When I first met my wife, it’s fair to say my finances were in disarray. I was causally employed, living at home and surviving week-to-week on whatever money I had. My wardrobe was well stocked (thanks, Mum), I’d regularly drop $150 on a night out, buy lunch at work and get take-out regularly. Yet despite this, I thought I was pretty good at managing my money – yeah, right!

Despite what it might look like, I’ve always hated spending money – and while I’d happily spend my cash, I always felt guilty about it. It wasn’t something I necessarily enjoyed doing, but I wanted to fit in, easily succumbing to FOMO – it was a recipe for disaster. It’s a small comfort to know I’m not alone, almost 40% of American millennials have gone into debt trying to keep up with their friends, that’s pretty crazy.

Every money journey is influenced from their environment, from the conversations you have with your parents, the behaviours you observe and your lived experience. My parents did everything they could to give us everything we wanted – I’m ashamed to admit I believed in Santa for much longer than a child should, largely due to my belief that my parents couldn’t afford the sheer volume of presents we’d receive every year! My Mum is a bargain hunter who loves giving, TK Max is a serious vice. Her ability to nab a bargain is second-to-none, but it’s also an expensive hobby. She was once invited by Myer to the Melbourne Cup Birdcage for being in the top 1% of spenders in the state. Not bad for a low-to-middle income family! From my Mum I learnt the value of a good deal, but also the ability to validate spending, regardless of the true cost of the item.

On the other hand, my Dad is more reserved when it comes to money. I couldn’t tell you the financial position my family is in, he doesn’t talk about it at all – except to say that he’s making investments – and to this day the only investment I’ve known him to make was buying Telstra shares with some money he took out of my account (don’t worry, he paid it all back, plus interest & some). To that end, Dad was a great saver and a meticulous excel user, I can still vividly remember him tracking his mortgage repayments and projecting his remaining balance. I can happily say that I picked this habit up from him, I love a good spreadsheet. I also inherited the more measured approach to finances – I simply wouldn’t talk about it!

Given this environment, it’s no wonder I thought I was going ok – discretional spending was justifiable, and because I wasn’t talking about it, I thought I was in a pretty good position!

Fast forward 10+ years and I can say that together, we’ve come a very long way. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that we’ve mastered the art, we are very much still on our journey, but we’ve made a lot of progress. We’re paying down our mortgage, created a saving bucket and we even invest a little along the way – and we’ve managed this while living overseas and taking regular holidays. It hasn’t always easy, and we got some help along the way (hello, Barefoot Investor – seriously, if you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favour…) but there were a lot of lessons that I learnt the hard way.

Our first major money milestone was saving the deposit for our apartment. Our focus at this point was on saving money – anything that we didn’t spend in a month went into a savings account, and it took us a little over four years to save our $80,0000 deposit. Break that down further and I was only saving $10,000 every year, while enjoying the privileges of living at home with no expenses. Incidentally, I moved to Papua New Guinea for twelve months in the middle of this time and as a volunteer on a small stipend, I managed to save $20,000 in this year alone! It’s amazing what you can save when you’re living in a small town in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea and there isn’t much to spend your money on!

Our second money milestone was facilitating a livable lifestyle while earning some very, very ordinary wages. Less than twelve months after purchasing our first apartment, I landed my dream job in Toronto, Canada. The pay wasn’t huge, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. My wife and I packed up our belongings, leaving the beautiful Melbourne summer for a frigid Toronto winter, and boy, we’re we in for a shock! Despite a successful career in Australia and landing a job at a large organisation, my wife’s starting salary was $32k!?! We had very little disposable income, and it was during this time we learnt the value of managing our expenses. By understanding where our money was going, we could facilitate a lifestyle of travel and socialising without worrying about making rent (or paying down our mortgage in Australia).

Our third money milestone was the commencement of our investing journey. As I mentioned earlier, this is an ongoing journey. Jumping into our investing account scares me. I understand why you want to look at liquidity, cash balances, PE ratios etc. but I don’t think I’ll ever log into my investment account and immediately know what I’m looking at. My wife and I opened a CommSec account over 2 years ago – it currently has a $0 balance, with no investments made to date. While I find CommSec overwhelming, I have found invessting into a Vanguard Index account relatively straightforward. We have a weekly recurring investment, and we’ve invested $15,ooo in the space of 18 months. We’ll never be flithy rich on this strategy, but I’m bloody stoked by it!

Our money journey countinues – we’ve just found out that our family is growing in 2021 and with that comes our next money milestone – preparing for parenthood! It’s daunting and I feel completely unprepared, so over the next twelve months, join my wife (sorry babe!) and I as we continue the next phase of our money journey!