Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of Money with Alpha. This week I wanted to talk about sort of a few things, which is generally about what is really holding you back when it comes to money. I've done a bit of speaking in the last couple of weeks, probably in the last week I've spoken at 4 different events. I've just done 2 today, which is why if you're watching this, I'm still in my pinks with my money pig earrings. I was up at Mackay over the weekend speaking at a women's event. And I spoke last week at another women's event. And it's interesting because there's sort of a commonality I've noticed in sort of the things that I'm getting asked directly, like one-on-one questions, as well as sort of as part of the presentation itself. And it made me kind of realize there's still a lot of perception around what holds us back in relation to money. And there's some themes. So I thought I would tackle each one of these themes in this week's episode and see if one of these may resonate with you. And I'm going to debunk is probably a bit stronger word, but discuss it in a way that can reframe it. Because a lot of the problems that we have in our life in general, like even in relation to us talking, just a little bit of a sidebar, I was talking with someone who is very shy about networking and they don't like talking about themselves and they don't. And you know, I've experienced that as well. I mean, I don't have a problem with the networking part anymore, but I do still find it difficult to talk about myself and what I do. I can talk about the work that I do, and how it helps people. And so the reframe for this particular person is like, well, how about you just tell the stories of the clients that you've helped and sort of go into problem-solution mode? And then by extension, you're talking about you, but it's more how you've solved problems rather than I've done this and I've done that and this is what I do and this is who I help. You're like, oh, this is the type of clients that I love working with and this is the result that I've got for them or that they've got. You don't even say this is what I got for them. You can just say this is the result they had after we worked together and it was really exciting. And then people are more likely to connect with that as well because it's a real-life person, a real-life story. There'll be something in that story they can connect with. So I'm going to be going through a few of the things that I've heard, and I'll be telling you some stories about how to reframe the way that they're possibly being seen at the moment. So I'll just talk about them each to start with. So this is in relation to what's really going on and what's really holding you back when it comes to getting your finances sorted. The first one is time. It takes too much time, or it's, you know, that it takes a lot of time and effort. The second one is knowledge and not having enough of it. The third one is confidence, and the flip side of that's fear around getting something wrong or not knowing what to do, which is kind of linked to knowledge too. The fourth one are the money stories that we tell ourselves, and the fifth one is not having enough money, so lack of money. So I'm going to talk about each one of these and how they tend to show up and what they tend to do in terms of holding us back from what we want to actually achieve. And part of it's clarity. So I'm not going to go through my, like, my normal, my normal kind of starting point really is getting clear on what it is that you actually want to achieve. Because when we aren't clear, we procrastinate. We can come up with all the excuses in the world. It becomes very easy to put something off. But also I've noticed recently there's, there's a lot more of a money crunch happening, whether it's, you know, rising fuel prices or, you know, groceries and all of that. And to be honest, there's certain things that can impact you if you let them, or if your world is kind of set up in terms of, you know, it's very reactionary. Like, we had the budget released a couple of weeks ago, the federal budget in Australia, and I have to admit, I was sort of sitting there going, oh, how is this going to play out? And I want to know what's going on because it's going to impact some people for sure. But when, you know, the initial kind of reaction to it was gone, and fairness aside, like whether or not it's actually reasonable and fair to tax the way that the changes are going to happen, that's one thing. I'm not gonna talk about whether I think it's— they're good changes or not, or that they're fair, or that they're actually going to achieve what is supposed to be achieved. It's more a case of, well, if it is and we can't change it, then how do we work sort of from that? And to be honest, it's not going to change most of my behavior and the things that I'm going to do. So that's— it's almost kind of like, like it's not even future-proofing. It's like political-proofing your life and how you do things. So, and coming up with strategies, it is difficult though when there are certain structures that you put in place and you've made the decisions on those structures based on asset protection and tax and all of that. And then the rules change. And so the decision that you made you could say 10 years ago is now no longer as valid because the rules have changed. And I remember when I was a kid, my my mum was breeding Weimaraners, the, the dogs, the, the gray gundogs. And she had this photograph of this Weimaraner with his head tilted, and it was like a little— it was a kind of a cardboard picture, and there was a little speech bubble that came out of it. It says, "Just as I learned all the answers, they changed all the questions." And it's really stuck in my mind. I