Happy New Year. Welcome to another year. Oh my goodness. I don't know where 2025 went, to be honest. It just absolutely flew. So many things happened that weren't expected and I kind of felt like the end of last year was just, I don't know, just, "Let's just try and clean up as much as possible and start afresh in 2026." So how does the new year feel for you? Are you feeling an energetic shift? I, I keep hearing how we're now in the Year of the Horse. The Horse is about sort of speed, flow, momentum. Last year was the Year of the Snake, which was about shedding and things coming to an end, and, you know, you know, out with the old, in with the new kind of a, kind of a concept. And I can actually feel a little bit of that. You know, there's, there's a, there was a major end that happened in my world last year and with other close family members too. So it's, it does feel like there was ending and after ends come beginnings. So it does have that feel for me. I'm also a Horse in the Chinese zodiac, so I was like, "Ooh, this is my year. All right. Let's, let's get it going." But before we sort of launch into the year, I, rather than hitting the ground running, I felt like being a little bit more contemplative. So I thought I would share my story with you, for those who, who don't know me. For those who do, you'll probably know some of this. But I, I think it's important to, before we move forwards, to kind of look at where we've come from, what's helped to shape us as who we are as, as humans, and reconnect with what it is that we want to do and what we want to be in this life. Whether you believe in past lives or multiple lives, it's, yeah. That, that's not, that's not what I'm going to be talking about here necessarily. The impact I find is where other lives in the past that are no longer, have impacted our lives. So for instance, in my life it was probably my grandmother and then even her mother to a certain extent because I heard stories, and understanding, like, the culture and the times that they grew up in. And that's had impacts on, sort of my life directly and indirectly. So I'm... I live in Brisbane, in Australia. It is very warm, very sunny summertime here at the moment. Very humid where I live too. I actually like the cold, but I don't do like, I do like sunshine and brightness. So from that perspective, Brisbane's probably a good place. I was born at the very end of the '70s. So I am about to, actually, 'cause my... I'm born in January. My... I'm about to turn 47. So I've... I feel like I've lived enough of life to realize that I know what I don't know, to a certain extent. But it's all gone quite quickly. So I started out... I was born into a, a migrant family. So both my parents had migrated to Australia and had met here. And my... and the cultural differences were quite noticeable as I grew up. So my mother is Austrian. Born in Austria, but spent most of her, sort of formative years in Paris. So French language was the first language she actually spoke. But she also learned German because of her, her mum, so my grandmother who was born in Vienna as well. And then my dad was born in a little... well, probably not that little really, but a town called Bitola, in what's now called Northern Macedonia. The country has changed names in my lifetime, which is interesting. And not through anything dramatic, just they needed a more unique name so they could eventually become part of the EU which is interesting. But yeah, so having had those sort of cultural backgrounds, and my, my father grew up in a, sort of a very poor family. He was the youngest of five. So it's interesting though. I never really kind of got the impression that from him there were money issues, although for him it was just... Money was just something he never had. So it was not even something that he kind of even contemplated, because you can't even really contemplate something you don't have. For him, I remember him... The only time it ever kind of came out was when he would say, like, what treats he would have as a kid. And I, I look at my daughter, who very regularly gets, like, really good quality treats. You know, like, she likes Haigh's Chocolate. Anyway, and s-... And his treats were literally just a piece of bread with some water on it and some sugar, if they had sugar. And that was his treat. Sometimes the, the dripping from... If they had sausages and things like that and the, the dripping, he would, you know, lash that onto a piece of bread and that was, that was a treat as well. So when I think about those sorts of things, I'm going, "My goodness, we, we lived a very privileged life." And, and my daughter in particular, and even me growing up. I never wanted for things. I was aware of the fact that money was still a certain created a certain degree of stress for my, for my parents. Because my mum did not come from a wealthy family either. Probably had a little bit more in terms of opportunities from her, her, her mum and her stepdad growing up. So she went to university, and, and