Episode 2. Everyday money

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This podcast is for education and entertainment purposes. It's not financial advice and doesn't take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. You should consider if the information in this podcast is appropriate for you and contact a professional financial adviser. If you are seeking financial advice, hello and welcome to episode two of our Women's Financial Empowerment Podcast series from Health Professionals Bank.

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It's where we take a deep dive into practical ways women can build their financial wellbeing and score some big financial goals. But before we get started, we'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

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I'm your host, Nicole Banks, and today will be looking at everyday money management. So that means budgeting, saving and spending. Some things that I'm good at, some things I'm very good at, and all the everyday stuff, which really is a foundation stone for a more stable financial future. So we'll be speaking about really simple steps for making a budget.

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Something that I absolutely need to get better at. How to set up a savings plan so it becomes a habit. Building an emergency fund. That's something a lot of people don't think about doing, and that's really about how we achieve some of our bigger savings goals and how different sorts of savings accounts can help. And we'll touch on super, which is savings for your retirement.

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So episode seven in this podcast series covers women and super will get stuck into super in a lot more detail in that episode. So be sure to listen to that one too. And joining me today is Betsy Scott, my co-host for this series, Heartbreak. Hello. She's a financial wellbeing coach with qualifications in financial advice, home lending and money coaching.

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Her biggest wish is that every Australian enjoys financial well-being. The more knowledge we can have around managing money, the better choices we can make to live a happy and independent life. So, Betsy, a really quick question to explain this to listeners. What do you mean when you say financial well-being for women? Yeah, so there's three things that I point to that make up financial well-being.

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So the first one is can you cover your everyday expenses? The second is do you have some money set aside for a financial safety net to get you out of a tight spot to be your financial cushion? And then the third component is are you able to put money away toward those longer term goals, Whether that might be buying a home education or just taking a lovely holiday and giving yourself a well-earned break.

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And so if you can say yes to those three things, then can regulations, my friend, you have financial wellbeing. Well done. If you can say yes to one or two, that's okay. But what that tells you is there's some things that you need to be working on in order to improve your financial wellbeing. And let me tell you, having those three things in place is such an asset.

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It really helps you feel confident around your life and your future, like you can handle any unexpected surprise in life. And I have leant on these three components of financial well-being so much in my life, particularly that emergency fund that you mentioned earlier. You know, just one example was I was I was working in a row and the I loved the job, but the culture of that workplace was not a healthy one.

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And it was really affecting my sleep, my wellbeing, my my physical health, so much so that it almost felt impossible to look for a new job whilst keeping that job. And because I had emergency savings, I had the confidence and the security to know that I could resign from that job. Take a little break, recover a little bit, and then get back to looking for a new job, feeling well and confident again.

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And it was because I had that financial security that I could put myself first and really prioritise my wellbeing. So that's the benefit of practicing financial wellbeing. I love that and I think that's a situation that many of us can relate to, but we don't think about using our savings goals to actually plan for unexpected life. Moments like that.

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It's usually the washing machine breaking down or something worse. So I'm really interested in getting stuck into this topic today. But I think you've you've touched on something really interesting for me, this idea that everyday money management is actually your first step to getting better financially. I think we often think about the big goals as the things that we need to set, but it's the everyday that really matters.

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Absolutely. I'll financial wellbeing is an accumulation of everyday habit. So it's, it's those small little things that you do consistently that really add up to having that financial fitness, little bit like health and wellbeing. You know, if you if you eat one salad, that's probably not going to help you. Now your financial goals, if you do one workout, it's about consistently practicing small, healthy money steps to create that long term financial wellbeing.

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So yes, I love it. I've got to add it to my gym routine as well, my financial routine. So every day money management is important for everyone. Health professionals face some particular issues. Working shifts can mean your income varies from week to week and the unusual hours that a lot of nurses work can really make it harder to find the time just to sit down and draw up a budget or even make a savings plan, or basically just do any of those little things that can help us improve our financial wellbeing.

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Thanks, Betty. And after this break, we'll be tackling that first step to better financial wellbeing. Betty will tell us about the steps you take to make a budget and the online tools you can use to make it really easy. So let's talk about budgeting. It's arguably the most important skill we can have when it comes to managing our money, but one that I think a lot of people don't really understand as well as they may be, could definitely.

