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The Investment Dictionary: learn the jargon you *need* to know! | Guest expert Betsy Westcott

HOSTS Maddy Guest & Sophie Dicker|23 March, 2021

Sharing is caring, especially when profits are involved! You may have come across some words like shares, stock market, ETFs, dividends and so on – but what does it all mean? Today we find out! We are joined by the lovely Betsy Westcott, who is going to help explain and contextualise all the terms you need to know. Betsy has helped an abundance of people work toward their money goals and on this episode, she will get us on the same page so we can focus on the good stuff… Making money! Don’t worry, it’s nowhere near as complicated as it seems.

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Maddie Guest: [00:00:55] Hello and welcome to your are in a good company, a podcast for like-minded people who want to make smart investment decisions. I'm Maddie and I'm here with my good friend Sophie. [00:01:04][8.7]

Sophie Dicker: [00:01:05] Hi, Maddie. How are we today? [00:01:06][1.1]

Maddie Guest: [00:01:07] We are good. Good. Before we start today's episode, we would like to acknowledge and pay respects to the wonderful people of the nation were the traditional owners of this land we pay our deepest respects to the elders past and present and to the next generation who we hope to create a different future for. [00:01:24][16.8]

Sophie Dicker: [00:01:25] Now, that's one of the things that really inhibits people from the finance world in general, is all that jargon that can be really hard to wrap your head around. [00:01:33][7.7]

Maddie Guest: [00:01:33] Yeah, I often find myself Googling things, but even reading definitions, it can be really hard to understand if you don't have any context. [00:01:40][6.3]

Sophie Dicker: [00:01:41] Well, today we're going to try and break down some of the basic terms that you need to know when you're starting at your investment journey with the lovely Betsy Wescott. [00:01:48][7.2]

Maddie Guest: [00:01:49] Let's jump over to her now. Today, we're going to be tackling some of the key towns we need to know when beginning investing. To do that, we're joined by Betsy Westacott, financial wellness coach and ambassador of the Ladies Finance Club. Betsy is passionate about financial literacy and dedicates her career to helping people understand and make the most out of their money. When she's not doing that, Betsy works as the chief revenue officer at Frappé, helping people to live large and take charge of their money. Betsy is doing amazing work in improving the financial lives of others, especially women, and we are so grateful to have it on our show. Welcome, Betsy. [00:02:23][34.5]

Betsy Westcott: [00:02:24] Hello. Thank you for having me. I am so thrilled to be a part of this. [00:02:27][3.1]

Maddie Guest: [00:02:28] Thanks so much for joining us. [00:02:29][1.1]

Sophie Dicker: [00:02:29] So before we get into the episode, we'd love to ask you a few questions so that we can get to know you. So the first one is, do you have a morning routine? And if so, what is it? [00:02:41][11.7]

Betsy Westcott: [00:02:42] I do? I'm definitely an early riser. I have a morning routine, but with Flex, I'm not one of those really strict people who do the same thing every day. But my husband and I probably wake up around five thirty six and then it's usually like a scissor paper rocks to who goes and makes a coffee for, for the both of us. We said OK so we have come on normally when. Oh he'll probably say he wins but I would say it's actually pretty 50/50. Yeah. So yeah we sort of drink coffee in bed and read the news and kind of chat and then I try to exercise first thing in the morning because that kind of physical well-being is really important to me. And I've just learned over the years if I don't do it straight up, it's probably not going to happen. So I try and do that first thing and then, you know, get ready, do the hair, do the makeup after work. And when I sit down at my desk, the first thing I do is I just write like, what are the three most important things that I do today? I find that we're just bombarded with noise and things to do and demands all the time that if I don't be really clear around what my priorities are on the day, just kind of like happens to me. And, you know, time is pretty precious. So I'm really diligent about saying, hey, what are the three things I need to do each day since my morning routine with Flex [00:04:14][92.7]

Sophie Dicker: [00:04:16] and Betsy, how long have you been investing for and who are what influenced you to invest? [00:04:20][3.9]

