Denise Duffield...:            Hey there, friend. And welcome to another episode of Chill and Prosper. I am your host, Denise Duffield-Thomas, money mindset coach, tap dancer, I don't know, all the things. I write books about money and mindset, which you can find all over the place. I have a new book out called Chill and Prosper, just like the name of this podcast. And you can get it all over the places, but it is about finding ways to make things easy and chill for you and your business.

                                                Now, I'm in the podcast studio today. I am wearing a Hot Shoe Shuffle shirt and a Hamilton jumper. So I'm feeling like, "Oh, it's so much fun to be in my musical outfit." Because it totally relates to what we're talking about today and it is how I invest my money and why I invested in a musical. Now, a lot of people are curious, I think, about how people spend their money. And I am a multimillionaire, which I have been for quite a few years now. I make my money from my business, and I'm the first millionaire in my family. I don't know. I come from a single parent, not very well off family. And so I'm new money basically. I'm absolutely new money. And so I love talking about money. I love telling people how I spend my money. And you might find this episode interesting as well.

                                                First up, a disclaimer. I am not a financial advisor. I'm not telling you to invest in anything at all. This is purely for entertainment and nosy purposes. And also, because I love normalizing this conversation around money. I love talking about money. I love talking about how I spend it and how I earn it. I'm very honest about this. I even publish my tax returns quite regularly. I often post at the end of the year how much money I made in that year. So I just think it's okay for us to talk about money. Also, I never hold myself up as someone who's perfect with money. Just because I talk about money mindset, it doesn't mean I know anything about investing or money or anything. So that's just a disclaimer. Do not take financial advice from me, because that's not what I do. It's not what I'm qualified for. And the way I spend money would be completely different to how you spend your money.

                                                Okay. So first up, let's do the boring stuff. I do things like I max out my retirement accounts. That's what I spend my money on. I was never great with things like that. Growing up, I never had any role models around spending money in a responsible way. And so now that I'm a grown up lady and I have financial advisors in my life, I do these boring things like making sure I max out my retirement accounts and it's not a ton. There is an upper limit in Australia of how much you can invest each year. But for me, I'm really want to make sure that my financial success isn't a flash in the pan in our family lineage. I don't want to be the feast or famine, "Oh yeah, cool."

                                                Generations ago, my great, great, great-grandmother Denise was briefly a millionaire and then she spent it all and that was it. I want to try and build that long term foundational stability that I didn't have. And so that means I do put money aside for retirement. I would like to retire early. How old am I? I'm 42, might be 43 by the time you listen. Who knows? I'm in my 40s. And I'd like to retire early. And by that, I mean, I would still write books. I'd still do things, but I would love to not have to work if I don't want to. So that's one of the boring things I invest my money into.

                                                I also invest in real estate. I bought my first house at age 25. It was a little apartment like two bedroom apartment in London when I was living there with my partner, Mark. The only way I was able to invest in that apartment is because at the time the banks were doing no deposit down mortgages. Hey, this was pre-financial crisis. I wonder what could go wrong. But yeah, anyway, I got a bank loan. It was 104% loaned value, as in they gave me money back. So not necessarily a good thing to do. But I share that because you know when you see those things of like, "I bought my first house at 25." And you dig into it and it's like, "My mom gave me all this money." or "I inherited half a million for my granddad." And it's always just like [inaudible]. So I never earned a great deal of money in my 20s at all, but I saw this opportunity to buy an apartment with Mark and it ended up being quite a good investment for us. It actually wasn't at the start, but it ended up being. I'm not being cagey. And now we own several investment properties, as well as our own. We have two houses too.

                                                So that was really a challenge for me from a mindset perspective too, because I realized how many stories I had about my ability to invest money. That it was complicated, that I wasn't able to do the numbers. I have a form of number dyslexia. I don't even know how to pronounce it, dyscalculia or something like that, but where numbers for me are quite confusing. So I'm really lucky and privileged that I have a partner in my life not only to help invest in things, but to do the paperwork. And I want to acknowledge that sometimes investing feels really complicated and scary because there's a lot of paperwork involved. There's a lot of numbers. There's a lot of things flying around where you have to remember and actually crunch the numbers.

