Elevate with Grace

S1, Ep 11.Our Financial Pillar & Our First Interview

• Elevate with Grace • Season 1 • Episode 11

Share episode

This week I have convinced my wonderfully talented co-host to share some more insights into her financial background as we introduce our last pillar, finessing your finances.  

We share why we have included our financial pillar and set minds at ease.  We are not financial advisors nor do we plan to be giving any direct investment advice.  

Instead we want to bring awareness to the power that comes with a solid financial mindset, paired with some probing questions to help you identify when your financial literacy might need further curiosity. 

Simple things like do you really know where your money is, how much ROI your cash is giving you, including super, that you have enough squirreled away that you don’t need to tolerate an untenable situation - be that a manager or working environment and that you have not given your power.  To explore our behaviour around money, conscious & subconscious and to acknowledge that as women we are far less comfortable discussing finances and therefore we are not supporting each other in this super important space


My interview with Claire explores her background in the financial industry, some insights and observations of the financial world.  Find out how the average women responds when Claire shares she is from this world and a great discussion on how we start conversations with our friends and family around finance.  And we need to start!  We share some startling findings around Australian women’s financial literacy and some books, articles & pods to get you started. 


SHOW NOTES:

The Barefoot Investor, Scott Pape

Own It, Sallie Krawshuck

The Broke Generation, Emma Edwards

Winging It, Emma Isaacs 

She’s on the Money, Victoria Devine


ARTICLE & REFERENCE LINKS:

https://esacentral.org.au/images/PrestonWright.pdf 

https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/3537441/HILDA-Statistical-report-2020.pdf 

https://www.nineforbrands.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Australian-Financial-Review-Media-Kit-2020.pdf 

https://www.lowellsun.com/2021/02/28/how-the-left-and-right-brain-affects-your-finances/ 

www.ellevest.com 

Music created by Claire's daughter Hannah

Claire:

Welcome to the elevate with grace podcast, for women who are short on time and long to take steps to create success on their own terms. Our aim is to curate and share the best tips, insights, and knowledge from all of the content out there. Then take the brain strain out of it by giving you the, so what, and some immediate actionable steps for you to slot seamlessly into your life each week that will help propel you from where you are to where you want to. In each episode, we take a look into one of the pillars of our elevate with grace success on your own terms model, where we explore taking smart risks, cultivating our careers and fueling our financial power. These three elements work together even better when we look at them within the broader context of the bigger picture aspirations we have for what we want our lives to be like and also paying attention to not letting stuff that might be holding us back, get in our way.

Miranda:

Hi, I'm Miranda and welcome to an exciting episode on the elevate with grace podcasts suite. If you have been listening for a little while now, and you will have heard us talk about these three pillars, cultivating career success, taking smart risks and building your financial muscle in this last pillar, I am still very much a wide-eyed student, but my co-host Claire has had an incredible career in the financial sector thus far so we are actually going to be interviewing her and getting a little bit more background into the financial sector. Before we jump into this interview though, like we didn't last episode, I would just like to start by sharing why we've included a financial pillar in our success model and to see. I think our minds and just also clarity around what we mean by focusing on the financial piece. We are not in any way financial advisors, nor do we plan to be giving any direct investment advice. Instead, we want to bring some awareness to the power that comes with a solid financial mindset, paired with some probing questions to help you identify where your financial literacy might be at. And some further curiosities around these financial matters, simple things like, do you really know where your money is? How much ROI, why is your cash giving you including super. do You have enough squirreled away that you don't need to tolerate an untenable situation, be that a difficult manager or a difficult working environment, and that you have not given away your financial power to somebody else. To explore our behavior around money conscious and subconscious. And to acknowledge that as women, we are far less comfortable discussing finances and therefore not necessarily supporting each other in this space like passing on investment tips, taxable benefits, et cetera, Claire, I know your suggestions have encouraged me to date to up my buffer funds and it really does offer more options for every decision tree type moment.

