There’s a well known concept in Perth that most places you’ll ever be going are ‘about 20 minutes away’. Less commonly, it will be ‘around 40 mins’, also known as ‘a bit of a drive’.

20 minutes is quite a nice capsule of time. It’s enough that you can make progress (or complete) a small-to-moderate task. It’s contained enough that you can’t procrastinate too much. The time ahead is not too spacious and therefore not too overwhelming.

This flashback to the ‘Perth trip’ increment of time started with an update that my favourite author of all time, Victoria (V E) Schwab, wrote in her newsletter.

Listen, people can say it is best to not meet your heroes. I think those people are wrong. I have met several of my heroes and they have been nothing short of incredible. As a specific author example, I have met Rick Morton more than once and he is even more wonderful in real life than in his baseline hero state (his writing).

But regardless, one thing is for sure, consuming your heroes is well worth it. Both Rick Morton’s and V E Schwab’s newsletters are fantastic. Both are full time writers. Both write (often, passionately) about the struggles of writing.

Writing is, in my view, often very similar to dealing with your money. It can have a fairly inherent embarrassment to it. One of those things that you know you want to do, is uncomfortable to do, and often feels insurmountable to do. Is important but not urgent and therefore vaguely percolates in the mental background waiting for us to have two energy cells to rub together. Especially, in the case of money, where the task we’re putting off feels like something we really should have learned or sorted out years ago, because it feels like we’re ‘failing adulthood’.

Moving back to heroes. Victoria (Schwab) wrote a couple of months ago that she has been getting back into the flow of writing by committing to a non negotiable hour a day. But not by finding a whole hour - doing it in 3 lots of 20 minutes.

I’ve been finding that it’s very helpful for me of late when I feel like the wheels are coming off (more often than not).

Anyway it has officially been 32 days and I have successfully written for (at least) an hour a day, except for the day of my brother’s wedding, and one day when work kicked my ass so bad I could not write another single word. Sometimes it’s in 3 blocks of 20 mins. Sometimes a 20 minute block is paused 4 or 5 times because I’m on the train and interrupted by a work email or remembering yet another life admin task. Sometimes I end up doing two blocks (or on particularly rough days, all three) back to back. Sometimes I have to carry a block over to the next day, and sometimes (not often) I am one ahead.

Many times it’s me awake at fuck o’clock, because I’ve spent the day thinking about it and/or procrastinating it but not got to it and it’s not done. Hence this particular paragraph was started at 1:30am while I was on holidays. This next sentence I am adding in at 4:31am Sunday morning on my way to the airport after my brother’s wedding. Sometimes the ‘if she wanted to, she would’ is actually about ourselves, I guess.

Let me just say I have been back at work for all of two days at the time of writing this particular sentence and the 3 x 20 is (unsurprisingly) much harder and was perhaps too audacious. I have often wondered if I clench my jaw at night to give myself a forced break from biting off more than I can chew. But I am giving it a good faith crack. Will it continue? I sure hope so.

Without doubt, the thought of squeezing in a 20 min block or even part of one is simply incredibly more achievable and sustainable than aiming for an hour at some nebulous point in the day or even the pressure of completing a whole thing at once (like a newsletter - why am I shocked by this?).

It would probably annoy some people, but I also find it comforting having a random part finished timer on my lock screen - the 7:34 from an unfinished block sitting there reminds me not to forget, if you know what I mean.

So I’ve been applying this method to other tasks too, including money related ones. One 20 min timer for a quick tidy and a wash of the dishes when I get home. 20 mins to get through reconciling as many of my expenses as possible. 20 minutes to fill in a form for an insurance policy that’s been on my kitchen counter for two weeks (desperate brain times, desperate brain measures).

I know I have not reinvented the wheel here. I am no better than a stunted Pomodoro timer. But it’s been a real baller discovering that it does still work.

If you are thinking you’d give this a crack, here is a list of some things that are money related or money adjacent that you can do (or start) in a 20 min block:

-- Set up a new savings account and/or automatic transfer to it
-- Review your spending over the last week and vibe check what was worth spending your money on and what wasn’t
-- Start your grocery order in the relevant app so you aren’t doing a panic shop, or start/review your shopping list while in front of the fridge and pantry so you arent buying things you already have
-- Check for a cheaper option on your phone bill (provider or plan - even if you can’t or don’t want to execute in the 20 mins, you can still have an idea in your mind of what’s around for when you do have the energy
-- Pay an outstanding bill (I never seem to be without one)
-- Fill in an outstanding form (mine is currently my binding death nomination for my super)
-- Pack lunch and snacks for work tomorrow
-- Book an overdue medical appointment (for me this was the GP and the podiatrist 🫩)

The first few times I was working on this piece of writing, it was actually just about writing - that’s where I desperately wanted the 20 min model to work after all. As I kept coming back to it I found myself adding the emotional similarities and making it more about money. Ironic, as I’ve been feeling like I don’t have ‘money-enough’ writing thoughts often these days.

I suppose a more accurate way of looking at it is probably that money infiltrates all aspects of our lives and so it’s okay to add a dash of financial seasoning rather than the whole written meal being about money. I hope so, anyway.

Nonetheless, this draft had become a strange (and lengthy) hybrid. I ended up killing a lot of my darlings - cutting paragraphs just about writing that didn’t have a natural match to the money side. Maybe I’ll do a part two/companion piece: the graveyard of those paragraphs. A cemetery of anecdotes.

But in the meantime: go on and give yourself a 20 min ‘Perth trip‘ and take the edge off something you’ve been wanting to do - whether that’s with your money, your writing, or something else entirely.

Yours in chaos,

Keep the best for the middle.

It’s the ‘clinging by my last claw‘ energy for me.

Bookshelf

Very funny, took me a while to get into it, can’t remember what happened at the end despite finishing it less than a month ago. Make of that what you will.

Obsession Confession

Found this DIVA in the boiler room of the District Court and had to rescue her immediately. Her name is Satine, she’s got pride of place on my wall and she is the patron saint of our chambers.

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2026 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

This is part 2 of the ‘god bless the Girlhood’ series. For part 1, see here. Part 2 is about a new threat to the girlhood, and yet one as old as Weight Watchers. The threat is the re-emergence of ‘thin above all else’ culture. And god, is it back with a vengeance.

For the last decade or close to it, we saw a real rise in body confidence and body acceptance. People were both online and in the world, deciding that there were more important things to do than fight the war on their own body in the hope of making it thinner and/or into whatever shape we had decided was the current trend.

There was also more mainstream awareness of body positivity, a movement that started in the 1960’s as accepting what bodies looked like and could do, not only those of all sizes but shapes, skin colour and abilities too.

But with the easy access to the new era of weight loss drugs - both prescription (eg Ozempic, Mounjaro - often referred to as GLP-1’s) and not yet legal (usually referred to as ‘peptides’ or ‘peptide treatments‘), we’ve swung back into skinny-or-bust harder than the swing from Obama to Trump.

For those people who take those medications for the diagnosed conditions which they were originally described, obviously none of this discussion applies to you - though maybe it will still resonate, especially if weight loss has been a side effect of your treatment.

But for everyone else, I don’t want to talk what, if any, of the health benefits may or may not be from taking weight loss drugs. Perhaps they exist, perhaps they don’t. But either way, we can all be honest and agree if we want to be skinny badly enough, we will convince ourselves and others of whatever perceived health benefits we need to in order to justify using them. And that it outweighs any side effects or risks from taking them. And I really get it.

I’ve been that friend. For several years I was the person who couldn’t (wouldn’t) eat anything off a menu, had several dietary requirements (restrictions) and was frankly, just a pain in the ass to hang out with. I did all of this under the guise of ‘being healthy’ when in fact I was anything but.

I often reflect that it was quite remarkable how many of my friends and family withstood this and didn’t just call it a day. Because quite honestly, I was very annoying. In sickness and in ‘health’ applies to friends too it seems, and thank god.

and hey, it’s possible that if my body was bigger than it is now, I’d be tempted myself. I like to hope and pray that all that work I did in therapy would mean I wouldn’t. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t. But I can’t ever be 100% sure.

The pressure to be thin is back to being unrelenting. Maybe even more so than it was before. The peer pressure - not in a sense of everyone saying you should try it, but in the sense of the oppressive atmosphere of ‘now that’s it’s so easy, what is the excuse for not’ doing it, basically. Accepting your body is no longer cool.

Anyway, what I worry about is the cost.

1. The mental cost

I worry about the brain cells otherwise used for yaps and jokes that have now been taken up with when to take the next dose, when to get more, how many grams have been lost this week. I worry about our natural vibrancy becoming a little less as our preoccupation with being thin takes up a little more. The fullness of a life, being shrunk in real time.

I don’t know about anyone else, but my diet brain always left me with a combination of feeling like somehow I wasn’t enough and that I was also too much.

There is also the joy cost - the brunches, the dinners, the chippies we wave around to emphasis our points. The gossiping and the plotting which happen best over food.

There is also, I think, a longer term mental cost as well. That fear in the back of the mind about how long a good thing can last. Further testing, longer studies on side effects, temporary or permanent supply changes - anything that might disrupt achieving or maintaining weight loss sustained by these drugs.

Even with those risks at play, I know there’s a thrill to doing it anyway. That heady feeling of deep down knowing eventually it will probably all fall apart but in the meantime it will be such a fun ride. The thrill of the chase, in a way.

2. The financial cost

There is the cost of the medication. Then the cost of the doctor (if getting them legally), or the cost of the cut the dealer takes (if not). The days off work for dealing with side effects. Then there is also the financial cost of taking up your limited brain space with the monitoring and planning of weight loss. When we are distracted or busy - our financial astuteness takes a hit. We’ll worry about our finances when we have time. Or once we are skinny and we have ‘succeeded’, then we’ll come back to paying attention to our money instead of our bodies.

Of course, this limited time/capacity can happen for various reasons, not just dieting. I know that. We all know that. But I worry that women will again be the ones distracted by the ambition and goal of being ‘a good woman’ i.e being desirable, wanted, and praised - all things that society tells us comes when we’re thinner (AKA more attractive, but also not too skinny, which then also becomes unattractive).

