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  GET UNSTUCK

  get unstuck

  CREATE A LIFE NOT LIMITED BY MONEY

  Get Unstuck

  Author – Ben Nash

  © Ben Nash 2018

  www.pivotwealth.com.au

  [email protected]

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, stored, posted on the internet, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without permission from the author of this book.

  The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

  The author is not affiliated with and does not endorse any of the corporate entities mentioned in or involved in the distribution of this work, or any third party entities whose trademarks and logos may appear on this work.

  All names used in this book have been changed to preserve privacy.

  Editing by: Tamara Protassow and Tanja Gardner

  Cover Design by: Vyrne Gullery

  Images: Jason Malouin

  Internal Design by: www.AuthorSupportServices.com

  Printed and Bound in Australia by: Ingram Spark.

  ISBN: 978-0-9876158-9-3 (paperback)

  eISBN: 978-0-6483917-0-8 (e-book)

  For Yang

  Contents

  Introduction

  Section 1: Structure

  Chapter 1: Don’t Think Yourself Poor

  Chapter 2: It Pays to Tame Your Brain

  Chapter 3: Why You Don’t Have a Six-Pack

  Chapter 4: Why You Suck at Saving

  Section 2: Strategy

  Chapter 5: You Can’t Have It All

  Chapter 6: Know Your Knowns and Unknowns

  Chapter 7: Saving Sucks

  Chapter 8: WTF is Financial Advice?

  Section 3: Solutions

  Chapter 9: Death and Taxes

  Chapter 10: Don’t Shoot the Lights Out

  Chapter 11: The House Always Wins (or does it?)

  Chapter 12: Don’t Be Old and Poor

  Chapter 13: Reality, Roadblocks and Results

  Bibliography

  Introduction

  My interest in money started by chance the day my nan gave me a book. The book was Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, and I was drawn to the simplicity with which Kiyosaki explained financial concepts I’d previously found confusing.

  This book sparked an interest, and I’m a bit of a reader – so I started buying up all the personal finance books I could get my hands on. Shortly afterwards, I decided to go back to uni and study finance. That led to a graduate role in a traditional ‘blue chip’ money management company that helped rich people get richer.

  I enjoyed the work: every day was different. I got to work with some interesting high-profile peeps, and everything went along swimmingly. Then, a few years later, I left that company to join a small business in the Sydney CBD that focused on working with first home buyers.

  When I started in the industry, I’d enjoyed helping people use the rules to keep more of their money. But there’s something slightly more rewarding about helping people buy their first home and set up their family’s (or potential family’s) future than there is about helping some super-rich dude save $200k in tax so he can buy a bigger boat.

  I joined this small business to build their financial advice arm, so I went to work creating a service that would be valuable to people in their 20s and 30s. I asked our clients about the problems they were facing; and, while everyone’s situation was unique, I definitely saw some common themes in their problems, including:

  •Being overwhelmed by too many options and too much information

  •Not being able to effectively balance financial success and enjoy an epic lifestyle at the same time

  •Being time-poor and not wanting to waste their precious spare time doing something they weren’t good at and didn’t enjoy

  They didn’t know what information was important or what to do with the information they had. They were scared of doing the wrong thing, so they did…. NOTHING!

  It’s so easy to fall into what I call ‘the inaction trap’ with money. Most financial benefits only come from taking ACTION. So if you fall into this trap, you end up missing the opportunity to get your income, savings and investments all working harder for you and moving you closer to the lifestyle you want.

  Once I recognised this, I created a financial planning and advice service to help people solve these problems. I’d look at their income and spending, plus what was left over and their existing assets, and help them to create a strategy for putting their money to work. The output was a plan that showed them the path from where they were that day to the money (and non-money) results they wanted.

  And when I first started doing this, I looked at the numbers and got really excited.

  I could see that my plan gave my clients the potential to very quickly grow their savings, investments and assets. I was stoked. They were going to grow some epic cash over time, which meant they could live a great lifestyle.

  Then, when I showed my clients the plan, I could see their excitement build as they imagined all the things they could do with this cash. I asked them about the difference this money would make to them, and they started telling me about all the things they wanted to do. The epic trips overseas. The ability to look after their parents. The flexibility around their work. And the list went on.

  I told them how much they’d need to save to make the plans happen, and what to do with their savings to get the results in their plan. Then I normally suggested we book in another check-in with them in six months’ time.

