My favourite saying is this:
It doesn’t matter how much you earn, it’s what you do with it that matters.
One of the reasons I originally started my money coaching business and went on to develop my own simple money education program was because I was so upset that people in the most important roles in our community are always the ones that are used in relation to statistics about poor financial outcomes (teachers and nurses for example). I wanted to help people to see that you can choose pretty much whatever career you want to and still do well financially!
I teach people how create financial freedom by educating them in eight key areas of money:
Money Mindset, Personal Balance Sheet, Effective Goal Setting, Budgeting, Saving, Investing, Retirement, Personal Insurance.
I’m going to break the first three down a little and give you an action for each to get you on the right track.
You will need to invest some time in these actions. But I’d ask you to consider, what do YOU want? This is life – it’s not a dress rehearsal and time is going to pass you by – don’t be left at the end thinking I really wish I had lived a different life. Only one person can make the life of your dreams happen and that’s you.
1. Money Mindset
It’s how you think about and how you treat money. We all have a money story that was likely to have been initially formed when you were a kid. It was created through what you saw, heard and felt about money as you were growing up. (Extreme examples would be growing up in poverty, or your parents going bankrupt).
Like most beliefs and values, our money story wedges itself into our subconscious and is like a backseat driver when it comes to money.
ACTION: Find out what your backseat driver is ‘making you do’ with your money and decide if you want to continue on this path. (Is your money story working for you in a positive way?). Sit down with a piece of paper and really think about your younger years and what happened with money in your home. Then, consider these questions and see if you can work out why they resonate. At the end of the exercise, consider what changes you need to make to improve your financial position by saving more and potentially investing.
2. Personal Balance Sheet
Understanding your financial position is an important foundation, to be repeated at least once every six months. If you’re going somewhere, you need to know where you are starting from. No matter how bad it is. This exercise is a powerful motivator. If you’re in a financial relationship with someone and it’s possible you can do your joint balance sheet. Then consider what changes need to be be made to improve your financial position - add these to the goals you set in the next step.
ACTION: Get some paper, and find out / record the following information:
3. Goal Setting
Swimming along in life without dreams is unlikely to motivate us to take the actions we need to take. How do you want to live? What are your big, wild dreams for your life?
ACTION: Write down your dreams. Once you have a clear list of big dreams (it can help to split into time horizons, like 1 - 3 - 5 - 10 years) you need to set clear goals for achieving them.
Here’s an example for you – if your dream is to buy a house by the beach:
In 5 years, I will buy a house by the beach. I will need $x saved by this time and I will do this by saving $x per month. To make this happen I will do x, y & z (e.g. stop buying shoes, start a side hustle).
Make it visible - do a vision board. Put it into action - create savings accounts with the names of the goals on them. Create a budget and make sure you pay into your savings accounts before you do anything else each pay day.
Use the dreams and goals to make better money decisions (thinking about your money mindset proactively - pausing before impulse buying, investing time weekly / monthly to manage your financial wellbeing).
Need more help?
I have a range of low cost ways to help you ranging from $800 (doing the full ‘eight’ program - personal 1:1 sessions providing education and coaching to put your own personal plans into action) to $550 (deep dive to get the help you need to do the actions in this blog) to $250 for one hour sessions on specific topics such as investing. Just send me an email asking for more information at [email protected].
Finally, a reminder that I created Kids Get Money so that all kids leave school with financial literacy ingrained. If you’d like to get Kids Get Money for your kids (home) or introduce us to your school we would be delighted to talk more about this - you can find out more here.