But in a world where we already aren’t getting paid what we deserve, it galls me that worrying about our bodies is back to taking up space we desperately need for our financial wellbeing and independence.

In conclusion

Something that has lived rent free in my head for a long time is the movie Requiem for a Dream. That movie disturbed me so badly that I had nightmares for a week afterwards - and I was 28 when I watched it.

One of the four storylines is that a woman, Sara, gets a call that she is going to be a guest on her favourite tv gameshow. She starts a crash diet and then manages to get her doctor to prescribe her amphetamines to help her control her weight further (which is what people were prescribed in those days). Short story long, she ups her dose to try and lose more weight, develops amphetamine psychosis, and ends up admitted to a psychiatric ward, where she undergoes electric shock therapy but does not recover.

I don’t blame anyone in the girlhood for reaching for these drugs. We are all fighting a system that demands we conform, and sometimes it is easier to give in than to fight back.

But I think it’s a bloody shame that’s the position we’re put in. And I can only hope that what we’re doing now isn’t going to cause people to end up in the modern day Sara equivalent.

I hope the cost of all this doesn’t end up being one we can’t afford to pay.

Yours in chaos,

Keep the best for the middle.

Getting dropped off by the cat sitter after being carried in the carrier for 10 mins like.

Bookshelf

My boss made my buy this at a second hand store and I had my doubts, but it was actually very good. Similar prose-y style of writing to the Great Gatsby, rich people doing crazy things, coming of age, outsider looking in but also peering from the inside out. Very glad I read it actually.

Obsession Confession

NO PLACE ON EARTH LIKE PERTH.

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2026 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

In this essay, I will be arguing that we should take back the words ‘girlhood’ and ‘gossip’.

Girlhood. I am sure there are plenty of arguments for calling it womanhood, and of course there is also the sisterhood. I like the term girlhood.

Girlhood to me are the spaces where we have permission to get back, even for the briefest moment in time, this:

Gossipy, messy magic. Where we take the loads off our hunched shoulders and throw our heads back cackling with laughter. Or the space where our shoulders are hunched over still while someone finally holds space for us to cry.

Girlhood is you and Steph and Hannah sat together on the floor eating pasta and salad in an airbnb having quite truly kept each other alive through five years of law school.

Girlhood is you and Meg and Eloise, AKA ‘the duckings’ who started on the same day at work and were trained by Zoe in a baptism of fire. It’s the FaceTime at 9pm on a Thursday gossiping about work and crying with laughter.

Girlhood is having to call Helen your accountant turned friend and telling her that despite the fact you are a published finance author, you forgot to declare something on your tax for two years in a row.

Girlhood is getting a call from Letisha at 10:45AM that you are to get up and get ready and get to Hordern pavilion right NOW because there is a spare ticket for the cheese and wine festival. It’s getting to said wine festival 45 mins later (from bed, very impressive tbh) and getting very tipsy on a Sunday and proceeding to solve the world’s problems while waving a slice of pizza dangerously around.

Girlhood is where it is safe to relax. Safe to trust, to ask for help.

Sometimes the girlhood exists at work and sometimes it doesn’t. I find the work girlhood often gets diluted when it is a big group - women brought together by situation but not by commonality. However I have had a girlhood at most of my workplaces and it has been 10/10.

The mother’s group at your kids’ private schools is not the girlhood. The stilted conversations with the competitive, bitchy lean edges. Yes exceptions exist, of course. But if you are being really honest, is yours one of them? Where the gossip is just tearing down the ones who aren’t there, those who aren’t doing it right. Versus the girlhood of the school mums who you can call on pick up your child from school because you are stuck at work.

Gossip is how we share spells. How we find out more about sex, contraception, pregnancy. Patriarchy, sexual harassment, divorce, menopause. Asking for more. Tolerating less. Saving money on everything from specialist appointments to toasters to school uniforms to cheese.

Gossip and the girlhood is what helps us to realise over and over again that we are not alone. It is the spaces where we save money through advice. Through being talked down from bad-for-us purchasing decisions and talked up to spend on good-for-us purchasing decisions. Even the way that sometimes getting things off our chest

Most men don’t have access to anything similar to the girlhood or its associated gossip and they suffer for it. The closest comparison is probably team sport - which of course has a bonding element but only at a surface level. It is no wonder men are lonelier than they have ever been. And also why a huge part of coercive control involves isolating women from their networks.

When we get busy, tired, caught up, the girlhoods often fall off the radar. Not to mention needing to book catch ups four months in advance to find one afternoon that everyone can make it.

In a world that pays us less and expects us to spend more, girlhood is some of the only armour we have that doesn’t have a capitalist ulterior motive. Every catch up, message, phone call - every investment we make into our girlhoods - offers returns that are financial, emotional and physiological. A good gossip with the girlhood quite literally has healing properties.

It is almost impossible to quantify the value of the girlhood and its gossip, I suppose. But I do know that while money can’t buy girlhood, girlhood saves us and our money over and over again.

Yours in chaos,

Keep the best for the middle.

Pippin clinging to my shoulder tighter than I am hanging on to my reading goal for the year.

Bookshelf

A classic that I can’t believe I haven’t read before now - 100/10, no notes, absolutely loved. There was so much covered in such a short book. Fkn phenomenal.

Obsession Confession

Last newsletter I talked about this jumpsuit….

Pleased to say I took action and bought one on Depop without ONE SINGLE REGRET::::::::

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2026 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

Sometimes, old habits die much easier than the saying leads us to believe.

Sometimes, you blink, and you have gone from January to June and you cannot make sense of how the time has passed, and yet it has.

Almost six months ago, I started a new job. If I were to guess, not having any children myself, and at the risk of alienating all my friends who are parents, the experience has been a bit like what having a newborn must feel like.

Constant exhaustion. Panic that you are getting it wrong every day. New things that you don’t know how to deal with. Strange problems to solve that take all your intellectual and emotional energy. Feeling as though you are fumbling your way through your first day on earth. And somehow, despite the fact you are holding your eyes open with toothpicks and mentally taking the ring to Mordor every day, you are in love.

Now of course, it is not the same as a baby, in that it is not life and death. But I can, if I make a mistake, release someone from prison, so the stakes are not zero.

I was not expecting it to be quite so hard, this new job. Such a shock to the system. Between being back in an office environment full time, long hours, and having absolutely no clue what I am doing while doing it anyway.

Somehow I have been having the time of my life and losing track of life in the same half year. It feels surreal to be in June.

It has been interesting to observe what has fallen off the radar. You would think it would be all the things that do not add value that get stripped back, leaving the most important things. But alas, no.

Things that I love, like writing, or reading any non fiction that is not legislation or cases. Even fiction has been a struggle. But also things that I don’t necessary love, but know serve me immensely - reconciling my expenses, monitoring money goals, cleaning my apartment on any Friday night I was home to wake up Saturday morning in a clean house.

I have not had two brain cells to rub together to do any of these tasks with a shred of regularity. Constantly I tell myself to ‘just [xyz - literally anything] and I simply do not. All these habits have died faster than pansies in the first summer heat.

On reflection, perhaps it makes sense. After all, these things - writing, regular engagement with expenses and money goals, reading, having a clean house - they all require proactivity. It’s me to me. Meanwhile, the functional stuff: washing, paying bills, groceries - this still gets done because it’s urgent enough to force reactivity.

When things get urgent enough, I can still pull through. When my credit card statement comes, I get it together and finally reconcile my expenses. My apartment gets too dirty or messy, I clean it. My unread emails get high enough, I do something about them.

And all is not lost. If I reflect on the first half of the year objectively, instead of cursing myself out for being lazy, I know the ability is still there. I often write good things for work. I drafted (and delivered) two really excellent speeches in the past couple of months. Nailed some funny LinkedIn posts.

But I will say, as the months have gone on, the harder it feels to pick things back up. The time spent writing this has been far outweighed by the time spent procrastinating it. Connecting back in with my spending more often and in more detail requires about three days of gearing myself up, and often a sweet treat. Even though I prove to myself time and time again that it is easier to do than I expect, somehow I am not ready to believe it in advance.

This can be boiled down into three key takeaways:

1). much of what we tell ourselves is urgent, really is not.

2). sometimes we have to ride a bad patch out

3). the very first start of starting again is truly the hardest part

I wish I could tell you all the fantastic techniques I have developed to cure this or package up a nice short course with some self-paced modules, but alas not.

I am sure I am supposed to recommend ‘self-compassion’. But I find that term still too… fluffy for me. Too sage-smudge adjacent. I dare say this attitude is a contributing factor to the above problems. What I am getting better at though is the more neutral, less loaded idea of ‘patience’. I am not concentrating on healing anything, only waiting for it to pass. I suppose some would call that ‘self-acceptance’. How you refer to it is a matter for you.

All I have is the offer of an option which can be functional - patience. One day at a time. We can try again tomorrow. We can celebrate the tiny wins in the meantime.

I am off to celebrate (go to bed) the fact I have managed to get something down on a page. May it happen again soon.

Yours in chaos,

Keep the best for the middle.

Just a couple of girls who went on a road trip to Queanbeyan - Pips was happier about it than she looks.

Bookshelf

Easy to read thriller about several writers on an island competing for a very lucrative representation contract. Very funny commentary on the world of authors, publishers and agents. I found it to be a solid page turner with interesting characters.

It reminded me of Eat Your Heart Out by Victoria Brownlee, another good novel in a similar people-in-crazy-competition-for-chance-of-big-win way, with less romance and more thrill.

Obsession Confession

This denim jumpsuit. I’ve had my eye on one for the last couple of years and now I want one more than ever - IYKYK.

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2026 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

I hope you have been keeping safe and that you were able to get some rest over the holidays.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it. I don’t know if anyone else feels like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole at the moment. Is it the time of year, the time of life, I don’t know, but I feel really weird.

I do have some updates to share.

Firstly, I have a new job.

