Podcast | Canna Campbell – Sugar Mamma TV

I’m tickled pink to welcome to the podcast Canna Campbell, the founder and director of the financial media platform, Sugar Mamma TV! Canna is also the bestselling author of The $1000 Project, and Mindful Money, and has been working as a licensed financial planner for nearly two decades.

CaptainFI is not a Financial Advisor and the information below is not financial advice. This website is reader-supported, which means we may be paid when you visit links to partner or featured sites, or by advertising on the site. For more information please read my Privacy PolicyTerms of Use, and Financial Disclaimer.

Canna Campbell

I’m tickled pink to welcome to the podcast Canna Campbell, the founder and director of the financial media platform, Sugar Mamma TV! Canna is also the bestselling author of The $1000 Project, and Mindful Money, and has been working as a licensed financial planner for nearly two decades.

Canna runs the popular podcast Sugar Mamma’s FirePlay which has seen more than 1.3 million downloads, as well as runs the podcast How Do They Afford That, with Michael Thompson.

Canna lives with her husband, 3 kids and 2 dogs in Sydney, and focuses on helping everyday people around the world with their relationship with money, educating them, inspiring them and empowering them to make smart financial decisions.

Canna started investing in property at a very young age and has continued to invest throughout her life, building various passive income streams and is well on her way to financial independence.

Canna has worked bloody hard to achieve what she has personally and professionally, and it was an absolute pleasure to chat to her today!

 

canna campbell, sugar mamma tv

Episode 56 – Canna Campbell – Sugar Mamma TV

Show Notes

Transcript

Episode 56 – Canna Campbell – Sugar Mamma TV

Canna Campbell

Captain Fi: [00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. Welcome aboard the Financial Independence Podcast.

Gday and welcome to another episode of Captain Fire, the Financial Independence Podcast, where I open the cockpit to some of the best and brightest in personal finance, as well as those who have reached or are on their way to financial independence. Before we get started, remember nothing said here is financial advice, and you should always do your own independent research before making any financial choices.

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Good day everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Captain Fly Financial Independence Podcast on board. Today I’m very pleased to introduce Canna Campbell, the founder and director of a financial media platform, sugar Mama tv.

Hey Canna. Now, look, you are also the bestselling author of the thousand Dollars Project and Mindful Money, and you’ve been a licensed financial planner for, geez, nearly two decades now.

Canna: Yes, I know. I’m feeling very old now when sit back and add up those years.

Captain Fi: Yes. That’s, no, that’s just compounding knowledge.

Look, can I remember, we were talking about this a bit off air, but it was , seven, eight years ago, I think I was starting to get really enthusiastic about learning about improving my personal finance. I’d sort of just graduated and got my commercial pilot’s license. I wasn’t spending literally tens of thousands of dollars regularly , on fly training.

And I’m like, I’ve gotta do something with this money. And so I, I looked [00:03:00] online because, I didn’t have a great track record with financial advisors. And one of the channels I found was Sugar Mama tv. And I think I, I binged all your videos, about finance, money, minimalism, and investing.

I thought, ah, Brilliant to have this stuff so easily accessible and free. I think probably the only thing I couldn’t relate to was the outfit of the day stuff. Maybe that’s just a bloke thing. That’s fair enough. Yeah. But you came across as this, like really switched on successful, classy, I mean, dare I see bougie person.

You have all this great information on offer, like one from your personal experience, but two also from your professional career as a financial advisor. So I think I was like alternating between your vlog reel, Bryce Holdaway videos of property or whatever it was called. And then, some of the early fire buggers, like Aussie firebug and sort of agonizing, oh, should I be buying property or should I be buying shares?

And yeah, it was a lot of fun. So look, Hannah I remember hearing, [00:04:00] so you’ve made your very first investment was property. I think you were still a teenager. Yes. And then fast forward to today, you’ve built Sugar Mama tv, this financial media company. You’ve got, I think over 230,000 subscribers across different platforms.

You’ve written two bestselling personal finance books, and you run a really popular podcast. The fire play, which is over three quarters of a million downloads, which is a pretty amazing milestone.

Canna: Actually it’s around 1.3 something, only be 1.4. I forgot to track my numbers so I had to go back cause I’d changed across three different platforms and yeah, I think I’m at maybe 1.4, so I forgot to celebrate my million downloads.

Whoa,

Captain Fi: , so double. That’s a lot. Look. I can’t believe I’m actually chatting to you because as I mentioned, going back to some of the formative days, my education you had this big name. So I’m kinda like pinching myself here. So look, thanks for your time today and coming on the show.

How you going? I’m well. How are you? Yeah, I’m really good. Thanks. I’m tickled pink.[00:05:00] So look, before we crack in can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Canna: Of course. So my name is Canner. I am a financial planner, but I focus really on just helping everyday people around the world with their relationship with money and.

I guess educating them and inspiring them and empowering them to make smart decisions with their money so that they feel good about their money today, but also they’re really relieved and proud of what they can create in the future. And it’s something I’m really passionate about. And I am a mother.

I have three kids two dogs. My partner also works for himself. He’s a equine physio. And we live a busy, hectic life like most. Australian households do. So if we can kind of get rid of or reduce that financial stress in our lives, it just makes life a little bit or maybe even a lot easier.

Captain Fi: Gee, I think your husband hit the goldmine marrying a financial planner because I actually have had horses before and [00:06:00] I know just how much they

Canna: cost.

Oh, my kids are banned from having a horse. I pray that they won’t get into horses. So, so far Rocco is not really interested. I’ve gotta be very careful with my two girls because, They haven’t asked to start doing horse riding lessons and stuff like that. That’s when I know we were in big trouble financially then.

Cause it’s yeah. Very expensive passion.

Captain Fi: When we were chatting before, I could see on the video your puppies curled up behind you.

Canna: Oh yes. I’ve had a very expensive month with those two actually. Peppi got gastro, Giuseppe had to have half his teeth taken out, and then Giuseppe got really sick and just suddenly lost huge amounts of waste.

So I’ve actually spent over $7,000 this month alone, just in vet bills. Now both dogs are insured, there. I am worried about my kids potentially liking horses. Really, I’ve got my own. Little Shetland ponies in my own home that are sucking dry my bank accounts.

Captain Fi: Oh, it’s not cheap, isn’t it? But I’ll tell you what, , I’m a dog person as well, and gee wouldn’t change it for the [00:07:00] world. Worth every cent in my opinion.

Canna: Absolutely. The unconditional love is unbelievable.

Captain Fi: Yeah. Now Canna who better to answer this question, right? Because your podcast, the fire play literally talking about fire.

So, I mean, you’ve been creating videos, writing for a long time and obviously, nearly two decades in the financial services industry. So you’ve probably seen a lot of fads come and go, right? But the fire movement, it’s kind of exploded. And we can see the concept kind of means different things to different people in that not everyone wants to retire, but we do need to reach financial independence.

Like by definition, if we want to stop working. Maybe not of you. Happy to die as soon as you finish work. And the point was time at home, because I’ve interviewed a few people and some of them get really fired up, pun intended about using the word early retirement, in particularly, a lot of them hate it.

So I’m really interested to see what does financial independence mean to you?

Canna: To me, [00:08:00] financial independence is about having the choice to work. If and when and where, because I want to, not because of a financial responsibility, on my shoulders or lingering around, and for me, it’s very much about having enough passive income that more than covers my living expenses.

So if I do want to work, it’s for my own personal growth and development and, intellectual stimulation and satisfaction that money I make for my physical work is just, a bonus as such. I have my money working for me in the background.

