A couple's story to managing finances

Hi Amy. So are you more of a spender or a saver?

I’m a bit of a mix. When I was younger and started working full time, I was definitely more of a spender. As I’ve gotten older and started thinking about my long-term goals, I’ve become more conscious about how I’m spending money. 

I would say I’m still a believer in enjoying life – that’s what it’s all about. I’m really big on going out to celebrate with friends, doing fun activities, having a holiday – spending on things that matter and bring joy.  

But within reason. I’ve definitely cut back on buying every single bag that I like or eating out every single day at work because I’m too lazy to cook! 

And what about your partner?

By nature, Idan’s probably a bit more of a saver. He grew up overseas and then left home when he was 18 before moving to Australia when he was 20. So having to support himself through university in a different country made him more conscious of how much he was earning and how much he had to spend.  

Tell us a bit about your financial goals when you were single

Getting a foot on the property ladder was a big one. But there was no way I could afford to buy near where I lived so I set my goal to buy an investment property in an area I could afford, rather than a property to live in.  

After many years of saving for a deposit, I bought an investment property off the plan. Construction has recently completed, and it’s just settled. 

I had no idea how confusing purchasing a property is. Going through the process of arranging a home loan and understanding what an offset account is, as opposed to a savings account.  

I had contingency in my budget but there were a lot of costs I’d never thought of. It’s a learning journey and it was really scary, especially signing the home loan application.  

I had a lot of conversations with the person at my bank who organised the loan, and with friends and family who had done it previously.  Now it’s settled I feel much more relaxed. 

We’ll see how it goes and hopefully it was a good financial decision. 

Now you're married, how do you manage your everyday expenses?

We have an idea of our general monthly costs. We know what our rent is, what our bills are and how much we’re spending on food. So every month we set aside that money, plus a bit extra for emergency expenses and savings, and that sits in an account. And the rest of the money is in short-term savings for fun activities. 

We use an offset account as the primary account to manage payments and expenses related to the investment property. Separate from the investment, we use a joint transaction account for everyday purchases and a high-interest savings account that helps us to build up our joint savings and provide a pool of funds for major purchases. 

But we’re looking to consolidate our accounts to make better use of our offset account and hopefully pay less on our mortgage repayments. 

Are you both on the same page when it comes to financial matters?

Money is a really sensitive subject for a lot of people and can cause a lot of conflict. But we’ve always had a really open and honest communication style. 

I would say we’re very aligned in terms of what we’re happy to spend on social activities and taking a holiday when we need it. 

I don’t micromanage how Idan spends his money. So if he goes out and buys something, I’m not like ‘Why did you do that?’ 

But we both know that if there’s a concern we can bring it up. So it’s important to continue having an open conversation about money. 

So how are you dealing with your investment property?

We had a frank discussion around how we’re going to treat the property. And we agreed as we approached our marriage that we’d like to see things as shared goals. So we’ll service the loan together and moving forward we’ll treat it as our investment property, not just mine. But I am definitely the more practical one in the relationship so we had a contract drawn up about what would happen to the property if we did break up – just a real practical solution. We had an open conversation about what that would look like. The other element was when I bought the property interest rates were a lot lower than they are now. But Idan’s happy to support me in the investment while we work towards buying our forever home eventually. 

You've recently got married. Congratulations! How are you approaching your long-term goals as a couple?

From the onset of our relationship we were very open about how we wanted to spend our money and what we would eventually want for our lives.  

It’s developed naturally as the relationship got more serious and we started discussing whether we’d eventually want to buy a house, what area we’d want to live in, and what that would look like. 

Idan has started looking at properties and hopefully in the near future we’ll start putting together a proper plan for saving for a deposit. It’s an ongoing conversation. 

We’re looking at different areas around Bondi where we live and we’ll continue to rent until we can find the right property that we can afford.