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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
**Winner of the Book of the Year, Winner of the Personal Development Book of the Year and Finalist of the Finance and Investment Book of the Year at the Australian Business Book Awards 2022**
Learn how to get money, how to spend it and how to save it.
Does thinking about money make you feel overwhelmed, confused or anxious? That ends now. Join one of Australia’s most loved and respected economics journalists, Jessica Irvine, as she helps you strip away your negative money thoughts and teaches you the real meaning of money: how to get it, how to spend it and how to save it.
Whether you want to buy a home, retire comfortably, sleep well at night, leave a job you hate or borrow to build your wealth, learning to budget your money is the foundation of all good money decisions.
Money with Jess unpacks the unique and simple system Jess created for organising, tracking and investing her own money. You’ll also find:
- Over 300 genius hacks to help you boost your income, trim your spending and create the life you truly want.
- Effective strategies for coming to grips with your own spending habits
- A colorful system for personal finance that will keep you engaged and interested
Money doesn’t have to be intimidating. With Money with Jess, you can forget the fear and learn to make money decisions with confidence.
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Seitenzahl: 255
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
How I found financial freedom
Why I wrote this book
PART I: How to build a healthy money mindset
1 Identifying your money emotions
The emotions wheel
Where do emotions come from?
2 Seven money thoughts you need to ditch right now
Money myth #1
Money myth #2
Money myth #3
Money myth #4
Money myth #5
Money myth #6
Money myth #7
3 It's time to meet Future You …
4 The four steps to financial freedom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
PART II: How to create an annual budget
5 Why you need a budget
My quest to design the ultimate household budgeting system
6 My 10 budget categories explained
HOUSING Put a roof over your head
HOUSEHOLD Make your house a home
UTILITIES Connect your home to essential services
TRANSPORT Get from A to B
FOOD Nourish your body
HEALTH Prevent and cure illness
EDUCATION Acquire knowledge to boost future income
APPEARANCE Influence how other people see you
LIFESTYLE Have fun!
PROFESSIONAL FEES Pay people to help you
7 Create your very own budget
Money in: what is your income?
Money out: what are your expenses?
What's left? Are you in surplus or deficit?
PART III: How to maintain your budget
8 Track your spending
How to use the Spending Tracker
Why I track using pen and paper
9 Set up Future Funds
How to use the Future Fund worksheets
How to create your Future Funds
How to maintain your Future Funds
10 Check in with your budget each month
How to use the Monthly Budget worksheet
11 Q&A with Jess
12 Next steps
Staying on track
A final note
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Begin Reading
A final note
Index
End User License Agreement
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First published in 2022 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064Office also in Melbourne
© Jessica Irvine 2022
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
ISBN: 978‐0‐730‐39823‐3
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.
Cover design by WileyAuthor photos: © Louie DouvisCover background image: © silverpak/ShutterstockTitle hand lettering image: © very‐very/ShutterstockLightbulb image: © Dashk/stock.adobe.comArrow image and notebook image: © Anatoliy Babiy/iStockHighlighter image: © OpenClipart‐Vectors from Pixabay.
Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
How to get immediate help
If you are in financial distress, call the National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007 on weekdays between 9.30 am and 4.30 pm (Australia only).
An army of trained financial counsellors is standing by to help you negotiate with creditors (people you owe money to) and to help get you back on financial track.
It's a completely free, independent and confidential service funded by the government and delivered by not‐for‐profit organisations in your state.
You can also access a ‘live chat’ feature on their website: ndh.org.au.
How to access my free resources
Throughout this book, I refer to many worksheets I have created to help you get started on your budgeting journey. All the resources I refer to are available to download for free from my website: jessicairvine.com.au.
Check it out and get downloading today!
For Henry xx
Introduction
Hello friends!
My name is Jess and I'm good at money. Like, really good.
It's taken a long time for me to be able to say that with confidence — partly because it wasn't always true.
Shortly after I divorced in my mid‐30s, a colleague suggested I write a book titled A Man Is Not a Financial Plan about how to manage your finances as a single parent. Trouble was, I didn't know how.
Which is a bit embarrassing, really, given I've now been working as a high‐profile economics and finance journalist for some of Australia's most prestigious newspapers for the better part of two decades.