I started my newsletter and @bad.bitch.money when I was a practicing financial counsellor. Working with clients, running workshops, managing cases. I started working as a financial counsellor in 2018. A few years later, I also trained as a financial coach, and had a blended role doing both.

I loved being a financial counsellor and financial coach. It was the best. Actually, I assumed I would be a financial counsellor for a long time. Maybe my whole career.

My boss at the time recommended I get a degree, to support me if I wanted to move into executive roles. So in 2021, I started my law degree part time.

Then, in 2022, I heard, quite by accident, about this great, interesting role in a bank, an independent function that helps the bank stay accountable for treating customers fairly, especially customers experiencing vulnerability. The role called to me, and in early 2023, I moved into a new career in banking.

And you know what, I love that job too. I love being able to change things on a bigger scale. Sometimes for hundreds of thousands of people. I love a busy corporate office, I love hearing what people are working on.

In 2022, actually at the exact same time I heard about the banking job, I had just started studying a unit called Commonwealth Criminal Law. I knew within the first two days of that unit that I was destined to work for the barrister who ran the unit. I didn’t know how, or when, but I was certain.

(Boy, I miss the days where I was so certain about literally anything, ever).

As the weeks went on, I was more and more sure. He was smart as hell and a full-tilt diva. I wanted to be him when I grew up (I was 30). In 2023, having finished that unit that changed my life, I still living in Perth and was in Sydney for an event, and I caught up with him for drinks. I had a whole list of reasons in my phone, ready to pitch to him why I should come and work for him. I didn’t even need the list. I said I was going to move to Sydney to work for him one day a week, he said hell yes** and that was that. He asked me what happened if he left where he worked, and I shrugged and told him that wherever he was, that was where I was coming to work.

A few months later, he was appointed as a Judge to the District Court of NSW - surprising absolutely no-one. A couple of years have passed. We’ve stayed in touch, caught up a few times. Both had books published (my first, his fourth). Finally, the time is right for both of us and in the year of Beyonce 2026, I am taking a year-long leave of absence from the banking job I love, to go and work in another job that I know I am also going to love - as his Judge’s Associate.

I can’t wait. In the District Court, an Associate does a lot for the Judge. They are a combination of an executive assistant, office manager, researcher, everything. They are just about the most competitive graduate roles you can get. I am going to learn an enormous amount. Plus, my Judge is a total bloody vibe. It’s going to be fun.

As you can imagine, I’m very excited. It’s a decent (read: huge) pay cut, and thankfully, years of being good with money means I can afford it.

I have also been feeling very weird though, and it took me a while to figure out why.

What I realised is that I am moving into my third distinct career in less than a decade, still loving the previous two. I’m due to go back to my banking role in 12 months, and while I will be thrilled to go back, I have the feeling I will want to at least incorporate legal work. Or maybe I will discover I do not like the idea of working in law, who really knows.

Nonetheless, it’s as though I have been spending the last eight years as a crash test dummy. I also built the car. I am also in charge of the features. I guess that explains why I feel so adrift, a bit out of sorts. Not to mention tired.

Speaking of tired, I’ve also just started my bloody grad certificate. Basically, if you want to practice as a lawyer after you finish your law degree, you have to complete a graduate certificate of legal practice. It’s expensive and time consuming, and the thought of studying again so soon makes me [words fail].

It’s going to be a DIABOLICAL four months, but I am determined. This has gone on for long enough. This method means I’ll finish the coursework the week before my uni graduation ceremony in May, which is nice. I’ll suffer gladly for that outcome (but not stoically; I will be complaining fervently).

It feels like such a discombobulating time. On the one hand, everything is changing. For someone who is a real control freak, having about 16 major life changes at the same time as a new year ticking over is quite the storm in a teacup. The holiday season saw me have an identity crisis, my last week at work had me so anxious I thought I was going to be sick every day.

On the other hand, WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE. WHAT A FEELING TO HAVE FREE TIME AND FREE BRAIN for that tiny splice of time before all the new things started. It has not been long enough, like trying to hold sand in my fingers. But at the same time, every single moment has been so precious.

What happens to everything else this year? Friends, I simply don’t know. I’m unsure yet what bad bitch money looks like, what writing in general looks like, etc. In a way, I will have lots of content because of budget cuts (from me to me), but I also wonder if I’ve become too far removed from the financial confidence space now? I don’t know. See how we go, I guess. Lots of thoughts, lots of feelings, little of time. I’m trying my best to resist the idea of needing to have all the answers and all the plans sorted by early January. Mixed results thus far.

If any of this is resonating for you, TELL MEEEEEE. Am I normal?!?!?!? I do not feel normal.

In the meantime, I hope 2026 is starting to shape up for you. For better or worse, we’re all in this together. Screaming, crying, laughing. May we all have enough money and an abundance of love.

Yours in chaos,

**words to the effect of.

“You’re not entitled to the reward for your labor. You’re only entitled to the labor itself.”

- Elizabeth Gilbert

Keep the best for the middle.

BABY GIRL.

Bookshelf

I have never been so obsessed with something in my entire life. The show, the clips, the books. It’s become consuming to the point that I now watch ice hockey clips (of REAL ICE HOCKEY. I’M WATCHING THE DAMN NHL FFS). I cannot shut up about it. But how nice to be unhinged about a cultural moment - usually I miss them completely so it’s a cool change to being obsessed with something that many, many other people are obsessed with too.

Obsession Confession

I went to Bali on a girl’s trip with my two uni besties to celebrate the fact that all three of us have now finished our degrees. I’m obsessed with this devil horn I picked up in this photo - may it inspire me to be more of a menace in 2026.

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2026 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

Some things are late but worth the wait (everything when it comes to me). Today we’re working off a grazing board style update, full of chaos, cahoots and celebrations. Let’s get stuck into it.

Overview

[The way I had to stop myself from writing an executive summary]

Hello from Japan - I can’t believe I am already in the last few days of the trip. I miss my cat. This newsletter is currently coming to you from the Shinkansen express train from Kobe to Tokyo, sitting next to a lovely older woman with a frankly ADORABLE cat bag and who told me my (new) ring is very nice.

At what point does customs need a CHAOS flag on passports?

Is there some kinda travel visa I can apply for which just puts people around me on notice that my skull is filled with background jazz, Hydrangeas, and not a single FUNCTIONAL logistics officer in sight.

I genuinely believe that there should be an official characterisation of a ‘type C’ personality. Because there is a special type of person that is both highly strung but the string is also regularly tangled in a ball and being played with on the floor by a kitten. AND IT’S ME.

Type A - competitive, ambitious, time-focused.

Type B - relaxed, easygoing, patient.

Type C - competitive, constantly late, chaotic. It’s all in the letter. C is for CRACKED OUT.

In news that will surprise no one, being an agent of chaos transcends the national border and naturally has cost me time, money, and sanity. Here are some highlights of the absolute antics that have occurred on this trip:

What it’s like travelling as an agent of chaos:

• Constantly late

• Lost my $750 occular splint (a thick ass mouth retainer because I clench my jaw at night like I’m white knuckling through my subconscious adventures the same way I do my conscious ones) in Tokyo. Which is SUPREMELY ANNOYING because I only had it replaced last year after having my old one for 10 years. If you are a dentist in Sydney who does occlusal splints for less than $750 let me know tho.

• Accidentally bought three CUPS of chocolate covered strawberries instead of 3 strawberries which is what i thought I was doing - so $41 of chocolate covered (dark, strawberry, and white chocolate, all delicious) later.

• My scarf fell off a coat hanger and got left behind in Kyoto which I LUCKILY picked up on before we left on the train to Kobe because I saw someone wearing the same one and thought to myself ‘hmmm I haven’t seen MY SCARF TODAY’ and had to race back in an uber after trying to get the front desk person at my friend’s parents’ (fancier) hotel to call my hotel and ask, he called the wrong hotel, it was under a different name, the whole thing was a comedy of errors. Thankfully the scarf was located.

• After managing to buy a Suica card straight off the flight for the public transport here (basically an Opal card in Sydney, a Myki card in Melbourne and a Smartrider in Perth), I recharged it with some $30 two days ago and promptly lost it. HOW have I kept both a Smartrider and a Myki in my HANDBAG for over two YEARS while living in Sydney and managed to lose this one? I don’t know. I just work here. Someone needs to put me on a performance improvement plan.

• While looking for aforementioned Suica card in my hotel room, found my beauty blender under the bed - didn’t even know it was lost at the time.

So anyway, my friend (type B) has to come to my room and supervise me when we want to leave by a certain time but it’s not urgent that we do so - my nemises is a ‘soft stop’ time.

Taking a leave of absence from being a money gal

Sometimes it’s ok to just ✨let it go✨.

Normally when my bestie and I travel together we’re pretty decent at tracking who has paid for what, splitting it down the middle at some point and transferring between us.

I’m also, of course, a regular spending tracker.

This holiday we’re travelling with her parents who are a huge vibe, and also haven’t travelled to a country that doesn’t have English as the predominant language for a longgg time. It’s been different to how we normally travel, and of course lots of costs are four ways instead of two. So we’ll have to do some sort of reckoning at the end in terms of who needs to pay who for what. Good luck to us frankly.

Additionally, I simply just had no fucks left to try and track my own expenses. Japan still has a pretty strong cash economy so I have Yen, I’ve got my WISE card, and my AMEX. When I got here I also had to use my ING debit card for something because I had no idea what the pin number even was on my WISE card. So the expenses are in even more places than usual and it’s every line item for themselves.

The world has not ended. No one has demanded I hand back my financial counselling diploma. I’ve just entered the amount I put on my WISE and the amount I changed into Yen into my spending app, and what that money has specifically been used for on this trip is frankly, no longer any of my business. I haven’t gone wild on the spending, though I’ve probably bought more random bits than I normally would. But for my first holiday in five years without work or study to do, I’ll allow it. The Chief Chaos Officer has wined and dined the Chief Financial Officer, and she’s agreed the shareholders will be ok with this bonus at the AGM.

My book was nominated for two awards (slay)

Know Your Worth was announced as a finalist for two awards in last week’s Australian Business Book Awards - Personal Development, and Personal Finance and Investment.