studied, and became a teacher. Much to her, sort of horror to start with, 'cause she hated school. Did whatever she could to get out of things and she was at a boarding school, no less, as well, with with nuns. So schooling was not a happy time for her. So it was very much, um...You know, money was something, so, you know, she made... She learned to sew, so she made her own clothes. You know, she would look at Vogue and all the, you know, the lovely magazines. And she actually had the ability to make clothes that looked very similar to that. She did not pass that down to me. I have zero ability to sew. I have attempted it many times. It's just not my, my area of expertise. I can fix things with needle and thread. I just can't create them. So... And I'm okay with that. There's other talented people in the world that I can, I can lean on for that. So that was sort of her journey. And then her and my dad were both like on the shelf in their friends' circle when they were in their late 20s, back in the 1970s. And so they, they... I think they more fell together more than anything. But my mom coming from an Austrian background and my dad coming from that Macedonian background, the cultures were actually quite different. The money side of things, because neither of them had really had any growing up, that wasn't necessarily a thing. They kind of just innately knew that their parents had moved here. Well, my mom's parents had moved here and my dad had moved here as a grownup, to create opportunities and to, to try and better themselves in whatever way that happened to mean. And quite often, that was financially. So I think they just, they just sort of stumbled through. And, and so I, I grew up with this kind of erratic stumbling kind of impression of money, that it was something that you just kind of tried things and randomly either succeeded or didn't, depending on luck. That money was to be spent. My, my... That was my mom's philosophy, I think, because for her, the future was never certain, so she really lived in the now. So there it wasn't necessarily a future view to money. Am-... But whereas, my dad had that a little bit too, but at the same time, had... was earning, 'cause he had his own, his own business. So he had to put it somewhere, and so I think his accountant was kind like, "Well, buy property." So he bought property. And he was really terrible at saving, because he'd never had any money to save. Like, there was absolutely nothing. They could barely make ends meet growing up. So the idea of saving was just a muscle he never flexed. So the only way he could do that was to buy properties, and the bank became his method of saving. And I... When he explained that to me, because he and I... 'Cause I, I, I s-... I watched both my parents growing up where money just went out faster than it came in. And I was like, "Well, that's..." and there was a stress as a result. You know, how could bills get paid, et cetera? And so I became a squirreler. I turned into the opposite. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to hang onto these acorns, 'cause I don't know what's going on. I'm... Just don't know what I'm gonna do with them, but I'm just gonna hang onto them." So... And then my... so of course, my dad and I... And I didn't even want to, like, risk getting a loan. Like I I earned very little for a very long time. But I'll, get into that a bit more. But yeah, my, my dad, very self-awarely, which was surprising, said to me, "I need to have a loan in order to have someone who I'm accountable to, to pay money to, in order to save money." In this case, it was paying off a loan. And when I was like, "Well, I don't need that, Dad. I am... I'm quite capable of storing my acorns on my own," I didn't understand the concept of debt and leverage back then. Which I do now, and I understand so many more things. But it's really, really interesting when it's very random, and you go about doing things without purpose or intention or knowledge or understanding. It's just... It feels... Like, I think back now and I'm going, "Oh my goodness," it, it was so all very fluid. The only thing that I got, like, really drummed into me by my mom and my grandma was, "You have to go university." My grandmother had s-... You know, sent herself to university. She... While she was doing dressmaking ... cleaning while trying to assimilate into the Australian culture and learn the language. And her husband who, at the time, they, they were divorced, he had to redo all his medical studies 'cause he had been a gynecologist back in Austria and had to redo it here. So she had to support the whole family while he did that. So, I mean, I look and go, "There's so much, like, strength and gumption there." Unfortunately she had a lot of other character things that were, were a little questionable. But but that, that... taking care of things, like, financially. And she, you know, bought a house and... I mean, she never amassed a any, like, real wealth. Her... All she really had was her home, but she was always