                                                And so now we have an investment strategy. We usually buy a property that doesn't need a lot of fixing up and we can put a granny flat on there, but we have someone to help us crunch the numbers and see if it makes sense. Because if it was up to me, I'd be like, "Oh my god, look at this old mansion that's totally haunted and it's got 15 bedrooms and it needs all this work. Let's buy that. Because look how fun and sexy it is." And Mark, my husband and our financial advisors is like, "Let's buy this boring four bedroom place that we can rent, that will go up in X amount value." But I wouldn't have the patience to do that. I just wouldn't. And I wouldn't even be able to do the paperwork for it.

                                                So Mark is the one who goes to the bank. He makes sure we pay the deposit, makes the appointment for us to go and sign. And yeah. And now that we've invested in so many properties, we have a private banker and a private mortgage broker and all those kind of things. But it started with that first property when I was 25.

                                                And again, there's a lot of privilege involved in that, right? But anyway. So that's what I invest my money in is just boring properties that don't need a lot of work, that will go up in value. How boring. But yeah. So what I do with my money to invest in fun things ... Oh, and we do invest in the stock market as well. But again, just kind of boring, safe things. I regret that I didn't invest in the stock market a little bit earlier in life, but I think it was just that ... I just didn't think it was my world. And this is why I love talking about money because I want for it not to be a taboo topic, especially for women to talk about that we belong in conversations talking about investing. Because once you see behind the scenes, you go, "Wow, literally anyone can invest. It doesn't mean you have to be smart."

                                                But it feels like it's not really ... Well, I'll speak for myself. I didn't think it was my world. I didn't think I was smart enough to understand it, to make good decisions and that I was going to screw up in some way. So yeah, we do standard boring things and we have a financial investor to help. And that was another money mindset thing too of going, you're allowed to have advisors. This is what people do. You don't have to know all the answers yourself. You don't have to know how to do it. And actually, it's not always very expensive to work with people like that. Once I got into that world, I realized, "Oh, this is why the rich get richer because they have advisors in their life to show them the opportunities and to actually make it happen."

                                                And so our mortgage broker, he's always like, "There's always plan B, C, D, E, Z." And whereas if you do that by yourself is you don't see the opportunities. You don't have the relationships to do it. And so that is the way of the world that sometimes that rich get richer because of the information. So they're the boring things I invest in. But I want to tell you after the break some of the things that I've spent my money on and how it aligns with my values of investing money. So if you love talking about money and you're very curious and nosy like I am, stick around after the break for the next part of the podcast.

Alina Martin:                      Hi, I'm Alina Martin and I'm a mindfulness mentor and a soul activation coach on the Sunshine Coast. I've recently read Get Rich, Lucky Bitch! and I've been decluttering my wardrobe, my physical environment and my money blocks. And I've just noticed that it's made room for new opportunities to come in for my business. And I've been asked to be a guest speaker at my local female entrepreneur network business group. And I feel like it's really easy to apply the knowledge from the book. You don't just read the book and just put it back on the bookshelf. It really lends itself to directly applying it straight to your life to get your vision board into your reality, really. So I 100% recommend all of Denise's books and products and I can't wait to do more.

Denise Duffield...:            Hey, welcome back. Today, we're talking about how I invest my money. And again, who cares how I invest my money. It's just that I know for me, I love hearing other people talk honestly about money, because sometimes we think everyone's got it together and I don't know or I'm not smart enough, or we just think you're only allowed to talk about money if you're a financial advisor and we're all allowed to talk about money. Money is just a thing in our lives. And so I want to do it to inspire you, but also to make you go, "Wow, she's not that smart. And she makes bad decisions so maybe I'm allowed to as well."

                                                So something I invested in recently was into a musical. I have always loved the world of theater, movies, all those kind of things. When I started dancing when I was eight, it was just such a beautiful, exciting thing for me to ... Yeah, just to see that there was this world that was the same no matter where you moved to, because we moved a lot. Ballet's the same everywhere. Tap's pretty much the same everywhere. And going to the big city and seeing a musical with my Nana or my mom was a really big special deal. So that for me is just heaven. Musicals is just absolute heaven.

                                                So I want to tell you the story behind this. So one of my friends, Clint Salter, who has a business who helps dance studio owners to grow their business and work on their mindset and things. And I've spoken at a few of his conferences, but Clint posted and said, "Oh, everyone go see Moulin Rouge when it comes to Melbourne. I'm an investor in it." And I went, "What? What are you talking about?" And so I sent him a message and I just said, "What do you mean you're an investor in Moulin Rouge?" And he said, "Well, yeah, I'm an investor. So I gave money to get the production to Australia and I'll get some profits if it does well." And I mean, Moulin Rouge has done so well in Australia. It was so hard to get tickets, had a sold out run. It's, oh, incredible. And it's a really great show.