  In the month before the first check-in was scheduled, I found myself imagining the meetings in my mind. I pictured big congratulations, high fives, maybe even a bear hug or two. I figured my clients would be so happy with their progress – from saving almost nothing to crushing it – that they might even consider naming their firstborn after me.

  That wasn’t what happened.

  I still remember the first meeting. As the clients came into the office and I greeted them, there were no high fives. The clients were fairly quiet, though, so I just chalked it up to personality.

  When we sat down, I was all smiles. They, however, weren’t. In fact, they looked nervous and a little upset. Definitely no bear hugs or offers to name their children after me. And when I asked the clients how they were going, they said, “Not well.”

  Concerned, I asked more questions; and they went on to tell me about the long list of things that had ‘come up’ and stopped them getting the results they needed. It felt like a confessional. I could tell my clients were frustrated.

  Then, when I looked at the numbers, I could see my clients weren’t on track. They weren’t even close. They’d increased their savings a tiny bit, but also increased spending on credit. Overall, they’d gone BACKWARDS. I was shocked.

  We talked about the impact of this setback, and I showed them the disastrous effect that continuing on this path would have on their original plan. They weren’t happy, but they told me that these issues were one-off exceptions, and wouldn’t be an ongoing thing.

  So we reset their strategy and targets, and confirmed what
they’d need to do over the next six months to get back on track. By the end of the meeting, my clients were feeling much better, and they left once again pumped up to go out and get their planned results.

  This was only my first review meeting, so I figured it was a one-off. But, over more and more meetings, I discovered that the majority of my clients also weren’t on track. They all had similar stories about what had come up to stop them sticking to the plan we’d set. Their reasons were different: little Jimmy needed special shoes, they had an ‘emergency’ getaway to reduce stress levels, or they NEEDED a new wood-fire pizza oven for their house. But very few of my clients had hit the targets they’d set for themselves.

  In fact, only one person had managed it: an actuary who was already pretty good with money and just needed help to get to the next level. This client was all over it. Most, however, weren’t.

  I got quite concerned at this point: both for my clients, and for the advice I was giving. I had no interest in helping people build awesome plans that never actually came together. So I started trying to figure out why this had happened, and what I could do to fix it.

  I came up with a few questions and started asking my clients for feedback. Pretty much all of them told me that they knew what to do, but actually doing it was hard work. They were spending a bunch of time trying to manage their money, but it was going everywhere. They were constantly ‘juggling’ money from one place to another, and pushing to get the results they’d planned for.

  Because there was so much work, they lost motivation over time and just gave up. I asked what would make getting results easier, and the feedback was almost unanimous. People needed a structured process to make it easy to save and invest their money the way they’d planned.

  Now we were getting somewhere.

  I’m a process nut. I think that with enough thought and attention, most things in life can be broken down into a clear, easy-to-follow process. Creating these sorts of processes is one of my strengths, so I went to work creating a spending, saving and banking system to make money management easy.

  It took a lot of effort to get there: almost five years of tweaking and refining the process. But the results speak for themselves. The recent statistics I’ve pulled on my clients’ savings show that people who follow this process save – on average – over 35% of their income. That’s more than seven times the Australian national savings average of 4.7%.

  And the impact? As you’ll learn through this book, the power of time and money is a beautiful thing. If the average 30-year-old saved this much extra income and invested it, they’d have an additional $3.4m by age 60.

  I believe that every single person should be able to live ‘a life not limited by money’. But, if you’re like most young people today, this isn’t easy. You want it all without sacrificing anything. You want a life that fulfils you and makes you happy. And you can have one.

  How? Having that life means realising that money doesn’t solve problems, but it does create options. Those options empower you with choices to do the things you want and live the life you want. Because, unless your dream life is living off the land in a forest or jungle somewhere, you need money to make it possible.

  Again, it’s not easy. Writing this book took me down a rabbit hole of complexities, options and choices around saving, investing, property, insurance and money in general. It was overwhelming.

  There are tens of thousands of investment options just in Australia, and hundreds of thousands across global markets. And that’s just investments. There are even more options for banking, retirement, property, and other investments and financial products. And then you have the strategy options. Pay down debt, contribute to super, buy shares, don’t buy shares, invest overseas, buy property, don’t buy property…. You get the picture.

  How do you choose which is best for you? Which combination of strategies, investments and products will get you what YOU want? Making this choice is difficult even for people who work in finance or money management.

