From Financial Anxiety to Financial Freedom: How to Take Control of Your Future with Confidence — with Gayle McKew

Are you tired of losing sleep over your financial future? In this empowering episode of the Thriving Business Podcast, hosts Kate and Sam are joined by seasoned financial strategist Gayle McKew, who reveals how to transform financial stress into strategic confidence.

Gayle shares her journey from a career in banking to becoming an independent financial planner. Her journey shows us how taking control of your financial decisions, even when they're difficult—can lead to both ethical alignment and financial freedom. 

After leaving the banking world twice due to values conflicts, Gayle built a practice that proves you don't have to choose between doing what's right and building wealth at the same time.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by financial decisions, confused by conflicting advice, or worried about your retirement security, this episode shares:

• How to move from financial anxiety to confident decision-making.
• Why growing up in a feast-or-famine household shaped Gayle's approach to financial security.
• The moment Gayle realised corporate banking wasn't aligned with her values—and what she did about it.
• A real-life example of choosing ethics over easy money (and why it pays off long-term).
• How to build wealth without compromising your personal values.
• Why professional financial guidance beats "BBQ advice" every time.

Sam also shares a personal update after a few episodes away, and the trio explores what it means to take control of your financial future with integrity and confidence.

Key Takeaways:

• Financial confidence comes from strategic planning, not wishful thinking.
• Trust your instincts—when something feels ethically wrong, it probably is.
• Breaking the feast-or-famine cycle requires professional guidance and clear systems.
• Taking control of your financial future starts with aligning your money decisions with your values.

Guest Spotlight – Gayle McKew: Gayle is a financial strategist who specialises in helping people move from financial anxiety to financial freedom. With over 25 years of experience in banking and financial planning, she's passionate about providing the strategic guidance that transforms financial stress into confident, values-aligned wealth building.

Connect with Gayle: 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaylemckew-financial-strategist-retirement-agedcare-successionplanning/ 

Thanks for tuning in! 

If this episode helped you feel more confident about your financial future, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who's ready to take control of their financial destiny.

Connect with the Hosts:

