Tom
And my biggest goal, which is probably pretty ambitious.

Aaron
I love this one. Hit us where it's good.

Tom
It's to get an investment property before I turn 18 years old. Yeah.

Aaron
Oh, yeah. Awesome. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Going. Wasn't going to. I know you're listening to the property. All right, guys, welcome back to the Property Pod, your weekly engagement into real estate here in the Hobart marketplace, I mean host Aaron Horn. And it gives me great pleasure to be joined by Johnny Mack. But you're not on your side of the desk.

Aaron
You're on my side of the desk. What's going on here, J-Mac?

John McGgregor
What's going on, man? Do you feel out of space? I've got the Twilight theme song just going through my head freaking me out.

Aaron
The Twilight theme song of the Twilight Zone. And I'm.

John McGgregor
Sure the Twilight.

Aaron
Went on. Just love me some of those vampires.

John McGgregor
Oh, yeah, yeah. Give me their sparkle.

Aaron
So my yeah you're on this are the dates because we've got a special guest coming in and I wanted to give him pride of place like often think of your spot as being the the premiere spot for for framing I don't really yeah look I say it's every week you look the sharpest, so I'll give it to our guest.

Aaron
You're not going to believe our guest today. Our guest is a 15 year old, the youngest person we've ever had on our podcast. And I am going to tell you this, he is a whole lot smarter than both of us.

John McGgregor
I would think so. But looking through the notes were in preparation. Yesterday I was like, Oh, Jesus, it's that thing that old head on, young shoulders. But sometimes, you know, there's like young heads on young shoulders and they're still crushing it.

Aaron
Oh, yeah. No, look, this is so. Yeah, Tom from Tom's Money Magic, his coming in to talk to a 15 year old who has his own investment YouTube series and website with information kind of stuff we've been aiming to do for the years of of giving information back to the people. We've had a 15 year old who is into it.

Aaron
Yeah, it's been nice to us. And yeah, let me tell you, it's a it's an amazing conversation. The the guy's got a bunch of stuff to say. And yeah, I really, really think that everybody's going to get something out of this episode. So what we'll do is we will cut away to Tom for some Tom from their day tomfoolery.

John McGgregor
What we will do.

Aaron
Is we will cut away and we will have Tom on the podcast just after this. We welcome to the show Tom from Tom's Money Magic. Thanks so much for coming in, my friend. You are your local YouTube star and curator of your own educational website, all based around helping kids and young adults become financially educated. Tom, welcome to the show.

Tom
Thanks for having me. Yeah, I've just come in to try and explain what I do and yeah, I understand what I'm trying to achieve with my channel.

Aaron
Yeah, yeah. I love it. I actually love. I only found out about it yesterday. I've gone through a bunch of your videos. They're really, really interesting, really engaging. So, Tom, can you explain to us how exactly you got into the finance space and investing space? I'm like, what's your superhero origin story for?

Tom
When I was only nine years old, I saved up for an entire year to buy my own laptop. So I asked for money and birthday and for Christmas and went around and I made some muffins and sold them to people nearby and did lots of different jobs to try and earn money that year. Then over the next few years, my mom gave me some finance books to read, and the main thing that caught my eye was that through investing and building up passive income and all that, you can get to a stage where you don't actually have to work anymore.

Tom
Yeah, you can keep doing it, just doing what you love and only doing it a few days a week, if that's what you want to do.

Aaron
Yeah. Look, I loved when I when I jumped onto your website and watched a very first video, I loved the bit where you were kind of like, Yeah, you can get to a point where you don't have to work, but if you love what you're doing, you still will want to do it. But the thing that always blows my mind is kind of this idea of I want to retire by at the time of 25, so what do you do for the rest of your life?

Aaron
But yeah, if you found something you love, which they like YouTube or something that you're really into, yet you might be doing it, you might be the next Mr. Beast. Who knows.

John McGgregor
Exactly. And with that, too, what you're talking about is with retiring is that you just giving yourself choice. So at some point then, you know, I guess what we're the message that we're given when we're young is that there's a specific path that you have to take. And what you're suggesting is or maybe not.

