Our latest episode is an voyage, where I lay bare the emotional toll of eviction, the struggle of supporting my terminally ill sister, and the complexities of balancing university.
Housing challenges and the need for stability, as I reflect on the sharp sting of losing my sister and the journey through grief before I recount the generosity from my Prince Charming dad at the forefront.
In a chapter most raw, I confront the specter of depression, sharing the night I felt the weight of the world might just crush me, and the saving grace of my dad's intervention.
Follow our mother daughter journey towards financial freedom!
Our latest episode is an voyage, where I lay bare the emotional toll of eviction, the struggle of supporting my terminally ill sister, and the complexities of balancing university.
Housing challenges and the need for stability, as I reflect on the sharp sting of losing my sister and the journey through grief before I recount the generosity from my Prince Charming dad at the forefront.
In a chapter most raw, I confront the specter of depression, sharing the night I felt the weight of the world might just crush me, and the saving grace of my dad's intervention.
Follow our mother daughter journey towards financial freedom!
Hey Mamas, welcome to the Raising Rich Podcast with your favourite mother-daughter duo, Jo and Lane. Join us as we take you on the rollercoaster ride that has been my mum's life with money.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'll be opening up about the taboo topic of money from bankruptcy to a six-figure income and all the heartache in between. So if you're a single mama out there trying to figure it all out, then this podcast is for you. Join us for all the ups and all the downs on Raising Rich.
Speaker 1:Hello, hello, welcome to our couch. Hi, it's my couch today. We're at my house May hear some background noise. We are, as today we're at my house may hear some background noise. We are, as I mentioned, at my home which has two dogs, doggos we got the little pip, which is mom's dog, and the big mickey the big mickey, the big boy mickey that's the voice I imagine for him, but oh gosh, sorry, back on track, back on
Speaker 2:track, we did allude to the last episode of uh coming up, for this episode was going to be all about an accident that I had, a very um, serious, actually life-changing accident. However, there is an episode prior to that that is extremely significant, so we're going to get into that Um, but we promise the next episode is all about the accident. Let's get into today's episode. It is all about seriously almost feeling like I had won the lotto, but prior to that is nothing at all like winning the lotto. So do you remember the house that we lived in in street and court?
Speaker 1:I do remember it. We weren't there for very long, from memory no, it was, um.
Speaker 2:It was a nice house, it was large enough for all of us and it was close to your school, hence why we had moved there. Now we had been there for 12 months and at that time, victoria was going through a interest or price hike in terms of renting, so we were currently paying rent, and the rent went up to $350 a week, which is massive.
Speaker 1:I know, but thinking about that now, man, I'd love to pay 300 bucks in rent a week, wouldn't we but?
Speaker 2:you know that's. I mean, that's almost a 20% per week rent. It's around, you know, 18%. And as a single mum working for jobs like I just didn't know where I was going to get that money from. And you know I, I pleaded with the landlord and said, look, could you, could you not put it up that much? Could we negotiate? And she was very stern no, the answer was just no, flat out. So, anyway, it was coming towards the end of the school year and I was asking her, you know, could you wait until the end? And then, that way, you know, be more comfortable for us, um, we can try and find another place in the school holidays. And she was just nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. So she actually gave us an eviction notice oh my gosh, I did not know this.
Speaker 1:I just thought we were moving again, but we used to move all the time, yeah yeah, and the worst thing was at that time.
Speaker 2:so I explained to you before that my sister had been diagnosed with breast cancer and at that time she was incredibly unwell and so my day consisted of actually I'll just let you know with uni. I did explain to them that my sister was having a lot of difficulty and that she was terminal, and they allowed me to hand in all of my assignments early. As you remember, I was on scholarships, so I had to keep my grades up really high and I had to make sure I was still getting high distinctions to ensure that my scholarships were covered. But after I spoke to them and told them the situation, they allowed me to hand in my assignments early and instead of the hurdle requirement of actually attending uni, I was allowed to have time off and was that just like an exception for you, or do you know if this is something that they commonly?
Speaker 2:do. No, I think, like I got to know the lecturers really well because obviously I was an A grade student, I was going to say you're a suck up.
Speaker 1:No, I was going to say, because you were a bit older, you were like a mature age student. So I think that, like you automatically connect with older people than kids that are fresh out of high school, I guess yes, and because I was so keen to learn and I was always asking questions. So yeah, a suck up.