Kate De Jong, PhD | Inspired Business

Website: https://katedejong.com/

Instagram: katedejong.inspiredbusiness

Email: kate@katedejong.com

Sam Morris | Digital Systers

Website: https://www.digitalsysters.com/

Instagram: sammorris.businesscoach

Transcript

0:02

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Thriving Business Podcast. Hi, Sam. Hi, Kate. It's really nice to have you back with us because you've been out of action for a while. Oh, I tell you, my family needs to stop gettingsurgeries. And before we get into that, I'd love to just quickly introduce our guest that we have with us today, Gail McHugh. It's so lovely to have you with us, Gail. Thank you. Nice to be here. Yeah. And Gail is a financial strategist and she's all about helping you take the stress out of your retirement, how you're going to fund your lifestyle, you know, beyond the working years. And Gail and I have had a great conversation previously that we came to unpack further with Sam today. And just for the listeners that are excited to have Sam back, it's been about three or four episodes that Sam's been out of auction due toFamily things happening, personal thingshappening. Yes. Which is all fine. So we don't we don't need to get into the nuts and bolts of that because we want to talk about money today. Yes. It's a relief to know that you and the family are all okay. So that's, yeah. 100%. But Gail, yes, over to you. So you, yeah, talking about money, that is your specialty. It's something you're particularly good at because you've dedicated your career to managing money for yourself and others and teaching people strategies of how to make money work for you. That's very true. It's all I've ever done since I left school. And that, as you can tell from looking at my wrinkles, is a long time. I don't see any wrinkles. I got them, I promise you. Well, the good thing about that is you have oodles of experience and wisdom to share with us. And yeah, so what was it that made you want to focus on money as young as you were at the time? I stumbled into banking when I left school because I didn't quite get the uni course that I wanted. And then I fell in love, maybe last, not quite sure, and spent the next, 23 years in the Commonwealth Bank. And then... ended up while I was there learning a lot. So I became a lender. I did everything that pretty much from taking out the rubbish as a junior through to approving commercial lending. And then they were sending me on a course and I got bored and I went, nah, so I want to do that new thing called financial planning. And I've been doing it for more than 25 years now. Right. So banking was just too boring for you, basically. it was all tick and flick, and I'm like, yeah, boring. it's a bit like if you have to put a red block in the red, like in the hole, the square in a hole. And I was the triangle. Right, yeah. I can absolutely relate to that. Yeah, that was a big, me and my career, and I think Sam as well in hers, which is why we've all ended up as independent business owners, because then we get to do our own thing in our own way, right?100%. And part of mine was that an ethical, has been ethical conflicts between past employers and my own ethics. And I've actually left two jobs based on those conflicts. So now I've been self-employed for the last 13 plus years and I determine the ethical situations. Does that make sense?Absolutely. Yeah. And I think Sam and I have both been through similar situations, notyes, around money as well, but also how you do business. And we've made choices to step out and do things on our own because of ethicalmisalignment, values misalignment. And it's so important to stay true toyourself. 100%. Yeah. And so that obviously in my mind, I'm thinking, what were they doing that was unethical?I can't say too much. Well, sometimes it's not even about them being unethical. Sometimes it's like you say, it's just about, you know, they're skating down a line that doesn't cross over, but sometimes it's skating too close for comfort, I think. Well, it was all legal, but it didn't meet my standard of ethical behaviour. Yes, exactly. They're not doing anything illegal. Technically, they're not doing anything wrong, but oh boy, orally some of the things people do are wrong in business. And I live on the Gold Coast, so hello, this It's an area that has been known for dodgy property deals forever. I've got brown paper bags. So I've never seen a brown paper bag other than the one I packed my mushrooms in at the supermarket the other week. So that's me. Yeah. It's so interesting though, isn't it?I just had a situation yesterday where I am, I've bought a new car and I'm selling my old one and the guys helping me sell my old one rang me and said, look, we've done the inspection and there's this issue that's come up with your brakes. The front and back brakes really do need replacing urgently. Either we can try and sell it, and this whole question came up of what do we do?And I said to him, no, we get it serviced, we fix the brakes, and then we put it back on the market, and just that whole skating anywhere close to a line of unnecessary, like selling something that's not in good condition, like he's going to get away with it. And I'm thinking, no, I don't want to try and get away with that. Like I couldn't. sleep, if I, I'll do the right thing, I'll invest the money, get it all upgraded, then we'll, do the deal. And I can, I feel good in that. And I think we all just have, to stay true to what feels good, ethical forus, right? So, Gail, given that you are about helping individuals build wealth and you've gone out on your own because you want to be able to do that in a way that feels good to you, Can you tell us, give us a little bit of backstory about the journey that you've been on and how you now help people build wealth?Sure. So I don't come from a family of wealth at all. My parents live from almost paycheck to paycheck and they were self-employed. So cash flow was all over the shop like a roller coaster. And there was feast and famine, shall we say, is the way I grew up. And When I started my banking journey, I was like, oh, we've got to, we can borrow money to buy a house. And that was as far as my psyche went. Because in those days, that's what people did. Or you got a personal loan to buy a car. That was, and a credit card was, oh my God, you got a credit card?So now everyone's got car loans, home loans, credit cards, and any other sort of loan that you can possibly get. So for me, it was a case of security was really important. And then there was this day when my husband came home and I was about 30, mother of three, and he said, hey, I want to put $100,000 into this investment, a startup company. And I'm like, red flags everywhere. And I was like, oh my God, oh my God. And all I could see was we were going to lose our house. We didn't have the money. We were going to have to borrow it. And in