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A good budget lays the foundation for good financial health. So you work hard for your money, so you want to be making sure that you make the most of it. You want to have a plan on how you're going to spend it, how you're going to save, what you're going to invest in. And let me tell you, if you don't have a plan for your money, someone else will have a plan for your money, and it's probably for you to spend it.

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So a budget which sometimes I like to call a spending plan, it's essentially a tool to help you do all of that. And again, it's really important for women, particularly if you're working casually or working part time, where your income can fluctuate to have a really sound plan around how you're going to spend that money and how you're going to spread out the income, you do have to cover those little breaks and interruptions from your income.

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So investing time into setting out your budget, it's absolutely going to be beneficial and help you. It's going to help you get a clear picture of your current finances. It'll help you to identify where you might need to reprioritise or cut back potentially on on some of your spending. It can help you work out how much you have available to set aside for savings, and then it gives you something that you can use to track and monitor and see how your you're going with your budget every every week.

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So tell us a little bit more about that, Betsy. What are the basic steps when sitting on a budget or a spending plan? So you, first of all, need to know what money is coming in and what money is going out. What's your income and expenses for a given period? Let's use the time frame of a month and it's really important that you're actually honest and quite accurate.

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Let me tells you see, people lie on a budget that they create. I would say I'm going to say underestimate and I say it all the time. I think pretty much 98% of my clients underestimate where they're spending. And look, and it's normal. There's no need to feel embarrassed. It's it's really common for us to do it, particularly because we don't always see our money.

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We're not handing out cash. It's kind of tap, tap and go. So it's easy for the money to to lose track of what's going on. So this is why it's a good idea to look at at least three months of your income and expenses to get a really good overview of what's going on. One month I'm sorry, it's not going to cut it.

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And the reason being is that not all of our expenses are recurring. Some months we have a holiday or a big event. On other months we have quarterly expenses coming through or an annual expense coming through. So at a minimum three months of of spending and income analysis, if you can push it to 12 Goldstar for you, that is that is the gold standard, let's say.

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So what things should I include? What kind of annual expenses should include for annual expenses like car rego, school fees, holidays, Christmas? That's one that always catches people out, even though it comes around every year. And then take that annual expense and break it up into a monthly amount. So you're slowly contributing and setting money aside for that expense.

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That's not such a big shock or a big hit to the budget. Now, once you've done all of this, you need to determine, do I have a surplus or a deficit in my budget, which basically means is there money left over at the end of the month or am I running out of cash? Now if you if you have a surplus, perfect.

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This is money that you can then contribute to savings or whatever goals you might have in place if you have a deficit. Okay, not ideal. There's a little bit of work to be done and that's where you might look at where can I reprioritise, cut back on some of my spending or how might I earn some additional income to cover the gap there?

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Basically, your two options spend less and more. And then once you have all this information, you can begin to categorize your expenses to kind of see where your money's going and find places to save. So I like to categorize mine based on what are the fixed and the recurring expenses like bills and utilities and subscriptions, things that I can really anticipate.

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And then I also like to categorize them by the more variable expenses. Those tend to be eating out groceries, gifts, self-care, all those sorts of things. With all of this, you can actually make a spending plan, meaning that when the money comes in, you're allocating money toward those different categories and making sure your, as I like to call it financially adulting, you're covering your expenses, you're getting those savings done.

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And if you want to save money, which we're going to get into in our next episode, I would suggest, including the amount that you want to save in your budget as an expense, making it a non-negotiable, just like a bill. It has to happen every pay cycle. I call this paying yourself first because you do the work you earn the money.

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You should get some too. And that's that's putting savings aside and contributing to your future. By doing all of this, you see exactly how much do you have left to spend instead of just saving whatever's left at the end of the month. And that's what's going to accelerate how quickly you achieve your goals. And remember, don't forget to budget the fun in.

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It's important to still have fun. Any budget that excludes a little bit of fun, a little bit of discretionary spending doesn't have enough fat in it, so to speak, is not realistic. It's not sustainable. You're going to fall off the bandwagon and then you going to feel bad about yourself. We don't want that. So make sure you're really realistic with your budget plan for fun and enjoyment and a little bit of flex because that's going to help you be successful.

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Now, I do have to ask you about this because the hot topic at the moment is cost of living and people feeling like they the struggling to make some of those decisions. So how do you do that? How do you how do you pay yourself first and how do you give yourself the opportunity for some of those niceties when every little dollar counts for some people?

