All in PocketSmith
To my surprise, I’ve chalked up five years of writing this blog! And I can’t quite believe it. I thought I’d blog today about what I’ve learnt, observed and what it’s like to write a blog because there is not a single day that has gone by that I’ve not emailed or spoken with someone about what I tend to refer to with my whanau and friends as ‘blog stuff’.
Before I started The Happy Saver I thought the only way to learn about money was to seek out a financial advisor, the supposed experts in the field, so I did go to a couple of financial advisors. As a result of these attempts I completely gave up on letting anyone else tell me what to do with my own money and decided that no one cared more about it than I did myself so I decided to take matters into my own hands and educate myself. I did it by actively taking an interest in my/our money and reading, listening, asking and deep-diving into all things personal finance related.
I’ve long said that there are alternatives to buying rental property and today I wanted to actually give you some decent detail on this. So today I’m going to give you an idea of what investing into KiwiSaver and index funds/ETFs actually looks like a few years down the track. I find with this blog of mine that it’s helpful to share some real numbers instead of just talking hypothetically all the time.
I thought I would start the year with something that I think is a mega important topic if you want to get your finances in order, Consistency and Planning. Both are boring yet effective. As always, I like to share what I’m up to and what works for us, you can then take from it what you will. A few years back I implemented a few simple things and today I’m reaping the rewards of my consistency, planning and good habits. You can do the same, but you do need to start today.
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of budgeting in some way, shape or form and knowing where your money is coming from and going to honestly helps you get ahead faster. There is no doubt in my mind about this. And from time to time I give my budgets an overhaul and this week I made a cup of coffee and took about an hour to look over every corner of my budgets in PocketSmith. The prompt to do this was because PocketSmith have launched a brand spanking new Dashboard with heaps of new customisable features and once I started having a look around, I was like a kid in a candy store.
I’m having a muck around with one of two of our investments this week. A “re-balance” is the fancy terminology, but I’m taking the opportunity to make sure that we are sticking to our investment plan because I have a tendency to wander off track. Some people are super organised and set a date to do this once a year, I don’t, I’ve just become aware that ‘it’s time’.
As part of the Sorted Money Week, I recently asked you to send me your money-related questions, which of course you did. I’ve selected a bunch of them and given my thoughts on each, plus added in a few links and resources to round out the answers for you.
I realised recently that I rattle off financial terms, assuming that people know what they are. And that annoyed me a bit, because the reason I started blogging was to demystify financial jargon and yet, here I was, rattling off a bit of jargon! One of these terms is ‘sinking fund’. Today I thought I would quickly explain what a sinking fund is and why I use them myself.
Even though Level 2 had felt quite ‘normal’ here in Alexandra, going to Level 1 on the 9th of June did have me going “phew, we did it”. Collectively as a town, region and as a country, WE DID IT! That’s a pretty good feeling. Well done whanau of 5 million! But personally speaking, I don’t quite feel out of the woods yet. My thoughts are along the lines of “don’t relax too soon Ruth”. Therefore, I’m going to listen to my gut instinct and from a financial standpoint, I’m not done with being cautious just yet.