Betsy Westcott: [00:04:21] That's a good question. Like if I'm technical about it, my dad got me to buy some Telstra shares when Telstra first went kind of public. And as a customer, you could sign up and become a part owner in the company. Yeah, I think [00:04:37][15.1]

Maddie Guest: [00:04:37] a lot of people have that situation of, you know, dad or grandpa bought shares in Telstra or something similar to that. Quite a common story. [00:04:44][6.9]

Betsy Westcott: [00:04:45] Yeah. So I think I probably count my first real foray into investing when I was actually trying to build up my first home deposit because I'm a country girl from north western Queensland, came to Sydney to the big smoke by myself and was like, cool, I'll play like a house, I've got a job to do, and then realized the price of things. And luckily I was looking in in the bank at the time and spoke to one of the financial advisors. And I was like, mate. How does everyone do it, like how how do you save one hundred and twenty grand, which was like my target goal at that time, and he sat me down, which is a really, really I really appreciate the fact that he did this and kind of explained to me, you know, you can save and working at how much it would take just saving alone and how, you know, because we kind of figured out that it would take six, seven, eight years, how we could use investing to accelerate my path to building up that first home deposit through higher returns and compounded returns. So that's what I feel like I this financially adulthood. [00:05:51][66.3]

Sophie Dicker: [00:05:53] I think you're like that's pretty much the stage that Maddie and I are in at the moment. We're like, how are we going to buy a house? We're going to have to get investing at least like try and get our money games through that. It's definitely, definitely something that a lot of people face. [00:06:06][13.4]

Betsy Westcott: [00:06:08] Yeah. And it was a really good lesson around goals based investing. Prior to that. I'd thought investing was just about kind of saying you were an investor and like, oh yeah, I've got some shares, I've got some crypto, whatever, you know, whatever you're investing in. And this was the moment where I sort of first learned about investing is not not the end game. Investing is a means to an end, and it's about facilitating your goals and what is the lifestyle you want to create or the business you want to sell, whatever it is that you want to use that money for. It's just a way to facilitate you achieving that over and above, saving cash alone, which is a really good lesson. [00:06:47][39.5]

Sophie Dicker: [00:06:48] Yeah, definitely. So the next question is for our listeners, investing can seem a little bit intimidating. So when you first started investing, what were you most afraid of? [00:06:58][10.0]

Betsy Westcott: [00:06:59] That I'd stuff it up and lose my money. And just that I like that someone would figure out that I had absolutely no idea about what I was doing. So, you know, like most women, I, I knew that there was so much I didn't know. And that's why I my first investing sort of foray, I actually got advice. I got proper financial advice to help me kind of understand how investing would help me achieve my goal. What was my risk profile? Why was it important that I diversified across a number of different investments? Why was asset allocation an important part of constructing my investment portfolio to ensure that I could achieve my goal? So I think, yeah, that was that was my biggest lesson, just feeling like. Such a fish out of water and knowing, OK, well, if I don't know what to do, how can I go and learn? And sadly, we didn't have podcast's back then and we didn't have fabulous things like the ladies finance clubs are. All I really had as an option was to go and see a financial adviser who was basically like a cardboard cutout of my dad. There's more options out there, but he was great. Shout out to Kim Neilson, financial adviser circa 2010. [00:08:18][78.9]

Sophie Dicker: [00:08:21] How are you doing? A shout out to your dad. Then I get good dad. [00:08:24][2.7]

Betsy Westcott: [00:08:25] Yeah, I mean, thanks, dad as well. Cheers, Brissie. But to be honest, I actually don't think Dad gave me a lot of great investment advice. Mostly just do it, but no no tools or strategies on actually what that would look like just to do it. [00:08:41][15.9]

Sophie Dicker: [00:08:42] Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, getting to know your goals and risk profile and how the financial adviser really helped you to do that. And that's something that we're touching on a lot. And it's sort of essays and is trying to understand what kind of an investor you are so that you can make decisions that sort of really align with who you are and what investments you actually want to and should be making. For our final question, Betsi, if you were a stock, who would you be? [00:09:05][23.1]

Betsy Westcott: [00:09:07] Such a good question. Does it have to be a listed stock? [00:09:09][2.8]