haven't actually physically seen that photo or that photo, that like picture thing for probably about maybe coming on 35, 40 years, but it's stuck as a little kid seeing that on the top of the cupboard in the kitchen, which is where it was. I don't know why. It just stuck with me. And I feel like that's, that's kind of been a catch cry for a lot of life. You know, we, we learn the answers to the questions because we're told these are the ones we need to know, and then they change the questions. So that's, that's unfortunately the kind of variability of life. So the time factor that I see, I don't have the time, is one of the main ones. I was like, well, there are so many tools out there. You know, I mean, I've created the app Prosperous, which crunches down the time dramatically. Like I've, I get more visibility over my money now and greater ability to now see everything and feel more on top of it. And it's so much less time. Like my quarterly reviews I used to do, they would probably take me about an hour. Now they take me about 10 minutes. Like it's 15 minutes max. Like it's so much because I don't have to enter any data. It's just all there. I just have to update a couple of numbers here and there and log into some stuff. The bank account data is already there. It's just the net worth stuff that I need to update balances on because I can't connect to some of those places because they're all over the place, which is why I need it all in one place. So the time factor then becomes not an issue. And There's other tools out there too. You can ask AI if you want to. I would— I'm not a big fan of uploading personal details into AI because, you know, there's privacy concerns and all of that. But having tools to be able to do some things that's data-related actually does make it easier. And even banking apps, if you have your accounts with a bank, most of them now have some ability to show you where your spending is. Not as flexible or perhaps as insightful as tools like Prosperous. I'm gonna sprig my, my out fear again. But it takes the time and effort away to a certain degree. So the time factor is really a perception, and we block out time to exercise. We block out time to do all sorts of things. I have an hour in a month in my calendar for a massage because it's just physical maintenance. My— every morning I go for some sort of exercise, whether it's a bike ride or a HIIT session or some strength training or whatever it is. It's like Monday to Friday, non-negotiable. And on weekends, it's sort of bike rides with the family and things like that. So we, as business owners as well, we're used to blocking out time in our calendar for client work, to work on our business, to work in our business. It's the same thing with money. We just need to block out some time. I get a weekly email reminder because that's how I've set it up inside my app, the Prosperous, to remind me to go in. And all I do on a weekly basis is go in and then update some of the new transactions that have come in if the category isn't completely correct. That process now takes me like 5 minutes. So, and I'm sitting there on my phone doing it. Like, it's, it's so easy to do it now. But I still have a reminder that I've set up to send me the email to do that. And then the court, like, it's, it's, it's something you can just get into a routine. So the time factor is really more down to the habit that you want to create around it and the kind of structure that you put there. And the more regular the structure, the faster it becomes a habit. So for instance, water, I do not sit down at a desk and I'm, I'm holding up my water glass without a glass of water there. It's just, It's habit now. If you think about your phone, if you look around you right now, I mean, if you're driving, this may be a little bit different, but I'm gonna guess that your phone is within arm's length reach. Mine certainly is. It's sitting right here because it has reminders that come up. It has, you know, I don't wanna miss calls or if there's messages that come in and there's things I need to answer. It's got my calendar. Like anytime somebody asks me something, I was like, I've gotta look at my phone cuz my phone has my life in there. So things like that. That became a habit. And that was— that was probably born out of need. But if you look at what's immediately around you are things that are going to be important to you. And some of them had to be built in, like I said, like, like the water. I remember when my daughter was a baby and I have— you know, she was a lot of, a lot of feeding, a lot of late nights, obviously a lot of sleepless periods. I always made sure that I had a bottle or a cup of water within arm's length so that if I couldn't move, because if I moved she woke up, I could at least hydrate and I could drink some water. That just became then habit. So I now have bottles of water all over the house. And because it's a habit for me, it's now extended to my daughter. She's got bottles everywhere. She's got one on her desk for when she's doing her schoolwork or her study work. She's got one up in her bed because she's got a loft bed, so she's got a water bottle up there as well so she doesn't have to climb down to get a drink. She can still have water. We've got one on the couch right where we sit and we share that one. So this is just— now it's become a habit for her because it's sort like rubbed off on her because of me. So you think of the time factor. It's, it's the perception of the time that's going to hold you back. There are tools out there to help you shorten the amount of time it will take. You can systemize things, you can create structure. There are so many tools out there nowadays and so many ways of doing things. So the time thing, it may be real. But the perception of