Kristina Plimer

My financial strategy started off as very much a need to learn how to manage my finances to avoid the worst of the worst. At the end of my second year of university, I had the debt collectors after me, could no longer afford to rent a room and had to couch hop for several months in order to be able to finish off the academic year. I considered filing for bankruptcy, but filing for bankruptcy actually cost money and I couldn’t afford it! I also owed the equivalent of HECS or the uni loan to a bank at 19% interest, not the government and was planning on a career in community services. I mean, no one ever earns much working in community services, right?

So that was that, the rest of my life was going to be a struggle, a struggle to pay the rent on an already cheap room, a struggle to ever go travelling, a struggle to ever live the lifestyle I wanted to. But I had to get the debt collectors off my back, and that would take $30k in one year. Great budgeting was not going to get me there, so for this drastic action was required – I needed to get creative! I applied extreme budgeting measures and worked out a way to significantly reduce my necessary expenses. But I did it! I paid off the debt one day before I was due in court!

Fast forward a couple of years, I have paid off my debt from the last year of uni, but still seemed to be struggling to make ends meet. And now, I have this dream of crossing Africa overland and I was simply not going to get there this way, suddenly struggling was not working for me anymore! I worked out my budget, then divided up my expenses by the categories of necessary, sanity savers and desirable expenses. By cutting out the desirable expenses, with my income at the time, I would still not be able to meet my weekly savings target. I had to get creative again! But at the end of it all, I did it, once again, and all of a sudden I was off across Africa!

Once again, scroll forward 2 years, I am now living back in Australia, earning a decent salary in community services, surprise, surprise, and have just bought my home in Bondi. Yeah, it was going to be tough, I did borrow more than I could comfortable pay, but I did the sums and knew I could do it. Fast forward another 2 years and suddenly I could relax, it wasn’t tough to meet the repayments and have a social life anymore. So I allowed myself 1 year of spending as much as I felt like, but after so long of questioning every time I was about to hand some money over, whether it was a] necessary or b] whether there was a cheaper alternative, it becomes difficult to spend a lot.

Once again, I found myself with savings, and now I wanted it to grow. I could see myself living the fabulous lifestyle my parents had – retirement by the age of 55 and 3 overseas trips a year! And I realised no one was going to do this for me, not superannuation at 9% of my salary, not my parents, because they were determined to spend all their money whilst still alive – and good on them! I had to do this for myself, and only I could do this. This is the moment that I thought let’s make this money work harder for me! I researched various investment strategies and picked one to start increasing my wealth and live the lifestyle that I wanted, and was going to repeat this strategy over and over again. I had a plan, and the future was mine and I was going to let everyone know about it, so they can do the same! If you break it down to the little steps you can take, give yourself the little wins, eventually you can dare to dream of the ultimate goal, and well you can just get there!