Money advice for your 20-year-old self
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What financial advice would Canna give her 20‑year‑old self?
Welcome to How Do They Afford That, the podcast that peaks into the financial lives of everyday Australians. I'm Michael Thompson. I'm an author and the co-host of the business news podcast Fear and Greed. As always, I'm with Kanna Campbell, financial planner and founder of the financial literacy platform Sugar Mama TV, and my co-author on our new book, 12 Months to Financial Freedom, which is out in Shops everywhere at this very moment. Hello Canna.
Hello, how
are you? I I'm actually quite looking forward to today's episode because it's about looking back. I know we look to the future a lot on this show, but this one's about looking back. If you could sit down with your twenty-year-old self for Twenty minutes.
Yeah.
All right. What financial advice would you give them? And not the obvious stuff necessarily. I I wanna know the the the kind of the lessons that took years to learn and you're only just aware of it now, and you would go back in your time machine and tell twenty year old Canner Give them a bit of a advanced warning of what's to come. But first of all I need you to paint the picture for me. Mm-hmm. What was twenty year old Canner like? I I'm I don't know why I'm I'm picturing dreadlocks.
You know what, I was actually really motivated when I was in my twenties. So I struggled at school, I struggled at university. But I y I had my financial aha moment, I think when I was around sort of eighteen, nineteen. So I that's when I started investing. What was that? Do you not know the story of how I got started?
I have a vague recollection of you telling me a story about working somewhere and really good tips.
Yes. Yes. So I made my first investment, I think eighteen or nineteen. The Aha moment was getting my first dividend, which came through back in the old days as a check. And I had no idea what it was. I just saw this piece of paper with a couple of digits on it. And I didn't understand even what to do with it. It wasn't until my father said, Well, you've got to take it to the bank and deposit it. You had to fill out a little paper slip and take it to the counter and deposit it. And didn't even understand what you would do with it. And I actually had this feeling of like worthlessness. Going, well, I didn't I that's not my money. I can't take that. I didn't do anything to earn it. But that was my first insight into passive income.
But already that's remarkably disciplined of you, the fact that you were eighteen and you had already started investing as well. And that that you were making money in a bar and and tips and that you were actually putting that towards investing in the first place. It's pretty impressive.
Well, I think for me that motivation is very much about reducing stress. Like I think our worlds are quite stressful and infiltrates into so many other parts of your life. So if you can just
How did Canna’s first investment and dividend check shape her view of passive income?
Nip that in the but BUD.
BUD. B U D Bud. This is a long term project working on you with this one.
You've got your you know, you've got one less stress on your shoulders to ever have to worry about.
Okay. So from this we can generally accept that twenty year old Canna was abnormally financially savvy by the sound of it, compared to most other twenty year olds. What would be the first thing then that you would tell? This Already investing twenty year old.
Focus on the passive income. Grow the passive income. Because this is actually where I sort of lost my way a little bit.
Okay.
There was a period of time where I became and I think this was very much ego driven, but I became obsessed with the capital growth, the value of the portfolio, and I started to forget about the importance of passive income. And I I lost my way, I got distracted, I deviated for a little bit. And I think back and look back and think if I had just stuck to that strategy that I started at age eighteen I would I uh could confidently say I would be completely financially independent because I would have just focused on growing up that passive income. Now, having said that, you know, some I deviated for other things that also helped as well in my financial journey.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What financial advice would Canna give her 20‑year‑old self?
0:01–2:46
2
How did Canna’s first investment and dividend check shape her view of passive income?
2:46–11:21
3
Why does Canna say focusing on passive‑income growth is more important than capital‑gain chasing?
11:21–15:34
4
What mistake does Canna wish she could avoid in her twenties?
15:34–20:33