Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
156. Flourish Blueprint explained - Your Budget Called; It Wants A Date Night
Ever feel like life keeps bumping along on a jagged wheel—good career, shaky health, no time for friends, and money always tight? We unpack a practical way to smooth the ride by pairing the Wheel of Life with the Wheel of Wealth, showing how small, planned moves can unlock time, reduce stress, and fund what matters most. Instead of chasing motivation, we map honest scores across career, health, fitness, fun, community, family, friends, love, and learning, then turn those insights into non‑negotiable diary “rocks” that actually happen.
From there, we zoom into money as seven relationships: receiving income from assets, active vs passive earning, conscious spending, saving for named goals, giving with intention, and steady growth through learning. You’ll hear how active earning often blocks rest and recreation, why passive income and side projects can create breathing space, and how to direct cash toward priorities like a weekly date night or a basic gym plan without derailing the budget. The guiding principle is simple and liberating: every rand needs a plan. When each rand has a job, impulse fades, goals get funded, and your calendar reflects your values.
We keep it practical with examples you can copy this week: set three immovable health sessions, budget a modest monthly braai to nurture friendships, allocate a course fee and study hour to boost earning power, and start a small “fun and recreation” pot so joy isn’t an afterthought. The goal isn’t a perfect circle; it’s a wheel smooth enough to roll. Subscribe for more real‑world money tips, share this with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a quick review telling us which spoke you’ll improve first.
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Hello everybody, welcome to Know Your Money. I'm Bronwan Wayner.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast.
SPEAKER_02:Hello, everybody. Today we want to continue on about what the Flourish Blueprint is. And one of the first steps that we go through or that I start with a client is they do an exercise where they do their wheel of wealth and their wheel of life. So they always start with the wheel of life first because for me, money impacts every single one of these areas. So, Craig, you have been an avid user of the wheel of life for how many years?
SPEAKER_00:Over 20 years.
SPEAKER_02:So maybe if you can just describe to our clients what each of these spokes kind of work, what they mean, and as they're listening, they can maybe jot down where they're at and do a little bit of the process.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So I need my glasses, yeah. So you draw the wheel and you segment it like a pizza.
SPEAKER_02:We'll also have a copy of that on our website. So you can download it.
SPEAKER_00:So then you you take, okay, I'll just take a couple of things here. Take money in finances, for example, and in the middle is naught, and the top is ten. And you say, Well, how is my money in finances? Not so great, so it's a number four. So you plot number four. Career and work is obviously what you do every day, what company you go to. Am I happy at my company? Do you think I need to leave, go somewhere else? What's the career opportunities? Oh no, it's it's actually fantastic. I'm on the right path, so I give myself a nine there. And then my health, how's my health? Am I going to gym? Am I eating properly? What do I do every day? Is my health important? Of course it is. I'm not so good. I'm number two, I'm a three there. My fitness, it's also a bit of the same as health, overall health, or my fitness. I'm eating well, but I'm not going to gym, so I'm a number two there. Fun and recreation. So, what do I do on the weekend? Do I see my friends? Do I go for walks? Do I play some sport? Once again, that the environment, where am I living? Am I happy where I where am I in the neighborhood where I'm living? Am I happy there? Do I need to move somewhere else? Is it a noisy flat that I want to go to, some quiet part? And you put in note notes really good. I've got great neighbours, so I'll put myself an eight. Community will go hand in hand with that as well. It's a great community. We all share ideas. If there's a problem in the neighborhood, we all get together, we've got a WhatsApp group. We need to find so the communities also very important where you live. Family, yeah, it goes without saying, it can be your obviously your immediate family, your children, your wife, your husband, spouse, whatever, and it can be your extended family, your cousins, etc. My friends, and that's also important. Do I have friends? Do I want to have friends? Do I cultivate friends? Do I look after my friends? It takes effort to keep friends. Do I phone them sometimes? Do I invite them for a bri? We am on the friends. Yeah, I'm not so bad. I'm a number seven on the friends. And as the wheel starts, you've got all this jaggedy scenario. Everybody wants to have a complete like a wheel, but this won't look like a wheel at all. And my partner in love, obviously, what how's my relationship with my partner and how that do we respect each other? Do we find time for each other, etc.? And growth and learning is obviously you're trying to