Claire:

Yeah, I think you've explained that beautifully Miranda. I think you've obviously been listening to me talk about financial stuff for many months, everything you said is spot on. I think many women, don't have a linear trajectory as much as men, when it comes to career in life. There's some challenges that we face as women in all sorts of aspects of our life as we go through there. And so I think one of the reasons why financial freedom and fueling your financial power so intricate to our model is because it really is related to the career progression and the trajectory that we have. We might take time out to look up to kids we might take, and that might be when their babies that might be later on and or maybe we need to care for others in our lives, and we need some of that runway. And so I think that's why when we're thinking about career and taking smart risks and fueling our financial power and what that means within our big aspirations for us. There's a lot of thought that we need to lean into and put into what as we'll talk about a little bit in this podcast, I think much more than we're really doing right now as women. And it's important that we talk about some of that stuff as part of our model.

Miranda:

Yes. I have been loving your inspiration and definitely learning from you. And I'm so excited that next year we'll actually explore this area in more detail and maybe share some of those those insights and that inspiration with our beautiful listeners. It's so intertwined with cultivating your career and that smart risk-taking as having something really set up for yourself is quite key. For today, let's dive into this interview and learn more about my inspirational and very talented co-host. Claire grew up as an expat kid living in Hong Kong and Singapore from eight to 17 before heading over to Australia for university, starting out the gate as a tax consultant, earnest young, and then a short stint in the financial recruitment. He ended up at to NIV where she built a 12 year powerhouse career working her way into head of roles before landing at HESTA in a general manager capacity, somewhere in the 12 years, Claire also took on her MBA. There was no study break first balancing career and study, and then study. And her first daughter, she went back to NAB where her role had been made redundant, but her tenacity and resilience had her leaning into her executive network until she secured her next role, which was also a broader head of department role so much to unpack and a huge and massive welcome to our first interview guest, Claire cornfield.

Claire:

Thanks Miranda for that. Very comprehensive and humbling introduction at the same time. I must say it's a bit of an interesting feeling being here as an interviewee instead of as a cohost, but as always, I'm very excited for our podcast chats. And so let's do this.

Miranda:

Fantastic. So over the past few episodes, we've learnt a little bit about you. However, I am confident our listeners would love to understand more about your finance financial background. Have you always been interested in finance? What drove you to first studying accounting and taking on the modern life? That is the financial sector?

Claire:

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. And I think if I could probably dive it, if you think, and look back over your life and refer back to when we were little kids and we'll talk a little bit about the importance of talking about money in family and at the dinner table a little bit later on, but I think. If I was going to summarize it in a nutshell at high school, I didn't really get into the accounting and finance subject specifically until university. But when I was at high school, particularly in the more senior years, I would have to say that my two favorite subjects were economics and geography. With both of those subjects, I liked the breadth of what was being taught. So in the. You would spend from the micro level of what it means within the smallest family or community setting, right through to board, social and economic impacts for countries and globally. And so when I came back to Australia, I applied to do a bachelor of commerce at Melbourne uni. To continue with that economics aspect of what I'd loved at school. I recall actually having an aspiration to work for the economist magazine at the time that I applied, gosh, man, I really am a geek, but then I started to pick up more specific accounting and finance subjects along with the economics subjects at university. And truth be told, I stumbled into continuing with the narrow field of accounting and finance and not the economics path, because at uni there was an opportunity offered to second year commerce students to apply for a summer holiday cadet ship that was being offered by AYA and their tax consulting practice. And so I applied, I got accepted and I suppose you could say the rest was history. When I think about your question, I think the world of finance has a connection with why I enjoyed the economics and geography subjects at school because finance also has a micro application in our homes in the homes of everyday Australians. And it's also very significantly important. At the societal and economic macro level too. And I think I liked the breadth of the discipline, and the people that I worked with and a whole bunch of other stuff that I liked the breadth of the discipline and the significance at the human level and as well at the national and global level. And I think that's probably what's kept me interested for a long time.