Speaker 2:But you know what? And and the group that I hung around in at uni as mature age students, we knew that. We knew that if we got our face in front of the lecturer and most of the time they mark the exams not always because I've since done it for- universities. I've marked exams but we knew that getting our face in front of the lecturer being well known, you know it gave us standing to ask for things like this and yeah even when it came to setting out our timetable.
Speaker 2:All the young kids, all the 18 and 19 year olds if they asked to change their timetable, they got a no.
Speaker 2:But us mature age students, and especially because we had children, you know we would say to them look, we have to work on this day and this day could we please move our tute or our lecture to a different day. And they were extremely accommodating. So shout out to that university. They were, that was Monash, down at Peninsula. They were fantastic and when, as I said, when I explained the situation of what was happening, they were very gracious. So what that meant. My day consisted of dropping you guys off at school in the morning and in the last few weeks of my sister's life I was going to the hospital. Sorry, I got goosebumps. I was going to the hospital and looking after her, hanging out with her, chatting with her, doing her hair and just stuff like that, and then I would go home, I would pick you guys up from school, get you guys organized for dinner and then I would have friends come over and look after you so that I could go back to the hospital.
Speaker 1:I did manage to take some time off my four jobs and be able to go and spend that time with her and did you feel like, at this point, even though you said that, yeah, she was terminal, did you really feel like this was the end of her life or did you? Was there still a bit of hope that she would get through this stage?
Speaker 2:no, there was no hope because she tried everything beforehand and there was just there was nothing left. It was just a waiting game, which was really just awful. But I guess, sharing that part of the story, I even shared that with the landlord and explained to her what was happening in my life and she could not have given a shit. She did not give a rat's ass and she actually ended up taking us to the tribunal because I wanted just more time. I needed to be there for my sister. I couldn't be looking for homes. Who the hell wants to look for a house in the middle of one of a life-changing moment?
Speaker 2:Like that was the furthest thing from my mind and I couldn't believe that I was at the mercy of a landlord and that was a pinnacle, life changing moment for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also because you were working in real estate at that time. Do you feel like you know you would have not?
Speaker 2:well, I'd left, I'd left real estate at that time, and it wasn't even that it was the humanity of the person Like how disgusting could you not have waited until that? There was more time? So, anyway, like I put my foot down and I just refused to move, because it really was the furthest thing from my mind having to look for another, home.
Speaker 1:So what happened with the tribunal situation? Were they like these?
Speaker 2:no, I think the real estate agent was well known to the judge and that's something that I also learned in real estate. If you are very well organized, you are, you speak eloquently and you're respectful of the judge. I know that many times when I was taking tenants to the tribunal, I got to know the judges quite well and they trusted you and they trusted your judgment. So I think that this real estate agent that was taking me to court was in that same situation and I also explained the same to them, and they only gave me an additional two weeks before having to move out.
Speaker 2:We didn't move out because I was still dealing with everything that was happening with my sister. Don't ever want to be at the mercy of a landlord ever again. Understandably, yeah, yeah. During that time, october 17 2007, uh, was the day that my sister passed and I don't know what else to say about that and it's 2024 and you can still have these emotions.
Speaker 2:Some days you can talk about it and some days you can't. And I guess that's just today that the date is not a date that I ever want to remember and I try to skip past it now. I try to not even say anything about it. I don't even want to write the date on the board being the school teacher. I don't even want to write the date on the board being his school teacher. But you know what the day before and the day after is like just a whole brand new day. Um, I guess moving. Let's move forward from there. Um, so obviously I had to move house and and this was an incredibly difficult time too, because the interest rate hikes had gone up we literally couldn't find anything, nothing close to where we lived. For your school that was becoming a. Um sorry, got a snotty nose that that was becoming an expensive area to rent. So then I had to look in different, cheaper areas.
Speaker 1:Oh, my gosh, those places are just like. I mean, I don't even know what they're like today, but we're talking about like Parking and Nari.
Speaker 2:Hatton Park.
Speaker 1:Nari Warren.
Speaker 2:Naza Waza C cram it cranny um. I looked in those areas and then I looked for schools for you. I was looking for secondary and primary schools and I was looking at the? Um, the truancy rates, because I wanted to see how often children attended schools. What's a truancy rates? Because I wanted to see how often children attended schools.
Speaker 1:What's a truancy rate?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's what I was alluding to.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:How often children attend school or don't attend school actually oh, okay.