Speaker 2: [00:09:10] No, new company. [00:09:10][0.1]

Betsy Westcott: [00:09:13] Yeah. So I would be Elvis, basically. I love this. I love Elvis as a company. I love that philosophy. Sally Krawczyk is just such a badass. She so fabulousness. Who like who's Elvis gal. What are you talking about? Essentially they're a finance company based in the US, which is founded by Women for Women. And what they do is they've created investment. They've created a company that offers not only investing solutions, but investing solutions that take into account the complexity of women's financial lives and helps to ensure that the investment strategies that they make help them achieve those lifestyle goals that they're aiming for. They also offer things like career coaching as well as financial coaching. I love because I'm so passionate about financial education and women's financial empowerment. If I could pick a company that I wanted to represent me, that would be the one. [00:10:13][59.9]

Sophie Dicker: [00:10:14] Yeah, I started following a couple of months ago because a friend got me onto it. And so if I can say anything right now, it's go follow the Instagram or look at a page because it's honestly it's such a great page. So they're going to move on. And we want to talk about what you do a little bit before we jump into the next part of the show. You mentioned off tonight that you're running your final week of your financially fit and a little bit fabulous boot camp. So we want to know if you could tell us a little bit about this and how it's all going. [00:10:45][31.2]

Betsy Westcott: [00:10:47] Yeah, let me just take a step back and give you some context to how did I come to be running a boot camp? I've worked in finance for over twelve years. I've run bank branches. I've been a private banker looking after very wealthy families and individuals. I've become qualified as a financial advisor. And what I've observed after 12 years of working in financial services is that financial advice is really essential. Educating people on how to make the most of and understand their money is a really key skill that I wish we all had. I wish we were all financially literate, because when you understand money and how it works in the world and use it to to sort of facilitate the lifestyle and goals, you can create so much freedom and choice and safety and abundance in your life. And one of the problems right now is that with all the future of financial advice, reforms with the royal commission, giving financial advice has become really expensive. And there's some good reasons for that. But it's kind of problematic because the people who probably need advice the most often can't afford it anymore. It's become too expensive. It's usually like three thousand dollars plus to get a personalized statement of financial advice. So there's this gap right now where, you know, because money is this tool that we we all get give in, but often aren't told how to use it. It's like being given the keys to a car and not told how to drive. Just been like, go see how you go. Good luck. And so there's a bit of a gap where people have access to money but don't really know how to use it optimally to the to the best advantage. And then they can get themselves into trouble. You often see people spending more than they earn, living paycheck to paycheck, getting caught up in those debt cycles. Or they might have good behaviors. And they want to learn how to multiply their money through investing, but don't really know how investing works and just kind of dove into something unwittingly. Not nearly knowing how or why it works and why you might do it. So what I thought is how I could help, how I kind of serve is to create course courses that educate people about money. I don't tell people what to do, but I developed the six week program to kind of take them on a bit of a journey to cover everything you wish you knew about money, that you probably should have been taught about money, either at school or from your family. So it is true. The financial services industry does use a lot of jargon. They use terminologies and create products that require really high level of financial acumen for you to actually know and understand what's going on. And it's problematic because most Australians don't feel particularly financially confident. There's this really funny financial influencer out of the US, I think. And I know Suze Orman. She says women fake orgasms, men fake fine. I think that would that sort of speaks to is the fact that most of us don't really understand the basics of finance. Women are more likely to ask questions. The blokes kind of just diamond and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. Put it all on black. But but it's a really common place. But then because of it being something that we all have access to and we all feel like we should understand this, this whole cycle of shame around money, when you feel like you aren't confident or you don't know what it means, and so it stops you asking questions because you don't want to be the one caught out and looking silly because you you know, you didn't understand what how credit cards worked or something like that. So we need to bring finance and financial well-being into the light and have more conversations about it so we can all learn collectively and do better collectively. [00:14:48][241.4]

Sophie Dicker: [00:14:50] Yeah, absolutely, I've always said that at school should be teaching us even just how to do like our tax returns, because it's just a simple the simple money, things that when you become an adult or you start adult and you're like, what is this? How do I do this? [00:15:04][14.1]