comfortable. And... Whereas my, my, my mom had no real idea. She hadn't imparted anything to my mom on this. She probably had... My grandmother probably had no idea either. And so I, I entered my 20s with this, or entered my late teens with this, "You have to go to uni, get a good job." So I did. I had no idea what else I wanted to do. So, I went to university, I studied a double degree and I could not get a job. I sent out easily a hundred resumes. Not a single interview. So, I did what I... the only thing I knew to do. I went back to uni and studied a master's. And this time I did it in accounting 'cause I was like, "All right, well I may as well study something where there is a bit more of a clear pathway rather than just, like, business and marketing." So I studied. I... By now I had figured out the study thing, so I did pretty well and got a a graduate position with one of the... what was big five accounting firms at the time, with KPMG. There's now only four. Andersen's disappeared. But yeah, so I then started, started accounting working in accounting, and I was miserable. I... Probably the only time in my life I've ever actually experienced like, depression. I couldn't get out of bed. It took three alarms to, like, wake me up enough, and the third one was always so far away that I had to physically get out of bed to turn it off. And it was one of those really annoying, like, dee, dee, alarms. Not the ones we have on our phone now, which sound more like music, which you could more easily ignore. But yeah. And I, I was there... I was only there for two years at KPMG and the people were lovely but I just did not enjoy the work. I was basically a lawyer, and tax law is very dry. So, I did learn a lot though. So gave me a lot of foundations that helped me later in life, but at the time I was absolutely miserable. But then I, I moved into an in-house role with Virgin Airlines. They were called Virgin Blue back then. And I got to actually help, like, create 'Cause it was a very small... There was one other person working there. There were no systems and processes. I got to establish it all and, like, build it which I didn't realize at the time that that's what I was doing. But later I looked back and went, "Oh, I love doing that. I love the creation, I love the building, I love that." And then once it's running and working, I, I get bored. I was like, "Okay, that's enough now. I'm... I've done this." Like, "What's, what's next?" And there wasn't really much else I could do there, so I I left the accounting world completely and went into consulting and, and... Yeah, so it was really, really interesting journey for me to realize. And of course, I got a lot of fear from my, my grandmother in particular, 'cause I remember her saying to me... She, she said it in German, but she was like, "Oh, but, but Alfie, you, you, you only had two years in, in that job and then now you've only had four years in this job. That's not gonna look good on your resume. Like, what are you doing?" You know, "You're ruining your, your, your life," sort of thing. The world was changing though, so it's... it wasn't the same world that she had grown up in. But there was still a certain degree of, of guilt that I was letting her down, but at the same time, I couldn't breathe. I was so ready to, to spread my wings and do something else. So I, I jumped into a completely new career path and I'm very glad that I did because that set me on a trajectory that I wouldn't... I wouldn't be here now. So, anything that we've done in our past, whether it's, you know, appeared positive or negative at the time, it was part of our journey. It's then what you do with that going forward rather than staying stuck in the, "Oh, I could have, should have or would have done blah." So, I mean, there's still things I would have... I could have done differently, but there's... there's not much point in doing that kind of reflection anymore. As long as whatever happens, I learn from it. So working in sort of more of a consulting space was really, really interesting and I worked for a small company, and I'd never worked for a small company before and it was like a family, and it was great. Loved the people, loved the work, loved my clients. It was dynamic, it was interesting, varied. Like, all of those things. I still had no idea about money. Personal finances, anyway. And so, I get to my, my sort of late 20s and go, "I still..." And it... don't know why, just something sparked in me and I went, "I don't know what I'm doing here, so I need to figure this thing out, I guess." And then, then I was like, "I don't know how to figure this thing out 'cause there's nowhere really." This was a good Oh gosh, getting close on 20 years ago now. There was nowhere to learn this. I was like, I, I... So I, I did what I thought you did. I got a financial planner that was recommended by a friend and went down that path. And interestingly enough, I went... My mom and I both signed up with this financial planner. Now, my mom's 35 years older