Julia Newbould on keeping on top of your finances

Rachel Smith: Hello and welcome to The Content Byte, a podcast for freelancers who use their words to make money. I’m Rachel Smith, a freelance journalist, copywriter, and content producer. I’m also the founder of Rachel’s List, a jobs board and community for Australian writers and other creatives. 

Lynne Testoni: I’m Lynne Testoni! I’m a journalist and content writer as well. Rachel and I are your weekly co-hosts, and every week we bring you all kinds of tips, tricks, and some fabulous guests to help you make the most of your freelance business.

This week we are tackling a topic that all freelancers need to be on top of it, even though I know there’s a few out there who actively avoid it. 

Rachel: Talking about finances, money. I feel like I’ve come late to the party in many respects with my own money management. So, I’m really interested to have Julia Newbould on the podcast this week. 

Lynne: She’s all about helping people understand their finances, and I think that’s really important because it helps you make better choices if you understand what’s happening. 

Tell us a little bit about Julia before we start our conversation.

Rachel: Julia Newbould is an editor, journalist, and author with over 20 years’ experience writing for leading financial consumer and trade publications.

She was editor of industry publication Super Review and then Independent Financial Advisors (IFA), and she headed Morningstar Media between 2000 to 2010 before joining BT Financial Group. While at BT, Julia co-founded and was head of the Stella Network, an inclusive female network formed to increase the number of females working as financial advisors.

In 2019, Julia returned to journalism as managing editor of Money Magazine and joined Connexus Financial as managing editor in early 2022 before taking up her current role, managing communications for the Financial Advice Association of Australia. In 2020, she co-authored The Joy of Money with Kate McCallum to help women better understand how to manage their finances.

Welcome Julia. You are definitely someone we need on the podcast! 

Julia, I love that you are helping women understand their finances. 

Julia Newbould: I think it’s really for everyone. Everyone should understand their finances. I think as women we sort of downplay what we know, and we don’t engage so much because we are a bit shy of money. We think we don’t understand and so when Kate and I wrote the book, it was mainly focusing on the language that women understand and respond to, rather than any of the concepts. We are smart, we manage money all the time, we make financial decisions, we just don’t think of them as that. 

We just wanted to talk about things that women think about, like sending kids to school, managing the household or saving for a holiday or futures rather than talking about, you’ve got a discrete pot of money, and we are looking to make interest on that. 

Rachel: You have essentially made money your career. Were you always really into that sort of thing and into saving and budgeting and all of that as a kid?

Julia: It is funny when you look back on it, a little bit and I think this also drives me. I think if you’re in a household where it’s something that you talk about and you understand and you learn the basic lessons, not even financial, but just a delayed gratification, it helps in the later years. 

I was telling someone the other day that when I was a kid, I used to get a dollar a week, pocket money and my dad said to me one year, if I don’t give you a dollar a week, I’ll give you a hundred dollars at the end of the year. How about it? I thought, well, yes, that sounds very good, I’ll find money somewhere else. That got me thinking about it, and I think I’ve always been a little bit thinking about money and I like maths, and I like the patterns.

Interesting that I find myself in journalism. 

Lynne: It is interesting because your bio mentioned that you worked across both journalism and marketing comms. How has that evolved? It seems like you’ve gone to and fro a bit. 

Julia: A little bit. I did economics at uni and when I went in, I wanted to come out and be a trader.

I loved the stock market and that kind of thing, but when I came out it was bad economic times, and I also didn’t really fancy working with the people I’d been studying with. What I really wanted to get to do at that point was PR and I’d done work experience at the stock exchange and the PR function was something I found interesting.

But no one would give me a job unless I had writing experience. So that’s what led me to go to the local paper, get some journalistic background, and then I loved it. We’re all nosy. Right? 

Lynne: Yes, exactly. 

Rachel: What are some of the mistakes that you see freelancers or journalists making with money? I know for me it was really starting super too late. 

I still remember as a teenager, Dad saying, if you put some money in your super account, I’ll match it. I’ll put a thousand in and then he said, but you have to consistently do that, and I didn’t. When you become a freelancer, you don’t have to do it. I put all my money into property, but now when I hit my forties, I thought, I really need to think about this. 