Betsy Westcott: [00:15:05] Yeah, I don't know if you guys saw the meme that seems to come out every tax time. And it's like me, the government is government. Like, you need to do your taxes and you're like, you need to pay me some money for the money. Then you're like, cool, how much you need to figure it out. What if I get it wrong? You go to jail to all. [00:15:27][21.1]

Maddie Guest: [00:15:29] We are going to hear a quick word from our sponsors. But after the break, Betsy is going to help explain some of the most common terms that you need to know when you first begin investing. [00:15:38][8.3]

Sophie Dicker: [00:16:14] OK, we're going to move in to maybe the more not-so-serious section, but a little bit about breaking down the terms that people need to know. So I guess for context, people who are listening might not have started investing yet or people might have stopped investing, but want to brush up on some terms. And we kind of just want to break down some of the basics so that we can feel comfortable joining the conversation. So we'll stop start with number one, which is probably a term that's used the most in the finance world. But what is a stock? [00:16:46][32.0]

Betsy Westcott: [00:16:47] A stock? So does the word stock. There's also shares that also is equities. Three words, same, same, old, the same. They mean the same thing. So what is stock a share or an equity? Is, is the fact that you are a part owner in a company you own a piece of a company pie, so to speak. And as an owner, you're entitled to the the profits that that company makes. And being an owner, you're going to pay to own this piece of the of the company pie. And if you want to sell it, you often can. And when you sell it, you might make some money on on that what you bought it for. It might have the company might have performed it may have made lots of money, might have acquired another company and grown and accumulated more customers. So when you go to sell it, the piece that you own is worth more than what you bought it for. Conversely, the company might not have done so well, and when you go to sell it, it might not be worth as much as you paid for it. But essentially stocks, equities, shares, they just mean you're a part owner of the company. [00:17:53][65.9]

Sophie Dicker: [00:17:54] Yeah, fantastic. And then another term that I hear a lot that people say that they can invest in is an ETF. What is an ETF? And then I guess, how does that differ from a share or a stock? [00:18:04][10.4]

Betsy Westcott: [00:18:05] Good question. So I'm going to use an analogy. So let me first explain what an ETF is and then I'm going to bring it to life with analogy. But an exchange traded fund is what we call a managed fund. And it's something that you can it's a fund that you can buy on a listed exchange such as the Australian Securities Exchange or better known as the ASX. Funds tend to be a parcel of investments. So instead of owning one share, you might want to buy a whole basket of shares or rather than buying a single flavored chocolate like a Cadbury dairy milk, you want to try all the flavors. So instead you go and buy yourself a box of favorites where you get to try all the chocolate flavors at once. That's kind of like an ETF. It's like a box of chocolates quoting Forrest Gump, but it's like a box of chocolates or basket of shares. And it's can be think of it as a sample. So it could be a sample of what are the biggest companies on a stock exchange. For example, the ASX 200 is an ETF that I can't remember the exact ticker code. Someone might have to look it up for me. [00:19:18][72.2]

Sophie Dicker: [00:19:18] But a200 [00:19:20][1.5]

Betsy Westcott: [00:19:20] Oh, beautiful. There you go. It's a sample of the largest companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, but you can also buy exchange traded funds that will focus on a particular asset. So an exchange traded fund that focuses on shares or it might focus on properties or it might focus on commodities such as gold, something like that. But when you buy a possible share, instead of investing your money in one thing, you're investing your money across many different things. It kind of gets your money gets thrown into a pool with lots of other investors, and then it's spread out across heaps of investments. And you own a portion of that. [00:20:00][39.8]

Sophie Dicker: [00:20:00] OK, so we know about shares, we know about ETF. So where can we actually buy them and how does it work? You're able to sort of tell us about a bit more about what the share market actually is. [00:20:09][9.5]

