Monday 29 February 2016

THE B WORD....... 

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberrans earn on average the highest wages in the country.

Pictured: Average Canberran:















IF WE EARN SO MUCH WHERE DOES IT GO??

It is very common to hear people say that they have no money or that they don't know where their money goes. Even worse – many people feel as though despite the fact they work hard, they aren’t getting anywhere in terms of their savings. Sad face. L


DOES THIS FEEL LIKE YOU?

Personally I know that I have been guilty of this in the past. I always had a vague idea where my money went, however I couldn’t easily sit down and really pinpoint my expenses. 

This sucked - it meant it was hard to really address where money could be saved, where we might be overspending and in the extreme occasionally things might be double paid without us knowing!



KNOWLEDGE IS POWER ->

VIVID CAN GRANT YOU KNOWLEDGE.

THEREFORE, VIVID CAN MAKE YOU POWERFUL!

Left: Before Vivid                                                            Right: After Vivid
       


How can the team at Vivid make you powerful????


FIRSTLY: With our help, set up a BUDGET (boring right? WRONG. OK partially right, but bear with me). 

The budget should take into account:

  • Your estimated income
  • Your fixed expenses (mortgage payments or rent, school fees, food) and
  • Your variable expenses (entertainment, Foxtel, restaurants) 

Many people have prepared budgets and then never looked at them again. If you do this, then you have completely wasted your time!

You might as well have gone and watched The Cobbler starring Adam Sandler.

An example of peaking in the mid-90s:



 SECONDLY: *IMPORTANT * *IMPORTANT * *IMPORTANT * *IMPORTANT *


  • Set up a personal Xero account.
  • Input your budget.
  • Setup live bank feeds from your bank accounts and credit cards.
  • Set up rules for regular expenses (eg: Woolworths – put to food, BP put to Motor Vehicle)
These steps mean the bulk of the data entry is done for you.


  • Tell Xero what the other expenses are on a regular basis
This is very easy and Xero remembers a lot of recurring expenses to save you even more time.

What you will find is that with a little (and seriously – it is not a lot) bit of work each week or month, you will see exactly where your money has gone and whether you are on track for your savings targets.

This is an example, which is obviously not tailored for you:








Once this has been done, you too can have the joy of sitting down every month to a family budget meeting. Seriously, the partners and staff at Vivid do it and we are extremely cool:


I think some of you may be shocked at where your money goes.

Knowledge is power – once you know where your money is going, you can choose what to do next!

After you have your budgeting set up you can move onto goal and target setting which we will cover in a future blog post.

If you would like to find out more please CONTACT US

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