Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of Money with Alpha. This week, I wanted to talk about the near and far juggle that impacts a lot of us, especially us women. Having to deal with all of the immediate financial needs that we have, and the, the stresses and the, you know, multitasking, and the distractions, and the interruptions, and all of those things that, that that are part of our daily life. And then comes the, "I don't have time to think about the longer term financial sort of security and situation and the lifestyle that goes with it," and the fact that this is, this is a real problem. I see this a lot with clients, and it impacts the way that we talk about money or the way that we don't talk about money, because we're so focused on just getting to the next day. The amount of times I hear, "Oh, I'm just thinking about today," or you know, just, "Got to get to the end of the month and see where things land." And, you know, if, if you're self-employed, or you have a business, and it's, "I just need to make payroll." You know, there, there's all these things which are very immediate, and while we can take the time to do vision boards and, and look at our, you know, our goals and, and and set our KPIs and things for the, for the year or for the quarter and break it down however we want, the reality is, the day-to-day where we often feel like we're sinking, and we're just trying to get through what we can actually achieve. And if I mention the concept of retirement or wealth or whatever, the whole, the whole idea of this can sometimes feel too overwhelming and unattainable. Like the idea of wealth is just so, "Oh, that's, that, that's the future, and that's not something I can have. I don't have enough money to build wealth. I, I, I, I can't deal with that right now." And, and the thing is, is that at some point, you're going to need to. To be really, like perfectly honest and blunt but as, in a loving way, if you don't start to look at this at some point, you're going to end up finding that years pass, and you're still concerned about this, and it hasn't been dealt with. And it doesn't have to be heavy. It doesn't have to be complex. It doesn't have to be huge. They're not major life changes that need to be made. It's just incremental things that, that can then really shift the dial. I've, I've relayed this story before, and I was literally talking about this to somebody yesterday, but one of my favorite money stories that I've read in in a book once was about this janitor in in America, and he, I think it was, I don't know, it was the '70s or '80s. Anyway, it was a it was a while ago, so he's, he's now long retired but he was a janitor, obviously didn't earn a whole lot of money, was very you know, very meager, I suppose, in just his day-to-day life but put money away and still went on his little holidays. They might not have been big European holidays or, or anything like that, but put money aside little by little. By the time he'd retired, he'd paid off his house and had $2 million just by putting money into investments, just consistently over like a 40-year career, and they had compounded and amplified to such an extent that he could then have a very, very comfortable retirement. Now, you're probably thinking, "Oh, but I'm not, I'm not, you know, at the beginning of my, my working life, I've, I have got a lot less time." And, and to a and to a certain extent, there is, there is truth to that, but it's not too late. Like you can still do something. You still have time. Like I'm, I'm in my sort of to late 40s now and there is still time for things to compound and develop. Like there's still, there's decades left of, of life you know, hopefully all, all going well. But if we look at sort of age statistics, you know, us women are living into our late 80s nowadays, like healthy for the most part. So if I look at that, it's like, "I've got another 40 years. Oh my gosh, of course, there's still plenty." So that's the 40 years of working life. But at the very least, I can start to make the changes and do the things now and to, to incrementally invest and actually allow time to still work for me. The thing is, though, I have to actually be doing it and starting it, not just worrying about it and talking about it and pushing it off to another day. And so this, this is a little bit of, you know, this is tough love me today because I was having a conversation with someone else this morning, and they're like, "You need to, you know, well, you need to say it like it is." I was like, "But I, I don't want to, like hurt anyone's feelings or make them feel bad." But at the same time, there is truth to it, and I like to speak the truth if it's going to be beneficial and help. And if it is a little bit of the, the push you need to do something, then, then great. And that is one of the reasons why I'm creating the, the things that I'm creating. So the, the app that's, that's that's now a reality and then the the community that I'm, that I'm building as well, it's there to create the support and the help and the handholding that you, you need to be able to... and the accountability as well, because sometimes we'll, we'll do these things for, for our kids or for other people, but we won't do it if it's just for us. And as a fellow woman, I'm like, "You need to do this as much for you as anybody, because the healthier, the fitter, the more financially independent