Tom
The retirement could then be like rearranged just a mean it's the point that you get to where you do it. So you have to go to work anymore. Yeah. See how it is having the choice to go to work or stay at home and do basically whatever you want.

Aaron
Well, I even saw one of your videos was you can earn money in your sleep. So yeah. You're staying at home and, and earning cash that way. There's Yeah. There's ways around it. So yeah I really loved going into the channel and finding out some of the stuff. So can you like give us an idea about the website and how you put it together?

Aaron
Like I know you mentioned, I know you've got some specific goals in mind. I saw a small one which hopefully we can help you achieve. The second one, John probably could help you achieve, yeah. Can you run through your small and large goal just for all our listeners?

Tom
Yeah, the small goal is mainly through what I want to achieve with my YouTube videos and all that. So I wanted to try and get to a thousand subscribers on YouTube so I could try and help and educate more people and get my teachings across so that more young people can understand all these different concepts and live better, knowing what they are doing with their money and how it all works and all that for sure.

Tom
And then my bigger goal, which is fully pretty ambitious.

Aaron
I love this one hit. I swear it's good.

Tom
It's to get an investment property before I turn 18 years old.

Aaron
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Awesome. Oh, yeah, yeah. How is it going? We feeling confident that it's going to happen?

Tom
Yeah, I'm feeling pretty confident at the moment. I got a job at the end of last year and I've been working quite a bit this year, giving quite a bit more money than I thought I was going to be able to do with a job. And as full as that, I've been able to do a bit of bookkeeping for my mum for a few years, not looking after some of the profit of income statements of investment property.

John McGgregor
Looking at those, you know, profit and loss statements, you know, understanding the the behind the scenes numbers aspect of property is was that a part that really fascinated you just understanding the numbers.

Tom
Yeah, looking through all the numbers, it was fascinating to me how there's so many different things that all work together and how you can still make an income after so many different expenses through the loans and yeah, rates and all that.

Aaron
So I guess I'm going to go back to the the books that your mum passed along to you. I got, you know, Harry Potter. I was reading Batman comics and things like that. This is really interesting to kind of scratch this. Each of you know, I'm selling muffins and stuff like that, like, yeah, do you want to go down this path?

Aaron
Can you tell us how you found the books? Were they instantly interesting or was it something that you thought, Oh, I bet this mum's giving them to me?

Tom
It was probably good. They both started with Get me interested. It was cold. Pretty sure how to turn $100 into $1,000,000.

John McGgregor
Oh, right.

Tom
That was definitely a very interesting. You have a strong young person to think about having $1,000,000 and it was also aimed at a younger audience talking about like getting your first job and how you can split up your money into savings and spending and all that. So yeah, really helped to like build a foundation of my knowledge of all the finance things and I already had an interest in math.

Tom
So all the numbers aspects of finance all really hit home with me.

Aaron
The funny bit is my and John went to school together and we do remember the time we got caught cheating on that test again.

John McGgregor
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was pretty brazen, too.

Aaron
At school. Now it enough to have you. This is how old we are. And you can help us with this. Tom, did I still have, like, math test where you can have, like, an example straight out with.

Tom
Look, there's.

Aaron
That's a think or is it on a screen or so from.

Tom
My brother's school, they have to make their own. But at my school they just give you a sheet with all of the different formulas on it. Yeah, well you're not allowed to bring anything remover, any of the main formulas they do give to you like they basically. That's totally deterring the main cheating aspect. Yeah. Because you think that you've already got all they need.

Aaron
That's good. Because they are. So John and myself were in the front row, right in front of the teacher and all the examples that were given to us at the start of the unit were then on the test. Yeah. So we both were looking at each other.

John McGgregor
Jackpot, baby.

Aaron
We got this and no one else had an example sheet. So we had, we thought we got.

John McGgregor
Away.

Aaron
With murder. So that's now.