Miranda:

Firstly, congratulations on being one of the 30% of women that actually was studying economics So there's a study I've heard in speeches. I went digging and I found, Jackie Dwyer head of information at RBI, there was a bank of Australia has been pushing this fact that in 1995, we were about equal men and women, studying economics in high school. So year 12 economics, it was about 50% which followed through to university. In 2017 only 31% of women were studying economics and 20, 64% of men. And that is both in year 12. And of course also in university, being that they follow through. So there's quite a big gap there. And I can definitely say that. You know that early interest that you had. And I'm wanting to study economics at university, obviously being quite unique in that way. So congratulations,

Claire:

Thank you. I think there probably would have been some influences at school. So the school that I went to in Singapore, we spoke a lot with the career coaches and stuff like that, about where we would go, afterschool. And I would probably have to say that. Dad would have been influential in that too. I was quite fine with the economics and geography and them pushing me towards the economics and perhaps that will maybe help make you more money in the longterm. And I was like, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's interesting.

Miranda:

It's a hope that Jackie gets her way because Jackie Dwight has been pushing to bring in economics as a core. And they didn't say anything about Singapore, but over 20 states in America now have this as a mandatory high school education. And I think financial literacy is really so important to how we go about our daily lives. So not having. He's a pretty big deficit.

Claire:

Yeah. And not to distract us too much on a tangent. But the other part of it is too. Highly important. I think there's a whole bunch of reports that we can go into about young people in Australia feeling like there's a real general sense that no one is giving them enough financial literacy and education. So parents that are in the space who are talking to them about what superannuation, they're putting their money into, how to fill out a tax return, how to do a budget. And a lot of it is reliant on the conversations that you're having and the financial literacy that exists in your home because we're not costing it at school enough. And yeah, I think it's a big deal. I think there's a lot of people playing in that space to get more of that education. And I think young people in their twenties would say themselves that they wish we were doing more of that stuff in the school system. Yeah,

Miranda:

definitely. And I think there's things you do learn in that mask that could even be switched out for a bit of economics

Claire:

call me if we're going to talk about anything today, from a mass perspective, I want to talk about compound interest because that's the key thing in all of this and risk, but I think one of the other things too, is if you're going into a leadership career in a corporate, a lot of the skills that they focus on is, relationship building skills, all of the soft skills that are. Natural for women and probably not for men. And so they're more aligned to what men need to lead and what the missing piece. I think it's called the missing 33% and what the missing piece is, what we're not telling women is that. You need to talk about outcomes if you're in a commercial organization in order to stand out, and if you are interested in progressing your career, you need to be talking about strategy, commercial outcomes. What's the financial benefits of doing stuff for the organization? No one gets the memo on that often from a female perspective

Miranda:

definitely something we could talk about for a long time, but let's go back. So from Ernest young, what motivated the decision to join NAB? And what were your ambitions when you started? Did you dream of being the CEO of NAB?

Claire:

I did not dream of being the CEO of NAB, I wouldn't say that I don't have ambitions to be CEO either for me. I guess it's mostly about finding my place in the world where I feel like I can make a material positive impact on my colleagues, customers and the teams that I work with and in my early twenties, I really enjoyed the challenge of the work I was doing and the amazingly switched on people I got to work with. But I think I wasn't quite sure at such a young age that a career in charter the county. Was for me, I am heavily slanted to the extrovert end of the spectrum. Back when I started my career, I felt like I was standing out like a beacon of extroverted them in the world of channel accounting and I just wasn't comfortable enough in my twenties to own that standing out from the crowd. So obviously extrovert in an obviously introverted culture. So I went and did recruitment for a bit, and I really enjoyed that for about 18 months, then I decided I want to do some travel overseas and I'd only half done my chartered accounting qualification before I left E Y. So I jumped back into a corporate tax role at Heinz. To finish my Chartered accounting qualification. So that from there I did a year traveling around the world. When I got back to Australia I landed a job in the tax team at NAB if I look back on it, I think what I was keen to do was to work in one of the largest Raelian, based organizations. So the big four banks were an obvious example who leave with a commerce degree, and chartered accounting qualification. I wanted to do that because I felt that it would be likely at a young age that I'd be able to figure out some things. What kind of environment suited me, what type of work that I like to do. So that was probably the driver for looking at big organizations at the time. It paid off in terms of getting an opportunity to work in different parts of a larger organization and building out a career in that way

