Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of Money with Alpha. Today, I'm gonna use a bit of a play on words from that saying "Make yourself work smarter, not harder," and make it into, "Make your money work smarter, not harder." Rather than always feeling like it's, you know, constantly more, more, more, hustle, earn more, I've got to make more, more, more, more that, you know, I did an episode a few weeks back which talked about this, that kind of enough-ness. When is, what is enough, and what is more, and, and that, that level of stress in our bodies as a result of that constantly moving and wanting more and not having enough, and all, all of that. And that, what it plays on your body and in your mind is just, it's it gets... It's tiring, and it leads to overwhelm when it doesn't need to. So let's talk about how to do things a little smarter, rather than always talking about how to just do more with less or, you know, more, more, more. Anyway, let's, let's, let's change the vernacular. So firstly, I'm gonna just go through the three things I'm gonna talk about. The first one is to give your money a purpose. Again, something I've spoken about before, but I wanted to talk about it more in this context. Second one is to create a system, and thirdly is to automate, which is basically to automate your system. And this is, this is where we can make things so much easier and giving your dollars a purpose, or giving your money a purpose, being that first one, is very much around being clear. Because money comes in, money goes out. That's just, you know, that's just life, and that's just energy. Money is energy, and and energy flows, so it comes, it goes. You know, good energy comes, good energy goes. Bad energy comes, bad energy goes, hopefully. And we just, it's all, it's an inflow. And, and life is about the ups and downs, you know, where we get, we get sleep, so we, we feel a bit more energized, and then we expend energy, and we get tired, and then we sleep, and then we that, and then we're, you know, we're hungry, so we have something to eat, and then we, you know, do some activities, so we get hungry, and then we have something eat. Like, it's literally all a rhythm and a flow, and the, the the more that we try to work against that flow, the harder things are. So rather than trying to constantly constrain ourselves to not spend money, you know, people talk about, you know, like they'll have these, you know, no, like... Mm, it's like Dry July, but instead of alcohol, it's for money. There's... I've forgotten. It's like Frugal February or something like that. There's, there's a few of these other things. And, and some of them about, you know, rather than just constantly buying new stuff, is maybe looking at more secondhand things. And, and so there's a certain consciousness that, and intentionality that goes with that, which I think is good. I, I know I'm a big... You know, I buy things secondhand, I, I sell things, and I sell the things that were secondhand if they're still good enough. And I'm a, I'm a believer in trying not to just add more stuff than to landfill as well. So it, there's a, there's a benefit for the environment, and it's, you know, just in my own mind. Like reuse, you know, reusing clothes, passing on books all sorts of things, anything that they can be really. So it's not, it's not about, you know, trying to be super, super frugal for the sake of frugality. It's just more being intentional and purposeful, which is why I'm like, "Give your money a purpose." What do you want it to be able to do? Is it really important to you to be able to support your church, or another, you know, charitable thing? You know, it is being able to help... Like, I, I love animals, so I love to be able to support animal shelters. I also feel very passionately about making sure that women have safe housing, so I like to support those sorts of charities as well. Then it's also, you know, making sure that, for me, what lights me up is being able to travel, and I love new experiences, I love new cultures. One of the first things I do when I go places is I go to the supermarket 'cause I love to see what the food is in places. I like to try and eat as authentically as I can for wherever I am. I don't want to just have sandwiches everywhere. I'm not a big sandwich eater anyway, but, you know, I just... that's, like that, that for me is, that's what my money is also there for, is to have those experiences, to be able to enjoy life, to have... Somebody... I can't... Well, they were talking about something the other day, I was like, I've been there," and, "Oh, I've seen that." You know, like, oh, it's so nice to have... Rather than just read about the world, and read about history, actually go to the places where it happened and experience that I'm actually wearing my, my Berlin shirt. You can't actually see it. We went to Berlin last year, and I really felt like I learned so much more about Germany as a country, about that East/West divide, about what that felt like by being there. And not just going to the museums, but actually being able to walk around and go see the wall, see where the line on the ground was, and go, "Oh my gosh, you know, we're standing one foot in the east, one foot in the west," and it just had this greater resonance because we're actually physically in the place where history happened, and you could kind of feel the energy still as well. So, so that for me is, is where my money... You know, people are like, "Oh, you travel so much." I'm like, "Yes, because that's important to me." I don't eat out a whole lot. We don't get takeout. I don't really drink much. I don't smoke. I don't... You know, there's so many things that I don't do, and not because I'm holding