Betsy Westcott: [00:20:10] Yes, that the share market is the market marketplace. You know, if you imagine back in the day people used to go to the town square and you'd have different people selling their wares and you would go along with your money and you decide what you want to buy from the markets marketplace. The stock market is exactly the same things. But instead of selling apples and pears and leather boots, they're selling companies, they're selling ownership in companies. And in Australia, the most commonly known stock exchange is the Australian Stock Exchange, the ASX. Other significantly significant and well-known ones might be the Nasdaq, for example, the S&P, things like that. But think of them as a marketplace where you just go to buy and sell something. If you want to participate in this marketplace, you need to have what's called a brokerage account. So you need an sort of like a a ticket kind of thing to get like a loose way to describe it, but. Essentially, like you need to have an account to which to access this market, and you can do that through banks such as Comsec Knab trade, but you sign up to them, you know, you create an account, you'll need a cash account in which you transfer your money into when you're ready to to go to the market. Then you can go onto the market, have a look around, see what you like. Do you like the look of this particular company or that one? If you want to buy it, click add to Cart. You know, name the price that you want to pay for it. If that's accepted, you'll become the owner of the shares you need to transfer your money and in exchange you will get a piece of that company, some shares in that company. So I hope that's not too simplistic, but really, that's what it boils down to. It's a marketplace. [00:21:58][107.7]

Sophie Dicker: [00:22:00] No, it's good. We need to definitely keep things simple. But then we've got a quickfire question. What's the ticker. [00:22:05][5.1]

Betsy Westcott: [00:22:08] A ticker. It's a code to give you a really abbreviated name for a company. So National Australia Bank's ticker code is NAB. I'm trying to think of some other ones out. Maybe that's the really obvious ones. Let's get some Templin Webster. I think it's Teep W. is their ticket code. But think of it as like an abbreviated name, a nickname. It's usually three, three characters. And you use that to find the company within the marketplace, within the stock exchange. [00:22:42][33.8]

Sophie Dicker: [00:22:43] And then a final thing that I hear a lot about is and you touched on this little bit earlier, the Red Bull and Bear. What what is that and what the bull and bear market, [00:22:52][8.8]

Betsy Westcott: [00:22:54] bull and bear. God, could it be more masculine? Hey, so basically, it's a term used to describe sentiment in the stock market, the sentiment of an economy. So the bull is when the market is feeling fabulous, you know, those days where you wake up and you skin's looking good and your clothes look just right and your hair lens in the right way and you're just full and brimming with confidence. That's a bull market, my friends. Those are your best days. So the bull market prices are going up, the value of companies are going up and they're expected to continue to go up. It's usually measured by an increase in the value of the stock market by more than 20 percent. And like I said, it's characterized by optimism. Everyone's feeling good. Everyone's feeling confident they're going to take risks because what could go wrong, the bull market is full of confidence. You'll probably see lower unemployment rates. You'll see the gross domestic producer, the production of the company, the output of the company of a country, you know, being quite high, everything's looking prosperous. There'll be lots of other companies wanting to list on the stock exchange through an initial public offerings. So it's a very confident time. The reason they call it a bull is because when a bull charges at its opponent, it lifts its head to its I guess. So if you think of blinkers on, our eyes are so funny versus a bear that swipes down. So a bear market is basically the opposite where everyone's feeling pessimistic. These are the days where you're feeling frumpy. You didn't get enough sleep, you drank way too much in the weekend and your face is breaking out. That's like the equivalent of a physical bear market. So prices are going down is usually characterized by a drop of 20 percent in the market. It's not a hard and fast rule, but basically things drop really quickly. You'll see unemployment rates go up. You'll see the economy slowing down. Companies aren't making as much money. So good examples of bear markets would be the global financial crisis was big bear market even just last year with covid-19 in about March, I think we saw the ASX 200 drop about twenty four percent. So it was a really great yeah. Rapid bear market. But, you know, between we've had a really long bull runs as well. So from about March 2009, basically through to March twenty twenty, we had a really long bull market where, you know, over that period the stock market went up quite a bit. So but really long and short of it is sentiment of people feeling confident and things are looking good or are they feeling and that's bullish or are they feeling bearish? They're concerned that pessimistic. They think everything's going to be worse tomorrow than it is today. [00:25:58][184.4]