Miranda:

so from chartered accounting to operations and managing tech teams overseas, Wow. The gamut that you've been able to create. Does talk to that big organization and the ability to shift and move. So really cool. There, can you talk through some of the opportunities and challenges of working in the financial sector?

Claire:

Yeah. So I think one of the key opportunities is exactly that what we've just talked about and is, and I think it goes all the way back to probably my parents and my teachers at school gearing me down that economics path and the accounting path., I've worked in tax. then I moved to financial reporting and then I've done operations where you're looking after the back office operations and processing of various information to the banks. I've worked with offshore teams in India. State-based teams on large scale. And so the breadth of the roles I was able to do within NAB was fabulous. You can learn a lot about yourself as you go along. I like having loyalty to an organization of that. But also you didn't run out of bandwidth as you move through. So that's definitely one opportunity. Another opportunity is that you work with a wide and diverse array of people. A lot of what I've learned is because of the huge variety of people, I've had the humble privilege of working with in the financial services sector, truth be told. I've also learned a lot from occasionally bad interactions too. Let's put that on the table. It's not always from the good interactions is certainly made some Rocky periods in there.

Miranda:

We all do though. I actually think any bad experience. You learn so much more from that maybe because it we react more to pain or something yeah what I don't want to do. Yeah. Talk to you maybe longer to learn from the good managers. Yeah.

Claire:

How you don't want to be, how that, how you don't want to make other people feel and all that sort of stuff. A great example from that, and we weren't talking about it today, but we have talked about it previously and it is so integrated with the importance of having financial independence and freedom. You know what COVID teaches you is. Over time. Like we don't have certainty over time. And so bad experiences can give you a lot more clarity about what you're doing don't want to do. So mostly it was great experiences. I went now, but the odd, bad one also helped from a learning perspective. I need to call out that a career in finance can usually often pay well as well. So being financially independent and financially empowered. To make choices in my life is very important to me. Freedom is one of my core values, freedom for myself and others and having money, and working in a career path that pays well was part of it. I'd have to say. Basic level from a challenges perspective the corporate politics in large financial services organizations. Again Corporate politics is everywhere, right? Not just in financial services organizations, but one of the things that I found challenging was the corporate politics. I'm not very good at being aware of it and navigating within it. I try to do that and. Often, I just want to be myself and just get on. The organizational change and restructures is constant and ongoing in large financial services organizations. Most of the time I've often leveraged it and benefited from it. One thing I do think about though, is that for the majority of my career, up until about the last three years or so. I wasn't the majority primary caregiver for my children who are now eight and 10 my partner was working part time for a lot of the time I had my mom and my dad also contributing to that sharing of the, of the childcare duties along with myself. And if I think about the last couple of years, and it's had to become more visible in my work situation, that I am a mum who has had support her kids. First, and I do believe to a certain degree that my career progression has been impacted by that, by have people having that perception, to what extent, time will tell, I suppose, and I don't regret any of that, but I do think that my success at NAB over those years, I just feel like it's really important to call it out that, I did have that a lot more distributed childcare support and probably for it. Cause that's just happened in the last couple of years. And I do think that can, I'm just more aware of that I suppose, for women.