those days, it was more than most people's houses were worth. And particularly in a country town. AndI went, oh, no. And three years later, that 100 grand was worth 1.1 mil because that's what$100,000 share in that startup business sold for. And I was like, whoops. So that was the start of my journey of learning how to be making better decisions around money. So I have missed an opportunity once and now I investigate opportunities and I'm happy to ask dumb questions or what some people might say is a dumb question. But it's not a dumb question if it helps me get the information to get an answer. So for me, the giving up of not wanting to look stupid was a key factor to this. Right. Does that make sense?I'm seeing Sam go over. Yeah. So for me, that decision to be open enough to exploreand think differently than what my parents had. Because when I made that decision on the$100,000, which we would have had to borrow, I was thinking with my mum and dad's fear and lack mentality. So now I look at things and go, what's the possibility?And what you're saying is at the time when you were filled with fear, you didn't want to ask any questions for fear of looking. Correct. Yeah. Whereas now you create this space where people are able to ask all the dumb questions or any questions and you sort of help them work through things with your expertise and knowledge so that, yeah. Yes. And I always say there is never a dumb question. It just means I haven't explained it well enough. So I'm always willing to take the responsibility for not having explained it the way the person who's receiving the information needs to receive it. Right. And that gives them permission to then start to feel free to ask questions. Yes. And we've sometimes gone down rabbit holes because that's where they need to go to get it right in their head. So my encouragement to everyone is to actually not be afraid and to ask the questions and to actually understand that if you're seeking advice from an accountant or a financial planner,or a lawyer, we all have ourspecialist areas of expertise. So I'm just going to tell you right now, I'm doing a strategy for two lots of clients at the moment where we're going to, actually, I've done one for, this will be my third life we're doing this for. We're saving their kids, their future inheritance from the taxman by taking some of their super taking it out, recontributing it and changing the internal tax components. Now that's a factual thing that you can do that. But what most people don't understand is if I die and I leave my super to my spouse, they get it tax free. But if I leave it to my kids, there's a part of my super that's going to be taxed. 17% because it's 15% plus 2% Medicare. Now, if you're leaving $100,000 of that taxable component to one child or any anybody, there's 17 grand that the tax office is going to get a hot little hands on. Whereas if I strategically change that, the tax office gets $0. So this is about understanding how to legally use the system to minimize tax. And I don't know about anyone who likes to pay extra tax, but we can legally change the tax structures and therefore keep more wealth within your family versus giving it to the tax office. Yeah. And a good friend of mine here in Perth who's in the wealth planning space always says super funds are a tax structure. Thank you. They are. Yes. Yeah. Most people think super is an investment and it's not. It's purely a structure that the tax office gives you concessional tax treatments on. You either pay 15% on the money going in and its earnings or when you are retired, you can pay 0% on the earnings and on the income of it. Yeah, but it's amazing how many people, myself included, have been or are completely ignorant to that wholeis space around that we are just blindly handing over money because we're not aware of these structures and how they work and how we can maximise them and so on. Well, I have a PAYG client who's in Sydney and they're on good six figures and we do a salary sacrifice to super every year because instead of paying their marginal tax rate, which is 42%,we get them down to 37% by dropping them under a tax bracket. And then the contributions to super are at 15%. So, you know, that's a fairly significant tax saving if you're looking for the difference between 37 and 15. And quite often what that means is the tax officer helping her build her super fund. Yeah. And it's a cumulative thing. If in one year, it doesn't seem like a lot, but if it's year after year after year after over 30 years, it's a lot of money. She started with me as a client about 10 years ago, and she didn't have a lot in super. Now she's got a bucket load in super, two investment properties and two other investment structures that are tax effective. And we talked about her net value the other day and she went, oh my God, Gail, I can afford to retire. Oh, yeah. That's so good. So, you know, it's not about expecting instant results. Yeah. But you just have to be willing to investigate what's there and use it. Yeah. YeahAnd I think, you know, I just turned 50 recently and you get to the point where you're like, oh my gosh, I've only gotanother 15, 20 years of working life and I've got to get my super up. Someone was explaining the numbers. if you want to sustain the lifestyle that you've got at the moment, I need to have minimum 500,000, you know, in super by the time I retire and preferably more. And then you look at the gap and think, gosh, how am I going to bridge the gap?And, that's where you come in. It's not that hard providing you aren't fearful when the markets are volatile. So I'm sure everyone saw the stuff where Mr. Trump threw all of those lovely little tariffs on, the market went whoa down and it's come back up almost to where it was. So for some people, I'm a moderator in a Facebook group and it's all about age, pension and super. And I'm there to actually test the psyche of investors that are not advised. Does that make sense?Yeah. And I'm under, what I'm seeing is people panic. Whereas people like me, if we've got clients who are putting money into the markets, we just go, hey, markets, you know, this is a great buying opportunity. when the market fell, I personally bought because it was 10 or 15% cheaper than it had been the week before. So I looked at that knowing that I'm going to hold those investments for probably the next 15 to 20 years and imagine what the value is going to be then versus what it is now. Because on one of the ones I bought in early April, I've actually got a 16% returnin just a few months, in just a month. close to two, because it was very early April. So my point is, it's about opportunity versus fear. So, you know, Warren Buffett, the greatest investor of all time, as far as people like me are concerned, he's a very much a buy and hold strategist. He also is like, if the market goes down, we really don't care. because we've still got the