than me, so by this stage I'm in my late 20s. So my mom is in her, like, early mid-50s, mid-60s. I can do my math, on the spur of the moment. So, totally different stage of life. She's sort of toward the end of her working career and I'm sort of more or less at the, sort of the starting end. But he had us in the same things. And I remember going, "That doesn't make sense to me. This doesn't feel right."Uh, so we let it go for a few months, and then after six months, I was like, "Oh," or I think was after I can't remember now if it was six or 12 months, but was like, "Can I have a performance review, or performance report?" And the industry has changed quite a lot since then. You know, there, there's a lot more requirements, and you know, there was a big inquiry into the whole industry. So it has changed from, from these days. But he couldn't provide me with anything basically. I got ... I was in this wrap fund. He sent me the report that the wrap fund had sent him. Wasn't really doing anything personalized for me at all. And I was paying him a fair amount of money, you know? There was I mean, I wasn't directly. It was, he was getting commissioned through the fund so he was probably getting easily $6,500, $7,000, which for back then, is still a lot. It was still a lot. It's a lot of money today. It's still a lot of money, even back then. So I was then just starting to get a little bit, like, huffy. "What, what's going on here?" So then I thought, "I'm going to study this financial planning thing. Maybe, maybe that I will learn something and it will help me." So that's what I did. I studied the Diploma of Financial Planning, and I was blown away by what we don't get told, by what we're not taught by, you know, the so many things. I thought, "Oh my gosh, my, my ..." You know, I, I fired the financial planner. I took it all over myself. I started managing my mum's stuff as well. And I was like, "You know what? This, this actually is doable." And since then as well, the, the, you know, the, the availability of investments has, has changed dramatically. There's micro-investing that has entered the arena. ETFs have really grown. We can directly access products that we never used to be able to as what we what everyday people are called retail investors. The superannuation industry has grown substantially. You're now able to choose your own super fund, which you couldn't back when I started working. And not only that, within your super fund, you can choose what you're invested in. So the, the landscape has changed quite a bit to the point where, as a consumer, we have more power now than ever, which makes the knowledge transfer or the knowledge acquisition even more important. And it's where I feel like there's a lot of complexity that gets put out there to try and keep us reliant. And that's not me with my conspiracy theory hat on at all. There's just, there is a lot of ... And there are complex products out there, and that's fine if that's the direction you want to go down. But if you want simplicity, that is very possible. And if you want to be able to do ... If you want to implement it yourself, you can do that. It's still, if you're... Depending on where you're at in your journey, you can get a financial planner to help you identify your strategy and to put a plan together. You can implement it yourself or you can pay them to implement it. So there's, there's different ways of doing things now that just didn't exist when I started. So my, my journey took a while. So I had I studied that diploma. I in, in parallel to this, I was also on a personal development journey, so I was going to, you know, NLP training, John Demartini courses. I was going to the US for hand analysis courses. I was, I was trying to find what was my purpose? Why was I here? What was I doing? I was also learning about share trading property investment, property development, all that. So I was trying to... It was basically just one big, like, life university in a way, all the things that I never got taught in the actual university. It's like life skills along the way too, so traveling. I love traveling. To me, it's one of the, the best teachers in the world is traveling. And so I, I felt like it was just information coming at me for a probably a good 10 years, and I had to start consolidating it all. And when I started to do that, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to write this course. It's, you know, everyone needs to know this because we're not taught this. Oh my gosh, I want to share this with everyone else because I've learned so much. I want to impart this, this knowledge." Well, not everybody wanted to actually know it. I didn't realize the, the mindset side and just the life overwhelm as well. Like so, so I had a few people go through that course but that really piqued ... interest in business as well. So I'd never actually contemplated running my own business. I had always just really kind of followed the path that I thought you followed, which was you grow up and you get a job