Captain Fi: Yeah. Now you’ve been, I guess, pretty openly sharing your money journey for quite a while now.

So could you tell us a bit about your journey to financial independence? How you got started and how it’s going lately?

Canna: Of course. So, I’m actually gonna share with you things that I haven’t really shared before. So to cut a long story short, I started investing when I was 19.

I made my first investment into a real estate investment trust that my father, organized and set up for me and recommended. And that was the start of my journey and getting that [00:09:00] dividend check was my, as cheesy as it is that aha moment where I realized that’s what I want to do.

So I never stopped investing from that point on. And I think I saved for about six years to buy my first apartment. And I have just been accumulating. In burst and spurts, whether it be shares, whether it be property, whether it be any particular asset, but they’re all sort of high growth assets, two dimensional in that they grow in value from a capital growth point of view.

And they also pay a, an income stream, through rent or through dividends. So I’ve literally not stopped and I’m very open and honest with everyone. I have this thing called mindful money number, so my fire strategy is not the same as what a lot of people do. Who’s that 4% rule?

Because I never want my money to run out. I have no intention to ever eat in my assets. So my fire strategy is to. Buy and build and invest, a portfolio that pays me a growing passive income with it, where it never touches the capital. So I [00:10:00] never want to eat into my assets. And I have this goal, it’s caught it’s my book Mindful Money, so it’s all about building that number.

So my number is $200,000 a year. So I am actively accumulating assets through various different strategies that will pay me a passive income of $200,000 a year. And, I’ve never stopped and I’ve had to make changes and, I’ve had to sell things along the way and rejig things, but I’m actually, and I’m actually really proud of saying this, the other day I sat down and looked at the gross, not the net, the gross passive income.

And we are 75% of the way to achieving

Captain Fi: that. Holy moly, that’s a pretty exciting achievement. Yeah, I’m just trying to do the math in my head. So that’s $150,000 of passive income.

Canna: Actually it’s a little bit more but yes. Wow. And full disclosure, that is the gross figure, because I do use gearing strategies and debt recycling strategies.

So Please, and that’s not advice, by the way, of anyone that’s listening to [00:11:00] this, but yeah, it’s actually quite incredible and it does include , an element, but only a small element of superannuation as well. But watching that grow, and this is why I’m so passionate about financial education and understanding, two dimensional assets and investing intelligently for your long-term needs rather than instant gratification.

it’s really satisfying seeing that number because when we hit that number, I can start actually, if I want to. Either start paying off that debt that’s helped build these assets, or I can just keep going and alter our number and change it. So I’ve got so many different options when we hit that number and we are so close to hitting that number.

But I will also share with you, whilst I have gearing behind the scenes, it’s always been set up so it’s cashflow positive. So all of these investments actually bar one cause we’ve had to tweak and change some of our strategy along the way. [00:12:00] Are cashflow

Captain Fi: positive? Yeah. Interesting. and the other thing I guess it’s important to point out as well is and maybe we can get to it cuz I definitely wanna ask about your books, but I know definitely in the thousand dollars project you’ve actually set up a charitable gifting with the return from that portfolio.

And, that’s pretty amazing to think that in addition to building your wealth and income streams you’ve actually been quite generously giving along the way as well.

Canna: Yeah, so when I started the thousand dollar project, I realized that I wanted to give back. I mean, I started a thousand dollars project in a bit of a sneaky way in that I told people I was building an investment portfolio that would pay me a passive income so I could buy a luxury handbag each year.

And it worked because all of a sudden I had lots of young women saying, oh, I’d like the idea of my investments buying me a handbag each year, but, In fact, I always plan to give that money to charity. So the income I make from the a thousand dollars project after I’ve paid over to factor in [00:13:00] tax and the interest expense that I fund myself, I give that money to World Vision and that today officially supports now 15 young girls in Myanmar and now Cambodia.

Captain Fi: Wow. I think that’s awesome. I mean, that’s way better, in my opinion. I think that’s way more satisfying than, an extra handbag. But then again, I’m a bloke.

Canna: No, I am a female who loves fashion and has a soft spot for a few little luxuries along the way and. I can say I feel so good knowing that, I’m helping these girls.

And also I was actually on the phone to the World Vision yesterday and they said for each person or child you sponsor, the flow on effect is for, so you know, by supporting that one girl, helping get her educated housed food, clothing, there is a flow on effect. And the flow on effect is actually four other

Captain Fi: children.

Yeah. Look, I must admit this has definitely been a blind spot of mine through my journey to [00:14:00] financial independence. And I definitely think I could have been doing a lot more than what I did. And so now I’m actually starting to do a regular donation, 10% of my investment returns.

Oh, great. Uh, And yeah, so my partner she comes from a big family of doctors and they run a hospital in Manila as well as a school. And so we’ve set up I must admit I’m still a little bit. Suss on big charities. I have worked delivering aid before as a part of some of these big charities and it did just leave sort of a bad taste in my mouth.

So I feel a lot better being able to directly put the money straight to the cause. Having said that, I know that’s probably not the right way to think about charity and giving, and I definitely have a lot to learn about this space. So it’s like an evolving thing for me. But yeah, I think it’s definitely something that is worth thinking about on your journey to fire.

I

Canna: completely understand what you’re saying. And if someone was to say to me, look, would you rather give the money to a charity? Or you could give it directly to the community they both have their place and they’re both equally [00:15:00] valuable. But I can completely understand your apprehension and your suspicion.

Where does that money go? Where does it land? What’s going on behind the scenes? So I understand, but I guess at the end of the day, you need to make charity easy for people to be able to donate to. So there’s places in the world . For both ways of giving.

And I think just being able to give and also being able to share the message of what you’re doing is even more powerful cuz that inspires other people to think, you know what, I’m gonna go sponsor a Gold World vision, or I’m gonna go and find a hospital,, in a third world country and see what I can do to help them by paying for food or paying for medical supplies.

So, there’s so much merit in both

Captain Fi: approaches. Yeah. And look, sharing the message in education is important. And I know you recently posted about a bit of a personal medical struggle of your own, which was you recently been diagnosed with A D H D. And that’s something we share in common which sometimes people are a bit surprised to hear that a transport pilot has had a d h adhd.

[00:16:00] But I do, and it can be really tricky sometimes. There’s actually quite a lot of us in the blogging and podcasting community because I like to think of it sometimes as a bit of a superpower. So would you be able to talk us through your recent video about how you use your ADHD to build wealth?

Canna: Yes, absolutely. So I was only diagnosed, I think in about maybe February this year, but , I had known about it for probably about four years, and it was actually one of my staff members that she said to me, look, I think you might have a D H D. And she actually had it herself, and it took her to about four years to convince me to go and make an appointment and be properly assessed.

And the moment I was obsessed, the psychiatrist said, look, I think you need to go on medication. And it has been the best thing I’ve done for myself. But it’s funny, there’s a lot of misunderstanding around A D H D because they assume that you can’t concentrate. And it’s not that at all.

It’s, there are parts of your brain which you can use, but then there are parts of your brain that just hit a [00:17:00] wall, and you just can’t push through. And I use the analogy of getting in the car. You wanna go for a drive somewhere. So you get in the car, you put the keys in the ignition, you put the seatbelt on.

And you turn the car on and you can’t move. And that’s what it felt like with my brain. But with money I’m good with money. I mean, I’m a financial planner. I can plan someone’s finances for the next 30 years of their life. But if you ask me to go and book a restaurant, or you go and ask me to book a holiday or plan a kids party I just simply can’t.