exactly the same number of shares or managed funds or ETF units that they had beforehand. So as long as you don't sell them, you've still got the key component, which is the bit that's going to make you wealth. Yeah, and that's a different approach to stock trading, isn't it? Which is people who are pumping and dumping and that sort of, you know,Yeah, whereas you're looking at opportunities that are, it's a long-term game where you're buying certain things that you are confident are going to increase in value over time significantly. I'm also confident they're going to go down at some stage. Yeah,But you hold during that time because you don't succumb to the fear that everyone else does. Yeah, and I wrote to all of my clients in March and basically said, there's a US, well, we had the US election, the Australian elections coming up. We've got key volatility things that are going to basically cause the markets to, I call it wobble. And I think I got 2 phone calls out of potentially80 emails that were sent out to ongoing clients. And one of them said, Gail, what can I buy? And the other one went, I expected your e-mail, thanks. And nobody rang and panicked. So they know you by now that it's, these wobbles are not. is something to be concerned about. You've just got to ride. Well, I've been planning for 25 years, so I've seen quite a few, either before becoming a financial planner as an investor myself, or so, you know, we've had the 1990 when we went to war in Iraq for the first time, 2003 we went to war in Iraq for the second time, we've had the GFC, we've had COVID, and we've just hadthe Trump wobble. So, there's been some serious stuff that's gone on. But during COVID, there were people made 30% on in a 12 month period because they bought while the market was low when other people were selling out of fear when the market was low. So to me, I encourage our clients to think of the fact that, yes, you might be retired, you might be 65 or 70,but your life expectancy is 85 to 90. So you're an investor till then. You're not an investor till the day you stop working. And that's a very big difference because it means that we've got time to ride the markets. Does that make sense?It does, yeah. What kind of burning questions do you have, Sam?I can see your brain. Where do I start?I can see you going too. No, because Gail, this is all so relevant for so many people right now. And the first question I have is that I think there are, from my perspective, there are two mindsets that happen. There's a mindset that happens whenPeople like I said, our 50s and we go, and like Kate said, it's like, oh, 50s, next to 60s when we want to retire. What's retirement going to look like? And the other one is when I think about my kids who are in their 20s and the concept of any kind of wealth planning or anything is so far removed from their daily lives. They don't do anything. No, they don't. But can I tell you that I have a son who came back from overseas. He'd gone and spent five or six years overseas and had a great life. God, I wish I'd traveled some of the places he went to, but it meant that he had no super. Like his super had stagnated for that period of time. So when he came back to Australia and he started his job, we were having a conversation about the impact of salary sacrifice versus just paying tax. So he said to me, mom, I know you've put salary sacrifice for years. And that's very true. And I still do it now. And I will continue to do it because I prefer to pay 15% on my super contributions and my own tax rate. So from that perspective, we sat down with the ATO free calculator and ran some numbers for him. And when he got to pay, like he was, he decidedHe couldn't trust himself to not necessarily want to spend the money if it was in his bank account. But if he saved it to his super, he knew he could access it to put towards first home deposit. Okay, so he's working on that. And he has been contributing $200 for the first couple of years to super. And now he got a pay rise of $6,000. And he said, so what's the impact going to be?We got the calculator out and he had a look at it and he went,Oh, if I put an extra$100 into super, it only means 6 bucks a week less in my hot little hand. And he said, that's not even a beer. Yeah. And he went, oh, okay. So he decided to do that. And that's one way that our kids can start to help build their own super. You can put as little as $10 a week in. And you can do it either before tax or after tax. All you have to do is if you want a salary sacrifice, your employer has to agree to it and you have to make it a prospective, as in a forward-looking arrangement. You can't go, oh, hang on, I want to salary sacrifice the past stuff. You've got to do it from tomorrow onwards. It's A proactive strategy. You've got to start now. The sooner you start, the more time you're giving it to accumulate. 100%. And very soon, they're going to make it payday super. So it means that within 12 months or so, every single employer is going to have to pay the super contributions within 10 days of having made your last wage payment, which is very different than what it used to be way back, seemingly 100 years ago, when you could pay once a year. Yes. So what are the things, because Sam and I work with a lot of small business owners who are not even paying themselves super or doing the basic things of putting wealth away. And where can someone start where, because what we're finding is with the downturn of the economy and so on, People that don't have to pay super sole traders. And am I right?That's the case that that's an option for sole traders. That's very common. Yeah, sole traders, somebody who runs out of a trust rather than a company. Because I'm a company employee of my own. If I'm my own employee of my company, I have to make contributions to super. Yeah, me too. Which I don't have a problem in. But. When I say I don't have a problem with that, it's actually beneficial for us as individuals, even if we are ABN holders and sole traders, to realize that we either save for ourselves a little bit or we pay the tax office. So I just say to have always said to people in the last 25 years that I've been doing this, you have a choice. You eitherput a little bit into your super fund, but you get to keep it. You can't use it now, but you can make it work hard for you. Your money that's needed. Give it to the tax office. And if you're a single person, the currentage pension is around $1,116 a fortnight. So you don't even get 28 grand. Yeah. It's not, you can't live off that comfortably. Yeah. That's as a single person. As a couple, it's about 42-ish. Yeah, but then there's two of you. Yeah, but then, yes, costs aren't going to be exactly double, but you know, that's still not enough to live on. That was the shocking thing to me when I actually understood how much the pension is in Australia and realised that you just said it's $28,000 a