The West End Founder Turning Cost-of-Living Pain Into a Business Model

Simone Ramirez launched Groundwork Financial from a shared desk at River City Labs in Fortitude Valley 18 months ago with $40,000 in personal savings and a waiting list of 200 people who had never owned a share in their lives. Today the platform has 3,800 paying members across Southeast Queensland, and Ramirez is preparing to raise a $2.5 million seed round by September.

The timing is not incidental. Australian household savings rates dropped to 3.8 per cent in the March 2026 quarter, the lowest since 2008, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released in June. At the same time, the median weekly rental in Brisbane climbed to $680 in May, up $95 on the same month in 2024, according to CoreLogic data. For many working households, the gap between income and expenses has closed to the point where building any kind of investment buffer feels abstract at best, laughable at worst.

Ramirez, a 34-year-old former mortgage broker who grew up in Inala, says that gap is exactly the market she is targeting. Groundwork charges $29 a month for access to structured investment education modules, a private community forum, and fortnightly live sessions run by registered financial advisers contracted through the platform. The model is deliberately positioned below the $3,500-plus entry cost for a full Statement of Advice from a traditional financial planning firm.

Building Financial Literacy Block by Block

The Groundwork curriculum runs across twelve weeks and covers compounding returns, exchange-traded fund selection, superannuation contribution strategies, and the mechanics of offset accounts — topics Ramirez says her clients consistently report were never explained to them by banks or employers. The platform does not provide personal financial advice, a legal distinction Ramirez is careful to maintain, and directs members toward licensed advisers for individual product recommendations.

She operates out of a 90-square-metre office on Montague Road in West End, two doors down from a specialty coffee roaster, and runs a free monthly drop-in session at the Boundary Street Community Hub that regularly draws 60 to 80 attendees. The Brisbane City Council's Inclusive Economy grants program contributed $15,000 to fund those community sessions through June 2027.

The competition is not standing still. National players including Rask Australia and Pearler have built substantial audiences through podcasts and micro-investing apps. But Ramirez argues that neither model adequately addresses the confidence gap that stops people from acting on information they already have access to. Her data, gathered from member surveys conducted in May, shows 61 per cent of Groundwork members made their first-ever investment within 90 days of joining the platform, with an average initial outlay of $850, mostly directed into ASX-listed ETFs.

What the Next Six Months Look Like

The September capital raise, which Ramirez is structuring as a convertible note, will fund two hires — a head of curriculum and a partnerships manager — as well as a mobile app rebuild scheduled for completion by January 2027. She is also in early-stage conversations with three Queensland credit unions about embedding Groundwork content inside member portals, a distribution channel that could add several thousand users without paid acquisition costs.

The broader economic picture is working in her direction. With AI-driven industrial land demand pushing commercial rents higher across inner Brisbane and property prices cooling enough to give first-home buyers pause without actually becoming affordable, more Queenslanders are looking at investment vehicles other than bricks and mortar for the first time. The Queensland Treasury's 2025-26 budget flagged financial literacy as a priority area under its Cost of Living Action Plan, though no dedicated program funding has materialised to date.

For households sitting on the fence, Ramirez's model offers a low-cost starting point. At $29 a month, the entry cost is roughly four oat milk flat whites from the café down the road. The free community sessions at Boundary Street run on the last Wednesday of each month, and registration opens on the Groundwork website two weeks prior. The next one is July 30.