John McGgregor
The only problem is too though is it normally I had like C's and BS and days and then all of a sudden just straight up like.

Aaron
Like hundred.

John McGgregor
Rank. Yeah, I was like, well, this leaves a little bit and straight then started my next door neighbor is like, how convenient maybe, you know.

Aaron
Well, there you go. Look, we're we're just investing in our future in a a roundabout way.

John McGgregor
Yeah, yeah. We're hustling for hustling.

Aaron
Talking in school. I guess this is a really good point of where I'm trying to go with this is there's a bunch of stuff in school that we should learn. I wish I learned more that I wish they taught. Whereas I guess coming coming from yourself, you're doing these video explainers. Are they explaining some of this stuff in school or are people at school coming up and being like, Tom, like give us the data as well.

Aaron
What shares do I need to buy? Where where am I getting my crypto from?

Tom
A few times I've only had to try and deter people away from asking me about like shares to buy and that I'm obviously not qualified and I could get into trouble if they lost lots of money on it. They would obviously not care if they made lots of money. But I.

Aaron
Know I saw the disclaimer on the site and I really.

Tom
Like to kind of confirm that they will make money if I tell them what shares to buy.

Aaron
Indeed.

Tom
Then also we do have a commerce class at school for me nine and ten, and then it goes into economics and business studies through year 11 and 12. But it's all option also not everybody in the year actually gets to learn about all these key things. And there are a few financial math things that you learn in math, but that's just like compound interest.

Tom
Simple interests are actually learning what they're applied to, what you actually do with them.

Aaron
Yeah, I remember you say the terms and they they jumped to my head. I'm just texting miles around and I'm just like, oh, man, why didn't they teach us this at school? Yeah. Yes.

John McGgregor
And we'll see. And then they are really like that part where even in that book that you started with, it's like, well, what do you do with your first paycheck? And all of a sudden you've done it to help yourself understand? Well, there are ways that you can, you know, what do you do with the $100 that you just earned?

John McGgregor
And then how do you split that and what do you look for and what's next? And I know, like with the you know, with with those books that you started with, what was the what was your next deep dove that you wanted to go to? I know you were chatting earlier about you learned this little bit of you need to learn more before you start teaching.

John McGgregor
How did what what was your what was your next step in CRM?

Tom
After I started learning about all these different things I was then we found like a investing app that kind of helps you invest. It's called Raise. It was called Acorns at the time, and you basically use as a normal bank account, you can deposit money into it, but instead of just storing it as a bank account, it then splits up your money into around six different ETFs.

Tom
And then you you, you can also choose a level of aggression. So it can either go for really stable stocks or ETFs. And then really.

Aaron
I'm going to have to stop you. Here you go. This is where you are, way further along the path than my ETFs. Can you hit me with what? An ETF is.

Tom
It? So ETF stands for exchange traded Fund and it's basically a collection of lots of other different stocks on the stock market a company would put together. So you can just buy one stock, but it's actually like ten, 20 different other stocks, which means that you might not lose lots of money if one company like brings out a terrible product and then it loses lots of money, then you also still get all the benefits of you might get some dividends throughout the year and stuff like that.

Tom
So you have through the app that we were using when I got a few dividends, even though there were a few cents, I was still surprised how even though you haven't sold anything, you're still able to, like, make more money from the share. Yeah.

Aaron
That was awesome. Sorry, I just need to jump in again. That was. That was a perfect explanation. That's exactly anybody out there that is listening in to the property pod. Do jump on Thomas money magic. Because I'm sitting here having an Aha moment just from that explanation. So thank you. That was that was perfect.

John McGgregor
Yeah. Well what would the next thing, what's, what's a dividend because I know that's a form of passive income they're talking about is it right.

Tom
US. Yeah it's the earnings that a company makes throughout the year. They then can split it up across all of the different shares and pay back to the shareholders. But then also some companies don't give out dividends usually if they're newer companies because then they use that income to help make the company grow faster. But then you'll see the same sort of income.

