$100 challenge: Where we invested our $1200

Bryce: [00:00:26] Welcome back to another episode of Get Started Investing, a podcast where we attempt to answer the most common money and investing questions from the get started investing community. Now, while we are licensed, we are not aware of your personal financial circumstances. So any information on the shows for education and entertainment purposes only. Any advice is general. My name is Bryce and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy, Ren. How are you?

Alec: [00:00:49] I'm very good, Bryce. Very excited for this episode. We are wrapping one of our favourite segments of show types of this year, and that is the $100 Challenge. We launched it at the start of this year with a very simple insight that $100 invested every month for 40 years in a broad based market tracking ETF. And we can talk about what those are in a second. 100 bucks invested each month in those over 40 years with the market's average return gets you $350,000. 

Bryce: [00:01:22] You can't complain with that. 

Alec: [00:01:23] So if you're thinking about, you know, what do I need to do to supplement my superannuation and or my 41K If you're listing in the States and, you know, set myself up for retirement or what can I do to accelerate my journey to financial independence, I want to retire early. It's making those small steps today, getting money to work as early as possible and then letting it compound over time. And so with that simple insight, the $100 challenge was born where every month we try and spend no, not spend, we try and save or earn an extra hundred dollars to put in the market. 

Bryce: [00:01:58] Yes. And what a year it has been. The trials and tribulations, ups and downs. I think overall we have definitely saved some money, found new ways to save. We've had many community members writing in about how they have been saving money, Some that come to mind match betting, hiring out your car park space, selling some of your clothes online. 

Alec: [00:02:21] Or renting them online.

Bryce: [00:02:23] Renting them online. Plenty of great ways coming in. And today we're going to close the year out, 2023 with what we've been doing over the last month to save or earn an extra hundred dollars. But also talk a bit about Christmas and how you can approach that, because it is a time of year where you can have a bit of unnecessary cost. Blow-out with the pressure of buying presents and secret Santas. All those sorts of things.

Alec: [00:02:49] And I've got a frustration with financial content around this time of year, but I'll get to that. 

Bryce: [00:02:55] Nice. Well, let's start by hearing from our community. 

Em Community: [00:03:04] Hey, equity mates clear here. This year, my family and I are doing Kris Kringle, and we set it to $50 max. I may have gone and tagged over and done $60, but I still think that's a pretty good money win on my end. Cheers. 

Em Community: [00:03:17] Cheese is Christmas to save money. I'm taking extra food from the work Christmas lunch and putting it in the staff fridge for the next two days. 

Em Community: [00:03:26] Yeah. Two years ago I bought a brand new car. It's been a challenging year this year, with the price being pushed back some day and getting my car to free up some capital. I'll save some money this holiday season by using bonus points with a free credit card to get cheap flights and also travelling in late January just outside of the Queensland holidays. For Iceland to travel.

Em Community: [00:03:48] Hi, Equity Mates. One way we are saving money. This Christmas is Secret Santa. Our side of the family is $100 to $200 and it's all done.

Em Community: [00:03:58] I'm planning on saving this Christmas by selling off the least favourite of my two children. I'll have extra cash and I'll only need to buy for one child. Win win. 

Bryce: [00:04:17] Nice, I love that selling off your least favourite child. 

Alec: [00:04:20] Yeah, yeah, that's some good ones there. I think my favourite thing there was taking extra food from the work Christmas party and putting it in the fridge. Yes, I think that's a good money saving hack at any time of year. If you're at a big company that puts on a lot of spreads. Definitely pocket as much as possible. 

Bryce: [00:04:39] Well, I'm going to make sure that stuff for the Christmas party, Ren we catered to the perfect amount and so no one's taking home extra food. Now we've got a couple here from the Equity Mates Facebook discussion group as well, one from Mitch Golding, who has said that they're having Christmas at home just himself, his partner, one year old and their dog. No travel, no stress, no beast, just top quality family fun. They're going to be working on Christmas morning, so they'll cook up a light lunch and relax in the afternoon. 

Alec: [00:05:08] I mean, great if you can do it. But I'm surprised you could get that over the line with your parents and your in-laws know, having a one year old. Like they wanna say the kid. 

Bryce: [00:05:20] And another from Anna Sultana. Anna is using Woolworths rewards. She's saved throughout the year and cashback money, saving her shop bank account to buy gift cards, especially when they have bonuses, which is a great idea. She's also politely declined to participate in Secret Santa at work, saving herself 20 points and saving time and has stocked up on some gifts during the Black Friday sales so that they don't go overboard. Yeah, So plenty of great ideas there. I do like the Black Friday sales, if you can. Noted in the diary for next year, you genuinely can pick up some great Christmas presents ahead of time. 

