not your fault. And even if they had the knowledge and skillset, most people don't listen to their parents anyway. And so what people have, I have found, have internalized is that they're bad with money.

Often people just need to be told, no, you're not. You just need to learn it. You know what the weird part about that is though is the fact that everyone thinks that they should be good with money in the first place. Like why do people naturally think that we should be good with money? It's like you watch a professional athlete play on the football field or in the sporting arena.

You don't think that I should be able to use a pole vault like that. These are people that have learned a skill and they've mastered a skill over years and years and decades, most of the time. But I think it might have something to do with the fact that because everyone gets money, like we work, we get money, we have money, that we think it should be, or we should just be good with money.

Yeah, because we're interacting with it all the time. Yeah. But you grow 100% right. Like, it blows mama. I don't know about the two of you. I went to a public school. It was a good public school. I didn't learn anything about my, I learned about trigonometry. I learned all this crap that frankly has been wildly unhelpful. Yeah, so unhelpful in real life. I figure this is there. I'll tell you.

Why do we need that? But I do remember the Dolomites Club turning up. They have any more. And what I think that internalizes, and like one of the most powerful emotions that we as humans have is shame. And so a lot of people have internalized, I'm bad with money. And particularly for women, I find, you know, there has been just a lot of societal BS that's told women to talk, that talking about money is, you know, unladylike and taboo.

And so they're running around talking about probably absolutely everything else in life. Eyebrows. We were talking about eyebrows before we started today. Crucial, I'm getting my done on Saturday. Oh, got my done last week. Eyebrow turned into two last week. But we will not- Well, given how much they charge for those eyebrows services these days, it's like you need to be on top of the money stuff as well. You need to be 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, there's sort of shame around money and guilt and so people then I don't know if you find this people clean for the cleaner People want to get to a certain point So that they can reach out to get professional help, but they don't want they don't want them to see how bad it really is until they've been able to sort it out yet I'm like that is so insane who cleans for the clean so it's interesting what like even talking about that so you mentioned earlier certainly people need that level of

level of accountability, which I live and die by accountability. I definitely need the coach, need someone in the corner, need someone looking over me. It's amazing how productive I'll be. But also when it comes to money, even hearing your story, I got a little emotional hearing about your story.

little just like, you know, the fear of Mufti Day like that. That's horrible. But there's also when it comes to money balancing a level of grace with people like having, I guess, hearing their story or hearing how, how they went on that journey to do to break through. How do you work with people when it comes to those

I want to call up money trauma to get through and what advice would you give to people that you've spoken to who are carrying money trauma and how they can break through and change their habits and then find accountability and then make change for themselves.

I think often it's generational money trauma. It may not even be money trauma that you've developed. It might be stuff that you've inherited from your parents or your grandparents just by virtue of what they've seen and how they've interpreted that from a monetary perspective. What I've also found is it can often be quite magnetic. You can be quite similar to your parents or you can go rogue and be the exact opposite to your parents. You see this in families. I have a really different relationship to money.

Then say my youngest brother and we grew up in the same household We had the same parenting we had different times that up you know I saw different things to what my brother saw and so you know It's not as simple as saying your parents dictate your money beliefs But I do think that a lot of people have you know

trauma from generations gone by as well. And so, look, I cover this in the first, I'm going to say three or four weeks of my program. It's a massive chunk, because what I say to people is, I can talk about investing all day long. But if we can't fix your behaviors and habits and we can't get you to learn or understand why you behave in the way you behave, you're going to keep going around in circles and not figure out, why is this pay rise not leading to the outcomes that I'm thinking they're going to solve?

So if I was going to give you any tips, you can be as short or long in terms of how long you take to do this. But what I would say to people is, what do you believe about money? With no filters, if you're going to write down what you believe about money without judging whether it's true or not, just get that out and you can find some really fascinating things to observe from that. People have a very emotional response in some instances about what they believe about money or what they believe about, quote unquote, rich people.

So that in itself is a really interesting exercise to then start, you know, picking through the answers and going like, where is this come from? And why do I believe that? And is this true? Am I looking for ways to confirm this belief system as well? Because we know confirmation bias is real. And then what I do inside the program and I give them a whole workbook on this is, you know, uncovering what I call like a money monster or an inner saboteur. And I believe that we all have one.