and off you go. So I'd never even really contemplated it. So I started yet another learning journey, a very steep learning journey in the world of business. And then my personal development journey, that I thought I was doing pretty well at I realized how inadequate it had been. And it amplified quite substantially as well, because there's so much mind stuff that goes on. Imposter syndrome doesn't even cover it. Like, it's, it's so beyond that, it's not funny . So it's, it's been a really, really interesting journey. And what I've discovered along the way as well was core values, what mine are, and if you haven't heard them before, because I do mention them occasionally creativity, discernment, and control are my three core values. And this is not what I'm, you know, when we, we think of values, we're like, "Oh, I value world peace. I value my family." There's all these things that we value. And I was like, "Well, that's, that's all very well and good, but, you know, how does it actually translate into me as a human, a core human?" So this is, this is where doing that core values work and linking it to money becomes really, really important. So it's, it's been a really interesting journey, let's just put it that way. And as far as the money side of things go, there's a reason why I called my business Money Made Simple. I like things to be simple. I, I don't, I don't enjoy complexity. I, I don't... I have a pretty low appetite for risk in a in some ways. I've probably actually developed it a bit more as I've gotten older because I've become probably a bit more confident and, and I can see where that power kind of comes from, that I don't have this desire to, you know, own half of a city, you know. I'm, I'm quite happy to own my home and just have the ability to holiday and go places whenever I want, and use my money in other ways to invest. And I'm also not a trader. That was the other thing I learned when I was learning about share trading, I was like, "I'm, I'm not a trader. I'm an investor." Buy and hold. ETFs are fine for me. I don't need to pick, pick a winning horse, as in, you know, a company or a few companies. I'm happy to just, you know, buy into an index and do it that way and, you know, grow probably slow and steady. But then, didn't slow and steady win the race in the end? So but it's important to understand yourself when going on this journey. And so, that's, that's sort of what I've learned the most, is that I need to always go inwards, trust myself, trust that what I'm doing is the right thing. And if it turns out, after a period of time, that it's not, because I do regular reviews. I do a quarterly financial review of all my things and then annually, I will do some I'll do half-year planning and then an annual plan for business and life. And, and it's really helpful to have that perspective so that you actually see, am I heading in the direction I want? if I look around me and I pause, is this life the life that I want? What's, what, what am I not getting enough of? And it was really, really interesting because my, my daughter is now 10, and I was having a bit of those, "I don't know what makes me happy," moments a few months back. And I thought, "I don't really like what is that? What, what does happy mean?" I mean, I, you know, I'm happy in my home, I'm happy in my marriage, I'm happy with my daughter, family, my friends. Like, there's so many things. Are there things in my business I could improve? Absolutely. There's always areas that can be improved that aren't necessarily functioning the way I would like them to or things happening at the pace I would like them to. But then, but what about, you know, intrinsically? If I if I sort of strip all of the labels and the, and the roles away, what is, what is there? You know, what is, what is the thing that lights me up that's not sort of about looking at my beautiful daughter or, you know, looking at a pretty sunset, you know? Like, what, what is it? And so, I had this little mini crisis is too extreme a word, but I had this... and I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, and he's like, "You know what always lights you up? Travel. Whenever you talk about travel, you light up." I thought, "Yeah, that was what it was for me in my 20s." Travel. I love traveling. I love going... and it doesn't have to be big overseas trips. Even just day trips you know, going to the Gold Coast or going to the Sunshine Coast or, you know, going bush walking and, and, you know, connecting with nature, going to the beach. You know, there were so many, so many... I was like, "I need to be able just..." you know, because when I was in my 20s working for an airline I could travel a lot cheaper, and also, I didn't have much money back then either, so that worked out quite well. But every, every month, I was going way away, like, on a plane somewhere. And then I was still doing... and I would literally my Sunday afternoon was usually me jumping in my car and just driving. I would drive for hours, hundreds of kilometers