Hello, my name's Santasha Nabananga Bamblet. I'm a proud yr
the Order Kerney Whoalbury and a waddery woman. And before we get started on She's on the Money podcast, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of which this podcast is recorded on a wondery country, acknowledging the elders, the ancestors and the next generation coming through as this podcast is about connecting, empowering, knowledge sharing and the storytelling of you to make a difference for today and lasting impact for tomorrow.
Let's get into it.
She's on the Money, She's on the Money.
Hello, and welcome to She's on the Money, the pod cast millennials who want financial freedom. It will covers no surprise to those of you who listen often to the show that I'm bexay ed just kidding. If you're noted, is sick? Just greed? Sheese You've got me instead today, But hopefully I do her justice. And I'm really excited because today we're talking all things small money goals with financial Wizard Victoria to Fine.
Oh, hello, you're here too. I'm excited about this. It's been a while since you've been on a deep dive.
I know this is fun and I love a good goal setting moment.
We were talking when I told you about the topic. I was like, look, be's not well. Do you think you can do this episode? You're like, oh, this was made for me.
We love a good goal in this team. And V You're always throwing around the quote from Little Things, Big Things Grow.
No, I'm not what are you talking about. I would never.
Definitely don't have it printed on books inside.
I would not plagiarize Paul Kelly's work ever.
But it's been a little while since we've spoken about how this concept can apply to our finances, not just as like a fun little motivational quote.
I love a little quote, but like it means a lot to me because it is true right like, and it's one of those things that I used to tell myself when I was getting out of debt or when I was doing things that were really hard. It was like,
from little Things, Big Things Grow, It's okay. Later, I'm probably going to teach you about ants because like ants, Yeah, okay, I'm gonna teach you about ants, But like one ant you think is really like insignificant and like if you put it on a scale, it would not mean that much. But like the strengthen ant has is so mighty and powerful, Like they can live like more than twenty times their own body weight. Jess, Like, one, that's wild. Two that's terrifying.
Imagine if there were trying ants on this planet, Like I'm done, I'm out. Like you were scared of spiders, No, I'm terrified of ants.
Yeah, they run around and they're like yeah.
But like they all come together and there are more ants that Like, if we looked at the world, there is a higher volume by weight of ants than there are people.
Jess could have lived my day without knowing that.
But movie, but they're little, but like they're mighty, and so will we. And so I think it's a really cool quote that a lot of people in our community really resonate with, which is why I bring it up so often. But also something that keeps me motivated because sometimes you don't feel like doing the little things, but you're like, no, the little things they actually make up the big things one hundred percent.
And I feel like that really leans into what we're going to chat about today, which is the power of setting small goals, specifically a lot of people out there don't often set themselves financial goals, and I think that's because sometimes the big goals can seem unattainable. But setting a goal for twenty dollars or fifty dollars might feel like a bit of a waste of time. Do you think that's the case.
Honestly, historically, I thought that was a waste of time. Like take her back to when I was like twenty three, twenty four getting out of debt. Like, and if you told me they like you need to set small financial goals, I'd be like, I'm in debt, Jessica, I have tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and you want me to set a fifty dollar financial goal? That is a waste of time. But that is absolutely not the case. I'm stat's girl in this House also quotes girl, So
I have another one for you. I love You've heard this on the show before, But if you can't manage ten dollars, you definitely can't manage ten thousand dollars. And that's so so true. Like I created She's on the money because I obviously adore helping people when it comes to all things finance and if you just paid off your debt and bought a house and started the business or got the promotion. Like, I'm here to celebrate you, but I'm also here to celebrate the small things and
the small steps because they're the building blocks. Like setting your first fifty dollar financial goal, it's all about confidence. It's instilling in you the idea that you definitely can do this and you can start scaling it, Like how many of us want to, you know, pay off all
our debt, but it seems all consuming and overwhelming. And every other financial goal jest you've set, you've failed at because you haven't done the planning, or you haven't had the right tools or resources, or you haven't had the commitment. Let's be honest, I'm really good at going I want to do this this week, and to your dismay, Jessica, next week, I don't want to do that anymore. We
do something else. So I think it's really important to kind of like celebrate the small things as well as the large things, because the small things become the large things.
What would you say to someone who felt as though sharing the idea of a small money goal with maybe their friends or their family, You know, if they do decide to set that smaller twenty or fifty dollar goal, but they go, oh, it seems a bit lame, a bit embarrassing.
It's a bit silly.
Yeah, how do we kind of overcome that the.
Small wins are the big wins?
Yess?
And they often go unnoticed? And I think that's because we usually see people, especially in twenty twenty four, Jess, like social media is insane. Yeah, let's be honest, like,
let's make this a bit more relatable. I'm probably not going to post on my Instagram stories about achieving a fifty dollar financial goal, because how many times do you see people celebrating their really big financial goals social media where they're like, I bought my first house, I bought my first car, I got out of mass amounts of debt, And you're like, oh, like, is it that good? Yes, it is because the small things they're the transformational ones.