And Ben, to your point, you probably have them in lots of areas of your life. But what I get them to do is personify this monster that lives inside of them, that often derails their plans and give them a name. So my money monster is called Stacy the Stor, because in moments of, you know, is this like Beyonce and Sasha Fierce? Yeah, except it's the opposite.

But we'll come to that in a second because that is a good tip. So I have personified this behavioral thing that has me stalling because ultimately what I'm trying to do is buy time. I want the perfect amount of information. I want the perfect situation. I want all of the answers that I know as an expert I can never get because by the time I've digested all of the information it's now become irrelevant.

And so whenever I notice Stacy popping up, and I think that's the next thing, like who is your money monster? Name them, like make them, it's based on parts theory, like make them funny, like Bougie Barbara or business class, but whatever you wanna name them, like whatever they do for you, name them. And then try to think about like where do they show up? Do they show up after a hard day at work when you're scrolling on Instagram at night, when you're emotionally certified with your partner or your boss or you know, you're upset. We know that most people,

men and women, they spend money when they're emotional, different emotional triggers, but both spend money when they're emotional and so being able to overlay your monster who derails you for me, it's actually not spending, it's stalling so I again try to figure out what is the thing that I'm doing and then noticing where that monster pops up for me and how often they're in the decision-making seat. I think that's really important as well because

if they're making all of the decisions for you, recognizing like, I have this thing that's derailing me on the daily and I'm letting it, then helps you to be like, no, I'm gaining. I have to like, she's got to go in the backseat and I've got to start taking control. And back to the Sashafias piece, then we want to do like the superhero piece and you're going to be like, well, here's your alter ego. And how do they behave? How do you want to show up? How do you want to behave with money? What does that person look like? And I think the big point there is,

That sashafias, if you will, is not doing it in a different mindset to you. She's still scared. She's still not maybe not got all the answers, but she's doing it anyway, rather than thinking that this like Wonder Woman or whatever you're a superhero is going to be, comes from a place of like full confidence, be like, no, no, no, she comes from wherever or he comes from wherever you're at now, but they do the thing. And then just write it all down, like, what do they do? And then just do that.

I love this. I get quite fascinated about this because this is the archetypes. It's very similar. I'm not going to derail this into a Jungian theory podcast, but you've got the archetypes who you are. I can't remember the female one, but I always remember that you've got the King Joker, the magician, the lover.

But then you've got your shadows and who are you in the shadow? Are you being true to yourself to be the empowered person that you can be when it comes to your money or your life or whatever it is? Who are you showing up for to be the best that you can be? It doesn't matter what it is that you are doing.

How do you show up and not live in your shadow? And so what do you do for yourself personally, if you don't mind me asking for when it comes to making your money decisions? Because I know what it's like that particularly is a business owner. It's like this can be a bit of variability. It's your planner, so I'm assuming you've got a plan, you know what you want to happen.

the reality is always a little bit different, sometimes better, sometimes worse. So it's probably easier to sort of almost objectively justify stalling as a business owner when it comes to investing or making financial decisions. So what do you do practically to make sure that it's not Stacey the Stoller in the driver's seat when it comes to yourself?

So for me, it's always like, well, what's the long game? Because I think as humans, we get really tied up in very short term outcomes. And I'm someone who runs at a million miles an hour, and I'm a bit frantic by design. And so I can get very easily caught up in the day to day without being able to step way back and go, what is this all for? And again, as humans, we're not actually designed to think about long term us. And so for me, I have very clear

goals in terms of what I want to do over my life, but also like where I want my business to go and how many people I want to do my programs and how many organizations I want to go into. And so I'm very big on goal setting, but not in a woo woo kind of like live your bestest just life January 2nd. And what I really struggle with for a long time, and I'm not perfect. And I don't think anyone is. And I think it's important to say that.

How lovely. Can you come and talk to me afterwards? I've always been a really challenge. So challenge is one of my core values. Like I love challenge, rightly or wrongly. And sometimes I wonder why. And so I've always been a very goal oriented person, but I'm not super organized. I'm not super structured. And so I was really falling down in the execution of my goals. And I was getting frustrated because I was like,

What the hell? Like I'm working hard and I got this big grand plan. Why is it not all kind of falling into place? And for me, it was actually the tiny, seemingly insignificant little things that I was not doing consistently that aggregated and compounded into big results. And so about seven years ago, I got a goals coach.

