Mindful spending choices you can make
Let’s explore how my husband and I made better money decisions to positively impact our financial health.
There is something impactful when you are able to share a personal experience. We acknowledge that everyone’s circumstances are different, however the following steps are intended to be an insight into the types of mindset changes that can be very influential in your life.
These are mindful spending choices you can also make with consistent effort and focus. (please note our disclaimer at the bottom of this article)
Within our website, we also talk about the mindset shift that occurred for us a few years ago. And also how adopting an abundance mindset drives positive outcomes in your life.
The first steps
We relocated to Sydney, Australia as a work transfer for my husband. Having been there a few months, we were considering buying an investment property – a challenge given Sydney real estate prices at the time.
We were both at the back end of our working life, so after more thought, we engaged a financial adviser (this is a highly recommended strategy). His knowledge and expertise gave us the confidence to understand we could make better money decisions.
Why use a financial adviser?
For starters, the initial advice received, meant not buying expensive property at inflated prices. Also it meant much less debt, with more flexible investment options as a result.
And basically, you need to get a clear picture in your head as to where your money goes weekly, fortnightly, monthly and beyond.
That picture for us came about as a result of discussions with our financial adviser, and our own “finance date nights”. We tended to go back over what we had been advised, in a more relaxed and personal space. It doesn’t sound like a romantic date does it? But gee it allowed us to made good sense of the advice we had been given.
This turned out to be quite a turning point for us. Our finance discussions showed us how we could potentially free up some funds for other investment platforms.
And that was the real start of our investment journey and financial mindshift change.
What finance experience did we have?
My husband and I had limited investment experience, but we have always shared an interest in learning how to invest.
We educated ourselves around “how to make your money work for you”. There are some good articles with guidelines on how to start on your own path to learning the same process.
One such article, suggested a number of key steps that created a very common sense way to improve your financial health.
We took very similar steps ourselves, to achieve the desired outcome of making our money work so much better for us.
It’s handy to note, that we didn’t jump straight into investing money.
We had to first understand more about our true financial health status, before we could start to make better money decisions. Almost like heading to a money doctor!
What were our initial steps?
– to find out where we spent our money (this helped identify areas of waste & frivolous spending habits)
– understanding what our spending priorities were or the “must haves”
– we avoided creating any extra bad debt. It’s important to understand the difference between good debt and bad debt
– make a plan how to use newly created savings (e.g. investing)
Ultimately, until we had an accurate picture of our financial position, it was potentially going to be a harder path towards creating increased financial health.
Why do you need that picture?
Simply because that financial picture allowed us to understand where we could save money. Then by creating a budget plan, we were on the way to tracking our spending. This process was the beginning of taking positive steps towards building an improved financial position.
Once you see you are in a strong financial position, you can then create your own abundance mindset – knowing you have enough for everything. You may surprise yourself and actually start that mindset change but it can take a little time to get used to this.
This can be a bit like taking exercise classes or going for a run – partner up with a friend for motivation and get that money energy and money muscle working!
After creating our steps that we outlined earlier, it was surprising what we learned about our spending pattern.
We focused on making better money decisions around our spending habits.
Let’s run the through our chosen ” how to make money work for you ” steps in more detail and discuss our actual results.
This may help you to further understand the impact you can have on your own money habits.
1. Find out where you spend your money
We took the time to clearly identify and list our weekly spending. This was a real eye opener for us! We were both working long hours in professional careers, and happily ate out at restaurants a couple of times per week.
Also visiting bars, buying good quality spirits and wines and generally having a great time.
It’s important to state that these types of Spending Choices are okay, if you have placed a specific personal value of using your money in this manner.
And to be honest, we have never regretted spending the money, but in hindsight now realise there were better value Spending Choices to be made. Our choices had a financial impact of up to $400 weekly!
Just think about that for a minute, before reading on further…..
2. Understanding your spending priorities.
The second step can be broken into NEEDS Vs WANTS. Having identified our pattern of spending, the next step was setting priorities or placing real value on our purchases.
And being realistic, some of our Spending Choices are common sense or NEEDS – groceries, fuel, health, clothes, car maintenance, etc.
But even then, you have influence over the amount of money required to be spent on these basic NEEDS.
Beyond these normal expenses are the WANTS, and here we made some significant changes to these types of expenses.
Simple decisions were made around restaurant eating – we made it a special occasion to enjoy a quality meal together once every few weeks.
Money saved around $120 weekly. Similarly with bar visits – these became an occasional treat, not an accepted weekend ritual.
Money saved around $100 weekly. Our take home alcohol purchases were also scaled down – money saved around $80 weekly.
Those initial steps created around $300 weekly, or nearly $16,000 yearly!
These savings were the direct result of making mindful spending choices and better money decisions .
We also reviewed our Spending Choices on clothing, and “nice to have” purchases like extra shoes, that latest t-shirt or pair of sunglasses. Money saved around $50 weekly by focusing on what we NEEDED VS WANTED.
Which brings us to the third step, which was all about our debt situation. And let’s be honest, most people are faced with debt in their lives. It’s a fact of life, but it doesn’t need to restrict your ability ability to maintain control of your financial health.