Alec: [00:05:55] That's what I've done. I don't know if you've seen the table. In our office there is a slowly accumulating pile of deliveries for me. Yes, that's my Christmas shopping. I did it all on Black Friday. Cyber Monday. 

Bryce: [00:06:15] What I love about Black Friday, Cyber Monday is it's actually about three weeks of sales because you have the two week lead up Cyber Monday. Then after Cyber Monday, they extend Cyber Monday, extend it, and all of a sudden you've had about a month of sales.

Alec: [00:06:29] So it's just it's so like it's so American. We don't even do Thanksgiving, but we have Black Friday.

Bryce: [00:06:35] Anyway. Ren, let's recap what we did last month before turning our attention to what we're going to do for Christmas and then put a bow on the whole 2023 $100 challenge. Look at what we've invested and perhaps what we're going to do for next year. 

Alec: [00:06:54] Yeah, right.

Bryce: [00:06:55] So what did you do last month? 

Alec: [00:06:56] So mine was super simple. I now live in an area where my closest three supermarkets are all Woolworths. And I didn't have the rewards set up. So last month I signed up for awards and then I also saw that they partner with Qantas frequent flyers. So I went to sign up with a frequent flyer. They charge 99.50 to sign up for some reason. I don't know why. But then I found a discount code that gets you access to frequent flyers for free, which I then shared in our Facebook discussion group if people want it as well. So I saved 200 bucks by finding that offer code. Simple. Easy. We'll get to the less simple and easy ways to save money when you talk about what you're doing. But update I so far have 3100 Qantas frequent flyer points. I don't think that gets me very far.

Bryce: [00:07:50] It does not. Unfortunately, no. And it doesn't get you very far. But I think I don't know if you've noticed, but more importantly with the rewards card for Woolworths and I'm not sure if Flybuys does the same, but they now have members. Pricing has been something that's gone for a while, but it's quite significant for some products. 

Alec: [00:08:07] To be honest, that was the impetus for me to actually do it. I didn't really care about the rewards points, but I saw the news around. We actually did an episode on the dive about differentiated pricing and how Woollies is just one business that is starting to do that now, where if you scan your everyday rewards card, you actually get discounts. So I signed up because of that. I don't reckon I've saved a lot of money from those. 

Bryce: [00:08:32] Oh, I had two huge wins last week. 

Alec: [00:08:34] Really? Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:08:35] I bought a chicken and veggie pie like a fresh meat pie from it. 

Alec: [00:08:42] Do they do that in Woolies? I'm in a metro location. Like, I guess it's like a true small format. 

Bryce: [00:08:47] Wow. This is a lot. This is an ex supermarket that is now metro market size. 50% off. And coffee. I bought coffee pods. Also 50% off. Yeah. So meaningful discounts because generally sometimes I don't always scan the card. 

Alec: [00:09:05] I'm still in that honeymoon period where I'm always scanning and I'm also going on the app. Yeah. You're getting all the booze. Yes. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:09:13] But it'll show on the ticket. And yes, there were meaningful discounts to be seen. So I was, I was pretty happy with that. Go Woollies. 

Alec: [00:09:20] So that was my $100 challenge last month. Easy. Simple. Yeah. On the other hand, are you trying to do a dropshipping business? So I want to hear that update. But before we get into that, is there anything else that. 

Bryce: [00:09:34] Yes, so I did have some easier wins. And during the week I think we put up a post or maybe it was last week on our Instagram page showing that a survey that was done by Finder that showed one of the most useful money advice tips people find is using coupons to save money. One of the worst ones, I think, was telling people to get an extra job, which is fair enough. 

Alec: [00:09:59] So I've got the post, the three write it as most helpful. Track your spending. Use coupons to save money and cook at home rather than going out. I'm surprised Cook at home was rated as most helpful. Three Most annoying. Tell me if any of these annoy you. Cancel TV subscriptions. 

Bryce: [00:10:18] It's just a common one. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:10:19] Work to earn more money. 

Bryce: [00:10:21] That's annoying. 

Alec: [00:10:22] Move into a share house or downsize. Yes.

Bryce: [00:10:24] That's completely. Yeah. Yeah. Two out of the three. 

Alec: [00:10:28] I always say I find all six kind of annoying, but I think it's because we live and breathe financial content. 

