Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
108. Mastering Financial Well-being and Personal Growth Through Conscious Spending
Unlock the secrets to mastering both your financial and personal well-being with insights from Craig Finch and Bronwyn Waner. Craig shares his tried-and-true approach to maintaining health through daily goals in stretching, weight training, and hydration, acknowledging the challenge of staying consistent. Meanwhile, Bronwyn introduces the game-changing concept of a "conscious spending plan," a fresh take on managing finances that shifts away from the typical reactive budgeting approach. Together, they highlight the power of authenticity and self-awareness in achieving a balanced and fulfilling life.
Ever wondered how to shape a positive money mindset that can be passed down to future generations? Our conversation delves into the impact of language on children's financial perceptions, advocating for an approach that fosters hope rather than scarcity. From practical strategies to teaching money management through the "seven relationships with money" to embracing the present moment with gratitude, this episode offers a treasure trove of wisdom. Join us as we explore how to live authentically and make the most of each day, while aligning financial goals with genuine happiness and long-term well-being.
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Welcome to Know your Money, where we will explore our relationship with money and how the psychology of it impacts our financial decisions, as everyone thinks about money differently. In our podcast, we'll be presenting a variety of financial topics in an easy to understand way, which we hope will assist you with managing your money.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Craig Finch, co-owner of Growth Financial Planning, an independent financial planning practice, and I've been a financial planner since 1986.
Speaker 1:Hi everybody. I'm Bronwyn Wehner, co -owner of Growth Financial Planning. I'm a certified financial planner and our philosophy at our company is to grow yourself to grow your wealth.
Speaker 3:Hi everyone. My name is Warren Grimsley. I'm a director at Rogue Media and help facilitate this wonderful podcast. My main goal here is to try and understand what these two lovely people are saying, so that we can all understand Mike Williams. Back again Another Monday. What a pleasure, what an honor, absolutely.
Speaker 4:Well, for me too, I feel very privileged to be here in the company, beautiful company. So there's a wonderful quote from Ari Kev, who was a New York psychiatrist, and the quote is brilliant is a successful life, is a succession of successful days, very powerful. When we arrived here, craig, you said to me you're doing the mastery, the success habits, yes, and you said, oh, that's difficult.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult. Why? What are?
Speaker 1:the success habits. Can you elaborate?
Speaker 2:In your diary. You put the rocks in your diary. So let's just take health. If you find it in your wheel, you've got to work on your health. If you find it in your wheel, you've got to work on your health. So you identify the fact that you need to stretch. So I've got that as a goal. I need to go and do some weight training, because the older you get, you need to have some upper body or some weights trained, because the muscles start disappearing. And then I need to do some aerobic. So walk 5Ks a day. Then written down, I need to drink two liters of water a day and then eat correctly, and I've got an eating plan At the end of the day.
Speaker 2:So I write it in my success habits as those are five key things that I need to do every day. Or maybe not every day, Maybe on a Thursday I don't do it because I've got another golf session on the go, so it depends on. And then at the end of the day I've got a tick off that I drank two liters of water, that I did go stretch, I went to gym, I walked my 5Ks, but boy, that's every day and there's a lot of times where you can not do it. It's so easy not to do it and you don't even know you're not doing it. But now, because I've put in my diary this list of everything, of those key things that I have to do in my personal life, and I've got to tick them off At the end of the day, I find it very difficult to keep consistency going.
Speaker 4:But the other thing that's very confronting about doing something like that is you start to realize how inconsistent you are Absolutely. And I have clients who say to me no, I'm pretty good with Jim, and one of the things that I always do with my clients is confront them with are you bulldusting me or is this the truth? And I'll say to them let's phone, you know Virgin, and they will send you if you request it. How many times did I swipe my card in the last six months? Yeah, he says okay, very hesitantly. So we phone, they email. How many times he swiped the card?
Speaker 4:And when he sees it, he says no, there's something wrong with their computers, because now the bullshit story about now I'm pretty good with gym is now very apparent in black and white. So the beauty of that success habit sheet is to now kind of put your money where your mouth is.
Speaker 4:To become conscious About all the things that you said you would do and it's such a powerful thing to do and you know, if you're one of those authentic, genuine, sincere people, you love that because you want to see where you're dropping the ball you know we talk about. There's the person you think you are. There's the person you want others to think you are. There's the person you really are and there's the person you want to become. I find most people are hooked up on the first two. They think they are good with Jim or they want others to think they are good with Jim, but they're not and they're quite happy to live their lives like that. But somebody who's authentic about their lives doesn't want to live that way.
