Introducing Jacki Ellis, a remarkable woman working in finance at her dream job as a portfolio manager for Aware Super.
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The following is a transcript taken from the episode. It has been created with AI so please excuse any grammatical imperfections.
Camilla Love
Welcome, everyone, back to another episode of Shares Not Shoes, an Insider's guide to careers in finance. I'm your host, Camilla Love, founder of Future Females in Finance. Shares Not Shoes is a podcast whereby I interview someone of my favourite people, all with one thing in common. They work in finance. We list a lid on who they are, how they came into a career in finance, and arm you with some knowledge about why a career in finance could be a good fit for you. I will promise that all my guests will share some amazing personal stories, will be open and honest, and will inspire you. So let's go.
Camilla Love
Today, I am so super excited to introduce you to Jacki Ellis. Jacki is the portfolio manager of retirement strategy at Aware Super, one of Australia's largest superannuation fund. And Jacki and I have known each other for maybe ten years.
Jacki Ellis
Yeah, maybe more than ten years.
Camilla Love
We're so young. Jacki.
Jacki Ellis
Oh, my God. Stop it. You're making me feel reminding me that I have to come over this year.
Camilla Love
Yes, we won't. So today, Jacki, thank you for joining us on Shares Not Shoes.
Jacki Ellis
Thank you so much for having me, Camilla. I'm delighted to be here.
Camilla Love
Fabulous. So, Jacki, let's start and say, can you introduce who you are and what you do and why you love it?
Jacki Ellis
So as you've just heard, I am the portfolio manager for retirement strategy at Aware Super, which is my dream job. I feel very fortunate to have this role. I love what I do. I'm sort of responsible for working out how we, as a super fund of a million members, can do a much better job of personalising the way we manage our members money to meet the specific needs of each of our members, and in particular, how we can help them understand what they need to meet their goals in retirement and give them really clever and smart and personalised strategies for actually drawing down on those savings so that they can live life large in retirement like they no doubt deserve it.
Camilla Love
Absolutely.
Jacki Ellis
It's very exciting because as an industry, we've spent a really long time working out how to make money and accumulate wealth for members. But as yet, we're not great at supporting members in actually drawing it down once they get to that magical retirement moment.
Camilla Love
So retirement is such an interesting space and something a topic that no one really ever wants to talk about because particularly when you're young, talking to a lot of our audience who haven't even thought about retirement. To me, retirement is the party stuff that you've worked so hard in your career to get to and have such a good time at that point. But then everyone's talking about at the moment, will we ever retire? What's your views here?
Jacki Ellis
Look, I think that our views of retirement are really starting to evolve and become a bit richer. Previously, it was like you hit a point. You retired, you hoped you had enough money and you kind of made do with what you had when you got there. And maybe for some lucky people, that was inspiring. But often it was sort of a bit of a negative connotation. Getting the age pension for the government was seen as a bit of a handout, and there's a bit of stigma around that. I think that that's really changing in society at the moment. Certainly if you retire the way my mom has, she skis most of the year whenever she can, like sort of eternally jealous about her retirement. Of course, she is one of those lucky people in the Commonwealth Public Service. They got a defined benefit scheme where they have that promised income for life, and that creates a lot more certainty. And I feel like that's inspiration, though. We can make retirement this exciting moment where you get freedom and choice and the time that you choose to retirement, to retire will depend on you and your circumstances and what you want.
Jacki Ellis
And maybe you'll choose to keep working for a bit, or maybe you'll start doing other types of work that you've always wanted to do. There's a huge amount of fulfilment we get from working. And so I don't think that the goal is necessarily to stop working for everyone. I don't know that that's necessarily what retirement means anymore. It's more about that moment where you get your sort of financial independence to make choices on a daily basis about what you really want to do. And I think that's really exciting and empowering, and we should be celebrating it as a society.
Camilla Love
Indeed. And now I loved when you explained about what you did was all about personalising retirement. How do you do that? Because that's hardly. That's a hard thing to do for 1 million members who are your clients.
Jacki Ellis
Yeah, it's really hard for a shockingly large portion of our members. We don't even have the email address.
Camilla Love
Details, people, please.
