Buying a house with someone you've only known three weeks is not the usual investing advice.

Sometimes the path from being bad with money to becoming a confident investor is a little unconventional.

Today's guest, perfect example of that.

Now, these days, Sophie Horwright is the co founder of the Curve, a platform helping thousands of women learn about money and investing.

But like many of us, she has had to learn a few lessons the hard way.

Memorably, she once invested so much in the share market that she ended up investing herself broke, without even having the money to pay for a bus ticket.

And more recently, she took the leap into property investment with someone she'd only known for three weeks.

I also had known this person for three weeks when we decided to do this.

So, like, I am crazy.

Okay, so, all right.

Yeah, more context, more context.

The truth is, a lot of people who end up good with money don't start out that way.

They experiment, make mistakes, and figure things out as they go.

Everybody listening.

Do not do this.

That's been a theme I had to really F up many times before, or I started to put better practices in place to avoid that constant anxiety.

To take those lessons and then build a business around it alongside a friend, well, that's the sort of thing I love to see.

It does make me pause, though, the idea of going into business with a friend.

Now there's another financial decision that people will often warn you to avoid.

So does it work?

Having worked with someone before, you go into business with them, and a really good starting point, like, because it's always going to be difficult being in business with someone like.

And I think for anyone that doesn't know that it's because you've never experienced it.

Well, welcome to Making Sense.

It's the podcast for people who want financial freedom without giving up their coffee.

I'm Francis Cook, a financial journalist and fellow financial freedom seeker who makes money simple for you.

Today we're talking about how Sophie moved from chaotic money moments to confident investor.

And why sometimes that unconventional path can be the one that's just perfect for you.

This episode of Making Sense is supported by Odoo, the affordable way to get your business working Smarter.

Go to odoo.com that's od.com for more.

Welcome to the podcast, Sophie.

We have been circling around each other for years and now we are finally doing a we podcast hang.

So I love this.

You are someone who you now talk about money for a living, and you talk about money very well for a living, but you haven't always had the Easiest relationship with it.

So back to the start.

What was your relationship with money like growing up?

God, I mean, how long do we have?

Because that question could be the entire podcast.

I had a really interesting relationship with money growing up.

It was never really spoken about.

You know, my parents didn't know a lot about money growing up, so I wasn't really taught it.

And I think that's true for a lot of people.

My parents are well educated.

It's not as though they didn't teach me cause they were trying to gatekeep.

They just didn't really know themselves.

And so I didn't learn about budgeting or.

I mean, I remember hearing about investing for the first time when I was 27 through a friend.

I always had this scarcity mindset, which I know a lot of people have, and it showed up in so many ways.

You know, as an example, do you remember Hamish Nandy?

Yeah.

So I moved over to Australia.

Their executive producer like plucked me up from Media Works and I moved over there and I had this really bizarre experience where the package they gave me included, Super.

And I didn't know what that meant.

It was, it's kind of like the Kiwi saver of New Zealand.

And I found out that it wasn't actually money coming into my pocket.

And I remember being like, hold on, I thought my package was 80, not 60, you know, and so like those things happened.

But then I actually moved over and I lost my job within about six months.

The person who hired me was fired.

And then I didn't have a job and I didn't have a financial plan.

I didn't have any emergency funds.

I didn't have.

I didn't.

Honestly, it was the scariest thing ever.

And I all of a sudden had no work prospects, no money coming in and no idea what to do financially.

Do you remember sort of those times, sort of like how money made you feel and that sort of realization of like, oh, like I need to do something differently and I don't know what.

Money always had so much power over me.

And if I'm being really transparent, I don't think that's changed a lot.

I think that I've improved hugely and I have way better systems in place.

I feel confident that I know how to get myself out of a situation, how to grow wealth.

But I think that when I used to spend money, it was this sort of endless pot.

There was this low level anxiety all the time.

All the time.

It's actually funny, I still got this dress.

I went into Ruby, which is in New Zealand.

I don't know how much of your audience is New Zealand based, but this brand in New Zealand.

And I tried this dress on, and it was bright Barbie pink.

And I just thought, I love it.

I feel so good.

God, it looks so good.

I can see you rocking that.

You know, since then, I have had my colors done.

Apparently, that is my color.

So before I knew.

Anyway, point is, I bought the dress, I got home, and I had a total panic attack.

Not a literal panic attack, but a, why did I do that?

That was really irresponsible.

I need to take it back.

And that was kind of the exact way that I interacted with money.

Always.

There was no conscious decision making or I have this money put aside for this, and I can spend it without guilt.

I think that for me, the last couple of years, that's changed only since I started splitting my pay.

And it's so interesting because I know what we're gonna talk about today, which is more about investing and overinvesting.

But I had to really f up many times before I started to put better practices in place to avoid that constant anxiety.

And I definitely have gotten to a much better place at that.

And I just think that for us, we really focused in the beginning on investing and stock picking in the stock market.

Cause that's what my business partner and co host knew so well.

But because I'd missed conversations about money and budgeting and splitting your pay and saving, I had no pre.

It was like I'd missed the training wheels and I'd gone straight to the motorbike.

And I think that I. I had to learn the hard way that that stuff is so fundamental.

And you actually can't get to the motorbike riding unless you've tried biking with your training wheels.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's really been in the last couple of years that I've started to feel more confident, let's just say, in terms of the money that comes in and how I distribute that.

Yeah, I think, God, that's such a good analogy as well, because you did.

You hit a point.

And I think so many of us do this.

Investing is exciting.

And investing is like, oh, I can grow wealth.

I can maybe quit work one day.

I can do all this great stuff with my money through investing.

Investing can go so wrong if you don't approach it in the right way.

