If Your Wallet Could Talk To You, What Would It Say, And Other Money Questions

Have you seen the money related conversation starter cards circulating in the social media lately?

It is the Financial Service Council NZ teaming up with Hatch investment platform who brings us these downloadable cards that each have a money related question to answer.

I thought I’d do a post series of personally answering a few of these questions in each post and inviting you to share your own answer to the same question in the comments! You can download your own set here.

What’s your money kryptonite?

My money kryptonite is the same as my money superpower. Getting obsessed.

If I get obsessed about a new hobby, I spare no expenses. If I get fixated on a specific brand, I often won’t budge even if I could get the same thing cheaper but a different brand.

This happened with my gardening when I was setting it all up.

I was buying multiple bags of soil, and I became fixated with Tui Garden brand, even though there were much cheaper options available.

I spent so much unnecessary money, it was a bit ridiculous!

This obsessiveness and nearly blind brand loyalty is often a reason for my binge spending, or overspending in general, and it is definitely something I need to keep working on.

If your wallet could talk to you, what would it say?

“Just because you know how to manage your money, doesn’t excuse you of getting slack keeping on top of it.”

That’s what my wallet would say to me.

I have gotten really slack with monitoring my own expenses, and especially spending that I have dipped into savings on multiple occasion.

I really have lost track on where I’m at when it comes to my cashflow (money coming in and money going out) so I need to get on top of that to better understand what I can and can’t afford.

Just because you’ve learnt how to manage your money, doesn’t mean that you can just kick back and forget about. Money requires constant managing, incomes change, expenses change so forth.

Is it better to pay by cash, credit card, or to use buy now pay later?

Personally I prefer paying cash, because I like knowing that I don’t owe any money on anything.

Although I am considering applying for a credit card to take advantage of the air points program, as I am planning to travel and it would be beneficial to be able to lower the flight ticket prices just by doing our regular shopping with a credit card.

I sometimes do use buy now pay later systems like Afterpay or Laybuy, but only if there is an immediate need for the product and I know I would buy the product anyway after saving for it.

But I do make sure that I pay the whole bill as soon as I have the money for it, rather than wait for the instalments to come due.

While there’s really no right or wrong answer to this questions, because everyone is different, the thing about using credit card or buy now pay later is that you really need to be able to control your spending and know what you can afford.

This is so you don’t go into too much debt and you’re able to pay them off on time!

You can find my other posts on this series here.

I’d love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments below!