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Chapter 1: What does it mean to be 'weird' with money?
Being weird saved my finances and being okay with being weird was the biggest thing that helped me get financial freedom. Because here's the problem, normal will constantly pull you towards broke. There is a system set up with normal. And I'm not trying to get all conspiratorial and weird here, but we just have to look at the facts of how normal usually shakes out for people.
Around 30% of us in New Zealand don't have $1,000 in savings. Over 60% of us couldn't cover a real emergency, and yet... We're constantly being advertised debt.
Chapter 2: Why is the standard approach to money ineffective for many?
We don't get taught about money at school. Social media is full of status symbols that will not make you happy. And to break out of that and find what actually makes you happy, you have to embrace weird. A little bit. Because what nobody tells you is that knowing what to do with money is actually often the easy part. The tactics that get you ahead are pretty simple. It's a small list.
It's the doing. that is hard because to do it you have to go against a monkey brain that is hardwired for instant gratification and a society filled with advertising that exists specifically to pick your pockets while making you feel great about that and i broke out of that by being weird saying no to things that my friends thought were obvious only buying second hand for a straight year
moving out of a big city to a small one because that actually made my life better and made it financially better at the same time. Today, we're getting into all of it, the money psychology traps that keep you stuck and how you break out of them to live the life that you actually want and what I really did in my own life to create financial freedom. So welcome to Making Sense.
It's the podcast for people who want financial freedom without giving up their coffee. I'm Frances Cook, a financial journalist and fellow financial freedom seeker who makes money simple for you.
I want to help as many people as possible reach financial freedom by taking control of their money. You can help me in that mission. Two really easy ways.
First, hit subscribe wherever you like to listen. YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast player. Then send this episode to a friend so we can all level up together. Then the show grows and I can keep giving you the money info that makes a difference for your life. Okay, back to it.
So let's start by talking about mindset because I don't know about you, but I find it is one thing to know what I need to be doing and another thing entirely to actually do it. It might sound too simple, but it's one of the most important parts of your journey to financial freedom. You need to know that financial freedom is achievable for you and then you have to decide if you want it.
There are all sorts of different versions of financial freedom. That's what makes this more achievable. But whatever version that you're aiming for, you are aiming for an extraordinary life. And it's one that's different from the normal path. It's one that has less stress, more stability, more safety. But if it was easy, everyone would do it. You have to be willing to give something.
And that something, when I weighed it up, No brainer. So happy to do it. But you still have to give it. So I want you to think about what matters to you and what you're willing to do to get there. And it might be different from what other people do. That's okay. We're focused on your best life here. Do you want the same life as everyone else? I don't. I want freedom. I want independence.
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Chapter 3: How does the hedonic treadmill affect our spending habits?
I've got areas of my life that are smaller and cheaper than what people expect. And they let me funnel my money and effort towards the parts of life that make a difference. I can still spend on big experiences that make me happy if I want and I invest a lot.
But many of the regular habits in my life are what other people would consider weird and I'm fine with that because I chose my weird and it let me build something bigger. Now I'm at a point in life where the benefits of this have become kind of obvious and people often ask me for money advice. But there was a period of years where I just looked broke and weird.
And I had to not care about that first. I was focused on something bigger. And I knew that in time, my life would be proof that it was all worth it. And can I just say, I think that one of the most radical things you can do, and unfortunately this is slightly weird in our current society, is being nice to yourself as you do this.
In fact, maybe this whole thing is about having confidence in yourself and loving yourself a bit more. As you're making changes and deciding on your own version of weird, and being ready to commit to it. It's really important to get in there, in this mindset. So for those who've been around a while, you'll remember when I did my challenge of only buying secondhand clothes for a year.
That was all the way back in 2020. I just knew I needed to budget. And one of my biggest weaknesses was clothes. I enjoyed them. I wanted to find a way to enjoy life while staying on what was a pretty tight budget at that point. So I decided to only buy secondhand.
put up a post about it on my Instagram and then promptly got in trouble with the Herald where I worked at the time for not giving them the exclusive, which was hilarious because I truly thought nobody would care. But turns out people did. So I wrote about it a few times for them, took some cute pictures of the clothes that I found and honestly developed a serious secondhand shopping appreciation.
And it's now my go-to because when you shop secondhand, you get decent quality for a fraction of the price. And I don't feel like it's compromise at all. It is literally the best of both worlds. And I have built up so many little frugal habits like this by just experimenting and seeing what works in my life. And overall, my life costs just come down without the quality of life going down.
But there's always someone who will judge you, whether it's that you proudly say you found something secondhand or if you're proudly showing off some fancy bag you spent too much on.
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Chapter 4: What is the secondhand challenge and how did it impact finances?
Either way, someone will judge you. So pick the one that works for you. Enjoy being weird because someone will think you're weird whatever you do. And then there's something else we need to remember because you need to know that as we make these changes, as you embrace your weird, still inevitably going to do some dumb stuff that screws you over.
And from the beginning, I really need you to promise that rather than being mad at yourself for being a dummy, We just need to get to grips with our monkey brain, appreciate it, and then get it out of the driver's seat. Because there is wiring that even as you make all the good decisions for your future, the way that we work as humans... will simply trip you up.