So you unfortunately did fall into that bad trap.

Tell me about how investing went very wrong for you.

Well, okay, let's just say I had the best of intentions.

I was Very excited.

So, okay, our podcast, when we started talking about all these different stocks and what's happening in the stock market, because I now understood the fundamentals of what investing meant and the idea that you invest in companies that you want to see grow and that you believe in and blah, blah, blah.

There was this news that came out about Netflix and it was something really small and, you know, not important, and the stock price had dropped.

We speak about this a lot on the podcast.

The idea that, you know, if there's a sale on your favorite clothing store, everyone's rushing to it, but if a stock's on sale or the share price is undervalued it, everyone freaks out.

No one buys it.

So I had this light bulb moment and I thought, step aside, everyone.

This is my investing moment.

Here I go.

And I put about 3,000 New Zealand dollars into Netflix, which, can I just say, if I had more money than that and also had the rest of my finances sorted, this would have been a stunning investment decision.

However, I did no calculations on what I should be putting in.

I had no money set aside for my rent, for my groceries, for insurance, for all the things I need to pay for.

I just took a lump sum that felt like a vague amount, put it in, and thought, God, I'm clever.

And so stressed on your behalf.

Honestly, just what was I thinking?

And like, it's so funny to think about it in hindsight, but at the time, Vic and I and a bunch of friends were going on a holiday to Italy.

I hadn't budgeted for the holiday.

I. I didn't have money in my account for anything.

And I checked my accounts and I had this meltdown the day we were leaving because I didn't have money to pay for the bus ride to get from where I was to the airport and then to our accommodation, let alone pay for the pasta and the drinks and all of the activities we were going to do.

Which, again, you think about now and it sounds so obvious, but I think I want to tell this story because it wasn't obvious to me as someone that didn't have financial education, that was not obvious.

And so it seems now in hindsight, like, how did you do that?

But I know how I did it, and it's because I missed all those beginner steps.

So I was at the airport with Vic and I was having a total meltdown.

First he had to borrow money from a friend to pay for that bus ride.

Oh, God, so embarrassing.

Vic was like, how much do you have in your sharesies account?

Like, how Much have you invested?

And I had 20,000 in there.

So it wasn't like I had no money.

It was just that I was getting so excited by investing and putting lump sums away without planning.

And Vic had, you know, said to me, for years, you invest and you leave it for at least five years.

Invest and think of it as your retirement savings.

Do not touch this money.

Invest in things that, you know, you could leave for 15, 20 years and come back after being on a desert island and that money would have grown.

So I had this really strict mentality of, I can't touch that money.

Yeah.

So in my head, I had no money to pay for the bus.

I didn't even think about the idea of cashing out or selling those shares.

What happened from there was I basically Vic said to me, you know, you can take money out of your sharesies account, you know, you can pull money out.

But there I was, sat on this holiday feeling embarrassed, feeling sorry for myself, feeling like I shouldn't be there actually, and really struggling to enjoy going out for a meal because all I was doing was thinking, how much is the split bill gonna be?

I'm not drinking.

Everyone else is.

You know, there was just so much anxiety around money for me.

And, yeah, I was really lucky.

I had to pull money out.

And that 3,000 that I put on Netflix had grown to 6,000.

So I'd made an incredible return.

Nice work.

Which, sorry, for a beginner investor, quite impressive.

But I was so lucky that that happened.

And the learning for me was just, I needed that money.

I didn't have a choice about pulling it out because I had nowhere else to get money from.

And if that share price or the rest of my investments were going down, like we all know the stock market does all the time, I could have lost a lot of money.

And so, yeah, I'm really grateful that that learning for me was almost a positive one where I could see how bad it could have gone, but I didn't have to experience an enormous loss.

Now, when you look at that and you have the beautiful benefit of hindsight, how would you have done things differently to end at a more ideal and much less stressed place?

Well, knowing how much money you have, splitting out your essentials, for me, I just had the most simple.

I was going to say hit me with your split.

For me, because I live in London, my expenses are much more than I would like, so my rent is 70% of my income, not quite, maybe 65%.

It's a lot that's up there.

It's so expensive.

But I've chosen that lifestyle for now and I just have to know that that's important to me and that's how I'm spending my money.

So I don't have a lot of money for fun things, for travel, for going out for dinners.

I also don't pay myself very much, so I just know that there's things I have to cut back on.

And that's just the reality of what I've, you know, the cards I've dealt myself for now.

So I have my money set aside for my needs.

So my rent, my, you know, my bills, things that I need to pay for, I used to have in there things like therapy, because for me, mental health should be an essential.

I definitely have struggled with that in my life.

So I used to put that in my essentials.

I can't afford to right now.

But things like exercise, if I want to pay for that, all those things go into my essentials bucket.

And that's generally 60 to 70% of my income.

It should be 50%, and I know that.

But again, it's just where I'm at in my life.

It's an expensive place.

What do you do then?

I've got probably around 20% ish, or maybe less than that on my.

The fun things, but that fluctuates and I really don't have a huge amount in there.

And then I have a small amount, which maybe is like 5%, that goes towards savings goals and investments, which again, I'd love to be way more.

I'm just not in a position to do that right now.

But what it means is the amount that I have to invest or go towards things, whether it's I want to save for a holiday or I want to put more money in my investments, there's just a set amount.

Rather than deciding each month how generous am I feeling, because, yeah, I think that stresses me out, not knowing and potentially eating into savings or rent money.

Not cool.

Not worth the anxiety.

100%.

And I think there's seasons in life.

I was literally just chatting to my business coach the other day and we were talking about seasons of life and, you know, which opportunities work.

And I've had to put a ban on myself for speaking events this year.

