Our Biggest Money Mistakes

We have made a lot of money mistakes over the years. Money has never been something myself or my husband has been interested in learning how to manage. It would come in and then go out just as quickly. We didn’t really care about budgeting or trying to save money. And repaying debt fast wasn’t even on our minds.

It wasn’t until our family grow from 4 children to 8 children in a space of 18 months that we finally realised we had to learn. There was more children to care for but the same amount of income coming in to do it with. We still weren’t great at it, but we were more aware of where our money was starting to go and how quickly. Although we where able to clear 10k of debt in 6 months, we where still making some mistakes.

Then 2020 hit like a wreaking ball. We lost a large portion of income and this really made us learn where we were going wrong. With the same amount of people in the home and less money to live on. We learnt really quickly how to budget better, shop for groceries smarter, all while saving and clearing debt we had created again.

Nobody was born to be good with money. You learn how over time and that is why I wanted to share some of our biggest money mistakes that we have made.

Not Setting Or Reviewing Financial Goals

Financial goals are one of the biggest key steps towards making changes with the way you see, think and use your money. We have never had financial goals. At least not goals that we have written down. We had spoke about what we wanted in the future but had never written anything down. Or even broken them down in manageable steps to make these visions of how we wanted our life to be, become a reality.

Looking back over the years, because we didn’t make financial goals. We have kept making the same mistakes with our money and never made any progress from where we are now. And with making goals with our money, we never review them to make sure they still aligned with what we wanted or to make progress. All this would have helped us be further along in our journey to finical freedom.

Not Being Realistic

Not being honest and realistic with ourselves and our money has been one of our biggest mistakes. We have been in denial over the years about our spending and our debt. Even though our debt is small compared to most people. We have used that as an excuse to not make our debt a priority. It was only when we started to really knuckle down and track our money to be in a better position to purchase our first home, that we started be real with our spending and debt. Debt is debt no matter how big or small the amount is. And making budgets that we couldn’t stick to was also us being un-realisit to what our family needed. Making a working budget based on our regular spend was much easier then making cuts that where never going to work.

Not Changing Bad Spending Habits

It didn’t take us long to realise we where the creators of our own money situation. With my impulsive buying and my husbands need to give our children the nice things he never had growing up. Our bad money habits were a disaster waiting to happen. We have had to do a lot of money mindset work to unblock those money block that have been keeping us both stuck in our bad habits. It has only been when things started to get really bad that we started to make changes. Kicking our bad spending habits changing the way we viewed procession in our life.

Not Making Saving A Proioirty

Savings was never something we where good at. If we had some spare money we would spend it. That meant that meant if things went wrong, like a car broke down or we needed to a new washing machine. We would go months without having the money to fall back one to cover these unexpected expenses. It was only when we started setting financial goals that we began to realise the importance of having saving for lives unexpected problems. But also to save to help cover expenses that would happen every year. It kept us on budget and we where still able to afford the thing, big and small, that we needed. Saving money so became a priority in our budgeting, just in front of paying off our debt.

Not Having A Debt Plan

When it came to paying off our debt, we where stuck for a really long time just making minimum repayments. while this did pay off the debt slowly, it was making us stay in debt longer. After reading some personal finance books and listening to podcasts. We finally found a debt repayment method that worked for our financial perdition. Helping to pay off our debt quicker. By now using the snowball method debt plan, we have taken what would off been years stuck repaying debt.

Not Saving For A Home Deposit Earlier

This was a massive mistake for us. We had always planned on buying a house because the insecurity of renting as a larger family is always looming. Most landlords don’t want a large family renting. For the last couple of years we have been repeatedly rejected from larger properties. The fear of homelessness is always on the back of our minds. As of now we wished we had started saving for a home deposit earlier. We would have been so close to the 35% deposit that our family our size and in our income bracket would require. Unfortunately we didn’t and now we are still many years away from our goal of home ownership, if we stay on our current income.

Not Having Sinking Funds

I had always had a saving account since I opened my first banking account. But I never really cared about it or used it. It wasn’t until we had to begin to live much more frugally that the idea of sinking funds become so appealing. Instead of having to pay off or cover big expenses in one go. Sinking funds allowed us to save before hand and not break out weekly budget to cover an expense. I like to us sinking funds for my neurodiverse children’s private health appointments. We also have one for Christmas and birthday gifts that we have relayed on for the last two years to cover gifts throughout the year. There is also over home deposit sinking fund account that I wish we had started five years ago. Sinking funds have been a big game changer to us financially.

READ: Paying Off Debt With The Snowball Method

Not Review Our Monthly Spending

Even though we budget weekly, from one pay check to the next. It wasn’t until we started to review our monthly spending that we began to see the little mistakes that we where making with our money. Giving us the drive to make adjustments to our spending habits. This not only help us be more motivated with our money, but it also helped us to put extra money toward savings and debt plans that we had in place.

What have we learned?

That being good with money is about changing our relationship with money. Neither myself or my husband have come from a place where money was abundant. We have both grown up watching our parent scrimp and save. To work hard to earn what they could to make ends meet. So before we could become better with money we had to learn and change our understanding of money.

We had to start making our money work for us. To get the most out of every cent that come into our banks account. Making sure it had a destination to go. To give our money a job to be used for so that we could be more frugal and purposeful with our money. It is taking practice but with every week that passes we are getting better. We are slowly clearing our debts and saving towards the future.

Here is the quick recap of, Our biggest money mistakes

• Not Setting Or Reviewing Financial Goals
• Not Being Realistic
• Not Changing Bad Spending Habits
• Not Making Saving A Priority
• Not Having A Debt Plan
• Not Saving For A Home Deposit Earlier
• Not Having Sinking Funds
• Not Reviewing Our Monthly Spending Habits