It's Pay Day! The ABC's new column where we ask Australians the money questions we don't like to talk about. We aim to demystify personal finance and normalise conversations about what we earn and how we save it — or spend it.
Elfy Scott is an award-winning freelance journalist, presenter, podcaster and producer. Her debut book, The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About, was published in early 2023 and focuses on the silence and stigma that still surrounds complex mental health conditions in Australia.
For Pay Day, she discusses the difficulty of planning your finances when you work freelance, her younger self's obsession with black eyeliners, and why just thinking of Sydney's property market is enough to induce nausea.
How would you describe your financial situation right now?
It's quite unpredictable. I have a casual newsroom job that affords me some financial stability but that was quite a recent development. I'm a freelance presenter, journalist and writer, meaning there can be devastating ebbs but also some quite nice flows. It makes it quite hard to plan financially and save.
What did you spend your first paycheque on?
I got my first job at Harvey Norman as soon as I was legally allowed, and I think it would have been spent immediately on either CDs or one of many, many black eyeliners.
About how much of your income goes towards your rent or mortgage each week?
Around 40 per cent of my income goes towards our rental. I would love for my partner and I to be able to put a deposit on our first apartment at some point in the next 12 months but I had a look on a real estate website on Tuesday night and I'm currently feeling very nauseous about the reality of that.
What's your guilty splurge?
Tickets to concerts, events and movies seem to be eating up quite a lot of cash for me at the moment.
How much was the last loaf of bread you bought?
An $8 rye sourdough loaf from the supermarket.
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How many bank accounts do you have? How do you organise your money?
This is a very fun question and an opportunity to take stock of what my online banking looks like. I have eight personal accounts and one joint account with my partner for shared bills, including rent and groceries.
My personal accounts include: everyday spending, treats, emergencies, medical, savings, freelance tax and GST, and a term deposit.
What's your biggest source of money anxiety?
As a 31-year-old woman living in Sydney in 2024, the answer could only ever be housing. Spending 40 per cent of my income on rent makes me feel ill if I think about it in any great depth.
What are you saving for right now and how are you doing it?
A house deposit and the short answer is "not very well".
What's the biggest lie you tell yourself about money?
I like to walk past the $8 million houses in Sydney's eastern suburbs close to where we live and dupe my naive little brain into believing that I too will be able to afford a house like that one day.
If you could tell 18-year-old you one thing about money, what would it be?
"Maybe journalism is not the best course of study. Maybe try something in finance or AI."
You can find Elfy Scott and follow her work here.