Jacki Ellis
It really makes a difference because even if we have any kind of significant event or any kind of change, we have to mail out to so many members because we don't have the email address as it kills trees and it costs money unnecessarily. Please update your email address. But yeah, we have to get a lot better as an industry at knowing our members at the moment. We do that a lot through my team, from a research perspective, and we partner with some really clever academics who are really good at this sort of stuff. To really help understand that we do a lot of member testing now. Human Centred Design is here to stay in the industry, particularly when it comes to retirement, which is really very demand played. It's all about what the member wants. Ultimately, it's their money, their choice, and so we have to really work harder to understand that. And pretty much every other industry out there has gone through that evolution, we expect a lot of personalisation in our daily lives today. Superannuation is no different, it's just a really highly regulated industry, so there are a few extra hurdles to jump through, which I think is one of the reasons it hasn't quite happened yet.
Jacki Ellis
But we're well on the way and I think we'll see a sea change in that aspect of super over the next decade for sure. Once you know things about members and once you get better at engaging with them on their terms without all of the jargon and lingo and ridiculous number of acronyms that do my head in, I use Jargon and I don't even realise it's Jargon. It's really funny because I'm the technical person, I'm the investment strategy team. So I do all of the really specifically technical bits and this is wonderful counterpart I have in product who gets me now after working with me for two years and she translates me and I don't even realise it was terrible. So I'm trying really hard to deognize myself as an important step on that process. But it's really hard if we don't know what personal goals are like. We don't know a member well enough to understand what they're actually trying to achieve in retirement. How can we possibly help them deliver on that?
Camilla Love
So how are you doing that? Like, how are you getting all the personal information to be able to do that unless you know their spending patterns and personal circumstances other than the dollar amount of their super balance?
Jacki Ellis
Yeah, I think it's going to be a combination of engaging with them effectively so that they tell us and really clever, smart nudges that we give them to say, well, given what you've told us about you, if you want to kind of maintain your lifestyle for retirement, which is where most members will start when you sort of talk to them about what they like in retirement, I just really like to keep living as I am as a sort of basic starting point. In many cases you don't need the same income in retirement to maintain your current lifestyle because a lot of expenses disappear for many people, although maybe this will change over time. They'll stop having to pay off a mortgage and things like that. They won't be paying nearly as much tax in retirement in many cases, no tax. Perhaps they won't have dependents to the same degree, although again, maybe that's sort of shifting a little bit and so often a replacement rate is 70% allows you to maintain your lifestyle and then you need to. Oh, I'm sorry, no, I do it again. You can hold me to account. Tam so that's just saying how much of your working life income you need in retirement to maintain your lifestyle.
Jacki Ellis
So five point 70% of the income before tax basis, then that will be enough for most people for the masses for them to maintain their lifestyle if you're in the wealthier end, it will be a bit lower than that. You might only need a half the income because you're not sort of theoretically, you're not supposed to be saving as much or a lot of wealthy people's income goes towards savings and sort of not really the point. And then actually the lowest income earners in society. The sad reality or how much of a divergence we have between the richer and the poor. Many of them actually get a pay rise in retirement because the age pension is quite generous relative to other supports in the system. And so often their replacement rate will be well over 100%. They'll be getting more money in retirement. So you have to sort of nuance these things. And that's why we have people like me who really dig into the research and think about it and help bring the richness of those details into the member experience that our marketing and product teams are building.
Camilla Love
So you described your job as your dream job. Why is it your dream job?
Jacki Ellis
Well, it's never dull or boring. It's just pure problem solving. I get to have this wonderful mix of really geeky number crunching, and I'm a total geek at heart, and I love that. But I also the success for me is making a difference to members. I've got this huge opportunity to really add value. This year, we implemented a new default in super. The default is called my super. So a new default investment strategy for our members that's thoughtful about how their money is invested throughout their working life. And we expect to add about $100,000 to the balance of our younger members by the time they get to retirement. That adds up to, like, I don't know, $20 billion across family members because something stupid. And so being able to make a difference is really amazing. But I also get to network right across the firm. I work very heavily with the product team, with the digital team, with the advice team, with the marketing team, with the policy and advocacy teams all around this really kind of complex and interconnected idea of retirement. We can only deliver on that personalization dream if we're all connected and coherent for that single goal. So I really enjoy the mix that brings all of that together.
