🙄 “This Stuff is Obvious” + 😓 Friends, Awkwardness, Money + 🌎👩🏻‍🎓 Travel Budgets

The money stuff that you wish they taught in school

You know when you’re in class and someone asks a question and you go:

• “Oh, I was going to ask that” or,

• “Oh, I didn’t have that question before, but now I want to know the answer to it”

That’s what this is supposed to be like (but with money stuff, not English or Biology).

The format of this newsletter is simple:

• 3 questions from teenagers and young adults like you (and my answers).

• Got your own question about money that you want to ask? Nice! You can submit it here.

• To find out why this newsletter exists (and a little about me), you can read the FAQs.

📌 Just one quick thing first. A few weeks ago I shared that there was over 3,000 of you getting this newsletter every week (still blows my mind 🤯). To mark the occasion, I decided to donate a small amount to a charity and asked for your suggestions. Here are the options (had to split them into two polls). If you’d like to know more about them the links to their websites are at the bottom of this newsletter 🙂.

Now let’s get to your questions…

Your Questions & Answers

• 🙄 “This Stuff is Obvious”

• 🗺👩🏻‍🎓 Travel Budgets

• 😓 Friends, Awkwardness, Money

🙄 “This Stuff is Obvious”

Q. “Why should I read this stuff? So much of what you say is so obvious and half the time it isn’t even right.”

-J, 16

Answer

Hey J. Here’s the thing: it’s not my job to convince you. It’s your choice what you do. But I’ll try explain why some other people read this stuff.

The biggest source of this type of information is always going to be your parents / care givers. It’s also taught in some schools.

• But some kids have parents who don’t want to talk about money stuff. Or maybe they just don’t like to. There’s a lot of reasons why that can happen.

• 👩🏻‍🏫 And some schools don’t teach this stuff. Or they don’t teach it enough. Or they don’t teach it in a way that kids / young adults enjoy.

This is meant to help them out.

And for homes where Mum and Dad do talk about money, this newsletter can be a handy resource too. Plenty of people have written to me saying it’s a good conversation starter for money chats around the dinner table, or in the car.

Disagreeing 🙅🏼‍♂️

It’s totally fine if people disagree with stuff I say. I just write about ways you can think about money situations based on my own experience and research.

You can:

• agree with it,

• agree with parts of it, or,

• completely disagree.

The point here isn’t to tell you what to do. It’s to give you options. And to get you thinking about what you would do, and why.

Obvious Answers

And if some of the answers seem obvious to you right now, that’s good.

But as you get older, you’ll be faced with more of these money situations and decisions. The right choice for you might not seem so obvious then. Reading this might help.

Hopefully some of that makes some sense to you. If you haven’t found found this newsletter useful yet, that’s fine. Maybe give it two more chances before you decide not read it any more. Or don’t. Like I said, it’s totally your choice 👍🏽.

Thanks for taking the time to write in!

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🌎👩🏻‍🎓 “Should I Travel At the End of Year 12?” (Part 2)

Q. Hey again! So I think I’d like to go to Europe for 2-3 weeks in December (I love the idea of Christmas markets in Europe and maybe spending New Years with family in the UK 🎄🎄)

-E.H, 16, NSW

Answer

Hey E.H. thanks for writing back and sending through those details! Hopefully the answer to ‘Part 1’ of your question last week was kinda helpful to you.

Ok, let’s break this down. This isn’t going to be a perfect budget because the actual choices you’ll make will be different. But it’ll be good enough to let you plan and decide what to do.

There’s three big buckets of costs to account for here:

1. Flights ✈️

2. Accomodation 🛌⛺️

3. Daily spend (food, spending money, activities) 🍕⛵️

Assumptions

• I’m going to use 18 days as your time overseas.

• I’m going to assume you don’t have any savings yet.

• I’m going to try go for the ‘cheaper but not cheapest’ option for everything. For example, for accommodation on a scale of 1-10, if ‘1’ is sleeping in a park (please don’t do that) and ‘10’ is a 5-star hotel, then I’ll be going for the ‘3 or 4’ level.