Miranda:

I think most women in leadership that understand that you can do both and you can do both really well and that you don't need to do really long work days to actually succeed. You can be far more efficient that you offer a lot more soft skills. Maybe the workplace is a great conversation that we need to have, but we need to see women in leadership to make sure that the knee-jerk reaction out of this COVID pandemic time when people have seen a lot more mums come to front is that they support and they celebrate those women, not, pass them over the career progression because of that of the covid reveal.

Claire:

Yeah. And I think there's a lot of hope in the COVID experience for many organizations. Demonstrate that we don't have to all be in bricks and mortar buildings from nine to five 30. There's a lot more women like Emma Isaacs that we're talking about your lead leave loudly. And there's a lot more conversation about that, which I'm hopeful for. And I think the reality is too that the millennials, are much more strong about not working in those sort of corporate cultures that kind of promote and reward the greedy work as it's sort of known. I think a lot going to change in the workforce over the next few years, but I do think if I reflect on the last two to three years versus the last 12 years, unfortunately, it's still done. Have some impact to how you're viewed at work? It's an important thing to consider.

Miranda:

And if we all thought about it, want work to be 18 now is about dying. Every day. We need to be allowed to have a life and have a career and there's countries that can do it really, really well. I mean, France not allowed to work after to 7:00 PM. It's illegal to send an email like you can't have.

Claire:

Now I'm bringing my macro lens to this. I think it is that combination of. Individuals. Executive women that I've worked with one of the things that some of the inspiring ones will take Emma Isaac's view and told me to leave loudly. And because you need to be showing younger women that you can have, and then that you can have the career and talk about the fact that men do work part time and all that sort of stuff. So be vocal about it from an individual perspective, I think is important, but there is a government. Responsibility to get involved in that space and the corporates responsibility. So it's kind of that combined thing.

Miranda:

You mentioned just then about some wonderful women that have supported you. I wonder if there's any other great teachings or messages that you would be open to sharing for some of those wonderful women in the financial sector that perhaps helped your progression through your career thus far?

Claire:

Yes, you're right. I've worked for some wonderful men and women, we need to be shouting more loudly about other women and how amazing they are. A lot of that stuff needs to come about. So you're right. I have worked with some amazing female leadership in financial services. It may not always land well in certain organizations or situations, but continuing to think about myself as a role model for younger women, my daughters and all that sort of stuff, and conduct myself in my leadership is definitely, something that I've been taught previously. To flex my leadership and professional style for different contextual situations. So if you're speaking to a board, you need to speak differently to the board than if you're speaking to someone on a one-on-one and that person who may be motivated by different things. Maybe somehow you might change your style slightly. Now that's not to mean that You know authentic yourself. And so that's the challenge. So you do need to flex your style in leadership context for the audience that you need to work with. then you just need to find the authentic way to still be yourself, but be aware that your professional brand does have an element of how you're presenting in different contexts. Stop worrying about so much about being liked was, I really found that hard to do. And so having senior female mentors kind of press that point, you're not going to be liked by everyone. Not everyone's going to like your leadership decisions and you need to make sure that that doesn't sway those leadership decisions that you're making or the choices that you're making. I touched on before about the commercial impacts to the role you're doing, particularly in large corporate organizations with shareholders, probably this applies in all contexts about being clear on what's the current situation or the current problem that you're looking at, what's the future state of that problem. And where are the big things where you can turn the dial and then focusing your energy on them, but doing that sort of what's the future state look like in this situation? What's the current state to help you map out those processes and make material differences that get noticed to the organization above. That's definitely something I've learned. And really about backing myself and being myself. So if I can't be myself and feel like there's something not quite right, and I'm not able to be my authentic self in a particular work environment, then I need to listen to my gut more. You know, a little bit of this stuff. We've talked about strategic winning in the past and a couple of episodes. Like you don't have to persevere every time. Yes. Persevere is important. Yes. It's important. Yes. Sticking in the roles important. But if you got, and your heart is telling you that this is not quite the right, I'm not thriving in this situation, then I'm trying to get better. Yeah. So taking that advice that I've had over the years and moving on quicker than I probably have done in the past. So yeah, this, some of the things that I've learned from some of the amazing women that I've worked fantastic advice. We've definitely seen that coming through as some really important messaging. All of those messages are things that we can use in any sector, not set to the financial sector, that these are very much transferred with skills across the board Observations. Have you made where other women might respond differently to you when you share that you work in

Miranda:

finance?