the amount of impact that that has on you doesn't have to be as big as you think. So that's, that was number 1. Number 2 is knowledge. Now you're listening to this podcast. I'm gonna take a pretty confident guess that you're highly educated and I don't care about, you know, degrees or diplomas or any, any kind of like formal education. You're, you're a smart person and more likely a smart woman. Listening to this. So I'm going to also take a guess that you've probably got enough knowledge to do at least one thing that you're afraid to do, which is gonna lead into my next one, which is fear. It's the point at which we have to trust the knowledge that we have to take an action. If you are really not confident enough to do that and you do still feel like you need some more knowledge, I would suggest getting some coaching or some consulting, some help to do that, to actually guide you along the way. That's why I still keep doing my one-on-ones, because there are people out there who just need that little extra. And it's not even handholding, and it's not even that they need it, they just— it's kind of more the accountability and the structure and the knowledge that step by step they have been guided along the way. They have somebody they can ask questions of. So if knowledge is the thing that's holding you back, look at what kind of knowledge is it you need. Like, literally, at an event this morning, one lady's— and she's got property investment, she's doing all sorts of things, but she wanted to get into shares to do some diversification. I've been doing a lot of speaking today, so my words are blending. And she's just like, I have— and she opened up a platform, like an account on a trading platform. She even put the money in there. And then she stopped. She's like, I don't know what to do next. It's like, right, okay. So the knowledge of what to do and the next thing I want to talk about, which is lack of confidence perhaps to actually take the next step, there's a bit of both there. And I know myself, when I think back to before I started doing some share investing, I thought, well, what do I invest in? Like, oh my gosh, I've been to a share trading course where they had candlestick charts and the technical analysis, and you had to, you know, there's the options, the buy and the largely going, oh my gosh, I don't— this is too much for me. I, you know, this isn't what I want to do at all. But there's a word in there, trading, share trading, not share investing. It's actually two different things. It often gets interchanged. People think of stocks and shares, they are, they are the same thing, but trading and investing are actually two different things. Trading is where you buy and you sell on a regular basis, and you're trying to time when you buy and when you sell to maximize the amount of money that you make. Investing is you just buy and hold. You just buy and hold. There's a reason why there's a term called dollar cost averaging, which is basically you just keep buying regularly over years and years. You just keep buying. Like every month I buy. Every month I have an automatic deduction that comes out of my bank account and an automatic buy that buys the same 3 ETFs every single month. I still go in and buy other stuff too because while I reinvest my dividends, which is when, you know, the shares that you buy, they pay you some income and then you can reinvest those just to buy more shares in the same ETF or the same share. I sometimes, you know, it doesn't round out completely. So every few months I go in and I've got some money still sitting in there. So it's like, okay, well, I'll just buy something else. And because, you know, our brains like variety, mine certainly does. I don't want to just keep buying the same one. So I've started dabbling in some other ones. So now I've got more than the 3 that I started out with. I've probably got closer to about 9. So today, that when she was like, she was just gripped with that like freeze because she's like, I've got the money in there, and then she just took the money back out again out of the trading account. I was going, aha, so you need to know. And so, so I like, I sort of was talking about the ones that I invest in. I said, go and do your own research and check out if they work for you. But gave her a place to start, so she got additional knowledge and then hopefully the ability to take some action to overcome the fear and work towards confidence. So that 2 feeds into number 3, which is confidence/fear, which is two sides of the same coin. So a lack of confidence is just quite often— it's either a lack of knowledge, you don't have enough or the right knowledge, or enough of the right knowledge, or there's just an underlying kind of fear, which also then feeds into number 4, which is money stories. So sometimes the lack of confidence and the fear We may have the time, we may have enough knowledge that we need to take one next step. Because we're always gonna be gathering more. This is the thing, like, it's not like our knowledge is stagnant. And sometimes our knowledge theory can only get us so far. And knowing something can only get us so far. We then have to do something to actually see what the result is. And not just what the tangible, like, money return result is. What the result is and how it feels in our bodies. Does it feel good to do this? Or are we more stressed now that we've done this? Then we're like, okay. 