Uncensored Money Season Four: Do Money Better in 2023

Melissa Browne: Ex-Accountant, Ex-Financial Advisor, Ex-Working Till I Drop, Now Serial Entrepreneur & Author, Financial Wellness Advocate, Living a Life by Design | 04/01/2023

Show Notes

Happy New Year! As our attention turns to New Year’s resolutions, in this solo episode Mel shares three actions you can take today to start to do money better in 2023

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• 9 Popular Investing Apps
• How to Find $10k in 12 Months 
• Investing in Shares Masterclass
• Investing in Property Masterclass

If you know you need more help with your finances make sure you join the waitlist for the next round of the My Financial Adulting Plan. 

If you're not already, come play over at insta at MelBrowne.Money and make sure you are signed up to Mel's Money Musings and Monday Money Moments (yep, we love us some alliteration) for more tips, tricks and ideas on how to best work with your money.

Finally, if you love this episode please make sure you subscribe and leave us a review.

Transcript

Hey, and welcome to a new year and a new season of Uncensored Money.

Now this is gonna be a short and sharp episode, partly because, let's be honest, my voice is not gonna hold out, but also because it's the beginning of a New Year. And in this episode, I wanted to give you really clear things you can take away and do if your New Year's resolution was to do money better.

Because I see that a lot of people, when it came to 2022, you kind of feel like how my voice is feeling, and I'm recording this at the end of 2022. I've just had my fourth bout of being sick and I've gotta be honest. I'm tired and I feel really shot. And it's just been a really hard year. If that's you, if you are nodding along going, oh yeah, I hear you, then what we wanna do is bring that different energy to 2023.

But nothing changes if nothing changes. And what I see with people in their finances is a lot of people are in this financial 'all or nothing' rollercoaster, where they're feeling that they're constantly chasing their tail. Where they're working to pay the bills or you're just working to pay your debt, to pay your mortgage, to pay your credit cards, and you simply don't know how to make money work for you.

I see too many people that are living paycheck to paycheck, or maybe they have money but they don't know how to be smart with it, or they have analysis by paralysis when it comes to investing. They're up to their eyeballs in debt, or they're abdicating their finances to their partner and they're hoping they've got it.

Here, I wanna help you change that. And if your New Year's resolution was to do money better, then what I wanna do is make sure that you are not one of the 80% of people who abandon that New Year's resolution by first of Feb, which is according to Forbes research. But what I know is that money's not the sexiest thing. It's not something that we're likely to stick to if we are not motivated.

And let's be honest, a lot of us don't have time to put in to do the doing this, to really make sure that we are doing this properly. So I want to, in this podcast, give you three very simple things you can do if you wanna do money better in 2023. So let's go.

Number one is you've gotta choose a financial goal.

Just saying I wanna do money better is simply not enough. What does that look like? Maybe instead it's, I want to have started investing in shares. Or I wanna feel like I'm in financial control and being proactive, or I wanna have bought a house, or I wanna have bought an investment property, or I wanna have paid off all my bad debt.

What we wanna do is move from vague ideas to something concrete. So if your New Year's resolution was to do money better, I want you to pause and write down what that actually looks like.

Number two is I want you to choose your first step. So once you know what doing money better looks like, what's your first step?

So if it was investing in shares, maybe it's looking at my free download comparing nine different investing apps, or purchasing my investing in shares for beginner's class. All of the resources I talk about, and I'm gonna give you loads, are gonna be in the show notes.

If it's property, maybe it's making an appointment with a mortgage broker. And yes, even if you won't be ready for 12 months, make the appointment now so that you can figure out what you need to start doing to get ready, what sort of deposit you need, how much you need to be earning. Preparation is key now more than ever. And again, check out my property masterclass class that I wrote that I uh, recorded last year, both for beginners, but also for those that are investing.

If it's paying down debt, take those credit cards out of your wallet. Cancel your 'buy now, pay later'. Cut up those credit cards, and then automate a payment so that they're paid off in 12 months. If you can't repay them within 12 months, then take a look at my free webinar ' How to Find 10 K in 12 Months' so that you can find the extra cash to repay them. Oh, and to make sure you are really stepping off that financial merry-go-round, no matter what situation you are in, whether it's dire, whether it's pretty good, but could be better. Or whether you have got a lot, you know, you've, you've got some assets, you've got income, but you just aren't being smart with it. Then make sure you sign up to the wait list for the My Financial Adulting Plan when we open. So you are the first to know when we open our doors in Jan.

And the final step is to decide why. This might seem like a strange one, but don't just decide to do money better cause you think it's a good thing to.

Now, Simon Sinek talks about the power of companies understanding and communicating their why. And why they do the things they do and why they believe what they believe, and I believe that's just as important for our personal lives. That's because if you think you should do something, if you think you should do money, if you think you should be get fitter, then when it gets hard or you get bored, you'll probably abandon it. That's why 80% of those resolutions are abandoned by first of Feb. If you have a deeper motivation, you are more likely to stick to it. Maybe that deeper motivation is simply that you don't wanna retire and live in your car. Maybe it's fear. Maybe that deeper motivation is you don't wanna retire and have to drink bad rosé out of casks and wear crocs.

Maybe your deeper motivation is you wanna give back either to your community, to your family, or maybe your deeper motivation is that you crave freedom and options and you want choice. Or maybe your deeper motivation is you are tired of the weight of debt around your neck and you wanna take it off.

Find out your reason. Sit down and discover your reason and really understand why. So that becomes your imagination rather than it simply being something on your to-do list.

So that's it. I told you it was gonna be short and sharp, but what I want you to do now is go and do those three simple things. And then if this, you've, you've been nodding along despite my really bad voice, if you've stuck with me for the less than 10 minutes, then I want you to sign up for the wait list for the My Financial Adulting Plan, and let's make sure that this is the year that you don't just do something a little bit different, but that we radically and positively transform your finances. I can't wait to work with you this year.

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