I'm very big on goal setting. In fact, we're recording this in November. Ben asked me before we started like what I'm doing next year. This is the time of year that I love to get planning on my yearly plans. They don't always turn out exactly right. Like 2024. I was in hospital on a four months.

That was not on my goals list for 2024. So I also think, you know, your point around grace, like you also just need to accept that sometimes life has moments that mean that you can't always, you know, deliver what you think you're going to. But I have a weekly coach that kicks me up the arse when I need it. And she really stress tests like, is all of the stuff that I'm working towards actually in line with my one-year vision, my five-year vision and my 10-year vision, which I need because I, you know, I can sometimes get all consumed and fixated on stuff.

that sends me down a strange rabbit hole and so I think being able to have longer term plans that are really personalized for you and it can set you up to have the life that you really want not the life that everyone tells you should have like who cares what they say what do you want and then for me practically it was like okay every single week what are the tiny

Boring sometimes BS things that I need to get done which frankly I was leaving before and she rides me if I don't she's text me twice this week to check that I've done two things I haven't done them and so I need to reply to her. I've been avoiding her because I haven't like this is released later.

But back to the personal training thing, I need that. And so I've got an investment strategy. I've basically come out of corporate. And one of the benefits of that was you have a lot of meetings. I could argue a lot of too many meetings. But I think one of the really big benefits of that was when I started my co-founder, my first financial advice business, we had a really good cadence of how often do we sit down and review numbers? How often are we doing forecasting? How often are we looking at revenue that's coming into the business? How often are we looking at staff stuff?

And you know, we just built that in from the very beginning because that's all we knew because in corporate, you have to do that stuff. And so that gives me a good opportunity to be able to, you know, make sure that we're back on track or, you know, we're hitting the milestones and levers that we want to or be able to sort of step back from that and go, okay, how does this interplay with my personal world? Because I often find that business owners as well, like,

If you, many business owners start business for freedom and like, if I ran a business, you would be laughing probably at that because I wouldn't say it happens very quickly, maybe ever. But they don't have a good handle a lot of them on how to get their business goals to actually build the personal life that they want. There's often a massive gap there. So I think that's a really important piece as well. Your business might be doing really well on paper.

But if it's not leading you to build the life that you want to have outside of work, because you're not your job, then what are you doing? And you avoid that by having it lined in with the like integrated goals one through five years. Yeah. So I basically try to figure out if I want this in my personal life, what did my business need to do to be able to enable that for me? Love it. That's awesome. Yeah. Certainly having that clarity, I think that's where a lot of people

fall over with businesses where they're like, you know, get all consumed with the business and then lose themselves in it a little bit. And then it just turns into burn out and you see it time and time again and same with big, you know, people in their jobs. It doesn't really, you know, so it's just what is it? What's the outcome? We're really big on this internally. Like what are the outcomes that you're trying to achieve? You're not kind of working towards those outcomes. Then perhaps you need to revisit the path. Yeah.

What would you say that there's obviously there's a lot of things that you can do. Money is one of these things. There's always another thing to learn or to focus on. But if you had to pick like the three most important things for people to get right or to do or to not do, maybe. What do you think?

you know, to your point before around like, we all know what to do or like the information's out there. Totally, like we can dumb it down and be like, oh yeah, it's so easy. You just got to do these three things, which is spend less than you earn, stay away from bad debt and buy good assets.

Like, ultimately, if you want to boil it down, that's how you build good wealth. You spend less than you earn, so you have capacity. You don't get into bad debt on a depreciating, like, not an asset liability. And then you've got money to be able to buy good quality assets and rinse and repeat. But it's not that simple. Like, if only it was that simple, yes, they may be the key steps. But within that, there are a lot of different variabilities. And I think, I don't know about YouTube, but a lot of people come to me and think that there is like some path

That is, I don't know, quote unquote, their destiny. And that our job is to just take the fog away and show them the path that they're meant to take. And I'm like, cute. This is not the Wizard of Oz. There is not one path that we're here to demystify. You can go down so many different routes. And there are so many options. And that becomes a challenge because then people are fatigued by the choice and they're scared that they're going to make the wrong decision. And so they make no decision and then they stall.

