Like with anything, if you work on it and put some energy into it, the better off it will be and money is no different. Join us this week as we jump into the concept of a money date night and what you can do every now and then to improve your financial position.
Monthly Check Ins
The need for reviews of your finances may vary depending on your situation or the but Host Andrew Baxter suggests whatever you need to do to review you try to do it monthly and regularly. Being disciplined with this is important because if you skip it every now and then you may find yourself suffering some unintended consequences as a result. If you are single and your finances do not pertain to anyone else, this will simply be a matter for you setting some regular time aside to go through your budgets and everything else to make sure everything is on track. This may be different for couples with shared incomes or any other variation but the main thing is ensuring that the check ins are done regularly and properly. If you have a trading account specifically, it is always a good idea to review your trades and the overall performance of your trading account to then figure out possible changes needed to your strategy or any other decisions that go along with that.
Rewarding Yourself
It is tempting to want to work hard and continue to save all the money you are earning but this is not necessarily the best thing to do from a long-term growth perspective. Host Andrew Baxter suggests rewarding yourself for you hard work. Of course, this needs to be within reason and should not be all the time, but it can be easy to lose motivation to do all of the things you have been doing if you are not rewarded for it at some stages along the way. So make sure if you’re doing well and things are going in the right direction that you are rewarding yourself for all of your hard work as this may be the motivation you need to continue.
Talking to an Advisor
If you find you are reviewing your financial position along with your advisor, there are a few ways to ensure you are prepared so that you can get the most out of it. You are paying for the time and only have a limited amount of time to spend with them so it’s important to be ready for a discussion to make it as productive as possible. Host Andrew Baxter suggests making sure you have any specific questions ready to go for your advisor so that you are not floundering during the meeting trying to think of things to cover. Likewise, if you have a partner and need to go make decisions along with them, you are better off making sure they can come along to the meeting with you. Having to relay information from the advisor to your partner or vice versa is not always the most fruitful and can cause miscommunication as well as obvious delays in possibly crucial decisions. There are also 3 key areas to be focused on for these sorts of occasions – performance, asset protection and tax effectiveness. These three topics can be the key drivers of any conversation with your advisor.
Some Other Rules
Host Andrew Baxter offers some final thoughts on money dates. Firstly – go out. The best place for these conversations to take place are outside of the family unit and area. You also need to try to make it fun so you’re more likely to continue to do it into the future. Doing what you can to ensure you can convince yourself to continually do it may be the difference and could significantly help your financial position over time. Money dates are another tool you can use as you work towards financial freedom.