Love speaking events.

Really.

It's so interesting.

Yeah, but it's just in terms of the amount of time it takes.

And I've got two very young kids who I'm obsessed with and want to be around all the time.

There are other opportunities that I can make a lot of in this time of my life that don't pull me away from family as much.

And so I'm choosing to prioritize those because it makes business sense and life sense.

And I think it's a very interesting thing as well for you.

You know, you're in a phase of life where you're in London, you're getting business done, it's exciting.

You can footloose fancy free, just be on the other side of the world.

And how amazing.

That comes with a cost with that.

But it's seasons.

You haven't totally abandoned the future goals, you've just moved it around a little.

How do you handle those splits?

Are you a fan of different bank accounts?

I'm a really visual person.

So I actually went into Canva and used our design, you know, our work design account and I created visuals.

So I've got my wants, my needs and then I've.

And in fact I could probably honestly just get it out.

I've got my essentials with like green love hearts, my nice to have with pink love hearts and then my rent with blue.

I've got a card attached to my essentials and my nice to have.

So I've got a green card for essentials and I've got a pink card for my nice to haves.

And that's just because I need to have some kind of like, I don't know, reminder and color stimulus.

But if I go into my nice to haves, I have a grand total of 23 pounds in there right now.

But I've got a purple visual so I drink cacao often instead of coffee.

So I've got my nice to haves which tells me what I pay for from this account.

So cacao, coffee, gifts, travel, shopping, Uber.

So those are like the things that I have.

And then when I go into my essentials, I've got my little green one and I have essentials, rent and bills, therapy, which I no longer can afford, groceries, limes, getting around London, trains, buses, class pass.

And then I also have a separate savings account which I also have my emergency fund.

I have a beauty account which I take out of my nice to haves because it's stuff that I pay for in lump sums like getting my hair dyed.

And I just know that if I had it in my nice tabs and I was spending it on coffees and stuff, I would spend it and then it would be.

I would have the worst regrowth ever and couldn't afford it.

So I have that separate.

And then I have my travel account which slowly has money going into it again, which I've pulled from like my nice to have kind of short term savings bucket.

So that's automated out.

And then I have a gifts amount for friends, presents or you know, things like that.

But so my beauty, travel, clothes, gifts, that kind of thing as well as the nice to haves, all of that is within like 20% of my pay.

It's just that I've separated them, some of them into separate accounts so I can keep track better just quickly.

On the seasons thing, what I will say is last year I bought two properties.

I bought two investment properties which I really focused on.

I took a lot of money out of the stock market.

I took a lot of my.

What I'd built up and put it in that.

So.

And I feel like that was a really clever decision when the market right now in New Zealand's not great for property.

So I've made those decisions and I have those assets that are going to be accruing in value over a long period of time.

So I don't feel like I'm just putting my financial goals on the back burner totally.

It's just that I don't have as much to grow as quickly.

And so I think I feel okay about that because the season last year was property and now this year it's about building up a bit more into the stock market again.

So I feel okay about that.

You talk about yourself as if you're not very good with money, but you are making so much huge progress and you're actually quite focused and you've got all this, you're actually sneakily very organized and to have two investment properties is amazing.

How old are you now?

34.

That's great.

Firstly, thank you.

That's so lovely.

I think I have, you know, and sort of back to the start of this conversation in my head because I've always been bad with money and because I have so much trauma around money and doing really stupid things, I. I still consider myself such a beginner.

But you're right, I've come so far and what I'm doing now, if I told myself five years ago, I would've been like, God, I'm so clever and smart.

But I found ways to build wealth later in life because I missed out on this really early.

So, for example, the properties, I did it with a friend and we bought houses that were 400,000, not a million, because that was within our budget.

You know, I've had to start from a different place because I didn't split my money early, and I didn't invest early.

So I have to be quite accepting in the fact that I am behind a lot of my friends.

No, I am.

You're ahead of so many other people, though.

I would still say no, I am.

But I look at my business partner who invested from the age of 15 or no, to be honest, she was 7.

She had shares from her parents when she was young, you know, so.

And she has two very valuable properties and she has a lot more than I do.

So I had that constant comparison of.

And she's only a few years older than me.

But that is a really toxic, bad place to be because all of us are starting from somewhere.

And you've got to be really proud of where you've been and where you're going.

And if you're listening to this thinking, I cannot even believe that she's thinking she's bad with money.

I don't do any of these things.

I hope that it is reassuring to know that I genuinely have done the most outrageous things with money.

And I mean, I've been in a lot of debt before.

I've done a lot of really stupid things, but you can totally turn it around.

And I think having visualizations for me and small goals that I can feel accumulate and I get excited by.

Like when I first started building my emergency fund, every time my pay came in and a little bit was split into all of these accounts, it was exciting rather than crawling to the finish line of payday.

And I think it's because I put those systems in place that meant I knew I was going somewhere and I was heading in the right direction.

So I think that, yeah, it's.

It's so possible and it's so easy, but you do have to do a bit of organization, even if you're not that way inclined, because I'm not normally.

Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you on that.

And it's.

It's kind of interesting, right, because there is a lot.

You see a lot of conversations online.

And I actually agree overall with this conversation that the old thing of if.

If you're the smartest person in the room, it's time to change rooms.

Because you should be like that.

It's good, right?

Because you should always be around people who make you want to level up.

You are the sum of the five closest people to you.

I truly believe that as well.

You do absorb a lot from the people around you, and it will subconsciously set a lot of your expectations for yourself, what you can achieve in life, what is possible.

And I think Your idea of what is possible is a huge part of what you will then even try for.

If you don't even try for something that can actually be the biggest thing that will hold some people back.