Camilla Love
Going back in time a little bit. You actually did a degree in finance and psychology.
Jacki Ellis
Yes.
Camilla Love
So why is that a good mix? And I think I know why that is a good mix. But tell me why you think that is a good mix.
Jacki Ellis
Look super fortunate in hindsight, but a little secret. It was completely accidentally. In fact, I was going to become a psychologist. I was, which I would have been terrible at that because I'm a much better talker than I am. Alisa, Lisa, as you would know, I really am. I couch for you. I really care about people. That sort of aspect made sense and people are really interesting but I would have made a really bad psychologist, I think so fortunately for me, my bestie was really into the idea of doing a commerce degree she's a very pragmatic person, very likes numbers and all this sort of stuff, she works at the Absorber of statistics now she really loves numbers and stats and we just thought that you would be way more fun if we could do it together So we made this packed to both do a double degree so we could go through the degrees that we wanted but we could do them together and that was serious, that is how the very deliberate and well thought through and highly strategic way I came to do a commerce psychology degree I should really thank your best friend yeah Coach, which I do all the time because I love where I've ended up in life and a lot of that is the wonderful influence that she has had in my life to shout out to Lauren Ford thank you Dusty the best destiny ever but I love the story that it's always I'm not going to say a mistake but.
Camilla Love
You've fallen into it.
Jacki Ellis
I've 100% fallen into my career from pretty much every step so somewhere along the line in my degree I just really enjoyed finance and one day I sort of woke up and I thought I just really enjoyed this the most and I went and I spoke to some of the lectures, my favourite lecturers in finance and they were doing some research in Behavioural finance which is just by far one of the more interesting aspects of finance, like why a market is crazy because it's like the culmination of millions of humans making silly decisions that they think logically but may or may not be exactly how interesting I thought oh wow, this is actually a wonderful way I can combine my two interests and so I ended up doing honours in finance and I did my own thesis in Behavioural finance and I totally loved it and then the next heavy accident was that I took so long because I also took some time out at Uni to go travelling and things I took so long at Uni in Canberra, some Canberra born and bred, I love that place, don't knock it and all my friends have left me come back and I thought Well, I want to fly their coup now, I want to hang out with my friends who've just come back So I got one of the few true finance jobs available in Canberra that was working at the Australian Office of Financial Management that sort of is the debt management arm of Treasury I had this amazing opportunity to do some really wonderful grad training through the treasury programme I met some amazing friends through that time too and my first ever boss ended up moving into an asset consulting firm and coached me six months later to follow him. And that was how I ended up in super because I just loved working with him and he was just fantastic. And the way he talked about his new job and the work that he was doing and the ability to sort of make a difference to Mums and Dads, I thought, oh, that's fantastic. And so I ended up there and then my next job was at Mercer again in investment consulting, where I got the absolute privilege of working with people like David Knox, who is a total short leader in the world of retirement and just completely fell in love with that as a problem and such an amazing opportunity. It's a problem that nobody in the world has solved. The Australia's at the forefront and we can't solve it. I am determined and, you know, I always do everything.
Camilla Love
I set myself one big hairy goal for the rest of the globe. Here's, Jacki, trying to solve it.
Jacki Ellis
That's what I'm going to do. That's probably the rest of my career sorted right there. It might take me that long at I'm it not sure.
Camilla Love
And then you'll retire and use your life.
Jacki Ellis
I know. And then I'll be like, I'm so glad I did this for myself. So that's a win.
Camilla Love
That's fabulous. And then along the way you did some postgrad stuff. You did your CFA.
Jacki Ellis
Yes.
Camilla Love
Has this been important for you?
Jacki Ellis
I think so in a way. Like it was finished studying. It was about ten years, I suppose, or close to it. And some of the detail was a bit rusty. And I have always suffered a little bit from imposter syndrome. I've never really thought of myself as remotely smart. I always just attribute any success to hard work and I know all my friends shake their heads. I know exactly that face. You guys just imagine the face that came into anything right now. That is usually. But look, I mean, that's why humans are interesting, right? We're all slightly crazy in our own way and that's my personal particular bent of that. And so it was really helpful for me. It covers kind of every 101 aspect to finance in a really detailed way and it's very black and white way of learning. I don't necessarily describe that. I think that context and conceptual problem solving is really important too. But in terms of just having that confidence, you across all of the basics. It was really useful. And I think having that sort of breadth and overview of all aspects of finance in the industry is always a really great grounding for anyone to have while they're an analyst. And so you can draw on that knowledge when you're sort of more senior and just your fingers in all sorts of pies all across the firm in the industry. Very helpful.