                                                And so I was like, "How do I do this?" And it just never occurred to me that a person could do something like that. And this is where this new world of money where you just go, "Oh, I can just do stuff with my money. I can just make it and I can just spend it how I want." And so he made a couple of introductions to me. And so one of the introductions was to the Michael Cassel Group in Australia. And they bring Hamilton to Australia and Harry Potter and they do the Lion King tours and all those things. And so I went, "Oh my gosh. Oh." And I felt like a massive imposter to contact them. Well, Clint sent an introduction message and said, "Denise is interested in investing in a musical." And I was like, "Am I? What?" Because it just felt like, "Who am I?" I come from a single parent family, grew up on the central coast of Australia in government housing. I come from a long line of just women who have not had power. You can hear me, I'm so excited. I was like, "Am I allowed to do this?" It just felt so weird.

                                                So I had a meeting with one of the guys and they told me about some musicals that they're putting together. And so how it works is usually a creative team comes up with an idea or whatever, and they have to find investors for it to be able to put on a run. And so I'm investing in Trading Places The Musical, which is the movie Trading Places with Eddie Murphy. And so a creative team has put together a musical version. It's a woman instead of a man in a Eddie Murphy part, which is kind of cool. An amazing team. And they have to raise money to do an out of town run. And so they're doing it in Atlanta. If you're listening to this and they're in Atlanta, go see the show, let me know what you think, because I can't fly over for it, because I'm in Australia right now. And so they do that. And then if all that goes well, then they raise a bit more money and go to Broadway. And then if Broadway goes well, they go to London and do like West End. And if that goes well, then eventually they come to Australia and they do a world tour.

                                                And some musicals run for decades. Some musicals run for a couple of years and then they fizzle out. And so I went into this going, "This isn't like you're going to get your money back necessarily." For me, that was an investment in my commitment to myself as a philanthropist of the arts, a patron of the arts, someone who puts my money into things that I'm passionate about. So it was a hundred grand in investment that I invested into this musical. And it's so symbolic to me. And Mark was like ... even our financial advisors were like, "Investing in a musical it is a bit of a crapshoot." And I was like, "For me, it is an investment in ... I don't even know how to articulate it. My self-identity as a wealthy woman." Makes me want to cry. My self-identity as someone who can make things happen and who invests money in ways that are important to her.

                                                So when I was a teenager, I heard this word philanthropist and I heard it on Oprah. And I went, "I want to be a wealthy philanthropist one day. And it was just like ... So investing in musical, which I'm sure Trading Places is going to be great, but it was so much more than that for me. It was so symbolic of the future I want to see in the world where art is important, where theater is important and all of the creative people who put on a show, it's incredibly important to me.

                                                And then, you know what, the freaking coolest thing is about this. So as I said, I can't fly over to Atlanta to see they had workshops and stuff for investors, fancy investors, but I will definitely fly over when it goes to Broadway. Not if, when it goes to Broadway for the premier, but now that I'm a fancy patron of the freaking arts, the Michael Cassel Group, who I invested in Trading Places with, they invite me to all the premieres of all their fancy musicals. So I got to go to the premier of Hamilton when it moved to Melbourne. And going to the after party and getting investor perks and going ... It's so much fun, and I'm going to see Mary Poppins this week. So now, I'm on the list as a fancy freaking investor. That for me is so cool because that is the world that I want to be a part of is creativity and joy.

                                                And so, yeah, that's what I spent my money on. Isn't that cool? Isn't it fun? And I want you to dream for yourself of what other things would you like to invest in that go beyond the sensible stuff of retirement accounts and investing for the future? Sorry, I don't mean to say it in such a boring voice, but for me, buying property, investing the share market, putting money away for retirement, it doesn't float my boat. It's good. I'm privileged. I'm so happy to be trying to build that long term wealth and to take care of myself and my family. But for me, it goes beyond that of like, what would you like to spend your money on? That's the stuff that will help you get through the times in your business where you don't feel like it.

                                                No one's getting up every day and having awkward conversations with clients and going through all the stress of launching something to be like, "This is going to be so great to put into my retirement account." You do it because you want to have something different. You want to be able to be, do, and have things on your dream board that weren't possible for you before. And that makes me so freaking excited and like I can't wait to go and invest in more musicals and to, I don't know, just go and be that person. It's really inspiring to see what other places I can put my money.

