Wonder Woman's Guide to Money

The Busy Woman's Guide to Money Management and Wealth Building

Natasha Janssens

• Publisher: Grammar Factory Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780648244295
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Finance

How confident are you when it comes to managing your finances?
Do you have a clearly defined goal and a plan mapped out to get you there?
Or are you so busy with life’s day-to-day activities that your finances are left on autopilot?

If making financial decisions leaves you feeling overwhelmed, you are not alone. In fact, research has found that women are not as confident as men when it comes to managing finances, regardless of their actual financial literacy!

If you wish you could be better with your money but just don’t seem to have the time, this book is for you. Written by a working mum of two, Wonder Woman’s Guide to Money will give you the tools you need to take control of your financial future, including:

• How to break out of the debt spiral and get better at saving
• The secret to becoming mortgage-free and building equity
• The key to growing your money the safe way
• The lowdown on offset accounts, life insurance and wills
• The four steps to getting on top of your super
• The simple backup plan to safeguard your future
• Bonus resources to help put your newfound knowledge into action
• And much more!

Part One:

Laying the
Foundations

CHAPTER ONE:

Reject Old Paradigms

To change something about your life for the better, you need to change something you are currently doing. In other words, you need to create a paradigm shift. A paradigm is a set of ideas, assumptions and values used to view something in a particular way.

When you operate from a particular paradigm, it means that you have certain beliefs or assumptions about the way things are and the way you need to behave. You may also believe that unless you do these things, you won’t get the desired result.

In this chapter, I’ll identify a couple of paradigms or belief systems that are common among women, and explain how these can cloud your vision when it comes to money management and wealth building. Then, I’ll share some proven tips and strategies to help you reject these paradigms and create new ones.

Paradigm 1: I’m Not Good with Money

In my experience, a very common paradigm or belief among women is that they simply aren’t any good with money. And this belief is present regardless of their age, career or social status. Very often I hear statements like: ‘I’m no good with numbers,’ ‘I love to spend,’ and so on.

For a long time, I struggled to understand where these limiting beliefs were coming from. It wasn’t until I started paying closer attention to the language we use around children – and the different language we use around girls versus boys – that I began to understand the problem.

Let me give you an example. The other day, I was attending a mothers’ group catch-up. I went to pay for my coffee with my eight-month-old baby, Emma, on my hip. She was playing with my wallet, prompting the lovely man at the counter to say, ‘Oh, you will be good at spending your parents’ money! Girls are good at that. I should know – I have two of them.’

Now, obviously he didn’t mean anything by it. But these sorts of remarks have been said to Emma (or to me about Emma) many times, by people of both genders and from different generations. But here’s the thing: No one ever said this to my son, not even at that age.

When Nicholas was about two years old, he absolutely loved ‘helping’ me pay for things at the supermarket with payWave. When it was time to pay for the groceries, he would pass my credit card over the EFTPOS machine with a big grin on his face.

No one ever commented that he would grow up to be a big spender. In fact, the comments were focused on how cute he was, how quickly kids grow up (look, he already knows how to use EFTPOS!) and what a good helper he was. Yet, the message I regularly hear with Emma is: ‘Girls are great at spending.’

Just as many of us will instinctively offer a girl a doll to play with, or a toy kitchen set, whereas boys will often be handed toy cars and tools, so too it seems we have different messages for them about money.

If we are to be successful in achieving full equality for women – including bridging the gender pay gap and the super gap, converting the cost of childcare from being a women’s problem to a parents’ problem, and boosting women’s confidence with regard to financial literacy – then we must change the messaging we give to young girls (and boys) about money, and the behaviour we role model for them.

If you find yourself thinking you are ‘no good with money’, that you can’t understand tax or investing, or that you struggle with other money matters, I really encourage you to pause for a moment and think about where this belief comes from. The thing about beliefs is that they become self-fulfilling prophecies – what you believe influences what you think, and what you think affects what you do.

Paradigm 2: I Don’t Have Time

As women, the second paradigm we tend to operate from – and, as a result, our first priority above all else – is the belief that it’s our responsibility to look after the household. In doing so, we tend to place everyone else’s needs before our own. The end result is that we carry an increasingly heavy mental load, which becomes even worse once you introduce kids into the equation.

The mental load refers to the seemingly never-ending to-do list we face with regard to work and social schedules, domestic chores and childcare activities. Research has shown that the responsibility of completing this to-do list falls disproportionally to women. A couple of years ago, an illustration by a French cartoonist made headlines because it resonated so strongly with women around the world. Titled ‘You should have asked’, it depicts the mental load and the household challenges faced by women on a daily basis, even those with a supportive partner.

