Video Transcription

Mind & Money pt 2: working while studying, moving out & renting + services that can help

Hey, I’m David.
Hi, I’m Hamish.
In this video, we’re chatting with a headspace mental health professional and a Work and Study Specialist in regard to the rising cost of living. This video is part two in a two-part series, so make sure to also check out part one where we continue the conversation.
[Music]

Career is a journey, and choices and inspirations, as well as restraints and barriers, change so much in that journey. There are lots of in-between moments, and sometimes those in-between moments are really valuable in forming who we are and what our career choices are. In some ways, we can kind of embrace that. There might be options to look at free or low-cost ways to do what you want to be doing. It might include free networking. It might include getting really engaged in LinkedIn and seeing what other people are doing. If you are a current student, it can also be that you go and talk to student services and discuss your financial stresses. Be really open about what you might need to see if there are any options for support available for you to maintain your study.

So, if you feel like you are engaged but you can’t continue, the first point of call would definitely be to engage with student services and talk to them about your worries. A lot of people really overlook scholarships. I know myself, a lot of the people I talk to sort of think scholarships are only for elite athletes or people who do really well in school or whatnot, but that’s really not the case. Sometimes, all you’ve got to do is just jump on your university website, or I believe there’s a site that you can look at to find scholarships?

Good Universities Guide.

• Good Universities Guide, okay cool. Yep, they have a scholarship search tool, which is really cool because it kind of compiles all of the scholarships in one place.
  Oh, that’s handy. But, yeah, just sort of finding scholarships available to you. Because sometimes the money is there, you just have to go looking for it.
  Yeah, and scholarships aren’t always for your tuition fees.
  Exactly.

How can young people balance the stress of work while studying?
I think a really good practical strategy is to actually map out your week and make a timetable. In that timetable, not just allocate your work shifts and your study time, but also allocate the stuff that you’re going to do that’s fun, that feels good for you, that meets those other needs that you have in your life as well. I think timetabling that and prioritizing that, and seeing it as equally as important to the time that you go to work and to the time that you commit to your studies, is a really good strategy to make sure that you’re looking after your mental health and wellbeing.

Who can help you with your career decisions? Who can help you with those study stresses? Pretty much every single education institution, whether it be uni or TAFE or high school, will have some sort of student support service, which may even have counsellors, for example. So when it comes to the study stress, for example, definitely utilize those services and the counsellors. They often have career counsellors on board as well, who can start talking to you about some of those career decisions and sort of lay out your options.

Of course, there are other organizations like the headspace Work & Study program that can also help with those sorts of things as well.

So, I know for myself that I had to get a HECS debt to actually continue my studies. So, if you could explain a little bit about what a HECS debt is and how you go about paying it off, that’d be awesome.
Yeah, definitely. Some people may also know it as FEE-HELP these days because HECS is a little bit of an older term, but essentially the same thing.

So basically, it’s a government loan that’s organized through your education institution. Most of the time, you don’t have to pay anything upfront, and basically the government takes on a loan for you that you will pay back at a certain period of time once you’re earning a certain amount of money, basically. For that actual amount of money that you have to be earning, I highly recommend you check out the information that your education institution gives you because often it changes. But basically, they will pay for your study. It may not always be the whole tuition, by the way. It may just be a portion of that tuition.

But basically, once you start earning a certain amount, it comes off your tax return, which a lot of people don’t realize. They kind of maybe think it’s like a personal loan or something, and you just pay it back, but it comes out of your tax return each year once you start earning that threshold amount.

Well, this is kind of more of a personal question, but sometimes university degrees and also other kinds of certificates may not bring the massive impact for job perspectives or getting you a job. What’s your advice, and what’s your thoughts regarding that?
My personal advice is to sort of, you know, really research your options, because there are so many different pathways to different occupations. There may be options to do some of the study at TAFE before going to university, or going through different pathways, which can drastically reduce your study costs.

So, I think the first step is to really do your research, and that might involve getting some support and some advice from a career counsellor or from free career support services that are available in your state or nationally. Work and Study at headspace is one of those programs where you can do that.

I think that finding out labour market information around what the graduate outcomes are for different courses, and the different opportunities for where you can study those courses, is really important. Some really key places to find that information are the My Futures website, as well as the Australian Graduate Outcomes Survey.

I think that there is actually a lot of labour market information out there, but it can be tricky to kind of read and understand. If you want some specific advice about that, I’d be reaching out to a free career counselling service to really talk about what your options are post-qualifications.

There’s a website that I absolutely love. A really, really good website. It has hundreds and hundreds of occupations on there. Basically, if you look up the job that you’re wanting to do, it’ll tell you things like potential earnings that you can make in that job, whether or not it’s a growing industry as well because I think that’s something that’s important to consider. You know, is the industry declining or is it going up in the next few years?

It will give you a bit of an idea of what sort of duties you’d do in the job as well, any study that you may have to do for that job. But I guess the good thing about that as well is that it actually gives you different jobs that are suitable to that one, that are sort of transferable from the one that you’re looking at, for example.

So if you’re studying a Bachelor’s degree in whatever it might be, this website can actually say, “Hey, did you know you can do this, this, and this job with this degree that you’ve got?” It’s just such a good website.
[Music]

I remember when I initially left high school, I actually moved across the other side of the country, and it was a massive change for me. Studying, and just, I really had no clue what I was doing. It is a really big transition, so I was sort of wondering, I’ve got some ideas of my own, but do you have anything to share on that sort of topic? About how it can be a bit of an easier transition?

I think one of the biggest things for me, because I also moved out straight after high school, I didn’t have much of a plan. I just sort of went and winged it. So, my biggest piece of advice, even if it’s not just high school but whatever time it is that you’re moving out of home, try to avoid getting into some formal debt if you can. If you have absolutely no other choice, then by all means explore those options.

I just found myself, as a young person, that I was like, ‘Oh, the bank’s going to give me all this money, and that’s really cool.’ I didn’t have any thought about the consequences or the long-term consequences of that. So, you know, even if it means maybe you’re going to be on a little bit of a limited budget for a little while, just remember that’s temporary, and once you get yourself set up and you’re on your feet, that’s when you can start living large a little bit.

But definitely, the biggest thing is, don’t go jumping into anything without researching what’s going to happen and what it will look like for you later. I’m really keen to hear your thoughts as well?

So growing up rural and someone who wanted to attend university, there wasn’t really an opportunity for me to stay at home and continue my studies. So, say I wanted to stay in my state, for example, that would have a lot of different benefits for me because I wouldn’t have to change a lot of things over. A lot of those sort of things like, say, a driver’s license. Useful in that sense to save a bit of money.

Or, say I was going to go somewhere that was interstate. Seeing, “Do I have friends there? Do I have family there?” I think that having a base, even if it’s just tiny, somewhere before you initially move. It’s helpful.

The main thing I will say for those things is that there’s always something that unexpected will happen. So, sort of account for that, if you can. As best as you can, anyway. Save for a rainy day.

When I was young, I came from a low socio-economic status kind of family. Housing security was a bit tough, but now, as I grew older, you know, family works now. I work. As a young person, it’s sometimes good to move out just to have your own.

Video by headspace