Money, Finances and $$$$…
What feeling comes up when you see these words?
Do you get Excited or Scared? Do you feel in Control or Overwhelmed?
Just take a moment and have a listen.
This is the thing with the modern world you’re living in it is almost impossible to not be caught up in the free flowing spending culture of Consumerism. Throw in the gift of the plastic credit card from the modern gods (the banks) and some of you might be finding yourselves in a battle. A battle between walking that tight rope of having your spending under control and losing it all and going into massive credit debt. To avoid losing you need to study the enemy, you need to study YOU. You need to study and know your spending habits inside and out for you to be able to pull yourself out of the hell-hole of debt.
I am a personal finance nut!
For over 15 years I’ve obsessed and researched and experimented in so many ways to manage, track and hack through my finances to make every cent count! So much so that by the time I finished university and got my first proper full-time job, I had enough saved to buy a property in Sydney worth just under $0.5M in 2008. All without having to pick up multiple low paying jobs during school or university. Now I’ve tripled the value of my property portfolio, expanded into online businesses and the stock market. Every cent counts and as most of the financial gurus share, if you want to be successful in business and finance you need to know where every dollar is going.
The Germans knew it best when they said
“If you don’t respect the penny, you don’t deserve the dollar.”
Originally appeared in Men’s Muscle & Health Australia
So for you to have the financial freedom or even the lifestyle you want, you first need to know where you are at today. Most people will go and try the old-fashioned manual style of writing down all of your spending each day and then reviewing them. If you’re a little more tech savvy you’re probably going to be doing it in Excel, but at the end of the day it is still manual. Make your life much simpler through this amazing app called Pocketbook. I’ve personally been using it since it launched back in 2014. It is an absolute game changer that will make your financial life sooooooo much more simpler.
So how does it work?
Simple. It automatically pulls all of your transactions down into an easy to view app that you can easily assign categories to. Allowing you to easily review your weekly, fortnightly or monthly spending habits to see where has your money really gone. There are no more excuses saying ‘it’s too hard to track my spending’.
Like anything that is automated it takes a little effort at the start to save you so much more time down the line. It all begins with connecting Pocketbook with your bank account or credit card provider. If you’re worried about security then no need to fear as the app is using the same bank-level security technology the big banks in Australia as well as end-to-end encryption.
Watch the overview video here at
Once you’re logged with the same details as you would for online banking you’ll be able to select which accounts you want Pocketbook to analyse. For most people it’ll be mainly the credit card or even debit card account. Beauty is if you have multiple cards Pocketbook can track them as well!
So once in you’ll be able to set spending targets to help the app notify you when you are edging closer to reaching your spending limit. I would recommend only putting this limiter in place after you’ve been tracking your spending for a few months, at least. Once completed next you’ll really want to work through each of the transactions to assign them to a category. This is CRUCIAL because it’ll make your life so much easier to analyse your spending habits. Now is the fun part!
After using the app for a week you should have enough data to be able to do a review to see where you’re money has gone for the week. This is where most boys would be scared off, but not you. You’re a man and as a man you’ll stare-down your fears and be the master of them.
The analyse function makes it amazingly simple for anyone to see where the money has gone as Pocketbook is smart enough to auto-detect your expenses and to categorise them. Sometimes they need tweaking, but more often then not they’ll get the difference between a mobile bill and a protein shake. Of course you can also add in cash transactions manually. I highly recommend performing weekly check-ins to see what is being processed. More to make sure your card hasn’t been skimmed. As well as monthly reviews to allocate your funding correctly.
The 3 most important rules to remember when it comes to personal financial management are:
- Garbage In Garbage Out (GIGO) – Make sure the data you put in is correct otherwise you won’t be able to analyse it effectively.
- Review, Review, Review – Make it a habit to review your expenses otherwise they start piling up and you lose track of where you are. Kind of like keeping your bedroom in order when you’re trying to find that nice shirt for your first date
- Optimise – After you’re in the habit of tracking your spending you’re ready to start to optimise your finances to cut out what you don’t need. Allowing you to pay yourself first to save for the big ticket items that you really want!
Pocketbook is not the saving grace for all your finances. It’s not here to help you make money, it also won’t tell you where you shouldn’t be spending your money. It’s here to help bring more self-awareness of what your purchases are so you can make an informed decision of what is unnecessary. If you do not spend the time to manage your own finances they’ll eventually be controlling you through stress of not truly knowing where you stand financially.
Money can be the root of all evil, only if you let it be untamed. Start taming your money beast within to cut the stress, live the life you want and respect the penny to earn the dollars…
Grab Pocketbook here for free https://getpocketbook.com/