Speaker 2:How often they are not going, because to me, that tells me that the children are either not interested in their education or they're not influenced by their parents to go to school and that education is just not important in that particular area or suburb. So there was a lot of factors and it was becoming quite difficult to try and find an affordable area in a low socioeconomic area that had a high truancy rate. No, low truancy oh, it's low, um, but students who are schools that were achieving yeah, and me becoming a school teacher. Obviously that was very important to me. So I started discussing this with my dad, mr Prince Charming, my Prince Charming and explaining to him how difficult it was. I couldn't afford anything. What am I going to do? And bless my dad's cotton socks on my 34th birthday? I remember laying in bed in the house, in street and court. He rings me to say happy birthday as he does with his dutch accent hello, happy birthday.
Speaker 2:Uh, we've been thinking so. He was remarried and he and his wife had decided at that time that, instead of waiting for something tragic to happen and he pass and leave me his superannuation, that they would give me a lump sum payment from his superannuation here and now, because I needed it more than ever at this very point in time. Do?
Speaker 2:you feel comfortable saying how much it was um, it was just under two hundred thousand dollars, yeah, um, so that was phenomenal. Like if you've ever seen somebody dance in bed, I think. Um, do you remember pretty woman, and she's really excited because she's met richard gear and she's in that hotel and he leaves her for the day and she is just dancing around in bed like kicking the sheets. And you know, that was me man. I was having a, I was having my own party in my own bed.
Speaker 1:My akin version to that is Cameron Diaz. I think in Charlie's Angels when she's like in her underwear dancing in front of the mirror and she's doing like the butt dance.
Speaker 2:Well, that was me. Oh, my goodness, that was so exciting. Went to uni, told my friends, you know, it couldn't have come at a better time and I still say to this day it was a lifesaver, a life changer. I have offered to pay it back because there have been other times in my life, moving forward, where I've had the opportunity to pay them back and they're like, no, you know, that was going to be your inheritance Anyway. So I've got some money to go shopping with and finally buy a house. So I spy this gorgeous home in Nary Warren. This was a brand new house. It was probably, when I say brand new, maybe two or three years old, and it was stunning, gorgeous um cathedral ceiling, beautiful kitchen. Do you remember the?
Speaker 1:only thing I remember and I don't know why I cannot remember the kitchen. I cannot remember anything but this and that was that they had put a spa, like in the middle of their garage or bungalow thing that they just like turned into this covered room. It was just a spa in the middle of it. Yeah, and I remember my brother and I finding out who was going to convert the garage into their bedroom so that they could have a spa in their bedroom.
Speaker 2:That's right, because it was a three bedroom house and there was four of us, so two of you were going to have to share somewhere. But the house was stunning, um, and we put in an offer but then discovered that this very funky little spa area didn't have a permit, naughty yes. So that meant that it potentially could have have to have been pulled down. So we went back and forward with the agent and it just didn't go ahead. But I have to tell you I'm glad that it didn't go ahead because the price of the house was quite out of my price range, even with the deposit from that. It meant that even though I had four jobs, I would literally still be struggling to be able to pay the mortgage.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And as much as I loved the home, I laid awake at night thinking of jobs I could do. That would make paying a mortgage easy. Like what that would make paying a mortgage easy, like what. Well, I thought about real estate because I thought, oh, could I? Could I continue to study at uni? Uh, sell houses and, you know, make a 10 grand profit or whatever it is that they seem to make or it's not.
Speaker 2:It's not, it's not some selling sunset commissions, that's for sure unfortunately, and but this is how desperate I got, like I even thought about you know, could I be an escort?
Speaker 2:what like yeah, I never knew that you were thinking about that it you know, it's one of those things that crosses your mind because sex, like escorts or sex workers yes, they, they can make some great money. But then I had to think about it realistically. The fact is I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it. It's not something that I could actually do, but I thought you know what I'm reasonably attractive. Could I please just go out for dinner with you, could?
Speaker 1:I be a companion. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely an option. Sex work doesn't necessarily translate to having sex. Being an escort is equally as much as work as sex work is real work. But I get what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know. And then I thought, oh, my moral compass in terms of, well, I'm going to be a school teacher. I really don't think I can do that right on. So it was. It came down to the fact what you're going to say something. You're looking at me sideways.
Speaker 1:I just think that like it's a construct of the outside world to be like that's not morally acceptable.