Julia: That’s something that as freelancers we do, but also as women, we put ourselves last. I think it’s just a matter of twisting things. 

One of the things that I did as a freelancer, and I became a freelancer when I’d already been in this industry for a bit. I was focused on it anyway, but it was that cash flow, having three bank accounts set up, one for the income to come into, one to put tax aside, and then something for super. I remember not having cash flow at the end of the year when it came time to contribute to super.

I thought, I’ve got nothing, but I can’t let this year go by without getting this tax deduction as well as contributing for my future. I remember borrowing it from one of my cousins one year and saying, I need five grand, can I just borrow it for a couple of months or until I get my next check, and I’ll pay you back. I realise people don’t do that. because you’re not thinking of it. It’s not top of mind. 

You’ve got to think of yourself and of your future and it’s always been in my mind, whatever I’m earning, try and keep some aside anyway to build up that emergency fund.

To me, money’s all about choices. So, the more you have in your emergency fund, the more you can go without taking a job you didn’t really want to do, or moving house or whatever it is.

Lynne: Not working for a client, you don’t want to. 

Rachel: Don’t they say you’re meant to have six months in your emergency fund, like your buffer?

Julia: Three to six months and to be honest, I only had my first emergency fund after my first redundancy. I thought, I’m going to make this work for me. I am going to put it aside and try not to touch it until I really need it. And so as soon as I was made redundant, I kept that aside and I got other work quickly so that I wouldn’t have to eat into it.

When I built it up again, I could then invest that money and do something with it. But I treated that as something special, like a gift that you don’t always get. You earned it, but if you have to use it, that’s a different story. 

Rachel: Tell us a bit about the Stella Networks. I’d love to hear how you co-founded that and what kind of results you got from bringing more women into what is a male dominated space? I mean, the only financial planners I know are men.

Julia: This was formed when I was at BT. There were a few different dealer groups of advisors, and it was a minority of women. They had a lot of regional offices, and so when they had national conferences and everyone got together, they really liked that idea of being able to network. We were going to put something together so all the women in the network could get together on a more regular basis.

But when they talked about things that were issues, like starting families, hiring staff, working flexibly, I thought it’s not just for that business, it’s across the industry there. We opened it up and made it across the industry, and it was a thought leadership project rather than a financially beneficial one.

The idea is to have more women offering advice that makes it more comfortable for women to seek advice. I think what’s driven me over the last five years or so is that thought of the growth of women to homelessness after 50 and how can we stop that and what can we do about it?

Unfortunately, it’s too late when women are in their fifties to start tackling the problem. The idea for me is to get more women coming to get advice, to be in comfortable environments where there’s a connection. Because to see an advisor, it’s a lifelong experience. Whether you see them every year, you’re telling them all your secrets, all your hopes and dreams for the future, what your family situation is, and it’s a big thing. If you don’t connect with someone or they’re not understanding or hearing what you say, then it’s a bit of a waste. 

Not all women connect with women but the more diversity we have in the space, the better it is for everybody. Even if that is an advisor sees you and you don’t have a connection, the fact that they could maybe refer you to someone else and that comes back to them at some point.

The bad news is however, that it hasn’t really moved the dial much because a few years after it was formed, it started to move the dial a little bit. It was around 20 to 21 percent female. It went to about 24, and then there was the Royal Commission and so on. A lot of women left the industry at that time because they were new arrivals to the industry. They didn’t have big books; they weren’t able to start businesses of their own. They weren’t poached by people because they weren’t bringing a lot of money with them. 

We kind of went backwards a bit and are now hovering around 22% again. There are issues that even the financial association, the Financial Advice Association of Australia (FAAA) are doing, trying to make it easier for women and listening to what makes it difficult for women to be in financial planning and there’s a few structural issues that need to be looked at. 

Rachel: Funnily enough, I met a journalist who wants to become a financial planner. Are you still working with the Stella Network? 

Julia: The Stella Network is now my own and I’m building it up with a website to start with. Absolutely refer her to me, that would be great. I’d love to meet her!

Rachel: I will connect you!

Julia: It’s a similar job in a way because it’s people who are interested in people, and that’s what advisors are doing. You’re finding out what is it that makes you tick, what do you want for the future, what’s important to you in your life, and it’s quite fascinating.