Congratulations to Glin Bayley, with The Negotiation Playbook winning Personal Development - I can’t wait to read it.

Huge slay by Glen James and Nick Bradley for taking out Personal Finance and Investment, AND overall Business Book of the Year for 2025.

It was a great night celebrating the finalists and winners - the quality of the submissions and the feedback from the judges was next level. I’ve added several (too many) books to to my reading list, and now I’m particularly looking forward to reading Demystifying Dementia by Rose Capp.

[this is copy paste from my LinkedIn and wow that difference in tone is PALPABLE].

I’m on my iPad and I can’t work out how to make this photo cropped or smaller lol.

My friend and esteemed colleague Emma’s new book comes out this week

The Wardrobe Project is about Emma’s year of buying no new clothes - or no clothes new to her in general (no vintage, no upcycle, no renting). Having done Emma’s The Wardrobe Project course, I knew I was going to love this book, and I was absolutely right. If you are ready to fall back in love with yourself and fall off the damn wagon of buying clothes to try and fill an internal craving, TWP is for you. IT IS RELEASED THIS THURSDAY!!! And if you have tickets to come to the Sydney launch party on Thursday night, I’ll see you there - walking off a plane and into Dymocks for a book launch is truly a celebrity-esque vibe.

Guess who got to feel like a total baddie reading an advance copy on the train in Japan, like Miranda’s twins reading the new Harry Potter book in the Devil Wears Prada? YA GIRL VIVI.

Black Friday: thoughts and prayers for us all (but also pls help me)

Normally I accidentally or purposely miss BF, but this year I have a few things that have been on my list for months that I am hoping I can just GET THE HELL DONE.

Therefore, I am seeking personal recommendations on the following:

Sports bra - please, I am only seeking advice if you also have boobs above an E cup. I say it with love, it’s a completely different sports bra experience for us big busted gallies. I want the absolute GOAT of high impact sports bras, but not something that gives my boobs a weird shape -IYKYK. I like a racerback style or convertible option, because I have big traps (muscles at the bottom of the back of your neck) and I often wear racerback gym tops to show them off. I’ve had about 20 different bra brands in my sponsored IG ads and quite simply, I cannot. Give me your best.

Headphones. Team, I am currently sporting a pair of $30 Amazon headphones and they aren’t it. I am willing to spend good money on ear buds including/especially those which have an ear hook over ear because for some reason headphones HATE my ear canals and will self eject at any opportunity. My favourites to date have been my powerbeats which did the needful for years even though I do think they are kinda ugly as part of an outfit (I am vain). If you have the Powerbeats Pro, would you recommend them? I am open to alternatives also. It seems wild to me that headphones are so expensive but at this point I’ll pay the price for something I use so much as long as it does the damn job.

Tennis bracelet - OK HEAR ME OUT. I’ve had a tennis bracelet on my vision board for 3+ years now. I was going to buy it when I got my book deal, then when the book came out, then when I finished my degree. I took my own book advice and wore a cubic zirconia one that my friend Hannah gave me for months, to make sure I both liked it and wore it. I wore that thing to its ultimate untimely death. I’ve been saving for it this year through random means like transferring cash when I use a giftcard, extra cash from selling uni notes, other ad hoc wins - rather than as a standard budget line item. I’m looking at something small, around the $2000 AUD mark, yellow gold, and am chill with either natural diamonds or lab.

In conclulu

That’s all from me for this week team, I hope you eat something delicious today and that your enemies have the day they deserve.

Yours in chaos,

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

I know my newsletters have still been coming (salute to the me of 4 months ago who wrote and scheduled those) but it feels like such a long while since I have been in touch. I’ve been off socials, texts unanswered for weeks, emails collecting in inboxes like cat hair on a couch. I hope you have been keeping well in these consistently precedented times. If not, I hope you have been keeping on.

By way of the only possible update that matters at my end, I have finished the ultramarathon that was my law degree.

I have many thoughts and several updates. How the helly did I have a book come out and get through an entire year of honours research in the same 12 month period, for a start.

But for now, I will leave you with my law school mascot, Christ in a Kebab:

And my law school spirit animal, Perplexed Diva:

I can’t wait to write again. Well, write about quite literally anything other than elder financial abuse, consumer vulnerability, and the Corporations Act, which has absorbed my brain almost exclusively for a quarter century quarter chicken and chips quarter of a year.

But before that, I’m going on my first holiday in almost five years with no laptop, no deadlines, no assignments. I’ve taken this degree with me absolutely fkn everywhere for the last half decade, and I think it’s high time to see where this degree can take me.

Still had to pay for my own trip to Japan though??

Yours in chaos,

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

2 This is part two of two. Actually it may be part two of part three. Who knows, not yet me.

In part one we talked about how often shame or insecurity makes us keep things quiet. The shadow that turns a mouse into a monster.

We talked about how the pressure of choosing the 'right' path forward gridlocks us from being able to move forward at all.

The solution is, seemingly, to pick a path - whether one that's interesting, or 'good enough' or has some kind of strategic alignment to who you are and what you want.

All well and good to say, but quite hard to do. Especially when you don't really know what you want, or it's all a bit of a jumble.

I've been working through this of late and it seems to me that there's a bit of juggling required. Throwing some long term values in my handbag with a short term planner, a lipbalm, a water bottle and some thoughts and prayers and swinging it over the shoulder in a most unladylike fashion.

Here's what I'm working through at the moment.

High level: I'm struggling with both my logistical long term plan and my long term 'personal strategy'. What that means is the girl who sat down and wrote a clear 5 year plan in 2022 (month by month - no, seriously) has executed most of it, binned or pivoted from the rest, and is a rumpled Barbie doll adrift in the ocean. I know sort of what I want, but the how and the when and the who are incorporeal.

At the same time, I realised that I'm not super clear on what my personal values are. Which of course, then makes it particularly hard to choose between multiple options, if you don't know what your points on the compass are.

I was overwhelmed by the wood and the trees my friends, and it was stopping me from being able to pick flowers.

In the end I just focused on the next six months. I printed out six months worth of calendar templates (very helpful if you have busy calendar and need to look at a high level). It probably would have been better on some kinda Gantt chart or timeline, but anyway.

I looked at what I actually had room for after work and the last few months of my degree, and the answer was not much. If I wanted to do X, I needed to shift Y, and to shift Y meant an impact to Z. I guess I went for a Hansel and Gretel approach: picked something and breadcrumbed it.

Here's how you can apply it to money:

Your rent gets paid on Monday, but you get paid on Thursday. The weekend (generally the spendiest of days) is in between them. So potentially, you need to move the rent money into a seperate account until Sunday.

You know your electricity bill comes Feb, April, June. You've got back to school in May (?) and an interstate wedding in March. You set up a weekly or fortnightly transfer the day after payday to take the sting out of a $600 utility bill.

You think you probably want to buy a house, but you aren't really sure when, or where. So you can't really have a SMART goal (specific, measured, achievable, relevant, time based). But you can have a 'smart' approach. You set up an account, maybe you call it the 'probably?' fund. If you have a secret little thought you want to live on a farm, or in a tiny Italian village, maybe you have a 'ranch' fund or a 'villetta' fund.

In all these cases, if the strategy doesn't work, at least you've breadcrumbed it - literally left a trail of money showing your decision-making. It becomes much easier to pivot to something else - firstly because the money is already there, and secondly because you've identified what about the approach is working and what isn't.

Take care of the practical and the values will look after themselves? We'll see. But better to be at least looking forward, rather than hopelessly around.

Anyway, by the time you get this email, I’ll be within 10 days (!!!!!!!!!) of finishing my law degree, and if there’s one thing I’m looking forward to, it’s absolutely fkn that.

Yours in chaos,

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

Isn't it funny how things can work.

A few weeks ago I was chatting to my therapist about the rest of 2025. How I have a sense of weird restlessness because I am in a temporary period of having less things to do - being one less university unit and no book.

Ironically, all this mental space created room for heightened comparison analysis to sneak in. I felt like everything I was doing, all I could see, were people who did it so much better, more 'successfully', or more easily.

And it's one of things, isn't it, you can rationalise it all you want, and because you know it's not as true as you think, you don’t tell anyone and get it off your chest. And then when you finally do and someone talks through it with you without judgement, the monster was just a mouse with a big shadow, after all.

As I financial counsellor, I know this. I know it so well. When a client would come in and finally unburden their financial situation into my notebook, things were better. Even if we couldn't fix it, this ✨thing✨ they knew they needed to talk through was finally out in the open; and they hadn’t been judged for it.

Do as I say, not as I do, etc, etc.

Society is the mouse and shame creates the shadows.

In this case, Rae talked me through (talked me down? Teehee) how perfectionists will often look for people in each category of their focus and identity what the best looks like in that one area. We pedestal them for the sliver of life we see or that we're thinking about, and forget we aren't comparing apples to apples.

We find ourselves staring up at a collection of trophies on the high shelf, for every category we want for ourselves, and it doesn't matter that the trophies have 28 different names on them, only that we don't see our name on one in every category.

This leads to what Rae very accurately described as a 'gridlock'. Not knowing where to spend your time, energy or money, because in every direction, someone else will be doing it better.

What we decided in the end was that one needs to choose a way forward, rather than trying to choose the ✨best way✨ forward. You choose a path and give it a whirl, with the understanding you can (almost always) change it later if it's not working. Which of course, is also hard for a perfectionist to grapple with, but I must say it's generally easier to work through things when you are on a walk, both literally and metaphorically.

What was the most interesting though is the balance that's required between the long and the short of it. Having an idea of what you want long term, but also not avoiding creating a plan simply because you can't get five years done in one go.

Sometimes that actually is pulling in the reigns and planning for a little less long.

We'll talk about that in part 2. For now, let's bring this back on home to money.

1. When you speak to people or see people on social media who are 'doing better' with money (or anything else). First of all, please know this happens to me on a regular basis. And I wrote a book on money.

