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.

• Are you a shopaholic?
• Do you spend more money than you earn?
• Do you feel as though you can’t get control of money?
• Have you got debt (credit cards, loans, buy now, pay later)?
• Do you know you need to find out about your retirement savings but don’t?
• Do you avoid doing your tax?
• Do you find it hard to ask for what you are worth/owed?
• Do you give too much – too generous?
• Do you find it hard to let go – always scrimping and saving in a mindset of scarcity? Repeating this to family, kids, anyone who will listen?
• Do you think money is too hard for you to understand?
• Do you think I’m married – I don’t need to worry, my partner will look after me in return for being a full-time mum?
• Do you think that the age pension will be enough but haven’t done any research to validate this theory?

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:

• Total Monthly Income
• Total Monthly Expenses including money you save
• Net Monthly Position
• Total Credit Amount (Credit Cards, Personal Loans, Buy Now Pay Later, Loans to Family/Friends)
• Total Home Loan Amount
• Total Equity in Home (based on how much you think you could sell the property for)
• Superannuation/Pension/401K Balance
• Personal Insurance (List all personal insurance and the value of lump sum payout or amount it would cover monthly including Life, Critical Illness, Total & Permanent Disability, Income Protection)

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:

• How much money do you need to do that?
• When do you want to do it?
• Be specific – say you want to buy in 5 years – how much money will you need to save each year to make it happen?
• How much money does that break down to each month?
• Is this achievable? Do you need to make more money somehow? How could you do that? Or do you need to spend less and put more into savings for this goal? How could you do that?
• Write it out on a piece of paper like this:

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 hello@kidsget.money.

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.