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I am basically a finance guru

I am basically a finance guru. I’m not really, but I’ve been giving it a good hard crack over the last month. I mentioned few weeks ago I’d read The Barefoot Investor twice in two days. My husband was away camping so I had some time up my sleeve and this book had a hold on me. Where have I been?? Under a rock obviously.

So, over the last few weeks I have been busy changing EVERYTHING. I manage the money in our house so it’s always been left to me. I have never done a top job, but I’ve always done a pretty ok job. My husband deals with his business, and I do our home stuff. The reason my husband doesn’t ‘do’ money is because he still lives in 1985, and freaks out if he has to use an ATM or a PIN. Recently I managed to get him to use paywave so at this stage he can buy anything as long as it’s under $100. Ha! He’d much prefer cash because he has an irrational fear that his card won’t work for some reason!

Anyhoo…. have you read The Barefoot Investor? If so, then you’ve probably done what I’ve just done… Set up new bank accounts and your “buckets”?

Then I bet you checked your super, all your insurances, phone deals, energy deals etc?? I did! And boy what a task that was! BUT I managed to get pretty much every single thing reduced, or I just switched to something new. I did ring my husband after every single win and he was so pumped! He kept cheering me on.

I even made an excel spreadsheet of all of our ‘non-negotiables’ – these are the things that I cannot change (mortgage, insurances, health fund, school fees etc). Who am I??!! 😉

I didn’t follow every single either. I just took what I needed from the book. I was also particularly interested in some ideas for my boys when they start working. There were good tips.

It’s taken a good part of 4 weeks to get all these changes in place. I had to switch where wages were being paid, ring all the direct debit companies and change those. It also meant I had to change Medicare payments, Paypal, Afterpay, online Lotto.. so many things that I didn’t think of at the time.

But in doing all of that I really took stock of everything. I became so aware of where money was going and it felt bloody good. We just live like everyone else with a mortgage and normal bills. We don’t have credit cards or personal loans, but we don’t have massive savings either. That’s my goal – to get some good savings. That is HARD though when I am a freelancer and it comes in waves. I think about this allllllll the time. While freelance is good in some respects, sometimes I think I’d like a normal job to depend on the money (and not lose so much sleep haha). So I have really had to adjust that excel spreadsheet and my “buckets” to suit.

I will say that starting out 2018 with these new little money tricks thanks to a really simple book I read has been refreshing. Once I got started I was on a roll.