Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of Money with Alpha. This is going to be a bit of a short one to really just help you think and maybe do a bit of a reset. It's always good to do this regularly anyway, and at the beginning of the year is the perfect opportunity. And the way I've sort of, as I was framing this up and writing some notes for, for this episode, I thought, it's kind of like you've got to kind of date your money in a way. You know, when we think of money as a relationship, like how we have a relationship with money, and you think about the relationships that you have and how they've formed and how they've improved and gotten better over the years it's because we've paid attention to them. We spent time with the, in most cases, people. Now we're talking about an inanimate object, which is, which is money, but we still have a relationship with it. And if we don't pay it attention, it's not going to improve. So avoidance is only going to make things worse because we'll start to build up things in our own mind that may or may not be real. Then we also need to kind of go through a little bit... and if you think of the relationships that you have that are really strong, you've been through stuff with those people. So I think of some of my really good friends, we've been through, like they've been through difficult times I've helped them through. I've been through difficult times they've helped me through. Even with my husband, we've had, you know, there's been challenging times, and what makes your relationship stronger is 'cause you've gone through it together. So the same thing with money, and you know, if you reached your, you know, your 30s, 40s, and even 50s, you've had a fair chunk of time to build a relationship with money, and it's probably fair to say there have been rocky times in there. So rather than looking at those rocky times as, you know, "I'm just bad with money," let's look at it, them as a way to learn and grow. And it's not a reason to ignore. It's a reason to be curious and to try and find out why. So there's a couple of things, a couple to do in order to, to say, well, yeah, but how? This is, this is the how. So firstly, you need to know where your money is coming from. And I know that sounds weird, but in this day and age where we've got businesses, possibly multiple businesses or a side hustle or lots of different... money can be coming from different directions, and we just need to make sure that we're gathering it and recognizing that it's all coming in as, whether it's income or just money in. It could be coming as child support payments and inheritance payments. Like, it could be coming in as salary, as director's fees, as you know, dividends. Like, there's, there's a few different ways that we've probably amassed over time. So we first need to actually document where it's all coming from, and the amounts over, over time as well would be handy as well. But for, first start, for start you can just say, "This is where it's coming from." Then you need to go, well, where, where is it coming out of? Like, how am I spending it? Because I sometimes use a credit card, but I also still use cash. Sometimes it can be a direct debit, sometimes it can be a BPAY or, you know, it's not all just sitting on a credit card unless yours is. If you're, if you're that disciplined and you just have one way of paying and that's it for everything, then that's fantastic. I think a lot more of us are a little bit, little less consistent, possibly a little messy, 'cause it depends on how you can pay certain things as well. I do like paying with my credit card 'cause I get points, but then I also do like to pay cash, especially if I'm dealing with, like, a farmer at the farmer's market or a small, if it's a small amount of money or whatever it is. So it, it's sort of dependent on the situation, so I still need to be able to sort of track that in a way. And then, you know, how else are... And then how your bills are paid. So once, once you can start to see where the money's going or how it's going so that you can start to track those things, and maybe if you do cash, you can be like, "Okay, well, I've got, like, $100 of cash, and that's going to be my sort of spending money in cash for the week." Everything else has to go on either a credit card, and if it's direct debits, perhaps have the direct debit to your credit card so that at least it's all in one place. Some things you can then pay with cash, but then you sort of still need a way to, to document it. If you've got your bank statement and your credit card statement, and with what I'm planning with my app, you can upload them and then they'll all come together. But to start with, it's always a good idea just to have that as as a way to at least see where it's going. So you're seeing where it's coming in, then you're seeing where it's going out. Then start to look at how your bills are paid. So again, like I said, just document that, because I had a recent experience where I had to help my mom go through and redo some direct debits and was like, okay, we need to figure out what is being direct debited and how. Some things are through PayPal now, which is good from one perspective that it's all centralized, but then other things are direct to the card. So I had to try and go through, okay, where are all the direct debits? So if you've ever had to replace a card that's got direct debits on it, you'll know what I'm talking about. So having a look at where are all of the regular expenses coming from, what, where, which card or which account are they coming out of? A ) are you, do you know them all? Like, is that... 'Cause I, I had a client once who had about $450 worth of subscriptions. She had no idea she was paying. Some of them, she didn't even remember signing up for. One we found was actually her son had signed up for something. She didn't know about it. So I was like, "Yeah, it's good to have a look every now and then." 