My final financial tip for 2021 (and it's a good one)

This week...My final financial tip for 2021 (and it's a good one)

This is my final Mel's Money Musings where I give my final tip for how to ensure that you finish the year well. It's SO simply, SO effective and it's potentially going to protect you financially as we all stumble to the finishing line.

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Transcript

Hey, and welcome to the very last Mel's Money Musings of 2021.  

And today I wanna talk about the one thing that I think you should be doing between now and the end of the year, so that you can start 2022 financially reset. And that is to release the pressure valve. What do I mean by that?  

Well, from talking to so many people over the last few weeks, from all walks of life, what I do know is there is a commonality where we are exhausted. We're fatigued. We are quite literally stumbling to the end of the finishing line. And for many of us with the silly season, with catchups, with this heightened expectation of what we want coming out of lockdown in the silly season to be this year, there is an added financial pressure that we kind to wanna keep up.  

And what I wanna ask you to do is to release the pressure valve, to remove the expectation that everything needs to be perfect. To set really clear boundaries around even good friends and loved ones to say, I want to catch up with you, but not yet. 

Maybe it's a new year catch up for those people. For your family, it might be letting them know that, Hey, Christmas, this year is going to look different. I want you all to bring a plate, or I know that we said we're gonna do presents, but it's gotta be Kris Kringle for me.  

I want to give you permission to release the pressure valve. Because my concern is if we don't, if we don't have a reset, then when 2022 comes, we don't get an automatic reboot at midnight on 2021. We have to create our own reboot.  

So I want you to think about how you are going to release that pressure valve. And for me, it's been saying 'not yet' to people. It's been about removing the expectation of presence. Um, it's been around being really clear around family catchups. It's also been, uh, for me about making sure that I have all my work done before I go on holidays so that I do not get sucked into work. And certainly for me, there'll be a social media hiatus between Christmas and new year where I simply look at nothing and give myself a proper reset.  

Now, this might seem like a really strange financial tip, but for many of us, if we don't do that now, we won't have the energy to give to our finances in the new year, or we'll be looking for a dopamine hit. And too many of us lean on our finances to give us that dopamine hit. They, we lean on spending to give us that hit. And I wanna remove that for you.  

My only final thing that I will say is that there is a lot of movement in share markets and interest rates and talk about all these things at the moment. But just remember if we have a long term view, then those short-term fluctuations don't matter. 

So if you've bought into a shares or ETFs, for example, in the last few months, and you are watching them really start to go all over the shop, say to yourself, this is long term. It simply doesn't matter.  

My wish for you is that you are able to reboot over the new year and I'm so looking forward to, uh, helping to inspire, empower and educate you financially in the new year. If you haven't already done it, make sure you jump onto the wait list for the Financial Adulting Plan.

The next round is in January, 2022, and there is no better time to sort yourself out financially than a new year. Have a fantastic silly season. I wish you rest and joy. That's it for me for another year!