Bryce: [00:10:34] Yeah. Well, we've spoken about a lot of those, but my point being was the work, the eat at home and use coupons. There's an app that we use throughout the week called Eat Club. Now what eight club does is it shows you restaurants around you and well, wherever you want to go and try an eat. And these restaurants sign up and they give you meaningful discounts, 35 to 60% if you go in and dine in. Some of them do have takeaway options as well, but they kind of stipulate which times you can do it.

Alec: [00:11:04] So it's like you come in at 5 p.m. and you'll get 60% off because they're not filling the restaurant. 

Bryce: [00:11:09] Five Yeah, it's kind of like if you're in before eight or if you come in on a Tuesday between whatever and whatever and you just buy it on the app and then away you go, you scan and you get your discount. 

Alec: [00:11:20] So have you, have you done the maths about are you actually saving money from just cooking at home though?

Bryce: [00:11:25] Well, I know it wasn't necessarily like an either or, but it's kind of like if you feel like you are able to go out. Yeah, yeah. You may as well check the app. 

Alec: [00:11:34] Or like compare that to Uber Eats and you'll definitely be saving money. 

Bryce: [00:11:37] Exactly. And so we did it with where we were going to go to the Burger restaurant down the road for Takeaway, but it had 30% off. So it's just like. Maxwell There's no reason not to do that. Yeah, 30% off. They scan it. Away you go. No. So Eat club, check it out. It's well. 

Alec: [00:11:52] Not sponsored, but if Eat club's listening, it could be. 

Bryce: [00:11:55] Yes, I would love to trial that every week anyway. Dropshipping. So I set out to sell some sunglasses. Now the website. 

Alec: [00:12:03] Before we get the whole narrative. How many pairs of sunglasses have you sold?

Bryce: [00:12:06] Well, I'm not going to do the narrative. I just encourage people to listen to the last 4 or 5 episodes. Okay. But we have been setting it up. Zero. 

Alec: [00:12:16] All right. So now give us the update. 

Bryce: [00:12:17] And I've done I've, I've got it to the point now where everything's ready to go. I've even started paid ads and now I'm in a whole new ball game of Facebook bots.

Alec: [00:12:29] I thought you were going to say you're in a whole as in now you're losing money on this thing. 

Bryce: [00:12:33] Well, that is happening. 

Alec: [00:12:35] So tell us about the Facebook bots. 

Bryce: [00:12:37] Well, you know how both you and I have struggled with the bots when it came to selling things on Facebook marketplace as part of this campaign, as part of these projects. Now, when you start Facebook ads for a Shopify website, bots, figure out that you're doing it or people. And now I'm just getting hit every day by 10 to 20 people telling me how they can help me improve the Shopify website. Yeah. I can help you with this. I can help you with that. I love this. I love that. But have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? And it's just super annoying.

Alec: [00:13:13] Where are they hitting you up like? 

Bryce: [00:13:14] Through messenger.

Alec: [00:13:15] In your, in your. 

Bryce: [00:13:17] Yeah, yeah. Through the messenger for the because you have to set up a Facebook page for Summer Daze and so I'm getting hit all through that. 

Alec: [00:13:23] How many followers to Summer Daze have? Oh, let's check. 

Bryce: [00:13:26] I don't think I need to. If you want to say the history of Summer Daze, head to my Facebook page. Summer Daze, D, a z, e, and you'll say that many moons ago I was actually trying to dropship phishing Lewis and dog kennels I think or something along those right anyway ran long story short I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 styles of sunglasses on the website. Please do yourself and do me a favour. Go to hellosummerdaze.myshopify.com. We'll put a sign in there and please buy yourself a high quality pair of sunglasses just in time for Christmas. 

Alec: [00:14:01] So I just searched Summer Daze in Facebook and it hasn't come up with your page. What it's come up with is a post that you put in a John's College group in 2011. Summerdaze.net. I clicked on that link link. 

Bryce: [00:14:18] At least I had the domain back there.

Alec: [00:14:19] Yeah, that domain seems to be broken. And then you have commented on all caps, cheap sunnies and our mate Flynn has commented on easy money and I think we can safely and more than ten years after you posted, you posted that comment. It certainly has not been easy money. 

Bryce: [00:14:36] Anyway, the saga continues. Ren, look, there's been a lot of lessons I've learned. It hasn't gotten to the point that I would have liked, which was a recurring revenue. 

Alec: [00:14:47] Single increment of revenue. 

Bryce: [00:14:50] I let it be said that I'm not going to give up on this because it feels like the work I've put into it deserves a bit more finessing. 

Alec: [00:14:57] So the time we have invested, listening to it deserves a payoff. 

Bryce: [00:15:01] So just like the drum kit, I can't wait to tell you when I have sold a pair of Sunnies and I will continue this over the summer break and put a bit more effort into refining how to get these Facebook ads. Right. 

