Why managing your money on autopilot will cost you - Diana Clement

Don't go on autopilot with your money. Photo / NZME

OPINION

Stop and think. Whatever you’re doing with your money, don’t do it on autopilot. Whether it’s earning, saving, or spending, the more mindful we are, the better the outcome in most cases.

Mindfulness is a practice that is part psychology and part self awareness. When applied to finances it involves stopping and observing our thoughts in order to become aware of our beliefs and behaviour around money. Not just the numbers. It’s a simple concept, but it takes work to put it into action.

We all have financial behaviours that we’re not 100 per cent cognisant of, or we know are negative. With mindful focus, people make better decisions about money.

I sometimes think mindfulness is the classic stopping and smelling the roses. Sure you have to think about what you need to do later, tomorrow and so on. However it’s about being in the present when you make financial decisions, be it $1 or $100,000.

I’m very guilty of living life at a million miles an hour and forgetting to smell the roses. It’s too easy to do what we’ve always done or latch onto the first thing that comes to mind, spending more energy on justifying decisions than getting them right in the first place. Slowing down and thinking about your financial decisions is sometimes uncomfortable.

The practice of mindfulness doesn’t solve money worries. But it’s an element of a solution. When being mindful with money we become aware of certain triggers. We stop and think about what we’re doing, and at least consider how much value that behaviour adds or subtracts from our overall wellbeing.

Once you’re aware of your behaviours around money, you can plan better, set goals, and hopefully see the benefit of budgeting. It’s not about becoming someone else, just making better decisions within your own framework.

Mindlessness with money, which is the polar opposite of mindfulness, comes when we’re not conscious of our financial behaviour. We just do things because we’ve always done them that way.

I think of mindlessness as a thief. Spending money mindlessly means that there may not be money left for the important stuff. The other way mindlessness steals from us is that it takes away the joy of planning how to spend our money.

I was ruminating on this while yearning for a raspberry muffin in my local cafe. The post-cycle coffee is budgeted for. The muffin, which could be a metaphor for any spending, wasn’t, and would have been a WTH purchase.

One mindless muffin purchase might bring joy from being naughty, although being me it would have come iced with guilt: “I didn’t need that muffin.” “I’ve already spent too much in the cafe this week.” As it transpired I’m trying not to eat between meals, so I found an excuse not to buy. A pattern of mindless spur of the moment financial decision-making isn’t helpful.

Another way to look at mindful versus mindless money is if that purchase is paid for from treat money in a budget, the act of planning how to use that money adds joy to the actual purchase. The muffin metaphor tastes better the longer you anticipate eating it - which is good when cycling up yet another maunga.

If being mindful about money is hard, get a second opinion. That second opinion can be friends and family, but be wary of groupthink. That can lead to awful mistakes, like the people who swapped lemming-like from growth to conservative KiwiSaver funds at the bottom of the Covid crash.

The second opinion that will help you stop and think and smell the roses hopefully, can be a budget adviser, mortgage adviser, financial adviser, or other professional. It can be a career counsellor if you want to look for ways to increase your income.

Being mindful about career planning, and creating five and 10-year goals can lead to a far better income over the long run. This works even for those in minimum wage jobs. I have written more than once about people who have worked their way up in organisations from the most lowly position there is to the top. They do it by doing more than operating on autopilot.

I haven’t explained how to become mindful. Endless books and videos have been published on mindfulness and there are courses in every major metropolitan area in New Zealand. Check them out.