  Add to this the pressure we (and social media) place on ourselves to ‘keep up’ with our peers and our personal and professional networks. The icing on the cake is our inbuilt psychology and decision-making processes, which work entirely against us when it comes to money. And then there’s the barrage of advice we get from mates, family and our friendly Uber drivers.

  Everyone has a different opinion about what you should do with your money. They tell you to buy shares, buy property, don’t buy property, contribute to your super fund, and it goes on… Each person is entirely convinced that they’re suggesting the absolute best thing to do, and that everyone else is wrong.

  No wonder you end up confused.

  Sadly, there’s no silver bullet. I speak to a lot of people about money, and they often ask questions like, “I’ve got $10k and I want to do something smart with it. What should I do?” I’ve actually lost count of the number of times I’ve heard this exact question.

  Unfortunately for all of us, there is no one right answer to this question. There’s no one pathway that will always deliver the best results. The right answer is different for everyone. The best thing for you depends on where you are now, what you want to do over time, and what’s important to you. This book was written to help you understand how to figure out what YOUR best pathway is.

  Because, while there’s no one pathway that can guarantee money success for everyone, there are things that everyone should know about money. There are also tools and concepts that everyone needs to understand to know how to make smart choices that are right for them.

  And that’s what you’ll learn as you work through this book.

  The importance of education

  I’ve got a lot of teachers in my family. My mum was a primary school teacher; and from a young age, she drilled the importance of education into me.

  I must have listened to her, because one of my true pleasures in life is learning. I’ve done a bunch of formal study, and I’m still learning every single day. That learning comes both through running and growing my financial planning business Pivot Wealth, and through the financial advice, planning and coaching work I do with my clients. That’s why, whether you focus on your work, health, money, or any other area, I think educating yourself is so important.

  When you understand your options and know what you should be doing, everything becomes easier. You can kick butt in your job. You can become healthier and live longer. You can pursue the interests you care about. And you can make it easier to get your money sorted.

  It doesn’t matter which path you take to reach your version of money success, you still need to educate yourself.

  Education lets you choose the best options to get you the results you want. It helps you to build confidence in your strategy and direction. A solid understanding allows you to reduce and manage risk. And maybe most importantly, it helps you to stick with your strategy when you should; or change, adjust or refine what you’re doing when needed.

  I can help anyone create a money strategy that will get them awesome results. But if I don’t educate them about why the strategy is so good, or how it will work for them, they’re much less likely to get the results we planned for.

  If you don’t have enough knowledge about the ‘why’ behind your strategy, you’ll forget why you’re doing whatever you’re doing. A colleague will tell you how they made big money following some interesting financial strategy, and your ears will prick up. You’ll wonder whether that option might be better for you. It’ll sound better – and without enough education, you won’t fully understand why you’re on your current path.

  Then you’ll get distracted by these ‘shiny objects’, and get off track.

  So regardless of the money path you choose, you need to educate yourself to clearly understand why it’s good for you. You should also understand why you’re NOT doing any of the multitude of other things you could possibly do with your cash.

  Invest in your money education, and it will pay benefi
ts for years to come. Not only in the financial benefits, but in time saved as you avoid distractions, confidence in your strategy, and less money-related stress.

  The three money areas you HAVE to get right

  My past experiences with clients have led me to think about what the critical elements of money success actually are.

  I’ve found there are three key areas you need to get right to be successful with money. These three areas are all related, and they work together. If any one of them is missing or not up to scratch, you’ll never achieve true success with money. The three areas are Structure, Strategy and Solutions.

  Structure

  Your Structure is how you manage your money on a day-to-day basis. The biggest part of this is your spending, saving and banking habits. Your money psychology and decision-making processes have a huge – and enormously underestimated – impact on the results you get with money.

  So you need to be aware of your flawed thinking and biases to avoid their impact.

  If you know the steps involved and what to look for, you can make your money management psychology work for you instead of against you. To help with this, I’m going to step you through your money psychology and biases in the first three chapters. Then, in the fourth chapter, I’ll show you how put this knowledge into practice to make managing your money simple and effective.

  The results of getting this right are powerful. They flow through to all other areas of your money and (should) drive the choices you’re making. You need to know how much money you need for spending now, and how much you can direct to making smart choices for the future – e.g. investing, or saving for a rainy day or emergencies.

  Then, once you’re on top of your spending and saving, you’re all set to get smart and make your money work harder for you.

  However, most people skim over this area, dishing out the good old Aussie ‘She’ll be right’ strategy. They might write a loose budget that they never really stick to, or download an app that tells them how much they’ve spent after the fact.