What’s Your Money Superpower 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 have you gone about negotiating a pay rise?

I have actually never negotiated a pay rise.

Most of my working life I’ve been employed in hospitality.

Back home in Finland hospitality workers are paid based on the union’s tiers of experience, there wasn’t much wiggle room there!

In New Zealand I’ve been pretty much on minimum wage, if you don’t count the brief moment I was a duty manager.

My pay has been automatically increasing with the minimum wage.

After having my second daughter I started working in ECE and they have pay parity, so my wage has been dictated by that.

So, so far in my working career I haven’t really been presented with pay negotiating opportunities, but hopefully that will change one day.

Do you think it’s easier for men to negotiate a pay rise?

As I mentioned above, I haven’t actually ever negotiated a pay rise in my working career, so I don’t have first hand experience.

But I imagine it probably would be easier for men to negotiate a pay rise.

The reason I believe that is because I’m sure it helps if you’re being assertive, confident, and you know your worth.

These behaviours and traits are often viewed in positive light on men, but negatively on women.

While this shouldn’t affect decision making or negotiations, it subconsciously can, making the process easier for men.

It might also be harder for women to display this behavior because it can often make others view them in a negative way.

I’m hoping with more awareness to this biased behavior we’ll see it less.

What’s your money superpower?

My money super power I suppose is my ability to get really focused on something, nearly obsessed.

It keeps me on track to my financial goals, and excited about them.

I’ve never been much of a spender, so I’m naturally inclined to preserve money rather than buy unnecessary things. I’m very lucky to be wired that way, as I can imagine fighting the urge to spend can be hard.

Being obsessive helps with reaching goals, but can cause burnout for me as well. I’ve needed to learn to harness that obsessiveness, since managing money isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. A life long marathon really.

I feel like at the time of writing this I’ve fallen off of the bandwagon a little bit. I need to jump back on and start to track my spending again to make sure I’m focusing on what matters to me.

You can find my other posts in this series over here.

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