person per year. Roughly, yeah. and if you look at how much we spend just to live, it's at least double that. So, just to groceries and whatever lifestyle expenses are. So that's a basic, like that to me, that age pension, if you're getting a fullpension, you're in a position where, yes, you've got some assets and some other cash around, but you don't have a choice in your lifestyle. And for me, That's one of my key drivers is having choices. Whether I can help my kids, whether I can choose to buy a really nice bottle of wine versus a dodgy bottle of wine. Having said that, we've all beenthere at times. Or whether I have a staycation, so I stay at home, or whether I get to go somewhere. They're all choices and they're all impacted by our earlier decisions. Yeah. Yeah. So. So my tip for those people, those self-employed sole traders, consider putting 50 or $100 a week into super. You're probably not going to miss it, but you're not going to be paying the tax man as much as you might. And then we'll have some choices if you're doing it for 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years in the future. Yeah. so that's the first thing people need to do. I go, it's a choice, isn't it?Either pay yourself or pay the tax man, which, and getting really disciplined around that. Andsince I've, like you, I am, need to pay super contributions, which I'm grateful for, because if the money's not there, you don't spend it and you know that it's going, you know, to, and it's nice being able to see your super fund growing. And so that's, Yeah. And I do other little things like Raiz, R-A-I-Z. I don't know if you've heard of that. I have heard of that. Yeah. Just a little thing. It's an app where if you spend at the supermarket, you know, $5.50, it'll bump it up to $6 and put that $0.50 into a, you know, a separate account. Yep. Yeah, a thing that generates. And it's nice just seeing that $0.50 has accumulated to $0.60 over time. It's all just tiny bits, but it all counts. And it's all about. It's all about what's going on in your head. Yeah, and having different things like that are built, making your money work for you. And so I've just introduced a few clients to things like that as a concept just to start putting money away, you know, just so that you're not, if it's not in your bank account, it's not there to spend, but it's knowing that you're putting it away in different places. But this is your domain, Gail. Obviously, that's very amateur. No, but it's still an important thing because it's the step that you've taken. And without having done that little thing,You, because I'm thinking of this going, oh, if they get to a couple of $100, you can use that to go and buy a small parcel of shares. And then you can do a dividend. That could work a bit harder for you. Yeah. So the reason I like Australian shares in particular is they have capacity to have the impact of volatility. So they will go up and down. They will also, if they're on the ASX and in the top 200, they will generally all pay you income. So the ASX is the Australian Stock Exchange. They'll all pay income and it's generally a franked dividend twice a year, usually March, April or September, October. So both of those, but some have different financial years, so that they're slightly out. But generally March, April and September, October,And if you don't take the income and you reinvest it, which is what I've been doing for donkey's years, you end up with this nice little pool of self-perpetuating and growing income and wealth. And if they're Australian shares, they come with sometax credits, which means you can help use them to offset your own tax liability. And if you move that concept of Australian shares into super fund, super funds pay tax at 15%. Companies, large companies on the Australian Stock Exchange pay it at 50, sorry, 30%. So you get the opportunity to get a refund back into your super fund or offset it against other income. So I love Australian Shares for what they can do. They're very clever. And for someone who is in that mindset, like you said, it is a simple mindset shift, isn't it?I know that a lot of people, and I actually felt this way myself previously, that I'm not earning enough yet to be able to put money away. That's sort of the mindset a lot of people have. ButYeah, I know now that's not correct. Whatever you're earning, you should always be putting a small portion of that away so that it's building wealth for you, right?Well, it's not even just that it's building wealth so that there's an emergency fund there just in case. So you mentioned your brakes earlier. You've got the money to fix the brakes if you've got an emergency fund. So I always sort of say to people, let's get an emergency fund sorted first. And then we go from there becauseBut can I ask either of you, have you ever savedfor a holiday? Yeah. Okay, so you can save. Absolutely. When the desire. And you can invest. That's right. Because it's just a commitment. That's right. And it's discipline, isn't it?And if I think back to I was a poor student living off$12,000 a year, and I still managed to save enough to go to Europe, because that was my priority and that was my focus and I was disciplined. And you can do anything if you put your mind and focus to it. Yes, you can. 100%. Now, I'm also going to say to you that I have had conversations with people and they go, what sort of car do you drive, Gail?And right now, it's going to get traded in this year, but I've had it for 12 years. And It's literally a little old Corolla. It goes and goes and goes. And my mechanic son's like, mom, you should just drive it into the ground. It's so reliable. You can't kill a Toyota Corolla on that vintage and I'm like, I know, right?But the conversation that caused me to have this little convo with you is that somebody said, oh, Gail, you can't be very good as a financial planner because you drive a dodgy little car. And I went, hang on, let me just explain. I bought it to get my mother and my mother-in-law, who were both on Wheelie Walkers, into the car. It was bought perfectly for them. The same as you'd buy a car to accommodate a growing family. And he said, yeah. I said, I own that. He said, well, I just bought myself $150,000 Beamer and I've got this loan and it's going to be great for tax. And I went, cool. But I know that your 150 grand beamer is still going to have a balloon on it in four years time and it's going to be worth about a third of what you paid for it. Yes. My car is still, after 12 years, worth about a third of what I paid for it. Yeah. And I only paid 25 grand. It's fascinating, isn't it?That's one of those things where, I mean, having just bought a car recently myself, I, it is choices. Of sure, I would love a $160,000 Beamer. Who wouldn't, you know, but. Is that a good use of my money right now?No, because I know cars depreciate like there's no. So I deliberately bought secondhand and