'All right, I know that I'm gonna start small with this. I'm not going to do any more now because I just don't like it. It just doesn't feel good for me right now.' That's not to say that you can't do it again in the future. Like, if share investing does make you too scared, like it feels like too much of a gamble and you want to stick with something else, then you can absolutely do that because it's your choice. You have agency to make those decisions and never feel pressured by anyone to do any specific thing. People can suggest something and they can provide guidance or advice, provided they're able to do so. Or they can give you their experiences, but that doesn't mean that you need to do the exact same thing or that you need to even take those opinions and advice and suggestions. So the confidence then comes from doing and comes from doing and seeing a result and then analyzing the result and going, okay, is this heading me towards what I want? Does it feel good? Am I getting what I wanted out of this? If the answer is yes, keep doing more of it. If it's not, then you go back and reassess, but you have more money, more knowledge then than you did previously because you've done something differently. So the fear starts to subside when you gain some confidence from taking that action. So for me, to be honest, actually putting it on an automatic investment, I was like, but what if I need that money? Like, I don't want to just like put that money like automatically have it gone every month and it's gone. Like, what if I need it? And so there's my, my, my like squirrelly acorns personality kicking in. But now I've been doing it for so long, it's just normal. To the point where the other day I looked and they took it out a day later than they normally do, and I was going, why is that money gone yet? Like, come on, take it, do the thing already, because now I need to know what I've got to work with for the, for the rest of the month. So now it's just, it's just a normal kind of state of affairs. I was like, I don't know why I was so sort of resistant to this for so long. So we all work at our own pace and Things aren't always logical, but that's okay as long as we're making progress and we're getting there and we're learning about ourselves and about what's going on around us. So that fear, yeah, it's a— it's an interesting thing. Fear is not logical. Sometimes when it's like, you know, human mortal fear, then it's a reaction. A lot of the fear that we experience in our daily lives, you know, we're in a very geopolitically stable environment here in Australia, which is— I'm very, very thankful and grateful for. So the fear that we tend to is more lifestyle kind of fears or, you know, the type of investments that we make, making the wrong decisions or taking the wrong actions. It tends to be those kinds of fears. And those are things that we can work on. That leads me to number 4 then, which is the money story. So quite often that fear then arises about the stories that we tell ourselves. We may have had someone who had about, like, for instance, in property, everyone's like, oh, property, it's the only pathway to wealth. I was like, well, I watched my dad lose money on property, struggle to pay off repayments and debt, sell property for less than he bought it, which sounds impossible now, but it did happen. Live through like 18% interest rates, whereas we're now sitting at about 6% or so. So it's— so of course I was then very resistant to the idea of property for a very long time, even to the point where I didn't even want to buy my own home. So I was like, well, it's cheaper and easier to rent, and then I have the flexibility of where I live, blah, blah, blah. And then after having my daughter, and you sort of tend to want to plant a few more roots then, and then go, I actually don't like the fact that this— somebody else can just come in and, you know, take a look around my home, take photographs, and tell me whether or not I can stay here. Because I did actually get I'm going to be dramatic here and say kicked out of a rental that I'd lived in for nearly 8 years because the property sold and the new owners wanted to move in. They didn't want it to be a rental property anymore. And that really shook me because I was like, oh my gosh, my home, I could not actually— I can't live here anymore, right? No, no, I want to buy my own home because that way it's mine and no one's going to kick me out. So, and especially like, I want my daughter to have a place to call home and play like a base. Anyway, so there's all this emotional stuff going on with it, which drove me to find a house and that we then, we then bought. And I'm so glad we did because the prices have really skyrocketed since then, even though I thought it was expensive at the time. So it's, it's a matter of trying not to be as reactive as that, although it was actually a good thing in retrospect. But the stories that we have, being aware of them and understanding what was driving me to not want to buy property was not wanting debt, watching my parents struggle to pay off debt over their lifetime and wanting to avoid that. And so avoiding something is not generally going to— there's red flags there, let's just say. So avoidant, any kind of avoidant behavior, like, oh, red flag, what's going on? Need to investigate this. And that's where the personal development journey comes in, because then you go, okay, I'm going to pause here, I'm going to look at this and go why, why am I doing this? Why am I reacting this way? If I didn't have this, would I have gone and bought property sooner? Quite possibly. Would it have been better for me financially? Quite possibly. But it's okay. I am where I am now. I'm not going to lament opportunities lost that weren't even particularly real. So we move forward. Learn from the past, but don't let it hold us hostage. So what kind of stories are holding you back right now from doing something, whether it's buying a home or buying an investment property, although the federal budget may have changed how you do that. Doesn't mean it stops you doing it. It might stop you how you do it