All in Saving
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.
I have the privilege to speak to so many people about “money stuff” and a very common scenario is that of a couple who have been together for a long time yet they still keep their money completely separate from each other. If you are committed to him or her being “the one”, you trust each other and have combined everything else in your life (your wardrobe, the bathroom cabinet, your home, your children, your pets), then why not your money?
This week I’ve received even more emails about Bonus Bonds with people asking what investment options are out there for the money that will be released from the scheme when it winds up shortly and also asking what they could do with the ongoing monthly payments that people had previously been making into the scheme. They don’t want to stop this regular savings habit, but they have no idea where to put it.
I refuse to spend $903 on a single pair of glasses. But I can manage $326 for three pairs. This is a blog post about wearing glasses and as I sit down to write this even I’m unsure if those people who come to my blog for my thoughts on investment and good money management are going to hang around long enough to see the point of me writing it? So, this post won’t be for everyone, but it is for everyone who either wears glasses or knows someone who does.
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.
There has been quite an increase in questions over the last couple of weeks, which is not at all surprising given how much uncertainty is out there. And this week, having answered so many emails, plus I was finishing writing and recording my final podcast episode of this series, I’ve not quite gotten around to a new blog post. So this week I’ve decided to republish a post I wrote back in 2017 because I feel that it’s still very relevant today.
The more I blog and the more emails I receive from people, the more I realise that people just want to know pretty much exactly what OTHER people are doing with their money. I’ve had a number of questions about how I structure our bank accounts. Like exactly how. I figure that as long as I don’t tell you my login details, then what’s the harm huh?
A few weekends ago a young guy was scanning my groceries and he was chatting away about his final exam and his finish date. When I asked him what he had planned for the summer, he said he will be working for about 35 hours a week. Although I was desperate to ask him the finer details of his financial life, I didn’t want to freak this young guy out so I kept my questions to myself. But my absolute main one was “what is a 16-year-old proposing to do with all the money they will make this summer?
There are no two ways about it. Overseas travel ain’t cheap. It’s awesome. But it sure ain’t cheap. We said to ourselves that 2019 would be a ‘stay at home’ year because we have bills coming up, there is not enough in our travel fund and we can’t afford a trip this year. But how have we managed to do it, despite saying we couldn’t afford it this year?