'cause you never know what's going on without your knowledge. So how are your bills being paid? Again, direct debit from a credit card, direct debit out of, like, BPAY cash. Like, how is it all happening? Just kind of like write it down, just so that you can have that picture all in front of you, 'cause sometimes it's so complex, but we don't know how complex or not it is until we actually, like, put it down on paper. And for now, pen and paper I think is probably a good idea. You can do it in a spreadsheet. That's my go-to, but I realize that's not everyone's, so just write it down on a pen and paper, old school.Uh, and then look at the frequency of these bills too. Some are probably monthly, some might be quarterly. If you do rates and power and water and sewage and things like that, they might be quarterly. Some might be annual. So start to kind of, when you write them all down, go which ones are monthly, quarterly, annually? They're your typical... Some might be six monthly even. But just write it down so that you're aware of the frequency, and if you want, can write down what month they all come in. Then at least you can start to get a picture. Like know for me, January is a big month because all the insurances come in, the car, the house, the contents. my personal insurances go up. I pay them. the health insurance comes in. It just seems to be the month that I... And it's ironic really because when you do start to do a review in January, everything becomes due in January. So I spend the rest of the year saving up for January. it's just an interesting time and then how it's now worked. I thought, "Oh, was that the best idea?" I was like, "That's okay. I have a system. I can make it work." But I needed to see it all first. And in a way, having it all, like having all the heavy hitters due in one month is actually bit easier because I could see them all because they're all there in front of me. It just makes the cash flow a little bit lumpy, but that's all right. We can work around that. We can have a system. And then the fifth thing, it really is to have some goals and write them down. Do you have some savings goals and some investing goals? Like put specific dollars to it because in a relationship, like for instance, if you're sitting down with your partner, you'd be like, "Let's go out on a date." Okay, great. Is that it? I still remember I'm often usually the organizer of the date nights as women often tend to be. And one night I was just like, "You know what? I'm fed up with organizing this. I'm going to let," this is to my husband, said, "I'm going to let you organize it. I'll organize the babysitter." So we I organized a good friend to be the babysitter, and then by the time we actually got out of the house, it was about 8:00 PM so I'm already like getting a bit hangry. And as we're driving, I was like, "Great. So where are we going?" And he's like I thought we'd just kind of like go into the city." And this a Saturday night. I was like, "Okay, and where are we going to eat?" He's like, "I thought we'd just find somewhere." I was like, "Are you kidding me? On a Saturday night and you don't have a booking?" Like, come on. So we ended up having to go to a restaurant where you don't actually make a booking but you have to line up. So of course we're standing there in line for like 20 minutes. By the time we got there and ate, it was like almost 10 o'clock. I, like, I'm a 6:00, 6:30 eater so by now I was so like hungry. It was ridiculous. And I thought, "You know what? This is why I organize it because I know it's planned." So it's like clockwork . But you had to still have you still had to have a goal. So we had the goal of going out, but there was just no other plans necessarily apart from, you know, we had the date and the babysitter and the rest kind of just was a little bit haphazard. But with your money, you need to be clear. You need to go, "Okay, this is what I'm going to do." If you just have an annual figure, then divide it by 12 and work it back so you know what you need to do monthly. If you want to do a holiday and you need you sort of cost it out what the holiday's going to be, then again, you need to work backwards from there. But start to set those goals and be specific. And then now that you have visibility over where your money's coming from, where it's going, where the lumpy months are for payments and so forth, it starts to be easier to manage when you can start to see it. Then you have a bit more of a friendly relationship with your money because you're actually interacting with it a bit more. You're paying it some attention. It's feeling a little better. You're feeling better about it because you have some visibility, and that's the key is to have some of that visibility, blend it with some clarity. What do you want it to do? And then have those two work together. And then you can create some flexibility in there too, but flexibility is kind of like the next step. But to start with, just get to know your money and build a better relationship with it. I'll let you think about that because there's a few things to implement there, and it probably will take, well, it depends on how easily you can access stuff, but I'd put 30 minutes aside. You don't really need... And this is like literally if you want to, go out for coffee. Take yourself out for coffee, have some quiet space. Most things are available on our phones now. Take a notebook and pen, get everything, make sure you've got all your logins, and then just start to write it all out. And you'll you'll feel better just by having done that, and you'll get out of your normal space because if you do this normally in your home and it just has this like icky feeling and that's why you don't do it, go to a new space, pick a cafe that you like. You know, treat yourself to like the best coffee, have a bit of cake if you want. Whatever will make the relationship or the date feel a little bit sweeter and nicer so that you'll actually do it. So with that, I will let you to go schedule in your date with your money, and hopefully you can start to gain a little bit more visibility and clarity on it. All right. Have a wonderful week, and I will catch you next episode.
