128. Housesitting Hack that Saved 6-Figures in Living Expenses with Britt Sharman

Average Joe Finances: 0:02

Hey, how's going everybody? Welcome back to the Average Joe Finances Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni, and today's guest is Britt Sharman. One of the things I'm really excited about is we're gonna talk about something that we've never really explored on this show before, and it's about house sitting. To save money towards fire which is pretty exciting stuff. I get a lot of podcast pitches in my email all the time. When I got this email from Britt, I thought this was super cool and super unique. Something that I haven't even thought about in the past. And I really wanted to explore this. Brit t thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

Britt Sharman: 0:36

Thank you so much for having me.

Average Joe Finances: 0:38

Yeah, absolutely. So we're gonna start this off the same way we start every podcast episode. And we wanna know more about you. So if you could share your story. What made you think about house sitting to save money?

Britt Sharman: 0:50

Yep. So I've traveled a lot over my life. I did a few winters in Canada and then I found myself living over in London. So I was on the working holiday and headed out one day to meet a friend at the park and she showed up with a dog , which a bit unusual cuz we're all traveling and living in share houses. And she was telling me how she was house sitting. So she had this beautiful home in a lovely part of London. And I thought maybe that like I could try as well, like you get sick of living with six, seven people in a share house. So I think that's like my first foray into house sitting there.

Average Joe Finances: 1:25

Alright awesome. So you met somebody at the park, they were walking the dog, and you're like, Wait a second, why do you have a dog? We're all just doing the traveling thing and living together in these spaces. So how do you have a dog? This is so weird, right? And then you learned about house sitting. What was the thought process that made you think, I'm gonna continue to do the traveling, but I'm gonna house sit and use that to save on my actual housing expenses. What was that shift for you and what was it like that mindset like?

Britt Sharman: 1:51

I think that we started house sitting kind of for the traveling element. We wanted to keep exploring Europe and we saw there was a lot of opportunities in Europe to do it. But from London, our Visa was running out, so we decided to head over to Ireland. We're gonna do two years in Dublin and we got there and we didn't realize, but the rental market was even more intense than London. We couldn't find a rental property. So we started looking into housing again and we'd actually done quite a few when we were in London, we did two or three just to start building up our references cuz that's what we start, we're reading online that's the most important thing and we managed to land a house that in Dublin for three months. In a really beautiful part, and there was a lovely Australian family who were looking after their golden retriever. And then from there we managed to get another three month sit and we thought maybe we could actually do this full time. Rather than just a week here and a week there. So after we left Dublin, we went to Thailand and we did a few house sits there and headed back to Australia from there. And we wanted to save, to keep traveling again. So it's not just traveling all the time, the house sitting, We managed to do a whole year of house sitting in Melbourne and that was to help us save if you keep traveling again. So I think that it started out as, Oh, we could just do this for a nice home for the week or live somewhere nice in Europe. But then we realized it's like we could do full time. And I think that at the same time I was listening to a few podcasts and discovering fire, and I thought, this is a real, this is a way to supercharge your fire. Some people take it as a way to travel, but some people also take it as a way to cut out the most expensive part of your life, which is cutting a roof over your head.

Average Joe Finances: 3:31

Yeah, housing expenses are definitely the number one expense that it's a need, right? You need to have a roof over your head, otherwise you're gonna be walking around the streets. So that's super important. Now I'm curious so you went from, you were traveling all over, right? And of course Staying in, in groups of six, like you said. But you were still paying at that point, it was probably a much smaller fee because you were staying with five other people, but you still, as you were traveling, you were having to pay to stay where you were at. Now with the house sitting, obviously, it seems like you know you're gonna be in that house for free, but at the same time, aren't you also being paid by the homeowner for you to house it?

Britt Sharman: 4:07

Yeah. All the house sits we've done have been free of charge. We've never taken anything. There is, it's a divide in the house sitting industry where some people do charge and some people just see it as a value of exchange. We always did it as a value of exchange because we found with taxes and visas, it can be a big issue. So that's why I've always done it that way. Whereas I do know a lot of people who do charge and it's their whole business. For me, it was just that value exchange and I enjoyed, meeting the people, having an animal, having just a whole home. I think I enjoyed that more than turning it into a business.

Average Joe Finances: 4:41

All right, fantastic. So that's a great point. That leads to the next question then. So if you weren't charging while you were there, what were you doing for an income while you were house sitting?