Rachel: They’re helping you map out a path forward financially for yourself that you perhaps can’t see yourself. 

Lynne: I do think so much of financial management is about confidence, and it does give you a lot more freedom for choices and certainly your point about women over 55 experiencing homelessness, it really resonates with me because I’m in my sixties and so many of my peers have got to my age. I do see some real issues with some of my colleagues and peers who have not planned, and I’ve certainly planned a lot. I own my own house and things. 

I think women, certainly older women who have a real fear about looking after their own finances. I think some people, particularly those who may gone through some sort of relationship breakdown, they’ve often delegated some of those financial decisions to their husband or partner.

Julia: Well, in most relationships, one person’s looking after it. I’ve got friends and family who their husbands look after all their financials. I’m single, but it freaks me out anyway. Like I know, like, how are we doing? How are we tracking? 

Even if you’re in relationships, you want to know, well, can we afford that holiday at the end of the year? Can I take time out? Can we move? What should we do next? When can we retire? 

Lynne: It’s so important. 

Rachel: You want to be across it, don’t you? Even if one person is the one responsible for paying the bills. When you’re freelance, you have to be across your own earnings and your own expense.

Lynne: I think there’s a terrible fear with some people who would call themselves creatives that by getting on top of their finances, it’s a bit too nerdy or not creative enough and there’s a real fear of numbers and there’s a real fear of that, which is something it actually does give you creative freedom, understanding of finances.

Julia: I think you’re totally right on that. I think people do get a bit blindfolded. You start talking money and they immediately think, figures, no, I don’t understand it. I’m a creative, I can’t. You know that’s what my partner’s like, and I think it’s damaging. You have to know. 

Lynne: Yeah, you definitely do. 

Julia: You know, financial planners, on one hand, you’re looking after helping people get to a position where they can afford to do things, but then they’re looking after people who are choosing not to retire because they don’t think they have enough money. And once they crunch the numbers for them, they’re like, well, you could retire tomorrow if you want to. What a relief that would be for people, you know. 

Rachel Smith: No one is ever going to say that to me, Julia. Not with the state of my super, but it’s getting there. I’m working on it. 

Julia: If you put money into property, that’s also fantastic. That’s more important really, because if you’re going to get the pension at some point and you don’t have your own property, I can’t imagine how people live. That’s really tough. 

Rachel: It was a good decision, I suppose. 

Lynne: I’d love to hear about your work with Intercoms, with the Financial Advice Association of Australia. What does that role involve? 

Julia: I write the comms for the financial advisors themselves. What’s new, what they have to think about and what they might want to talk to clients about.

I also write comms for anyone who was thinking about investing, and I try and segment it into different age groups or different lifestyle stages and so on. I think that’s where you seek advice. You might not want to see an advisor every year. There’s not something that they can do for you every year. 

If you’re starting a family or thinking of starting a family, there’s things to consider. Some of the issues at the moment are about financial abuse, scams, even topics like IVF. If you are thinking of starting a family and you might need reproductive health, how are you going to afford that? Have you looked at all the considerations that need to be made? There’s a lot and every day there’s something. 

At the moment with the world the way it is, if you’ve got money invested, everybody’s worried. What will I do? What will I take money out? Will I move it? Can I retire now? Do I put my retirement off? There are always things that people are interested in. 

Funnily enough, when Kate and I wrote our book, it was to launch in March 2020. We thought, well, that’s a disaster, just as the pandemic fit in. But actually, everybody was focused on money at that point, and I think in a way it made people so much more aware of what they had. 

We wrote the book aimed at people over 40 at that time because that’s where we were thinking. Talking to our friends, this is the time where people are thinking, can I change jobs? Can I work less? Can I move out of the city? Can I leave my partner? 

It’s a time of choice where you’re trying to make a big decision and then you start thinking, can I afford to? Where’s my money? Can I afford to do these? And that’s exactly what happened during the pandemic. People started thinking, can I afford this? What happens if I lose my job? What have I got? What am I working on? 

Rachel: Tell us a bit more about the book. What does it cover and who’s it for? 

Julia: Well, it’s for everyone but it’s written more for that female mindset of being able to have choice. We don’t use jargon because I think it’s a bit bullshitty and created to make people think that they should earn more than other people.