The idea of that's not for people like me, but the flip side of that that you've run into is it can create this, as you say, quite toxic comparison.

So when you're surrounding yourself, I mean, you work with Vic every day, you are co founders of a financial education platform, you are talking about money every day, you are surrounding yourself with smart people who are also similarly inclined.

How do you put yourself in that position where you're inspired and you're leveling up and you're seeing what's possible without falling into that trap of I feel like an idiot compared to these people.

I think comparison has always been something that's plagued me.

Whether it's money or other things.

You know, I'm 34 and I'm only now just in a serious relationship with someone that I really love.

But I was single for a long time and all my friends were getting married and having kids.

And I've always been quite different from the people around me and from people I've grown up with.

While I'm really proud of all of the decisions that I've made and all of the things that I've done and the places that I've gone, it's been.

Been a really wild, different ride.

And I know that that's suited to who I am.

But with that comes the comparison piece so often.

And I think on the financial side of things, you know, for Vic to go full time in the curve, she wanted to have a hundred thousand invested in the stock market, so she had a buffer.

When I went full time in the curve, I had almost no money in my account.

I.

It was decided overnight with our business advisor.

I didn't have time to have a financial plan.

I didn't even know what a financial plan was.

When we're both coming back to New Zealand and she's going and spending time at her beach house in Maringi that she owns or, you know, she rents out her beautiful home in, in Auckland and gets amazing income from that.

I, I'm in a totally different position and there's been times where I do feel jealous of that.

I do feel, I, I do feel envious and wish that I had known this more and done better and was in a different position now.

I just wish that I had known this sooner.

What I come back to is looking at what I've achieved and where I'm going.

And I think that it's inspiring to look at the people around you and surround yourself with people that are doing well.

I just think you have to totally check in with how you feel around the people.

How are they talking to you about stuff?

Are you, what, what, what do you feel when you go out for dinner with people who can afford a menu that's five times more.

You know, you have to reevaluate the way perhaps you spend time with those people.

Maybe it's you go for walks rather than out for dinner.

I don't, I don't know if that's a very helpful answer because I haven't, I haven't got it sorted.

If I'm being totally honest.

I think what I pick up from that is that 90% of it is just being aware of it.

And I've noticed that because I'm someone who's very ambitious, very motivated and like a lot of my life I can look at and be like, damn, girl.

Like you really, you built something like that's really cool in so many different areas.

And then there is always someone who is doing better than you in whatever area.

I've got a really good friend who makes me feel totally insecure as a mum and I just, I love her to bits, but she went and did a cake making course and like the cakes that she makes for her children's birthdays look professional and it is beautiful.

It is like this, this crazy flavor there's.

She's done her own paw patrol decorations.

It's nuts.

And I look at it and I'm like, well, I really regret inviting you to a birthday party and seeing my version of a cake.

But she's so lovely.

She's such a sweet.

And I'm sure that there are some parts of my life that she would look at and feel comparison as well.

You know, we're on, we're doing different things and I have found that being just aware of it and being like, oh, that's a me issue has been very helpful for me and just always knowing there will always be someone.

And if I want to go on a cake decorating course, maybe I should go with her because she'd know the good ones.

It's really interesting because I do think that the times you feel kind of jealous or you feel inferior, it's totally a mirror and it's something you need to look at yourself.

So, for example, I am insecure about money.

I am insecure about where I am financially compared to a lot of my friends.

So I know that when I feel those things, it's a me problem or I look at people around me and I don't have great feelings about it.

I need to look at that and go and journal about it or think about it.

Because being around people that are doing better than me, I E Beck, who has an incredible investing portfolio, is ultimately positive because it's taught me so much.

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Sorry.

No, it's fine.

Hang me out to dry.

I'm fine with that.

In a loving, safe space.

But you, you know, you mentioned before about you're someone who's been in a lot of debt before and yeah, that's super interesting to me because I only just realized you put up a social post the other day and I was like, wow, I had no idea about this one $50,000 post.

Christchurch quakes.

Have I got the details right?

Hit me with the proper story.

Jesus.

Right, so throughout this conversation, as I've been talking about being a disaster or having disasters, this was probably the worst.

Well, there was a literal disaster at the core of this.

Yeah, it was a literal disaster.

And, you know, the earthquake and what happened was devastating for me and.

But people lost loved ones, so it's so easy to say what happened to me was awful, but there's people that have it worse always.

However, what happened to me was essentially I moved into a flat.

A week after that, the earthquake happened.

The big 2011 one.

I was at broadcasting school at the time.

I'd move everything I own, all of my 21st jewellery, all of my clothing, all the things I bought, a new microwave, you know, all of my items that I owned were in this flat that then lost two of its four walls and was in the red zone.

So I was condemned for a year.

So I couldn't get access to anything in there you couldn't get.

Even the sentimental stuff.

No, nothing.

So I flew out of Christchurch wearing what I had on my body and I got a credit card to buy the essentials, to buy a new wardrobe.

Basically.

I went to Melbourne to stay with a friend and I was getting a new wardrobe.

That's when I was there to see her and get new clothes.

How privileged.

But also I was spending money that wasn't mine, it was a credit card.

And I racked up just under $20,000.

And what happened was I had 10 days basically of shopping with this credit card.

Nice work.

And I started with the essentials.

I started with jeans, I started with tops, I started with the basics and then it just spiraled and I was buying, you know, the leather miniskirt that I needed for essentials and heels and stupid things.

And yeah, it was quite devastating financially.

And my parents were absolutely gobsmacked.

Like, how did this happen?

At that point, I hadn't earned my own money.

