Enhanced Transcribe:
Hey folks, Dr Ro here hope you are well.
We’re coming through Covid, there’ve been many people furloughed many people in a situation where they’ve been made redundant and employed some people are saving money because they’re not spending. Other people have spent, Amazon has gone through the roof a lot of deliveries to people’s houses and there’s a lot of people saying what do I do next?
Do I want to stay in my career?
A lot of it is driven by the need to have a better financial situation or to be able to have a better lifestyle and want to be able to do that and have choices.
With choices comes the ability or the need to be able to financially put yourself in a position to have those choices, i.e. where do I travel, when I travel, how I travel, who I travel with.
The thing I found over years when I used to run financial workshops and there was a lady couple years ago who I know very well and she listened to a 38 minute closed eye really deep process that I took and still take people through on the recording and off the back of that the next day she raised 600 K I think it was. Pretty damn good going, I think.
I want to strip that down and just give you one simple thing: how do you spot credit blur?
It refers to and I first used it in the late 90s going back a long time. It refers to someone that hasn’t got clarity. In other words, there is a blur they haven’t got clarity on their credit, their financial situation, financial statement. That includes bank statements, credit card statements, statements from your mortgage company, credit cards, all that stuff loans. I’ve brought them into one term, I call it credit blur.
Here are the signs when you know that maybe you haven’t got such a great relationship with the money, you are afraid to open up your bank account and look at the bank statement. You’re afraid to open up a letter that comes to the door that has a summary of your financial situation. You feel uncomfortable sitting down and discussing your finances with your partner, you feel uncomfortable making choices about how to manage your money and you may even have a habit of spending money, but not looking to see how much you’ve got left and what’s available to spend. You don’t really have clarity on how the money will stretch out over the next two months, six months, 12 months, you certainly don’t have clarity on how much you’re spending on a monthly basis.
How much is coming in, how much is allocated to savings, how much you’re using to treat yourself to money, how much you give to charity. How much you’re investing you wouldn’t have that level of clarity if you have clear credit because blur is just a blur, it’s just a greyness.
You certainly have a slight tension in your tummy or tightness in your chest or a kind of fuzziness when it comes to dealing with or handling your finances, making big decisions about money and certainly when it comes to buying something for investment or education or anything like that it’s like I’m not sure.
There are four personality types that over the years I talked about. The key thing here is to look for those traits I just talked about and honestly, if you’ve got a partner or you are feeling that chances are two things one you’ve got credit blur, which means that you’re not 100% comfortable with your financial situation. Rather than face up to it you just blur it. We soft filter finances as well if we have credit, blur, meaning that you don’t really want to find out the details of it. If you said to me what’s a quick solution to that, well sit up, take a deep breath, say I have got to draw a line here now what I do next?
What’s the best way to handle my current situation?
If you have tenseness when it comes to dealing with money. If you find a resistance to sitting down and opening up all your notes, your accounts and paperwork and all that stuff. Your credit file, your bank statements, any sort of resistance to that working through it or there’s a kind of nervousness about what the end result could be, how much am I making per month versus what I’m spending. How much I am equal to at the end of the year. How much borrowing have I got?
What’s the interest rate on borrowing all that stuff if that’s the stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable, then chances are you’ve got a bad relationship with money because you don’t feel healthy about dealing with it. I spent probably four hours this afternoon looking through spreadsheets with my account’s manager stripping down our portfolio to see where we’ve got properties that could work harder, where we might be coming into problems in the next two or three months. We’ve got a few student lets, let’s talk about that separately, and what’s that particular university looking to do. Are they looking to move back the opening of the year?
As some universities right now are considering just going online for the next six months so how is that going to affect us?
This is not an easy conversation to have and you have to face up to them. So we sat and went through all of this, where’s stuff doing really, what needs to be adjusted, where have we got borrowing that we can reduce?
These are conversations that you’ve got to have upfront close and personal with yourself, your computer with your laptop whatever you use and your bank account.
Those are the signs.
Disclaimer: This video or written publication does not offer investment or financial advice and nothing in them should be construed as investment or financial advice. Our publications provide information and education only. The information contained in our publications is not, and should not be seen as a recommendation to use any particular investment strategy. Always seek financial advice from an independent financial adviser around your own personal financial situation.