And what I’ve. I think I just did this intuitively. And also I think being influenced by my love and passion of minimalism is I keep my finances very simple. I don’t overcomplicate things. I don’t give myself a thousand different financial goals. I have one superannuation account, I have one life insurance policy, one TPD policy, one income protection policy, one trauma policy.

I have the number of bank accounts that I need. I don’t have all of these, like my cult work [00:18:00] colleague Michael Thompson from how do therefore that he has 17 bank accounts that would just send me into a tailspin. Whoa. Okay.

Captain Fi: That’s giving me anxiety, just I know. Just

Canna: as a thought. Yeah. So, and I have them all my bank accounts for my personal affairs and our family financial affairs or with the one banking institution.

So I can see exactly where I stand financially in the one screen. I’m not logging in and out of different apps, having to wait for money to be transferred overnight if it’s not Osco. And yeah, it’s just easy. I know where I stand, I know what I’m working towards. I’ve got great clarity and purpose and direction.

And I’ve really comes down to just keeping it really simple and not trying to reinvent the wheel because I know that if I do that my A D h ADHD will win and overturn me, and, that’s when I drop the ball. So I think keeping things simple and having less in your life is a very powerful approach, especially

Captain Fi: with adhd.

Yeah. Keeping it simple and minimalism. I love those concepts. [00:19:00] And I think as well, even I like to think of myself as a minimalist, but My house. Like I’m not like a zen monk by any stretch of the imagination. We have stuff we do have multiple accounts and stuff, but we also try and follow that philosophy of keeping it simple.

And a big one for me was just automating as much as possible because then it’s like a less of a distraction for me to have to think, to remember, oh, today’s investing day. Like I need to go and invest that. Or geez, I need to pay the electricity bill. I need to pay the rates. Like basically just sort of outsourcing and automating has been a game changer for me personally.

Canna: Absolutely. And one budgeting hack that I find that helps me a lot is I front load all of my big expenses. So, I get paid on the first every month. So I will try and make sure that I have all our direct debits. Or I have, or the bills that I have to pay, that I pay them actually upfront at the start of the pay cycle.

So I’ve got all the heavy lifting out of the way, [00:20:00] and that means I can really clearly see what’s left over and make sure I r that correctly for the rest of the month.

Captain Fi: Yeah, it sort of reminds me of and I know a few people love this book. A lot of, some people hate it. It’s a bit of a controversial bloke recently, but Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, poor Dad.

He used to always talk about pay yourself first. And it took me a long time to, to actually realize what that meant and exactly like you just said. It means Paying your investments and doing that at the start of the month front loading everything and then you can see what’s left.

At the end. And it took me a while to figure that out, but I think the other thing with a D H D and I, it might not be relevant to like every listener, but if you do have a D H D and sometimes people sort of make it out to be this negative thing about hyper fixating on things.

Like it’s been actually super useful for me, just focus all my effort and attention on achieving a particular goal. And then I feel like I’m able to achieve it way quicker than sort of normal people.

Canna: Absolutely. And especially when you add the element of creativity in there, [00:21:00] I’ve come up with some really great life hacks that actually have added so much efficiency to my life.

And the $1,000 project I wrote that in 10 weeks. Whoa.

Captain Fi: Yeah. That’s impressive. Just that’s a big book. It’s not like a short novel. It’s a full book.

Canna: It’s a full book. I can’t believe I did that and Cuz Mindful Money, which is where I, my A D H D really sort of took over and I couldn’t manage it like I used to be able to with all my mindfulness techniques.

That took me over 10 months to write. It was physically painful to my brain.

Captain Fi: Yeah. Look I I’ve a lot of what’s the word I’m looking for here? A lot of respect for you as an author, because I mean, I’ve been blogging for a while and I’ve been meaning to sort out all my thoughts and put together like a bit of an ebook and oh gosh, it’s taken me a long time.

So yeah, lot of respect for you there, Canna speaking, which, can you tell us a bit more about the books? Obviously we touched on the thousand dollar project before, but can you go into a little bit more detail about mindful Money and the thousand dollar projects and what people can learn from them?

[00:22:00] So,

Canna: the $1,000 Project, that was my first book, and that is really about. The power of a side hustle and when you have a goal in your life that you break down into bite-size, mini, manageable, and therefore achievable goals. And for me, this was just $1,000 at a time. So what I set out to do was hustle, save, create, invest.

And dare I say, manifest $1,000 at a time. The moment whether it was $1, I, managed to save or earn, I put into a separate dedicated savings account, nicknamed the thousand dollars project, and the moment my account balance hit $1,000, I went and invested that $1,000 into a diversified share portfolio, and I reinvested all the dividends and I just basically would start all over again.

The moment I hit my $1,000 and invested it, I’d go back to the drawing board and repeat that process over and over again, and explained my journey in the book and what I did and how I, [00:23:00] started and how I picked. The platform to trade on and, the importance of investing for the long run and understanding your risk profile and making informed, educated decisions and pretty much all the different ideas to help you come up with cash.

Now people use a thousand dollars project around the world. People have used it to help pay off their home loans. They’ve used it to help pay for their children’s education, help pay for ivf help pay for the deposits on their first home to do what I have done, which is invest, and build passive income stream.

So I even had one woman who did the a thousand dollars product to help pay for reconstructive surgery. So it’s really about taking. One goal, a big scary goal that might overwhelm you and intimidate you and just breaking it down into lots of mini goals that are in positive alignment to that big one.

So that’s a thousand dollar project. Then the thousand dollar project today is a $250,000 share portfolio, which I’m really proud of. It does have a small element of a margin loan included in there and obviously that’s not advice to anyone to go and take [00:24:00] a margin loan out, but it’s, it’s incredible how it’s grown and it’s, started eight years ago and literally not a dollar has come from my salary or base salary and not a dollar has come from my savings cuz I was completely, I was in a very tight, stressful situation when I started it.

Mindful money it’s about fire really. It’s about. Having a mindful money number, which is the, ultimately is how much passive income do you want to earn? And you then look at all the different strategies that are out there to help make sure that you can build that passive income, with the available resources in your life.

And how to find additional resources in your life to make it happen.

Captain Fi: Well, they say how do you eat an elephant? Yeah. Not one at this, one bite at a time. So there you go. How to build a quarter of a million dollar portfolio, just a thousand dollars at a time. I love the side hustles, I mean, especially when you find one that you can scale and outsource.

I think that’s like a huge key. But being [00:25:00] mindful about money, it’s super important and not everyone needs to build a huge investment portfolio and retire early. I think as long as you’re sensible with money and you do something that you love, you can get heaps of positive outcomes from that.

Right? So just kind of about what do you want out of life? What do you want out of your finances?

Canna: Absolutely. At the end of the day, we come here with nothing and we leave here with nothing. So, we have responsibility to make sure we have a, a wonderful time and a great balance and experience, adventures and great connections with people and help people as well, that element of charity.

So, it’s something that I’m really passionate about.

Captain Fi: Yeah. And I guess speaking of helping educate people and you built this big platform, Sugar Mama tv, right? So you are a financial advisor. That was your full-time job and then you made the move into personal finance education.

Can you tell us a little bit, I guess, the reasons for the switch and maybe some of the challenges that you faced previously as a financial advisor and some of the new [00:26:00] challenges as a financial educator?

Canna: , I never would say I made the switch as such, because I am still a financial planner today, I ran my business as financial and that merged into my dealer group so that I could.

To take a bit more time because I was running Sugar Mama and SAS Financial at the same time and I was also about to have my third baby. So something had to give. Cause for me, my, children and my partner are my life. So, I realized, okay, I can’t spread myself too thinly here.

