New Financial Year: New Challenges, New Behavioural Opportunities

- By Darren Smith

With the Financial New Year upon us, many of the conversations around households are how the price of everything, particularly with staple spends of most families, is going in one direction: up.

Couple this with a fast-paced movement in interest rates upwards it is paralysing many households, particularly those that have larger loans.

For those who are self-funded, the rising return outlook, particularly for lower risk option investments, are a little more upbeat but fearful of general uncertainty that prevails.

Unfortunately, the fear takes hold, and many become reluctant to make meaningful action even on the most basic things that could provide some relief to the current stresses.

What is evident in all the work that we do is it is making people aware of what are the habits and behaviours that are going to support them achieving their financial and life goals, and what ones are going to detract from achievement. Awareness is the first step.

We then get on the second phase of changing or modifying our behaviours and investing the effort.

Sounds easy but it needs to occur consistently over a period to replace previous behaviours.

Simplistically, we are replacing a bad habit or behaviour with a good one.

Tying those actions, we take to those outcomes, feelings or experiences that are important to us, and use them as a key link to be maintaining effort over a prolonged period.

Again, it can be expressed in different ways, but creating the space in our busy work and home lives to discuss and document what is important to us on a regular basis is important.

Some of us also require help in this space to get beyond our own blind spots.

In the work we are doing in workshops with teams around potential savings of 5 – 10k on their annual spending through behaviour change, most people start as non-believers.

However, as we go through the session and highlight practical steps that some take to achieve these saving opportunities, it becomes more accepted and visible to the audience.

Those who take the focused action reap the rewards whilst those who don’t get stuck with the loyalty tax…

In some respects, it doesn’t matter where you start, but it does matter whether you take steps in the right direction and are mindful of your behaviours with money…