Speaker 2:Right like yes, there's nothing wrong with no no, no, no, not at all, but I think it is a. It is a construct between if you're a parent and you knew your teacher, that was their, uh, life outside of the classroom. I'm not saying that I would have an issue with it.
Speaker 1:But I'm telling you, oh, there's going to be, absolutely there's going to be. Parents would have an issue with it.
Speaker 2:But I'm telling you, oh, there's going to be absolutely there's going to be parents who have an issue with that, and so for me, you know, that's that's an important thing that I have to take into consideration. And, um, my career as a school teacher means a million times more to me than having to make money to purchase a house. So you know, but it was just, it was a fleeting thought and obviously, within you know 2.37 seconds, I decided that that was not for me. Therefore, that meant that the house is not for me.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I had to keep looking for a house, but I had to lower my standards because obviously I've come from a marriage with, you know, the house, the pool, the, the, cinema room yeah, the cinema room, the computer the computer room, the computer room, because back in the you know the late 90s, oh, having a computer, so I've, I've come from a house with that and I have to, you know, look in lower socioeconomic areas and still try and find a house that will fit us all in. So I find this really cute, super cute little house. It's a townhouse, uh, three bedrooms in boronia with a little sort of veranda yeah yep, yep, and we make that our cute little house. Do you remember that?
Speaker 1:house. I do remember that house right on a very busy road, attic, but attic style yeah, which were really cute. They were very cute and they were really big too. They were massive. Yeah, because I remember sharing with my sister and she had one end, I had the other end. I just kept, yeah, yeah, kept bumping my head because because of the gattie and you had to bend down.
Speaker 2:Remember you had to bend down to see the mirror in the bathroom upstairs because you're so tall, whereas for me I'm jumping to see myself in the mirror. My brother, beautiful brother. He built an outdoor, he extended that patio area and we bought a secondhand spa that later got stolen remember.
Speaker 1:Yes, it did get stolen. Oh, my goodness, that's yeah. And people are probably thinking how do people steal a spa? Mum was moving and the people that she hired to help move the spa just fucking took off with it. See you later yes, see you at the other end, joe, no worries, I never came back bless them.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, there's some hairy people out there so we're living.
Speaker 2:We've moved into our boronia little townhouse yes, and then things start to fall apart for me and there's there's, honestly, well, there is a reason and but you don't know when it's going to hit you. So my sister had passed and that was really, I think, at the time, because she'd gone through four years of fighting the breast cancer. When she passed I'm not going to say it was a relief, but it was four years of grief and then it stops and it catches up with you and you realize, you go to pick up the phone and you realize that they're not there. I'm in this house, I've got three children, my sister has passed. I am arguing like a dog with my ex-husband not your dad, the father of my next two children for child support, for crumbs, for bread crumbs, and that became incredibly toxic and he sent me a text message. I don't even know if I should say this. He sent me a text message that said I wish it wasn't your sister that got the cancer.
Speaker 2:I wish it was you oh my god and that sent me into a spiral of well, I couldn't. I couldn't believe it because the grief of us losing our marriage was still hurting. Yeah, even though it was, you know, a couple of years later, it was still hurting. My sister's passed, my mom has been struggling with dementia and we're losing her. We're losing her mind. She's not remembering me. My grandfather had passed, my grandmother had passed.
Speaker 2:I was working these four jobs, arguing like a dog with the ex-husband trying to pay a mortgage and living on a budget and drinking, drinking a lot of alcohol to try and suppress everything. But you know why it doesn't work. It catches up on you and the depression hit me in one go on this one night. In terms of, I have struggled with depression at times, not so much. Now I'm really good. My outlook is very, very different.
Speaker 2:But at that time, the crying and the sobbing.
Speaker 2:But I never considered not being here, because I always felt like I had a responsibility to my children to be here and to not have them go through life without me.
Speaker 2:But there was one night, and I don't know what triggered it, but I remember being on the bathroom floor thinking that I needed to leave this life because you guys would be better off without me, and I don't know why I came to that conclusion. I mean, I'm grateful that I didn't, because imagine all the shit that I would have missed out on Like making a podcast, like making a podcast. But it was actually Dana, my daughter, who rang my dad and he came over and he just he sat on the bathroom floor with me and he didn't even say anything, he just hugged me and you know, I just thought, oh my god, I can't leave my dad, like imagine what that would do to him. And so that was a really, really overwhelmingly tiresome night. And once I got some sleep, I woke up in the morning and I don't know why, but I I just wrote down things that I could change right here and right now, things that I could change in the next three months and things that I could change in the next five years.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry to make you cry, it's okay, I think it's for me. I just that, I think, also was a bit of a tumultuous time for our relationship and I didn't really not necessarily not know that this is the stuff that you were going through, but I was also a teenager trying to live my own life and not necessarily giving a shit about anyone else, and it wasn't. It wasn't that I didn't know that you were going through a tough time, I just didn't know this specific night. I don't know whether or not I was still living in the house at the time or not, but yeah, I just don't remember or recall you ever talking about this night in particular and I think perhaps no, I remember you not being there.