Alec: [00:15:13] Okay, nice. But I still think there's going to be. I still think there's a light at the end of this tunnel. 

Bryce: [00:15:18] For what I think what I've missed is the ice baths. 

Alec: [00:15:21] No bro. You can't give it. 

Alec: [00:15:23] It's not the product. Like if you were selling some Sunnies but not a hey, then we could talk about refining and optimising product. 

Bryce: [00:15:32] Yeah, I know, I know. It's too. I'm too deep in Sunnies. 

Alec: [00:15:35] No, I think we just need to get, I mean I'm saying the way but I'm not doing any of the work. Just like prove that you can sell something, get some conversions, make sure the flow's working and I'm getting traffic. 

Bryce: [00:15:46] So yeah, there's a few things and a few things I need to finesse. But please, I'll put a shot. I'll put a link in the show notes hellosummerdaze.myshopify.com. Obviously the domain is one thing we need to finesse and do yourself a favour. We talked about Christmas presents and very cheap quality sunglasses. Cheap, good quality. 

Alec: [00:16:07] The importance of a comma between cheap and quality. 

Bryce: [00:16:11] Nice. All right. Ren, let's take a break and then on the other side, we'll talk about how we are going to approach Christmas? A few things you can think about to save money during the festive season. Then we'll wrap up the $100 challenge for 2023. We'll be right back. All right. And we're here talking about the $100 challenge. We've just spoken about what we did last month, the challenges of dropshipping. We've heard from some of our community members. So let's talk about Christmas more broadly. Some of the ways that we can save money because it is a time when I feel like you can get yourself into a bit of trouble with the pressure of feeling like you need to buy presents. And buying too. 

Alec: [00:16:48] Definitely. It's a time when you can spend a lot of money. It's also a time of the year where there's a lot of pressure on delivering a great Christmas without spending a lot of money. I think the pressure comes from all sides at this time of year. And I hate this type of content. I have such great financial Christmas content because this is if we need to paper it. But it's both. It is just like that. Let me give you some examples to illustrate my point. And I only call these out because they have good SEO and they were top of the feed like that. This is almost universal. The money saving Christmas hacks are just trash choice.com to write you their tips for saving money this Christmas. Don't buy meat. Have a vegan Christmas and don't buy alcohol. Have a non-alcoholic Christmas. If the saving is just don't buy things that you want to celebrate like you're not. That's not a money saving hack. That's just like, just deprive us of joy. 

Alec: [00:17:57] Yeah, yeah. Or Dave Ramsey, the massive, you know, financial commentator in the US, one of the biggest financial commentators in the world. His he has 25 Christmas tips this year. One of them had a virtual Christmas. Just do it on Zoom. 

Bryce: [00:18:15] That is lame is. 

Alec: [00:18:17] Another one tip number 24 wrap gifts. Gifts creatively as if your bloody wrapping paper budget is the thing that's costing more this year. Not fuel to go on holiday, not food to actually do it, but gift wrap is your problem. One of his tips and this one is interesting, I don't hate this one as much as the controversial tip number 15 re-gift. Which I actually don't mind, but I think a lot of people would not like that this one tip number 18 make more money. Hmm. Thanks, Dave Ramsey. That's a helpful tip. I just reckon the problem with Christmas is that like you're having these big parties, you're buying gifts like there is, you got to spend more. It's really hard to avoid that. And you can do things like make gifts rather than buy gifts. You can agree, you can do Secret Santa. So you're not buying gifts for everyone. You can agree with the family or whatever, that we're not going to do any gifts Like you can do stuff like that to reduce spending. But the idea it's like have Christmas lunch with no booze or no maid because that's a good tip to save money or just do it on Zoom rather than in person, because then you'll have to buy less money to cater like they're not good savings tips. And it's just bullshit.

Bryce: [00:19:37] I mean in some. Yeah, I mean it depends on your circumstance, but like, yeah, there are instances where. 

Alec: [00:19:44] Sorry. Let me put it this, let me put it this way. Everyone knows they can just not buy things. Yeah. Like everyone knows that I could just not buy and not buy booze because I can't afford it. It's not like an insightful savings hack. 

Bryce: [00:19:59] Yeah, well, what would you say? 