With our debit situation, we had to consider: How much we had – how much we needed – and what could we do about our debt levels.
Remember, we mentioned this topic earlier, and the importance of understanding the difference between good debt and bad debt.
3. Avoid creating extra bad debt
Put simply we had some GOOD DEBT, with an investment property in Brisbane. Long term quality tenants were in place, completely supporting our interest only investment loan. An added bonus was the fixed interest rate over 3 years.
Banks can tend to offer slightly higher interest rates for non-occupier properties, but as long as you correctly calculate the rental income versus outgoing costs, this is definitely a GOOD type of debt.
We had some BAD DEBT in the form of a car loan, which at the time was required for a reliable work vehicle.
Having said that, my husband made a vehicle choice that was also about fun and the enjoyment of driving long kilometres. So, at the time of purchase, we had placed a personal value on this car. However as our working situation changed, it was just BAD DEBT that needed to be serviced.
In addition, we had a credit card that serviced our spending monthly, with rewards and bonuses gained by the more money you spent. This can seem attractive at first.
However, unless you are prepared to consistently pay down this credit debt monthly, it can get very expensive via steep bank interest rates up to 21%.
(You can compare credit card interest rates and conditions here.)
4. The next steps we took?
Our investment property was retained, as that was clearly a GOOD debt situation. My husband’s vehicle was sold, and we agreed to have just one car to use. This was influenced by only one of us working, and that was from home.
We monitored our credit closely, with the outstanding balance being paid off each fortnight. This was done to ensure we did not incur any interest charges.
Another great step was changing our credit card structure to reduce the annual renewal costs being charged by the bank, for the so called “free bonuses and points.
Okay, so here’s where we hit another one of those “Spending Choices” moments. Having reviewed our financial health and reshaped our budget, we had some spare funds available.
From the above steps we had created an extra $350 per week. A great start!
What would YOU choose to do with that freshly created spare money? Take that long awaited overseas holiday, buy a new car or just hit the latest shopping sales?
If you need some guidance with your thoughts about money, our article on The Psychology of Money might just help. We are all human, with a number of our Life Choices being driven by our emotions and desires. So its easy to understand how our beliefs or thoughts can have a direct impact on money outcomes.
Consistently taking control of our Spending Choices, can provide very positive money outcomes.
How to use your excess money?
At the time we were looking to use our excess funds, banks were providing around 2% interest on savings accounts. So we didn’t consider that to be “making our money work for us”.
NOTE please refer to our information disclaimer at the bottom of this page – it applies to this and all articles
We understood that superannuation was a good investment option, and that we could salary sacrifice some additional wages to our funds and drive growth. In Australia, this occurs as a tax reduction arrangement via the Australian Taxation Office.
There are a number of learning resources available to understand this salary sacrifice option. Take some time to access these resources and seek out some financial advice if required. Only then decide if it suits your circumstances or stage in life.
It was a solid investment choice for us, and we sacrificed a percentage of the newly acquired savings.
Never stop learning
Other options were available for those excess funds – allowing more flexibility. This meant still having access to the money if required. Further education was required before making any long term decisions for our money.
Here are a couple of relatable Australian authors, writing great articles to help you start down your own education path – Captain FI and The Barefoot Investor.
We had a preference for a grass roots style of information, that was easy to understand and relate to.
We found these authors to be of great value, and continue to read and learn from them.
Remember that financial adviser we spoke about earlier? Well he recommended a series of investment styles that would diversify our use of excess money. It’s a strategy we knew about, but it was a great confirmation to understand we were making strong financial choices.
Remembering that everyone has an individual set of circumstances, what we suggest or describe in this article may not always be suitable. However, it definitely worked for us over several years, and set the foundations for improved growth in our financial health.
Ultimately, we diversified and invested money into a number of managed funds facilities.
This was a great way to use those excess funds we had released, and still have some access to the money for an emergency down the road. It is an important part of investing or saving – consider carefully if you can tie up the funds in the medium to longer term (5 – 10 years).
If you can, there is more chance of successful compounding growth.
If flexibility or some access to funds is required in the shorter term (1-5 years), this needs to be a part of your investment or savings structure.
Setting financial goals
For an increased chance of success in life – be it financial, health or career – you need to have a plan or set goals.
These goals will be different for each individual, and be influenced by a number of factors. We created a financial plan that would be realistic and achievable.
Understanding the factors that affect investment or saving options will guide you towards a clearer plan.
– amount of excess funds you have available (e.g. what money is left out of your budget?)
– the time available to invest is largely determined by your age and earnings timespan. This will potentially determine if your investment/savings plan is for the short, medium or long term
– risk profile or approach. Are you a higher risk speculator or more conservative?
– what is the purpose or attached value for these funds. Set an outcome to achieve.
– ease of access to the funds. Do you need flexibility to access the savings or are you happier locking them up for several years?
* Disclaimer – any information we provide is general information only and is not intended to be taken as formal or professional advice – what we write about is suited to our own personal circumstances and provided as general in nature. We always recommend seeking your own financial advice.