Sophie Dicker: [00:26:00] This is going to be a really bad joke. But maybe they should call the bear market the bat market because it took about, oh, [00:26:07][7.8]

Betsy Westcott: [00:26:10] My gosh, I .Like it. [00:26:11][1.9]

Sophie Dicker: [00:26:14] That's my joke for the day. So we've set that kind of understanding of what we're purchasing, the purchasing equity or stocks, shares and where we're purchasing them in. If you're in Australia on the ASX, you can obviously purchase services as well. But we wanted to now define some factors that might influence your purchasing decisions. So one that people often talk about or you'll hear about a lot is dividends and people buy stocks that might have a high dividend yield. So we wanted to know what is a dividend and why do companies pay them? [00:26:51][37.4]

Betsy Westcott: [00:26:52] OK, so the first thing you need to know is when you're investing, you're investing because you want to make a return. You want to get something back for putting your money away. And you can make two types of returns. There's income or a capital growth or a capital gain or loss. So a dividend is representative of income. It's the income that you receive for being a part owner of a company. So a company makes money. They report on it at the end of the financial year or reporting period. And if they've made a profit, they need to divide it up at the end of that period and give it out to all the shit owners. So dividend profit that's divided up at the end of the period and paid to you as an owner as income for being a pot owner in that company. So if you're investing in a company that's paying dividends, you're investing in a company that's going to pay you an income. Not all companies will do this. Sometimes they're not going to pay an income out to the owners. What they're going to do is they're going to take those profits and use them to grow the company or pay down debt. So it's a consideration when you're looking at a company that you want to invest in. Are you investing because you want a lot of income or are you investing because you want to see that company grow in value? Well, maybe a little bit of both and all those like the chocolate. But, you know, what are the characteristics of the company and what are what are the characteristics of this investment? So typically you see people that are looking to live off the income of their investments will have a bias towards shares that have a dividend that produce dividends because they don't want to sell those investments to to pay their bills. They want the income to support their lifestyle so they can pay their bills with the income. [00:28:42][109.9]

Maddie Guest: [00:28:43] When we asked friends and family what they wanted to hear on a podcast like this, it was often mentioned that they wanted to know a good company to buy into. So I guess it makes sense because wouldn't we all like to get those best stock picks or, you know, have people tell us where to put our money? But unfortunately, we're not financial advisors and nor do we want to be telling people how to use their hard earned money, because these are decisions like we've discussed that you need to make yourself based on your own personal goals [00:29:09][26.4]

Sophie Dicker: [00:29:10] when not financial advisors. [00:29:11][1.1]

Maddie Guest: [00:29:12] We wish [00:29:12][0.2]

Sophie Dicker: [00:29:14] everyone did. This is purely for educational purposes only, and it absolutely does not constitute any investment advice. Every week we're going to discuss an area that is of interest to us and of interest to you today. Betsi, this can be a particular stock industry news topic, anything that you think deserves a little bit of attention. And we're going to pop it on our watchlist and we're going to watch it throughout the season or the series. And, yeah, just give a little bit of context to people of what you can be thinking about and what's out there, OK? [00:29:45][31.7]