I have a university degree in economics and philosophy. It's my job to regularly pass judgement on how the nation's treasurer is managing the country's budget. I've reported on 18 annual federal budgets so far (not counting the ‘bonus’ emergency budgets and stimulus packages during the Global Financial Crisis and COVID‐19).
I've interviewed prime ministers on live TV, enjoyed private one‐on‐one lunches with Reserve Bank governors and I regularly text and speak with treasury secretaries, both past and present.
‘I've been to budgeting nerd paradise' — as the 1970s chanteuse Charlene once famously (almost) sang — but I'd never, until quite recently, taken a very serious look at my own personal finances.
It's not that I was ever particularly bad at money, depending on your definition of this. I've never had a credit card I couldn't pay off in full each month to avoid paying interest. And I've always paid my bills on time.
But, wow, have I spent a lot of money during my 40 years on this earth!
As my career blossomed in my late 20s and early 30s, I thought nothing of dropping $400 on a new designer suit jacket, a meal at a posh restaurant or a night at a fancy hotel.
I remember spending about that much to have my childhood copy of The Lord of the Rings rebound in an expensive, fabric‐clad hard cover by a specialist antique book store.
Pretty cool, right?
But then, one day, you find yourself pushing 40 as a divorced single mum who doesn't own a home, has never invested in shares or property and has no idea if she's on course for a comfortable retirement.
I'm the classic example of someone who knows a lot about something in theory, but was pretty crap at applying it in practice.
Looking back, I can see that at the time of my colleague's book‐writing suggestion, I was still drowning in deep shame and sadness at the failure of my marriage and my single parenthood.
But, as the dust began to settle on my new life, I did start to slowly pick myself up and put my financial life together — perhaps for the first time.
I bought my first home as a single mum aged 38 (I share all my best hacks for navigating that gruelling process in chapter 6 — stay tuned!).
At about that time, I began writing a weekly personal finance column for the ‘Money’ sections of the Sunday Age and Sun Herald newspapers. In it, I finally began applying all the economic theory I had learned to overhauling my real‐life finances — and sharing all the gory details with readers.
My Instagram account, @moneywithjess, began to grow rapidly and I pitched the idea of a weekly email newsletter of the same name — Money with Jess — to share the results of my one‐woman mission to budget, save and invest.
You name a crazy money‐saving experiment, I've tried it!
I once kept a spreadsheet to calculate the precise cost of every meal I cooked for one week to figure out a realistic food budget (it worked out about $85 per week for me and my son). I used another spreadsheet to tally the cost of buying the same basket of groceries from two different supermarkets to find out which was cheaper (spoiler alert: Aldi).
I kept a handwritten tally on a sticky note stuck to a bottle of dishwashing powder to figure out the per‐wash cost and whether it is cheaper than using tablets (it is, mostly because you can just use less detergent).
I didn't buy any clothes for an entire year. I cut my own hair. I gave up getting blonde foils (you can just see the remnant of my former colour on the tips of my hair in the cover photo for this book).
I began meticulously tracking my spending and in one article published the details of every single dollar I spent in one financial year (I know you'll want to know: it was $88 379.84 in 2020–21).
Bigger picture: I embarked on an epic hunt for the best mortgage deal, locking in my interest rate in for two years at 1.84 per cent and scoring a $4000 ‘cash back’ for my efforts.
I began making regular voluntary contributions to my retirement savings account.
And finally, in May 2021, I did something I had never previously dreamed of. I began investing directly in the share market for the first time — something I continue to do on a regular monthly basis and will tell you about in chapter 10.
How I found financial freedom
Underpinning all my progress, I believe, is a budgeting system I created to sort, organise and track my money: the system this book is ultimately designed to teach you to use yourself.
I've divided this book into three parts that roughly correlate to the personal journey I've been on with my money.
Part I is all about getting you in the right ‘money mindset’ to succeed. I share some of the details of my own therapy journey, where I learned about the critical role of emotions and thoughts in ultimately driving your behaviours and outcomes. Getting into a healthy ‘money mindset’ requires ridding yourself of some unhelpful beliefs you've probably picked up about money, namely that it's too boring or too complex. To assist, I've outlined seven ‘money myths’ you'll need to ditch.
In part II, we put together an annual budget to show you where your money is going. Whether it's planning for retirement, applying for a loan or deciding what size emergency fund you need, having an idea of your individual spending is critical.