Camilla Love
Now, you mentioned you moved from your first role to your second role due to your boss right at the time. And I just reflect on the role of the mentors that you've had in your career to date and the importance that those type of people are to you. What would you say to the listeners out there today about the role of mentors and maybe even finding one, or what do you think of the benefits of it?
Jacki Ellis
Having mentors is really important. I've tended to sort of collect them along the way. I think mostly just because I'm a real coupon person, I tend to sort of really value people and relationships. And so I take that time to build relationships with everyone that I'm working with. And I've had the great fortune of working with some amazing people, including some really senior women who have sort of been there and done it all before and gave me some really great advice. He sort of, in many ways only realised later that they were mentors. It was never a formal. I've actually never done formal mentoring where there's like you're meeting every, I don't know, three weeks and you got an agenda and all this sort of thing. I was just taking the opportunity to have the extra chats or to ask questions or to seek their feedback and building that sort of rapport and trust so that they'll also kind of say, hey, in a minute, what are you doing here? Why do you think about this? Why are you doing this? Have you stopped to consider that maybe you're the person who is responsible for you in your career and you're the only one who can know really what you want and you have to figure that out and you can't wait for someone else to do that for you?
Jacki Ellis
If you don't know what inspires and motivates you or why you're doing what you're doing, it's really up to you to find that out, and then you can ask the right questions and ask for the right help and people you kind of can say, this is what I want. It's very difficult for your bosses or other senior people to help you. And I've had the great fortune of managing a whole lot of analysts, including pools of analysts, in my time. And it's a really common thing for people in the early parts of their career sort of almost expect a really high degree of hand holding in terms of what's going to happen with their career and promotions and opportunities. And by far the best thing is to put your hand up and just ask for it. Managers excited and allows you to sort of tilt your career in the direction, things that interest you the most and get you that extra experience that will give you that leg up. And so I'm just a big fan of sort of putting your hand up and kind of going for it.
Camilla Love
Yes, indeed. So either asking for help or asking for advice, or I always say, so my version of that is ask the next question. So can I have a coffee? Can I have a pay rise? Do you mind if I have your job? That sort of thing? That's my version of that.
Jacki Ellis
Yeah. Well, people actually love to help. It feels really scary to ask. Sometimes people love to help and they just need to know how to help. And I literally can't think of a single time that I've asked for help. And the answer has been no. And even if the answer was no, would have been a really apologetic no. But how about you try this? And I'm so sorry. In this instance, because of X, Y, and Z, and you still end up getting there in a slightly more roundabout way. But if you don't ask, well, that's a no before you started.
Camilla Love
Can I tell you a funny story?
Jacki Ellis
Sure.
Camilla Love
So I was looking for a mentor. This is a while ago, and one of the guys I worked with who I respect highly said to me, think about the most senior female in finance industry and just going up and ask her. And at that time it was Gail Kelly who was the Westpac CEO. So there I was, green eyes and bushy tails going, yeah, I'm just going to ask God College be my mentor. And I got back and no, can I tell you a funny story? Two years later, I went and did my MBA, and there I was sitting next to this person from Westpac, and I explained who I was. And she's like, You're Camilla love. What are you talking about? She goes, did you write to Gail Kelly to ask her to be a member? Yeah, that was ages ago. She goes, that was disgust at a meeting. And I'm like, Holy Moly. Serious. Anyway, that's a pretty funny story. So I did get a note, but I totally understand why.
Jacki Ellis
Maybe I've never been ambitious enough to get to know. I'm so not surprised that you were there. I love that.
Camilla Love
Well, if you don't ask, you don't.
Jacki Ellis
You don't get that's right. Absolutely, indeed.
Camilla Love
Anyway, so let's move tact a little bit. And I'm always interested in our guest point of view on what the trends that they are seeing in the financial services industry right now. And that could be anything but particularly from your view, what's out there that people who are looking at joining the industry or who are recent entrants in the industry should look out for?
