When it comes to money, there’s only one thing I know for sure: nothing stays the same.
I was terrible with money until about five years ago. Genuinely, truly terrible.
When I was six, my grandpa asked my parents on a whim if he could take me to England for three weeks to visit family. My parents got me a priority passport — my photograph was basically taped into the front page, that’s how long ago it was — and away we went.
I was given £10 in a tiny wallet to take with me as spending money. When we arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport, my grandpa left me in a newsagent for five minutes while he found us a rental car. When he came to find me, I had arrived at the counter with £15 worth of goods, only £10 in my wallet, and a line was building up behind me.
For years, this was my modus operandi: spend without thought.
As a kid, I spent pocket money in advance. As a teenager with a first job, I was worse.
I couldn’t save a single dollar. The one time I managed to save about $500, I went to Sydney for a weekend and spent the entire lot on makeup and shoes. I didn’t wear makeup at the time, and in the end the shoes were not my style, so the whole lot went to waste.
When I was 18, I bought a car using a personal loan. When I crashed the car and received the insurance money, I didn’t pay off the loan. I spent the money instead and paid off the loan slowly over the next few years.
It only gets worse. In my twenties, I spent everything I made. When I was 20, I decided to go to America for three months. I got a credit card because that’s what I thought you did for security. By the time I returned from my trip, there was $1,000 on the card that needed paying off.
A year later, I was so worried about how I used a credit card, I cut it into two pieces. When I needed an emergency dental visit, I had to shamefully hand over two pieces.
Meanwhile, the little super I had saved over the years dwindled while I lived overseas thanks to being in multiple super accounts with multiple fees and no contributions.
And so on, and so on.
When I look back at all these little moments, I feel quite embarrassed. And there’s more than 300,000 — including my friends, family, and co-workers — who get to read all about it today!
But the point I wanted to make is that nothing stays the same.
At some point, I had some very blind luck: I received a chunk of money by selling a business, which arrived just in time to support me through four years of chronic illness.
And that’s when I finally learned — really learned — that money is a tool.
Every time you make a small, mindful decision about money, you contribute to yourself — you get one step closer to a goal, you unlock a moment in the future when you can walk away from a bad situation because money can’t keep you there, you save a dollar that will turn into many dollars by the time you retire, you can look after yourself in an emergency.
But — again — the most important thing to know is that nothing stays the same. Wherever you are now, that doesn’t have to be where you are in a year or five years. And even the smallest changes can build to become big moments in your life. Trust me on that.