Speaker 2:So I think if that was when our relationship was a bit shitty in terms of, yeah, you're a shitty teenager, but I was, also a shitty mum, just like and I've said this to you before I was just.
Speaker 2:You were my first born. I'm trying to work out how to be a mum, but then I'm trying to work out how to be a single mum. And, yeah, that probably added to the depression, um, but I took, I wrote down all the things that I didn't like and what made me feel so shitty at that point in time and how I could change it, and I think sometimes we just want to wake up the next day and go. My life has changed. Everything is good, yeah, but that's not how it works and you have to take one step, one foot in front of the other and make the changes and just keep moving forward on those particular changes.
Speaker 2:And you know, I remember one of those things was about my career. I didn't't have a steady job, I didn't have a career, and but I already knew I was in that process of changing that because I was at uni and so for me that was in my three year change column, that I knew. You know what, in three years time I'm going to get there. So stop worrying about that shit. Right, that I can mark off. Yeah, you know, it was other things. I have a house. I have a roof over my head. Yes, the mortgage is difficult, but once I find that job, once I find that permanent teaching job, that's going to become easier. So I have to. I have to live in that shit for 12 more months and that's all it was. It wasn't as overwhelming as I had created in my mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that's what we do. That's what I was gonna say. We do that. I think that a lot of people catastrophize scenarios in their head because it's a natural response. Right like our, our hardwired brain is always looking out for signs of danger, things that are going to hurt and harm us, and a lot of the time people don't realize that a lot of those things are now even non-existent. We're not trying to run away from tigers and lions and bears, oh my but a lot of it is also in our head as well, because we're just so conditioned to look out for for the danger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, danger, yeah, yep. And once you put things down on paper, it's not so catastrophic. No, you're right. Or, if you know, if you do have something that is catastrophic, it's there in front of you, right? How do I go about changing this? How do I fix this? What do I do that moment in time? I've I have looked back on that time a lot in the last, however many years and I'm so grateful that I was only in that dark black hole, that black dog, for that really small moment in time. And for people who say you know, how could you possibly leave your children? How do people you know do this to themselves? The fact is, there's no answer because, you know, do this to themselves. The fact is, there's no answer because you have. You believe that that's the right thing, you believe that that's the best thing for everybody, and I'm glad for me that it was a very brief moment in time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have. I definitely agree with that. I think that there's no way of being able to understand what somebody else is going through in an emotional sense. And yeah, when people say, you know, doing that to yourself is selfish, I disagree because they're not seeing it like that at all.
Speaker 2:No, it's incredibly.
Speaker 1:Not selfish, because you believe that everyone will be better off. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So it's not a selfish thing. The only thing that I will consistently say is that life is not better without you. It truly isn't so. That gift giving from my dad has that changed my life? From my dad has that that changed my life? It gave us a roof over our head and it made me realize that I will always work towards not being at the mercy of a landlord.
Speaker 1:And I just wanted to talk about the fact that, even though you have been given this massive gift financially that has provided us with a roof over our head, you still recognize that you're not in the best place mentally and something needs to change absolutely. So I know that that episode may have been a little bit difficult for some people to listen to. I think any loss and any form of grief is a beautiful thing that needs to be felt and needs to be wholeheartedly expressed. But we don't necessarily see it like that at that point in time, especially when there's so much other stuff that's happening around us and we feel like it's happening to us and not necessarily for us. As mentioned, we are going into the next accident episode, which is also a bit full on, so we will see you guys then.
Speaker 2:Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Raising Rich rich. If any of today's episode has resonated with you, we'd love for you to share it with another mama.
Speaker 1:It really helps us to connect with the right women and if you would like to share your story, you can connect with us on facebook, instagram or tiktok just search for richrippleeffect is it time for a wine yet?
Speaker 2:oh mom, oh what.