Alec: [00:20:01] For me, I think the way I approach Christmas, I actually wrote an article for nine Honey. Don't know if it ever got published, but by the way, we we sometimes write articles for nine honey that you can go and check out. It was 100 days till Christmas and we wrote, you know, 200 days to Christmas. Start thinking about saving now and putting money aside. And I think honestly, that's the only way that you can approach Christmas. Well, that's the way I approach it, there is going to be a step up in spending. The right way to do it is to start planning early. So you've got the money set aside. I think it's really hard to manage it if you're only starting to think about a big step up in spending in December. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:20:44] Yeah that's my number one thing as well. I remember at uni I would have it as a savings line in my budget and save for a year. 

Alec: [00:20:51] That's pretty good. At uni I was probably just buying presents for people. 

Bryce: [00:20:55] So mind you like that wasn't me saving five grand or anything to pay like it was. Still, you get to the end of the year and you'd just have an extra 300 bucks or something. Like it wasn't big money, but it was just it was a conscious decision, as you said to you just need to think about it and stick to that budget and or even if like I think that's the most important thing to me. It's like, you know, you're going to spend money but just limit what you're going to spend it. You don't have to. You don't have to spend heaps of money to have a good Christmas. Yeah. So I think think about it now for next year, if you're in a situation where you're feeling a bit of the squeeze, there are other things that you can do to reduce your spending, like there's plenty of sales. I think if you you can almost buy anything electronics, homewares related, whatever, on some sort of discount leading into Christmas. There's those ways of bargain.com today you like plenty of ways. 

Alec: [00:21:49] So I've heard of people and it's probably less relevant now with Black Friday sales but I've heard of people whose families would say No. One buy a present before Christmas and then we'll all buy Presence on Black on Boxing Day, which is interesting. Yeah, I think like the Kris Kringle one is one that everyone. We do that in the family as well and put a spending limit on Kris Kringle as well so that no one's disappointed that they feel like they've been shortchanged. But also then you. Just as spending happens. 

Bryce: [00:22:22] Nice, Ren. Well, let's tie this all up. I guess the question is, we said we were going to invest 100 bucks a month. Did you do it? And in. In what? Because I think we've had a few questions throughout the year where we've said investing $100 in a market index to get the market return is more than enough over a long period of time. So how did you what was the result for you this year? 

Alec: [00:22:47] So the way that I've approached it, I have my core investment that I automate every fortnight that we get paid and that goes into a number of index ETFs, just market tracking ETFs. And so that just continues ticking along. But what I also do is I take my I automatically transfer a certain amount every time I get paid into my spending account. And what I've been doing this year is whatever's left over at the end of the fortnight in my spending account, which really has been money that I've saved from things with $100 challenge, you know, like I've started, I've started doing intermittent fasting and not eating breakfast, stopped buying coffees at work and making them the machine here stop buying lunch and making lunch. Just all of those, you know, nothing. Reinventing the wheel, nothing groundbreaking, but just a number of things to limit spending also pulled out the small amounts of money very incrementally. Small amounts of money I made doing online surveys earlier this year and just throughout the course of the year. Any of that money left over, I've transferred into my brokerage account and bought Vanguard, Diversified High Growth, the ETF. And yeah, I've got about $1,000 in that on top of what I normally invest just from, you know, those saving money and stuff like that. 

Bryce: [00:24:10] Nice. So VDHG is the ticker there. If you're interested to know more about that, check it out on the Vanguard product page. 

Alec: [00:24:18] What about you?

Bryce: [00:24:19] So I invested the 1500 that I did sell the drum kit for. And I haven't done it in a separate product, so I just split it across my core portfolio. So the ETFs that give exposure to Aussie, US, Asia and Europe. So that was the 1500. And then and then right at the start, when I saved, I think it was 98 bucks. On cutting back subscriptions and those sorts of things. I put that in. And then I was hoping for a bit more of a result from they dropped shipping by now, but anything that I did genuinely make from this challenge has gone into my core portfolio. 

Alec: [00:24:58] And if you're wondering what makes up his core portfolio, then the book to read is Don't Stress, Just Invest makes the perfect Christmas present. It's the only Christmas present that guarantees a right of return. And it explores this whole concept of core portfolios and talks about some products that you can actually invest in.

Bryce: [00:25:18] That's it. 

Alec: [00:25:19] So with that Bryce, that brings a $100 challenge to an end this year, let's go and spend too much over Christmas, come back in January and tighten our belts both literally and financially. Attack the year ahead. 

Bryce: [00:25:33] And thank you to everyone who has submitted ideas and contributed to the challenge throughout 2023. Really excited to hear some of the bigger and better ways we can tackle it next year. 

Alec: [00:25:43] We've got one more episode to go. This year, it's our mailbag bonanza where we're going to answer everyone's questions that you've written in and ask at equitymates.com. So we'll see you next week for that. 

Bryce: [00:25:54] Nice.