How are Your Finances right now?
How are your Finances right now?
How are your finances right now?
Hhmm. What a confronting question! One that you may not fancy answering.
Are you comfortable with it or does it make you squirm? Does it make you
shiver, shake and want to hide those credit card statements? You know the one that shows the new pairs of shoes, then the second pair you bought because the first ones were so good.The bottles of wine (did you really buy that many?), the school fees, the kids uniforms, the soccer fees, the car rego, the house insurance, the car insurance, the medical insurance, the groceries, the mortgage repayments, the petrol costs…….Oh my goodness, no wonder we bought that wine!!!
Seriously, HOW do people do it? How do families keep up with their expenses. Can anyone really earn that much?? The cost of living is so high these days. I have three kids and my oldest turned 13 last week. Even at 13 they want it all. So many kids have I Phones, it seems nearly every kid at least has a mobile phone of some sort (whos paying their bills?), they want the best shoes, the label clothes (which they lose), the lap top, the Wii, the X box, the best skateboards, surfboards, bikes………………the list goes on. And we havnt even talked about the cost of educating them, sporting costs and food!
It blows my mind how families make do these days. Most families have two incomes and high mortgages. To me it seems essential to have in place some investment strategies to grow your money faster. It just isnt enough working for a wage without some other streams of income.
This week we spoke to Jodie McIver, a gorgeous Mum of two littlies and a highly respected financial adviser here in Australia. Jodie gave us some basic tips and information on how to be smart with your money. How to monitor your expenses, how to minimise them and how to get the whole family on a smart financial plan.It was great talking to Jodie and basically just keeping it simple. It doesnt always have to be complicated. Just starting with some basic strategies to get yourself and your whole family more aware of what you spend and formulate strategies to minimise this.
I’ve always been a saver. My twin sister has always been a shopper. This has clearly worked to my advantage over the years. Ros buys the latest fashions and lots of them, I’ve learnt to wait more to the end of the season when they’re reduced or better still when Ros is sick of them and hands them down to me!! Its saved me thousands of dollars over the years but sadly she’s onto me now. She’s not as keen to just give it all to me because she’s worked it out. Even the other day we took all 7 kids to Dreamworld. When we arrived they took some photos of us all which we could view later in the day. They were $15 each and although I loved them I didnt really want to spend alot more money. The day had already cost us over $500!! Ros ordered hers and then the man said that you can purchase copies for only $5 each. So guess what I did? Yep. I got the $5 ones!! Okay okay, I did give Ros some more money towards it but we both laughed at how typical it was of her and I. She spends and I save.
Which are you, a spender or a saver??
Hopefully after listening to Jodie this week we are all developing good habits of more saving and less spending.
Sue
July 17, 2010 8:45 am | 