I got a car broker to help me look for a good Japanese car that's kind of... Yeah, and I think I paid, well, I paid 12 grand, but it's fairly new. It's really reliable. All the mechanics are great on it. And so it's got that functionality. It doesn't look too bad. It's, you know, the kids like it. It's function, it's practical. But again, it's that do you choose image versus actual responsible financial management?Do you know what I mean?By contrast, my share portfolio, I checked it earlier today for something. I was going, have we got that share?Because I was trying to, I'm thinking about life and what. And it turns out I didn't have that share. But when I looked at it, my initial investment has almost doubled. So that particular fund, and this is after a divorce, that particular portfolio is sitting at in excess of 110. Actually, it's more than doubled because I had spent less than 50 on it. So it went up, is reinvesting, and my car has gone down. I know what I would prefer because that share portfolio, when I do retire, I canturn the income tap on and pay me instead of building extra wealth. That's what I want to do. So I think we should all be considering having two or three different types of income streams. So building wealth outside of your business, getting your business to a point where you can sell it and throwing some money at super. Yeah, good advice. What do you think, Sam?Oh, I think I should have you as my financial planner. That's not the purpose of this conversation though. I'm sure. No, no, look, I think it's, I agree with you. I think it's really important to have these multiple income streams and multiple investments because,you know, I remember the first time I bought an investment property and my dad and my brother were like,What did you do that for?It's a waste of time, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're really short sighted about it because they'd already had a bad experience where they'd made a bad investment and lost money. And so therefore all investments were off the table. But it's interesting the influence family can have on your investment decisions. And I love that you are talking about diversifying and having these multiple opportunities for wealth to grow. Well, interestingly, you mentioned investment properties. My parents used to go, oh my God, what do you think you're doing buying an investment property?And again, post-divorce, I sold the investment property that I got out of our divorce. We walked away 50-50 with no fights, no nothing, 50-50. After 34 years, that's pretty good that we could price enough to do that. But my point is,Out of my investment property, by the time I paid rates, insurances, body corporate fees, and all those sort of things, my return was only about 2% in my hot little hand. Yes, it went up in value, don't get me wrong, but I sold it and I am getting seriously amazing returns by not holding property. And I don't have a cranky tenant. I don't have body corporates to deal with. Maintenance costs and all those things. SoMy decision to offload that property was twofold. One was we're not doing it in a year where I'm going to pay extra capital gains tax. So I managed my income. So in that year, I paid myself less so I could minimize my capital gain tax liability. I wrote off a couple of some of those investments that you make that you probably shouldn't have made, you know?We've all done them. And it meant that you can write off a capital loss against a capital bank. So my capital bank went from being this big to this big. And I had to pay a lot less tax. So 18 months after selling it, I actually paid for the tax I built. But in the meantime, I'd had that money invested for 18 months. Wow. So it's about understanding, proclaiming,contracts and all that sort of stuff because literally I've made more in the last 18 months with the proceeds of that sale than I have probably out of it in 10 years from a cash flow perspective. Yeah, I'm very hesitant about the whole property investment thing now. Like when I was younger, I was really like, oh, I want to collect houses, for investment. But I think regulations and the tax implications now, and even, like land tax here in Victoria, land tax on investment properties, it's absolutely killing it for, I think, I mean, I don't know. But from what I see, I would think if anyone said to me, go and buy an investment property now, I'd look at them sideways and go, oh, look,Why would you do that with all the changes?So you've got to pay all this tax. People have so many rights now to do things to your house that you don't need to even ask your permission for. I don't know. And it's hard if you've got a bad tenant, it's so hard to get them out. Well, not only that, it has such a high barrier to entry. So if you're buying something that's worth 6 or $700,000, which will get you a unit here on the Gold Coast, it won't get you a house. you will be basically having to pay the state government a bucket load of stamp duty just for the right to buy that house. Yeah. Whereas most of the other investment opportunities that are out there don't have those high barriers to entry. The highest barrier to entry is, should I do it?Yes or no? And do I need somebody to help me do it?So people have got the confidence and others going, Yeah, that's right. So, Gail, it sounds like property is not a big part of the wealth creation strategy that you use for yourself and for clients. No, it's not. I have had, over time, we've had together when I was with my husband, we've had four different investmentproperties and found ourselves selling them 99% of the time because of the issues with tenants. And in Queensland, they changed the law to make it even more tenant friendly than it was landlord friendly. And I just went,I'm done. And so does that mean the other things that you use are predominantly shares or are there other things that... So I use a range of exchange traded funds, so the ETFs. is what they're commonly known as. They're listed on the ASX, or the Australian Stock Exchange, and they're very liquid. So they can be, when I say liquid, it's trade plus two, and the money's in your bank account. Or if you're buying, it's trade plus two, and the money's out of your bank account. What does that mean, trade plus two?It's 2 days. Oh, right, okay. So it's trade two days, plus two days, and they'll be taking the money out of your bank account, or they'll be dropping it into your bank account. And because they are a very liquid thing, it means it's easier for people to get access to a chunk of capital versus trying to sell a whole investment property because you can't sell part of an investment. You can't sell a bedroom or a bathroom or anything like that. It's all or nothing. So I've always had the view that, yes, my home's my home and that is a property investment, but it's actually also a liability becauseI've got the rates, the insurances, the