Britt Sharman: 4:50

Yeah, so when I was in Dublin, I was working for an agency web development and then when we left to go to Thailand, I quit that job and kind of went freelance for myself. So that was another great thing about house sitting. It really took the pressure of building up that business. I wasn't worried, month to month, am I gonna make rent? Am I gonna be able to pay the bills? I could focus on the business and not worry about taking on more clients than I could actually do. It was just more building the business at that time rather than stressing over those external kind of pressures.

Average Joe Finances: 5:25

Okay. Yeah that's fantastic. Now, as you're building your freelance business at this point, now, you don't have to worry about chasing down to try to get these contracts to happen just so you could pay rent. Right? That's covered. You're good there. You're doing your value exchange. Now, as you're building up your freelance business and you're moving around first you start off at an agency in Dublin, right? And then when you move to Thailand, that's when you decided to start freelancing. Now that gave you an opportunity to go ahead and just build that up. And as you're building it up, was there anything that you found that while traveling that made it either more difficult or easier to run a freelance business?

Britt Sharman: 6:07

I think it is more difficult to work on the road and these days I do prefer to have a home base and then travel and house it when I want to. I think I did that digital nomad thing for quite a long time and it doesn't really appreciate. When you're traveling in those places and trying to work, you don't really appreciate those areas and it's hard to switch off when other people are in holiday mode in those kind of areas. So I think that it was harder. I think everyone glamorizes a digital nomad movement, but I think it is quite hard to work and keep clients and work in different time zones. So that's just the way I work. But some people really enjoy that kind of laptop, beach lifestyle, but that's just really not for me. I thought it was more harder than it really I imagine it would be.

Average Joe Finances: 6:45

Yeah, that's a fair point. You always see all those ads and stuff on social media where you got the person sitting on the beach with their laptop like, Yeah, I'm just working from the beach. This is where I work. We decided to go down to Costa Rica for a week and I'm just gonna get my work done. You made a very fair point where you say, other people are there on holiday mode, right? And they're out there having a good time partying. Hanging out at the beach and actually hanging out at the beach, not with a laptop. They're out there, swimming, surfing, whatever. And then, you're sitting here having to tip tap on your keyboard and get this work done because the person that you're working for is in a different time zone. So that's a very good point. And I think it does go to the over glamorization that you see of the digital nomad movement. And even myself, I keep telling myself, Oh yeah, if I, decide to go to Bali or go anywhere else, I can still do my work and everything from there. But realistically, how much of that do I really wanna do when I'm trying to go out there and have a good time and hang with the family and everything, all right. Fair point. Definitely appreciate that, that side. Now how long did you do the house sitting thing?

Britt Sharman: 7:46

I think it was about five years. We started in 2015 and we did a big trip around Europe. We actually purchased a camp event in the uk and we housed that through France, Italy. Greece, Monte Negro, Croatia, for about nine months. So we packed all that in. That was right at the end of 2019. So we got a lot of travel done then, which I'm glad because as we all know, 2020 happened and all meant to actually go to a house in Mexico in March of 2020. My partner Jay, he was looking after a Catamaran in the Caribbean. He was house sitting, cat sitting that, And we're gonna meet in Mexico for our next house sit. And then as we know, travel got shut down. So I did quite a few house sits back here in Australia because all the borders were closed, but a lot of people were doing trips around Australia, so two, three months. So I did quite a few long term house sits in Australia, but cuz we had such big lockdowns, it was quite hard for people to organize travel. So in the end I ended up just renting, which I am at the moment, and I'm hoping to, at the end of this year, start next year, maybe head to Mexico and house it there for a few months. So that's my plan at the moment.

Average Joe Finances: 8:57

Okay. Yeah. So Covid definitely put like a big pause on that, but, so you were doing it for five years. How much money would you say over that time period that you were able to save on living expenses?

Britt Sharman: 9:07

So I calculated around a hundred to 120,000 pretty much in those five years. Didn't pay rent. No bills, no cancel tax, no internet, no power, no water bills. So it really is the biggest, ultimate travel hack, life hack, I think. Like you hear a lot of people talking about flight hacking, credit card hacking, but I think that, like you said before, your living expenses, Biggest part. So I think cutting that out was the reason why I could save so much money. And that's why, I said before, that's when I was also getting into the fire movement. So not only was I investing that money and time that I had back into my business, I was also able to save that money and start looking towards the fire movement. So I started investing in a few different things and that.