Something’s gotta shift. So I decided to merge SAS Financial into my dealer group and I’m still in contact with all of my clients today. And they’ve said basically, whatever you wanna do, we’ll support you, whatever decision. So that allowed me to focus, full-time on Sugar Mama.

And I don’t ever really feel like it’s a switch. Cause I’m still a financial planner’s still in my blood. I still think like a financial planner. I just do exactly what I do with my clients, which is explain financial strategies. [00:27:00] But instead of talking to someone in front of me, in person, I’m talking to a camera lens or talking into a microphone.

So to me, that’s probably why there’s no switch as such.

Captain Fi: It’s awesome when you’re able to scale a system like that because in the end instead of sort of one-on-one, you’re able to reach, well, like we found out earlier, over 1.4 million people via the podcast. And then, regularly an audience of, a quarter of a million people.

That’s pretty powerful, right? That’s a huge platform to promote financial wellbeing.

Canna: I’m feeling quite blown away by it and, I’d had to take some videos or I chose to take some videos down from YouTube. Some really old ones, but I think I’ve had something like 15 million views on YouTube.

Captain Fi: Wow, that’s quite crazy. That’s a lot. Yeah. Something you should be really proud of. It’s no mean feat. There’s a lot of people , producing content and there’s no guarantee that it’s gonna do well

Canna: And there are a lot of people who just, people who write books, there are lots of writers who’ve got fantastic novels that have never seen the light of day because [00:28:00] they just haven’t landed in front of the right person.

So, I love what I’m do and I’m passionate about it. And so, to me, and that’s probably a reason why I didn’t even realize I’d hit over a million downloads, is it’s not about the numbers. I just love what I do. So I’m not really intrigued or obsessed with those things. I only happen to know the YouTube numbers cause I accidentally came across it a couple of months ago.

Captain Fi: Yeah. And I guess that it’s a perfect example of, people talk about, oh, I want, fire, like I want to retire early, , and then people say, well, okay, you’ve gotta retire to something, not retire from something. And then, so a lot of people say, well, why don’t you just build a life that you don’t need to retire from?

And I think this has been a important part of my sort of mindset shift and education in that, I did feel really stressed in my job. I felt really controlled. And so, there’s a lot of stuff going on in my personal life that since. Leaving my flying role and running my websites part-time.

 I love the work-life balance now. It’s really enjoyable. And [00:29:00] so, I never used to understand when people were like, oh, I didn’t wanna retire. , I used to think they were mad. I was like, well, why would you wanna work forever? But some people love their job and that’s totally cool.

In fact, that’s the goal,

Canna: right? Yeah. That is the goal. And I’m definitely one of those people. I spring out of bed at five o’clock in the morning. I love five o’clock.

Captain Fi: Yeah. Are you

Canna: serious? Five o’clock rain, hail, or shine? Monday to Sunday and I don’t have an alarm. I just wake up and sometimes I wake up even earlier and look, probably once every three months, my body will actually not wake up and it will just let me sleep in until seven.

But no for me, there’s just so many opportunities in the day. There are so many things to, to live for. So, I’m someone who’s. Very easily inspired, which I sometimes think is a curse at times because just get blown away by everything I see and think, oh, I wanna do that, or I think I can create that, or I’m gonna build something like this.

So, to me, when I wake up in the morning, there is a beautiful day. It’s time to, start seeing your [00:30:00] goals and dreams come into fruition.

Captain Fi: Yes. I love it. Now, look, not to be a negative Nancy here at all but I’m interested to hear what are some of the challenges that you face now running your own business, especially in this industry?

Canna: Oh gosh. Well, obviously content creation is exhausting. You put a lot of your heart and soul and you can think this is gonna do really well and it flatlines and content creation is expensive. It takes a lot of time and you can. Really think, oh wow this is gonna go viral.

And it doesn’t at all. And also, you’ve gotta deal with , the haters out there, people who have negative comments leave toxic, ratings and reviews that you know are really disheartening. Obviously, being a financial planner, you have to be hypervigilant when it comes to compliance and making sure that you follow all the rules and regulations so that as always comfortable and happy with everything that you’re doing.

You’ve also gotta, obviously, make sure that you really understand. Your [00:31:00] listeners, and that can be quite stressful at times because you can’t please everyone. People want to know about this, and then people wanna know about that. And then, you are excluding a certain group and someone will send you a DM saying, why don’t you do something , for people like me.

And it can be exhausting and, anyone who’s in the content creation game knows it also, it’s very up and down from an income point of view, for sponsorships and collaborations and so forth. So you’ve gotta, understand how to manage a business at the same in time when you’re running a business such a

Captain Fi: sugar mother.

Yeah. There’s a lot, isn’t there? Even like I’ve found it’s quite difficult, even just blogging get a lot of people again Yeah. Wanting certain things from you. And it’s hard because you can’t really always be everything to everyone. Yeah. So look Canna, you’re pretty open about your finances on your YouTube channel and podcasts.

And I’d love to delve a little deeper into your personal finances if your game to spill some tea.

Canna: Yes I’m [00:32:00] happy to. Obviously I’m not gonna be sharing numbers here. And a full warning, please obviously refer to my general advice warning as well as yours and my license details as you’re listening to, what I’ve invested in.

Please don’t think, oh, bloods do what can’s doing cause that’s not how it works at all. But yeah, I look what’s inside my investment portfolio. Well, shares Australian shares, And international shares. And when I invest in international shares, I typically use ETFs, actually, well, all of my international shares are through ETFs.

I love industrial shares. I love listed investment companies. And I have emergency money, which I will talk to you about in a second. And I have commercial property and residential property. And yeah it’s, as I said, it’s predominantly high risk, high growth investment assets really. But for me, with my risk profile of being a high growth investor, that, and what my goals are, which are very long term, [00:33:00] it works for

Captain Fi: me.

Yeah. And yes brilliant advice you’ve pointed out, don’t just blindly do something cuz you’ve heard it on a podcast. But yeah, it’s just interesting to see what certain people do and I think it’s a great way of learning is that we can understand all what’s kind of doing or why is she doing it.

And I think hit the nail on the head there, it all comes down to your risk tolerance and your investing timeframe. Yeah. But look, what I’ll do is I’ll try and do it in a somewhat logical sequence. So I guess starting out with income. So, obviously you have multiple sources of income and you love the side hustles, which sometimes grow into a full on business.

But could you tell us a bit more about your streams of income, of course.

Canna: Well, I’ll talk about from a personal point of view because, business is obviously separate, from a personal point of view, I have commercial properties, so I receive rent from that.

We also have an investment property, which is a residential investment property, so we receive rent from that. We have multiple share portfolios, which I’m trying [00:34:00] to work out how to, I guess, simplify and consolidate as well. So, they the portfolios made up for, and I receive dividends from the listed investment companies, the ETFs, and then the individual stocks that I own myself.

And we have, it’s cash, but that is sitting in our offset account. So I don’t actually earn any interest from that, but it’s helping offset the interest on my home loan as well. So, pretty well diversified. Investment income when it comes to business. Obviously the sugar Mama business it’s varies cause obviously I have my books, I have my podcasts I have, sponsorship and collaborations and so forth.

So again, I’ve created a wide range of different income

Captain Fi: sources. Wow. So I’m trying to keep track here and I think I almost, ran outta fingers to count. So that’s over 10 different income streams, so that’s awesome. And I think the takeaway there for people listening is that people that are good with money people who wanna build wealth is they’re often looking [00:35:00] to build multiple streams of income for diversification, also working on building the amount of income within those streams.