Claire:

Maybe aren't in your sector, do you sort of notice anyone being a little bit like, oh, okay. And sort of backing away or anything like that? I'm not sure I've made a direct link that they're backing away from me because I say I work in finance or something else. There's probably other elements there, but I haven't noticed a particular reaction to the finance.

Miranda:

You work in finance. Great tonight. I think when I make somebody many sector, but definitely the financial sector, I'm always very curious about the areas they work in, what it involves. So I think that curiosity, whenever we make people is always lovely. We spoke about a couple of episodes ago that maybe a better question to ask people when you first meet them. What are you passionate about right now? What are you still being project rather than necessarily? Oh, what's your job. Oh, your accountant. Okay, cool. I've already stereotyped you. I've put you in a. I mean for me personally, I definitely feel like the financial ward has its own codes. And perhaps that there is like a fear that if we ask more questions, we're going to look kind of silly if we don't understand that Intel. And, there's probably a little bit of financial literacy gaps there. I wonder also if there's an embarrassment factor, when they sort of admit to you because you work in the financial sector. Oh, I haven't done my taxes. I have no idea what my super really is. Has some kind of controls the finances. Have you seen or felt any of that awkwardness in conversations with women?

Claire:

Yeah, I think this is a really excellent question and this is really close to my heart. I haven't really noticed an awkwardness in having financial conversations because women never want to have financial conversations. I don't know whether it's awkward to talk to someone that financial literacy is reasonably high, but I actually get a sense of feeling, I think there's a lot of stats to support this is that women just don't talk about this anywhere near enough and anywhere near as much as they should be, which is why it's so important to me that it's part of our elevate with grace success model, because I think it's super important. What's your experience? do you, do you ever talk about money with anyone else? Not really. I mean, it's interesting. There was a couple of girls in my work place who have investment and so we definitely have that conversation and support each other with insights and things that we found.

Miranda:

I think actually it would feel quite uncomfortable talking about other people sometimes you have some sort of preface it, will you apologize for it? I don't know. And I it's just talking about finance, until we are actually much more comfortable to talk about these things. I definitely know my husband does have these conversations with his family and it's been a consistent conversation.

Claire:

I think the important thing for me the family conversation, but then the family conversation is talking to sons and daughters. Research out there that say that women defer to their husbands or partners to look after the finance arrangements in their household. And then that does become a problem when divorce happens or when the male partner of the relationship dies or whoever's looking after the finances. And so I think there's so much great content out there. There's great books. It's about spending a bit of time to learn those basic concepts and. They're not that complicated. It's just about choosing to learn it. And then when more of us are learning it and talking about it, but being okay, like, I guess we have to be, we have to be less ashamed about the fact that we don't know anything about it and be more open. Hey I don't know enough about finances and I want to learn more and get curious about it, like an asking. And I know that women don't talk about what they get paid. Like men talk about it a lot more. There's adequate to say that as well. And I often talk about how much I get paid and it's like, I haven't said anything. I don't talk about it with every random person, but I do indicate to girlfriends like, oh, you know, I got offered this role and it paid this much, or I'm getting this much as a daily rate per hour. It just drops on the floor, but I'm still committed because I think it's like, People don't have to share what they get paid back, but I think it's helpful to know like, what pay is out there. I mean, I've in the past specifically asked trusted men that I've worked with who were at the same level what they get paid to make sure that I'm getting paid the same. And it's hard. It's hard to be that vulnerable. And it's hard to sound silly, but tell us if it's worth it.