Average Joe Finances: 9:52

Wow. That's super awesome. So you saved you're able to save over six figures during this five year span on living expenses. And now this just gives you more wiggle room and more freedom for what you wanna do with your money and where you wanna put it, right? For those that are in the fire movement, what a great way to get your travel fix. , and still save so much money cuz it's more than just the rent, right? You're not paying, like you said, you're not paying any bills. There's no power bill, there's no water bill, there's none of that, no taxes or anything because you're just staying in someone's home for free. That is super cool. And I see where the whole, doing the value exchange makes a lot more sense than charging because if you do start charging and everything like that, now you're paying taxes and there's other expenses that are gonna show up with it. That headache affecting you. Yeah. More headaches. Yeah. Wow. That's really cool. Again, this is something that I'd never really even thought about before. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the term house hacking, but if you're, if you follow the fire movement you probably have heard of that before, and that is something that we've talked about several times on this podcast where people will, buy a home and then rent out either a portion of their home or they'll buy like a duplex and rent out the other unit while living in the other unit. So pretty much essentially living in their home for free or at very reduced cost because they have somebody else pretty much paying their mortgage, right? So this is almost a way to, when we talk about like travel hacking and things like that, and you talk about, the whole thing to, to use airline or credit card points towards tickets and things like that, this is just another quote unquote hack that you can do if you want to travel the world and and do different things like that. This is something an episode that I'm gonna tell my wife Hey, when this one comes out, make sure you listen to it, because this might be something that we can do pretty, pretty often especially since I retire next week. So we're super excited about that. Okay. Really cool. Now for you and your own personal journey into financial freedom, is there anything that you find that this has done for you or any other opportunities that this has opened up for you besides the whole travel aspect?

Britt Sharman: 11:56

Not so much on the fire side of things. I think that it really opened up I got to learn like a lot more in depth in some cultures, and I met a lot of people, but for the fire movement, I think that it really just did allow me to invest in some different things. And it gives you, like you said, like you just have that more mental bandwidth to think about different things, listen to more podcasts. And I listen to a lot of fire bloggers. Oh, like podcasters here in Australia. And a lot of them, I've heard about their house hacking, but a lot of them pushed kind of the EFT hands off kind of model. So that's the way I've always gone with it. And I think that just having that extra time has allowed me to think about which way I wanna invest. I think that Home ownership would be a little too hands on for me. So I do enjoy the hands off money and the EFTs, I don't have to think about it. You get your dividends, you reinvest, and I love that model.

Average Joe Finances: 12:47

Yeah. Yeah. Just completely passive. it's a great way to go. That's how I invest in real estate right now, currently in multi-family real estate. As a passive investor, I pretty much say, Hey, here's the money, here's capital you can use towards your investment. And then I get paid my, my distributions monthly or quarterly, depending on who I'm investing with. That's really awesome.

Britt Sharman: 13:06

So is that is that a real estate fund or

Average Joe Finances: 13:09

it's like a fund, but it's actually, the, it's called a real estate syndication where you have a multifamily asset. So it's, a larger multifamily, like you're talking 50 plus units. And you have somebody, you have the general partners that are gonna come in that are gonna be like the operators, right? They're the ones that are actually doing all the background stuff. They're the ones doing the underwriting and making sure the deal makes sense, right? They're also running all the operations, collecting rent and hiring the property management team and everything like that. And then you as a passive investor, you're called a limited partner and you can actually invest towards that cuz they need to raise a certain amount of capital. To put the down payment and any renovations that need to be done, because the bank will only cover so much, right? So they raise money and you are one of the capital razors, right? You're the one of the ones contributing to that. And you get paid either a guaranteed percentage or you get paid based off of how they have this, it's called a waterfall, right? How they have it set up on the rents coming in. And everything else like that. But one of the beautiful things about it that I really like is the loss that you get to claim too, because it does count as ownership of real estate, right? So they do something called a cost segregation study, and it says basically in that first year, you've lost this much money because you get to write off everything that's done, like all the renovations that are getting done. You get to write off like different things like the. Like if the roof got done if you replace appliances or anything like that, you get to write all that stuff off. And so the beautiful thing is, when you file your taxes the next year, you've got this huge loss that you get to claim. And it's, that's one of the beautiful things about it. So that's what I like about it the most is the tax benefits that we get. But then you also get paid, either monthly or quarterly, depending on how it's set up with the team that you're investing in. And it's passive. I don't have to do anything with it. I don't have to show up to the site. I don't have to do anything. They send out a monthly or a quarterly, depending on who you're with update. And it's usually over a Zoom call and you get to see what's going on. You could ask questions. They say, Hey, here's the stuff that we're renovating, here's the stuff we're working on. It's just a really neat way in real estate. So it's one of the things that I personally like it's one of my favorite ways to invest just because it's a lot more hands off. But you get to learn so much while you're doing it because you get these updates and you get to learn from these operators. Cuz I plan on going more active and actually taking down deals myself and then bringing in capital as well and raising capital. Yeah, that's just a neat way to do it almost. It's almost like investing in a REIT but a REIT like you're completely hands off. You have no idea what's going on until you get like the annual statement. And you can't claim any of that on your taxes. But that's one of the biggest differences right there.

