You work hard, so you can play hard. Because you’re living in the moment, you need access to your money in an instant, even if that means borrowing a little extra here and there. You’re no stranger to doing things ‘on a whim’ because to you, life is for living.
The fear of missing out is your worst enemy, so you’ve got a lot of great stories to tell. You do have a tendency to focus on the short-term and you know you’ll get around to long-term financial planning one day – but that day is always tomorrow.
You love to be out and about, trying something new. You’re first to try the newest restaurant or see the latest film. You enjoy a holiday, and with all the activities you can pack into a weekend away, along with your entertaining personality, you’ve got a long list of people all queuing up to come with you…
You’re a ‘people person’ through and through. For you, life’s too short to live it through technology, which is why you prefer to speak to your bank over the phone.
Does this sound like you?
- You’re often the one to have an idea for a new start-up business, or always eager to try something new.
- It’s fun first, finances second.
- You don’t really have a long-term financial plan yet, so you might not always make the best money decisions.
Psychologist, Dr Oliver, shares his tips that could help improve your financial wellbeing…
Your attention tends to be focused on what you’re doing right now, and not so much on what might be good for your future self. As human beings, we all have ‘self-schemas’, which are the cognitive ideas we have about ourselves. One of these is known as our ‘future self’ and is the inner representation of who we’d like to be in the future. Bringing this self-schema to the forefront of some of your decision-making could help you.
Try the following tips:
- Get a blank piece of paper and write ‘Now: me and money’ in a circle in the middle, then make a spider diagram with all the things that come to mind about your current approach to money. Do the same with the title ‘Future: me and money’ – for where you’d like to be with your money in the future. Now, write down actions you can take to achieve this. By writing down your goals vs where you are now, it can help you work out the steps you need to take. And the next time you get the urge to say ‘yes’ to a big purchase, you can refer back to this and check if it fits in with your plans.
- Write a letter to your future self to be delivered on a specified date. Start the letter by addressing your future self, then write 2 or 3 things about where you want to be by that date, and what you are going to do to get there. Finally, do an internet search for ‘letter to future self’ – lots of websites will send your letter to you as an email on your chosen date. You could initially try just 1 month, then 6 months, then over a long period if it works for you.
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