A little preamble before we start…
1. I stumbled upon an instagram account late last year; I don’t even remember her name but it was a very young girl in the UK (max 26 years old) who was a budget-influencer. Can we call them that? She inspires people to be wise with their money.
Anyway, as you do (as I do!), I went solidly down a two-hour rabbit hole reading everything she’d posted and watching plenty of her reels. In one of them she suggested a few money podcasts that had some year-end reflections.
2. I love end-of-year reflections so I popped over to Apple Podcasts, downloaded all four of them and basically listened to less than 5 minutes of them all before deleting except for The Broke Generation by Emma Edwards. I love her breezy, very practical way of looking at money and it absolutely helps that she’s a British woman now living in Australia, which always feels like a sister to South Africa.
3. I also read a fantastic book in one sitting on 1 April that my husband was decluttering (without reading!) called Manage your money like a f*cking grownup. Yes, it is a bit sweary but more for effect here and there – I didn’t let that put me off at all because the book was fantastic.
4. In the book, I was reminded of 22Seven, an app that helps you track your spending, manage your money and identify gaps. I was on it about 10 years ago and then I stopped (it was still a website when I used it) and now it is even more fabulous. It has the most beautiful dashboard and you can generate reports. Very exciting for nerdy people like me. It had huge changes in my life way back when and I’m also gaining valuable insights this time around.
All of these things happening in such close proximity has made me be very conscious about money, for good and bad.
So where do we go from here?
There are three parts to raising your money consciousness and here is where I’d like you to join me:
Awareness
Are you happy with how you’re treating your money? To quote Suze Orman from the early aughts, if you treat your money with respect, money will flow to you. Do you know your numbers – how much you bring in, what your monthly expenses are, and what’s in your savings account? Do you know if your retirement account is red, amber or green? Are there some bits you’re avoiding in the hope they just go away? (they’re not)
Analysis
Here’s where you’re honest with yourself. Actually go look at your payslip, bank account (s), statements and start making notes. Do you know what each item means and why you have it there?
Then go deeper. What’s making you feel squeamish? Where do you need to do some work around money? When you find yourself reacting in a weird way, ask yourself, what’s really going on here?
I shared one such incident with a colleague recently – my husband asked if he could take my car somewhere far and I barked out a few sentences and then realised, hey, something’s going on. I honestly don’t mind anyone (licenced) driving my car so what was going on? It was a “filling up of petrol” trigger – not even the price of petrol, but the whole schlep of detouring from my route, doing the whole oil/ water/ tyres check. All that. We’re sorted now – we’ve agreed that he also has to do it once a month so I still do the chore the exact same amount of times (once!).
Action
Then you take action on all the steps you’ve identified. This is a work in progress because just the awareness step results in about 5 action steps. E.g. I knew what I earned but I had to recheck exactly what the monthly outgo was. 22Seven also told me what my top 5 spends every month are. I was horrified when I saw exactly how much “non-grocery grocery spending I was doing”.
That’s enough for now – more in two weeks time.
For now, how is your awareness of your money?
If you haven’t done any analysis in a while, I highly recommend an hour or two (don’t say you don’t have time; most people spend 4 – 5 hours on social media every DAY) where you objectively look at your numbers and maybe start taking additional action.
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