Britt Sharman: 16:23

What's it called?

Average Joe Finances: 16:24

Real estate syndication.

Britt Sharman: 16:26

I have to say they do something similar in Australia.

Average Joe Finances: 16:28

Yeah, so I was actually talking to someone earlier today. I did another interview and He was from Australia. He's lived in the States for the last five years, and I think one of the things he was talking about is that they don't really have this as an opportunity there because most of the multi-family places that, that are built, like the apartments and stuff that are built in Australia, get sold as individual condo units instead of one building where you own all the units, right? So that's one of the biggest differences that he was saying that he saw in Australia versus when he came to the United States and started investing here.

Britt Sharman: 16:59

So do you have any kind of influence on kind of areas they look at or like where they're purchasing or?

Average Joe Finances: 17:05

Yeah, it just it depends. There's always like key performance indicators that you look for. A lot of people have been investing in the southeast of the United States right now, just because there's been this huge influx of people moving from like New York and like some of the bigger city areas and moving down to Florida. Cuz I think this whole pandemic's put life into perspective for some people and they're like, do I really wanna sit here in a cubicle all day and then in the winter time freeze or move down to Florida where it's warm all year. And live my best life, quote unquote. So you see a lot of people migrating to the South. So areas you see population growth is huge, where you see job growth and things like that. Those are some of the key things that you look for to see if that's a good area to buy a multifamily asset there, because you know it's gonna go up in value cuz you know the rent's gonna go up because you know the demand is going up.

Britt Sharman: 17:53

Demand's coming.

Average Joe Finances: 17:53

Yep. Absolutely.

Britt Sharman: 17:56

I'll have to look into it.

Average Joe Finances: 17:57

Awesome.

Britt Sharman: 17:57

It's anything similar or not?

Average Joe Finances: 17:59

Yeah. Hey, are you interviewing me or am I interviewing you? All right, awesome. Yeah No that's great. I'm glad you asked questions like that because I'm getting to learn something really awesome and new from you, and maybe you get to learn a little something from me, so I have other episodes on this if you wanna go check it out. So Yeah. No, this is really neat and for me again, this is something different that I've never even thought about before. We've looked up all these different travel hacks and things like that. I use my credit card a lot to build up the points to, to get the tickets and everything, but I never thought about hey, what if we decide to just go out there and house sit somewhere, and then that's what we're, we'll decide where we're gonna go based off of that. And just kinda roll the dice, right? Or something like that. That just makes it more fun. And yeah, it's really cool. I thought about buying some short term rentals overseas and just renting them out throughout the year. And then when we're get, when we decide we wanna go there, block it off for ourselves. That's another idea. But this whole thing is pretty neat. It's definitely got the gear's turning up here.

Britt Sharman: 18:56

I think a lot of people actually just use it as a vacation thing as well cause you can just you can jump on some of the websites you just put in, the dates that you're available or the dates that you wanna head away. And you can just see you could pick your area, you could pick Florida, or you could pick California and just see what's available for that time period. And just go for your week somewhere.

Average Joe Finances: 19:15

I wanna go overseas somewhere outside the United States.

Britt Sharman: 19:18

Definitely I find that France and Spain, they have so many house sits there I think cuz a lot of people from the UK and the US have second homes there as well. So there's always a lot of really great ones there.

Average Joe Finances: 19:28

Yeah, that's fantastic. You know what it reminds me of? Have you ever seen that movie. The Holiday?