So, yeah, that’s pretty impressive. And essentially what was a side hustle has now grown to become a full on business through Sugar Mama tv, which is bloody fantastic. Thank you. Now, Canada the flip side to income is obviously expenses. Now, you’ve mentioned you’ve had some pretty big bills lately with the pups.

You’ve got a big family, three kids and your Sydney based. Is that correct? Yeah. Tell me. Yeah, so look, that doesn’t sound cheap. So Kenna, what are your expenses looking like?

Canna: Our expenses are huge. I actually reviewed our family budget the other day and I grabbed Tom and said, you’ve gotta sit down and look at this.

And I made him sit down with me and look at the Excel spreadsheet and I said, this is our monthly expenses as a family. And that didn’t include holidays in there. And he said, how’s it so [00:36:00] much? I said, it’s the cost of living. And I said, look, there is nothing in there that I can take out. This is the. Basics really.

It’s the food, the energy, the water, the council rates. I didn’t even put our mortgage repayments in there. It was just the actual, what it costs, what we need. And I said, there’s nothing I can take out of this. Like I’ve trimmed as much as I possibly can. And , we both said, it is incredibly high.

And I, I feel like a lot of other families will really relate to that. Cause a lot of people feel really bad about what their true cost of living is, and can feel embarrassed and ashamed that’s how much they spend per month. But it’s a crazy, expensive world that we are living in right now. We’re all trying to really do our best.

And I’m in the same boat as everyone else. There’s nothing excessive in there whatsoever. And it very quickly adds up to be a large amount of

Captain Fi: money. Yeah, look, I mean I definitely come from a huge point of privilege in that I had quite a good salary and also had no [00:37:00] kids, so I didn’t have a lot of expenses, so was.

Pretty easy for me to save and invest. But when you start looking at larger families and people with different circumstances and other responsibilities, maybe blended families, multi-generation families, it can be bloody hard. And I was just reading as well, because one of the things I want to do is start a family, and I was looking into the cost of children and GVAs childcare.

Oh my God. Oh my

Canna: gosh. Childcare is more expensive than our food. And it’s our mortgage repayment is the biggest expense followed by childcare. And, Tom’s family live in the country. We have no family locally. So if we want to go out for dinner, it’s at. $150 in babysitting.

Cause we have three kids and normally if you have more than two, they tend to bump up their rate and that’s often cash payment. So before you’ve actually, walked out the door, that’s how much you’re up for in babysitting. And a lot of babysitters will say, look, I’m not gonna come over just to [00:38:00] babysit for two hours.

I have a four hour minimum. And, it’s expensive. And then you’ve gotta obviously pay for the food. And if you wanna have a bottle of wine and perhaps, you’d ever wanna drink and drive, you’d get a cab or an Uber. It’s a very expensive date night. So we don’t really do that often.

 My son’s in school. I have a nanny who helps me out three days a week cause I work for myself and my daughter goes to daycare one day a week. And , it just blows my mind as to how much it costs.

Captain Fi: Wow. Well, all I’m thinking is geez, it’s a bloody good thing that you sorted out your financial foundations early and that you’ve got.

Your investments and passive income that can really help to offset this cost of living.

Canna: I’m so glad I invested, I’m so glad I was disciplined with my money and I did all the hard work back now because I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for those sacrifices and

Captain Fi: dedication.

Yeah, well done. I think that’s a testament to I guess, your hard work and your [00:39:00] intelligence and forward planning. So bloody well done. Cuz imagine trying to get ahead now would be bloody difficult. It’s a lot harder. And another way that manifests is getting an emergency fund started.

If you don’t have an emergency fund, it can be financially devastating and it can be really hard to build one, especially when, your expenses are so high compared to your income. So just on emergency funds what’s your take on it? And how much cash do you keep?

Do you keep as a multiple of your living expenses or how do you work out what’s enough for you personally?

Canna: Well, great question. Cause I think a lot of people think, oh yes, I have emergency money. But the problem is they don’t actually have the right amount of emergency money for their situation so there’s no magical formula.

What I say is look at your individual situation and think about what could realistically, and not that we wanna manifest this, but what is a real risk for you and what is the cost of those risks? So, for in my situation, well, I work for [00:40:00] myself, so I don’t have any annual leave or sick leave to fall back on.

I have , three children, I have dogs. So you would look at your own individual situation and look at the things that could go wrong, and then think of three things suddenly going wrong all at the same time, and think out what would be the financial cost of those three things.

And that number is where you start to think about what your emergency money. Really is, and how much you really need. So, someone who is maybe working full-time, has three kids, their partner stays at home to help raise those kids. Are they in good health? What bills do they have?

Do they have maybe car repayments as well as a mortgage repayment? What annual leave do they have? What sick leave do they have? Do they perhaps have family that live overseas and, might have a health condition where they may have to suddenly drop everything and fly to that country? So they need to factor in airfare, accommodations, spending money, time out of work where they may be eating up their annual leave or [00:41:00] don’t have any annual leave.

So they have to, have even more emergency money. You’ve really got to look internally to your situation and what those risks are. And, someone who’s, say 22 has the luxury of living at home, has a full-time job, is not gonna need the same emergency money number. That I’m gonna need. And I had my annual challenge of frugal February, and we had huge damage exposed to the house that originally the insurance company were gonna cover.

And , we had this claim with insurance. It was sitting there for six months and at the very end, they turned around and said, actually, this is not insurable. They found a loophole in the policy details and all of a sudden we had to pay for the damage. And it was. Excessively expensive and to the point where we had a scaffolding inside our house like that’s how bad this water damage was.

So, that wiped all of our emergency money and extra savings we had set aside. So it made me realize, okay, that emergency money [00:42:00] number needs to be a lot bigger and we’re in the process of rebuilding our emergency money as quickly as possible. And I don’t wanna share the exact number because I don’t want someone to think, well, if Canna has that much as emergency money, I need the same.

But it’s a six figure emergency money that we need as a family.

Captain Fi: Wow. Yeah. Look, thanks for sharing that because Yeah, I remember , when you posted about that and how stressful and, these things can really build up. And I think a really important thing that you mentioned is, what if those three things happen all at once?

Yeah. And I must say I’ve sort of been publishing my journey and I publish my financials and I worry that perhaps people May have been a bit lax because I never really typically kept a lot of money. Cause I had a very stable job. I had oodles and oodles of annual leave.

I had insurances up the wazoo and I didn’t have a lot of liabilities. So I tended to keep a very small amount of cash. In fact, I mean, not that long ago, I think I ran outta money. [00:43:00] Like it was only kept a couple of thousand bucks. Oh wow. And yeah, and so my mindset has completely changed now since leaving full-time work and yeah, I’m keeping sometimes nearly two years worth of expenses in cash.

And for me that’s. Well, I mean, I’m spending about 30, $35,000 a year. So yeah I , it’s not six figures, but it’s getting up there, it

Canna: definitely is. And the thing is it helps you sleep better at night. As I said, we live in a stressful world, a fast paced world, we’ve got so much pressure and stress and responsibilities on our shoulder.

If we can take control of our money, that helps alleviate that stress. And part of taking control is having emergency money. And the thing is, when an emergency happens and no one’s an immune from emergencies, at least it doesn’t completely knock you off your feet where you have to start all over again.

Or even worse, you have to start selling things off at a fire sale price. So you know, you are actually then two steps back,[00:44:00] the whole point about emergency money is you can get back on your feet again quickly and easily, and then obviously replenish those emergency money supplies.