especially work-wise, or even yourself personally. Do you go on courses to make yourself better? Do you in work? Do they say okay, you've got a course you can go to, you can be better at what you do, how you're doing on that. Company offers it, offers it, I take it up. So this whole wheel is is a complete wheel where you're trying to get to the a proper wheel that goes like a wheel down the road, but you're gonna have all these jagged areas on it. And let's say fitness is your one, and fitness and health is a problem, then okay, maybe I need to go and see somebody first of all join the gym, find a person who can help me put a program together, go to somebody who can help me with an eating plan, and then you start working on those areas and put in your diary and say, okay, well, the person told me I need to go three times a week to gym, so I put that in my diary. So now I've got every afternoon, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I go to the gym for an hour, and that's in my diary. That's a rock, it's not negotiable. It's back to your holidays. That's a holiday, that's not negotiable. I need to spend time with my wife, we need to have date night. We go to movies every Thursday night, that's in the diary, not negotiable. If a friend phones you and says, We're going to do going to the pub and have a few drinks and play snooker, whatever. No, sorry, that's that's date night mouth, my wife. So you take each area that you should be working on, all of them, but maybe the ones that you really need to work on, put that in your diary, and once again, a successful life is a progression of successful days.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:No, you're gonna chat about the wheel.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, so finances in practice that is all. Can I have the book, please? In practice, that is so true. But what I found when I first started doing the wheel of life is like, okay, but I don't have time for that. Like, I don't have time for fitness. I've got two young kids, how am I supposed to get to the gym? Or um friendships. Okay, that means that we potentially need to go out. I don't have money for that, so how am I supposed to do that? So I think where people sometimes get stuck on the wheel of life is that time and money thing. And that's why I created the wheel of wealth. Because if you can focus on being intentional and understand your wealth, the wheel of life becomes a piece of cake because you have that extra money to go to the dietitian to help you with that. You have the time to go spend in your community or to go do the fun and recreation. If you don't have a handle on your finances, none of these things can sometimes change. So I won't go through all of the wheel of um wealth, but what it is pretty much is the seven relationships with money, which we have done some episodes on. So, first of all is receiving. So, have you got those investments where you are now receiving an income from it, from a rental property, from your investments that you've done? Where are you at with that kind of way of earning money? Because if you're not there at all or don't plan to ever be there, you're never going to have time because you have to keep working. So it's just understanding that, receiving from others. Then I also break down earning into two parts so active earning and passive earning. Often people don't have time because they are actively earning, meaning they're in a job that's nine to five, they never take holidays, so they can't do the fun and recreation. Okay, so number one, yes, actually use your leave days, but how do you fund those leave days if you're living paycheck to paycheck? Maybe you can do some passive earning, maybe you can start something on the side to give you additional money. Maybe you can look at your spending and try and be more conscious about that. Maybe you can see how much you give. Is there something that needs to change there? Are you keeping money aside so that you can go on those holidays? Are you saving towards specific goals? Are you growing and are you conscious about your spending? So I would then take a climb through the wheel of wealth and see all the different areas and kind of just that just doing that creates such awareness to go, okay, well, now I can't do the fun and recreation because I'm never keeping any money. How do we change that? How do we focus on that?
SPEAKER_00:That's amazing because if you don't put it in place, you won't do it. So that that other money will just disappear. So if you allocate it to those areas, it's amazing how that'll build up and you will have money for most of the things in life.
SPEAKER_02:Completely. And my rule is that every RAN needs to have a plan. That's okay. Because if you don't give it a plan, it will just disappear and it will go to amazing how that happens.
SPEAKER_00:Just disappear.
SPEAKER_02:So that's one of the first steps of the blueprint. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's great. Flourish blueprint. Yes. And the wheels. Thank you, Brian.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00:See you next week.
SPEAKER_02:See you next week.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, would like to subscribe, please visit our website www.growth.fp.co.za. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.