I think particularly for people that are on good incomes or that have a bit of money behind them once they get past that initial momentum building phase that more money actually means more options and sometimes that makes it harder to make a decision because if you're a grad and you're on 60 grand a year, then

and this is not financial advice, but what you should probably do is put some money in an emergency fund, so you've got to buffer and then start doing a little bit of investing. You probably don't have that much money, so using one of the investing apps that you can automate your investing through, that's pretty much it. You can't buy a property, probably shouldn't be putting money in your super fund. It's simple, but if you go, you fast forward and you're on 600K and you've got thinking about buying your own home or your own it already, you maybe have an investment property or thinking about it,

Planning kids, it's like, well, you could buy shares, you could use an investment bond, you could crank your super investment property, buy your own home, or you could do a number of those different things. And it does make it a lot harder. Yes. It also makes it easier to feed your money monster because you've got more capacity to do it. And often, I've worked with people in that income bracket as well.

There's this sort of belief of, I work hard, therefore I deserve insert wild spending behavior here. And so there can be this level of justification and you can spend heaps of money and waste heaps of money because you have more money to be able to wait. You know, it's not like you're taking food off the table for your kids.

And so you can create situations where you are enabling like really bad behaviors to kind of be doubled down on and hide behind a really good income and think you're doing really well. You know, the amount of people that earn hundreds of thousands of dollars that walked into my office and being like,

I have nothing. I'm like, will you look fancy? And that looks like a fancy watch to me. And I'm pretty sure that's your fancy car at the front. They can also get, and this is a generalization, but they can get swept up in buying things because they work so hard. They've been told that that's what should make them feel good. And then they buy the things and they're like, well, where's the feel good? Because it hasn't hit just yet.

Yeah, and then there's the other side of the coin with that as well that you see the people that they don't have a spending problem, that they might have a decision-making problem or getting out of their comfort zone problem. And for those people that they might, maybe they own a home, maybe they're saving 10 grand a month, which seems like a huge number and it is a huge number. But then you look at what their real goals actually are, and they're going to need quite a lot of money to make that happen.

And paying down their mortgage or saving money in a bank account is not going to get them there as well. And so it's not just the spending issue that can be an issue. It's broader. You've got to be taking advantage of the opportunity that's there. And you talked about those levers of success spend less than you earn.

invest avoid bad debt. Sure. But using the right amount of good debt, I think it's totally really important. Leave it, get the banks money, invest that, grow your money faster. But if you've got a decision-making problem or you've got to getting out of your comfort zone problem, then that's going to be a handbrake as well.

And this is the human-ing component that I talk about. It's like, we're fascinating beasts. I'm in my next life. I'm either coming back as an economist, because I, at the moment, am a fake economist, or I'm coming back as a neuroscientist, because I'm so fascinated by the brain.

Totally. And so yeah, I think you have to be hyper critical and honest and self-reflective around like, what am I really good at right now? Because we're often also, especially with money, very good at saying how bad we are at things. It's like, no, well, what am I doing really well with money? Or what have I done really well with money in the past? And where have I got gaps? Am I a fear-based person? Do I get to the choice fatigue, you know, crossroad and stay there? Am I someone who's reckless and then, you know, y'all knows and then tries to figure it out later? Like, what feels like you? And then,

Who is the person that you want to be? All that? What help do you need? If you know that you can't do this yourself, me, with a goals coach, go and get help.

Yeah, you fast track it for sure. And I think the other part is measuring backwards to that, particularly for high achievers, they're like, oh, I should be, there should be good with this is one part of it, but there's also should be further ahead, should be able to do this, want to be at that milestone. But don't realize that all the work that's being put in to get to that point. And it's only because

Like necessarily being good with money, like building your wealth is about spending less than you could today so that you can spend more in the future. And I think that people beat themselves up. But often when you look back, it's like you have made progress. There's been milestones to get there. So when you see that, then that gives you the motivation to keep doing the work.

so that you keep on the path as well. If you just keep looking at your Facebook feed thinking, why aren't I doing that and why an idea yet or why don't I look like that or have those clothes or that car or that boat, then you just, it's going to make it even harder for you to get there.