Britt Sharman: 19:31

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances: 19:32

Yeah, that's exactly what it reminds me of what they did, like that house swap thing. So yeah. Awesome. Okay, so now you did this, you did the house sitting thing for five years pre covid. Now you've settled for a bit in Melbourne, but you're actually looking to start it back up, you said at the end of the year.

Britt Sharman: 19:49

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances: 19:49

So you're looking to go to Mexico next?

Britt Sharman: 19:52

That's what I'm hoping.

Average Joe Finances: 19:53

Okay, now what I'm curious about now, what do you think is gonna be some of the biggest challenges that you're gonna face now in this post Covid era versus what it was like pre covid?

Britt Sharman: 20:07

I think the biggest thing I've seen, I've got a Facebook group and a lot of things that people are saying at the moment is that homeowners, they're not booking in advance. It used to be that if you were gonna go on a holiday next year, You'd be looking at flights now, you'd be booking places. But I think that people, things were just turned upside down so many times that people aren't really confident booking things far out. And it makes it harder as a house sit because If you are doing it full time, you do wanna lock in those house sits as early as you can. Cause you don't really wanna end up with too many gap. So I think that's the hardest thing at the moment for people is the uncertainty with homeowners traveling. So I think that's probably the hardest thing right now.

Average Joe Finances: 20:44

Yeah. Cuz with each gap comes cost, right? Because now you gotta either pay for a hotel in the area or figure out another way to have a place to stay during that timeframe. So yeah. I have seen that too, like even in my own travel, right whenever we're booking a trip. We live in Hawaii, right? So even when we fly back to the States it's a big deal, right? It's a big flight and it's expensive, right? So you would think, oh, you're playing this stuff like a year out or something or maybe nine months out. No, it's usually Hey, I wanna go do this next month. So let's, fly over there. Or maybe two months tops is like what we're looking at when it comes to planning our flights, which is crazy when you think about it, but it's the reality of where we're at today, right? With the uncertainty of what's gonna be the next outbreak that happens, or the next thing that's gonna cancel flights. Look at what just happened here in the States with Delta where they had, like thousands of flights get canceled because of a strike, right? So you never know when things like that are gonna happen. Your whole travel plans get ruined. So the more of the short term like thinking is, I think that might stick around for a little while.

Britt Sharman: 22:05

I think it will. And that's why I've wanted to find myself a base because it was hard to rely on. You just didn't know what was gonna happen. And it's just nice knowing you have some, I have somewhere now and not moving around as much. I can focus more on work. So yeah, for me it's been, I got all that traveling before COVID which I'm glad about. And now I can settle and I've saved that money. But I think that it will be hard going forward.

Average Joe Finances: 22:28

Yeah. And now with the home base, like before that you didn't have to have that, right? So this is now another expense that you're having to accrue just to, to have that self assurance or that reassurance that you're not gonna be homeless, right? If something doesn't work out. So yeah that's just the world that we live in now. But you've prepared yourself for that, right? So you've definitely been able to set yourself up for success and you're at a point where you can actually do that. Where, who knows, five years ago if you were doing your trips and then Covid happened, like a year into what you were doing, who knows what could have happened, right? So it's good that you were able to get that five years of experience under your belt to really, get the ins and outs of how this worked. Now there's something I wanna kind of circle back to something you said earlier, because it's something that, that my ear caught and I can't get that outta my head since you mentioned it. You said that your partner was in the Caribbean. Looking after a cat on a catamaran. I can't get that outta my head cuz it's a cat on a catamaran. So that's pretty cool. Like how did that work?

Britt Sharman: 23:24

That's a nice little catch phrase. That one we used to have quite an active Instagram and someone just contacted us through there. She was living in Grenada and we'd already been in Europe for nine months and I'd already told my parents I'd come home for Christmas. I was had enough of traveling off those nine months in a camper van. And so Jay went to, from, I think we're in Greece at the time. He went from Greece to the Caribbean and he looked, he was there for about three months and he loved it. It was hard work you had to move the boat if you wanted to get wifi sometimes, but he loved being out there.

Average Joe Finances: 24:01

Yeah. That's awesome. It's, that's one of the things that I've always wanted to do is have my own sailing Catamaran. It's like one of my retirement dreams that hopefully one day I'll have one and sail around the world and everything. So I follow a lot of those channels and everything. So I was just curious, like if it was one of those like YouTubers that I watch if there were, cats sitting their catamaran for them because they did have a cat as well. But now did they have him go down there during hurricane season?