Tom
But it will be in terms of capital gains because the share price would have risen in value diode.

Aaron
Can I put you on speed dial? Whenever I get stuck in the property part, I'm just going to like, hold on a sec. I don't know. Tom Yeah. Just combine this in the best way.

John McGgregor
Well, I would just have. Previously on Well, the show is active is like Tom you just like a cutaway, right?

Aaron
You know, this is so good. Thank you so much for this. I actually saw your video on the dividends with the with the book. I think Harry Potter might have been your example with that one, but yeah, it was a.

Tom
Very old video.

Aaron
Yeah. No, look, I told you I went. I went way back and I really enjoy it. I guess, like, my next question from here is, are you and your friends all in this space? Is this something that you find unique to yourself, like are young people jumping on to this kind of financial freedom space? And is it something that.

Aaron
Yeah, you say regularly or.

Tom
Yeah, so at first also with my videos, I don't really have anybody about it even once, like I told a few of my friends that learn sort of year seven, they pretty much went out and told everybody my yoga, of course. Yeah. And I saw like Spike in viewers and subscribers and that. Yeah. And it was probably like a lot of people just wanted to see what it was that everybody was talking about.

Tom
But I think lots of people have actually been surprised what I know and how they didn't know anything about that. And I've had a few people in my classes like come up to me and say that it's cool that I know that stuff. And I have some link to a few of my videos of like a group chat and then like some people that might like not take it seriously.

Tom
Then someone else in the group checked once, which was really good as you came in and talked about how like it's amazing how I know all this stuff and that the other people end up and know. He used to create example of like they'll end up living in a ditch. It works but like Tom will be able to understand everything and be really rich or something.

Tom
That was like some last feedback telling, Oh.

Aaron
Yeah, we're not as rich in in cash, but rich in knowledge. And it's absolutely yeah, it's just brilliant. I'm blowing out. I'm so pumped about this. And yeah, I, I really want to push forward, like. Yeah, Tom told me he's a superstar, so thank you for coming in, my man.

John McGgregor
Yeah, well, one thing I was always curious about, because, you know, when we go into a new space learning something new, it's can be overwhelming, like which direction to take. It opens up a whole new set of doors. But, you know, can you remember any specific, you know, aha moments or lightbulb moments that really stand out in your mind?

John McGgregor
That really changed the way that you almost view this space.

Tom
But what I was talking about earlier is when I originally went into learning about finance and all that is passive income and how like you might do a bit of work initially, but after that you highly need to do any work just to get that income and you can be asleep all your earning and all of that. But also through looking at some property renovations and during the bookkeeping, I've learned that you can do renovation for pretty little money and it can make such a big difference to the look of a property and get like much more income through it that you thought would be possible.

John McGgregor
Because it's that you're looking at you're starting to see what a return on investment actually looks like in practice there, right?

Tom
Yeah. So like your my mum is a through property investing, she got a property, did a renovation and then rents it out instead of just trying to sell it. So you see more long term effects on how you can change a property and how to make it worth more money, but at the same time earning more money possibly.

Tom
And then also how the increase in value you can then uses equity to use for other things.

John McGgregor
Mm says that I like that idea that you're making your money work for you. Yeah. Rather than you working for the money at that point.

Aaron
I'm online. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good.

John McGgregor
So I'm going to get myself out of the ditch, baby.

Aaron
So I guess from here, what's next? Obviously, the the big goal what is three years away.

Tom
So two and a half years is kind of the deadline.

Aaron
Okay. Yeah. And I, I want it to be two and a half years already. I want to know if we get there. I'm so excited. I really hope we can help with the with the other side of things. We'll send this out to the world and hopefully some people will jump on but yeah good luck with. Yeah the the small goal but even more good luck with with the big go.

John McGgregor
Yeah I think yeah it's, it's, it's so exciting to see that, you know, we can get access to this information early just how much further ahead in the game you can be in, you know, in ten years time or even in your case potentially three years time, you know. So it's going to be awesome to watch your progress, right?