• I’m going to assume that you work part-time during year 11 and 12 in retail or hospitality.

Flights ✈️

There’s no getting around this. Flights at that time of year are horrendously expensive. Lots of demand, limited supply. The absolute cheapest fares are about $2,500. But those come with multiple stops and long stopovers. You probably don’t want to spend 42 hours getting there.

• Cost: likely $3,000 (return flights, to a major hub like Frankfurt)

Accomodation 🛌⛺️

We’re working on 18 days overseas. But I’ve taken off 3 nights from that total since you said you might visit family, so we’ll say a total of 15 nights of accommodation. This will be a really variable cost depending on your choice. Some estimates:

• Europe, dorm accommodation (backpackers hostels): $40 per night.

• Europe, basic 2 star hotel in major cities: $150 per night.

• 15 night cost: $600 - $2,250.

Just for reference, if you’re thinking going for a higher class of accommodation you’ll have to pay up for it.

• Europe, 4 star hotel accommodation in major cities: $230 per night.

• 15 night cost: $3,450.

Daily spend (food, spending money, activities) 🍕⛵️

Food is going to be about half of your daily spend, and spending on activities the other half. Food is one of the most memorable parts of travel so you want to budget enough to enjoy it and not be (completely) living on cup noodles and muesli bars.

• Cost (on average) $100 per day = $1,800.

Working it Out: What You Need ➕

From the above estimates you need about:

• $3,000 + $600 + $1,800 = $5,400 (backpackers hostel version)

• $3,000 + $2250 + $1,800 = $7,050 (2 star hotel version)

Let’s pick the middle number between those 2 and assume you stay in a mix of places.

• That’s $6,225 needed.

Working it Out: What You Earn ➕

If you’re 17 and working part-time in retail or hospitality (2 common job types for teens) then you’ll earn around $18 an hour when you work weekends and weekday evenings.¹

If you get a job in December this year then you’ve got about 104 weeks between now and December 2025 when you finish year 12. I’m going to take away 20 of those weeks for things like study periods, family holidays and times you might be sick. That leaves 84 weeks.

• $6,225 / 84 weeks = $74.

So you need to save $74 per week until then.

Let’s say you work 10 hours a week and get $18 an hour. Remember, this is just an average. It’ll be more some weeks (e.g. you might do 15-20 hours during school holidays) and less on others (e.g. when you’re busy with assignments).

• Weekly earnings: 10 hours a week x $18 per hour = $180

• Weekly savings needed: $74

An Achievable Goal 📍🗺

When you look at like that, it seems pretty achievable, right?

I hope it feels that way to you too! Since you haven’t started year 11 yet, and you want to travel at the end of year 12, you’ve got something really important on your side: time.

All you need now are a couple of other ingredients:

• A part-time job that gives you regular hours.

• A consistent saving habit.

I really hope reading this helps you feel a bit more clear and in control of what you need to do if you decide you want to head over to Europe after you graduate!

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Friends, Awkwardness, Money

Q. “A friend of mine asked me to help her out with money a while ago. So I lent it to her. But I think she thinks it was a gift? But now I feel super awkward about bringing it up : / What do I do?”

-Olivia, 19, Qld

Answer

Hey Olivia. Oooh yeah, I can feel the awkwardness here. Sorry you’ve found yourself in this situation 😓.

First of all, just know that you did a nice thing. A friend needed help and you gave it to them. You’re a good friend.

Second of all, you’re going to have to make some choices now. They’re going to 100% depend on what feels right to you. So I’ll list out some options for you to consider.

I’ll try order them from ‘least awkward’ to ‘most awkward' .

Option 1: Be Like Elsa ❄️

What I mean is just ‘let it go’. This is obviously going to be easier if the amount of money is $50 compared to $500. But try zoom out a bit. Are they a good friend? Are they thoughtful and considerate? Have they been there for you when you needed them? How long have you been friends?