2. The only way to keep the shadows at bay is to turn the light on. I have conversations all time where one of us is doing an 'emotional sense check' of bringing some sort of shame (from the major to the minor) out of the dark in the hope someone can at least turn on their iPhone flashlight.

3. If you have financial shadows, financial counsellors are free and here to help. In Australia that's the National Debt Helpline (1800 007 007 or find one close to you at ndh.org.au) but they also exist in the USA and the UK.

Anyway, I was trying to finish this at pace while walking somewhere new, and walked 6 minutes in the complete wrong direction. Who would have thought. Yet, it could be undone.

Narrow your focus to one decision. Ideally, the most time sensitive one. Less of the ‘best‘ choice, more of making a choice. Potentially the easiest choice, or the easiest to undo choice, or the scary choice.

If only I could take my own advice just slightly faster than I currently do.

Yours in chaos,

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

When I was a financial counsellor and a financial coach, something that people brought with them many, many times in our sessions was this statement:

I can’t stop spending money.

The person might say it with defeat, or shame, or helplessness. Sometimes with anger. So we’d start pulling it apart - what was really going on? What were they spending on, specifically? How often, what else was happening, who else knew about it? Was it a secret, or was it a point of tension in a relationship?

Sometimes, specific mental illnesses could be a cause, such as for clients with Bipolar or Borderline Personality Disorder, where something has happened (pre-diagnosis, or change in medication) to cause uncontrollable spending. Happened more than you think, actually - so if this has been/is/was you, you’re not alone on this one.

Where mental illness was not a factor, or a contributing factor but not the overall cause, why a person couldn’t stop spending money usually boiled down to one of four emotional states of which the feeling of out-of-control spending was a symptom.

The four main reasons we feel like we can’t stop spending money:

1. We aren’t giving ourselves permission to spend.

2. We’re filling an emotional need.

3. We’re in crisis and everything is tumbling in a heap so may as well ignore it for now

4. ‘Just one more week of this and then I’ll sort my budget out‘

Sometimes it’s a combination of these, and often they are a bit like a Venn diagram, reasons and circles overlapping, and often not evenly, either.

Interestingly, so many people I work with think that their spending will be the worst ever seen, or that no one else fails at this like they do. Couldn’t be further from the truth - it’s common, it’s happened to me, it happens to most people at some point or another. We just don’t really talk about it very much, because it feels like as adults, we should have this shit sorted out. I’m here to tell you that lots, lots, lots of people don’t. So over the next four newsletters, we’ll take a look at each reason, some practical tips on improving them, and hopefully we come out feeling less alone if this is something that has or does impact you.

In the meantime, just know that whatever which way you’re feeling about your money - I can promise you, PROMISE you, you are not alone.

I’ve written our first part of the series, and there’s Ketamine and fried chicken in there. Even when money is shit, it can be funny. Pinky swear.

[2025 update - and there hasn’t been Ketamine or fried chicken in the newsletter since. An outrage.]

Yours in chaos,

D I…. WHY?

If you’ve been following along on my *treadmill desk at the gym* journey, here is the $22 solution. I wanted something that was relatively immediate, easy to return, and low cost enough that I could suffer the loss if I really bricked it.

[2025 update - the treadmill desk did not make it to Sydney, and now I barely use a treadmill at all. How the tables have turned.]

1.Went to the gym with a tape measure and measured the treadmill across, down (like how wide the ‘desk‘ could be while still being able to actually walk), measured how much space there was on the sides, etc. Very Bobette the Builder.

2. Looked at the measurements for my laptop so I could make sure the desk was going to be wide enough for the whole bottom to sit on it.

3.Looked on the Bunnings (hardware store) website at ‘shelves‘ and found the best matching ones to the measurements.

4.Attended said Bunnings with picture, found the shelf, and also went and found the drawer liner that stops stuff from moving around. No one was around to help so just eyeballed a metre and ripped it.

5.Left the plastic on and went to the gym late at night to minimise staring while I was checking it and cutting grip to size (not sure if was allowed scissors).

6.Cut the grip into decent mats that went over the arms of the treadmill so the desk doesnt move, even with light bumps.

7.Used the rest of the grip under the laptop for extra support/holding that in place (could have got a way with .5m grip I reckon but anyway).

8.That’s it - I’m experimenting with speeds but currently seems to be around the 1.3km for basic typing and 2-2.5km for watching/participating. Would expect if I was working on something hard that needed lots of focus I’d go slow

If you make one, send me a pic.

PS - I have also been informed by two people (Jess B - not to be confused with Jess N or Jess C who is also a Jess B - and Sam) that a $15 bath caddy from Kmart does the job too - though there are spaces in the plank which gives me the fear. An even cheaper option.

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

I've discovered that if I'm stuck on something that should be straightforward (think: basic email I'm mentally overcooking, making an appointment, drafting a newsletter) I'm much better at executing it if my body is moving.

I started drafting overwhelming emails on hot girl walks in my phone notes, and low and behold, all of a sudden they weren’t so scary after all. Booking an online appointment? God forbid…. circling back??? Nothing seemed as difficult.

What I realised was that I don't have to be walking, but it also seems to work when I'm on the train, on a plane (less so but still works) and in a car (currently writing this in an Uber, though rapidly feeling increasingly sick).

I remember I wrote a great piece once that came to me as I was driving around and I had to write it on the tiny blank edges of a parking ticket. I have so many good thoughts when driving, or walking.

The train is a great one, as when I’m going to work, I know I have around 16-18 mins. It’s a stretch goal - how much can I write, how many expenses can I reconcile, how many texts can I reply to (all things that build up and become undoable in day to day life).

It must be something in line with the same reason that watching Lord of the Rings on repeat constantly as background enrichment for my brain works. Sometimes, you just need to take up a bit more brain, rather than working to have less on your plate. A bit of noise in the background, just enough to not hear yourself overthink.

I'm sure there's research to back this up, but I truly have journal article fatigue. You’ll just have to run the experiment yourself. Or walk it, as it were.

So, go for a walk. Especially if you have something simple you’ve been putting off, or something you need to get out of your head and onto a page.

Get on the train. Get on a plane. Why not.

Move out of your own damn way by physically moving (a love note from me to me, and me to you).

PS - I was first inspired to write this while I was walking, after having just POWERED through a newsletter on a longer train journey. I came up with the concept of ‘budget Spotto’. If you don’t live in Australia or haven’t heard of Spotto, there are a few different rules and variations, one of which is punching other passengers when you spot an old VW Beetle while driving, with ‘Spotto’ for sighting yellow cars in general. The first person to… well, spot it, would shout ’SPOTTO’. We’re simple folk, truly. In what was a fundamentally genius marketing idea, a petrol station in Australia created road trip ‘Spotto kits’. They used to come with stickers, now they exist as a ‘printable’ - upsetting technological development in my view.

UPDATE: HAVE JUST DISCOVERED THERE IS AN INTERNATIONAL SPOTTO FEDERATION. Absolutely iconic origination story too (an aspirational level of pure pettiness).

Anyway, in my enthusiastic but far less roadtrip energy version of Spotto, you basically ‘spot the expense’. Hear me out, it sounded good in my head. You walk past a car and you have a car? Boom. Car expenses on the budget list. Are they up to date? Is your insurance coming up? New tyres? Someone walking their dog past you, and you have a dog? Dog expenses on the list. Someone walks past you in the phone and says they need to book an appointment with such and such, you add your specialists to the list. And your health insurance. etc etc.

Perhaps not my best, but I had a top tier time looking up Spotto commentary online, I’ll give you the tip.

Anyway, love you, chat soon.

Yours in chaos,

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

At the time of writing, there are 129 days left of my law degree. It’s going to be tough, touch and go, toucan, toudalou etc, etc.

I’m too scared to tell you what my GPA is in case I jinx it, but it’s very, very good. Frankly, I can’t believe I’ve managed it. Standing between me and 31 October is a 10,000 word honours thesis and a unit on criminal procedure. It’s the final push, and I’m in the position where I’ve never had less to give it and it’s never mattered so much to give it everything. Maybe my GPA will never matter again in my entire life, but I’ll be damned if I’m not going to hedge my bets (the only betting I condone).

I had to decide how I could still keep doing what I love (writing) while giving myself as much time as possible to keep doing what I need to do (writing, but legal). So, the few weeks have been an absolute flurry of activity, and I’ve organised every newsletter for the rest of the year. Turns out, in proper Vivi fashion, if you turn up the pressure and also get out of your own damn way, you can get a lot done. I also promised myself I could read V.E Schwab’s brand new novel I pre-ordered 15 months ago once I’d done this. I could be lured off a cliff with Victoria’s books, I tell you.

There is a mix of brand new newsletters, and some updated newsletters from my old Mailchimp newsletter days that I’ve been meaning to get around to publishing again on Substack. A lot of you will have never read them, and those of you who have will forgive me. They also have quite hilarious 2025 commentary inserted of the pertinent updates.

Between them, some of it is my best writing to date. Also, my newsletters used to be so short! I’m not sure which I prefer, but perhaps a mix of both is the way forward in the future.

They are all ready, currently without the bonus extras (pictures of Pippin, bookshelf updates, current obsessions). Could I make these up? Sure. But I’m best at my most authentic chaos, and that’s what you’ll get. Maybe I will add them in when I can.

As for everything else:

• Regrettably I still work for a living, therefore nothing changes at work, except a) I am currently doing my boss’ job while he is in America, so I report directly to the CEO of a bank (personality hire stumbles into success through a combination of chaos, talent and delusion). b) I have the best, most supportive team. c) I have travel to Melb and Perth towards the VERYYYYY pointy end, as in the two weeks before the end, how bad can it be? Don’t answer that.

• I’m deliberately taking longer to reply to non-work emails. Unless something is urgent, I leave everything to a Sunday morning. Tasks take up the space you allow them to, and I was finding myself fighting for my sanity in my inboxes (think personal, uni, business. I have at least EIGHT email addresses, all of which receive emails I need to at least skim read). By Sunday, if it still needs me I’ll decide if I’m going to do something about it.

• Social media is a TBC. If I can get out of my own way and embrace going back to basics, maybe I’ll do some. We’ll see.

