- Hey, what's up?
I am MuchelleB and in this video I'm gonna talk about money.
To give you a bit of context to my story,
in January of last year I bought an apartment
which I saved $40,000 in deposit for.
This is the celebratory Instagram photo
and in the past year and a half,
I managed to pay off more than 30 grand of my loan.
At the start of this year,
I still managed to go on a six week Europe trip
which was like nine grand to 12 grand,
I have a full-time job which I earn a decent income from
and then I also have my side hustle which is this,
which I have only earned real money from in the past year.
If you're interested in how much money I earn from YouTube,
I make videos about that on my second channel.
I get really transparent about
how much money I make on YouTube.
So I'm gonna have a link to
that below and up here somewhere.
I do live in my family home which my parents have vacated,
so we have a low rent which is about $200 a week
which is a really good amount considering
the place that we used to live in was $350 a week.
So that is a bit of a snap shot of my story
because I think everyone has a different situation
and you need to understand someone's situation
when they're talking about money.
In this video, I want to share some of the things
that I'm practicing in my day to day
to save as much money as I do.
The first thing that I'm gonna recommend that you do,
if you're in your adult life
and you want to save money
is to get rid of most of the stuff that you own.
If you've followed my journey for a while now,
you'll know that my life now looks radically different
to what it did four years ago.
In another life,
I was a person who bought clothes every single week.
My dad and my postman literally had running jokes
about how much I bought.
I've never met my postman.
I remember having a cupboard that was so full of crap
that I was scared to open it.
To cut a very long story short,
I got rid of a lot of stuff in my life.
I followed the Konmari journey.
I will link my videos up here, down there.
As well as I went through my own
30 day decluttering challenge and I got rid of so much.
I had a kitchen full of bags and a lounge room, I remember.
It was ridiculous.
Something about resetting your space entirely
and getting rid of the amount that I did get rid of
gets you to a point where you couldn't fathom
letting it get back to where it was.
It reshapes your habits in the most positive of ways
because you think much more mindfully
about what you spend your money on.
I now have far less stuff than I ever used to have
and I buy far less than I ever used to buy.
I definitely started spending more on ridiculous stuff
that I never needed as soon as I started earning more.
So as soon as my trainee wage turned into a real person wage
I was just like yes, more clothes for me.
And going through a full decluttering process
just completely changed the way that I approach money.
It's not really about getting rid of your stuff.
It's about changing the way that you live your life
and changing your approach to things.
I'm starting with the big tips.
The hard to grasp tips.
The things that people don't wanna do
but make the biggest differences.
So my second tip is diversify your income.
This will probably be the most important thing in this video
and it's probably the thing that people
will disregard the most.
If you're Australian
you've probably heard of the Barefoot Investor.
If you're not you still might have heard of it.
It's by Scott Pape and he has a whole section dedicated
to creating your own source of income.
Because relying on someone else, a big business,
or even a small business to literally support your life
and enable you to live is scary.
So me diversifying my income looks like me creating
YouTube videos, earning from Google AdSense.
But also by creating an ebook, having a second channel,
having brand deals, looking into affiliate links.
I think restriction is often something promoted
when it comes to money management
and restriction can be important in those first stages.
Stopping yourself from buying an excessive amount
of clothes, an excessive amount of makeup.
But I have no interest in living a life
where I need to restrict myself.
I'd rather earn more.
Not an excessive amount but enough
so I don't need to restrict myself from spending
on the things that I value.
I know that most of you wanna start doing your own thing
because I did a community poll and I asked you
and I think 70% of you said that you wanted to start doing
your own thing on the side. And the opportunity is so there.
It's so tangible.
It is so achievable.
Even though it may not seem like it
as you're watching this video.
Now I'm moving on to something that is very doable.
You need to start doing it.
And that is setting up auto transfers every week.
The first kind of auto transfers that you need to set up
are for your bills.
As soon as my money hits my account every week
or actually prior to my money hitting my account every week
I have a loan repayment that goes off.
My rates, my water gets paid, my rent,
the tax that I need to pay for YouTube,
it all comes out of my account as soon as the money
hits my account.
I hate paying bills and if I had to pay them manually
every week, guaranteed I would have terrible credit.
Which is why I like to automate as much as I can in my life.
Also, when you get a bill payment back and it says
that you are in credit even if it's by like $5
it has a really good feeling.
Then you have your auto savings that are for just living
your best life.
So I have auto savings for my emergency fund.
Then there is money automatically taken out to whatever
experience I'm saving for at the time.
So that was Europe now it is Bali.
In your mind you need to be thinking that any money
that goes out of your main account is no longer your money.
It is not for you to touch.
Creating a money mindset
is probably the hardest part of the process.
If that's something that you struggle with I would recommend
the book You are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero.