though. And that's where you can talk to the professionals about that. Then there's the, that feeling of lack that goes with, and that, that relates to money stories. It can relate to knowledge. It can relate to all sorts of things, not thinking you have enough. And in some cases, if it's to do with a deposit on a property, it may not be enough. In which case, what do you need to do instead? So that, that feeling of lack is a, is a pivot point. And it may just be because at the moment things have gotten tough. There's less— perhaps you've got less sort of cash flow in your world and you're just feeling like you do not have enough. Like going to the grocery store might be stressful. And if that's the case, it's a matter of going, well, how— what, what kind of things can I do? Because it can keep us stuck in a point of where we feel like we've got no control and no ability to, to do anything. And that is terrifying. And you feel very hopeless in that case. So how do we try and get beyond And to be honest, sometimes we're so in it that it's hard to see any other opportunities, in which case have a chat to someone. If you're in sort of feeling it really, really intensely, there are financial counselors out there. Talk to somebody that you trust and you can ask for some questions, ask for some guidance. They might be able to see something that you can't. But if you're like in that like day-to-day, it's just feeling a bit of a struggle, but it's not dire, then I would suggest reassessing where the spending is, looking at ways that you can earn more income, do some microinvesting. That's one of the things that I still find people are just so surprised about is the power of it, because it's— it just seems so small, like, oh, how can a few cents and a few dollars here and there actually build? There was a lady at an event this morning and she'd signed up for a microinvesting app, I think it was 6 months ago, and she hadn't looked at it since. She'd connected her bank accounts and everything, and this was a Roundup kind of app. She opened it up today, she's like, oh, I've got $1,200 in there. Oh, well, there we go. It's like, see, that's $1,200 that you didn't even know that you had, that you haven't missed in, in your budget at all. That's just built because of rounding up and compounding and through investing. So it's, it's very— and I was quite surprised too because I looked at my investing app and it had jumped like $1,000 since I'd looked at it previously. I was like, oh, okay, this is pretty cool. And my daughter— I've got a sub-account for my daughter and it had about $200 or about probably about closer to $180 more than it had the last time I looked at it. I thought, huh, what a bonus, this is so nice. And then the, the mindset that you have around money starts to really shift when you see it's actually not that hard and it doesn't require a whole lot of money, it doesn't require a whole lot of time, it doesn't even require a huge amount of knowledge. It just— and then the confidence starts to build. So, and then your money stories get challenged, and before you know them, before you know it, you've debunked a lot of them without even really doing a whole lot of, you know, micro work on it. And so all of this really flows in together. So if you're looking at— I'm just going to re-go through those 5 things I spoke about of what's holding you back in relation to money: time or lack of time, knowledge or lack of knowledge or the right knowledge lack of confidence and the fear that goes with that, the money stories that you're holding on to, and then the feeling of lack around money, like not having enough. And so hopefully everything I've spoken about there, which all sort of ties in together, it's helped you question any one of those that you may have been relying on as a reason that things are holding you back from getting your money sorted. And that it sh— it doesn't need to be. Like, each one of those has an easy fix or a next step. If you want to know more or you want to have a bit more of a chat, I do offer free clarity chats. Sometimes it's literally a matter of just like saying something out loud to somebody else, bouncing it off, and then when as soon as you hear it, you're like, huh, okay I don't really think I believe that. I know I've thought I believed it, but I don't really now if I look at my behavior or my actions. And, or it could just be, oh, I'm planning to do this, what do you think? Does that sound like a good idea? Because I get asked that question quite a lot. I've been in rooms recently where there's a lot of women doing some really good things with money, but they're still not confident. They're just like, oh, well, I'm doing this and this and this. Is that, is that okay? I was like, that's amazing. That's so good. What, what, so what's holding you back? Why do you feel like you need some extra help with money? And then there's usually a few things that you can tweak here and there, and quite often it's the lifestyle area of it, and they want some structure and accountability around it. So that's sort of, that's then the optimizing piece that kind of comes where things can become easier and happen faster. But in terms of things that will hold you back from even getting started or progressing on this journey, I encourage you to challenge yourself on them because I can guarantee you, you'll be further ahead than you think you are and possibly even more capable than you're giving yourself credit for. So with that, a little bit of a, bit of a boost-up episode, this one. I will leave it there for you to have a bit of thinking time, maybe have a bit of quiet time after this episode to really sort of take all that in and consolidate it. And yeah, and I will catch you in next week's episode. Have a great week.