and strong you are, the more you're able to help others. Whether it's your children, other family members, your church, your community, whatever is important to you, that's what you need to, that's why you need to become more financially independent and wealthy." So with this, how do we, how do you do that then? So the first step really is clarity, and the clarity is not just about your lifestyle. I do talk about that quite a lot, but there is a certain level of understanding and clarity you need to get over, well, how do you want to invest? And there are multiple ways but there are different levels of complexity different levels of investment, so it really depends on your personality, your risk profile, your age, what you want to do. Like for me, the idea of managing investment portfolios for investment properties is just, just, oh my gosh, I...... seen and heard too many stories from my grandmother and my dad, and helping him with his stuff. It's just, oh my goodness. I saw a unit he had rented out , excuse me, and the state that it was in was horrendous. I was, I don't even know how somebody could have lived in this, and how it even got to this point. Was like, "I don't want to have to deal with that." Maybe when I was in my 20s and 30s I would've had the tolerance and the patience to do that, but not anymore. I'm like, "No, no, no, this is not for me." So I'm going to, I'm going to invest in property in different ways. So there's different ways to do it that you don't have to be like the direct landlord, which suits me far better. That said though, for some people, probably really lights them up and they love the idea of having, like being able to visit their tangible asset and having, you know, discussions with the agents and dealing with the, you know, whatever else is going on. They love it, and it lights them up. It's like, fantastic. If it's something that you understand and you enjoy, I say go for it. But it's then understanding, well what are, what are the other options if that's not for you? And that's what I've had to figure out for myself, because I was like, "This is really not for me, but what else do I do?" 'Cause in Australia especially, it's very much you make your wealth through property. It's like, well, no, there's other, there's other ways. So there's even, if you wanted to invest, there's private credit, which is investing in property, because you're helping people to build infrastructure and property for people to live in as well, which I'm I want, I want as many people who can as possible to own their own home. Let's, let's try and like get beyond just constantly having one person having multiple houses and having multiple people with a house each, and a home as well. So that's something I would love to see. Then there's share investing. You can choose direct companies if you want. Do you want high dividend companies? What is it that, do you have a specific belief system? Do you want them to be eco-friendly and sustainable? Whatever it is, you can do that too. Then there's the more passive investing, which is exchange-traded funds, so ETFs. They're my personal favorite. So you invest in an index or an industry or a a country, a set of companies. So that's, that's more my style 'cause it's a lot less hassle. I can just automate that as well, and it just buys them every month for me. I don't have to really get too stressed about what's happening in the market because it's a longer term view. Superannuation or your retirement savings from a tax perspective can be quite good. That sort of thing you do need to, to look at when you get a bit older, because some things change in terms of the tax effectiveness, so that's where an accountant can help you. In Australia as well you can do self-managed super funds. Investment properties can be bought inside them as well. So this is where that structuring side of things, you really do need to talk to an accountant, and an estate lawyer to make sure that things are set up correctly for your legacy as well, especially if that's important to you and you want to make sure that your kids are set up and have everything that you want them to have. So this is where some of the other professionals can come in to support it. But you're still in control or in charge of the decision-making side of it, and then potentially also the management. If you want to be the property manager for the investment property that you've got, absolutely, go for it. If you want to bring in a property manager to do it for you, that is fine too There's no right or wrongs here. It's just becoming informed, having that clarity, and then making the decisions, and then you know, learning as you go, 'cause there's no better teacher than experience. And to a certain extent, failure as well, but we don't want to, we don't want to make too, too many expensive failures. It's just more understanding things a bit more before you start to do them, especially if you can do it incrementally, which is one of the things I love about ETFs. It's a lot more incremental. Then there's the visibility of it. You don't want things to become so complex and overwhelming that you can't keep track of it. So again, this is where my app Prosperous, I'm wearing my Prosperous T-shirt today, if you're watching will be able to, to help you coordinate it all and organize it all and see it all. All your bank details will be in there and automatically categorized. You can