I hadn't actually had a job and I do think that that is like I had small jobs over summer, like housekeeping for three weeks, whatever, but I wasn't constantly thinking, oh, that's seven years of working full time at my $15 an hour rate making beds.

Do you know what I mean?

So I think that that had a huge amount to do with spending without concept of how much that was.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

So did that end up going up from the, like, interest and fees and things, or did you?

I was really lucky with that, that insurance came through for a portion of it, so I didn't have to pay the full 20,000 dol.

In my defence, I was spending thinking all of it would be paid back by insurance because I didn't understand how insurance worked.

I didn't, you know, I.

Again, that was just an entire blind spot for me.

So now if this happened, I would be looking at the fine print of my insurance and I would see, am I covered?

If so, how much for how long is it going to take them to pay me back?

You know, like, all those things are really important and I just didn't think about them.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think part of it is age, like you say, experience having earned money.

But also, do you think some of it was, you know, after the earthquakes?

But just being there at all, I think would be quite traumatic.

And having all your stuff lost, do you think there was a little element of that too, that was impacting trauma response?

Yeah, probably.

I mean, I Think about that now.

I mean, straight after it happened, we were all wandering the streets with these, like, blankets around our shoulders, looking at these ginormous roads that have cracks for 4 meters.

You know, like, it was, it was like apocalyptic.

It looked like a scary movie.

There were people trapped in buildings.

It was, I had trauma around my phone not being charged for full, you know, for years because there were these people trapped in buildings and as soon as their phone died, no one knew where they were.

You know, it was pretty awful.

So, yes, I would say there probably was an element of that.

Yeah, I, I would think so.

If I'd been in that situation, I don't think I'd be making very smart decisions afterwards.

No.

And I think that's another thing, you know, when you start to look at how you're spending money and you see your emotional responses.

So, for example, when you spend, how do you feel?

And this is something you spoke about on our podcast years ago, and it was so helpful for me.

Just reflecting on how you feel when you spend money and, and do you feel good or bad?

I feel amazing when I spend $100 on a nut butter in an organic shop, but I feel terrible when I spend it on a pink dress from Ruby, you know, so it's, it's, it's, it's just like figuring out for you how you feel good and noticing when you go and splash out.

Because I do have times where either I'll go and put my head in a bag of salt and vinegar chips because I'm feeling emotionally stressed, or I'll go and spend money and once the floodgates are open, I find it really hard to stop.

So you did have insurance come through for helping you pay off some of that debt.

How did you get rid of the rest of it?

How long did it take you?

What's your favorite debt repayment strategy?

Quick wins for me, as a neurodiver scowl, I need some kind of sort of tick off.

So doing the smaller first and then moving to bigger ones worked for me for a period of time.

Cool.

So you target those smaller dats, snipe them out, get that win of like goddess.

Yeah, the dopamine hit of crossing something out for me was great, but the more educated I became with how detrimental high interest debt was and how much that was massively holding me back, I swapped and I did do some of the.

Is it the avalanche Avalanche where you.

Target the high interest debts, Smack all your extra payments on that.

Yeah.

So I think in answer to your question, I've Tried many different things.

I think when it comes to debt, I think that it can feel really shameful.

You kind of just have to accept the fact that that's where you're at and you just have to work your way out of it.

Because life is long and if you're 30 and you're in debt, you've got hopefully at least 50, if not more years of living.

You know, money is not a quick one.

It's not something that you can sort out overnight.

It does take time.

And I think that for me, looking back the last five years, I've now done a lot.

What's that saying?

It's like you overestimate what you can do in here, but you underestimate what you can do in five years.

And I do think that's a really valuable piece to anyone particularly that's in debt.

Do you think as well there's a certain confidence that you can get from, okay, you've had these steaks where you've, you've made a boo boo and it's not gone well and you've had to dig yourself out of it.

But do you also think there's a flip side to that where it gives you the confidence of, I've gotten out of things before, I can do it again?

Yeah, I think that.

And I went to a talk not that long ago in London.

There was this woman who'd done all this research.

She was based in Edinburgh University.

And it was about the reason why the gender pay gap, the, the kiwisaver or retirement gap.

You know, we have 40% less than, you know, I mean, all of those sorts of things.

And she was looking at some of the things that we could do.

And one of the biggest takeaways for me was the idea that a lot of us, particularly women, learn, learn, learn, feel like we need to do absolutely everything before we do, do, do.

And actually doing is the best place to build confidence.

So obviously don't go and chuck all of your investment money in one stock.

But it might be as simple as finding a small amount, putting in an index fund, or, you know, tracking the market like the s and P500, even if it's like $5.

This is not advice.

But the more that you do, the more confidence you build.

And I wholeheartedly think that that's true.

The more that I've seen myself do, the more confidence I have in myself.

To do more hundred percent.

And as well, I think from someone who's had that bad experience with that, chipped away, got rid of it and now you've moved into having investment properties.

Was there a little bit of a mental flip there to be like, oh, I'm taking on debt again?

Was there any moment of.

No, that was good because you knew it was good stuff.

It's so interesting.

I have a very high risk tolerance.

I think I'm not stressed at the idea of having good debt.

So I e. A mortgage Vic, when she looks at her account, stresses out, hates it, like, really struggles.

I have had no issue to the point where I probably will do a third this year and leverage again and refinance and then go again.

Yeah, I have no issue with it.

And maybe it's the idea of feeling like I need to catch up.

So I'm really have no issue with doubling down on the risk front.

You know, for me, I find crypto really interesting, and I find investments that are perhaps more risky interesting, and I'm happy to take those bets.

So, yeah, in terms of debt and mortgage, No, I also don't have my mortgage with my everyday account.

Like, I can't see it when I log in.

