The unhinged guide to becoming richer

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

I am sure you’ve heard all the rules around money. Cut back on your coffees. Don’t go on holidays, buy cheap clothes. Well, today I’m busting open all of those boring, outdated, tight ay rules that keep people stressed and weird about money because you should be able to enjoy your life as you create wealth.

So today I’m sharing some unhinged ways that you can become rich.

Just a quick note before we dive in. Everything I share on this podcast is general in nature and does not take your personal circumstances into account. I’m not a licensed financial advisor, and nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as personalized, financial, business, taxation or investment advice.

Before you make any financial decisions, please seek guidance from your accountant or a qualified licensed financial advisor who understands your specific situation.

If you are here to make more money, which I know you are, ’cause that’s what this podcast is all about, I wanna let you know about a new freebie that I’ve got. It’s called Find $500 in five days. This is a fun, fast-paced money sprint to put real cash back in your bank account without budgeting yourself into misery.

So over five bite-sized days, I’ll walk you through some simple practical ways to uncover $500 that’s hiding in plain sight. No spreadsheets, no guilt trips, no deprivation. It’s free to download, and you can do so by clicking in the link in the show notes for today’s episode.

So let’s start to talk about some of the unhinged ways to become wealthier. Well, let’s start with talking about the foundation of making more money, which is spend less than you earn.

Now I know this is a bit of an unsexy truth, but one of the foundational concepts to understand about wealth creation is that you need to earn more than you spend. So the goal is not to spend nothing. The goal is to spend on the right things. You don’t need to cut out your daily coffee if that’s what truly lights you up.

You don’t need to cancel your Netflix or Prime or Apple tv. You really need to know what matters to you, and then use that foundational concept to actually be able to enjoy the things that you love. So for example, if you are someone who absolutely loves designer handbags and you’ve got plenty of time on your hands, then maybe you can drive an Uber on the weekends, earn some extra money and enjoy your damn bag.

Because to me, being rich isn’t about deprivation, it’s about priorities. Because yes, the numbers matter. Like there’s something I’m gonna talk about again and again, which is the math matters, but your joy matters too. Now this leads me to my unhinged belief that I know that a lot of money coaches would cringe at, but I truly believe it’s okay to have short periods where you aren’t earning more than what you’re spending.

Now, hear me out before you jump down my throat. I am saying as a short term only, like objectively, we want to be making sure that there’s more coming in than going out. But one of the reasons why I find think a lot of people find traditional budgeting so restrictive is that it’s always like, you know, if your income drops, you immediately drop your expenses.

But there’s, there’s a few reasons why this isn’t always the, the right thing to do. Let me give you an example. If you are, I don’t know, having a baby, I don’t think that you need to go, okay, well, I’m having a baby. I’m gonna move out of my apartment and moving into one that’s exactly a third of my income over this.

What we know is gonna be only a short period of time that you are often at home with your baby. Now, again, I wanna preface this by saying I recognize that there’s an inherent privilege in what I’m saying because I’m assuming that this is an option and that you don’t have to make that decision.

But what I’m saying is that if there is a short term reason why you need to be spending a little bit more than what you are bringing in, I believe that that’s okay. So long as you have a game plan around it. So, for example, if you know that you’re off for three months on maternity leave and you say, okay, well for three months I’m gonna go a little bit backwards, but then I’m gonna get back into my normal flow where I’ve got a lot more coming in than going out and I know that I’ve got a buffer to get me through that window of time, then I think that that’s okay.

So you need to really check in what’s important to you. And if you are going to be going through a deficit period, do you firstly have the capacity, like a savings to support you to navigate through? And secondly, do you have a really clear plan of when you’re gonna go back into a surplus situation? The next foundation of long-term wealth creation is something that sounds really boring, but I think it’s the closest thing to magic that we have here on Earth, and it’s called compounding interest.

So the concept of compounding interest is that money doesn’t grow linearly. It grows like a snowball rolling downhill. It gathers more snow as it rolls, and that’s why that investment that you hesitated on 10 years ago is worth double today. Here’s the deal. Compounding is one of the secrets and one of the reasons that wealthy people get richer.

Because wealthy people understand one thing, which is that time does the heavy lifting for you. So here is my unhinged take about this. If you start investing early, you can be average as hell and still become rich because compounding interest will literally make you money without you having to do anything.

Let me break this down. Here’s the simple version. You invest money. The money that you invest earns interest, and then the interest also earns more money on top of it. So both chunks earning more money. The magic is in the time. And something that I’ve observed over the years is that people say, I’ll start investing, I’ll start saving when I earn more.