maintenance and all those other things. Whereas if I was renting, that would be the problem of the landlord. The bonus of having my home is that it's capital gains tax free when I sell it. Is this your home or residence?It's my principal place of residence. And reality of it is, since 1984, there is no such thing as a CGT exempt investment anymore. So if you're buying a share, you're buying an investment property, they're all included. So I tend to use ETFs that cover Australian shares,international shares, infrastructure. So infrastructure is things like ports, schools, roads, toll networks, electricity grids, even jails and airports. They're all included in infrastructure. And most of those things, if you've ever been on a plane or driven on a toll road, that they never get cheaper. So the cost of, they have this ever increasing income stream associated with those things. Property, when we're talking property as in an ETF, we're not talking about a house. We're talking aboutcommercial officeall those other types of things that are not necessarily specifically residential. Okay, that's, yeah. I'm quite naive in that whole ETF space, but could you explain for the ignoramuses amongst us?Well, it's just they're not quite yet informed. Not quite informed, exactly. Yes, let's just say we're not yet informed. So the difference like between a share, which is, you know, an equity in a company versus an ETF. OK, so if I were to go and buy a company's share, let's say company X. whether it be a bank or a major retailer or a minor, I'm buying a share in that particular company. And along with that comes whatever risk is going on inside of that company. So if it's poorly managed, it's poorly managed. And I don't necessarily know that as an individual investor. Whereas if I use an ETF, an exchange traded fund or a managed fund, they actually have a manager that goes and researches all of these companies that they consider would be good for their portfolio. Now what that means is because they're going to be an investor of scale, they can go and have conversations with the board. They can ask them questions. They can look at the management style. They can look at the growthintentions of the board. Whereas as an individual investor, I can't go and say to the board of CBA, for example, hey, tell me why. No, you're very removed. It's a very, yeah, you're very removed from the whole, you have no understanding or influence or anything. Whereas with an ETF, it sounds like. The manager actually. goes and does that digging. They do that research. They have analysts to understand their cash flow, their risks that are inside of their business, and they are specific risks depending upon the type of business you're talking. So this is one of the reasons why I don't use direct shares very often. And if I have used direct shares, it's usually in my portfolio because I'm prepared to take the risk at a higher level. But having said that,I am moving myself away from that, and I am using ETFs that have global opportunities in them, not just Australian-based shares. So the advantage of diversification is the Australian share market's roughly 3% to 4% of the global share markets in total. If you're staying in Australia, you're missing out on 96%. of opportunities that are presenting globally. Right, so ETFs are global. They can be. They can focus on global shares, so international shares, whether it be the US, the UK, Japan, all of those markets. Okay, so that's a lot of potential there. Interesting. And so what is the entry point that people can start If you go to a, say, a low-cost broker, there are a few of them. You can do it yourself. You can buy from as little as about $29 as the brokerage fee. Whatever you want to contribute, you can buy. If you're doing a strategy through a financial planner, we're going to look at your whole position generally. And I've got clients who've got investments with me from around 150 right up to well in excess of 1.5 million. And we just structure portfolios based on them, their needs, and what outcomes we're trying tocreate for them. And self-managed super funds are part of that. Self-managed super funds are an amazing thing. I've had one since 2003. And you can do a lot of things with the self-managed super fund. One of the few things you can't do is buy an investment property from a related party. So I couldn't go and buy an investment property from my trust or one of my kids or anything along those lines because that's not considered to be arm's length. So it has to be from a third party. So I could buy it from Joe Bloggs, wouldn't matter. I could put that into my self-managed super fund. but I can never have any of my family or related parties or myself live in it. So that's kind of to stop you selling your own house that you live in to your self-managed super fund and then renting it from your own fund. Yeah, it's called, it's basically to keep it from being a contrived arrangement. So when it's non-arm's length, any income that's earned and any capital gains are taxed at 30%, not 15. So, or worst case scenario, if you did do something silly like that, you can actually end up with your fund being non-compliant. And that means you'll lose 45% as a penalty of your overall balance. You'll lose the complying tax status. So you'll be paying 45 cents in the dollar instead of 50. That's a huge punishment. Yeah, because it's illegal to do that sort of stuff. Yeah, but that, there's no, yeah, that's obviously, I mean, I just have opened my own self-managed super fund. recently. So I'm a little bit terrified about thatnon-compliance thing. If you're buying ETFs, you won't have a problem because you won't have, you won't be a related party to that because they're listed on the ASX and they're regularly traded. So it's not like it's, yeah, it's widely traded, so it's okay. But if you were trying to buy a house off your sister, for example, to put into your self-managed super fund, no. that would be a real big red flag. Yeah. Your images would be all over that. Yeah, so whenever I talk to you, Gail, I just am amazed at the complexity and the, you know, it's such a, for people like us that aren't in that field, it seems so complicated and difficult to get your head around and almost to the point of paralysis. Do you know what I mean?SoYeah, I do. Look, I started with my self-managed super fund and I knew a big fat zero. 100% I knew zero. I've got qualifications in SMSF specialist stuff, but reality of it is the ATO have a lot of really available resources, amazing resources available. And if you're a SMSF member, you're also a trustee or you're a part of a the director of a corporate trustee. It's your responsibility to know what's going on. And if you don't know and you're not comfortable, find the right person to work with. Yeah. Suggestion. Yeah. And that's where you come in. So yeah, for those that are just, you know, like me, you suddenly hit midlife and all of a sudden you think, oh my gosh, I'm middle-aged. How did that happen?Honey, I've got a 40 year old son. How did that happen?Wow. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I can imagine. but and you think, I've only got this amount of time left. I need to build wealth. I need to accelerate my wealth accumulation. Where do I start?What do I do?But that's where, you know, it's a conversation with you on, let's have a look at where things are at. It can be as simple as just understanding what you've got and then deciding to start to trim your expenditure. BecauseI don't know about you, but how many streaming services do most families have?Six. I've got one. Yeah. And that's only because I don't watch it very often. And it's, I'm a psycho, I don't really want to go to the movies and watch a movie, but I'll sit on the couch and occasionally watch something on Netflix. That's my, shall I say, my advice for want of a better word when it comes to streaming, because they have Bridgerton. Now, I thought you would have been watching billions onStan. No, I'm more interested in those historical dramas. There's money all day. She needs to unplug at night. Yeah, 100%. But you know, the thing is, it's about getting the priorities right and decidingDo I miss out on 10 bucks a week or something and drop it into my super?Or do I put $10 a week into something that when I get $500, I'm going to buy some shares? Because if you can put money into collecting shoes like I used to, I used to be like the Imelda Marcos Atari, because that's where we used to live. And then I went, you know what?If instead of spending money on shoes every payday, I went and bought some shares, and I did that for quite a while. And yeah, life's very different when you have a different priority. Because the reality of it is, for me, I'm not about impressing anyone. I'm about having the things that I need, that my family need. Yeah. Security is still a number one thing for me because I'm A Canterian, so we're all about home and stuff. And having enough money to travel when I want to travel. The choice that you said. It's all about choice. Because it's interesting, you know, I went to a seminar recently by someone in the financial, and I know we've got to wrap up in a few minutes,But he was saying the number of clients that come to him and they are living the champagne lifestyle, they've got the$160,000 beamer, they've got the, kids are at private schools, they've got it, and they're close to retirement age and they look at their super and there's no way they can possibly sustain that lifestyle into retirement. And they're completelyunaware. spending like crazy because they're on the big salary or they've got the business that, they're writing heaps of stuff off through the business. That business is no longer the cash generating machine. What's left over?And he said, it's just crazy the number of people living this affluent lifestyle that don't realize they're about to hit a cliff that's very, you know, very poor. And it's going to be a culture shock and it's going to be seriously uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah, but that complete sort of naivete or lack of awareness about... Can I call it the ostrich syndrome?Yeah. Get in the sand and they don't want to know. And I don't want to be an ostrich because I know that I need to, especially now that I'm sort of on my own, I need to be responsible and make sure that I can provide for my kids and myself. And so that shifts things very quickly, doesn't it?When all of a sudden you are questioning the $10 subscription and the car and, you know, how do I make my money work for me? not only do I need to be generating more revenue through my business, I've got to look at how I'm putting money aside to grow on, you know, on my behalf, that diversification that you said. So for me, it's a case of changing what goes on in here. As I said, I used to leave my parents fear and lack. Now I'm about possibility and I measure risk. And sometimes when I'm measuring risk,It's not like I'm going to take a punt on the horse because I can't tell you the last time I actually even bought a sweepstake on the Melbourne cart. That's how bad I am. But what I'm trying to say is you decide how much you're prepared to let move up and down in value. So if you say, look, I've got this pool of$10,000 that I've built up. I don't know how this is going to go, but I'm prepared to take $1000 of that and put it into something and see how it goes. Now that's seeing how it goes is going to tell you how you would reactemotionally. And if you're going to make an emotional decision and pull it out if it drops down to $800, you need somebody to really work with you to help you grow your change your mindset and understand the impact of volatility. Because if you had bought a CBA share when it first loaded, it went on the market around $6 and the last time I checked itwas about $130. and you didn't have to spend any more money and it's paid you income every six months and it's giving you some tax credits. That's what the willingness to take a risk can deliver. Now, I'm not saying CBA is the company to buy. I'm just using that because when it's filed, I happen to be there. And it's just very different. Yeah. So. Gail, thank you so much for coming and sharing our wisdom. And hopefully people are a lot more aware now of the things that they can do to shift their mindset and start building wealth. And how can people get in touch with you if they want to ring for a chat?My number is actually 0407 159 298. So you'll get me direct if you bother to ring. And that's the client number for all of my clients. So every client has my personal mobile number. Okay, listeners, well, you got that right. Rewind and write it down and give Gail a call and yeah, see how she can help you start planning your, you know, building your future wealth starting now. And any final comments, Sam? no, I just, I loved this conversation, Gail, because yeah, like Kate said, it is such a complex topic and having someone like you who can just explain it in a way that the people that are afraid of it can understand and probably give them a little bit of courage to pick up the phone and call you and have that conversation. I think that's, it's been worthwhile today. Thank you. And I think using plain English is one of mysuperpowers. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's important for everyone to be comfortable. So I speakEnglish instead of gobbledygook. That is amazing. And yeah, well, thank you so much, Gail. We're so appreciative of you coming to spend your time with us today and share your knowledge. Thank you for having me. Yeah, and so you can find Gail at prosperityplanning.com.au. Is that right?That's right, you can. And to her privately, she's even given us her number, so no excuses. Thanks everyone. Thank you so much everyone. Bye for now. Bye.