Captain Fi: . Yep. And you don’t have to resort to debt as well.

Exactly. That’s not to say if you have debt that it’s a horrible thing. You’re a bad person. Sometimes that’s what happens.

Canna: Sometimes it’s the necessary part of life. It’s also what debt sometimes creates opportunity. Buying a home, you have to take on debt to be able to buy that home.

But hopefully that home can grow in value and can be used as a resource to help grow your wealth even further. The toxic debt is the credit card debt, the personal loans, the car loans that are not used for work or for business or income producing.

Captain Fi: We will get back to the show in a moment, but for now, I wanna ask you a question. Do you have a side hustle? And if you do, is it scalable? My side hustle is building and running websites a form of digital real estate. Now, it might sound tricky to make money online, but really they’re just small online businesses that have low overheads, [00:45:00] high margins, and which you can easily scale by outsourcing.

If you’ve ever read the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, then you’re on the right track. What I love about websites is just like my investments, they’re working 24 7 to make me richer and I can put as much or as little effort into running them as I like. I can pay a writer to produce a piece of evergreen content, which is then edited and posted by virtual assistant.

Then it can be viewed potentially millions of times and easily updated by my editors over the years to remain relevant. If you want to learn more about this lucrative side hustle and retraining for the Digital Workforce revolution, then check out my article about making money online and read my review of the E-Business Institute and their online self-paced courses.

The E-Business Institute cover everything from total beginners. Right through to advanced web design and how to buy, renovate, run, and sell websites for profit. As a graduate of the E-Business [00:46:00] Institute, I can’t thank Matt and Liz enough for the valuable web skills I’ve developed. And now I can enjoy growing my portfolio of websites for semi-passive income.

Captain FY listeners can register for free access to some of their resources by following the link in the E-Business Institute review article on captain fy.com. So what are you waiting for? Start learning how to build a portfolio of digital real estate and use websites to make money today.

I guess another way that you can avoid getting into that pinch similar to having an emergency fund is insurances.

And you are a big supporter of having appropriate insurance and even mentioned earlier today some of the insurances that you have. But I guess just to close the loop on that, would you be able to outline what personal insurances that you and your family have and why you think it’s important?

Canna: Absolutely. So again, not advice, general advice only, I am a financial planner. I have to be very careful of that. But I have [00:47:00] life insurance, I have TPD insurance, I have income protection, and I have trauma. And I actually sat down and worked out. We spend $1,500 per month on personal insurances between Tom and I.

I know. Our living expenses are huge, but the thing is, we need that cover because if something was to happen to me, we need to know that we can still pay the mortgage, we can still pay the bills, and we would be able to help pay for someone that could help us manage the kids.

Cause you know, as I said, I have a nanny three days a week. I look after the kids the other four days. So if anything happened to me and I couldn’t work, and that would include looking after my kids, we need help. So, this is a huge comfort knowing that, we are protected. We’re not gonna have to be forced to sell our home.

We’re gonna be able to still put food on the table. We can, be present with our children and also we have the ability then focus on recovery and rehabilitation in the event of something happening to us.

Captain Fi: Yeah, , my partner recently switched roles [00:48:00] and as a part of that, she had the opportunity to switch to a superannuation provider that was specific to that role, which was pretty good.

Had some good perks. But their insurance offerings, the baseline , they were a bit lackluster. I think they tended to under insure you as a default. , so she beefed up her income protection, her t p d and , that’s giving her the sleep at night factor.

Canna: Yeah.

Look, no two insurance policies are the same. It is so important that you get personal advice, from an insurance broker or a financial planner. And you would never go and cancel a policy without knowing the consequences of that. And if you were looking to switch, Policies, you would wait until your new policy had been activated and was enforced , and you had something in writing to say that it’s enforced before you would, cancel the old one.

But you wanna be very careful with switching products as well, because there are waiting periods, there might be exclusions, the policies are gonna be different. So you’ve gotta go in eyes [00:49:00] wide open.

Captain Fi: This is just giving me anxiety. Just talk about this. No, it’s a good point though.

 Talk to a specialist. So, I interviewed Catherine Hayes and she’s a, an insurance specialist really cool lady. Actually has a D H D as well. Oh wow. Was fairly open about it. So there you go. There’s not a lot. She came on the pod and , there was just so much to it.

And so if it’s not something I think you can tackle and look, I consider myself a pretty switched on guy, right? I used to fly, multimillion dollar aircraft and also an engineer. And yet I feel so overwhelmed when it comes to reading the fine print and understanding how these policies work.

In fact , I’d almost feel like I would not take out a policy cut my nose off to spite my face just cause it’s so complex.

Canna: And look, and that’s why you go and see, an insurance broker or a financial planner because that says specialty and they can help you work out what is the right policy for you.

So you’re not paying for something you don’t need and you then can beef up the features of the policy that are really important to your [00:50:00] situation.

Captain Fi: Okay, so we’ve covered income, expenses, emergency funds, insurance, and we’ve already talked about your investments. So, well there’s only two more in here.

So one of ’em is Do you have a target savings rate? So are you trying to achieve a particular percentage of your income or a particular amount per month that you are trying to save and invest?

Canna: No, so at the moment we had a bit of a change cause we. Decided to move house and it was sort of a very out of the blue unexpected decision.

So we have a mortgage now. So basically what we do is all of our income goes into the one account, a joint account, and we have our family expenses that, come out in our individual. I guess sanity money for Tom and I, and then everything goes towards the mortgage that is left over.

So we are trying to maximize our mortgage re payments so we can reduce the non-deductible debt in our life and own our home outright as quickly as [00:51:00] possible. So, I don’t believe in percentages, that, you should save 20% of your income and live off 30%. I feel like you start pigeonholing people and your expectations, and it can lead to disappointment because everyone’s in different.

Stages of their life. And if you said to me, I had to save 20% and live off 50% and invest 30%, it’s, that’s just not gonna work. And I’ll, I won’t bother paying attention to my finances. So you do the best you can do for you and you have goals that you actively work on. And you tweak and evolve it as your situation changes.

You might get a pay rise, you might get a promotion, or your living expenses may change cause you have a child or you may inherit some money, or you may have decided to go back to university and educate yourself with, and invest in education for yourself. So yeah, I don’t believe about, aggressive percentages and rules.

, and for us it’s about restocking our emergency money through our offset account right now and making as many extra repayments as possible on our home loan.

Captain Fi: Yeah, I [00:52:00] like it. Keeping it simple. Yes. Keeping it simple is good and keeping

Canna: it fluid as well, yeah. I never try and, box myself in the corner.

Captain Fi: Yeah. And that’s probably something that I kind of took a little bit overboard. Having said for some people saving can be easier than for others. For a lot of us in the fire community particularly like high paid, people in tech or, professional careers with no no kids or other responsibilities, it’s sort of, it can be pretty effortless to save.

And I think I probably obsessed about this too much and, it’s something I talk to a counselor about. But yeah, sort of getting into the 70, 80% savings rates whilst it’s great to, build your wealth and everything it’s not necessarily. A necessity. I look back and I go, well, I’m glad I did it still.

But it maybe did contribute to a bit of an unhealthy relationship towards money. So I think I kind of like your strategy better, just not putting these really rigid rules in place and just doing the best you can. And also

Canna: come from a place of love. Financial wellbeing has an element of self-love and self-care.

[00:53:00] So, you were taking care of your financial responsibilities cuz you want to make sure that you can live a rich, fulfilling life beyond, the dollars and the figures and the numbers. So you know what you are talking about. Sounds like that your actions were driven from a place of scarcity and fear, which is never a good thing.

