Manage Your Money like a F*cking Grown Up

The Best Money Advice You Never Got

Sam Beckbessinger

• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781868428229
• eBook ISBN:
  9781868428236
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Business Skills

We never get an instruction manual about how money works. We never have to pass a test to get our Money License before we can take a new credit card for a drive. Most of what we learn about money comes from advertising or from other people who know as little as we do. No wonder we make such basic mistakes. No wonder we feel disempowered and scared. No wonder so many of us just decide to stick our heads in the damn sand and just never deal with it. I wrote this book, because so many of the people I spoke to told me that they wished someone would.

In this clear and engaging basic guide to managing your finances, Sam Beckbessinger covers topics from compound interest and inflation to "Your brain on money", negotiating a raise, and particularly local South African phenomena like "black tax". The book includes exercises and "how-to's", doesn't shy away from the psychology of money, and is empowering, humorous and helpful. The book you wish you'd had at 25, but is never too late to read.

MONEY AND FREEDOM

Being in control of your money means being in control of your life

When you look back over the list of every transaction you’ve made, you’re seeing, in a sense, a journal of your life. That lunch you had two years ago with your mum — there’s the receipt for it. There’s that gym membership you took out but never used. There’s the vet bill for your dog. There’s that road trip you took with your best friend. Here’s the first thing you need to realise: stop thinking that you need to be less emotional about money. Money should feel emotional.

When you’re more in control of your money, it means that you’re directing more of it into things that really matter to you. This means that, in order to be a Badass Grownup with your money, you need to start off by figuring out what really matters to you. Easy-peasy, right?

You don’t have infinite money, unless you have a genie or something. That means that you have to be more honest with yourself about what you want your life to look like. Sure, maybe you imagine yourself as a long-distance runner who’s also an amazing chef and wears fabulous vintage clothing all the time and travels six times a year and eats dinner with friends every night and also lives in a fabulous house and runs her own business and makes delicate miniature portraits of cats for fun, but realistically, you’ve got to pick just a few of these things. You can do anything, but not everything.

No one actually wants money. We want the things money can allow us to do. To have money is to have freedom.

You gain control by being more conscious of your choices

The next big thing you need to realise is that most of the world is actively working against your designing the life you really want.

Every business in the world wants you to buy the things they’re selling. They spend billions and billions of rands each year on marketing and advertising, industries whose sole aim is to make you think you want a bunch of crap you didn’t want before they told you that you want it. These people are alarmingly good at their jobs. They shape culture, they make you believe ideas like ‘cars mean freedom’ and ‘no one will love you unless you are a very specific type of beautiful’ and ‘expensive means quality’. But these ideas are not your own. They have been carefully implanted in your brain to sell you things. They distract you from the things you really do care about.

Then there are other people, people who care about you but also try to impose their own values on you, like your parents. They might imagine a good life for you involving a big family home in the suburbs and a reliable job and lots of money. But their values come from a world that doesn’t exist any more – reliable jobs, ha! And they’re not necessarily your values.

Friends can be even less helpful. We all imitate our friends. We’re jealous of their holidays, their Facebook feeds, the stuff they buy. But we don’t really know how they’re financing all of this, what trade-offs they’ve made.

A guy called Rob Greenfield decided that the thing that matters most to him is travelling the world. So, he owns exactly 111 items, and he has spent the last five years roaming the world with these things on his back. That’s probably not what everyone wants to do with their life. But the point is, you have more choices than you realise.

Being in control of your money is about making those choices more deliberately because, if you don’t, you’ll end up spending it all on the advertisers’ ideas about what makes a good life.

You’re smarter than that. You’re going to have the guts to dream bigger.

START IMAGINING A FUTURE

Which of these resonate the most with you, when you think about your future?

•A beautiful suburban home

•Owning one of the world’s best sports cars

•Living in a cabin near a serene lake

•Seeing the world

•Honing a skill to become a renowned artist or craftsman

•Volunteering and community service

•Doing an MBA

•A big family, and time to spend with them

•Going to intense music concerts

•Throwing wild parties in a mansion

•Starting a life in another country

•Going on crazy adventures

•Becoming a successful entrepreneur

What other futures stir your heart?

Trying to look rich is how most of us get poor

In my early 20s, I dated a boy who drove the shittiest car you’ve ever seen. It was a twelve-year-old Jetta, 90% rust, that broke down on the highway all the friggin’ time. When I started dating this boy, I assumed that he came from a pretty regular family. I felt a bit sorry for him with his terrible car. Then, a few months into dating him, I met his family. And I discovered – to my great surprise – that this boy’s family was rich. Old money rich.

You see, this guy had bought his shitty Jetta himself. With cash. From the savings he started accumulating as a ch...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Disclaimer
• Contents
• Why did I write this book?
• This book’s approach
• Chapter 1 — This book is for you
• Chapter 2 — A money crash course
• Chapter 3 — Get your shit together
• Chapter 4 — Figure out which game you’re playing
• Chapter 5 — Wrangle your spending
• Chapter 6 — Making money
• Chapter 7 — Get the right accounts
• Chapter 8 — Staying motivated
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Book
• About the Author
• Imprint Page