It covers everything like super, insurance, starting out, ways to save, things that you should think about with your money and it’s about values as well. What do you value to spend your money on and conscious spending. 

We don’t tell people what they should do. If you love buying shoes, we are never going to say, don’t buy shoes. We’re going to say, well, great, that’s what you love to do, make sure that you can afford to do that. Everything you spend comes at a cost to something that you then can’t spend money on. For me, I’m not going to give up coffees in the morning because that’s too valuable to me. But there’s other things that aren’t so important that I would give up. 

It’s about being conscious with your money and just knowing where it all is at any time and what needs to change and what doesn’t. 

Rachel: I love that because I think that budgeting is such an eye-opening experience really, isn’t it? You can keep your head in the sand about all the things that you’re spending money on and almost do it very mindlessly. 

We all need to be more mindful. 

Julia: It definitely gives me a buzz and I know that I do it just for that feelgood factor. Sometimes I can scroll in bed and just put things in the basket and then turn it off, the purchase and that’s quite comforting as well.

But you’ve got to know what you are earning and what that means. And you’ve got to know how you can save money. I think super is difficult and starting early is fantastic, but I didn’t, it’s so unattractive. Thinking of all the things that can happen in a 40-year period that you might want that money for, it’s tough. As long as you’re doing something else, and that’s a decision. That’s okay too. 

Rachel: We are often talking on the podcast about it, because we have, so many of our audience members who are journalists who are moving into other areas. We talk a lot about using your transferable skills to leapfrog into new areas or new niches. And you seem to have done that brilliantly with your career. 

Do you think journalists in particular are really skilled but don’t realise potentially what areas they can step into? 

Julia: Yes, and I think particularly female journalists. I think we always downplay our skills, but we hear a lot about AI can do all this stuff, but really it can’t. You still need someone to program it to properly to get what you want. I think there are lots of skills that we have, and communicating is always a big one. There’s a lot of boring jobs that we can do that pay a lot. It depends on what you want. To cut up the skills that you can speak, you can write. Communicating is a forever skill, and every industry needs it, whether you’re doing it to your workforce, whether you’re doing it externally. 

Lynne: It is interesting because when I was an editor, I obviously managed money and big budgets and things, but I didn’t know all the terminology and I wasn’t as confident, and I went back to uni and did an MBA and I think that there were a few things that made a big difference. 

One is that I don’t know that I did learn a lot, but what it gave me more was confidence. I realised that I knew more than I knew. The other thing I have to say, as a journalist, maybe even as a woman sitting in the room at an executive MBA, I sat in this room and I worked out that I managed a bigger budget, more people, and I was paid the least of anyone in the room. 

I thought, this is time and that’s when I left publishing because, and also, I realised that other people didn’t have the skills I did. You’re talking about comms and writing, because some of these people were being paid two or three times what I was being paid and couldn’t actually string sentences together on paper.

That’s changed my life, and it’s certainly improved my financial literacy, even though I knew this stuff, I realised how much I knew and that’s a big difference. 

Julia: I think similarly what helped me in the first place was because I did the economics degree, I knew the jargon. I had that confidence that I knew that they didn’t know more. 

Lynne: They just knew the words! 

Julia: Another story that I heard this week was a friend said she left her job where she wasn’t getting a pay rise. She was more in the sales side, and they employed someone else, a man for 50 grand more the next week. You see the stories all the time. 

Lynne: You seem to do quite a bit of presenting, obviously that’s on the back of the book and everything. How does it all work? A real portfolio career you’ve got going there, Julia?

Julia: Yes and no. I never really thought of it like that. I guess this is an awful thing, I’ve never really had a career plan. When people say what are you going to do next, I have no idea. As long as it’s fun and it pays well and I don’t do anything that’s against my values, I think that’s okay.

The house is virtually paid off and it’s a bit of freedom, being able to pick and choose. I’ve come to the stage where I think, I’m not ever going to be rich and that’s a little bit upsetting, but I’m also not going to be tied to a job I hate and that to me is a great. 

I had an awful job in my first job, and I think that really propelled me to get financially independent as soon as possible so that I never had to go through that again. 

Lynne: It’s all about freedom really, isn’t it? 

Julia: Freedom and choice. 