When I first attempted to do this for myself, I quickly realised how useful it would be to have a comprehensive checklist to work through of all the things people can spend money on.
Being the self‐confessed ‘numbers nerd’ that I am, I began trawling through statistical surveys of household expenditure from Australia and other advanced nations — a search that would lead me all the way to the United Nations — to find the ultimate budget categories system.
None suited my purposes, however. So I decided to create my own. In chapter 6, I run you through what I believe to be a complete checklist of all the purchases you will ever make in life, sorted neatly into my unique 10 budget categories.
Dog treats, garden hoses, charity donations — I know where they all go! I truly believe I have identified every possible expense you need to consider when putting together a household budget. I found the process so satisfying and I hope you do too.
Of course, once you begin to become aware of where all your money is going, you'll want to begin trimming and saving where you can. So I've sprinkled part II of this book with over 300 money‐saving hacks to help you (you'll find them in green boxes throughout). You're so welcome!
Finally, part III of this book is all about the system I personally use to regularly budget and track my money. It contains information about how to access and use all my free, downloadable resources, including my Annual Budget worksheet, Spending Tracker, Monthly Budget worksheet and Future Fund worksheet. I am regularly asked to explain how they all work, so this has been my chance to explain in full!
Why I wrote this book
My deepest desire is that the information you're about to read will help alleviate some of the suffering so many people feel when they think about money. Undeniably, many people suffer real, actual financial deprivation, unable to make ends meet on meagre incomes, with severe repercussions for their mental and even physical health and wellbeing.
But I'm also talking about a different kind of suffering — one that is perhaps even more widespread.
It's the suffering people endure when they simply don't feel in control of the money they do have; when they lack the confidence to make empowered decisions about money on a daily basis, let alone save for their future selves.
Studies have shown that, beyond a certain point, a person's level of income is a much less important driver of their wellbeing than the sense that they have of being in control of their financial situation.
For two decades, the authors of the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index survey have asked Australians to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied they are with their life. Their clear conclusion is that it's not money, per se, but ‘financial control’ that matters most. ‘People with lower income can actually achieve higher wellbeing than those on higher incomes, so long as they have a higher perceived control over their financial position’, the study authors conclude.
Indeed, financial control forms one part of a ‘golden triangle of happiness’ that predominantly determines our wellbeing, alongside ‘personal relationships’ and a ‘sense of purpose’.
As I sit down to write this introduction, I feel quite emotional at how far I've come. And because I'm a big fan of giving precise labels to emotions — as you'll soon discover — specifically, I feel proud, hopeful and optimistic for both myself and for you, as you embark on your own budgeting journey.
From a place of fear and despair, I have arrived at a sense of calm and joy when it comes to managing my money.
On a daily basis, I spend my money with confidence, and in ways that align with my own personal values and desires. When I say ‘yes’ to spending, it's a ‘hell yes’. I cherish the things I buy because I have done the inner work to know what really does — or does not — bring me pleasure. And I don't waste money on the latter.
It is my deepest desire to share with you the same sense of peace and calm I now feel when I look at my finances. I want you to know it's possible to have a happier and more stress‐free relationship with your money.
One last thing before we begin.
I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge what I feel is an elephant in the room.
You've seen the cover of this book. I don't look like your typical personal finance expert. I'm not particularly old. And I'm not a man (although, if you want to see a fun picture of what that would look like, you can quickly flick to page 35). I think it's useful to share that writing this book has been one of the greatest challenges of my life. In addition to the usual struggles of writing a book, I've faced an uphill battle against ‘imposter syndrome’: an uncomfortable feeling of ‘Who am I to be telling people what to do with their money?’
Despite almost two decades of writing about economics and finance, I have still, at times, struggled internally to picture myself as a person who can and should sit down and write an authoritative book about money — one that both men and women can benefit from reading. It's hard to be what you don't often see.
Because, unlike my colleague's original suggestion, this is not a book aimed specifically at women. Yes, I am a woman. And yes, ladies, that retirement savings gap is very real. And yes, as it turns out, a man is not a financial plan.