Maddie Guest: [00:29:46] I think if I think about, like, what's on my watch list, what's on my radar, it's often companies where I've just spent a lot of money. So, yes, right on. You know, you like. Yeah, I'm spending a lot of money with you and you're listed. Let me check you out a bit more. So my husband and I achieved a goal of ours of buying our first home last year, which was really, really exciting. And it was a big upgrade from a little one bedroom apartment with three bedroom semi's. So when you buy some more furniture and whilst I went to a number of different outlets, the one I kept coming back to was Temple and Webster. And it's really funny. I didn't even realize that they were listed on the stock exchange until recently. I was poking around. I was like, oh, check that out to blow up stuff and no surprises. They've really done quite well over the last few years. I mean, not only are more people moving online and looking for that really seamless e-commerce experience when they're purchasing goods, but then they've also had the coronavirus pandemic where people are spending more time at home and there's probably a bias towards making our homes more comfortable right now. So they're a company that I find really interesting, that as a customer, I really love spending money with them. They've got a really great service. They've got a massive range. And I think they're actually the number one online retail. I lived in Australia for homeowners and furniture, and it's interesting, Australia is as a company, the company as a country. I've done that twice now. The uni, the online sort of e-commerce space around furniture and homewards isn't as large as like some of the other different industries, say, like retail clothing and things like that, which is interesting because overseas it's quite a really big trend to buy a furniture online. And if you think about Pottery Barn and West Elm and companies like that that have become sort of global names as as online furniture retailers, I think this is a bit of an opportunity here in Australia to kind of see more companies into that space and expand on that. So being the kind of number one retailer in Australia, I think there's a lot of growth opportunity. They've acquired a few different companies along the way. They listed around twenty sixteen I think. Twenty, sixteen, twenty fifteen. I think it was late 2015, like December and the share price was a dollar ten. It's now with my last check, eight dollars and forty five cents. So wow. Really good growth over the last six years. So yeah that's one that I like just because I'm a happy customer and I've used their services and I think that there's more growth there. But that's a good example of a company that to date hasn't paid dividends because they're a growth company and reinvesting in expanding their business. [00:32:38][171.3]

Sophie Dicker: [00:32:39] So this is just a bit of a follow up question, I guess. Do you think the growth for something like Tamplin Webster will continue into the future, kind of that post covid world where we're not always so much in our homes and enjoying our environments? [00:32:52][13.0]

Maddie Guest: [00:32:54] Well, it's a great question. Look, this is just a personal opinion. But for me, like I love doing up my home and I you know, Australians have such a long love affair with property, don't they? And I've found that as a person who's often short on time being able to browse something, because I've got this great little step which one of my favorite other brands like from my search is I'm going out to find they don't have that app. And I'm sure I'm a bit like you guys any time I get a bit of downtime, the old habit of just slap, unlock your phone and mindlessly gaze at things I like. It's such an ingrained habit, isn't it? But, you know, I find myself going on Timboon website. I'm like, oh yeah, I've been thinking about buying a new rug or what have they got in? Or I broke the butta container. I need it and I love it because I don't have to go to a store and buy it. I personally actually don't always love that physical shopping experience for something that I can get really good information. And I was using I don't know if this was a simple website, but I was using another furniture retailer recently and they had augmented reality with the items. You could take a photo of your place and then put it in the room. And I was like, this is a game. Oh, it's pretty cool. How cool is technology? [00:34:22][87.5]

Sophie Dicker: [00:34:23] It's actually heavenly because with someone like me, like, I literally cannot visualize. So that's like necessity. [00:34:28][5.5]

Betsy Westcott: [00:34:30] Yeah, it was actually I remember which company was Miss the Rug Company and I was like, this is brilliant because now I can see what it's going to look like so and so I do think the market's going to continue to grow there because people have a bias towards digital services and you can do that. Someone delivers it to your door, you've got the return period. So you get to try it a little bit before you are like locked in with it. And then if you think about augmented reality and be able to place things in a room before you physically pay for it or order it so good [00:35:04][34.4]

Maddie Guest: [00:35:06] and betsie to you to round at this episode, what would you tell your younger self when you're starting out investing? [00:35:12][5.7]

Betsy Westcott: [00:35:15] Great question, how long have we got? I would say I would be telling younger Betsy to get educated and start investing in either well diversified funds, be the ETF or a managed fund, whatever she felt comfortable in. I would tell her to get going and do it early because being young when you are investing is like having a super power. You just need to do a little bit regularly to create some really powerful and impressive financial results. So I would be telling her to like, not worry about playing Snake on her, like Motorola or whatever. Nokia, 20 for 10 defines the cold to ignore that, to ignore like the blue light disco and start reading up on how to invest safely in diversified investments and get going with that. That's what I tell her. [00:36:09][54.5]

Betsy Westcott: [00:36:11] I think that's very sound advice, especially, you know, going into diversified portfolios. I'm not sure how you would have invested when you were younger with the Nokia Fund. [00:36:20][8.8]