It should always come from a place of empowerment, of education, of inspiration. So if you were saving 70% and you happy about that, and it’s that action of saving 70 or 80% or 30% or whatever it is, comes from a place of being excited about the future because you’re investing in your future.

You’re creating a greater sense of security and comfort and peace of mind that is fine and happy and healthy. So , what I say to people is you do you, you do what is best for you. Obviously always. Look to tweak and change as necessary, and don’t be afraid to give yourself a goal. That’s a bit of a stretch because that’s where fantastic growth and.

Shifts and breakthroughs come from, but also feel very proud along the way and celebrate every [00:54:00] success no matter how big or how small.

Captain Fi: Yeah, I love having the b h a, that’s what my mentor calls it. A bhag, a big, hairy, audacious goal. . So you talked about all the different investments that you have. But I’m interested, do you have a particular target sort of asset allocation? Do you want a certain amount in, say residential properties, certain amount of international shares, certain amount in Australian shares?

How do you plan out where you put your money?

Canna: Both Tom and I are high growth investors, so our risk profile asset allocation is predominantly Australian shares, international shares and property. But a lot like our, spending and saving and investing calculations, I don’t believe in hard and fast aggressive rules and regulations.

So the way I look at it is, I always monitor the diversification, making sure that we’re not over or underexposed in a certain area. And if we are, I don’t ever sell things to [00:55:00] rebalance. I just simply make a note of that and go, okay, well we’re a little bit underexposed in international shares.

Next time we’re going to be doing some investing. I need to make a mental note to make sure that we use those funds to help, Rebalance the portfolio by using that cash to invest in, say, more international shares or whatever is under. So I take a, I guess a wealth accumulation point of view when it comes to making sure our portfolio is diversified, any cash that we have in our life is either emergency money or goes into the mortgage.

So, I’m very comfortable with what we’ve done and I look forward to the stage where, our mortgage is gone or our mortgage is further down and we can, revisit debt recycling again and look to accumulate more assets more passive income stream assets, and build upon what we already have so we can finish off that last 25% needed for our mindful money number goal.

Captain Fi: So with the shares then, do you just split it kind of evenly between Aussie and international, or do you have a particular ratio you look for?

Canna: I don’t look for a [00:56:00] particular hard and fast ratio as such, but. I do love Australian shares because of the franking credits.

Yeah, I would definitely have a, that’s isn’t, yeah, very powerful. So I do have a bias towards more Australian shares than international. However, having said that, the growth element to the international shares is also very valuable. And I’m mindful of, the income tax level that both Tom and I pay.

Sometimes, that international asset location can be quite valuable because it’s obviously more growth. You don’t pay any capital gains tax until you sell. And Tom and I don’t sell any assets. It’s very rare that we sell assets.

Captain Fi: Yeah, look, and I do a similar thing as well. Like I I guess I’ve been fortunate and I haven’t had to draw down my portfolio yet.

And I guess that’s the benefit of having a side hustle that turns into a, an awesome business. And so I do my rebalancing the same via reinvesting dividends and if I do have any extra windfalls inheritance my mom passed away. So that’ll be [00:57:00] getting invested in just shares as well.

And yeah I tend to focus on those high growth ones, just me personally. I’m, I mean for the long haul, so I think I have about 75% international shares, 25% Australian. But it’s interesting the tax stuff, , there is dividends from international shares and it’s not nothing, and you do get taxed, I think from memory it’s like 15%. And you won’t get a franking credit for that with international shares. Yeah. So, , that is a consideration when it comes to your financial planning and how much income you want in retirement.

, but yeah, so you,

Canna: and The long-term growth opportunities as well is really important because, it might be a $10,000 worth of shares, but, and it’s, say 4% capital growth, say 2% income versus the, vice versa for Australians, sometimes over the long run, if, depending on, what your goals are, that international exposure can be very valuable.

Captain Fi: , I was just a hundred percent Australian shares at the start of my journey. So I was really focused on building an income stream. So I was like [00:58:00] buying en listed investment companies and ETFs and even some individual shares as well. But yeah, as I sort of, felt a bit more secure and built a larger portfolio, definitely for tax efficiency, I’m looking at , the capital growth stuff.

So my next question is about housing, but I feel like we’ve already covered that. So I’m gonna say you are team pay off your mortgage. Oh yes. But team key into tax deductible debt. So for like an investment property, you’d be wanting to keep that?

Canna: No not quite. Not quite. So all but one of our investment loans are set up to be cashflow.

Positive. So they actually are paying themselves off over time. And that’s not product advice or strategic advice to anyone out there. But because our goal is to build a growing passive income stream of $200,000 per annum, I need to make sure that I’m using the time to make sure that those loans that we have in place that have allowed us to help accumulate these investment assets and build this [00:59:00] passive income are actually being paid off because there’s no point, creating this $200,000 passive income if you know it’s got $200,000 worth of interest expenses as well.

So, we have a overall debt reduction strategy in place. The priority is obviously the non-deductible debt first, which is the mortgage, but we are also at the same time, slowly and steadily chipping away at our investment loans so that all of our investments are cashflow positive and almost self-funding

Captain Fi: themselves.

Yeah, look, I think that’s a very sensible option. And that means they’ll just get more and more positively geared over time, right? Yes. And growing stream. And that’s exactly why we’re investing.

Canna: Exactly. And the beauty is the moment our mortgage is paid off, that frees up our cash flow and hopefully by then, we don’t have to spend, another 10 years paying off the remaining investment debt.

There isn’t hopefully that much investment debt left because it’s been paying itself off. Yeah. Cause we don’t ever spend our passive income, we always reinvest it or use it to help pay down the debt.

Captain Fi: Another question which I think we probably [01:00:00] already covered, I was gonna say, what would early retirement look like for you, if at all?

And I would say it’s probably, if at all, cuz it sounds like jumping outta bed at 5:00 AM bright-eyed, bushy tailed. It sounds like you lover life and you don’t really wanna make any big changes.

Canna: I feel incredibly lucky and incredibly. Blessed and I know that, I’m in a privileged situation and I’ve been lucky in that I’ve been, Where we live in the world and the fact that we have access to everything we need and I’ve had the opportunity to have an amazing education as well.

So, I have been very privileged and very lucky, but also I’ve worked my absolute backside off. I stayed for six years to buy my first home. I, when I was at university, I had two jobs, and whilst I was at university with two jobs, I also started studying and doing my advanced diploma of financial planning.

So I, I’m someone who’s worked incredibly hard and I’ve had sacrifices along the way. When my friends were backpacking around Europe, I was working. And I, there are some sacrifices I regret [01:01:00] such as those, and I regret not living overseas, but these are all things that I can actually look at and afford to do now because I’d put my priorities slightly differently.

And, so if I was to win a hundred million dollars tomorrow, I would still be doing exactly what I’m doing today because I’m passionate about helping people build financial freedom and harmony in their lives.

Captain Fi: That’s bloody awesome. Build a life you don’t have to retire from. I love it.

Exactly. And I’ve said, so look Canna, you’ve got a lot of really good knowledge and information. And I guess one of the awesome things we can do on our money journeys is to, look to the people that are successful, look to the people that we want to achieve, similar things that they’ve achieved, , so we can copy ’em, and especially when it comes to educating about your finances.

So, with that in mind, do you have any favorite resources that you’ve used that you could share with us? Perhaps you’ve got some favorite books or blogs, podcasts or

Canna: websites. Absolutely. [01:02:00] So there is a book called Motivated Money by Peter Thornhill, , and it is an absolutely brilliant book.