Step back and try look at the bigger picture, then decide.

But this is tricky. Because if you’re not going to bring it up with them but then that means you’re going to be quietly angry with them for not paying you back, then you might need to look at the next option.

Option 2: A Gentle Nudge 📱

Make them aware that you want to be paid back. And do it via a message. This can work because:

• They might have genuinely forgotten about the money. People don’t usually ask to borrow cash when things are going well and their lives are stress-free. There’s a good chance that they will be happy to pay you back and will be embarrassed that they had to be reminded (I’ve been that person myself, and I was so glad that my friend reminded me).

• Also, doing it via a message means you can reduce everyone’s overall level of awkwardness with the whole thing.

• The way you phrase this matters. Here’s my suggestion. It works because it makes it clear that the money was a loan (not a gift). It’s also open-ended, and not demanding. Edit it however works best for you:

“Hey - you know that [insert amount here] that I loaned you in [insert date]? I was wondering if we might be able to talk about paying it back.”

Option 3: Dealing With Excuses 🤷‍♀️

• You might hear back something like ‘oh I didn’t realise that was a loan’.

• Your response: ‘Yeah sorry, I probably could have been clearer about that. Do you think we can talk about when you could pay it back?’.

• You might also hear a more straight up excuse like ‘oh I just don’t have that right now’. Again, that’s more likely if it’s a bigger amount.

• Your response: ‘That’s ok. How about paying it back in smaller chunks. Say $50 - $100 a week? Is that doable?

These ways of phrasing it - gently but firmly - are deliberate. Because you’ve got two goals: preserving the friendship and also getting your money back. It’s hard to do both.

Option 4: Dealing With Being Ignored 🔇

If ‘gentle but firm’ doesn’t work, or your friend ignores you, then you probably have to bump it up to an in person conversation. The best way to do this is by taking along a mutual friend that you both know and trust. This is NOT so you’ve got someone else ‘on your side’. That’s just going to end up in an argument. No one likes being ganged up on.

That third person is there to be objective and keep everyone calm and solution-focussed since they’re not personally involved.

Try to leave that meetup with a specific plan of how the money is going to get paid back.

Option 5: Moving On

If that still doesn’t work then you’re probably out of luck. That sucks. But it happens. What happens next is up to you.

• You can choose to forget about it and get on with your friendship and your life.

• Or you can choose to spend less time with this person if their actions have made you think less of them.

• Or maybe you just need to take a little break from each other to give it all a bit of space and to clear the air.

🤔 Ideas For Next Time

Lending money is a tricky thing, especially between friends and family. It can make good relationships feel strained or awkward.

There’s nothing wrong with it. But it’s important to think about whether you want to be in this situation again, and what you could do differently to change the outcomes.

• That might mean deciding that loaning money to family and friends isn’t something you want to do any more.

• Or it might be agreeing up front when any loan might be repaid.

At the end of the day, there are plenty of ways to help people in your life out. If you say to someone who needs help ‘I can’t help with money right now, but what else can I do?’ chances are they’ll be fine with it.

And if they’re not, or they use emotional blackmail to try convince you, well, that’s kind of a red flag.

I really hope some of those ideas help!

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Thanks for Reading

You made it to the end! Congrats. I hope you got something useful from the newsletter this week.

Got your own question you want to ask? Can’t wait to hear it! You can submit it here.

-Ry

P.S. You’re going to hear from me again this week (on Thursday) with an announcement of some news + upcoming changes. See you then!

Links to Charitable Organisation Websites

1. https://beddown.org.au/

2. https://kidsgivingback.org/

3. https://goodshep.org.au/

4. https://www.challenge.org.au/

5. https://www.hollows.org/au/home

6. https://www.mcgrathfoundation.com.au/

7. https://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/

8. https://guidedogs.com.au/

9. https://www.youngveterans.com.au/

10. https://www.makeawish.org.au/

1. https://calculate.fairwork.gov.au/payguides/fairwork/ma000004/pdf