I read that on my trip back from Europe, actually.
And it's really good about talking about creating
a positive money mindset.
Fair warning, it might be a little bit woo woo
for some of you.
Having auto transfers leaves you with an amount of money
that you can spend and if you go over it, it's too bad.
So you kind of just have to work with the money
that you're left with.
You budgeted out everything else
and you know that you're saving for the things that you want
to save for you know you're on the right track.
And to add another quick thing in there,
if you have friends that like to spend money
just say I'm broke, let's do coffee instead
or come to my house for a tea.
Most people have their own money things going on
and they will be happy not to have to spend money.
Create a most important things list.
This is so important.
When you know what is most important to you and you know
where you want your money to go you will stop spending
your money on the things that don't matter.
If you follow my 30 days to simplify challenge,
it sort of naturally takes you along that path
so you declutter all of your stuff and then you decide
where you actually want your money to be going
because that's a really important part
of the decluttering process.
I know pretty automatically what is most important to me
when it comes to where I put my money.
And I would say, hmm,
do I spend my money in line with my values?
When I think about what I spent my money on this week,
I spent my money on going to the drive in movies
with my sister.
I spent my money on a holiday away with Luke.
My biggest investment recently was video labs
which is a course on doing YouTube better
so learning, growing.
Thinking about all of my purchases recently
I feel I can confidently say that my purchases
do reflect my values.
If you need to write your top values on a little index card
chuck it in your wallet so that it's always there with you
when you go to spend some money.
If you haven't defined what you value
I have two videos that might help you out.
There is a video specifically on figuring out your values
and a video all about figuring out what lights you up.
So very similar.
Links up here and down here.
My next tip is very important especially for people my age
and that is limiting at home doing nothing takeout.
Many of us, me included, have gotten into bad ruts
of buying way too much takeout.
I've never been like really awful with takeout.
Like I've never gotten takeout every day of the week
but I have gotten to a point where I bought takeout
maybe two to three times a week and to me, I'm like, no.
I cannot get into that.
Which over a long period of time
can be a huge waste of money.
So I limit my at home doing nothing takeout
to once a week most weeks.
I usually try to make a big fuss out of getting takeout
so Luke and I do philosophical Sunday
which is our little tradition where we watch a documentary
every Sunday night.
So we make a big fuss, go out and we get our favorite
takeout or we get sushi because sushi's always good.
And we will sit down and watch our documentary
and it's all like kind of a big deal.
I think nearly everyone my age if you're not spending
most of your money on clothes then you're probably
spending most of your money on food.
So if you cut down on takeout drastically,
even if you can cut down on takeout all together,
you will save a heap of money.
And my last tip is to avoid opportunities to buy things.
You probably heard me say before
that I really don't like shopping centers.
They make me feel anxious.
There's a lot of people, it's very busy.
Everyone's in a rush.
It's just not a good vibe.
Another bad thing about shopping centers is how easy it is
to acquire new things and spend a lot of money.
On things that you have never even considered buying before.
When you are wandering through the aisles of Kmart,
it's very easy to invest in five new home decor products
that you never needed and will not need.
Ever.
So in general, I actually avoid shops.
I do my grocery shopping online and when I need to go
to the shops I will usually have a list of five things
that have built up over five weeks and I'm like, okay.
Going to the shops, getting this out of the way.
I try to stick to that list.
The same goes for online shopping as well.
Which I think is something that a lot of people
don't think about.
So a lot of my urges to shop when I was in my bad
shopping phase pre decluttering were because I would receive
an email from a company with all of their newest products
and this beautiful editorial they made everything look
fabulous and made me feel like I needed everything.
And it's the same on Instagram.
If you're following a bunch of companies that are releasing
photos all the time of all of their products,
of course you're naturally going to want to purchase
more than you would if you did not follow those companies
and if you were unsubscribed from those emails.
So unsubscribe from any emails that prompt you
to purchase anything.
Unfollow any product companies
that you know are going to tempt you.
There's a reason that every product company has an Instagram
and has an email because that's where the majority
of their sales come from.
If you're not exposing that to yourself on a regular basis
you're not going to buy as much.
Also, get ad blockers so that if you do look at a product
on the site it doesn't follow you around
for your entire life until you purchase it.
Absolutely you definitely want to cultivate a mindset
where you don't feel this need to buy things constantly.
However, advertising works.
There's a reason we live in an extremely consumerist world.
So the more advertising opportunities you can strip away
from your life the less you are likely to purchase.
And in the background, work on your mindset.
Prioritize getting to the point
where you don't feel the need to buy quite so much.
If you like this video, you might be interested in watching
my very first Konmari decluttering video.
Oh, it's so cringe-y to watch.
I'll have it linked onscreen and down below.
Subscribe to my channel if you haven't already
and I will see you soon.