The Perfect Balance: How to Get Ahead Financially and Still Have a Life

THE

Perfect

BALANCE

THE

Perfect

BALANCE

HOW TO GET

AHEAD FINANCIALLY AND

STILL HAVE A LIFE

HANNAH MCQUEEN

Every effort has been made to provide accurate and authoritative information in this book. Neither the publisher or the author accepts any liability for injury, loss or damage caused to any person acting as a result of information in this book nor for any errors or omissions. Readers are advised to obtain advice from a licensed financial adviser before acting on the information contained in this book.

First published in 2012

Copyright © Hannah McQueen 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Allen & Unwin

Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the National Library of New Zealand

ISBN 978 1 877505 18 8

Internal design by Brittany Britten

Set in 11.5/16 pt Sabon by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my boys

Contents

Preface

Introduction

1. Let’s get started

2. Your situation

3. Financial literacy

4. Buying your first home

5. Investing

6. Understanding your capability

7. Building momentum

Appendix I—The five-step program

Appendix II—Financial compatibility questionnaire

Appendix III—Financial assessment template

Notes

Preface

ACHIEVING THE PERFECT BALANCE IS SIMPLE, IT’S JUST NOT EASY.

Myth: the more money you earn, the easier it is to get ahead.

There’s an old saying, ‘Money doesn’t buy happiness’. No. But it certainly helps.

Money is supposed to help you live the life you want and allow you to reach your financial goals pre- and post-retirement. Yet this perfect point of balance eludes most people. Instead, many of us incorrectly assume that the two ideas are incompatible. We too easily accept that if we want to enjoy our lives, our financial goals won’t be achieved, or if we commit to our financial success, we are not going to be able to do the things we love.

Many of us presume that the more money you earn, the easier it is to get ahead. However, those of us who enjoy higher incomes realise quickly that income levels and financial progress do not go hand in hand. Getting ahead has less to do with income and more to do with sustainability, the ability to keep going. To keep going you need to feel like you are living a life you enjoy, otherwise your momentum will wane fast. Finding the perfect balance is when you achieve that very precise point of having a life and getting ahead as fast as your circumstances allow.

MANAGING MONEY IS SIMPLE,

IT IS JUST NOT EASY

Money is important in our lives, yet most of us gloss over it. Many books, when talking about wealth creation and getting ahead seem to brush lightly over our understanding of, and our ability to control, the basics of money. They presume we are already in control of our finances, or that we should be. For most people, this is not the case. Interestingly, if we could master the basics of money management then many wealth creation techniques would not be required.

It isn’t that easy. Implying that we all should have our money sorted and that managing money is an easy thing to do is simply misleading. For many people, money is a complex subject. Often it is intrinsically linked to self-worth, and self-esteem. It plays a significant part in our lives and relationships, yet we never really discuss it openly with others, except to complain about increasing petrol prices or the price of milk. Sometimes in a crisis, we may discuss the state of our finances, but it is not a topic for everyday conversation.

Not discussing money and not talking about how much we earn is one of life’s long-standing unwritten rules. Society once thought it vulgar to discuss the subject even though it is used to indicate how successful we are. In modern times, most of us continue to keep it private—it is personal, after all.

We don’t want to introduce the money dynamic into relationships where it doesn’t already exist. However, there is a risk that you may be in denial about how well you are doing financially or, if you are less confident with money, you may believe that money is bigger than you. Both these beliefs are dangerous.

People can feel frustrated and intimidated by money— it can even cause anxiety and stress. Many of my clients often complain that, despite earning more money than they have ever earned before, they do not have a sense of getting ahead any faster. The idea of finding the perfect balance between lifestyle and financial progress eludes them. They simply accept this as their current and future reality.

If left unchecked, holding onto misconceptions about money can become like a disease with an extensive reach. The stress of your relationship with money can affect your health and your other relationships, especially your intimate relationships. Whether you have a lot of money or not much, it’s difficult to escape its reach.

Back in the day, marriage was a financial transaction. Today, marriage tends to be more about falling in love, finding a soulmate and spending more than you should on a wedding. I am all for finding your soulmate, but you need to think about what drives a long-term partnership. Although it can help to have similar money values, it is not critical. I have worked with people across the spectrum, from shopaholics to manic savers. I have worked with a married couple, one of whom was a prolific shopper and the other an assiduous saver, yet because they grew to accept their different money personalities, money wasn’t an issue. One of the partners suggested things worked nicely—one of them brought in the money, and the other spent it. It is not common, though, for such diverse money personalities to have so little conflict.

In the above situation, while the acceptance of each other’s money personality was good for the relationship, little progress was being made towards the couple’s financial capability. Equally, even clients more aligned in their money personalities can be unhappy with their financial position. The money comes in, and the money leaves almost as quickly. Unfortunately, elevating the role of money in a relationship isn’t enough to create sustainable change (although it is a good first step). More often than not, confronting issues can either cause deep frictions in the relationship, or lead to heads being buried deeper in the financial quicksand.

Irrespective of your money values, you have to be able to work together to make sure you are getting what you need from your finances. You both need to be living a life you want and still be on track to achieve your financial goals. Shared financial goals are more important than shared money values.

Many of my clients surprise me, at least initially, with their ambivalence towards money. People tend to take a hands-off approach to managing their money. It is as if they think that somehow everything is going to be alright. As if someone, at some stage, is going to come and rescue them financially—cue ‘Rich spouse with trust fund’. For most of us, this won’t happen, yet we don’t wake up and acknowledge this until retirement is a hair’s breadth away. By then, it may be too late.