Rachel: I think freelancing gives you a lot of that. Once you get to a point where your cash flow is really steady and you’ve got regular clients and then you’re plugging the gaps with other clients, you really can pick and choose who you want to work with and your hours too. And that’s enormous freedom. That’s why we love it, isn’t it?

Lynne: One of the many reasons. Yes! And I have to say, to be positive about freelancing too, and I say this to people, I earn 50% more as a freelancer than I did when I worked in publishing and in-house because I can pick who I work for.

Rachel: You can go after big fish if you want.

Lynne: Well, to be honest, I wasn’t being earning a lot, even as a magazine editor. 

Julia: How do you work it out if you want to take a holiday? Are you putting money aside for holidays at all times and how do you structure it like that? 

Lynne: I set up a company structure and I pay myself a regular salary. I think that profit first thing has been good for me and making and putting money aside for tax. But I think some of that stuff, and I’m sure Rachel would agree, it comes the longer you’re in it, you only have one bad tax year and go, okay, I’ve worked this out now.

I think we’ve all made mistakes early in freelancing, and part of the reason for this podcast is to hopefully, have other people not make some of those mistakes that we made. 

Rachel: I had one bad tax year where I didn’t put enough away and I would never, ever made that mistake again and I’ve been freelancing for over 20 years, isn’t it? It’s well over 20 years, but I put money aside. Painful as it is, for tax, for super, for an emergency fund and then we try to put some in a travel fund as well. It’s tricky, isn’t it? There isn’t much left when you’re taking everything out. 

Julia: I get horror stories of people who been working as consultants and so on, and not put money aside for tax. And then ended up with enormous tax bills that just kept rolling over that they couldn’t pay until they had security. You’ve got to face those issues pretty quickly.

Lynne: I’ve also heard quite a few writers that I know who haven’t done their tax for six or seven years. 

Rachel: That always, it strikes fear into my heart!

Lynne: That happens and it’s not as uncommon as you’d think, and then it gets worse because they get the fear of it. They don’t want to face it, and it gets worse, and then that’s a nightmare.

Rachel: It’s interesting. I also juggle two businesses, a solopreneur freelancing business and also Rachel’s List, which is an actual business, a company. They’re completely separate and I have bookkeeper and accountant and helping me with all of the stuff that I really don’t want to look at or do. I probably should be across it more. I’m across it in the sense that I get sent everything and I look at it and then approve it, and then they go and do it for me. 

Julia: My accountants are so valuable. When I first started freelancing, around 2000, I remember just juggling everything in my head and one day my mum came over and she said, how do you know what you’re doing? I said, I know I’ve got this job, and I’ve got that job. She said, well, are you waiting for anyone to pay you? And I went, oh yeah. She goes, do you not have this written down anywhere? And I said, oh no. She just said, well, I’m going to write you a ledger right now and you can just fill it out. This was so basic and the freedom it gave me that it was not in your head. I was actually sleeping better now. 

Rachel: It’s essential. I’ve got an actual project software that I use to write everything down, but also in Rounded, this is my little motivational tip for the week. When I get a story, even if I haven’t finished it or even started it, I will create the invoice in Rounded, because I know that money’s coming if I just get off my ass and do it.

Lynne: When people ask me the biggest tip, I usually say get some financial accounting software because it just helps take that out of your head. As you say, Julia puts it somewhere safe so you can actually just spend your time doing the work. 

Julia: I guess in the day when I did it, they didn’t really have the software, so I was very much, paper, books and actually when I first bought my house, I had those massive computer sheets, and I would work out if I paid this much back each month, what would it mean? It meant that I was never going to pay the principal ever. And this was when it was maybe 14% interest rates. I was like, well, I’m going to have to put my whole cadet wage into this house and get some more jobs to pay for living. 

I did that for 18 months and that’s what set me up. That has given me freedom now, but I could never do that again. It was too much of a sacrifice. 

Lynne: We’ve talked a lot about how writers are intimidated by finances and numbers. How do you find that they can get beyond this? How does somebody make that step tomorrow? We’re coming up to the beginning of a new financial year. What’s the sort of things should you put in place from the 1st of July?

Julia: In way it’s not about the numbers. You shouldn’t really be thinking about it. In numbers and that it’s some sort of mathematical formula. It’s just very basic, if you set up that bucket system, which most financial writers tell you about, however they name it. Have your different accounts for different things, I think that’s really important. 

