Lachie Perry is bringing a youthful outlook to the world of financial advice in Warrnambool.
The 22-year-old Deakin University graduate joined the Warrnambool-based firm, Silvan Ridge, in August this year as an associate advisor and practice principal, Dallas Ludeman, says it’s working out just fine.
“Lachie has well and truly exceeded our expectations and is a credit to the Business and Law Faculty at Deakin Warrnambool,” Dallas said.
“He is a great acquisition to the Silvan Ridge team and his role as an associate adviser has him sitting in on client appointments and doing a lot of the preparation and strategy work to get advice documents ready for clients,” he said.
Lachie will soon progress to advising his own clients.
Lachie completed his Bachelor of Commerce this year through the Deakin University Warrnambool Campus.
Studying in Warrnambool was the best option for Lachie, who completed his secondary education at Emmanuel College.
“I was always going to do a Bachelor of Commerce,” he said. “I’m good with numbers and always wanted to do either financial planning or accounting.
“I could have moved away if I wanted, my brother and sister both did, but there was nothing driving me to go to Melbourne and it was easier and cheaper to stay here with my family.”
Lachie said the flexibility of the course and being able to maintain his local social and work connections were invaluable.
“The classes were easy to work around. I worked full time as a manager at McDonalds through my course and it was easy to schedule everything.
“If I had uni during the week, I’d work the late shift and then on weekends I’d go back to the early shifts.
“During the semester when all the assignments were due, it was a bit harder but after exams there were always a good few weeks where you could catch up with everything.”
Lachie said studying close to home had been a financial saving but also a solid grounding for his career.
“You can get everything here in Warrnambool,” he said. “I felt I was well prepared to enter the workforce. The financial planning subjects were excellent and I did an internship as well which really helped.”