Being financially competent takes planning and planning takes time. To be successful, planning needs to be based on rational thought and decisions need to be made without emotion. Then you need to refine your plan to better reflect your situation. After that, you need to take more time, and you need to develop understanding coupled with accountability to get real results. If you are time-poor, you need to outsource your planning. Lack of time is an obstacle to getting ahead, but it is not an excuse for not making any progress.

Money issues are inescapable. Money changes things between people. Unaddressed money issues can cause stress and anxiety. Don’t think that you are the only one having difficulty—many people are going backwards, they just don’t realise it yet. On the other hand, well-considered and refined attitudes to money can create happiness and self-worth.

Today, overspending is of epidemic proportions, across society and generations. The overspending tends to be more ‘about me’ the younger the person is. As we get older and become parents and grandparents we still overspend, just less on ourselves and more on loved ones. A tendency to be generous with ourselves or others (that is, to be comfortable spending money on ourselves or others) is widely accepted, more so than ever before. I think that because we are all so time-poor, we look to ‘make good’ our relationships and our own wellbeing by spending money to buy convenience or to offset lack of time (to invest in relationships). Parents spend more money on their kids because it buys them a result. Individuals do it, businesses do it and governments do it. In New Zealand it is easy to overspend. On average, we spend all of what we earn. Prior to the global financial crisis (GFC), we were spending up to 10 per cent more than we were earning. There are some valid reasons for this—some are within our control and some are outside our control. For example, high property prices compared to income levels are a factor outside our control. However, the ease with which we can overspend on frivolous items is a factor we can control. The idea of sticking to a budget is easy enough, so why are there so few people that can do it?

My team and I have worked with just over 2000 New Zealanders—young, old, self-employed and salaried—to help them find the perfect balance between a life well lived and maximum financial progress made. Some are in relationships, some are single. Some have children, some don’t. Several are financially literate, a few aren’t. Some are thinking about retirement, others are fresh out of school. They all want to get ahead faster and, irrespective of each person’s position, three consistent themes have emerged:

• Number one—You are never doing as well as you think you are.

• Number two—It is never too late to change your financial landscape, but you have to start, and you need a watertight plan.

• Number three—Achieving the perfect balance is simple but not easy, and anything that suggests otherwise is a myth.

If this book achieves nothing else, it will give you encouragement and permission to be honest about your finances and it will help you make the right start to get ahead faster.

MY BACKGROUND

I’m an accountant with a Masters degree in tax. Although my husband did not study money or business, he is Scottish (and therefore less inclined to spend money, just like the clichés suggest). When we graduated from university, we had a combined income of $32,000. We thought we were the richest people in the world. Fast forward eight years to us earning almost ten times that income, and we didn’t feel better off. If anything, we felt we were on a treadmill that required us to keep earning more money just to maintain the status quo. This treadmill had us running faster and harder. We certainly weren’t taking a stroll as I had always hoped.

To purchase our first home we needed a mortgage of $350 000. Until then, I never thought that money was a dynamic in our relationship—we always seemed to have enough and we never argued about it. With hindsight, I realise we had fostered a dynamic of indifference towards money. We were both relaxed about money—too relaxed. It came in and we presumed it would keep coming, but just as quickly as it came in, it left us.

To raise that mortgage I did what everyone does—I played the banks off against each other to try and get the best interest rate. I did get a good interest rate, but strangely, to me at least, the actual value of the savings was very little compared to the outgoings over the life of the mortgage. Sure it saved about $20 000 over the life of the mortgage and, of course, I would prefer that money in my pocket as opposed to the bank’s. However, I was going to be paying back the $350 000 originally borrowed and a massive $490 000 in interest costs to the bank over the next 30 years!

I became fixated on understanding how to save more of the total interest cost. I kind of understood that compound interest was making the interest cost so high, but I didn’t know how compound interest actually works, and I didn’t understand how to circumvent it.

I understood that the longer I had my mortgage or owed money to the bank the more it was going to cost me. So, to save myself interest I needed to repay my mortgage faster. How could I do this without having my mortgage dictate my lifestyle?

After posing this question, I started to diddle with the calculus around how to structure my debt, based on my unique situation, in order to repay it faster. I only studied calculus until second year at uni so I didn’t get very far. So, I decided to call my old university to see if someone could help me solve the problem.

I met with Dr Jamie Sneddon, a calculus tutor. I don’t know what defines a genius, but I am sure he comes close. A few months and a fair few pages of calculus later, we had written a formula for structuring debt to repay it as fast as circumstances allow, while living the lifestyle you enjoy. The formula calculates the perfect balance every time.

However, it does make one key assumption—that you will have money left over at the end of the week, month or year that can be used to repay your debt faster. It seems a reasonable assumption, but when I started thinking about my own situation I realised I was living from one payday to the next and I did not have much in the way of savings. There were times when I couldn’t repay my credit card in full (usually after an overseas holiday). It was ironic that I had this incredible formula, but it was worthless until I could solve the first problem of where all the money was going. How could I find the money while continuing to live a lifestyle I enjoy? Could I get ahead faster without compromising that lifestyle? Could I find a perfect balance?

Chatting to my friends I discovered I was not the only one caught on this treadmill—most of my friends said they felt the same way. A lot of the people I spoke to were accountants, CEOs and the like—educated people who work with numbers and money on a day-to-day basis—yet they were not making much progress on a personal level.

I wanted to understand why and I wanted to apply my formula to the problem, so I started my company enableMe Ltd—financial personal trainers—to help solve this problem. Here, I reveal some of the secrets we have learned and mastered to help you find the perfect balance faster.

Introduction

Money is a funny thing. The mere word seems to intimidate people and many switch off or disengage when talk turns to finance. Understanding money is a much-needed life skill that you must master for your own benefit, for your children’s benefit and for the benefit of your personal relationships.

To be money smart is to be socially responsible. Let’s