Work out at the beginning of the year what you’re working towards, and whether that’s to pay down the mortgage or whether it’s to buy a new car or whatever it is. Work out what your big goal is, and you’ve got a bucket for that. Figure out how you are you going to get there just for the year. Break it down into small manageable parcels and you’ve got your tax section and your super. Don’t forget the super and don’t leave it to the last minute because sometimes it’s a bit fiddly to get it into your super fund.

Make sure you leave enough time to do that. I think if you bucket it, it’s quiet fun and if you can have number of accounts with your bank accounts, you can name them all something separate. If you think about it that way, it’s the best way and as a freelancer, you’ve got to have an idea of what you need to earn and somehow, graphically design how you are going to reach that total each month.

Lynne: I think that’s really important because that’s a real mindset change for freelancers. We hear a lot of freelancers ask what they should charge rather than what they should earn, and that’s starting from what you need to earn to pay your mortgage, live. You can take that back to an hourly rate, even if it’s just your own internal rate. That’s a big mind shift, isn’t it?

Julia: I honestly hate hourly rates. I think it penalises people who are quick and experienced and so on. I find it a tough one. 

Rachel: I just want to go back to what you said about how it can be fiddly, getting your super into the fund. I was so excited when my fund brought in digital forms so that you could just fill them in, click go, transfer the money, and it was done instead of having to print it out, fill it in, put it in the post, et cetera, et cetera. That only happened this year, which just is nuts. 

Julia: Oh no, that’s good. Sometimes you just want to know how to do it. If you need to make the phone calls and you can’t get in touch with people. You can find out a lot online, but sometimes you want to know, can I put in a bit extra this year and you need to speak to a person. That’s what I found a bit off putting sometimes. 

Rachel: We learned a lot from freelancers. We’re often around them. We do co-working with them, and I was actually talking to someone this week about a business owner she knew who’d saved up six months’ worth of expenses in a business account. A bit like the emergency fund, but the business account and she would pay herself the same salary out of that nest egg every month, even if she had a really slow month, one month, or more. I just thought that sounded amazing, which is something that I want to work towards. Is that a strategy we should be working towards, treating the business account a bit like another emergency fund?

Julia: That’s quite a good thing. My first thought on that was I’d feel a bit guilty if I knew I didn’t earn anything that month. You can even out what you’re earning. It’s all in the mind and what suits you, what works best for you. I used to always have a running total thinking, this has been a slow week, but I know that last week was good and next week’s good, so the month will be okay.

I guess you are massaging that over a whole year, and you’ll know it’s going to be fine over the year, then I can take that out. Sure, that’s a good idea and I guess what you have to do when you’re budgeting for your holiday as well, figure out, I’ve worked for 11 months or whatever it is, but I’m going to take that out over 12 months if that’s how you do it. 

Lynne: It is a bit tricky as a freelancer because there is that feast and famine cycle sometimes, especially if you do more project-based work. You might do a website rework or a big article that pays quite a bit. But then maybe not for a while or I do tend to find that I get big lumps of cash at the end of the month and then I might have three weeks where I get no money in. And that’s just payment cycles. How do you manage that? 

Julia: I think you’ve got to work out how you are going to manage the payment cycle. How you think best. I find that if you do it weekly, it can look a bit sad. For me, monthly works quite well. Annually is scary, especially when you’re trying to figure out your tax obligations and so on. 

I guess it’s how you feel, but I used to make sure I did a BAS statement, even if I wasn’t earning the amount, just because it was a smaller amount that I would be obligated to pay, and I could mentally deal with that. Having a whole year go by and then suddenly realise you owed a larger amount.

Rachel: Absolutely! This is a tricky one because I think the state of the world right now, we’re coming up to an election, lots of clients it feels like, are pressing pause on spending money and hiring freelancers. Raising prices is something we all have to do and probably should do once a year. What would be your advice to freelancers in doing that, especially in the position that we’re all in right now.