myself back. They're just not as important to me as something else. You know, like I will spend the money on really good chocolate, because having good chocolate is also important to me. So we just have to figure out what that is that, for us, and the kind of lifestyle that you want, and that is also part of making money smarter. So it's not just about managing it in a smarter way, although that is the benefit that you get as a result of being more intentional and more thoughtful. It's just going, "Okay, well, why do I want this thing?" Or, "Why do I want to go on that trip?" Or, you know, "Where do I want to go next? What kind of experience do I want? What do I want to be able to, to look back on my life and, say, 'Oh yeah, I did that'? I, you know, I planned to do this, and I did it"?' Even, even doing, you know... like experiences. Like, for instance, I always wanted to go skydiving and I did. I probably wouldn't... No, don't know if I'd do it again. I don't know. hadn't really thought about it. But one of the things I really want to do that I haven't done yet is to go in a hot air balloon. Ideally, I'd love to do it over Cappadocia in Turkey, but I could do it over the Barossa as well in South Australia. So, you know, so there's things like this as well. So there, you know, I have my vision board sitting right there and there's things like that on there having those experiences. There's also really nice chocolate on there too. But it's, it's a, it's allowing us to think in a way that'll, you know, that our money is there to just facilitate the life and the lifestyle, not just there to be a hassle and a stress and a never enough of, and too many bills, and all of these things, and I can't do this for whatever reason. So it's, it's, that's the first part about making money smarter, is actually making how we see it and make the decisions to being smarter. So then number two is about creating a system. Because we don't want money to just be the constant stressor and the constant thought in our minds all the time. You want to be able to set it up, let it run, and then enjoy life. And then you don't have to have some of these conversations so much. The conversations then shift and change into possibilities and investments and different types of things, rather than just like, "Oh, my gosh. Another bill's come in. I don't know if I've got the money to pay that," or, "I need to do this first before I can do that," or, "I can't afford to go to the dentist because of this." Like, what, whatever the trade-offs then end up needing to be, the conversation shifts dramatically from that. And then you can actually just go and enjoy, or you can go on a holiday and enjoy the holiday not having to, you know, in the back of your mind there's little stressor going, "Oh, my gosh. Oh, my god. We just ate out three times in a day. Oh, my gosh. Are we going to be able to pay for that when we get back?" You don't want to be thinking about those things when you're on holiday. You want to be able to save for it, have budgeted for it, go on the holiday that you want but also can afford, and then enjoy that holiday. So if there is something that comes up, like for instance, a few years back I went with my mom and my daughter to Uluru. And admittedly, it was sort of in that COVID bubble time, so, so there were more opportunities for doing activities because there weren't that many people around. And we got there, and at the hotel they were offering a helicopter flight. I was like Yes, I would love this." My daughter's six at the time. So I was like, "Oh, my gosh." I think I was in my 20s before I ever went in a helicopter, and here's a six-year-old, and I thought, "But..." And then normally, you would had to have booked that months in advance. And, and I, and it's not something I would have spent the money on either, but I was like, "This, we're here. I can book it on the fly. There's hardly anyone around. This is, this... I want to be able to take this opportunity." And it wasn't even that expensive, I think it was about $170 each. And I thought, "I'm so glad that I have the means and the opportunity to be able to take advantage of this situation and enjoy it." And, and it's, it's a, it's a standout memory now. As a result, I saw the big red rock, as my daughter calls it, from the air which is just a tremendous thing. Whenever I see them now in calendars, I was like, "I've seen that. I, don't need to just see it in a photo. I've actually seen that with my own eyes." And it's such a different experience in my body as well. And that then flows into other things knowing that you can have this possibility thinking, and it lightens the load so much. And then money really just becomes the facilitator of life, which is what it should be. It should not be the, the warrior or the judgment or anything like that, or the stressor So the system then becomes the way that you can do this to take that mental load away. And to do that, first you need some visibility over your money. You then need to be clear on what you want your money to do, and that clarity comes in the framework that I've created called the Money Pie so that you know exactly where you want your money to go so you don't have to micromanage it. You can get that visibility of sort of the detail and then it can have a system to run, which I'll talk about. And then the Money Pie helps you classify where you want your money to actually go. What are your key priorities? Like, what's, what's the, what, what priorities will help you gain that lifestyle that you want? Then there's the flexibility. Because, let's face it, life changes. We you know, as one of the only constants has changed. So we want a system that can work with us over time, that will shift and change