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So you've got to remember that your budget is a living, breathing document. It's something that you should be coming back to and checking regularly, particularly as the cost of living goes up. That way you can sort of quickly identify when an expenses change. Let's talk about maybe home loans, for example. If an interest rates rise, your home loan repayment goes up and that can help you then go, okay, it's not negotiable that I pay my home loan, basically.

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So where are the other areas where I can reprioritise money? And it might be that you simply renegotiate another bill and make sure you're getting a better deal. Or instead of eating out three times a week, you reduce that to two and you look for an alternative that's less expensive but just as fun. So making sure that you're regularly engaging in that budget is what's going to enable you to continue living your good life whilst accommodating those increasing expenses.

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It's the information is power. I love that. That's really good advice. So I might be cheeky and jump in here and add that if you've never done this before or you want a bit of help putting a budget together, Health Professionals Bank actually has an online budgeting tool that includes all the things that Betty's just mentioned. If it's what you're after, it's free to use and you can really help kick start your own budget.

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So just type in budget plan into the search bar on the Health Professionals Bank website and you'll be taken straight through to that. We'll also be speaking briefly about some other resources you can use to manage your money at the end of this episode. So please stick around for that. Thanks, Nicole. I am actually a huge fan of making the most of online budgeting tools.

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It's a lot easier than going to your classic Excel spreadsheet and having to start from scratch. Use technology, use these apps to help you and take out some of the heavy lifting so you get it done quicker and probably more holistically and delivering a better outcome than if you just do it yourself. So make the most of those tools and resources is my is my advice.

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Thank you. I think it becomes a lot less intimidating to So now, Betsy, you've done a great job explaining about doing a budget. When we come back after the break, let's look at the other essentials for managing money savings.

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Welcome back. Today we're diving into everyday money management for women. We've covered how to set up a budget and now we're looking at another essential area with financial well-being coach Betsy Westcott. So, Betsy, why are saving so crucial for financial well-being? Well, earlier in the episode, we defined the three components of financial well-being. The one was meeting your everyday expenses, and that's where our budget comes in.

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But for two and three, it was around having money set aside to withstand a financial shock and then money going towards your long term goals. And this is where your savings come in. Step one is that financial cushion. And then step two is actually not spending everything you earn and setting money aside, contributing towards those long term goals, which is going to take you from just earning money and saving to creating long term wealth, which is really the ultimate goal.

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So the first thing you need to do is actually set some goals around your savings. Why are you putting money away? And I see this all the time with clients. Well, they'll tell me that their goal is to save some more money this year. But like how much? By when? What for? Is a dollar enough? You need to get specific and really create some smart goals here.

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Now, hopefully everyone's heard about smart goals, but let's recap on them just in case. So a goal that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. So let's bring this to life with an example. A great initial goal would be to build up some emergency savings. This is going to be your financial safety net. I like to call it my financial equivalent of that ride or Die friend to get you out of that.

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Now, if you if you don't have any emergency savings right now, just building up a little buffer of $1,000 is a great place to start. If you really want to go the gold standard of financial circles, we say it should be around 3 to 6 months of your living expenses set aside in a in a savings account as as your sort of target amount.

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Now, that's just one example of a goal you might have. What I find really beneficial is when you're mapping out your goals, identify if it's a short term goal, say something that you want to achieve in the next 1 to 3 years. A medium term goal, which is typically something that you want to achieve in the next 4 to 6 years or a long term goal, something that's seven plus years away.

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So a short term goal might be saving up for a holiday or buying a new car, something medium term might be saving up that home deposit because let's be honest, that's a bit of a marathon these days. And then a long term goal might be around education and or upgrading homes, renovations or even something like your ultimate retirement strategy.

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Now, being able to identify these is short, medium or long term is really important because it will help you determine what strategy, what savings strategy is going to match your goal, because particularly for short term goals, we will use savings as the strategy to get there. But if it's a longer term goal, you might actually use a strategy like investing and contributing to an investment as a way to get you to that goal quicker.

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So all these little points of information in your smart goal will help you take it from just being a goal to helping you develop a strategy to go with that goal and giving you a game plan to get you there. Now there's different types of savings accounts that might be appropriate for your your long term or short term savings goals.

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So whenever you're selecting an account, you want to be making sure that you're avoiding things like fees, because that's going to be taking money away from your goal. And then you also want to look at the features of that account to make sure it's appropriate for the goal that you have in mind. So is it just a account that offers a short term introductory rate, meaning that you're earning a high interest for a short period of time before it drops down to a base rate?