Miranda:

Yeah. Conscious and subconsciously women have certainly been geared towards softer skills and maybe not as much in that financial literacy space, I went and dove into some research and did actually find, HILDA study, which is house out income, labor division in Australia. It's performed by the Melbourne Institute, at the uni of Melbourne. And this Hilda survey found that basic financial literacy that there is an 11% gap between men and women. So 3.75 to 4.17. This gets high when we go into more advanced financial literacy. So there's a lot of scary things in this report around poverty and such. And look, I think it's something we can dig into more next year. I think this idea of financial literacy and that this is one area where women are lagging behind men, is great to bring to people's attention because women, we never want to be left behind so it is a really great kick in the butt to go and have a look at some of these podcasts. Do maybe some LinkedIn learning, be curious about economics, find out what your interest means, what you're super account paying with your Have a look at your home loan. There was a study where it was like one in three Australian people didn't know that their home loan was on an interest only account. Some really important things at least know where your, what your situation is holistically, I think is a really healthy conversation to have and to continue to build up that bandwidth. We spoke about numbers before around Children year 12 students and university students studying economics, being sort of that mid thirties to compared to men, which is the mid sixties, but then also the financial review. Australia's main financial papers. And women are at 31% subscribers of this newspaper compared to 64% of men. The majority of the Raiders of this newspaper, manager or professional levels. They have a household income of 120 K plus. We can certainly start to pay more attention to our finances and to start to share and bring those financial discussions to your friendship groups and, collectively we can all improve. A bit of summer reading for everybody, definitely a good one to get into. Claire, what can we do to ensure that we are collectively, lifting up women and how do we start this conversation?

Claire:

Yeah. I mean, this is a really tough phone, right? Like I, I wish I had, I think many of us that are very passionate about the financial vulnerability challenges of women in this country, one of the largest growing cohorts of homeless people in Australia is women in their fifties and sixties. I think you brought it up with me Miranda. I'm so proud of you, the people that got naughty naughty, your superannuation fund is not performing. And then there's going on those letters. There's been a bunch of, media. The Australian Prudential regulatory authority is concerned that people aren't acting enough on their superannuation. So I think that at the moment, there's a lot of awareness coming into this space, which is great, then you need to move into that desire to take action. And I think that's where we're hoping to do some really good work, with elevate with grace is to encourage people to take action in this space because being aware of it is one thing being brave enough to look at your financial situation and take some action into it and not knowing if you're on an interest only loan, knowing that means that if you're not paying down that principal, What does that mean for you financially and life? Like we know from COVID life is always going to throw us curly big problems. And are we in a position where we feel financially secure It's just such an important space. And I think lots more conversation is happening about it, but now. How do we turn that into action? How do we make it feel sexy to want to get excited about your financial, personal financial situation as a woman, right. We really need to have long-term financial planning. Need to think about what our trajectory of life is. We need to own it in terms of our own financial literacy.

Miranda:

On that note, do you have a favorite financial tool, author quote, article or inspirational passage that could help women to start building a better relationship with money? Hopefully we're going into a little bit of summer holidays, maybe a bit of summer reading

Claire:

Yes, I do. In my personal opinion, and I think a lot of Australians would be aware of this, I do rate the barefoot investor by Scott Pape. I think Scott Pape does a great job at. Bringing it down to very basic levels. So in the barefoot investor, it's sort of set out as a very clear structure, a program of work. I like some of his philosophies around a partnership with another person and you're sharing finances that you're approaching life as a team, and you're there to support financially as a team. And I think that he's got a lot of good ethos and concepts behind the work that he does. Fan girling big time over Sally Krawcheck who is the founder of Ellevest, which is an American based financial services organization that's designed for women and wealth, because a lot of financial products more designed for when you don't have a lumpy career, so much more male design. And so she had a big goal to really get women much more financially independent. So some are reading very different type of book, but her book own it is very good. Following her on Instagram, LinkedIn or whatever. And she does lots of like short, sharp articles about helping women get better familiarized with their finances. So I really like her stuff. I like the thought leadership of image Edwards, who is behind the Broke generation. the brick generation is pitched at millennials and gen Ys who want to learn how to get financially fit. I think some of the stuff that Emma Edwards talks about on her Insta posts are really great. And she's the she's on the money podcast, which is divine. Victoria, divine. I think like some of the stuff that she's doing in this space is outstanding. So all of these are aside from Sally Krawcheck, this is all Australian grown, Australian based talent. So did probably a couple of. Some suggestions from me, of people that talk quite simply in this space and talk about simple financial planning and simple financial concepts. And it's really good. Some good takeaways. And, yes, I have been following Seroquel shake and Ellevest very closely. Her post today actually was around, Inflation and just not being scared of it and actually learning what a little bit about what it's about and how you can actually ride that wave and ride it really well.