It’s, Really thought-provoking, but is also backed up with hard facts. And I highly recommend that Motivated Money by Peter Thornhill to anyone who’s thinking of starting him to invest and wants to learn more about the Australian Share Market. I think Rich Dad put out is brilliant. It’s one of the first financial books I ever read before I became a financial planner.

There’s also a book called Harmonic Wealth. Now this book is very hard to get because, and I feel bad about saying this, but the, I think the guy who wrote it is actually. In jail for murder. So, but the book itself is very powerful because it talks about, looking at wealth in a harmonious way and all the different areas in our lives that help make us wealthy, feel wealthy, like friendships and relationships and spiritual growth and development and intellectual stimulation.

So it’s a brilliant book. There’s also another one I love, [01:03:00] it’s called The Millionaire Next Door, which really makes you think about really what’s going on behind closed doors? That actually your neighbor could be a millionaire and you never actually know about it.

And, as a financial planner, nothing is what it seems. And you’ll think, oh, this person’s got a nice big house. They must be swimming in cash. And it’s not the case at all that sometimes they have a massive mortgage. And sometimes those people in those, massive homes have no mortgage at all.

But then you go and see someone who’s in a, a very humble home and has a very sort of frugal life and you think, well, They must be struggling. And actually, it’s far from it. They’re actually swimming in cash. So, I love how the Millionaire Next Door it sort of exposes

Captain Fi: that awesome books.

I haven’t read Harmonic Wealth but that is a very spicy bit of information there. Who’s the

Canna: author? Oh, I think it’s something like James. Ray

Captain Fi: maybe his publisher , pulled the deal.

 But Motivated Money, Peter Thornhill, what a legend as well. Oh, he’s, and he’s such a nice guy as well.

Yeah, he’s done a couple of interviews [01:04:00] with Aussie Firebug and just spin fire, like the guy’s so funny. He so cheeky and you was saying like, oh what about the haters that don’t agree with you? And he’s just oh, well, they can keep working, veered my wife and just get, enjoys champagne every day.

He’s

Canna: such a great life as well. He’s traveling around the world. , he’s just so laid back and he is so relaxed and good on him. A wonderful

Captain Fi: man. really smart guy. And because, even in the fire community, it’s often , coined this phrase like you’ve got like the bogle head investors, following the John Bogle typical advice of, predominantly broad-based index, total market index funds, with America, like really looking at those growth.

And then you’ve got the Thornhill approach, which is, like the Aussie industrials really juicing the dividend income. And then, when you couple Peter Thorn Hill’s approach with something sensible, like a, a sensible amount of leverage on a debt recycling endeavor, it can be very powerful wealth building tool.

Oh,

Canna: absolutely. Yeah. And the thing is you don’t have to be one or [01:05:00] the other. You can have a little bit of, a different approaches. So you might take a Peter Thornhill approach for your super, you might, take a, Warren Buffett approach for your investment portfolio outside of super.

Captain Fi: . So look, and other than books obviously listening to the Financial Fire Play and the Captain Fire Podcast, do you have any other favorites?

Canna: Well, I have how do they afford that with Michael Thompson from Fear and Greed, and we publish that every Wednesday morning. And it’s a shorter form podcast, and we have a bit of a laugh along the way, we are really sort of peeking over the neighbor’s fence to see how people are affording these lifestyles.

Captain Fi: Interesting. I’m gonna tune in cause I actually haven’t had to listen to the, how can they afford that podcast? So there’s one for my, how do they afford that? How did that, sorry. How did they afford that?

Okay, one last question.

Everyone hates this question. But I love asking it, right? So, if we could distill all of your knowledge down into three small actionable pieces of advice for someone wanting to improve their finances, what would you recommend?

Canna: Number one would be do [01:06:00] a budget so you understand where your money goes, and then you can proactively take control and decide where you want it to go. The second advice would be to have. Some financial goals in your life, such as a mindful money number goal. And then the third advice would be cut the crap.

Stop talking about and not thinking about it. Just get on and do it. Just start, build that momentum. Make your first investment. Track , your results and watch’s your passive income grow and make sure that passive income growth is in positive alignment to that financial goal that you set for yourself.

Captain Fi: I love it. You don’t have to be doing miracles. But you do have to start. And I love that it doesn’t have to be perfect either because just because you started investing doesn’t mean you can change your focus. So you can always change what you’re doing. But I think, , it’s really important to just get started.

Just cut the crap. Just bloody do it. Exactly.

Oh, that’s awesome. Look, Canna, thank you so much for your time today. [01:07:00] Like I said, I’m actually absolutely pinching myself chatting to you cuz you know, quite a big influence on my financial journey.

So, someone who’s benefited immensely from, the amount of time and effort that you’ve put into producing your content. So honestly, thank you so much for everything you’ve done and thanks heaps for coming on the show today. It means a lot to me. Oh,

Canna: well thank you for having me.

Captain Fi: Oh my pleasure. Look, before we finish up, is there anything else you’d like to mention today that we might have missed?

Canna: Well, no, I think we pretty much covered everything and obviously to go and check out Sugar Mama’s Fire Play and how do they

Captain Fi: afford that? Yeah. Awesome. Well, I’m looking forward to , how do they afford that?

And I don’t know, how do you guys produce content every week? Oh my goodness. It’s hard.

Canna: Worker smarter, not harder,

Captain Fi: hey, look canna if people now I would be quite surprised if people listening today didn’t know who you were, but if people wanted to find out more about you or contact you, whereabouts can they find you?

Well, my website

Canna: was hacked, so it’s currently being rebuilt and it will be up in a couple of months. But in the meantime I [01:08:00] know heartbroken.

So Instagram is probably the best place because my phone is quite often in my hand and if I see something, I’ll quickly reply or as

Captain Fi: soon as possible. Awesome. Hey, and that’s a trap in itself. Oh. Well, it’s good to know that you are, quite genuine and, able to engage with your community.

So look anyone’s listening if you Chuck in Canna Campbell sugar Mama tv into your Google or your Instagram, Facebook, check it out. But if you find that too difficult, come onto captain fi.com, go to the show notes for this podcast, and there’ll be links to where all of Kenneth’s places are online.

Again, Kenneth, thank you so much for your time. Bloody awesome. Wish you all the best knocking off that final 25% of your fire portfolio and enjoying all of your fat fire dreams. Oh,

Canna: thank you for having me. And good luck with your own adventure and journey.

Captain Fi: Thank you very much. Yes, it’s it’s definitely an unfolding one and like I said, I’ve got this puppy dog.

It’s just so much fun. Brings so [01:09:00] much joy into my life. And we’re actually, we might be getting a Labrador two soon, so I might have to hit you up for a bit of Labrador specific preparation and advice.

Canna: Absolutely. More than happy to help you out.

Captain Fi: Awesome. Look, can I have an awesome day? Once again, thanks so much for your time and we’ll chat soon.

Fantastic.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Captain Fire Financial Independence Podcast. To read the transcripts or check out the show notes, head over to www.captainfire.com for all the details. If you have a question for the captain and make sure to get in touch, you might even make it on the airwaves.

You can reach me online through the Captain Fire contact form. Or get in touch through the socials. I’m active on Facebook and Instagram, as well as a number of online finance and investing forums. And finally, remember the information [01:10:00] presented on the show and the links provided are for general information purposes only.

They should not be taken as constituting professional financial advice. You should always do your own research when making any financial decisions and make sure it’s appropriate for your personal circumstance.

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