And the biggest weapon in fighting back against that is just knowing about it. You know, we talk on this podcast about simple themes like increasing your income, decreasing your spending, and they're really simple ideas.
Chapter 5: How can a cheaper daily life lead to greater financial freedom?
But we talk about it still so much because so many of us fail at it and we fail because it's not that easy to actually put into practice. And this is partly because the idea of budgeting has become wedded to the idea of loss, of cutting back, of giving up, of having less, whereas actually it is giving you control over your life and making sure you are focused on what matters to you.
Now, advertising will try to take advantage of this feeling. It's, you've worked so hard, you deserve this. That's a really common message in ads, when actually, no, you've worked hard, so you deserve to keep that reward for yourself, not just unthinkingly hand it straight over to a company. If you do this right... Embrace your weird. Really think about what matters to you.
You won't lose anything that you want to keep. You will decide what makes you happy, what gives your life meaning. And then you will stop all of the other meaningless nonsense from getting in the way and crowding that out. You can have anything you want in life. You just can't have everything at once. and trying to get that will doom you to failure.
When you're trying to build financial independence, start investing, build something real, it's so much easier to hit those financial goals when your expenses are lower to start with. Simplifying your life and figuring out what truly makes you happy, the best place to start. If you don't figure out what happiness looks like to you, nothing will ever be enough.
You will work harder and harder at jobs you may or may not enjoy, always searching for more. If you don't stop and think about it first, you will never find that more that you're searching for. It will be like the end of the rainbow moving away from you as fast as you move towards it. So if your life costs less, you win twice.
You will be able to save and invest more money towards things like financial freedom goals. You will also need less money in order to achieve financial freedom because when your life costs less, you don't need as much money invested in order to create the income that gives you independence from others.
And it also means you just stepped off the hedonic treadmill, which is such a life hack for finding actual happiness. Quick interruption to say, if you're enjoying this episode, you'll love the Market Memo, my weekly newsletter where I teach you how to actually invest. No jargon, no spreadsheets, just real talk about shares and how to make your money work for you.
It's the thing I wish I'd had when I was starting out. You can sign up for free at franciscook.co.nz slash invest. That's franciscook.co.nz slash invest. But don't worry, I'll put the link in the show notes and the description of this podcast. All right, back to it. So I said before about how budgeting and cutting back makes you think about having a sad life.
The psychology of this is actually the opposite because cutting back often gives you a happier life and it's because of the hedonic treadmill. The hedonic treadmill is the way that you adapt to whatever you consider normal so that it is no longer special.
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Chapter 6: What strategies can help prioritize personal spending over societal expectations?
Everything you own used to be money, and that money used to be hours of your life that you exchanged at your workplace in order to get the money. Do you remember buying all of that furniture? How happy does it make you now? How long did the happiness last? If you replace it with something bigger, brighter, fancier, how long do you think that next hit of consumer happiness will last?
And this is where embracing being weird works so well because I prefer to cheat the system by having a day-to-day life that's frugal. And then I have big blowout expenses, like traveling to some fabulous destination I've always wanted to see, or going to a stupid expensive concert that I can only afford because the rest of my life is simple. And why is that cheating the system?
Because I've just stepped off the hedonic treadmill. You have a day-to-day life that is simpler, Because whatever your normal is will just be normal to you. It can be an expensive normal or a cheap normal. And then big one-off expenses will surprise and delight you because your brain hasn't had time to turn it into normal yet.
But they're not fully hardwired into your budget, sending you broke without even making you happy. A trip that you look forward to for six months and then enjoy so much while you're there is probably cheaper than living in a house that you can't afford and you don't even use half the rooms. You can pull back on one-offs when you need to or do them in a smarter way.
Organize fun life experiences that don't actually cost that much. But it's really hard to pull back on a high mortgage payment going out every month. And you will get used to that housing experience. So you're getting less. from that hard-coded end cost. And there is really no escaping how much we can turn expensive luxury experiences into normal. I'm sorry, but literally running hot water.
You get it every morning. Kings didn't have that 150 years ago. Almost all of human history, it's truly an insane luxury that we take for granted every day. And there will be something in your life right now that someone else would kill for that you take for granted every day. That's the hedonic treadmill for you. It's hardwired into us and we have to consciously pull it under control.
And I mean, look, there's a reason that we're wired this way. It's not all the fault of ads. Think about it this way. If prehistoric man chewed on a mammoth leg, sat back, felt happy with himself, never wanting for more, what would have happened? Eventually, he would have been someone else's lunch. Instead, he wanted fire. He found caves to shelter in.
People eventually built farms, discovered electricity. We've developed to always want more and to be slightly dissatisfied with life because it pushed us to greater heights as a society, which, awesome. But as individuals in the modern world with plenty of more around us, It can ruin us. We will always want more. I want you to know that.
Deepen your bones so that you can take that power back and stop reaching for something you'll never have. We have to understand the hedonic treadmill and take control of it. So I think this idea of being good with money is often actually about working out what you want from life. Most of us can have some of what we want. Very few of us can have all of what we want.
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