How are you doing everybody? It's week six. And this week, we are talking all about spending. Now getting a grip on your spending, and being really honest about this is a huge, huge step forward. Because we spend money consciously and unconsciously. And then, you know, we go through this whole process of where did it all go?

Where is all my money gone? What is going on with it? And you know, it's really, really interesting for you to actually get a handle on this and, and really be real with you about what all of this is all about. Because only when you get real with you, can you really, really get a grasp on what you're doing with all of your money, what the ins and outs are. And, you know, there's always things that we don't plan for with our finances as well. And that is a huge part of the exercise that we're going to do here.

Because what I want you to do is I want you to go in detail about everything. Now in your workbook, you have got lots of things that you can be filling in here. There's lots of questions. It's about talking and thinking about the things that you don't necessarily always think about. So let's kick off. And let's talk about, you know, what is your income right now.

Now, what I want you to do is grab your workbook and write down what your gross annual income is, and what your net annual increments. So by now, you should know the difference between the two of you. So the grossest kind of the top line figure before all of the taxes, and the net is the bottom line figure, which is what you actually get into your bank account. So if you're self employed, this is the bit that you receive after you've paid all your expenses and taxes. And if you're employed, this is the bit that's actually credited to you by your employer. What I want you to do is I want you to look at what your gross amount monthly is, and what your net amount monthly is, because again, it's important to see the difference between those two figures.

It's a little bit more pertinent to you if you are self employed, because you're really going to then get a good look at what your business expenses are. That's something that we'll talk about a whole nother day. And but again, if you're employed, it's about looking at what the taxes are that you're paying. And it's also a good opportunity just to double check in, they are correct, because we've got taxable allowances. And sometimes we haven't got those, those tax bill allowances correct. And it means that we don't always receive the amount of money that we could receive.

So let's have a look now at what you are spending out of those, those things, because you know, whether your income is guaranteed or whether it varies, it really does make a difference, again to that bottom line of what you're spending every single day. Now we're going to talk in later modules about guaranteed income, residual income, varied income and how to cope with these things. But for now, what we're going to start looking at Is what your essential monthly bills are. Now, in your workbook you've got, you've got a table where you can fill in what all of these figures are. Now, it may be that you choose to do that on a spreadsheet, it may be that you've already got it on a spreadsheet, it may be that you're working this in some kind of app at the moment. But what I want you to do is I want you to actually physically write it all down, and then add it all up.

The reason that I want you to do it that way is I want you to get super conscious of what all of these things are. Now I've attempted to think about absolutely everything that can be an expense here. But what I've also done is I've left you some space for you to add in things that maybe I haven't thought about and haven't added onto there. Now, once you've done that particular exercise, we're looking at all of your essential items in this exercise. So we're looking at things like your mortgage or your rent to cancel taxes, water, gas, electricity insurance is sky, your cable telephones. mobiles and broadband loans, all those kinds of things that you have to pay every single month, child maintenance fees, school fees, and savings that you have regularly, everything is what I want you to put into that essential spending.

And once you've got all of that there, I had all of that up and see what that figure comes out. What they want you to do is I want you to spend some time focusing on your non essential monthly spending. So when I talk about non essential I'm talking about you know, fun money, I'm talking about having lunch, if your work when you're out and about when you're working and going out for dinner. I'm talking about any education and training that you have, for example, you know, your monthly subscription to the money personal trainer, or any other subscriptions that you've got. I'm talking about you know, sort of things that you buy to fill you up so it could be magazines, it could be books, it could be audios, you know, do you have a subscription Example to say amazon music or the Apple Music. What are you spending on holidays?

What are you spending on mini adventures weekends away, and things like expenses on your car. And those are not essential things. But they are things that you know if the car breaks, and that's how we get to and from work, then we have to get it fixed, don't me and anything else, because what I want you to do is I want to make sure that we're budgeting for everything. So this is something where you need to spend a little bit of time looking at what these things are. And it may be that what you need to do is pull out those bank statements, pull up the mobile app, or log on to your online banking and have a look at what all of these items are. So put some figures around that and again, get to the My screens just disappears as you're watching this.

So hopefully I should come back in a second. So put some figures around all of this. And let's start to get really, really clear on what these are. terms are. Now, hopefully this is going to come back any second. There we go.

So what we then need to do, the next step is we then need to make sure that we're budgeting for everything. And when I say budgeting for everything, what I'm talking about is I am talking about then things like events, others and all the other stuff that goes on. So, birthdays, they can happen annually. anniversaries, they can happen annually. We do days out, we have Christmas, for example, we have Hanukkah we have, you know Diwali or the sorts of events. We have just simple things, children's parties that are going on, if you've got children, and you know, other special parties for friends, we've got all these things that are going on every single month.

And actually, are we really budgeting for them, because for example, My daughter is just at an age now where she's starting to get invited to children's parties. And basically, you know, going to a kid's party can be maybe an outfit for the child, it can be the cost and expense of going there, it can be buying a present. And you know, and even when you kind of do it on a budget, the expenses there, it could be that you are throwing a party for your child. And you know, again, these things can start to get really quite expensive. And because these are things that we don't tend to always budget for, we can get really, really thrown when we don't actually budget for them. So, again, you've got a box on your workbook, that is for you to put some clarity around this.

And if you don't know what these figures are, again, historically, look back at some bank statements, look at events that have happened, because by going into detail of every single area of our spending, we can see where all of our money is going. Because one of the things that a lot of people do suffer with is saying I don't know where all of my money goes. So what I want you to do now is I want you to do all of those exercises. And I want you to make sure that you do them in a detailed way. Now, this exercise is probably going to take you some time, and it might be one of those ones that you procrastinate on. And the reason that potentially you could procrastinate on it is simply because you know, that actually, there's room for improvement in all of this.