Miranda:

These are the kind of tips I think women could drive.

Claire:

If you subscribe to their newsletters and follow them, and tiny little steps every day, like if you read one post from, Sally Kaushik from Ellevest, or you read Scott paper newsletter, or you follow the Insta posts, or you do one 20 minute podcasts from she's on the money. It's just about building up that knowledge every day and those are some great people to follow. I think

Miranda:

absolutely. We have come to the end of the episode and wow. What incredible, positive information here. So I'll definitely put the book recommendations and the podcast recommendations in the show notes. Now it's only fair that you set the next and last challenge for this year. what do we need our elevate community to be doing, to set themselves up for right 20 22.

Claire:

Yeah, I think at this point, the best action challenge is just to get curious, through this interview style pod, we've talked quite a lot about deep and also broad reaching topics around finance. And it is a very complex, we can problem in terms of how all of the. Economic and political and corporate and personal situations all come to a head in terms of supporting women in their financial situation. And so I think the thing is just about getting curious, it's about finding something in this field that makes you feel like you're interested. So whether that's investing, whether that's listening to a podcast about investing or getting a bit more curious about your superannuation or, thinking about some of the financial security issues that we've talked about that can happen to women in this in Australia, which is quite heartbreaking in a country like ours, maybe that's where you want to get involved in some of the areas about understanding a little bit. The action is to just get curious, what elements within our fuel, your financial pillar in 2022, we'll get you excited. So what's just, the action is type in the search engine of your favorite podcast app or type in the search engine of Instagram or whatever your social media of choice is women in finance, women and money. And just find, check out a couple of the links in the show notes. Start to find a way to make it interesting. Build up, that Intel, that language, and the other thing is then using that to start conversations at the dinner table in your own home with your friends, in preparation for this podcast, I literally, I did a little chip test for myself the other night, and I asked my eight year old daughter. to explain to me what superannuation was? And she said it is where people save money for their retirement. Yeah I think we put pressure on it. The fact that we think it is more complicated than it is. There's so much good resource out there that makes it easy for us to get ahead of these concepts. And so I think just getting curious and doing some work on that space.

Miranda:

Great action challenge. Great advice. I think that just starting somewhere and just starting with one little area is really important. So making sure you're so overwhelmed with all of the ideas that you don't start anywhere. So next episodes in a fortnight we are going to be wrapping up the podcast for the year with a summary of our 11 episodes so far reflection on some key learnings and some things that maybe didn't fit into the podcast tip. So we're going to bring you some little surprise and delights in this one. We've put all of the links in the episode notes, please visit our Insta post for more inspiration. Email us@elevatewithgraceatgmail.com or check out our website, elevate with grace.com that I, you, we would absolutely love to hear from you and hear your thoughts. Thank you. Thank you. What a fun conversation. I am so grateful to you, Claire, for letting me interview you. Thank you so much.

Claire:

It was really fun. I really enjoyed it. Well, I always enjoy talking about money and women and finances and investing and texts and all that stuff. So pleasure. I'm glad you enjoyed it too. And hopefully our listeners did as well.