Jacki Ellis
I think retirement is a big trend and that's we already talked about ageing demographics. The system is maturing. So we're finally seeing more and more waves of members retiring with quite decent superannuation balances and where that's quite a sizable asset for them in terms of their retirement. So it's getting greater importance placed on it from all avenues members, government regulators, and also choice is here to stay. And again, that's another very purposeful policy setting from the government's perspective. They want more members engaging with the system and making more choice to help competitive pressures ensure that that trend towards performance orientated cultures where that whole system, as efficient as can be, is maintained. And so I think that's one of the reasons why I'm so confident that personalisation is here to stay in the way of the future for super, because choice will push us there eventually anyway. And responsible ownership is another really big trend where you start to see that sort of positive virtuous cycle of capital coming into play, where we're aggregating up the wealth of millions of members into funds which have become really desensitised to the figures that I talk about these days.
Jacki Ellis
My fund has over 150,000,000,000 in assets under management, but we're managing on behalf of our members, and we're expecting to sort of double in the years to come in terms of that size. And so it's a really silly amount of money. And that means that we need to really take seriously the responsibility that comes with investing those assets and make sure that we understand all aspects of how that money is being used. And governance, environmental, social, thinking about societal impacts because the very long term horizon of our members. What's the point of retiring with all this money if you don't really have a planet to retire on, for example? And we have to think about all of the risks. And so increasingly, climate change is part of that opera is pushing funds, and members are pushing funds to think more and more about how we're managing for that and making sure that we're factoring in the risks of investing in coal because of stranded assets and things like that. Property is a long term asset class, and for years they've been leading the investment field in terms of green practises because it makes sense when you're investing in those type of time Horizons.
Jacki Ellis
And so that's another trend, I think that's here to stay. Yeah.
Camilla Love
And that's particularly poignant given that we've just had the week that's gone. We talk about sustainability a lot on this podcast, and it's nice to see the importance of the use of capital and putting it in the right places to sustain a better planet. And we've talked about it a lot in the episode. But it's also quite nice to think that the fact that going on the days that superannuation as an industry was like what I would deem as sleepy, I like the fact that it's now at the forefront and that people should really be thinking about that as a path in their career, not just something that goes off in your paycheck every month. I think that's great. So I asked this question to all of my guests, which is, what is the best career advice that you've ever been given? And why did it mean the most to you?
Jacki Ellis
I had a moment where I was really calling out for perhaps not believing in myself enough and maybe not really having sufficient ambition in the way I thought about my career and what I was trying to achieve and how I was conducting myself in a professional sort of setting and just that idea that I have your sights on the next goal and dress for that success. And maybe that's sort of less applicable today after the realities are locked down. And certainly dress codes have become more casual and we've got much more ability to have our whole selves with us in the office now. But I think it's a mindset that's really important because if you don't believe you can get there, then why would anyone else? And sort of having that just consumption in the way that you're working, that you will get there really does actually make a difference. It certainly did for me, much to my surprise. And actually I was almost annoyed that it did because I was really annoyed by the advice at the time. If I'm honest, sometimes you don't like getting called out. Yeah, that's right. You didn't want to believe it, but it was really true.
Jacki Ellis
It had a really big impact, that mental shift. And I think how we visualise ourselves and the things that we say to ourselves and the self talk that comes with that can be a really powerful force for good or a real roadblock. So that's probably the most fundamental thing, especially because of my imposter syndrome. I think it was really important for me to hear that from someone really directly.
Camilla Love
And it's good to note that imposter syndrome happens to everyone at lots of points in their career. You're not alone in this. If you're out there listening to it, everybody whether I can't sit on this panel, why would anyone be able to listen to me? Why am I even writing this strategy paper? Because what are my ideas mean? Yeah, it comes from everywhere, and I'm glad that person gave you that advice, Jack.
Jacki Ellis
I know, right? It was really good advice. Hard to hear, but it was really good advice. And I think the best advice is hard to hear, and you have to be really open to that, and you have to seek it out, and you have to kind of be willing to really embrace those gems and seek feedback all the time, just normalise that process. That's the beauty of learning, right? You're not trying to be perfect. You're just trying to be better than you were.