And you know, what we tend to procrastinate on are things that we know are affecting us because we've got a fear going on of seeing what's really there. The reality is if you take the bull by the horns, and you grab it, and you deal with this, in the longer term, you are going to be in a much better place. What this is also going to help you to do is it's going to help you to really create a budget that actually works for you. Because if you're not planning for all of these eventualities and all of these different things, then guess what people you're not going to be congruent with What your spending is, and also you're going to find yourself in a place of negative because you're spending more on stuff that you're not actually budgeting for. So budgeting for all these different eventualities really does make a big difference.

And the next thing that I want to talk to you about is cash because the world that we live in today with very much a cashless society. Now we've got things now such as contactless payments, where we can authorize a payment up to 30 quid without even putting a pin number in, we've got situations where we've got things now like Apple Pay, where you can just pay for something using your phone and you don't necessarily need to get your card out. We've got credit cards, we've got prepaid cards, we've got so many different things that we can be thinking about and that we can be doing that we can get really, really stressed out with, you know, not knowing where we are. Now. Also, it can be easy to get some cash out of the cash point or be given some cash for something that maybe somebody owes you or you know, giving a present.

You know, nowadays yesterday for example, I went out to go and buy some flowers for a friend, some flowers for myself and some flowers for another friend and ended up spending 20 pounds. Now that was a good deal, I think on all the flowers that are bought, because I'm quite particular about where I go and buy these things for free. Because I make sure that you know, I'm doing it within the budget that I've allocated for myself. But, you know, somebody had given me some cash the other day, and that's why I mentioned in this, that I, you know, they owed to me, and you know, it was 30 pounds, you know, two thirds of that were gone in one purchase. So, you know, be very mindful of this because cash can easily go through your hands and disappear when you're not keeping tabs on what you're actually doing.

So when you've done all of these exercises, and you've pulled all of this information together, what I want you to do is I want you to then do an exercise around where could you be saving money, you know, what are you spending on food For example, every month, food can be a huge expense for us. And it can be something where, you know, we overspend dramatically. Now in the next module that we're going to be doing, I'm actually going to be sharing with you a model that I highly recommend that you adopt on how to manage all of your money in the most effective way. And to be able to budget simply for things like food, and I keep going on about this, but it's something that I will keep keep reiterating to you until people really get it in there. But, you know, food, for example, can be something where people totally lose control of that budget.

And there's a program here in the UK, which is all about what you're spending on food. And there was one particular lady that was spending just for her and her daughter alone, 24,000 pounds a year on food for two people guys, that is a lot of money, a lot of money and it really doesn't need to be that much. So you know if you are in a place where you need to look at your budget and make some saving somewhere Food is a huge area for you to look at. And we're going to do a whole separate masterclass on food, and how to kind of, you know, really make the most out of what you're doing there because it is a key key area. What I want you to then do is I want you to look at things like your insurances. And are you getting the best deal on your insurances and your mortgage?

Are you getting the best deal? For example, if you've got a mortgage, and you're in the most competitive rate that you could be on your non essential spending things like kids parties, you know, for example, when it was my daughter's birthday, I actually messaged all of the parents of the children that I invited and I said, Look, please don't spend any more than five pounds on a present for Olive. She's very blessed little girl. She has lots of wonderful things. She really doesn't need anything in particular because I always make sure that all of her needs are met. And actually, she's three, she would be thrilled to bits if you got her one of these blind back things that are three pounds or, or indirect.

You know, so I think about getting things into perspective, and looking at what that non essential spending is, as well. And maybe where you can make some savings there. Again, if you've got debts, we will do a whole separate thing on debt and how to manage that and how to, you know, get all of that into check for you. But things like loans, credit cards, you know, are you on the most competitive rate. A few years ago, I worked with a lady that had got a dream to go and live in New Zealand. And basically, she'd kind of she, she put it out there, she said that, you know, it's never going to happen, I'm never going to be able to do this because I've got this debt.

And actually, until I pay the debt off, I can't even begin to entertain this dream of going to live in New Zealand. So what I encouraged her to do was to go and look at all of those debts and to see what she could do with regards to consolidation. And again, like I said, I'm going to do a whole separate class on this and how you can do that in the most effective way. But the long story short of this is she went away. She did what I told her to do, she applied what I told To do, and ultimately, within 18 months, she was, you know, in the place of planning when she was leaving to go and live in New Zealand, because what she actually discovered was she was paying a lot of money on interest rates that she didn't need to be spending it on.

And actually, by going and looking at a consolidation of that all she actually managed to pay it off within the 18 months when the reality was, she thought that it was going to be nearly three years before she could actually get all of this debt paid off. So putting yourself in an informed position, which is what this entire exercise is all about. Really, really does make a big difference to what is going on with you and your money. So again, the final thing here is a travel. What are you spending on travel expenses, could you do that in a more effective way? You know, fuel drive your car at the speed limit people believe me, my husband has a lot of miles and When he drives his vehicle at the speed limit, rather than speeding, which gets him there no quicker, he can get up to 150 miles per tank more out of the fuel by literally driving the speed limit.

And also, you know, when you go in over speed bumps, there were a reality of the world nowadays, if you brake people, you are using more fuel because you're braking, whereas if you just drive the speed limit and go a bit slower knowing that you've got to do that, you know, anyway, because otherwise you're gonna damage your car by bouncing over them. Again, all of these things add up. And as I say, with everything, it's all of the little things people all of the little things that make a massive, massive difference. So make some time to do this exercise because this people, practicality wise is one of the most important exercises that you are going to do on this 90 day induction. So get on with it. Do the work.

Let us know how it goes on. catch you in the next video.