• Social life: 🤷‍♀️

Of course, do please stay in touch. Email me! I will get back to you probably on a Sunday. If we don’t chat before then, I’ll see you on the LLB(honours) side.

Strap in peeps, this bitch is getting the degree done so she can write another book next year.

Yours in chaos,

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

Anyway, I thought I might try it for the newsletter. Timer on, and when it runs out, I stop writing - regardless of if I’m mid making a point, mid sentence or mid breakdown. Hopefully, it will pressure me to write faster, resulting in more succinct reading for you, and less dilly-dally-procrastifally from me. It’s already been six minutes.

It’s very expensive to even be a little bit sick

This fortnight I have been reflecting on how expensive it is to get sick. Last week I was in Adelaide for work, with a conference across 2 full days and 2 half days, and the day before, I came down hard with something. $100 at the chemist later, I was laden with Difflam tablets, Codral, COVID/RSV/Influenza tests, masks and Hydralite. Four hours later, I actually felt pretty good. Tested negative for everything, drugs were working. I’d also been taking Armaforce in the lead up (a must before any conference - trust me, you’ll only need to hear the coughing in the plenary once). ‘Must be some 24 hour bug‘ I thought.

The conference passed in a blur. I felt mostly good, though kept up with my $100 of pharma. I also have very bad insomnia often - one night I slept less than an hour. Not ideal conditions for healing after a 16 hour work day. But nonetheless, I was in decent knick.

In what, surprisingly, came as a shock to me, I came home, went to bed and promptly fell diabolically unwell. I haven’t been this sick since at least 2020’s first COVID round, and possibly even then. I couldn’t get out of bed for more than 1-2 hours for four days. The cat absolutely loved it. I did not. The conses quenced, you could say.

We’re coming into day 7 now, and I’ve had to have at least 1 or 2 naps every day. Tonight is the first night I’ve managed to retain some semblance of brain function.

Living alone means you really do have to manage. And managing is well, expensive.

First there was the online shopping - $130 later which basically was a top-up/delirium shop of 2 minute noodles, more Hydralite, corn chips, raisin toast, fruit, and frozen yoghurt.

Then there was a birthday gift, basically ordered from the first place that could execute the idea, no price hunting or considering alternatives. Done and back to sleep. Then the chemist again for more Hydralite. Today I had to embrace I was not getting better, do a Telehealth appt and get a script for antibiotics and go back to the chemist again. On the plus, I’ve had three doses and I feel substantially better already.

So we’re looking at $350+ just on the logistics of being sick. That doesn’t count the Armaforce, ibuprofen and paracetamol I had at home. I’m lucky in that I’m employed full-time, and have plenty of sick leave (though the mental cost of falling behind on work and my honours thesis for uni…). If I ran a business full-time or worked casually or not at all, it would be both much harder and much more expensive. I was also extremely grateful to pre-trip Victoria, who froze her leftover pasta and taco mince, and therefore had some meals ready to go when I could stomach something.

Truly, it made me realise how lucky I am day-to-day, to have so few health considerations to manage and budget for. Four specialists, a few regular medications, and 5-6 GP visits a year for everything else. It made me think of the financial counselling and/or coaching clients I had who have really consuming chronic health conditions (or their kids do). I remember us setting up account ‘bubbles’ and setting money aside every pay/Centrelink cycle for those costs.

We used to talk not only about the costs of the medical appointments, but the mental cost of organising the appointments, [~13 mins on my writing timer to go~] taking on the information from the appointments, organising the tests for the specialists, organising the time off work/away from business. The mental load was basically it’s own line item. Sometimes we’d add it as a separate budget bubble, or we’d really try and pad out the medical one. Here’s why.

In my book (still a wild thing to say), I talk about the ‘capacity jar‘ - how we all have a mental jar which is full of rocks of different sizes and shapes for all the ✨stuff✨ in our brains. Work, family, friend drama, cat with a limp, school holidays, etc. Once the jar is full, our capacity for getting through everything else is extremely limited. So when we have a giant ‘health’ rock, especially a chronic or unresolved one, we find it harder to be mindful with our spending in other ways. More expensive food that has less prep time, buying little treats because the gynaecologist was rude, letting our kids do activities or spending money on them because we feel bad for not spending the quality time with them they deserve. On it goes.

Wherever possible, it is genuinely easier to budget for this, especially in the short/medium or ‘trying to work out what the problem is‘ phase. Why try and ‘just be better‘ if there is wiggle room to buy ourselves mental space. When it’s done without guilt, it actually becomes an exercise in self compassion. Actually, most clients found that once they had permission to do it, they spent less. Funny how that works.

In summary: [~2 mins on timer left~]

• Definitely plan somewhere in your finances for getting sick (whether in emergency fund or own account/elsewhere).

• If you are exploring and/or managing a chronic illness or medical issue, it’s ok that your financial progress is slower than other people around you.

• It’s ok to build in a buffer for your affected capacity when you (or your family) are impacted by illness or injury. Give yourself permission, and genuinely set some money aside for it. You’ll feel 10000% better than not doing this and then throwing in the towel and blowing a whole week of great financial planning.

• Listen to your body (me talking to me).

• freeze your leftovers before you go on a tr…

Yours in chaos,

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Bookshelf

This was odd but good. You know those novels that are a cultural critique and some kind of metaphor you know is important but can’t quite put your finger on? One of those. Nice and short too.

Obsession Confession

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

Anyway, this memory re-occurred to me when I was at the gym at 9pm on a Sunday night, after getting ready at 6pm and then doing absolutely nothing of value for 2 hours.

I'm finding this resistance for all sorts of things lately (burnout, is that you? It's me, Mary). Studying, nightmare. As soon as I know what is on the agenda is going to be complicated and require a lot of untangling and cross referencing (for example, see the Corporations Act), good luck to me getting it started.

On Sundays, I do my weekly 'recalibration'. During the week I jot things down that I need to do/remember to do later/make a note of/ random brainwaves about anything from ‘who invented rice pudding‘ to ‘add [important business information] to ExCo slides‘. It has taken a huge mental load off Mon-Sat, as I’m no longer trying to stay on top of everything, every damn day. If it’s urgent, I deal with it. Otherwise, it’s on the dumplist until Sunday. But my god, does Sunday morning test me. Sometimes I walk my recalcitrant inner toddler to a cafe and bribe myself with a pain au chocolat like a frazzled parent taking their kid to the McDonald’s playground for 20 minutes of peace. Except there is no peace, because the toddler is in charge of sorting out the week gone and the week ahead.

Sometimes I even get this with reconciling my finances. I know I want to go back through and reflect on what I spent on, check money is growing in the right places and generally things are happening as they should. But starting is truly a Herculean task. I wrote A VERY GOOD BOOK on personal finance, for crying out loud.

By far the worst part of all this is that once I start, it is NEVER, EVER as bad as I think it’s going to be. And once I start, I can usually keep going for a decent amount of time. My brain locks into the task, and every single time, I think ‘that wasn’t so bad‘. Do you think that these 27 thousand proof points help me the next time?

Alas, I fear I am not adjusting well to a reduced level of business. Things are too quiet for a gal who’s sense of self worth is bound with her achievements more tightly than Kris Jenner’s new jawline. The foot is off the accelerator but I'm still on the motorway, ya know? Therapy is going well, thanks.

The short story long here is that if you are a person who avoids engaging with your money, or other important life things you want to do, I feel you. I AM YOU. But know this, you can still be this person and do the things. In fact, you can do them well - sometimes it’s just going to take you a frustratingly long time to start. Having started though, chances are very good that it won’t be as bad as you think.

What to do about it

Basically, we have to desensitise ourselves via various versions of sneezing and opening umbrellas. I have all sorts of cobbled together strategies to try and cope with this behaviour.

I'm at the stage now we're I'm starting to radically ✨go with it✨. It is what it is. Sometimes I won't do the task. Sometimes I will, just 3-8 hours later than intended. Ok, does the world end? Usually not. Thankfully, the crushing fear of failure means I usually don’t reach for this one at work, only for tasks no one sees except me.

One that's worked well in the past that I need to try again is this strategy. Basically I set a time with myself, and if I don’t start the task by that time, I’m not allowed to do it until the next day. I have to do something else. Anything else. Cannot pick the task up for the rest of the day - rather than a continued delay. The video explains it much better, and for some reason it very much works.

I'll make a competition with myself how much of ✨a thing✨ I can get done on the train to or from work (a grand total of 16-18 minutes). The perceived pressure of the other passengers seems to do something to my brain and it’s very productive.

A really good one is blocks with friends - set a goal of between 1-3 things for 40 mins and then check in. There's websites like FocusMate and apparently chatgpt will do this with you too, but I find friends work best.

Anyway, now I'm leaving the gym and going to race how many emails I can action while waiting for the train (it was Sunday after all), even though my millennial-core hyperventilates at the thought of replying to emails on my phone instead my ✨important tasks machine✨ (laptop).

Let me know if you apply any of these to your money situation or a life situation - or if you have other strategies you use to do the things you don’t want to do, let me know. May we all get some key things done over the next week, amen.

Yours in chaos,

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Bookshelf

This was a good consolidation of many key strategies for doing well in corporate, and a good reminder that you can still be nice to work with, without being a pushover. I finished it and gave it to a younger colleague who is in her first job out of uni. Probably not as helpful for anyone in business for themselves.

Obsession Confession

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

My colleagues refer to me as ‘cyclone Vivente’, which I have to say is very apt.

The more I think about it, the more realise how accurate it is.

Firstly, I blow into places. I can’t describe it any other way - I think it’s a combination of generally being somewhat late, somewhat distracted, and somewhat happy to be there – wherever ‘there’ is. Lots of motion – arms waving, hair tossing, a general sense of drama and chaos. I don’t mind people knowing that I have arrived because frankly, the outfit is generally worth looking at, and I love bringing the vibes to the function, even if that function is a Tuesday in the Sydney CBD office building.

Secondly, let’s talk about this:

Moderate pressure, I’m decent. In environments of high pressure, I am at my absolute best. But I am well and truly at my most self-destructive in environments of low pressure. When I’m living life too low pressure for too long, I start getting myself into a spin.

I'm not sure if I actually can't help it, or if I enable myself by telling myself I can’t help it. But when I am just ticking along, I am a ticking time bomb, looking for something to tear my teeth into. I feel like when I am turning on my axis I generate force, and that force needs a direction - any direction. But if there is a project on my mind (or once I find one to insert, like a quarter into a slot machine), I will BEAR down at the cost of my own destruction, not to mention everything and anything else in my path.

HMS Vivente: get on board or get out of the way. NB: there was no actual HMS Vivente, but there was once a HMS Vivacious, which honestly, what a mood.

For someone who gets violently unwell on rollercoasters or an even mildly inclement sea-based journey, I'm somehow emotionally and intellectually getting off the Big Dipper and repeatedly getting back in the line to go again.

Even watching this for a screenshot made me feel sick.

Huge achievements are tick, flick, pack it away and attack something else. Blood, sweat, chronic hip impingement, tears and white-knuckling through it, and then five minutes after it's done, I'm dusting dirt out of my grazed knees and getting up for another round.I feel like life itself is the achievement, and I'm aiming for the honour roll. Perhaps a bread roll is what I need. Am I hungry? Perhaps I need to eat more baked goods.

Is this normal - To feel you have a quite happy life, but still feel constantly restless? Is it genetics? Trauma? A coping strategy… for what??? A fear of dying without having squeezed every drop out of this one go around? I certainly have my bad days, but I feel that generally, I have a great life.

On the plus side, generally the beauty of what [I produce] ‘belies the destructive forces reeking havoc below’ – and that’s on god.

Thirdly, no one is quite sure where cyclone Vivente is headed exactly, including me. Oh, we’ve all got our predictions and our charts and we’re licking our fingers and holding them up in the air, but really, who knows. Could be a lawyer, could stay a banker, could go back to financial counselling, could stay an author, could be in tech, could could could. Should should should.

Maybe that’s why snack platters are my favourite meal of all time. Because I love a dabble. Little bits of lots of types of deliciousness.

Let’s hope being a master of snack platters and overthinking are desirable qualities on a job position description somewhere for an obscene salary and interesting responsibilities.

Anyway, I'm seeing my psychologist at 4pm, so I'll keep you all abreast.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s extreme weather event.

Yours in chaos,

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Bookshelf

I’ve read about 8 of these in the last few weeks - very good WWI era murder mysteries, written by a mother-son duo under the Charles Todd name. I was surprised I enjoyed them so much, but I’ve been powering through the audiobooks at breakneck speed.

Obsession Confession

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

It’s been a busy few weeks of travel and chats and just general bric-a-brac of a life being lived. I hope you’ve been as best you can in these times.

Today I'd like to share with you one of my most favourite money 'line items' - something I always have money tucked away for.

Basically, it's money that I have for interesting people and interesting conversations. Funds to say 'hey, I would love to hear your story/what you're working on/who you are'. I guess in a technical sense it's money for 'networking', but that term never resonates for me. Makes it sound too... conferece-y. Inorganic. Stilted. At once too strategic (career wise) and not strategic enough (soul wise), if you know what I mean.

I tried to come up with an ultra quippy name for you for an account or fund for this purpose, and couldn't really land on one. Perhaps because this money for me doesn't sit in its own account; it sits in one of my other sinking funds (a sinking fund is like a holding account that I 'sink' money into for when I need it). However, I do have some finalists that were quite strong.

Tap to yap

Strategic alignment

Future proofing

Curiosi-tea

What I mean is having money, whenever possible, to seize the opportunity when someone tugs at your brain or your soul. Not that it always costs money, but for when it does.

Some recent examples. Design Thinking over Negronis. Elder abuse research over TEAMs. Being a UN Delegate over hot chocolate. Book marketing and publicity over decaf oat lattes. Executive business coaching over Zoom. Scams legislation over Spanish tapas. Criminal prosecution over Amaretto sours.

Me asking about things beyond my subject matter expertise but with immaculate enthusiasm.

I've never wasted a single coffee, muffin, negroni, lunch, or meeting. Even if it never goes anyway, hell, even in the rare situation of realising I dont like someone very much, I always learn something. Generally, lots of somethings.

It pays dividends in every way. The way you think about a topic, about career journeys, about people, about money, happiness, what matters. About mistakes, opportunities and success.

You know what else it does? Its like a recalibration back to the real world. Especially if you are someone who spends a lot of time on social media, watching the kick offs in the comments and people spewing vitriol at each other behind a screen and with no accountability really does make you think this planet and everyone on it is headed straight to hell. And maybe it is. But in the meantime, I can have an robust conversation with someone about their job and their values without it becoming a passive aggressive battle two sentences at a time with bystanders having their say too.

It's different to spending time with people who you already love. Sure, you can have debates, but even when you disagree you already know each other, know how you respond to certain arguments, even each other's styles and strengths and weaknesses.

And that's not to say I don't love having these conversations with my friends and learning about their jobs and talents, I very much do.

Colleagues, competitors, experts - when you are putting yourself at the conversational mercy of someone with more expertise, with that purpose, it forces you to pay more attention. To think more carefully about your responses. To ask thoughtful questions.

Pair this with a curious mind and wherever possible, non judgement, and no expectations and you will reap the benefits. Pratice doing it in times when you arent looking for favours, because this is the secret. Your curiosity is different when you aren't in it 'for yourself', for example a job opportunity or good word. Not to say you shouldn't do it for those reasons to when you need to, but still do it when you don't need to do it for those reasons, ya know?

Short story long, it will always be money well spent.

Over to you. Do you agree, disagree? Take a different approach? Would love to know if there’s even better ways of using this line item. Let’s chat.

Yours in chaos,

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Mise en scene.

Bookshelf

Has anyone read this?!? It SLAAAAAAAAPPED. Smoky and gritty and a strong self sacrificing heroine who we love and both drives us nuts. Sidebar, why are these heroines always in their early 20’s when they discover their powers and ability to save the world? Where are the leading women in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s?

Obsession Confession

The urge to move to Melbourne is strong of late.

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

I’ve stopped drinking caffeine, which has been fantastic, but you know, exhausting. More on that another time. If you have a good recommendatio for instant decaf coffee though, please throw them at me. I am not open to recommendations of filters, grinding my own beans, drip, percolators. I say it with love - I know for the sake of myself and others that I will not change.

In case you are currently operating in a similar space of limited capacity slash fucks to give, we’re going to keep it sweet, simple and helpful today with some practical bits and bobs ALLLLL of which you can do on your phone, to add to your back pocket or your frontal lobe.

Do they sell replacement lobes at Bunnings? Mine seems a bit flickery.

Download the Libby app

I simply refuse to stop the yap about this app. I will shout about it from the rooftops. Basically, it’s the library in an app. You sign up with your library card (go get one if you don’t have one!!).

This app gives you access to (and in this instance I really do mean the word) literally, thousands of e-books and audiobooks. FOR FREE. Just like a normal library, you borrow for two weeks, if the copies are already borrowed you can put them on hold, you can renew, you can have up to TEN loans at once.

It is one of my top 10 apps ever. EVER.

Happy bonus: some libraries have access to full newspapers, including ones that are usually paywalled. So if you aren’t a regular reader but have a particular article that’s of interest. For me, this is on the library website, rather than in the app.

PS - audiobook speed is up to 3X rather than 2X and whoever engineered that has my undying love.

Disproportionately large app photo for scale.

Check your PHONE subscriptions

Ok listen to me when I say that on an iPhone this is TOOOOO easy to do.

SETTINGS  —> Your name (at the very top) —> Subscriptions

I did Google it and apparently it’s almost exactly the same process on Android. Check them today, because who doesn’t love saving $16.99 on a Capcut subscription they aren’t currently using on a Friday. Exaaaaaactly.

Put your automatic ‘do not disturb‘ on

Having your phone turn itself into DND from 8:30pm - 7:30pm is a real easy winner for me. Actually, I have two levels for this now. I have DND at 8:30pm, and then when I go to sleep I turn my phone on aeroplane mode. When I wake up, I LEAVE aeroplane mode on, and play ‘background jazz‘ on Spotify while I get ready for work. Mental health has dramatically improved not having new texts and emails as the first thing my eyes lay upon.

Download the PepTalkHer app

I love this app - it’s clean and simple… and it’s for you to track your slays at work so when it comes around to your performance review (or you’ve called a meeting to ask for a pay rise), you aren’t scrolling through 92000 emails, project plans and monthly recaps, trying madly to remember all the stuff you know you did, and did well. Trust, my performance review from last year took me DAYS to prepare because I was not using a tracking system. The Pep is not complicated - no long set up, no setting lofty goals in advance, just the achievement equivalent of cold hard cash. You can put pictures in there. Very much a quick jot down in the moment. Cold hard proof.

Update your phone emergency information

This one might save your life.

On iPhone: open the Health app, click your profile picture, then ‘Medical ID’ and ‘Edit’.

On Android: open the Safety app, sign in to your Google Account, click "Your info", and then add or edit.

This is the information emergency services (or anyone else) can access when you are *unavailable* to verbalise your own medical and emergency information. Everything from your blood type, medication, health conditions, emergency contacts, medical professionals.

Get listing your furkin health conditions. @jjakejonezz - if you know you know.

Do yours. Help your parents and grandparents do theirs.

I’ll never forget my friend telling me about his medical condition and what we needed to do if it flared up, which ‘shouldn’t happen as long as I don’t do shots‘. People, I have never felt such ice cold dread watching someone throw back a jelly donut shot as I bore witness to not 48 hours later. This was almost three years ago and it’s still in my head rent free the way our eyes met as he lifted the first one up.

and that’s a wrap on our Friday flash sale - five free things to bring you health, wealth, and self team. Stay well out there.

Yours in chaos,

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The princess and the pea, but the prince is dead and we’ve got a mattress topper.

