Being good with money comes with a lot of advantages. For one, you’re not a nervous wreck for literally most of your waking life, which can be quite a nice change of pace, from what I hear!
Up until very recently, I was not someone who was ‘good’ with money, why, certain folks would even go so far as to call me ‘bad’ with money. Like my accountant — quite the negative nancy that one — always saying things like: “You need to get on top of your spending” and “surely you don’t need another life-size cut-out of Tom Cruise”.
Let’s just say he was right about one thing. And so, get on top of my spending I did. Now, I shall pass my sacred knowledge on to you. And if I can be better with money, literally anyone can. Lets goooo.
Make keeping track easy
Okay so, I don’t understand how Excel spreadsheets work. They’re alien tech sent down here to confuse us mere hominids, methinks. One thing I do understand, however, is apps.
Well, some of them. There are plenty of apps out there that will help you keep track of all the money that’s coming out of your account and going straight into the greedy pockets of those pesky life-size celebrity cut-out merchants (they know you can’t stop at one).
If you’re with CommBank, you can use their handy Spend Tracker feature, which breaks down your spending, so you can see what, where and how much you’ve spent across a day, a week, a month, or well, you get the point. Which is nice, as your habits are all wrapped up in a neat little package!
Communicate
This one is important because, most of the time, your budget doesn’t just affect you. You may have a partner, family commitments, perhaps you live with housemates — that last one especially is a big factor. There can sometimes be a stigma around talking about money with housemates.
It’s important that everyone in the household has a rough idea of what everyone’s budget looks like, so there’s no unnecessary pressure or conflict arising from people’s budget disparity. It’s really not fun when your trust fund housemate insists on splitting a Fendi Casa couch when you’ve been eating 2 Minute Noodles all week.
List ya bills
Once upon a time, if you asked me things like: “Hey dude, when’s your next phone bill due?” I would’ve answered things like: “Who are you?” and “how did you get in my bed?”.
But these days, I’d simply answer with: “Why, March the third, my good man!” — that’s because I took the time to first find out where the heck all my money is going every month, and then write down when all those pesky bills are due. While quite the headache initially, this proves quite the stress-saver in the long run.
One thing I only recently found out about is — you guessed it — another CommBank feature. This one’s called Bill Sense, and it basically predicts upcoming bills for you, so you don’t have to suffer from bill shock, or go through all the effort of writing all that stuff down. Fun!
Maybe cut down on the smashed avo?
Lmao can you imagine?