Betsy Westcott: [00:36:21] That wouldn't have worked. And I have to put the phone down, you know? Well, actually, I remember when I bought my Telstra shares, my dad and I went downtown. My dad was living in Yeppoon, in Queensland at the time, if anyone knows where that is. And we went downtown to the main street of Yeppoon. And I think it was like ABN Amro, ABN get something like that. It basically was a stock market. A little tiny office opened up the door. You know, when you've got the blinds that go down the door and every time you open the door goes clean, clean. It was like that kind of office, brown carpet. There was like a desk in a corner and a very sad looking son and dad. And I went in and I handed over my I think it was like my probably Commonwealth Dolomites got some, like, money out of the Telstra shares. So it was a lot of effort. It is much easier to invest these days. You're lucky. Current generation. You're welcome. [00:37:21][60.0]

Maddie Guest: [00:37:23] We are very lucky that we can just use the apps and look online. Well, Betsy, we wanted to say thank you so much for coming and speaking to us today. Everything you've said has been super insightful, and we hope that it can help some people along their investment journey. Do you have any pages or Instagram or Facebook that you'd want people to follow with? They could reach out to you or I guess follow your journey or be a part of any of your boot camps? [00:37:48][24.5]

Betsy Westcott: [00:37:49] Yes, you can find me at Betsi Westcost on Instagram. My personal financial coaching page is betsywestcott.com. I need to give a shout out for both the Ladies Finance Club and footy. So please check out at the Ladies Finance Club. My fabulous friend Muhly is the founder and they do some really fun events and courses, Ladies Finance Club dot com and also check out download free pay. And I think the website Is getfree.com [00:38:19][29.1]

Betsy Westcott: [00:38:25] But check out for as well. It's a fantastic app that helps you aggregate all your different accounts, analyzes your spending, gives you a forecast of where you're going to be financially. You've got the food pay to help out with your cash flow. And there's some really exciting features in the works. So we'll tell you more about those when they launch. [00:38:47][22.3]

Sophie Dicker: [00:38:49] Perfect. Thanks so much, Betsy. We really appreciate your time. [00:38:52][2.6]

Maddie Guest: [00:38:53] Thanks, Betsy. [00:38:53][0.5]

Betsy Westcott: [00:38:54] Thank you. [00:38:54][0.3]

Sophie Dicker: [00:38:55] A huge thank you to Betsy for joining us on today's episode. We feel very lucky to be able to take your questions straight to the experts, so please send them thirt there are no silly questions [00:39:04][9.3]

Maddie Guest: [00:39:05] and if you want to continue the conversation about getting started investing, we would love you to join our Facebook community at YIGC discussion group. You can also follow us on Instagram at WIGC podcast or email. Any questions directly to why yigc@equitymates.com and we would do our best to answer. [00:39:23][17.9]

Sophie Dicker: [00:39:23] The next episode would be jumping to understanding your risk profile and debunking that myth that investing is like gambling. Until then. [00:39:23][0.0]

[2180.6]

More About

Meet your hosts

  • Maddy Guest

    Maddy Guest

    Maddy lives in Melbourne, works in finance, but had no idea about investing until she started recently. Her favourite things to do are watching the Hawks play on weekends, reading books, and she says she's happiest, 'when eating pasta with a glass of wine'. Maddy began her investing journey when she started earning a full time income and found myself reading about the benefits of compound interest in the Barefoot Investor. Her mind was blown, and she started just before the pandemic crash in 2020. What's her investing goal? To be financially independent for the rest of her life, and make decisions without being overly stressed about money.
  • Sophie Dicker

    Sophie Dicker

    Sophie lives in Melbourne, and enjoys playing sport, and then drinking red wine immediately after finishing sport. She works in finance, but honestly had no idea about investing until her partner encouraged her to start. She says, 'my interest has only taken off from there - I find it exciting… I mean who doesn’t like watching their money grow?' Her investing goal is to build the freedom to do things that she's passionate about - whether it be start a business, donate to causes close to her, or to take time out of the workforce to start a family. Right now, there’s no specific goal, she just wants to have the freedom when she'll need it.

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