                                                The other thing that's important to me as well is philanthropy. Conscious philanthropy, it's really tricky. I hired somebody to help me with this because I sort of went, "I don't want to just give money to charity for willy-nilly. I want to really be intentional about it." And so I want to see where else I can spend my money in ways that are going to enrich my community and build long term change. Not just like one off things here and there. So Mark and I have our own foundation that we also invest money into because ... We can never take that money back if that makes sense. It goes into a foundation, it gets invested.

                                                We donate money from it, but also we want to make sure it gets built up. Because once it gets to a certain point, the interest it generates, the return it generates, it self funds forever. And that's a really important thing again for us to have that, what's our legacy? What can we build and create with our money that is going to live beyond us? And so for me, it's arts, but it's also investing in things that change laws, change laws around the environment and equality and education for people who don't have the opportunities that me and my kids do.

                                                Even for the fact that I grew up in public housing. I'm very, very passionate about social nets and social programs for disadvantaged children, because I know I could have gone either way. I could totally have fallen into some bad places, but instead, I'm a multimillionaire and I have a responsibility to then give back and invest in ways that change other people's lives. So yeah. And you know what? I buy some random shit too. At my farm, I love buying random rusty old cars. And I bought a beautiful mint green Chevy. So I don't think I'm just super responsible with my money and stuff. I can be an impulsive buyer. I love buying thrifted stuff. So yeah, don't worry. I'm irresponsible and I buy random shit with my money like anyone does.

                                                Yeah. I just want you to spend some time thinking about what would feel good for you to spend your money on, would you want to invest in the arts and the movie? Would you want to invest in scholarships for people or maybe you want to buy a farm like me one day and do cool stuff at your farm, social enterprises, or just fun stuff like travel and adventure and things like that. So, yeah. Anyway, yeah, I just wanted to share that and that I invested in a musical, because it makes me happy. And if Hot Shoe Shuffle comes back, which is the T-shirt I'm wearing today, I will definitely invest in a revival of Hot Shoe Shuffle, 100%. It's a tap show. Anyway, I have one more final thought for you after this last break. I'll see you in a sec.

Roswitha Herman:           Hi, everyone. My name is Roswitha Herman. I live in Romania and I'm a manifesting business coach and bestselling author. I help women entrepreneurs triple their monthly revenue using manifesting instead of complicated marketing or hustle. I'm all for raising vibration, ease and abundance. I joined Money Bootcamp back in 2015 after dreaming of buying it for six months. Back then, I was just starting my coaching practice. I had tons of limiting beliefs about money, and I had no idea how to manifest my dream life. Now, just two weeks ago, I had the [inaudible] in 24 hours, making 10K a month is my new normal and I do it all working part-time. My biggest aha or the thing that impacted me the most was the incremental upgrades part. I understood that I can get there one step at a time. And that's how I have everything that I have now.

                                                Denise is my ultimate manager. I love the ease that she teaches. I love her business model. I love the chillpreneur vibe. Because I modeled her, I got here, and for that, I'm forever grateful. Thank you for existing and creating this awesome community where I feel safe to share my successes and my struggles. I'm so inspired by all the other bees in the bootcamp who make millions each year and who opened the way for me to be able to do the same. It's a must course to buy. I cannot wait to be able to share that I'm also a chillpreneur [inaudible]. Thank you so, so much.

Denise Duffield...:            Okay. Welcome back. Thanks for listening to this episode. It felt like it was a bit personal, but I hope you enjoyed it. So my final thought for you is that I want you to change how you see yourself. I think I started thinking of myself as a wealthy philanthropist in my late teens. And we can start doing that now, and you can do that with mirror work. So next time you see a mirror, look yourself in the eye and you can look as scuzzy as possible. It's actually better if you don't look good for this exercise. And you say, "This is what a wealthy, could be woman, looks like. This is what a wealthy philanthropist looks like." And acclimatize yourself to that.

                                                Start seeing the vision of yourself as a wealthy philanthropist now. Maybe the money hasn't shown up yet, but you can change that identity of yourself now and see yourself in that. And that sometimes allows the money to come in because you are a wealthy philanthropist. So you can, this is what a wealthy philanthropist looks like, and acclimatize yourself to that. Ah, I can't wait to hear your aha's about this episode. Hit me up at Denise DT on social media. Yeah. Show me a picture. Show me some things that you would love to invest in. And I love this episode, but I will see you next week on another episode of Chill and Prosper. Thanks for listening