And I think that helps psychologically.

So much of it does come back to money psychology, though, right.

When you were saying about your risk tolerance and you're fine with it and you're like, let's go.

I understand money now much more than I did.

I understand that to build wealth, you like to be able to leverage from a bank and to be able to use that money to catapult returns.

Incredible, amazing opportunity.

Worth the headache of getting your mortgage and jumping through the hoops.

You have to, you know, because the power of knowledge.

Yeah, the power of knowledge.

I think it's.

Yeah, it's just changed the way I think about everything.

I say this all the time.

First thing to invest into is your education and your knowledge.

Career helps too, then the other investments, you know.

But to invest into your education and your knowledge is actually amazing because it does give you that confidence to be like, I'm doing it, I'm going for it 100%.

And I think anyone listening that is feeling scared about investing in whatever asset class or maybe it's the way that you split your pay.

Honestly, the best thing you can do is take action rather than sit there and continue to learn until you think you have everything sorted.

Because we've had how many hours of interviews have we spoken to finance professionals?

And we're still not perfect, but if we'd waited five years, we wouldn't have done anything.

So I think that that's just like, don't feel like you have to have every little bit of knowledge sorted before you do things differently.

Such a good point.

When you with the investment properties, I know a lot of people will be interested on that because you've sort of mentioned a couple of things and I think people's ears will have perked up.

So you mentioned two.

You went for regions and a friend was involved.

How did you take this from?

Oh, gosh, I'm a bit of a money mess.

I can't even afford a bus ticket to investment property.

What was the strategy?

It's an investing approach called brrrr.

So you buy, renovate, rent, refinance, repeat.

And it's the idea that you buy wealth, you buy a house somewhere that you don't.

You never planning on living in this house, by the way, so you're not having to spend money or effort or emotional exertion on finding the right property because you're not going to be living in it, if that makes sense.

It's all about the numbers.

So I, I was like approaching this completely as an investment property.

So buy well, find a house that you can add value to, which is what we did.

We spent.

So the first one we bought for 400,000, spent 73,000 on the renovation, budgeted 80, spent less than that, renovated in six weeks and then we rented it out.

So there's people covering the rent.

It now completely washes its face.

As you know, property professionals say, basically, I don't have to put any money into that month to month.

So it's growing in value by tracking the market.

So we're going to hold it for a long period of time.

But by renovating and adding an extra bedroom, we immediately had an uplift of about 125,000.

So it's just a different approach to property.

It's the idea that you buy in an area you wouldn't otherwise, because I'm not planning on living in Whangarei, but it was the perfect house for what we needed.

I've now done it for a second time.

So because we had such an equity uplift in that first one, I could borrow against that so I didn't have to put any money in as a deposit for the second house, which is just like.

So, you know, when something lands.

For me, I was like the property ladder.

They call it a ladder for a reason.

You know, it's so hard to get the first one.

It's just like investing the first 100k is the hardest.

You know, those, those first steps are hard and then money makes Money.

So yeah, we, we loaned against the second one to get it, like extend the mortgage, spent that on the deposit for the second, budgeted 100 grand for our renovation, spent 100 grand on the renovation, had it revalued and made close to 130 in that one in equity uplift and again have rented it out, holding onto it for a long period of time.

So they're, you know, they're not expensive houses.

We haven't gone and bought in, you know, a main center.

And for me it was a stepping stone because A, I couldn't buy a house that I was going to live in and therefore needed to look at investment, which is 30% deposit, which is obviously more.

And because I needed a 30% deposit I could only afford in the regions, so I spent less on that property.

But I just think it's been such a cool way to invest in property and I don't know why more people don't do it.

Well, it's tricky, right, because people often struggle with a deposit.

So that was you mentioned about you'd been making investments into the share market and liquidated some of that.

The deposit.

Yeah.

How do you feel about that?

Still investing money.

Right.

But liquidating some to put it elsewhere?

Yeah, I felt really good about it because.

Well, firstly, this was last February when I bought my first one and it was when the market started to tank.

So this was last year, like February, April, when all of the tariff saga was happening.

And I did not do.

Everybody listening, do not do this.

It's been a theme.

So basically, you know how everyone will say to you, put money in the stock market that you want to leave for five years.

You need to readjust or move things around if you're planning on using that money.

Because investing in the stock market goes up and down and sideways in the short term.

So if you need it and you're going to be using that money, do not risk it going down in the short term.

I nearly couldn't buy the house because I didn't pull that money out of the stock market soon enough.

I knew I was buying a property but I didn't know how long it would be till I found one and blah, blah, blah.

And I didn't do that early.

So the stock market started to go down and I pulled it all out just before it like fully tanked.

So I was really, really lucky.

You know, it was pulling money out of investments that I had made money on to leverage by using more money from the bank to make hopefully more returns.

I wasn't also crystallizing losses by taking money out of the stock market.

I'd made money, so.

And also I will say, just for transparency, my dad gave me 50,000 towards my first property.

So I was able to get.

I wouldn't have been able to do it without that.

And I just think it's important to recognize that.

Cause a lot of people don't have help from parents.

I'm really privileged.

And I think it's really unhelpful when people don't talk about getting help from parents because it again is the comparison game of like, what am I doing wrong?

You just don't know someone's personal situation.

I was really lucky to have that.

I know it's tricky that, isn't it?

Because you want to be honest and you know that some people are not gonna like it.

But at the same time hiding it is so unfair.

Well, it's worse.

And I mean people will listen to that and think, you privileged spoiled brat, you were given $50,000 to put into it.

You know, and I'm have to own that because it's the reality of my situation.

But I know a lot of people who have had way more help than that and don't talk about it and I think that's even more detrimental.

