Intro to Adam

Foreign Money, where we show you how to pay your home loan off in up to half the time of a normal bank loan. Welcome to the Crown Money Podcast. I'm Jessie Edge, and today we're joined by a very, very special guest, Adam Santangelo. Many of our clients would have spoken to Adam. He's been a part of the Crowd Money team now for almost seven years. It's his Crown anniversary next week, and he is absolutely the backbone of the coaching side of the business. If you've been fortunate enough to have a conversation with Adam, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. He's a very talented man. We're very lucky to have him. So it's going to be great to speak to you today. Welcome, Adam.

Thanks, Jess. That's a great introduction there. Can you believe it's only seven years since I jumped on board? That's incredible. It's time has flown. Yeah, Just really excited to be on board here and, yeah, see what we can do to keep helping clients through this podcast.

Love this. Yeah, so I just wanted to really give our clients the opportunity to kind of have a bit of an introduction to you and your background and your story, and then I'd love to pick your brain on some things that our clients can do at the moment to help improve their cash flow. I know everyone's feeling the pinch, and so I thought it'd be great to hear from the man himself on some give, to impart some wisdom and help us all to. To get through this really tough period right now. So, Adam, can you just kick us off with a little bit about you?

Yeah, for sure. So finance wasn't always my, I guess, forte. Yeah, I actually started off back in the day as a lot of young people do, working for Coles. Actually done the retail apprenticeship and stuck with that for about seven years and then actually got into finance because of one of my older brothers, so one of four siblings, family six. So, yeah, it was a little bit tight for us growing up, and then when my brother got into finance, I thought, you know, this is something that I really should start to learn about and just really has kind of grown from there, I should say. I actually started off with another mortgage company before jumping on board with Crown, who literally tried to do exactly what Crown doing, but fell very, very short. And I'm just super pleased that I've actually found a company that cares about their clients and just want to help people push forward. So, yeah, been on board for seven years now and just can't see an end Just want to keep pushing forward.

That's fantastic to hear. Can you tell us a little bit without naming names, but can you tell us a little bit about what wasn't working at your other organization?

Sure, sure. So, yeah, this was a company that I thought had good intentions. They're jumping on board and yeah, just literally running through, I guess a similar program to what Crown does. However, they were charging clients a whopping $12,980 for a signup fee, which is, yeah, crazy to start with. So that was kind of the first alarm bells going off right there. And then there was literally no backend support. They would literally set up the clients like, here you go, you're on your own. And there was literally no follow ups, there was no touch bases. So I tried to actually touch base with clients myself after a year or two and just seeing how they're traveling and yeah, they were really struggling. Didn't like it at all. There was no back end support. And that's kind of when the major alarm bells went off and I thought, well, this is not what I signed up for. I want to actually help people push forward financially. And yeah, stumbled across Crown. All thanks to my brother, actually. So, yeah, we're afterwards and yeah, just very.

You owe him a big thanks, don't you? Maybe a.

Possibly, possibly he's got enough over the years. He needs to slow down, I think.

So. Interesting, isn't it, when you hear about, you know, a company trying to do this sort of thing without the back end support? Because as we know, that's, that's really where it all comes together. That's where the program actually delivers is in that ongoing support that we can give to the clients like after they settle.

Yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, Scott always says that we kind of become your personal coach or your personal fitness trainer for your finances without that back end support. I mean, there's so many people out there. I mean, let's talk about the elites for a second, like tennis players. I mean, Nick Kyrgios we all know doesn't have a coach. He's great. But without that coach supporting you moving forward, you're never really going to crack that top five. And yeah, I mean, all the best people have coaches and it makes sense to have a coach with your finances.

Absolutely. Especially with something that, you know, we never really taught about in school, not properly. And it's. You learn your money skills from your family and they might have one way of doing things, but you don't really broaden and open yourself up to all the other Kind of different ways of doing things. So it's like you absolutely can put your hand up and say, I need a coach. I need someone to help guide me. No matter how skilled you think you are with finances, there's always more to learn and more that you can do to set yourself up financially.

Yeah, exactly Right. You only know what you know. So if you don't know something and don't know a system or what to put in place to keep pushing forward, then it's not your fault. We haven't been taught this by the banks or anyone else, so it makes total sense to have a coach in your corner just supporting you along the way to keep pushing forward and achieving your goals.

And that. That sums up you to a T. You are always in our client's corner. You always have their back. And there's that real fine line between, you know, being a little bit tougher on the clients when you need to so you can keep them accountable, but also just supporting them and helping them and understanding. At the end of the day, it's their money, and you're just. You're just offering your support. You're not there to tell them. No. You're not there to tell them they can't do the things that they want to do. You're just there to keep them conscious of their spending and keeping them accountable to their goals.

Yeah, exactly right. At the end of the day, the client's money, they can do as they please with it. But if we just put a few things in place and actually show them the breakdown. Okay. If you do this, if you do this, then your results will end up like this. So, yeah, just putting, I guess, a plan in place for people to show them exactly what can happen and what's possible.

Yes. Fantastic. Now, one thing we've heard from a lot of clients at the moment is that things are getting tight with the increasing cost of living, rising interest rates, it's just a common thing. I think a lot of our clients are really quite lucky that they've been on the program for a while, so they've been able to build up substantial buffer, you know, to get them through this period. But I think for a lot of other clients, it's a real question around, what can I do right now? What can I be doing to set myself up a little bit better or to make things a little bit easier? What's some suggestions that you might have?

Yeah, for sure. I think the easiest way we can get a quick little win is actually reviewing our fixed expenses, which a lot of People simply just don't do. I mean we've all got those fixed expenses, I'm talking gas bills that we all have, electricity, phone, Internet, insurances for the car, for health, our home, all these fixed expenses that we all have need to be reviewed at least twice per year. As a bare minimum, at least once per year. So that's something where you can get an instant win, whether it be even, you know, picking up the phone and having a chat to your current company and just seeing what they can do saying hey look, I've got a better offer here, what can you do? Cause I know it can be a little frustrating for some people to actually go through and change the whole companies setting up the new bills and so forth. But even picking up the phone sometimes and seeing what your current company can do can get you a little win to kick things off.

So did you hear one of our clients save, it was like 400 or $500 a year just by changing one of their providers.

Just simple provider crazy to think of that.

Yeah. And worth a 10 minute phone call.

Oh, absolutely. That was simply on their home insurance. They hadn't changed their home insurance for about nine years or something like that. So they just kept bringing you in the obviously annual when it came through and that was just crazy. I mean, yeah, they picked up the phone say 4 or $500 in one phone call. So I mean that's money back saving you interest against the mortgage. And that's, that's what it's all about.

I would say, you know, there's three steps, the three things you need to do when you're reviewing your fixed expenses. One, ask yourself if you really need it. This is really down to your streaming services, a gym membership, things that you're not actually using. If you're not using it, cancel it. You can always set it up again in a couple of months time if you absolutely decide that you want to start using it. But for now, just get it out of your life. Then the second question is can you know, going back, going to other providers and getting a quote, finding out what other people in the market are charging for the same service and then the final option is to go back to your current provider and ask for a discount. And especially if you've done step number two, you have a comparison point, you can go to them and say, look, I've been offered, you know, this amount from this provider. Can you match it or better it, otherwise I'm going to have to leave. And so it's just three steps, really, really powerful and you can save yourself hundreds of dollars every year, if not every month.

Absolutely. And we've even got some links attached that we can shoot across to clients if they need just to help them, you know, kickstart things. But yeah, absol. Three simple steps can save you hundreds of dollars per year.

Fantastic. So fixed expenses, what else can clients be doing right now?

Yeah, so it's all about, I mean, obviously tax time is amongst us as well. So it's just making sure that we're getting all funds that we have available working for you. And as we know, the best place that funds can actually sit until you need them is generally against the mortgage account right now. It's no point putting funds like a tax return straight into an everyday account where you're getting a 0.01% return. Or even if you've got a high interest rate savings account these days, you likely get that 5 or 5.2% return. So if your mortgage is anything higher than that 5.2% mark, your funds are definitely going to be better off sitting against that saving you interest. Because as we know, any interest saved is exactly like interest earned.

Interest earned, yeah. Tax free as well.

Absolutely.

So getting all the money into the home loan account. Absolutely. The only thing that I'll mention is, you know, obviously all of our clients are on their weekly spending amount with rising expenses. Is it okay for clients to ask for an increase in their living allowance?

Absolutely. It's 100%. Okay. It's pretty much expected when things go up quite a lot. I mean, as you know, everything's going up right now, so there's no issues. And we don't want people to feel concerned about spending their money. It's. Your money obviously wants you to get through comfortably every single week while still removing or reducing your debt. I should say, however, one good thing about this weekly spending about is we can actually review that for you. And if you say, come to us and say, hey, Adam or Crown, we just want to increase that by an extra $50 to get us through. Petrol's through the roof right now. We can actually run some projections and show you how that will affect you moving forward. So, yeah, you can make an informed decision before actually pulling the trigger.

And that's. And that's. You've nailed it there. It's an informed decision and that's what it's all about. It's just being conscious of us spending where our money is going, which so many people are. It's, you know, it's traditionally we're very unconscious about where our money is going. So I think, you know, whenever we're very supportive of clients, when they come to us and say, I need more money just to get through my day to day, that is completely understandable. We'll provide you with the breakdown, help you to understand what that means to your debt reduction in your goals. And maybe, you know, on one of the most recent podcast episodes, we discussed what is a flex? And that's the money that you're taking out of your account above and beyond your weekly spending amount. And if your weekly spending amount is going up and you're really concerned about your debt reduction goals, maybe your flex just needs to come down slightly. So it's a bit of a balancing act. So we can always kind of think about things like that and what, what it's going to mean to your account and make a decision from there.

Yeah, exactly. Right, absolutely. So, yeah, we can obviously run those projections, show you exactly what's going to happen if the flex goes up, if the flex goes down, if the weekly spending amount adjusts, and just, yeah, make sure that you guys are on track and happy with those projections to achieve your goals. That's what it's all about.

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, look, I think that's a really great information that you've been able to share today, Adam, and I really appreciate you coming on. It's so great to have you here. So thank you so much, Adam, and I'm looking forward to having you on the podcast again very soon.

No worries, Jess. Thanks for having me. Speak soon.