Britt Sharman: 24:25

He actually, there was one time where they had to move the boat cause there was a risk. He was there. He was there from November till March. So I don't know. Is that hurricane season?

Average Joe Finances: 24:34

November? No that's I think he's good. I think it's June to October, or now it's June to November-ish, like early November, but yeah, no. Okay, cool. So he wasn't there during hurricane season. That's surprising. Cuz normally that's the time when the people that have the Catamaran are gonna be sailing around the Caribbean. Okay. Really neat though. Good opportunity. So I had to ask about that cause I thought that was really cool

Britt Sharman: 24:56

about it and how we got it. Cause I think other people wanna do it and I have seen on some platforms that we use, I've seen a few times boats on there. But I think if people really wanted to do it, I've heard that a lot of the sailing forums, they always, apparently it's like an industry thing. Like once you know a few people, cuz I think a lot of people have boats and they're great at the time, but you can't just leave a boat. I think like you've gotta have someone on there. If you are experience in boat sitting, I think there's actually quite a lot of demand for it. Similar to there's a lot of people who are quite in demand for farm sitting. If you have horses and cows, you can't just leave them. So if you have experience in that, I think that's also in demand. So it just depends on what industry you in and how experience you have.

Average Joe Finances: 25:36

Yeah. Oh you definitely got the gears grinding because if that's something that we could do, like just go out there and sit on a boat and just watch over it for a while and really just get that feel to see what it's like sitting there to see if my family can handle it and not get seasick while sitting at Anchor. Cuz you can get seasick at Anchor, trust me. In the Navy for 20 years and I've seen people do it Wow. That's really neat. It's something I actually, I really wanna look more into. So actually speaking of looking more into it, what are some websites that maybe somebody, if they wanted to look at this, can go check out to learn about it or really maybe go book something themselves? Like what are some resources that you use?

Britt Sharman: 26:10

Yep. So we actually use Trusted House Sitters mainly. That's like the worldwide house sittings, like Conky Airbnb for house sitting, but then, if you go into Pacific areas, if you come into Australia, if you go to Mexico, if you go into the UK or Europe, then there's more Country Pacific kind of house sitting sites to use and we've been asked by all our friends and family, they wanna know the house sitting sites to use. So actually we actually have a resource that kind of details each country and which house sitting site we suggest you use. So that resources on our site, which I can give you if you like.

Average Joe Finances: 26:45

Yeah. We'll hold that till the end. To make people listen to this whole episode.

Britt Sharman: 26:48

Yep. Yeah. Trusted Houses is the best one to use, I think.

Average Joe Finances: 26:52

Awesome. Yeah. No I'm gonna check that out. That's really cool. And as you're doing this so like trusted house sitters, I would assume just by the name, they do like background checks and everything else like that, just to make sure that, you're not having some felon or criminal that's gonna go, house sit for somebody and they, somebody comes back and their house is empty.

Britt Sharman: 27:10

Yeah, they do background checks and we personally, we have our own police checks that we submit with all our applications. But they also, what I like about them compared to some other sites is they also cover the house that, and the homeowner for insurance, which I think is quite important cause you just never know what's gonna happen when you're living in someone else's house. You're looking after their most important asset and they're probably their animals, which is one of their like beloved family members. So you I do having that kind of That little bit of peace of mind having insurance

Average Joe Finances: 27:39

No that's huge actually. And that's a great point. For those that are listening, if this is something you're thinking about doing, having that backup, having that insurance, just buying travel insurance, like when you're taking a trip, you get that travel insurance package just to make sure that you're covered. If anything happens to you while you're on your trip, it's covered. Things like that. That's, yeah, that's definitely huge Okay. Awesome.

Britt Sharman: 27:57

I think a lot of people like to find, they ask me if where else to find house is, and I do sometimes suggest if you're going to a more I find that in Asia and South America house sitting isn't quite as big. So if you go into those areas, sometimes I do suggest what we have done before is joint expat groups in the cities that you're going to and post your services. Sometimes you've gotta generate your own leads, but that's a good way to do it if there's not many assignments in that area. But then you have to think about insurance and those sorts of things. And I think that it's double-edged sword. Like you can either go that route and have all the house sits in front of you, or you can look yourself, which is quite hard, whether you wanna generate the leave yourself.