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Or is it something that offers bonus interest when you do something like save extra money for it? And really matching those features to your savings strategy is going to be really beneficial. Other longer term goals, you might be looking at things like your term deposit or investment funds as ways to get that. So again, matching your goal, the timeframe to your strategy is really important and if you're not sure how to do this, that's always a great thing to get some advice from a suitably qualified professional like a financial advisor to help you navigate that, because it can sometimes feel really complex.

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There's different offers out there, there's different set ups, different accounts. Sometimes it's really hard to navigate and work through. I think also there are times where those conditions on account feel really scary, but what you're saying is that they can actually work to your benefit as long as you're matching the right accounts to the right goal. Yes, absolutely.

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That couldn't have said it better myself. Now, saving money for women can sometimes be a little bit harder, particularly in the fact that there's the prevalence of what we call the pink tax. Now, if you've never heard of that before, you haven't heard of the pink tag. it's a it's a pest, actually. So now the pink text basically refers to this phenomenon where products targeted at women are, on average, more expensive than the equivalent product aimed at women.

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So, for example, women pay about 13% more for personal care products than men do. So I don't know what it is about making a raise it pink, but suddenly it's more expensive. So things like soaps, lotions, raises, deodorants are typically much more expensive when they're targeted at women. Then when the targeted at the boys. And then there's products that we have to buy that men don't have to buy.

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So things like tampons and other sanitary products, these add up to thousands of dollars over a lifetime. And they're just expenses that that men don't have. And of course, we've talked about it before, but there's that gender pay gap, which means we're earning less on average. So for women, it's really important that we're intentional around our spending and our savings.

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If we're going to achieve these goals, we do have to pay a little bit more attention to make sure that we are actively contributing to them to nail their financial goals that we have. And a couple of the episodes past, we did talk about the fact that so many women aren't necessarily getting paid as you reference that with the gender pay gap, but also part time working non paid work in the home, a whole range of things that end up impacting the way that women can spend and save.

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So these become even more important for women. Absolutely. I will use myself as a little example, but I knew that at some point in my career I'd want to have a family. And the reality is, is that when you're on maternity leave, many organisations don't pay super on that maternity leave payment if you're lucky enough to get maternity leave payments.

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So I actively made additional contributions to my super prior to having kids anticipating that there would be a point when I wouldn't be able to do that. So I was kind of like prepaying my super for maternity leave, which was obviously a little bit of a sacrifice and took a bit of planning. But what it meant is that money still went into super I'm not missing out on those contributions because I put them in earlier.

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They've been in their compounding and growing. Which has been a benefit to me in addition to to putting that extra money in. So, you know, I wish it wasn't the case. I wish that money was paid on super and these these gaps didn't exist. But the reality is you can do something about it if you're mindful and if you have some good early planning.

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I think that's the key, right? It's early planning. What you talked about is the possibility of a decision you want to make in the future and what things you need to do today to prepare yourself for that. And I think a lot of us don't think about that in terms of our long term planning and linking it back to our savings goals, whether they be short or long term.

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So I love that. I love that story and I love the the advice that you're giving us around that. For our listeners who would like to hear more about savings and budgeting, but she's done some other great podcasts with us that really get into these topics for you. There's also a great one on being credit healthy. So go find that.

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Simply go to the Health Professionals Bank website. Search better money management and follow the links. Yeah, we've got some really practical tips that you can use there and there's also, I think some webinars, maybe some downloadable guides on the website as well. So listeners, if you haven't, please go check them out and make this all part of your regular self-care financial wellbeing routine.

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They're really popular and I think if you haven't reached out and had a look at them already, you absolutely have to do so. Thanks, Betsy. Now when we come back after the break, we'll briefly look at a different type of saving, though. You touched on it already, superannuation, which is saving for your retirement. That's a long term savings plan.

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But I will be talking about some simple things women can do to make super work better for you. That's coming up.

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I'm back with financial Wellbeing coach Betsy Westcott, who's been giving us great tips on how to improve our everyday money management. We've chatted about budgeting and savings. Now there's one last thing we should touch on in this episode, and that's superannuation saving for your retirement. Now we have another episode coming up that's all about women and super, but we thought we'd give everyone just a little bit of a taster today.