But I hate the way personal finance books and advice are universally clad in ‘pink’ to target women and ‘blue’ for men (something my publisher can affirm, after all the grief I gave over wanting a ‘gender‐neutral’ cover and design for this book: ‘Too girly; try again!’ was my repeated refrain).
If you've got a head and a heart, and some money to manage, you will benefit from reading this book. It's taken me considerable internal effort to arrive at a place where I can say that with confidence. But it's true. So, I'll say it again:
My name is Jess and I'm good at money. Bloody good, in fact.
And you can be, too.
I know, because I'm about to show you how.
Let's get started, shall we?
PART IHow to build a healthy money mindset
Before we get to the action parts of this book, where we organise your money and figure out where you want it to go, we need to stop for a hot minute and figure out how you currently think and feel about money.
In my career as a finance journalist, I've observed the way lots of people — such as readers, editors, fellow journalists, politicians and voters — think about money.
Overwhelmingly, I see people stuck in a pattern of thinking money is just too complex — too overwhelming — to understand. It's also common to believe that money is boring (this one hurts my soul!) or that it's just the case that some people suck at money.
The good news is that if you're one of those people who believe these things, honey, you're wrong. Don't feel too bad about it. An entire financial system exists that profits from your overwhelm. To fight it, you need to learn to manage your thoughts and emotions about money, which is what we're about to do now.
Perhaps some of us pop out of the womb knowing how to make good money decisions. But, believe me, most of us don't. The ability to manage money is a skillset that needs to be learned.
Unfortunately, many of us miss the memo and by the time we're old enough to control our money, we're already trapped in a toxic relationship with it.
We turn a blind eye to our overall financial position. We spend up big to calm our inner storms. We stick our heads in the sand and just hope our money problems will figure themselves out, one day. So much mental distress is caused this way and so much of it could be avoided, I believe, if we just took some time to really stare our money in the face. That's what this whole book is about.
But before we start looking at your personal money situation, I want to spend part I of this book really getting to the bottom of all the unhealthy attitudes towards money you may have unconsciously internalised — and then to help liberate you from them.
I'll teach you how to become a mini emotions detective, able to root out all the feelings you feel when you think about money. We'll then trace the origin of these emotions back to the thoughts you're having about money. And then, we'll replace those old thoughts with some more helpful ones.
Be warned: it might take some time and effort to really rid yourself of these unhelpful beliefs about money. But you'll feel so much better when you do, I promise!
It's never too late to start reframing your thoughts and feelings around money. So let's get into it.
1Identifying your money emotions
I want you to start by really focusing on that word for a moment: MONEY.
Say it out loud with me: ‘MONEY’.
Or, if you're in a public place (and you haven't already embarrassed yourself), just really stare at that word on the page for moment: MONEY.
What emotion do you feel in your body when you see that word or hear it spoken?
MONEY
MONEY
MONEY
Don't worry. If you're anything like I was, you may struggle with this exercise.
I've been seeing a psychologist on and off for about half a decade now. These days, I usually enjoy our sessions — they're like a workout for my brain.
Most of my very early sessions, however, consisted of my kindly therapist bookending everything I said with the question, ‘And how did that make you feel?’ and me just shuffling uncomfortably in my seat and staring back somewhat blankly.
After one particularly difficult session, that dreaded question came up again: ‘How did that make you feel, Jess?’
‘Analytical’, I replied, adding, ‘Is analytical a feeling?’
‘No, Jess’, came the reply, ‘analytical is pretty much the opposite of a feeling’.
Oh.
It wasn't until one day when my therapist actually provided me with a potentially relevant word to describe my emotion that I began to connect the dots.
Truth is, unless you've been taught how, it can be difficult to recognise what emotion, or what combination of emotions (there can be many!) you are feeling at any point in time.
Yet it is so very important. Because emotions drive our behaviours; and it's our behaviours that produce our outcomes.
Now, I can almost hear you thinking, ‘But Jess, I am a very evolved person. I always put reason ahead of passion. I am not driven by my emotions!’
To which I say, ‘Bless you, dear reader. Yes, you are. You just don't realise it — yet'.
Despite our protestations to the contrary, so many of us these days exist in a perpetual state of emotional arousal. I used to have just one blanket word to describe how I was feeling: ‘stressed’.
When you are ‘stressed’ you spend quite a bit of time — and money — running around trying to distract yourself from that sensation with alcohol, comfort food, internet dating — or whatever your distraction of choice is. Been there, tried that.