Average Joe Finances: 28:38

No that's a fantastic point. The way you talk about it too, it's it's like its own business as well, right? So you have to go out there and find these leads and find the people that are interested in having you house it for them, right? So same thing as if you, So for my listeners that are experience in real estate and going out and finding leads to go find deals, this is something you could do in a similar way to go out on a nice vacation for a little while and really save a significant amount of cost by being able to house it, which this is just something that is like A plus. Really appreciate that. We did,

Britt Sharman: 29:11

I think we had a six week house sit in Rome and it was in walking distance of all the downtown kind of attractions and that, and it was lovely because it was middle of summer, so we didn't have to push ourselves to see everything every day, and we got to really explore the city. But if we think about what six weeks in Rome would cost you, I imagine you'd be probably looking at 5, 6, 7 grand even more. I think.

Average Joe Finances: 29:33

Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you're staying at a hotel or even renting a place for six weeks. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's gonna be costly. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. I wanna transition this into something. So I definitely wanna get to the where people can find more information about what you're doing and everything. So we have to get through the final round to get there first. So I wanna transition this into the final round, and I'm gonna ask you four hard hitting questions that are gonna help us get a better understanding of you, Britt and how you got to where you are today with what you're doing. All right. So if you're ready to go we'll get this party started.

Britt Sharman: 30:06

Alrighty. Yep.

Average Joe Finances: 30:08

All right, let's do it. All right, so the first question of the final round is, what's the biggest mistake you've ever made? This could be related to fire, this could be related to your travel hacking that we were talking about. What, Whatever you wanna talk, Whatever you think is the biggest one.

Britt Sharman: 30:21

I think my biggest mistake was not backing myself early enough and thinking I could go out on my own and work for myself.

Average Joe Finances: 30:28

Very fair point. That's, I think that's something that a lot of us struggle with. It's that whole imposter syndrome that a lot of us face with. Like, how can I do this? I can't be like that person. And it's just I don't, it's the self doubt and the things like that. So I'm glad you were able to overcome that For sure. And get this whole thing started.

Britt Sharman: 30:47

And not having that monthly paycheck. It's, it's a bit stressful.

Average Joe Finances: 30:50

I'm about to find out what that's like soon. Awesome. Okay. Alright. Next question is, what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started?

Britt Sharman: 30:58

Definitely I wish I knew about compound interest.

Average Joe Finances: 31:00

Fair point.

Britt Sharman: 31:01

Wish I knew about that when I was 20.

Average Joe Finances: 31:03

Yeah. I think a lot of people wish that they knew about that when they were younger. This is actually, that's a very common answer. Not so much the compound interest, but the whole like getting started younger for sure is a very common answer that I hear that question.

Britt Sharman: 31:14

They should be showing that graph at in high school to kids.

Average Joe Finances: 31:17

Right? Yeah. And see that's part of the problem is that we have a severe lack of financial education in the actual education system itself. And to see if that it's even that way in Australia as well is a little disheartening because we have a lack of financial education in the states. You don't really talk about it at all. And even in the family dynamic, finances is always like a taboo topic and it's not something people wanna talk about at the dinner table, That's not the case in my family. My children we talk about it all the time and it's even a part of their daily routine. When they, whenever they earn money allowance or anything like that, they have to split it up. So much of it gets saved. So much of it goes to charity and they get to keep so much of it. Yeah, that's huge.

Britt Sharman: 31:59

I think we should be more educated about it. I think that in Australia, the fire movement, it's, I think, at the moment they've just regulated it all of the financial influences. So it's gonna be quite hard for more education for people here, which I think is a bit sad.

Average Joe Finances: 32:13

Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, especially like on TikTok it was pretty big. A lot of channels and stuff in Australia were getting shut down. Somebody else was sharing that with me not too long ago. Definitely interesting.

Britt Sharman: 32:22

I think it, the worst thing, I think that people have built up a whole blog, like that would be the hardest thing for someone like that. Rather like TikTok, I guess you've got a following, but you don't have years worth of work there.

Average Joe Finances: 32:31

Yeah, absolutely. Ah, okay. Moving on to the next question. And this is gonna be something that's very helpful for our listeners. Do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started today?