So I'm kind of like willing to risk people thinking I'm a brat, to be honest, because I think that it's important.

I love that.

The other thing that sticks with me though is buying them with a friend.

Yeah, sorry, I thought that was part of the question.

Yes, no, but I like compare that with your business as well.

You know, you've gone into.

I'm assuming it's a different friend.

Yes, yes.

So you've got these investment properties with a friend.

You've also gone into business with a friend.

Yeah.

People do often say, don't mix money.

Well, they more say don't mix money in family, but don't mix money in friendship is certainly up there.

You've got a good risk tolerance.

I really do, don't I?

I also known this person for three weeks when we decided to do this.

So like, I am crazy.

Okay, so.

All right.

Yeah, more context, more context.

So he moved into the flat that I was living in at the time.

He's really good friends of one of.

My friends, also London based.

A New Zealander.

Yeah, yeah, he's.

I knew his sister.

I knew, you know, it wasn't like he was a random.

I met and knew for three weeks.

We.

So we basically set it up as a business.

So Rather than doing it in a personal capacity, we've done it all through a business and we did it 50, 50.

We were both in a position where we had enough for a deposit and the renovation.

He'd always wanted to do property and that way he works in that industry.

He understands it.

I introduced him to the concept, the person I was gonna work with to make it happen.

He loved the idea.

So yeah, it was crazy.

But the only way I could have done it.

What I will say is we did have a lot of honest conversations about how long are you willing to hold it for?

You know, we had some pretty hairy questions.

Let's just say that we both had to answer and be on the same page and we had it in right hand.

How did you vet each other?

Like legally, financially and also personalities?

Yeah.

We basically had really long conversations, at length.

We had a huge list of questions to work our way through and make sure we're on the same page.

We have an agreement between the two of us.

We've done it really properly, like a lawyer's agreement.

Sat down with a lawyer as well.

ChatGPT.

But I did run it past a lawyer to be fair.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

And the world we live in, houses and property is so expensive for a lot of people.

If you're not in a relationship, it's kind of impossible.

We were both single, so it was perfect.

I'm so glad I did it that way because also I didn't want to put 100% of my life wealth into property.

I wanted to be diversified still.

What would have been a red flag that would have made you pull the pin on it?

One of the things that we.

He was wanting to talk.

He was talking about wanting to leave it at it for three years and then potentially selling.

And I wanted a minimum of five.

I just felt like we didn't know if we were in the bottom of the market.

And I wanted capital gains and I know the longer you keep something.

I wanted to know he wasn't going to need that money for a long period of time and there wasn't going to be some contentious.

I want to sell early.

What were green flags?

Super open minded.

Quite a high risk tolerance.

Like me had the amount of money that we both needed to make it happen.

Had pre existing knowledge around building construction.

So could really like sense check all the numbers that we were looking at.

If someone else was thinking.

Because I do think teaming up with friends or people you're friendly with, like do we call someone a friend after.

Three weeks, who is my friend?

You Definitely have a higher risk tolerance that I really want that one you've got.

Oh, my God.

Okay, good to know.

But hey, it's working so good for you.

But I think, you know, when, when you team up with someone, I think you're spot on there, that it's easier with two incomes than one.

Of course.

And if you're not in a partnership, if you can find someone who you trust and you are on the same page financially, I think it's smart.

I mean, the amount of people I know who are in romantic relationships and it's not necessarily the best money match and they still buy houses together.

So, like, I just think changing your mindset around buying property as a less emotional, romantic thing is an interesting mindset shift in itself.

Like most people who buy property with their partners are buying a house to live in.

It's completely different to what I did.

You know, I actually think what would be higher risk for me would be going into a mortgage with my now boyfriend.

That to me would feel more risky than what I did with my friend.

It's totally different buying a house that you live in because also the stakes are higher in terms of the relationship doesn't work out.

You probably have to sell the asset at a time that might not be ideal, blah, blah, blah.

So for me, having that quite separate to my romantic life is great because I can be super strategic and numbers focused rather than romanticize.

Like, I've only seen one of the two properties I own.

You know, it's totally different.

You don't.

I don't need to see touch, feel, feel good in it, get a good vibe.

You know, it's not about that.

So in an ideal world, where would you like to land with the money side of things?

You mentioned that you would like more investment properties and I'm assuming more share market investing too.

You know, do you have an ideal number?

Whether it's an ideal number of properties or an ideal amount invested, do you have those sorts of goals in mind?

I find this one really hard because so much of the value or so much of my wealth is tied up in my business.

And, you know, whether or not we sell that, whether or not we can pay ourselves, like all those things play a huge role in my potential future wealth trajectory.

So, yes, I have goals around how much I want to invest in the stock market.

And yes, I definitely want to become a property mogul.

I want to have absolutely more properties.

But that all could change very easily because for me, I'm betting my wealth through my business, which is something that is really hard to put too many parameters around.

So when I make my financial goals, there's almost like the dream scenario which is dependent on my business on the curve.

And then there's the one that doesn't think about that I don't have right now, like my number sorted or the amount I'm trying to get to.

I find that I think that would be really helpful for me.

And I think that having sort of a big final destination that I'm trying to get to would be really motivating.

But right now I don't have that.

Yeah, I think that's honest though.

It's good.

And it's funny because people ask me that all the time.

I also don't have a final number.

Really?

That's what I was gonna ask you.

Yeah.

Good to know.

Yeah.

Spoiler alert.

I just, I kind of, I'm so loosey goosey about things that I'm like, oh, we'll vibes through it.

But it's very much, I think you kind of instinctively can know sometimes when enough is enough.

And I think you don't always know until you hit it.