Camilla Love
Such great advice. Maybe you could have been that psychologist.
Jacki Ellis
Maybe a coach, maybe talking versus listening thing.
Camilla Love
Sure. Okay. At the end of every episode, we do this quick fire round. Have you listened to any of our episodes?
Jacki Ellis
Do you know what this is? Yeah, I'm ready. Hit me with it.
Camilla Love
Okay. If you could be any animal, what would it be? And why for sure?
Jacki Ellis
A Penguin? Because I really love Penguins and I really like the idea of sliding around on my belly on the ice. It looks really fun. Although I have to say, with climate change, melting ice caps and also just how hard Penguin life is, I'm not sure that it's a really sensible thing to want to be kind of fun. It does look fun, right? I want to do that all day. Yes, exactly. Dance around, slide.
Camilla Love
And so I went to the Zoo with Sabrina on the weekend and we get some Penguin. But no Penguins. They're not good. Who do you admire the most?
Jacki Ellis
I know these questions are usually talking about the famous people, the Balmers of the world, but I actually source my inspiration locally. I'm a real people person. I love my friends and family. I pick out pieces I admire from the people I know best. So I admire my husband's endless calm and consideration of others. I wish I was a calmer person. I am as a result of him, but I'm nothing on his scale. You would be one of the people in my life that I gave my camera. I know that sounds corny, but I just love your energy and commitment to making a difference and somehow managed to stay organised through all of that, which I never achieved.
Camilla Love
It's organised chaos.
Jacki Ellis
Organised chaos is better than just straight chaos, which is probably more true for my reality.
Camilla Love
If you could invite anyone to dinner, alive or dead, who would it be and why?
Jacki Ellis
Just at the moment post lock down. One of my oldest, very close friends is going through breast cancer at the moment and I haven't been able to be there. She's down in Canberra. We've been locked down, so if I could have anyone to dinner, it would definitely be her, so I could give her a big hug in person and see how she's really doing.
Camilla Love
That's beautiful.
Jacki Ellis
But she's doing great.
Camilla Love
Well, cross fingers. My favourite book is.
Jacki Ellis
Oh, I have always been a sucker for period dramas and I just love Pride and Prejudice. I always have. I must have read it a million times. And I really like Mr Darcy. Yeah. I don't know why we love Mr Darcy, but everyone does. I'm not going to go internally on that, but I just really like the sort of strong characters that female characters at Jane Austen wrote into books in a time when it was very difficult to be strong female and just, I don't know, the romance of the period combined with that. I've always loved it.
Camilla Love
So if you came back in another time, you'd come back in Jane Austin time, then?
Jacki Ellis
Only if I could be one of her book characters, maybe. I'm not sure that it was a great time for women generally.
Camilla Love
Not at all.
Jacki Ellis
I'm not sure. Maybe the future would be more interesting to find out about. See if I crack the retirement code.
Camilla Love
Yeah, we'll crack that one first and then we'll crack the time travel one.
Jacki Ellis
Yeah.
Camilla Love
Summer, winter. Autumn or spring?
Jacki Ellis
Winter. Hand down. I love skiing. Oh, my God. Just miss it so much right now.
Camilla Love
One day we'll get to do it.
Jacki Ellis
One day we still haven't have we? Cannot believe this year.
Camilla Love
But we were locked down.
Jacki Ellis
I mean, we've tried several times. It's going to happen. It's going to happen.
Camilla Love
Okay. Next year.
Jacki Ellis
Next year. Let's do it. Logged in.
Camilla Love
Tell me something that no one else knows about you.
Jacki Ellis
No one else. Oh, my God. That doesn't exist. I don't think I'm such an open book. Everyone knows everything about me. I mean, things that would surprise people today would be from my distant past. I was a springboard diver. Did you know? Were you? I did the double back pike thing. Yeah. I could do, like, the inward hike, one and a half of the three metre and things like that. I could dive off the five minute. I got a silver medal at the Australian Inter Schools Championships. Really? Well, no, not really. I grew up in Canberra, so opportunities are limited. Maybe if I grow up in Brisbane.
Camilla Love
So next time I want to see one of these.
Jacki Ellis
Yeah, well, a little bit rusty, but we can always try.