But that’s backwards because as we can see, there’s a lot of power. There’s the momentum that happens from getting the ball rolling. So I really want you to start with something, anything. Because a hundred dollars invested today is more powerful than a thousand dollars invested 10 years from now. Let me break down this as an example.

So, if you were to invest $200 a month from the age of, of 30 until 60 at let’s say 4%, it’s about 3.6% at the time of recording. $200 over that period of time, $200 a month, that comes to a total of $72,000. But with interest, what actually ends up happening is that you actually end up with $138,000.

So you can see it’s so much more because the money is compounding. And if you were to do the same thing, if you were to start investing at 20. That amount jumps to $236,000 putting in the same amount of money. There’s an extra a hundred thousand dollars just because you gave compounding a head start. So here is what I want you to take out of this start today, even if you just start small because compounding interest.

It’s gonna be your employee of the month. It will do the hard work for you. Now, I touched on this before, but I think that this is important. Your spending, it might be the problem, but it isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s that you values clarity is, and let me explain what I mean by this, because most people haven’t actually taken the time to think about what’s important to me, and then really look at their money and say, well, how am I actually spending my money?

What I want you to do, a little mini exercise, write down the top five things in your life that are really important to you, and then I want you to write down the top five places that your money actually goes. Because if those lists don’t match, that’s your problem. So for example, [00:10:00] you might say the, you know, the most important things to me are spending time with my family, but you are spending a lot of money on eating out with friends, and you can see you’re like, hang on, there’s, there’s, there’s a bit of a values mismatch here.

So really take some time, have a think what’s important to me. And where am I spending my money? Now, yes, you might have a fundamental overspending problem, and we will be talking a lot more about that here on the podcast, the psychology behind it, but also the practical strategies around it. But at a top line glance, I just want you to really think about this in a bit of an unhinged way, like what is important to me?

Like if you were to start cutting back, what are the areas that it feels aligned to and what areas are you like, no, that feels really beautiful and abundant to me and I don’t wanna cut back in that area. Now, the next unhinged truth that’s really different to how a lot of traditional money coaches have spoken about [00:11:00] money is that earning more is your superpower.

And this is wildly underused because here’s the thing, you can only cut back so far. But you can earn infinitely. You know, this is one of the reasons why, you know, I, I know for many years I’ve spoken about business finances, and I am always going to be a raving fan of business as a tool for creating more wealth, because you haven’t limited to capacity to earn more.

Now, maybe running a business does not excite you at all, but there are ways that you can increase your income without losing your soul. You can ask for a pay rise. You can add a new revenue stream. You can monetize a skill you already have, like you could drive Uber on the weekend. We are gonna talk a lot more about this on the podcast in coming episodes, but I just wanna get you to start shifting your thinking around, okay, if I don’t wanna ruthlessly slash my spending, what can I do to increase my income so I can still continue to live the lifestyle that I love, but still making sure that I’m, I’m not going into deficit or falling behind.

So to sum up today. What I want you to do, really get clear on your money values and spend on what matters to you. So guilt free spending in some areas, but slashing back in the areas that you’ve realized actually isn’t that important to you. Increase your income. Really think about like, can I go and negotiate a pay rise with my boss?

Do I need to add an extra revenue stream? You’re running a business like, what am I doing to proactively bring in more income? And the last, like, I know this sounds really unhinged, but check your numbers weekly all the time. I’m gonna talk to you more about money meetings and why you need to be having them regularly.

But rich people know their numbers and broke people avoid them. Now if you are listening to this and thinking, oh my gosh, I’m getting really excited about the potential of, of more money, I’d love to invite you to go and check out my freebie. It’s called Find $500 in five days. I mentioned at the start.

So this is really practical ways that you can add some more money into your bank account in just five days. Couple of really easy actions to take. You can go grab that, that game plan via the link in the show notes for today’s episode. $500 in five days. Gosh, try and say that a few times. Look, if there’s one thing I want you to take away from today’s episode, let it be.

This wealth isn’t built through punishment, scrimping [00:14:00] cutting back and being miserable. It’s built through being intentional, so earn more. Spend with purpose. Cut the crap you don’t care about, but enjoy the things that make your life sparkle. Thanks so much for tuning in and I’ll be sharing more right here next week on the Intentional Money Show.

Have a fabulous week.

One more thing before you go. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend who needs to learn more about managing their money, and I’d really appreciate if you could leave me a review on Spotify or Apple Podcast. Thanks so much and I’ll catch you again soon.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast a