Christine & Jono
29 & 32, SydneyYoung couples
Somewhat experienced
Purchase a place to live
Their situation
Key outcomes
- Five years later have bought and built substantial equity in their home and investment property and have continued investing into a share portfolio
- Considering making the next step of upgrading to a larger home as they grow their family thanks to the equity built up in their current properties
- Feel comfortable to continue to take these steps because they have insurance to protect them
Understanding their situation
When Christine and Jono first came to Montara Wealth, they’d saved well, but they weren’t confident they had saved enough to start investing. And if they had saved enough, they didn’t know where best to invest that money to achieve their goals. What they knew was that they’d seen their friends getting ahead while Christine and Jono had been sitting on the sidelines trying to work out their investment options.
“We felt we had a lot of money in the bank that was just sitting there and doing nothing. That propelled us to get professional advice to find out how our money could work for us.”
After comprehensively researching financial planners, Christine and Jono sat down with Montara.
“We didn’t want to use the big four banks. We wanted to align with a planner who could give us fair and independent advice.”
The Process
As we got to know Christine and Jono, their financial position, and their goals in detail, we were able to propose the investment options and show Christine and Jono how they would work. One of the initial steps was gathering the financial data we needed from Christine and Jono to run our financial models. This meant we were able to:
- Identify their key goals and aspirations, along with their current and projected income/expenses (assumptions took into account potentially starting a family)
- Engage a mortgage broker to work out their borrowing capacity
- Model the various investment strategies that included the purchase of a $1.5m family home versus renting and building an investment portfolio, with the clients ultimately deciding on a hybrid approach, and
- Identify and implement insurance and superannuation strategies to protect their financial position and reduce their superannuation fees significantly.
During our first few meetings, they could see that Ethan understood their motivations and reservations around money.
“We really liked their approach. Ethan is incredibly knowledgeable in the market and drew on a lot of personal experience that was similar to our situation.”
With the injection of confidence that a solid understanding of their numbers gave them, Christine and Jono started going to auctions in the Inner West in Sydney to buy a home. They checked in with us regularly for negotiation and auction tips.
“Having Montara to check in with felt like we had a little cheer squad — we’ve done the numbers, stick to your guns and go for it”.
Through our systematic process, we narrowed down the options to buying a home or investment properties. Christine and Jono chose to buy a home.
Working with Montara
Working together over six months, we built Christine and Jono’s confidence in their financial position. Their confidence to invest came from:
- Knowing their numbers (starting with the most basic incomings versus outgoings)
- Seeing through our financial modelling process how various investment scenarios (e.g. investing in property versus investing in shares) were going to play out over the next 5-10 years
- Understanding how beneficial a proposed investment was for them and that they would be able to stay on top of it
- Having a trusted relationship with us. It wasn’t all about the maths, it was also about having the comfort and support through their decision-making process.
FIND OUT HOW WE CAN HELP“One of the most eye-opening experiences was having to itemise all of our spending over a month. Understanding that was pivotal to knowing where our money was even going. It was a necessary process and something we wouldn’t have done if we hadn’t received this advice from Montara. While it was a lot of work, it was only done once and was necessary to set us up financially in the best way for the rest of our lives.”
We felt the Montara team was really rooting for us throughout the entire process — Ethan was more like a good mate who wanted the best for us, not just a planner. We wouldn’t have bought something as beautiful or as soon as we did without the team. They gave us confidence and were really instrumental in helping us achieve our goals.”