with us as we have kids, as the kids grow up, as the kids leave home, as relationships potentially break down, as aging impacts us, either via our parents to start with or then us and our partners. So, money does need to shift and change over time, so we need a system that's flexible enough to change with it, 'cause you don't want to have to relearn something every single time something changes. So, that's the system. Again, I'll come back to that. And then thirdly, we want to be able to automate stuff as much as possible. So, automate some, some savings, automate some investments automate even the management and the visibility side. And that is why I created my app, Prosperous, designed to create the system and the automation all in one. The only piece that it can't do is tell you what your purpose for your money is. That is something you still have to figure out, but you can embed it into the app So there's Money Pie. There's actually a couple of Money Pies, 'cause there's a couple's mode as well if you want to do things slightly differently. So, you have your Money Pie to help gain that clarity or to visualize that clarity and to, like, actually document it because then you're like, "Okay, now I know where all this is going." It will calculate the amounts based on what you've got left at the end of each month that need to go into the different accounts, whether they're offset sub-accounts or savings sub-accounts, how, depending where you're at. But it gives you also that visibility. It will automate pulling in your bank data. It'll automate categorizing it. There's still a little bit to make sure that it is categorized correctly and classified correctly, because a lot of us are doing money in a similar way in terms of we've got transfers going between different accounts, because the level of complexity in our lives is just like that. So you can exclude some of those transfers so that they're not clogging up the data that's in there. So there's the flexibility to do that. And then there's the flexibility to adjust your Money Pie as life changes. If you don't, if you need to you know you're gonna need a new car, you can create a pie slice for the car. Once you've got the car, you can reassign that money elsewhereYou can make sure that you then have the amount going into your investment, so then you can automate that. So, I set up an automation where every month, on the same day of every month... Admittedly, it took me a couple of months to make sure that I had the money in the account ready for that direct debit until I'd gotten into my system. And now it just automates going, and it buys the same three ETFs every month, it just keeps on going. And I've got all of the dividends reinvested, so that's automated as well. So it just keeps compounding, 'cause I don't need that income right now. But I can change that later on, and I can automate that the income comes to me once I've, you know... and I hesitate to use the word retired, 'cause I'm not, not even sure what that looks like for me yet, whether it's just slowing down or... I don't know. But that's, again, that's the flexibility. And I get to make that choice because I have everything set up. I have my system, and this is basically a system I've been running in Excel for the last probably five years. I've been using it with clients for probably about three years now, and then it was getting to the point where I was like, "I need to make this even easier to use." So that's why I created the app and that's been that learning curve, oh my goodness. But that creates a system and the automation that you can then tack onto it. But it automates the, the management and the systemized part of it. So then it really just becomes, what do you want in life? And what do you want your money to do for you? So think about that rather than how much money do you need, because you need to figure that part out first. And that's the part I find we always start, tend to start with the back end first. It's like, "Oh, how much money am I gonna need in retirement? Will I have enough money in retirement?" Like, you're worrying about something that you don't have enough information yet to answer because you don't know what lifestyle you want. Once you sit down and get a bit clearer on that, then you can figure out the numbers. Then you can plug those numbers into Prosperous and it will tell you how much, and it will tell you how how, like, how your trajectory is looking, and what your, how so, how many percent you are close to your goal. And then you can start to get a little bit more information to make better decisions on perhaps what clients to take, what work to take or not to, how much money you need to actually enjoy your life, where your money's actually even going, so you can start to become a bit more intentional and deliberate about what you're spending your money on. And it just, it just simplifies things. It makes, it creates ease, and it stops the guesswork, it, which is, just blows things out of proportion. Whenever I've spoken with, with clients in the past and we look at net worth, and they're always, look, obviously, like, "Oh my gosh," we tend to doomsday everything. And it's, it's actually amazing how often it's not as bad as you think, but the guessing and the assumptions behind it being bad and hard is actually almost worse than the reality. So actually looking at it is easier, and that, that's the part that I think people find the most surprising. Sorry, I'm gonna leave you with that, but I'll just reiterate. First is give your money a purpose. Secondly, create a system, and thirdly, automate. And then go enjoy life. Stop guessing, start growing, and enjoy your life. So have a lovely week, and I will catch you in next week's episode.
