What’s One Thing You Would Tell Your Younger Self About Money 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.

How many times a day do you think about money?

To be honest, too many times to count.

I’m constantly trying to think of ways to save more, to invest more, often regretting those impulse purchases (hello, two chocolate blocks two days in a row) and so on.

Money has become a bit of an obsession to me, I so desperately want to move on to the chapter of our lives where we have a little bit more of it.

Even though we’re doing absolutely fine as we are at the moment.

Actually, just the other day we were talking about how freeing it is to not have to worry about whether we have enough money for groceries.

We can put what we want in the trolley (within a limit of course!), and to know that we’ll be fine at the checkout.

It definitely wasn’t always like that!

I do my best to be grateful for where we are (and I am), while moving full steam ahead to where I want us to go.

And that means I think about money a lot. And check my bank accounts a lot.

What would you tell someone if they asked how much you get paid?

I’d tell straight up what I’m paid.

But I’d say that’s because I’m on minimum wage, and have been for the past few years.

In fact, my only pay rises so far have been as I’ve been moving up with the minimum wage.

But I don’t know how what I’ll say once I move away from working minimum wage jobs.

Would probably depend on the person asking.

There are some people in our life I would not want to know how much money I make (especially if it’s higher than average).

But good friends I imagine I would be honest with.

I guess time will tell how I will feel about this question once I earn a bit more!

What’s one thing you would tell your younger self about money?

Investing is for everyone. And it’s surprisingly easy.

Although, I have to admit that even though barriers to enter the investment world are melting away with the ability to do fractional investing (=being able to buy fractions of shares rather than having to buy in even numbers), it maybe wasn’t quite that easy when I was younger.

So I try not to be too angry at myself for not looking into it sooner.

I would also tell my younger self that money matters. To a certain degree.

And that managing it well is life changing.

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

You can also find my answers to other questions from the conversation starter cards here.