finance

'My mum found me at rock bottom in a pub. What happened next transformed my life completely.'

When my marriage of seven years ended, I walked away with next to nothing.

There I was — the former corporate "power woman," the financial expert, the breadwinner — suddenly single with two young children.

I did still have $25,000 in savings, though, so I decided I would buy a house — and not just any house, but a $2 million property on the Mornington Peninsula that had been sitting on the market for over a year.

I approached the vendors with what I thought was a brilliant plan: I'd put down my entire $25,000 as a deposit and rent from them for 12 months while I saved for settlement.

Watch: 4 money hacks that don't cut out your daily cup of coffee. Post continues below.


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Why I felt compelled to purchase such an expensive property immediately still baffles me today. I genuinely believed I would sail through my divorce and make more money than I ever had before.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

The downward spiral.

The following 12 months turned out to be the worst-performing year my business had ever seen.

I was tired, distracted and emotionally traumatised by the divorce — and I began drinking habitually.

By the end of that year, I'd lost my property — not to mention the small amount of savings I had left.

My unhealthy relationship with money had led me to overspend, overcompensate, and make foolish decisions. Everything I'd worked so hard for was gone, and neither my bravado nor my entrepreneurial spirit could save me.

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I had to accept my position: all I had left was an alcohol addiction and my family.

My turning point.

My turning point came the day my mum — realising I had lost the property — drove around the Peninsula looking for me. She found me in a pub, drunk.

She didn't lecture me. She just took my hand across the bar table and said, "It's time to come home."

Broken in every way, I moved in with my parents. And for six months, I drank, partied, and tried to numb my reality.

During this period, I blamed everyone and everything else. I blamed my ADHD diagnosis. I blamed my ex-husband, ex-boyfriends, past employers. I blamed the ATO, and even my parents.

But it was only when I reached my lowest point that I one day realised that my self-worth, the love of my children, family, and friends, and my ability to love myself weren't tied to how much I earned or owned.

Once that clicked, things started to change.

I started going to AA, and stopped drinking.

I began working 12-hour days, travelling around Victoria providing advice to my clients and clocking about 2,500km per week.

I started to listen to my own advice and stopped spending on depreciating assets, instead buying cheaper assets that allowed the market to do the work for me. I wasn't trying to trick the market, I was just buying what I could afford in high-growth areas.

For the first time, I truly understood what money represented: my energy, my time away from my children, the late nights and early mornings. I began to respect money as a measure of my energy, and for the things it could provide me and my children.

Without this fundamental shift in perspective, I couldn't have made the decisions that ultimately led to my eventual financial independence.

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I cut up all my credit cards, I stopped splurging, and threw every cent I could into making my money work for me.

Where I am today.

Five years on, I now own 17 properties and help women achieve wealth through property investment.

Through my company, Eda Property, I now guide other women on similar journeys to my own. The number of single mothers I help who are working full-time to support their children — often without financial help from their children's fathers — is staggering.

Many people, even the highly educated, struggle with unhealthy relationships with money. True financial literacy often remains elusive, and only we can change that for ourselves.

The women I work with to build wealth face genuine challenges; they aren't driving luxury cars or taking multiple holidays each year. The truth is, life owes us nothing, and until we change our behaviours, we remain trapped in the same unhelpful money patterns.

Sacrifices are necessary along the journey, but I truly believe that if you can find and retain a job, you can buy an investment property.

My tips for women who want to invest in property.

  1. Understand and identify your money blocks. Work on them and develop a better relationship with money, and respect money as your energy.

  1. Don't be a snob about where you buy; choose property that you CAN afford in high-growth areas so you have the capacity to service more (ie. build a portfolio) and use the capital growth as your next deposit

  1. Buy untitled land in high-value localities to maximise your exposure without putting down much cash.

  1. Sacrifice depreciating assets: no new cars, fewer new clothes, no credit.

  1. Keep increasing your equity — don't use everything on your next purchase, so if the market goes against you, you don't lose every property you have purchased.

Anissa Cavallo is a property expert and adviser from Eda Property empowering and educating Australians to achieve financial freedom through property.

Feature Image: Supplied.

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