While I don’t disagree with the depiction, I can’t help but feel like the comic not only gave women across the world validation for their struggles, it also gave us an excuse. And it is one I hear often: ‘I have all this other stuff on my plate, so how can I possibly find the time to learn about money?’

You simply can’t afford to think this way.

It’s not the load that breaks you down,
it’s the way you carry it.

LENA HORNE

While it is real, the mental load is not what is stopping you from getting ahead – be it in life, your career or financially. What is stopping you is your decision to let it get in the way.

For the remainder of this chapter, I want to share with you how I, and plenty of other women, have freed up time in our schedules by overcoming the instinct to micromanage everything and everyone around us. Be warned: In order to do this, you may need to change your attitude towards household tasks and parenting duties.

I’ll show you how to push past the mental load, how to avoid stereotypical gender roles, and how to make time for the things that truly matter (like managing your money). As the saying goes, what got you here won’t get you there, so unless you address the stories and habits that have been getting in your way, you will struggle to create real change in your life.

My ‘Aha!’ Moment

A few years ago, I found myself feeling overwhelmed by my to-do list, so much so that I didn’t know what to do first. My son was eighteen months old, I was trying to get my business off the ground, and it felt like one step forward, two steps back. I would just start making progress on my workload, only for childcare to call and say my son had developed a high temperature and had to go home. Cue me finishing work early to look after him.

Both my husband and I are self-employed, but as his business is more established, I was acutely aware that if he didn’t work our cash flow would suffer an immediate impact. So, my instinct was to prioritise his time over my own (yes, I made the classic mistake of not valuing my own contribution). In essence, this decision meant that I was trying to be a present parent, run my business and take care of the household all at the same time.

One day, I finally had a wakeup call.

I was trying to arrange a catch-up with an old friend visiting from interstate, and so I looked at our family calendar on my phone. Much to my surprise, I found my husband had a heap of fun activities already scheduled in – for months in advance! There were football games, the latest Star Wars movie premiere, Sunday cycling sessions to train for L’Etape Australia and so on.

At first I was furious. Here I was, working around the clock and looking after our son, with barely enough time to shower uninterrupted. Meanwhile, he had all these events scheduled for himself.

And then it hit me – what he is doing is healthy! It is good for his physical and emotional health, it is good for our marriage, and it sets a good example for our kids. I shouldn’t be annoyed with him for doing it. On the contrary, I should be taking a leaf out of his book and doing the same! After all, unless we make time for the stuff that matters, it will never happen!

The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.

STEPHEN COVEY

For months I had been saying to myself and my family, ‘I don’t have time for X right now. Work is so busy. But in just a few more weeks, once all this stuff is done, I will have time then.’ Months would pass and I would still be saying the same thing! The faster I got through my to-do list, the more work would pile on! What I needed to do was accept the reality that life will never get less busy (at least not for the next ten or twenty years!) and instead find a way to make it work.

I’m not the only woman who, after years of struggling to bear the load, had an ‘aha!’ moment like this. In the following case study, mother-of-two Amanda explains what led her to take a more active, empowered approach to her finances and parenting responsibilities.

CASE STUDY: AMANDA’S STORY

By the second half of 2017, I was drowning. I’d recently returned to full-time work and was still battling postnatal depression after the birth of my almost two-year-old daughter. Being a single parent of two little girls – and paying for childcare and a mortgage, and all the other necessities of life – was draining my finances. I was only making it worse by overspending and putting my head in the sand about the state of my credit card debt.

I had convinced myself that there was no way to get off the treadmill I was on, because every bit of my time and energy went into my job and my children. There was nothing left over to manage my money or earn more. Everything came to a head in early 2018 when my elder daughter started preschool. I grew up with a mum who stayed at home and was there after school, and suddenly I realised I wanted some of that for my own daughters.

And that became my motivation to change my situation. Finding a way to have a better lifestyle for me and my children, and being the kind of parent that I wanted to be, gave me the push I needed to really examine what was going on in my life and what needed to change. I signed up to Natasha’s money boot camp and started taking an active role in managing my money again. By spending an hour less on my phone every day, checking social media and reading things I didn’t really care about, I had a handle on where all my money was going.

Then I had an epiphany. I could start a business and scale it slowly over time, with the goal of eventually stepping away from my nine-to-five job. And a funny thing happened. Because I had a plan and knew what I wanted to achieve, I found the time to make it happen. I launched my copywriting and editing business, and in the first...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Plight of the Modern-Day Wonder Woman
• Part One: Laying the Foundations
• Part Two: Building Your Dream Life
• Part Three: Protecting Your Plans
• Conclusion: Following Through on Your Financial Plan
• About the Author