Yeah, 100%. I think there's like, there is, particularly when it comes to, you know, seeing other things or seeing people around you or, you know, it's important to kind of perhaps cut out some of those things just to make sure you're not trying to achieve something or work towards something and in the process derailing your own, you know, success in the meantime, if that meant like trying to do something to keep up with the Joneses, that would be

Another big conversation I always had with people, particularly high earners or people who had a lot of money is getting them to reframe their thinking. You're working really hard. I assume you don't want to continue to be working at this pace or doing what it is that you're doing. Think about your income like a tap and it's a tap that's flowing right now. What you need to do is figure out

What are all of the other taps you're going to create? Where are you going to build your wells so that you can get water from somewhere else? Because right now you're relying on blah, blah proprietary limited, or you're relying on the business that especially if there's uncertainty, then you're at the mercy of the economy and things like that.

So what are you gonna do to make sure that you have one, two, three, four, maybe five taps turned on so that when proprietary limited or whatever turns off, the other taps are flowing. Yeah, and I think water, I use this analogy as well. It's such a good way to think of it, especially because I hate the word budget. I talk about it as like a conscious cash flow plan. Like where is that water flowing to? And where are you like letting it out to see? And where are you pulling it so that it's growing? Because most of those high income earners are,

self-identifying that they're on the path to burnout and that it's unsustainable. And this is not how they want to live forever. And it's like, cool, well, then we need to figure out how to use that money or that water to grow and to be able to, you know what's really, and I don't do this anymore, but it can be really confronting for people to see modeling because they, to the point around like the $10,000 a month set is like,

They'd be like, we're doing so well, and they are doing well. But then you model out for them and show them what it's going to lead to. Obviously, it interplays with whatever their personal goals are. And sometimes it can be deeply distressing, because they're like, yeah, right. We're going to be able to retire in six years. It's just like not on the car.

Kids are not going to go into that private schoolbox of it, or we're not going to be able to have that house that we really wanted it. And sometimes we do need a bit of a reality check, and especially at the moment, a lot of people are making really hard trade-offs with their goals. It's just a reality in terms of how much surplus cash flow a lot of people have. It can be really confronting, but it's better to know so that you can really double down on your strategy or fix some of your behaviours, because then you're like, you know what, if I keep

doing what I'm doing. I'm going to be nowhere close to where I want to be, but where I want to be is actually far more important. It's just a longer, harder journey. I'm ready. I'm ready. Yeah. The end of the day, it's the easiest time to do something is now. It doesn't matter what your goals are and whether you're on track to get there or you've got a gap, it's like the gap's going to be the smallest. You wait a week a month a year. You just have to do more, delay more, sacrifice more to end up in the same position.

My last question for you, if you could go back to 18-year-old little Jess, as Siobhan called her and give yourself one piece of money advice, what would it be?

Someone asked me this a little while ago, can I borrow my answer that I used from that? Still my answer. Absolutely. Do it scared. Because I think I'm a pretty confident person, but I'm scared all the time. Can we talk about that more? Because sometimes you feel so alone. I would go and I'd take more risks. I'd put my hand up for more things, and I'd put my hand up for a lot of things, to be honest, but I would stop waiting till I felt like I was

Ready, ready? Because if I'm ready, ready, I've left it way too late. And so if I could go back and shake 18-year-old Jess and just hug her as well, I'd do go. I would say, babe, stop waiting to have all the answers. Stop waiting to feel like everything's going to be perfect. I still don't feel like an adult. Stop waiting. Just do it. And just do it scared.

like it. Nice. Jessen, for anyone that wants to know more about your programs or education, what's the best way for them to find out more? Yeah, jesicabrady.com.au or I'm Jess Brady, underscore financial advice on Instagram. Love it.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing, Jess. It's been great. Gonna do guests more often, Siobhan. Yeah, I'm gonna... I think I've found someone to help us with the list. Nice one. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Cheers, guys. We'll catch you next time. Cheers. Bye for now.

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