Julia: I think if you have to do it, you have to do it. I think often when these sorts of decisions come up, I think, what would a man do? Because I think women, we are always going, I don’t know, I’m a bit uncomfortable doing this. Ask a man what they would do and how they would do it. The stats are that we don’t get pay rises in jobs because we don’t ask for them and it’s a similar situation. I think we feel that guilt and so we want to explain it. Don’t explain, let’s go, the bills have gone up, this is what you’re now paying, increased costs by 5%, 10%, whatever it is. I think it’s got to be a bit stronger on it. And then, have faith that your clients know that you do good work and they’re going to absorb what they can.

Lynne: Every year I just increase my prices just a little bit, a small percentage and then it’s never been where I haven’t explained. I learned that back to, without harping on my MBA, being the only woman in the cohort, that’s what all the rest of the cohort who are all men, they did that, and they had no compunction about it. I learned from them. I certainly will get more pushback from them, but than they would. But still, I think it’s worth learning from them. 

Julia:  I think there’s a value in women having male mentors for that reason. We are all sympathetic because we understand what we all go through. But to have that really different point of view is valuable. 

Lynne: I wanted to talk a little bit about AI because I’d like to hear how financial reporting AI. We’ve talked a lot about how it impacts our work, but there seems to be a lot of AI going into financial reporting and into the financial markets. Are you finding that and or do you think that always that human element in term in terms of evaluating assessment is always important as well? 

Julia: I think you’ve always got to evaluate it on top. I think AI isn’t perfect. I recently was in New Zealand for a financial planning conference and there were some great talks on AI and how financial planners can put it into their business.

A lot of it was in the marketing side of it, but you still have to have something there for AI to pick up on. You’ve still got to be on top of things. The idea really was to do the more basic roles, yes use AI and it’s really effective in doing a lot of things, but the more complex issues or articles, you still need the input.

Lynne: Tell us about a typical week for you. It sounds like it’s lots of different things. 

Julia: A typical week, I do three days in at the FAAA and this morning I started with an election breakfast with Allegra Spender with financial planners talking about, the association and what they wanted from the next government and her talking about what policies she was pushing on. Here I am talking to you today and then I’m talking to a couple of new advisors on what they expect out of the profession and so on and getting their stories to encourage more people. 

There are not enough financial planners, so if journalists are looking to transition careers, it is a good career. What we are finding, and again, is one of the issues that we are talking to the government about is at the moment, the educational standards are too prescriptive. We are wanting them to make it a bit more general so it’s easier to transition. If you’ve already got a degree that you don’t have to do as many subjects because it’s both expensive and time consuming, which also is difficult for women. 

If you’re taking out the childbearing ages, it makes a really tough career, but most women, and you would understand this, that our financial planners and have been for long term, they run their own businesses because they can be more flexible with the hours. They’re all turning business away. It’s a busy area at the moment. 

Rachel: Oh, that’s good to hear. We love to ask all our guests about their favourite tech tools, things they would be lost without. What are yours? Apart from Excel, which I’m guessing is maybe your favourite?

Julia: I just love LinkedIn. I think I’m on LinkedIn all the time because I want to know what everybody’s doing, and I just find it so helpful that everybody updates their own details. In the olden days we had to have your little black book and find out where everyone was and change of numbers. I love LinkedIn, that’s the thing I use the most. 

Lynne: We like it too. Connect with all my clients on LinkedIn and inevitably they move. The longer you’re in business, there’s more fluidity and then means you keep in touch without actually stalking them.

Thank you so much for such a great chat, Julia. Tell us where our audience can find you, find you on LinkedIn and maybe buy your book? 

Julia: My book’s still available I think through Amazon and a few other places, and you can also contact me through the Stella Network, which is just julia@thestellanetwork.com. I’d love to hear from people and please connect.

Rachel: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Julia. That brings us to the end of the show this week, but if you like the show, leave us a rating and review where you find your podcasts. 

Lynne: We’ll have all the show notes and how to connect with Julia on your platform.

Rachel: See you everybody. Bye. Thanks so much!

---

Credits:

Connect with Julia via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-newbould-44454712/ 

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com 

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au 

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au 

If you have questions you’d like us to answer in our next Q&A episode, just send them here.

Thanks (as always) to our sponsors Rounded (www.rounded.com.au), an easy invoicing and accounting solution that helps freelancers run their businesses with confidence. Looking to take advantage of the discount for Rachel’s List Gold Members? Email us at: hello@rachelslist.com.au for the details.

Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co