away, and then I'd come home again and I'd be like I feel refreshed." So it's, it was really, really interesting. I thought, "Yes, I need to do this more." And I don't need to do it on my own. I my daughter loves going out and traveling, and she she, you know, she's my little buddy, and my mom as well. If my husband... sometimes he'll like to come, sometimes he doesn't. If he doesn't, that's fine. We'll, we'll go . We have annual girls trips. I think I've probably had... well, my daughter and I have more than one every year now. So we, you know, we went to Sydney with my mom, we went to Adelaide to visit family. We've been overseas to see family this year. And then I'm having a little, you know, few days, few nights away with my daughter at the Gold Coast soon as well while she's on holidays. 'Cause while she's 10, I want to really, like, hold onto this beautiful little girl who wants to be with mama because I know it won't last forever. So I wanna, I wanna cherish that as much as humanly possible. And I love that I have the lifestyle and the financial resources to be able to do that. I want to be able to enjoy it while I'm young and fit enough to be able to do that, while at the same time considering the future. And this is why...As part of that simplicity, I developed the, the Money Pie System, framework that I use. And I use it myself. And even when I use it and I see the power of it, I'm still always amazed at how well it works. And it's nothing, you know, earth-shatteringly new. People can use ... people used envelopes back in the day or buckets. I happen to call it the money pie because it just works better for my brain. Because buckets are individual, whereas the pie is one of the whole. You know, they have pie slices as part of the whole, and that just works better with how I see life, that we're part of a whole. So it's just, yeah, so that's, that, that's what really gives me joy, is traveling and then sharing what I do. And the community and the, the people I bring together as part of my business, and the people I get to meet as a business owner is just they're amazing humans out there women and men. And it's just, it's so lovely. So that, that's the areas that I, that really sort of do bring me joy. So it's been, it's been a journey, and that's one of the things, the reasons why I like ... from a money perspective. Like, I'm constantly learning. Like, this, even this year or, you know, last year, with my, my father passing, and there was some lumps, there was some inheritance there. So I had to figure out what to do with that, and I felt this, like, weight of responsibility about it as well. So I went back and researched. I went to seminars, I went to conferences read books, did all sorts of things, talked to people, listened to podcasts. Had my spreadsheet, had various scenarios of my spreadsheet, if I, like, did this or I did this or I did this, and I had to go with the one that sat well with me and aligned with my values and aligned with how I like to, to manage life, and the level of admin that I'm prepared to accept. So it just ... Yeah. So then, so now I've, I've, I've decided, I'm at peace, and I'm good. And I'm one of those people that once I make a decision, I'm good. It doesn't mean I can't change my mind, but I'm not likely to flip-flop around. Whereas I've noticed my daughter, she she'll make a decision, and then she'll jump. She's a bit like are they meerkats that jump around a bit? And in the end, I'm just like, stay. Like, pick one." Like, just pick something and stick with it for a bit. She's a manifesting generator, for anybody who follows human design, whereas I'm a generator. So we've got, like, this get-it-done kind of energy. So I'm, I'm acknowledging and, and you know, accepting and trying to understand this manifesting energy that goes with my daughter, the flip-flopping of around of things. So even that as part of the, that level of understanding is, is a, is a beautiful thing. So yeah. So it's, it's, it's nice to get to that place of peace. When I think back to the, the volatility that existed in my grandmother's era and how that spilled over into my my mom's life, and even, like, with my dad, and then the volatility they brought together as a relationship was not calm. And then how I've cultivated a more peaceful, simple life, and how I'm trying to help my daughter live that way without having to worry about all of that turmoil and, and complexity. But at the same time, being resilient and understanding and conscious and intentional. So it's yeah. Life is a journey. So have a think about your story and what's brought you to where you are now. And be intentional with this coming year and how you want the year to play out for you, who you want to be in this year, what lights you up, what makes you happy. Make time for that. Because if you're a woman and you're in your 40s and up, it's very likely you may have lost touch with that, as I did. So with that, I will leave you to contemplate and enjoy the rest of the start of a new year.