Bookshelf

I finally finished reading the hardcopy of my own book and wow - by far the best book I’ve ever written. In all seriousness though, this book has been loved by readers so far, and reading it back, I get it. It’s good. Like having coffee with a friend… which obviously now is bloody decaf for me.

Here’s a cool website that does an internet scan to find you the best price, though it doesn’t include Dymocks and Big W, who both also have it.

Obsession Confession

My friend Michael, writer and illustrator of Life Crumbs, wrote the funniest and frightfully relatable story about a shit job. Let’s just say there was a fish and a mirror and neither were used to reflect on the possible consequences.

Why does everyone know someone who has one of these.

LOVEYOUBYE.

Copyright (C) 2025 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

Ive been lamenting not writing as much as I want and as much as I feel I should.

I spoke at the Perth book launch about what future books I would love to write and have ‘threads‘ of in my brain. How the three distinct books sit in my brain and fight for my attention, and I feel like sometimes I’m tempting fate by playing cat and moose as parts of them come to me, and that if I’m not careful, the ideas will move on to someone else. (Just typed moose by error, I’m vibing it).

Liz Gilbert talks about this concept in Big Magic, and I think about it like men think about the Roman Empire. That if we don’t let an idea, a dream, a project know that we are ready for it, and act accordingly, the idea will eventually move on to someone who does. Sometimes I feel like my body is quivering with the need to just try a little harder, just a little more, just, just just.

But what does it mean to ‘write’?

I had a moment a couple of weeks ago where the thought in my brain was ‘I don’t have time to write, because I need to write X, Y and Z.‘ ‘Hmmm‘ I thought, that’s an interesting thought to have. Because in actual fact, between a newsletter, two articles I wrote to pitch as a column, and doing a written interview…. I’d easily written 5000 words. When I was writing Know Your Worth, my weekly target was 3500. My criticism of myself that because the progress didn’t match the picture in my head, it didn’t exist.

This lead me to a period of mulling over whether our progress is often hiding in plain sight. Whether the squeak is coming from inside the moose/mouse.

From a finances perspective, we are making choices and decisions about money every week. Perhaps they aren’t the sweeping progressions we wanted, hoped for or were expecting. But some of the decisions will be good. Better than expected. Just not in the area or direction we were looking. Maybe we went out and found a cheaper phone plan, even though we didn’t hit our savings goal. Perhaps we only saved $20, not the $80 we wanted, but we didn’t pull the money back out.

I’ve not been tracking my expenses as well as I normally do. But progress wise, I negotiated a couple of annual renewals over the last couple of weeks, so my cash flow is going okay. I’ve not been on social media much promoting the book, but some other really great opportunities to make progress have come up - talks, podcasts, conversations.

We can apply this to everything - career. We didn’t get the job we wanted, but we did clap back, respectfully (or close to it) in a meeting we otherwise wouldn’t. Relationships - we went on two bust dates but we bit the bullet and communicated clearly afterwards that it wasn’t going to work out.

Sometimes there is an outcome to our hard work. Sometimes we’re even lucky enough to simply we get what we hope for. It’s just not in the format we thought we would, or should get it. But if we don’t look for it, we’ll never find it.

Yours in chaos,

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This Facetime could have been a text.

Bookshelf

This was really fascinating - one of the miracles of human persistence. I’ll never look at the dictionary in the same way. PLUS, if you have read The Dictionary of Lost Words or The Bookbinder of Jericho (both phenomenal), this book covers a lot of the biographical information from the same time.

Obsession Confession

Imagine someone thinking your Ferrari jacket is a turtleneck which also forms the basis of their trust in you. Diabolical.

LOVEYOUBYE.

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Copyright (C) 2024 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

Today is a short and sweet number to tide us over while I get through finishing a talk about the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell (am I joking? We’ll soon find out), finishing (and starting) three video submissions, and already being back at uni (212 days to go).

Today I want to talk about a concept I stumbled across in the depths of Reddit the other night. It’s the concept of ‘don’t put it down, put it away‘. Basically when you are doing ‘messy tasks‘ that involve a lot of *things* - think cooking, unpacking your work bag, choosing an outfit, looking for something in a cupboard, etc. Rather than putting items down and coming back to them later, it’s putting them away right after you’ve finished with them.

Entirely basic, right? Well the way that one sentence has been revolutionary in making me less overwhelmed - during work, life admin, even just for cooking, which I have always found the mess of entirely frustrating. Turns out if you put the ingredients away while you are working, there’s less to sort out afterwards? Novel.

This concept can easily be applied to money too. Something I do well, is when money comes in (expectedly or not), I ‘don’t put it down, put it away‘ by allocating what that money is going to do in my different accounts. Where I’m less strong, is staying on top of is putting my expenses ‘away‘ - tracking costs as they come in, instead of in exhausting batches, and paying (or negotiating) bills by keeping them on my mind or flagged in my inbox, rather than ‘putting them away‘ by just paying them or putting reminders in my calendar. Using the whole ‘don’t put it down, put it away‘ in my inboxes is a big task, but I’m trying to at least use this strategy for financial emails, and it does seem to be helping. Stay tuned.

If you use this already, drop me a comment and let me know where and if it has worked for you.

Yours in chaos,

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A diva is the female version of a hustler (of a hustler, of a of a hustler).

Bookshelf

Firstly, a moment for this cover. Stellar. While some of the threads didn’t quite pull together for me, overall I really enjoyed this and the couple of twists added just enough ‘ooooh‘ factor.

Obsession Confession

Wore these to work (chaos gallie body trapped in a corporate gallie life) and a man stopped and held the elevator doors from the outside in order to tell me how much he liked them. Very platonic meet-cute. Much vibes. Wow.

LOVEYOUBYE.

Thanks for reading Bad Bitch Money! Subscribe for fortnightly chaos, book recommendations, and pictures of the cat.

Copyright (C) 2024 Bad Bitch Money. All rights reserved.

Read previous chaos here.

Wow - haven’t things just been crazy the last few weeks. In case you missed it (an actual miracle considering I haven’t shut up about it) my book came out a few short weeks ago and has so far been a huge slay. While a full debrief is both overdue and on the cards, a fun consequence of a series of minor inconveniences has brought us a fun newsletter this week.

It all started with my friend Ben. Ben has somehow managed to blend a life of strategic corporate success with a roaring good time. ‘Come to Melbourne next Sunday for Victoria Pride Street Party’ Ben says to me. ‘I can’t, I have to fly to Perth on Monday afternoon’ I reply. Shortly after this, I book a flight to Melbourne for 25 hours on Sunday, and am booked to fly home on Monday morning by 11am, ready to unpack and repack before my flight to Perth at 4pm. Creme de la chaos.

Babes, I had a RIOT. It was the hugest vibe. Ben picked me up from the airport at 9am in Melb, we went home, finished setting up, made platters & punch & fairy bread. Everyone who came was a) shockingly attractive, and b) so wonderful, effervescent, intelligent, dynamic. I felt like I was at a modern day Gatsby party. I did make up for some of the guests, had great conversations, we went out dancing and ate and wandered. I really had a moment where I was like ‘these will be the good old days‘.

At one point I was talking to Ryan in the backyard - everyone else had left to do a lap of the ‘Trude (Gertrude St), and I was talking about being convinced to come to Melb for the day and made a comment about ‘doing it for the plot‘. Ryan asked me what it meant to do it for ‘the plot‘, and I explained how in a book dramatic things happen to build the plot and keep people invested in the story.

Well, well, did the plot twist come for me. I wake up at 7:30 on Monday, having had the best quality sleep in weeks for a whole 6.5 hours (substantial for me). Turn my phone off aeroplane mode to discover Qantas has messaged at 3am to cancel my flight. I’m rebooked an hour later at 10:30am - I change it to the 10am in the Qantas app and everything is going to work out. Get to the airport, the plot thickens. The crew is stuck on another flight, 45 minute delay. Nervous chuckling. Soft sirens of alarm are ringing. We finally get on the plane (we sat on the tarmac for SO long I attended an entire work meeting) and and in the air - ‘plenty of time still‘, I think, and fall promptly asleep.

Nek minut I wake up to the pilot informing us that WAHOO FURTHER PLOT TWIST, the weather is too bad in Sydney, they’ve closed the airport and we can’t land. Can’t reroute us to Canberra, that’s where the storm is coming from. Five minutes later, we’re fkn HEADING BACK to Melbourne. I regretfully inform the flight attendant that I think I’m going to miss my 4pm flight from Sydney to Perth, and after she happily tells me they can fly me direct from Melb to Perth instead, must with further regret inform her that’s not going to work as I have a week long trip in Perth, and what is currently in my suitcase is one flapper dress, two high thigh boots, a men’s shirt, and two fluroescent eyeshadow palettes.

Man shirt, short skirt, flapper boots.

Short story long, we flew back to Melbourne, waited an hour, re-fueled and flew back to Sydney, where i exited the plane at 3:50pm. I was at the service desk changing my flight when the original gate called me to see where I was at. I changed to a 7:50pm flight, dashed home, unpacked/repacked, including outfits and merch for the Perth book launch event, and was back at the aiport within 2.5 hours. My new flight was then delayed in boarding, and THEN we sat on the tarmac for another 40 minutes. Fam, I was exhausted.

So most certainly, I had gone to Melbourne for the plot, but wheeeeeew boy, did I experience some consequences.

To bring it all back together, this is how things tend to go with our money. So often when we decide to just spend the money, or do the thing ‘for the plot’, there are often consequences. Whether that’s dipping into the emergency fund, only to have a genuine emergency spring up, or buying something on payday to make ourselves feel better about our job, forgetting that we have a dentist appointment the next week. Doing it for the plot is the red flag that gets waved in the face of the money progress bull.

Luckily, I didn’t have any plans on Monday afternoon/evening in Perth. I had to work on Tuesday, but still had plenty of time for the launch event which wasn’t until Friday. Basically, the plot was worth the shot.

And that’s the risk/reward we have to weigh up when we’re making money choices for the plot. Will the chaos be worth the squeeze? Only you can decide.

Yours in chaos,

LOVEYOUBYE.

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