So it's, it's kind of good to stay open minded to that, mentioning the business because that is a huge one.

You know, I talk a lot about increasing income in order to create these opportunities elsewhere.

A business is an amazing one for that, whether it's income in the hand now or you're building an asset for the future.

Right.

And again, you chose to build your business with a friend, which I think is bold, but I love it.

What's it like running the curve alongside Vic?

You were friends before the business, right?

So did you have to put in boundaries as the business progressed?

Like, how do you preserve both the friendship and the business relationship?

Oh, it's so hard.

I think when the curve started, we were babies.

We didn't know.

I mean, I personally didn't know anything about business.

I didn't know anything about what an ideal business partner looked like.

I didn't know.

I had no idea.

So I went in really blind.

I do think that for us a challenge has been.

We've worked in different, completely different industries.

You know, like she's from the finance world, which is like so cut and dry, so black and white.

I'm from the creative production, you know, content show, like completely different, which is the opposite of that.

It's collaborative, it's creative, it's loose, it's, you know, so there's definitely been a, like us trying to meet in the middle in Terms of me being more strict, her being more fluid, you know, is just coming down to figuring out what each other need and being able to respect that.

Now that I've looked at so many different businesses and business partnerships, I think a common thread and something that when I, in the, you know, very distant future, start a different business, which I'm sure I will one day, I think a really good starting point for finding a business partner that is probably because it's always going to be difficult being in business with someone like.

And I think for anyone that doesn't know that, it's because you've never experienced it.

It's.

It's kind of like assuming that a relationship has no bumps in the road romantically.

It's like, life's hard, work's hard, we're stressed.

We have a huge amount of pressure on us.

So it's not.

We're not sitting there, like, laughing every five seconds.

It's, you know, it's like there's a lot going on.

But I think that having worked with someone before you go into business with them is a really good starting point.

Like, if you look at the Shameless girls, they worked together in Mamma Mia.

Before they started Shameless.

And so I think when you know how someone works, it's a really good starting point.

We didn't have that foundation, so we had to figure that out along the way.

Well, speaking of Shameless, I remember I.

They mentioned at one point on the podcast that they don't talk to each other on weekends to give themselves a little break.

Do you do anything like that?

Yeah, I mean, we.

We've just spent so much time together now that we don't hang out that much unless it's with a group of friends, because we've got a lot of mutual friends.

It's more just like, so easy to revert to talking about work.

You know, Our relationship has changed so much.

What, we started as friends and then turned business partners.

We're now very much business partners and friends.

But it's like the business is what we've prioritized because we can't help the fact that we have to spend so much time together and work.

But what we can change is outside of work.

And honestly, it does sometimes otherwise feel like you're working all the time.

Because also our friendship is the podcast, which is also work.

Do you know what I mean?

So it's like, yeah, it's a complicated one.

I think for us, what works best is hanging.

Like, I had a dinner party at mine at the end of last year and I invited four friends that we're both really good friends with.

And that was so lovely because we can just talk about normal stuff.

It's not anywhere near the curve, you know.

And I think for Vic and I, we're both very all consuming in terms of work.

We both work ridiculous hours and we're really obsessed with making the business as good as it can be.

And I think that with.

That means we're not great with our own boundaries anyway in terms of work life boundaries.

I'm trying so hard to be better at it, but one thing that we can do is have, you know, like separate work and friendship chat.

So like we've, we've done things like we've got now slack for our work chat rather than having WhatsApp, you know, it was sort of being like, hey, what are you doing on Saturday?

To like, can you send me this blah, blah, you know, and that's really confusing.

So I think separating out comms was really helpful.

The team is also growing, so it's not just Vic and I anymore.

And that's also changed the dynamic.

So it's quite clear on who does what, which I think is actually probably helped in terms of the more that we free up and kind of actually as the business grows and our jobs start to become slightly less intertwined, I would say we'll slowly build back up more time outside of work.

If you could go back and talk to your younger self, do you think she'd be surprised at where you've ended up?

It would be.

She'd fall off her chair laughing.

Especially if the content that she's creating is for money.

I think mainly she'd be surprised because my perception of money used to be I, I'm a creative.

So like, I don't care about money.

I'm not materialistic.

I don't need to worry about finance and budgeting.

Like, how sad that that's the rhetoric that we've all had.

Because creativity and being financially astute are not mutually exclusive.

They can exist together and they should exist together.

And there'd probably be more creativity if they existed together.

If I spoken to my younger self saying what I would be creating content about, I would have been judgmental and I would have said that's a bit icky.

Like, why are you talking or learning about money or credit?

Like, you don't care about that stuff.

And I just did myself such a disservice by thinking that because I think it prevented me from looking at my finances sooner.

Well, we're pretty much out of time.

But where can people find you?

There's lots of places hit with all of them.

We're spamming you on all fronts at the Curve platform, on socials like Instagram, TikTok, et cetera.

TheCurvePlatform.com is our website and our podcast is the Curve Podcast.

So yeah, we do two podcasts a week.

One that's more interview style, speaking to amazing people like yourself and also focusing on like topics.

So it might be what is your enough number or how do you diversify?

So kind of focus topics.

And then we have the Curve weekly, which is our news weekly news.

So if you want to stay up to date with what's happening and feel kind of smart, but in a way that feels like you're learning with friends, then the Curve Podcast is a really good one.

Love it so much.

Sophie Horo, thank you so much for coming on Making Sense.

Absolute delight chatting to you now.

If this episode was helpful to you, send it to a friend.

First and foremost, let's all level up with money together.

Until next time, have a great day.

This podcast can only give you general information about how things work in most situations.

It's not individual financial advice.

If you're after that, a financial advisor is always the best bet.