The last thing I learned, or perhaps am currently learning is managing a budget and progression of our collective household net worth.
I am an impulse shopper.
By god do I love the dopamine hit of something new. If it’s shoes or a handbag, we’re set for a good month or so before the novelty wears off.
However, for 2024 my first and main goal is to become financially free over the next ten years. My partner is a fly-in, fly-out worker who busts his ass to provide for our home. Currently he is working overseas and is gone for an offensive period of time when it comes to being in a relationship.
We don’t want him there until he’s sixty. I would love nothing more than for the man I want to spend forever with, to have the opportunity to retire at forty. He doesn’t have too and I highly doubt he will, how I will do everything in my power over the next decade to ensure he has that option.
Therefore, my impulse spending has to become a back burner vibe controlled by monthly budgeting.
I am spiritual, therefore I am consciously aware that money is energy, it is also psychological. The need to find dopamine in shopping comes from a childhood wound of not having anything growing up, at times not even base needs met. I had to learn to understand this about myself and equip myself with information and education to reach a space that I could overcome this obstacle and change my mentality around money.
It is a work in progress. I have come to space where I have been able to budget effectively and isolate my finances, organise a savings schedule and in all honesty, increase our net worth by Sixty Thousand Dollars in two months or so. This has taken huge commitment from not only my partner, but from me and holding myself accountable to our overall goal.
I want to share how I did this with a few pieces of self reflection advice below.
- Free financial literacy education
- Reading financial and budgeting books
- Setting up a very in depth budget and tracking it weekly
- Sharing my goals with my partner and celebrating our monthly wins
- Allocating as much as humanly possible to paying down debt, investing and saving
- Changing my mentality around what is classified as an investment
Some resources are included below if you would like to educate yourself as I currently am around money. I love this topic, I could talk about it all day. But I will stop here as this is a daily prompt and not a ‘Day in the Life’.. Please let me know if you source any of the resources below and find them even half as useful as I did on educating myself and pulling my head out of the sand.
Resources and links to access below.
- “She’s on the Money” Podcast – CLICK HERE
- All three of Victoria Devines ‘She’s on the Money’ books (links below)
- She’s on the Money
- Investing with She’s on the Money
- Property with She’s on the Money
- Budgeting Spreadsheet purchased from Etsy CLICK HERE
- “Atomic Habits” by James Clear CLICK HERE
Anyway. That’s me done with my random tidbits for a Thursday.
Sarah x
Things I learnt. 