Britt Sharman: 32:43

I think that you should, if you wanna start house sitting, I think you should try it with ask friends and family if they need a house sitter, give it a go. For some people, they don't really enjoy the responsibility of being in someone else's home and looking after their animals, so I think starting with friends and family is a great way to start building your references and gives you a good indication if you like it or not. Very fair

Average Joe Finances: 33:05

point. Yeah, you definitely wanna build up that reference base, right? You wanna have that background so when you start applying to actually go do it especially if you're gonna go overseas and far away from where you actually live, you wanna make sure you're putting that best application out there so that they pick you over someone else.

Britt Sharman: 33:20

Yeah, just like a job, like people wanna see references. But another thing is like when we started out, which is two tips. We started out around November and I was applying and wasn't really getting much interest and coming into December, all of a sudden all our applications started getting accepted. So I think around holiday periods is a good time to start as well cuz there's just so much demand. And we also use just our Airbnb reviews, which most people have. So there's the little print screen of those. So if you don't have any references, you can't get friends and family. There are two little things you can do.

Average Joe Finances: 33:51

Oh yeah that's a great point. Especially, yeah, a lot of people that when they go out on travel they stay at short term rentals and they do Airbnbs and VRBO's and you get reviews from the owners. So yeah that's a great point. Yeah. Social proof that's huge. All right. And I have one more question for the final round, and that is, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast, or both?

Britt Sharman: 34:13

The podcast is the Aussie Fire Bug. He's an Australian fire podcaster and I think that he's been quite lucky. He hasn't really, he's kept producing content even though they're quite regulated. He's quite good. I love listening to him. He's taught me a lot. And I think my favorite book, I know it's very cliche, but I did enjoy Rich Dad Poor Dad, gave me the whole idea that buy things that produced income by assets whose income. So I think that was my two.

Average Joe Finances: 34:42

Yeah, absolutely. That It's the purple Bible. It's what we call it, so yeah. Awesome. All right, so that is it for the fire final Round. To go into the question that everyone here has been waiting for. We'll get a little drum roll. Okay. No. So this is a really important question because the stuff that we talked about is unique, interesting, but it's also something that I think people are gonna want to jump. All over because this is something that I have not heard about on any other podcast or people talking about it. So I'm really excited to get this out there. So where can people find more information about you? Can you share your website, social media, and what can people find on your website?

Britt Sharman: 35:23

Yep. So you can find us at thetravellinghousesitters.com. So it's traveling with two Ls. So that's the Australian version. I know I've got a lot of questions about that. On there we have a get started guide, we have all our favorite house sits, we have all the things I've talked about today. We've got stuff like our handover guides. All the questions we ask, we get to a house, our house sit, cuz providing the best service is the way that we get our great references. So we've got all that information on there to get people started as well and then we also have a Facebook group. So that've got about 8,000 people in there of new house sitters and experienced house sitters. So there's heaps information in that group because people are always sharing their experiences or asking questions how to get started, and we have so much interaction and it's so great to see. So you can find us, That one's called The Travelling House Sitters Group, but if you are looking for it, it's probably easiest to find on the website. There's a little link to it there, but I can give it all to you if you like.

Average Joe Finances: 36:20

All right. Awesome. So actually I'm gonna make it Easy for our listeners, and I'm gonna have links to all of that in the show notes. So you can either just click away or copy and paste and go find out, go check out what Brit is doing, check out her website, check out some of the resources that she has available to you there. It's gonna help you as you go forward and start this travel hack that you probably haven't heard of before. And I really wish I would've heard about this sooner because this is really good stuff. Britt, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and talk with us about this today especially with how unique it is. I was trying to find the right questions to ask you to make sure I'm pulling out all the information that, that we want to hear. Again, thank you for your patience and thank you for joining us.

Britt Sharman: 37:00

Thank you so much for having me. It's been one thing you did say before that Yeah, you might wanna go on the boat to take the family. I think it's actually a great kind of way to figure out if they're gonna enjoy it,

Average Joe Finances: 37:12

Yeah, absolutely. It's like a try it before you diet type. Yeah. Yeah. Good. We've talked about it several times, so yeah. Awesome. Hey Britt, again, This has been an absolute pleasure. It's been a blast. And I learned so much just in the short conversation that we had. So thank you so much.

Britt Sharman: 37:27

Thank you. Enjoy your retirement.

Average Joe Finances: 37:29

I will, aloha. Thanks.