Chris Carlin, Financial Adviser, Master Your Money Now (MYMN) shares why he is most proud of winning the 2019 AFA Rising Star of the year award; the great guidance he received from truly inspirational mentors to help him launch MYMN and his great ‘high-five’ moment of receiving MYMN branded cupcakes to celebrate twelve months in business from a very happy client!
- Why financial advice?Financial advice combines my two major passions of crunching numbers (nerd alert!) and helping people. I get to help people buy their first home, build their wealth and retire sooner while tinkering with spreadsheets and projections, I think I have hit the jackpot!
- What are you most proud of? Personally, marrying my beautiful Kiwi wife Natalie – she is a stunner and an amazing paediatric nurse! Professionally, it is hard to look past winning the 2019 AFA Rising Star, it is such a prestigious award and I am honoured to have the trophy in my home office. To receive recognition for all of the hard work learning the trade as a paraplanner, then making the step up into financial advice at ANZ, then moving to start Master Your Money Now, is incredible. It is good to know that someone in the industry thinks I must be doing something right!
3. Who inspires you?
I was very fortunate to have two amazing financial planning mentors who really shaped my career, Jessica Grixti at MyLife MyAdvice (formerly Catholic Super) and Brendan Madden at Voyage To Freedom (we worked together at ANZ Financial Planning). They definitely gave me the guidance, motivation and encouragement to succeed in financial planning and I am very grateful for the time they invested into me.
Also, it may be a bit strange to say but my clients motivate me as well. I work primarily with teachers and nurses who do so much good for the community and often don’t see the financial rewards for it. When I compare one of my bad days to one of my clients bad days it puts things into perspective – as an example my wife used to work on the oncology (cancer) ward at the Royal Children’s Hospital and often have to give palliative care to terminally ill children, it puts life into perspective.
4. What advice would you give to your younger self?
I did see a financial planner when I was 19! I had $7,000 saved up (which I thought was a lot) and after seeing a financial planning seminar on investing in shares I booked in a complimentary chat with their financial planner so I could get rich quick. The financial planner (with the patience of a saint) kindly looked at me and suggested paying off my HECS debt early and getting a 20% discount was a better strategy. Disappointed I wasn’t going to retire at 25, I did take her advice and saved over $5,000 in fees. I should point out this was May 2008 too, so it was probably the best financial advice I ever received!
5. Your most recent ‘high-five’ moment?
As per the above, the 2019 AFA Rising Star was an incredible moment. Also I recently celebrated twelve months since launching Master Your Money Now – one of my clients who owns a café prepared some MYMN branded cupcakes which was awesome!
6. The one word you wish everyone would stop using!
I don’t have a word, but one phrase I hate is “its only a game”. My wife used this one after Geelong lost to Richmond in the preliminary final – it wasn’t well received…
7. Early or late tech adopter?
When are you early and when are you late to adapt technology? I am using technology to service my clients remotely, enabling me to drill down in my niche and often deliver personalised advice at a much lower price (I have a lot of clients in Sydney who appreciate this!). I don’t have a shopfront, I rather use that money to invest in my social media, website and SEO to increase my profile and promote my business. Platform Plus (Infocus CRM software) does enable us to sign a lot of documents remotely which is very convenient. But there are still a lot of challenges that need to be looked at from a technology perspective to ensure that advice can be cost effective to everyday people – roboadvice is not the answer.