put all of your assets in there. You can see what they're going to do over time. You can play around with the decisions, so you don't actually have to physically do, make the decision. You can play around with it in like a sandbox or scenario environment first, and then you can go, "Oh, okay, so if I do this, with this assumption, then this will make that. If I do, even just if I put 50 bucks a week into that, over this amount of time, it'll be that." So then you can actually have the information and go, "If I do nothing, I'll probably be still, still where I am now in 12 months, two years' time. If I do this, so save $50 a month in here at this interest rate, over the next five years I could have $10,000." And you'd be like, and then all of a sudden the decision becomes so much easier, 'cause you're like, "Oh my gosh, why would I not do that? Because in, you know, in 10 years, I wouldn't have that money. But if I do this now, consistently, I will." So you're like, "Okay, now I get why I'm doing this as well, and why, I can see the result and that transformation that it will give me as well, as my, my life will then suddenly become a lot easier because I then have choices." I can take the trips. I can, you know, pay my kids' school fees with ease. In, you know, 10 years' time, probably won't have any school fees anymore, so then you can do other things as well You can put money aside for your kids to give them a little helping hand if you want to. So, you know, there's, there's this, it's choice, and that's what money provides. It's the freedom to choose the things that you want to do. So then flexibility comes into this too, because the needs that you have right now is more immediate. Over time, once you start to have a bit of a longer term view, once you allow yourself to have that, that level of clarity, and the visibility that takes you a bit further into the future, you're then probably gonna find that you have different problems to solveSo, you might have aging parents to then deal with, so you've gotta readjust things a little bit there. Or you can help them manage their money then, because you've been doing such a great job of it yourself, because you've learned how to set it all up. Then you find you need to be able to, instead of worrying about the immediate money situation, you've got more money and then you've got to make it last longer as well. That's something I noticed with my parents. Once they got to a certain age, it became more about, "Well, how do we make this last as long as possible, but still keep a certain lifestyle?" So they didn't feel like they had to scrimp and save. Because I see this as, you know, quite often, people just either hoard or spend . There's, there's very, you know, very little that happens in between, because we don't have that ability to regulate it because we don't know what's going to happen. None of us has a crystal ball. We don't know how long we're going to live. So, we hoard it thinking, "Oh, what if I'm going to live for another, like, 20 years, can I make it last that long?" Or, "Let's just not spend any, because we don't know." Or, you know, "We only live today 'cause we, we don't know what's coming tomorrow, so let's just go for it." So there's, there's these two varying camps that I, that I tend to see. So somewhere in the middle is a little bit better. So you can, you can have those, like, trips where there's a bit of blow-out, and then there can be a bit more moderation for a while. But then, if there's medical things that you need, you've got the money to pay for them. If there's something that will improve your life, you can choose to invest in it. So it just allows that level of flexibility as your life changes. And then the big how. How does this all happen? It happens with a system, a system that's flexible enough to move with you and is right for you. And that's the Money Pie Framework. And being able to, to connect your day-to-day banking and expenses, et cetera, and income, and make sure that it all kind of works and you know where everything's going. Then link that to your future, well, current wealth and your future wealth building. And have it as a system that just ticks along. So, after a while, your conversations change entirely. Your stresses about money just change or fall away, the stress. It then becomes a different level of conversation. And that's, that's what we want you to get to. So you're not constantly trying to feel like the balancing this, like, immediate need and problem with, "I can't even think about the future." We want you to be able to do both. And do it in a way that's calm, has the right information to make the decisions that will actually help you get where you want to go, and the clarity to know what that even is. So, have a little think about that and think where you're sitting in this at the moment. If you think of it as a scale between, like, like, immediate, just treading water, versus future, can't think there. Where, where are you on that scale? Please reach out to tell me. I would love to hear it. I'd love some thoughts and, and some some feedback, if you have any, on where you are, you are at in your journey. And happy to, to share some insights if that is helpful. So, I will leave you to contemplate all of that and to think about where you are in your journey and on your scale of timeline for money. Have a wonderful week, and I will catch you in the next episode.