Camilla Love
There's always a moment. My hidden talent is.
Jacki Ellis
My hidden talent is talking my son out of a tantrum. I'm the only one who can do it. They are really like, he's one determined little lad and those tantrums are epic. And he's so funny, especially through locked eyes. So funny. And he'd be like, mom, the tantrums are back. Help me. It's so funny. And I've always managed to crack the code.
Camilla Love
Eventually. Maybe you can come to my place.
Jacki Ellis
Sure. I charge by the hour.
Camilla Love
Free for friends, right?
Jacki Ellis
Yeah. Maybe my biggest investment mistake was to tell you what the worst investment I made recently was through lockdown. I invested in a trampoline for our backyard, for my kindergarten son. Vain hope that it would give him something to do. And all of those hours we were in work meetings and couldn't pay him attention. He was trying to, I don't know, entertain himself. But unfortunately, the Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He's far too extrovert. And he refuses to jump on the damn thing without someone else with him. And he hardly ever used it as a result. It was the worst.
Camilla Love
So it doesn't count if no one's watching.
Jacki Ellis
No. Why would I play with toys without people to play with? And I'm like, I hear you, mate. It's really hard to. It's really hard to complain when that's your personality coming out back at you. My favourite song is probably anything from Julia and Angerstone. I love them. And maybe Bella in particular. That was my wedding song.
Camilla Love
It's really special for me. That's so nice. The last question is complete this sentence.
Jacki Ellis
A career in finance is never boring, sometimes challenging, but an amazing opportunity to make a difference.
Camilla Love
Jacki such a great way to end. And I loved our chat. I Think We've Given, as Always, Just Some Surprising. I Didn't Realise That It Was Like A Pact With Your Mates Which Made You Do Psychology Because That's What I Really Wanted To Do. And Then Into Finance. I Love The Fact That Your Worst Investment Decision Was Buying A Kid In Trampoline.
Jacki Ellis
Really?
Camilla Love
And It's Great To See That Super, Which Has Moved Forward And Trying To Reach For Better Retirement Outcomes For All Members And Personalising Them Is Really A Goal And An Achievable Goal, Which I Think Is Super Exciting. So Once You Get There, You Let Me Know.
Jacki Ellis
I Will. Absolutely. And For Everyone Out There, Pay Attention Early To Your Super. For Every Dollar You Invest In Your 20s, It Will Grown To At Least Around $4 by The Time You retire. It's An Amazing Way To Get Ahead In Life And Also Give You That Extra Freedom And Flexibility To Have Time Out Of The workforce later For Whatever Reason You Might choose And Still Have A Great Retirement Outcome. So Engage Early, make The Most Of It, and Don't Succumb To that. Oh, It's My Future Self Problem Kind Of Thing That We Tend To Do As Humans.
Camilla Love
That Future Self Comes Around Too Fast, huh?
Jacki Ellis
Oh, My God. It Has For Me.
Camilla Love
Wendy. So Jack, it Was Really Great To Chat and thank You For Being Funny And Entertaining As Usual. And I'm Just Really Glad That You Can Help Inspire The New Generation Of Talent Coming Into The Industry And What We're Trying To Do Here At Shares Not Shoes. So thank You For Being Open And Honest And Being Just Generally Jacki Ellis.
Jacki Ellis
Really thank You So Much For Having Me. It's Been A Blast As Always. And For Anyone Still On The Fence, Do It, just Do It. It's The Best.
Camilla Love
Just Do It. Exactly. So for More Information About Our Guests On Shares, Not Shoes And Further Episodes, head to SharesnotShoes.com. And for more information On F three Future Females In Finance, Head To F Three.com Au. As Always, I Look Forward To You Joining US Next Episode Where We Will Continue To Interview Some Fabulous People Just Like Jacki And To Give You The Inside Scoop On Careers In Finance. Bye. For now.
Camilla Love
You Know The Information That Is In This Podcast. We Always Talk About Finance In This Podcast. But It's Not Financial Advice. It's Actually Really Careers Advice. If You Really Want Financial Advice, I Recommend That You Speak To A Financial Planner Or A broker And Work Out Your Own Personal Circumstances With that. But this Is All About Career's Advice And How It's Finance Would Be A Fabulous Career For you.