Speaker 1:I think also the term is somebody that is conscious about their lives, so actually looking at it and seeing it. You know, in our financial planning instead of budgeting we have a conscious spending plan. So budgeting you always do it at the end of the month of what you have spent. You're not actually being conscious about it. Conscious is looking at it in the beginning. Conscious about it, conscious is looking at it in the beginning understanding it and then being authentic and true with yourself.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and the budget is a very good example, because if you don't stick to that budget, you're going to have financial problems.
Speaker 4:But I don't think people can stick to a budget necessarily if they're not conscious Financial problems means that the kids can't continue to go to the private school or we can't go on that holiday or whatever it is. So the budget is quite a serious thing. It has a very negative connotation a budget but the purpose behind a budget is to curtail the unnecessary spending, wasting money on things that aren't important and if you had, it would help.
Speaker 2:Which you have and you've got a plan to help people with that.
Speaker 3:Stop them spending in areas that I need to. When I think of budgeting right, I try and make it as fruitful as possible. So why am I doing this? Well, I'm doing this because I know if I overspend this month, it's going to create stress and anxiety for me. It's going to create problems in my marriage because there's no money and we can't do the things that we thought we were going to do or want to do. So if I have intention in the way I spend my money, I'm going to alleviate future anxiety, fear and anything else that comes with it. So there's an intention as to why I spend the way I do.
Speaker 1:Intention and authenticness. Mark is saying when you're authentic.
Speaker 4:But that's why, when you sit with the whole family and you do a budget, the kids understand why we're not going to movies like we used to, or we're not having those pizzas every night or whatever it is. And I just want to give you this wonderful example, which was on the other thing, but this might be a good time to do it. I've got a client, zax, and he gave me this story. In fact, in the conference room, he shared this in front of everybody and he was saying that he was sitting in the lounge, you know, reading an article, magazine, whatever it is, and he could hear his six-year-old daughter talking to mother in the kitchen okay, helping his mother, the mother prepare the meal, the dinner.
Speaker 4:And he heard his daughter asking for money for something for school and his mother. The mother said to the daughter no, I don't have the money. I can't help you, but go and ask your father. And his daughter said but he never has money. You know we were talking about the environment that you grow up in. There's no money, there's no money. There's a better way of saying it and I'm not going to go into it. I've got a whole bunch of sentences you can say to your children when they're asking for things, because when you keep saying to them there's no money, there's no money, we don't have money. They grow up with a poverty class and it affects their life later on.
Speaker 1:So what could you say instead?
Speaker 4:Well, you know, money is a very important resource. I mean, you'd speak to whatever level they're at. Resource might be a big word for them, but it's a very valuable resource and we need to use it wisely. So, right now, the way that we budget because you were with us when we did a budget thing it's not in the budget right now. It will be because we'll discuss it next month and we'll make sure that you're going to be able to get whatever it is, but don't say we don't have money.
Speaker 3:Funny. You say that that's exactly what I had to say to my wife last night.
Speaker 3:So I've got some work lined up with Jamiroquai to do a tour in the UK and Europe. And so as soon as she heard that she, and so as soon as she heard that she went well, how much are you going to earn? I said, well, it's going to be this much. And her eyes lit up she goes well, can we do this, this and this? And I went well, can we discuss it when we get there? Because I don't know what the months before that will hold. I'm self-employed. So when it comes to talking to her about money, I often will have to say look, we're weathering a storm right now as I'm setting up a new business and doing less of the touring, so it's not affordable now, but everything can be affordable if we allow the breathing room now for us to build. And so that's that idea of what you were saying. It's not in the budget now, but it can be.
Speaker 4:And I think that makes it feel better. It gives hope as well. There's no money, we don't have money, you can't afford it. You know like when you at the supermarket and you hear a mother saying to her child there's no money, we don't have the money, or whatever it is, that's a very negative way of doing it.