John McGgregor
Yeah, it's coming.

Aaron
Hmm. Not a problem. Thank you so much for coming in, Tom. We will. Yeah, we will be watching closely. And I will definitely have you on speed dial, my friend. You'll get me out of some house when I'm recording here many a time.

John McGgregor
So how you get then you start charging a consultancy fee and that's going to add to me to get give multiple streams of income.

Aaron
They're not bad. Not bad. What did I tell you, J-Mac? Absolutely blown away by time. I cannot tell you how many times in that conversation I was just sitting there being like, Oh, my God, we're in the room with royalty. Like, Let's get on the coattails of this guy. He knows his stuff. Yeah, he knows his stuff. So good.

John McGgregor
Now I think he is by is spent the time you can tell not only just reading about it, but then really getting to understand it well so we can teach it well. Yeah. Such a big difference between knowing something and being able to teach something, which is really cool considering he's integrating that at 15.

Aaron
Well, yeah, look, when he was talking about the app, the icon sort of thing, I think I'd heard about that in the past, but like I never thought, Oh yeah, I'll download it. And then he's dropping these NFT things. I'm like, Oh no. Like I'm out of my depth theory. I'm a gif like always.

John McGgregor
But he just pulled you right after he did. He did.

Aaron
It was so good. So, look, anybody out there that is listening. Jump on Tom's money. Magic over at YouTube. It can lead you to his website there as well. Pretty sure that is Tom's money magic dot com.

John McGgregor
Yeah, I got you all clarified. Anyway, I think one of the the cool thing is, is that he's, I hope, opening up these conversations with other young people where it's like even me he's talking about is Obama. It's almost like it's just a whole new way of seeing the world, you know? Yeah, I just think that's fascinating because to get that information in early means that by the time you've got good habits that you start into your first career and moving through into your early twenties and late twenties.

John McGgregor
So it's going to be so far ahead of the game. This could be awesome to watch.

Aaron
Yeah, well, like, it was amazing hearing him talk about kind of his his journey off. Like we were just talking with his mom and she was saying, you know, she walk into his room years ago and he's doing the 1 to 100 factors on the on the.

John McGgregor
White board compared he.

Aaron
Couldn't sleep mom so sorry I just I just squared. Yeah. Every number from 1 to 100. That's just what you say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, look, everybody jump out there. I definitely will be reaching out to time in the future to try and find out more about yeah. His journey will watch this space. If the podcast is still going three years from now or two and a half years from now, we'll be able to say if that goal was achieved or maybe you're selling these first investment property.

Aaron
Only time will tell. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming in, Tom. We will be back next week with with even more property pod can't guarantee the age of the guest or whether it'll just be us talking smack as usual.

John McGgregor
I just hope I'll be back in my corner.

Aaron
Yeah, yeah. Back in your little say like, how do you feel on this side of the table? I could.

John McGgregor
Dig it. I can do that. I can dig it. Especially when it's just one on one. Just feels like it would if you're sitting at a bar, you know what I mean?

Aaron
Yes, we do need to be. Yeah, we missed the ball, that one.

John McGgregor
Oh, good. All right.

Aaron
Guys, thank you so much for listening to Pod Like Share. Subscribe to all those things that we'd never tell anybody to do. But yeah, if you can jump on Tom's money magic as well. Yeah, Papa, subscribe on there. And that will help the young man reach his baby goal, his small goal. And then we'll help him write go number two.

Aaron
Beautiful. All right, guys. Thank you. Bye. You have been listening to the property, both recorded and edited by Forman for Media House in conjunction with the Fall and Fall Property Code.

John McGgregor
This podcast is general information only and the thoughts of views expressed is the opinion of our panel and listeners should always then use their own investigation into any topic we discuss to ensure they fully understand their own situation. It does not constitute and should not be relied on as purchasing, selling, financial or investment advice or recommendations expressed or implied.

John McGgregor
And it should not be used as an invitation to take up any agent or investment services. No investment decision or activity should be undertaken on the basis of this information without first taking.