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Now, for most Australians, you're superannuation account will be one of your largest financial assets. Unfortunately, super is one of those things we don't often give much thought to. This is General kind of sit and forget mentality because we can't touch that money until retirement and we're not looking at that in our bank account every day. It's very true.

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It's something that everyone kind of like, future me. We'll deal with that today. It will love you back, I promise you. And really, if you do things early throughout your working career, whilst that money's going to be invested while you're working, it can have a huge impact on the final balance that you get to retire with. So making sure you're getting the most out of your super savings is really important, especially for women and especially for women, because we are more likely to have interrupt careers, whether that's for raising children or caring for aging relatives, or maybe you're in the sandwich generation where you've got to do a bit of both all at once.

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And this means that if we're not working, our super savings aren't growing. And then as a result, when we retire, we retire with less. And what's more, we've got that gender pay gap, which we've already mentioned, which means on average, women are earning less than men. So less money is also getting paid into our super because of that.

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And the same thing is happening if we're working part time and casual jobs were earning less and less is contributing to super. What does all of this add up to? Less money in retirement. So, Betsy, I know I almost never look at my financial statements as they come from my super fund, which makes me a little bit guilty talking to you today.

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So what can women do to make super work better for them? Well, happily, there's lots that you can do, and a lot of these things don't actually cost you any money as well. So the first thing that you want to do is find out how many super funds do you actually have? Almost one fifth of Australian women have more than one account.

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And this is potentially a problem because it means you're paying more than one set of fees and you're possibly missing out on better investment returns, which is what's contributing to how big your balance is going to be. So the second thing you can do is after checking if you've got one or more accounts, you can check your risk profile and investment style.

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And basically this is looking at how your money is invested and does that align with how long you have until you retire and also your your kind of appetite for investing and risk fed? The third thing you should do is check your insurance cover again. If you've got more than one account, you might be paying for multiple insurance policies that you can't claim against because you can only claim against one policy.

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So making sure that you've got the right level of insurance and the right number of insurances and the right type of insurance is is is a great place to start then. And those are all those things. Just checking those three things doesn't cost you a cent and it's going to make a big difference to your balance at the end of your working life.

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The following suggestions might require you to pop some extra money, so this is making additional concessional contributions. Now that's a technical term. What does it mean? Concessional contributions are the money that you put in pretax. So example is include salary, sacrificing, forgoing some of your salary. Now pumping it into your super as a concessional contribution. And there's also things called spousal contributions and we'll get into the details of them.

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But essentially, if you're not earning a lot of money or not working, your spouse can make contributions to your super fund and they'll get a little tax offset. wow. And then for something that you might not have thought about and I quite like this one because it focuses on something that I'm really good at, and that's shopping.

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And basically there's this service called Grow My Money, and you sign up to the platform and as you're doing the shopping that you do inevitably all the time anyway, such as the groceries or you might be, you know, dating the Activewear wardrobe or buying Christmas presents and a portion of the money that you spend is given back to you as a cash back from the retailer.

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And you can direct that to your super fund. You can also direct it to your home loan or savings account. But super fund, if you're putting it in there, then that's helping to grow your super balance with money that you're spending already. So remember, when it comes to super, it's always important to consider the options available to improve things.

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And if you're not sure, again, get advice from a suitably qualified professional like a financial advisor to guide you around. What's the best decision for you? Thank you. I love that. I love the idea of growing your money. That's really fascinating. We'll get into some of those things in the later podcast. But I think that last important, really important, it doesn't just apply to superannuation no matter where you're at in life.

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Take the time to look at your budget, your savings strategies, including your superannuation. You might just be better off in the long run. In fact, I guarantee you will. Yeah, I promise you, if you take care of your money, particularly your super will take care of you and honestly it's going to leave you, if not hundreds of dollars better, probably thousand, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars richer in retirement.

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I wouldn't say no to that. So look, after your money. It looks after you a bit. I love that. A little bit of extra in my pocket in the short term or long term is exactly what I need. And then what I'm sure every one of our listeners needs to. Betty, thanks so much for that advice and thank you for joining us, too.

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We hope you enjoyed this episode of women's Financial Empowerment. Tune in to episode three when between I cover Work and Money, we'll be looking at income taxes and how raising a family can affect the women's professional trajectory and of course, their super. Thanks so much, Betsy, for everything. We'll be talking more about super in the later episode and I'll catch you next time.

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