Brewing up the perfect investment Corinne Noyes is founder and general manager of Madame Flavour which deals in specialty tea. CORINNE Noyes is head tea blender and founder of Madame Flavour, which specialises in a range of teas. She also likes to blend her investments. What was your first investment and how did it go? I bought a house when I was 21, in 1989. Our neighbours all had goats and chickens. My parents were against it. It was a dump but I had such great times there. My partner and I gutted it and redid the place ourselves. I'd come home from work in my suit and walk over piles of rubble. We made a decent profit when we sold about 10 years later. What is your favourite type of investment and why? I prefer property, cash, then shares in superannuation. I enjoy the permanence of bricks and mortar. Shares make me nervous as I lost a fair bit in a panic reaction to the crash of the early 2000s. What is the best investment advice you have received and who was it from? Look after yourself, from my accountant and financial planner. In the context of a business, it is easy to pay everything and everyone else first. But it is actually important to pay yourself first and have a plan to look after yourself financially. Nothing is certain, and you deserve it. Maybe this is a female tendency? How do you approach investment risk? As I get older, I'm more conservative. I'm less likely to buy on impulse. I'm saving more often and contributing to super more regularly. What has been your best-performing investment? My block of 46 acres of rainforest in the countryside - it cost me $105,000 and had given me such joy. Ten years later it's worth only about $150,000, but it is not that sort of an investment. And the worst? As above! Actually, my dad convinced me to spend all my hard-earned bartending savings when I was at university on shares, which then went on to drop to 2¢ each, where they have since remained, changing the company name every few years. Where do you get your information about investing? After recently separating from my husband I decided to put my entire financial house in order - wills, loans, credit cards, tax, filing - and part of that process included creating a financial plan with a planner. How well do you treat your credit card? I've paid down my cards, cut a couple up and now have only two. One is for emergencies; the other I use for points and pay off regularly. I am enjoying paying with a debit card and sometimes even carrying cash. Do you have a personal finance budget and do you stick to it? I have automatic savings deductions put in place that encourage me to live on what is left. What's the most extravagant purchase you have made? My extravagance is travel. I've spent three years of my life on overseas travelling. My salsa trip around the world was probably the greatest extravagance: six months of dancing - from LA to Paris, Canes, Rimini in Italy, then Cuba. It was wonderful. I've never regretted a cent of money spent travelling. Now I am lucky that trips to Sri Lanka, China and Europe are part of my job as head tea blender at Madame Flavour.