Speaker 1:You know what we do with our kids. So in our practice we have the seven relationships that you have with money. So there's two making it and there's five spending it. So whenever I give my kids their pocket money, their pocket money breaks up into five areas. So the one area is you can spend that right now, today. The other area is you've got to keep that to last for the rest of the month, so that you can buy it at any stage. And the other one is you've got to save that. So what do you want to buy at the end of the year? Some big thing, because for them a year is quite long. What do you want to give? So, do you want to give this to a charity? Do you want to buy your friend an ice cream? What is it? And then the last one is what do you want to buy your friend an ice cream? What is it? And then the last one is what do you want to grow so that they learn that there's relationships and things with money at all different times?
Speaker 4:Now that's brilliant, bronwyn, because you're teaching your children the value of money and how to manage it and use it wisely In different ways. The way I grew up, what was said so many times is you think money grows on trees of money and how to manage it and use it wisely In different ways, the way I grew up what was said so many times is you think money?
Speaker 2:grows on trees. It was a favorite one.
Speaker 1:yeah, I really do.
Speaker 4:It served me so well. Brian does believe it. You know you can just pick a couple of things, a couple of dollars, whatever, but it will come. So yeah, I think you know the success habits, or the successful life is a session of successful days. I changed it slightly and I said a happy life is a progression of happy days. I prefer that philosophy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, what's your metric for success If happiness is your?
Speaker 4:metric. Yeah, yeah, and so that's the quote that I came up with, but I like, for the average person out there, the Ari Kiv one seems to make more sense to them.
Speaker 2:But every day counts, and that's the important.
Speaker 4:Well, that's what we've got to realize, because remember that when you visit the future, what has happened in your marriage, in your health, in your wealth, you know how much money have you saved, how much have you invested or whatever the case might be, because we always talk about those four things your earning goals, saving goals, investment goals and financial freedom goals. Is that what you were looking for earlier on? Yeah, yes, okay, you said three and I was trying to figure out.
Speaker 4:It's four yeah, okay, so the earning goals is very important, you know, to actually visualize yourself making that extra income and knowing what you need to do to do that, yeah, and then how you're going to save it and then putting overalls on those savings so that it's earning. You know it's not sitting lazily in the bank but it's earning something. You know. At 15% it would double every 4.9 years and 30% it would do this, that and the other. So, but what has transpired? What have you achieved?
Speaker 1:That's a very important question what are the goals you set last year and have they come to flourishing?
Speaker 4:And then the Arikiv quote becomes very powerful. So what is a successful day, or days? Because when you visit the future, it makes sense out of the present. But, if you haven't visited the future, then today I can screw it up. I can waste it, which is what most people do.
Speaker 2:They just absolutely waste it and you'll end up at the end of 2025 and you look back and you've achieved nothing, because your days have been….
Speaker 4:And so year after year, I mean, I'm working with people in-house, with companies and their employees, and they don't have great attitudes about life and money and whatever it is. You're probably below average people sometimes in that they have negative attitudes, negative behavior, all those different things, and you're trying to change that. So when they visit the end of 2025 and then they look back at today, they realize I've got to change my mindset, I've got to change my behavior, I've got to treat my colleagues different, I've got to treat my customers different. Because now, if I look at that future that I want, if I continue like I am now, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:So what you're saying is that future is dependent on the actions that you take today, and Craig says that you have an awesome way of doing that by doing the ideal week. So in our next episode, do you think you would be open?
Speaker 4:to sharing that with us. Yeah, I'm going to talk very specifically.
Speaker 1:I think that would help.
Speaker 4:Because I'm neurotic about that in my own life. Awesome.
Speaker 1:Can't wait to hear so now. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4:Thanks, mark, thank you. Can I say one last thing? Sure, always Okay, I can go on for hours, actually, in fact, in these sessions I realize how much stuff I've got. But anyway, the point is this, though, that tunnel vision is a virtue. You know a lot of people are very negative about tunnel vision, but in this case, tunnel vision is a virtue, because now, each day, you know again, going back to the manana and the free beer tomorrow is that tomorrow never comes. It never comes. You can never be in tomorrow. It's impossible. And yesterday it spilled milk. It's gone, it's over, it's done. There's nothing you can do. All you own is today, like now. You're going to play golf a little later. I don't know what you're going to be doing. I don't know what you're going to be doing.
Speaker 1:I don't know what you're going to be doing.
Speaker 4:I know what I'm going to be doing. But you know, today is rich with so much opportunity if you clear on what today really means.
Speaker 1:Well, that's why they call it the present. Yes, because it is a present it is Beautiful, so thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mark. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast and would like to subscribe, please visit our website wwwgrowthfpcoza. Information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.