The emotions wheel
Until you do the work to identify and label the root emotions you are actually feeling — sadness, fear, loneliness — you're really just running on a treadmill (and not the good kind that gets you fit!).
I don't think I deliberately set out to suppress my emotions. Well, not entirely. I think I just genuinely lacked a sufficiently rich vocabulary to describe the feelings I was experiencing in my body.
Realising this, my therapist quickly supplied me with a so‐called ‘feelings wheel’ or ‘emotions wheel’ to help me when I got stuck.
There are lots of different versions of this on the internet, the origin of which is contested. On the next page you will find one version that I like.
As you can see, in the centre of the wheel sit six core human emotional states: happy, sad, disgust, anger, fear and surprise. Psychologists disagree about which ones should occupy the central space, but these will do for our purposes.
Fanning out from the centre, you see ever more nuanced words to describe subsets of the core emotions. Let your eye roam over the middle and outer circles for a moment. Do you just feel sad? Or do you also feel despair or powerless? Do you feel just fearful, or also anxious and overwhelmed?
The reality is, you can feel multiple emotions, from different slices of the wheel, all at the same time.
These days, I keep a wheel just like this plastered in the front of every journal I write in. I refer to it regularly to help me identify my emotional state. I sometimes make it a personal challenge to name as many relevant emotions as I can!
I have found this simple act of naming my emotions to be an incredibly powerful tool for helping to dissipate the very emotions I'm feeling.
‘But Jess, what's all this got to do with money? I've read several pages of your book now and I still don't feel rich. What gives?'
Okay, let me come to the point.
I want you to now look at the emotions wheel and identify exactly which words apply to you when you think about money — either your own personal financial circumstances or the notion of money in general. You can circle the words on the page, or write a list in a separate notebook. Try not to judge yourself — nobody is watching. Just try to name as many relevant emotions as you can.
Here are a few of the very common ones people gravitate to:
scared
overwhelmed
anxious
worried
aversion
ashamed
powerless
despair
guilty
judgemental
hesitant
apathetic
inferior.
In your body, you might feel some of these emotions as a tightness in your chest, a clenched jawline or hunched shoulders.
If that's you, take another moment right now to just breathe for a second. Go on. Deep breath in … and out.
Relax your shoulders away from your ears; now your jaw, letting your tongue drop away from the roof your mouth.
There, isn't that better?
Go on, take another deep breath on me. They're completely free, I promise.
Now I want you to know that all these feelings you feel about money are very common and very normal. I have felt them too.
But what if I told you there was also another way to feel about money?
What if I told you it is possible, instead, to feel peaceful, hopeful, optimistic, courageous, confident, proud and liberated?
Sound too good to be true?
It's not. These are words I now feel when I think about money. I know others feel them too.
It turns out we can alter the emotions we feel about something. And in chapter 2, we're going to work through transforming the emotions you feel about your money.
But we have to do some more detective work first.
Where do emotions come from?
You see, emotions don't just arise out of nowhere. They are the body's and mind's reaction to the world around us and — even more explicitly — the thoughts and beliefs that we have about that world.
These can be thoughts you aren't even consciously aware of; they're just thoughts swimming in the social soup you've been fed all your life from society, governments, media, your family and friends.
Often we're not even aware we're having a specific thought. Sometimes, we're just having so many thoughts in such rapid succession, it's too hard to pinpoint one in particular.
But I promise you, if you are having a strong emotion, it is being driven by a thought you are also having.
Luckily, there is an ingenious way to identify thoughts and distinguish them from emotions.
Emotions can be summarised in one word — for example, ‘fear’, ‘joy’ or ‘sadness’.
Thoughts, by contrast, come in sentence form — for example, ‘I am going to fail the test’; ‘Nobody likes me’; ‘I will never be able to own a home’.
Logic decrees that there can only be so many words to describe emotions, which is why it's often easier to try identifying them before thoughts.
Thoughts — comprising of a string of words — exist in almost infinitely more variety, so catching yourself in the process of having a specific thought can be very difficult. But necessary if you want to be able to choose to think another thought that could, in turn, drive a different — perhaps more pleasurable — emotional state.
Because here's the thing. Thoughts are not facts.