They're the ones that are going to change our lives for the better. And it turns out that when we set the small ones, we are more likely to achieve the big ones. And when we see our goals as too big from a psychological perspective, it actually overstimulates our brain, like we get analysis paralysis. We feel overwhelmed and uninspired, and then we can't deal with our goals rationally. We go, oh, it's not enough, or it's too much, or it's too hard, and that's when we like to bury our heads in
the sand. But when we actually focus on really specific, smaller things, they are smaller problems to solve. We're able to achieve them, but we're also able to build our confidence and we're able to learn from them and go, oh, I you know, I thought I could do that fifty dollars, but far out I actually need to tighten up my budget a little bit. You're not waiting an entire twelve
month period, Jess, to find out that your budget was wrong. Like, we're doing small things, small steps in the right direction, and we're able to build them up and then that becomes the big thing. We're breaking things down so that we feel good about ourselves. And there's a researcher called Carl Weck and he put it, well, maybe this is a new quote to add to the quote our portfolio this year. He said, small wins are controllable opportunities that produce visible results.
I love that.
I love that too. It's not as easy as like, from little things, big things grow, but like, I just really like the intention behind it.
Anecdotally. That's why I love our Money Wins threat that we put in the Facebook group and that we run through on a Friday episode, because yes, we do have people going, oh, I paid off my credit card, I did this, or I did that. But sometimes mue Go's got some free chips at macas this week, and.
You're like slay queen, although saying like I did my budget in cash flow and I've been doing it for a year, and Jess, for the first time, I've got twenty bucks left over queen behavior, Is there.
Such a thing as too small of a money goal?
I like that you're asking, but you and I both know that suggests yes or no. I'm going to say no.
No.
Of course, It's all about consistency and proving to yourself
that you can do it. I think so many of us are in this circumstance where we're so empowered to change our financial goals and our financial lives, and we're so excited about that, but we also need to recognize that our money stories are such big parts of this and they could be working against you, So if you didn't grow up with the tools and the resources, and then all of a sudden you've joined the She's on the Money community, or you've joined any other finance community,
and you're really excited about getting it done, and then you're really overwhelmed because you're like, oh, saving for a house. I've gone from having absolutely no restriction on how I spend or like structure or any type of plan when it comes to finances, and now I'm saving for my first house. It's a massive change. Like and as much as that's a noble one, if you're doing that, then I'm so proud of you. But let's be honest. You don't just wake up one day and go, do you
know what, Jess, I've been thinking. I don't even like the gym. I don't like exercising. Sometimes I justify the walk to the coffee shop as my exercise. Six months from now, I'm going to run a marathon.
Yeah?
Would I do that? Would you like? Probably? I have ADHD and sometimes I just get fix. But is that reasonable? You would go? Fee? That's way too much to bite off. You don't even run five k now, you couldn't even run five k and Jess. You know what, there are some people in this world who have done that. They've woken up one day and gone, I'm going to run a marathon. Yeah, it's psychotic. I am not one of
those I am not one of those people. But also, you can't just wake up one day and all of a sudden be able to do these really big things without some practice. First, we need to run a few five ks, we need to learn to run the first one hundred meters. So these small goals are what creates the big goal. And I think it's obviously going to depend on your financial situation and you know what you want to create in life and what job you have and what cash flow you've got accessible. But so many
small money wins are actually quite personal. And again there's no right or wrong, but you need to find your own inner motivation. Yeah, but you also need to be reasonable, Like you can't just wake up tomorrow and be like, all of a sudden, I can run a marathon.
Yeah. I can't be like I'm going to walk on the moon this month.
It's just not going to happen. Like, there's got to be a plan in place.
What about the people who can't think of a small goal that they want to reach. If maybe they're focusing their goal is to buy the house. Yeah, that's they've woken up, They've gone note, that's really important to me. That's what I want to do.
But how do I want to run the marathon?
Be?
Yeah, stop trying to gas like me and not running a marathon?
Yeah, but how do I Buying the house is a big goal? Like I can't buy a house for five hundred dollars, So what's the small goal there?
So I don't think there there's no such thing as not having small goals, because often small goals are just really big goals that are broken down into smaller parts. So when we can celebrate them along the way, but also we can prove to ourselves that we are capable. We can prove to our selves that we can do this. Sometimes we need that. And while smaller goals, you might be like V, Look, a smaller financial goal is just
not going to work for me right now. It might actually be a better use of your time to break this house goal into smaller chunks. So maybe we're talking about setting up your first emergency fund instead of making your goal to have like a five thousand dollars emergency fund. If you've never had one before, Jess, it's going to feel overwhelming, uninspiring too much. You might start and then be like, I'm only two hundred dollars of the way there. I thought i'd be better at it. What the hell?
Maybe we actually set the goal of saving your first hundred dollars, Like, let's just save one hundred dollars. I know there's a bigger goal at play in the future, but like, you've never done this before, so let's start at the very start one hundred bucks. This way, you could start using this one hundred dollar figure as building blocks for your bigger goals. One we can celebrate along the way and ere it cheese on money. That's all
we want to do. Like if somebody every single week posted in my money Wins thread and said, oh, yep, got another fifty bucks in my emergency fund, I'd.
Be like slate, get it, Like I'm.
So here for that, So please start sharing those. But it proves to yourself that you can be good at money. People aren't born good at money, just you have to learn. It has to be ingrained, it has to be taught, so you can teach yourself that you can be good at money. And then there's the idea that small wins, again from more of a psychological perspective, they're so good for your well being, they're so good for your mental health because big wins and big losses there's so much
more dramatic. It's like being bipolar and having these massive mood swings and going from one extreme to another. Like you have a really big win, you're gonna celebrate really big. But often people experiencing something like bipolar, they can't just feel ok in the middle. So it's finding that beautiful middle ground where we can celebrate the small things and go these minor boosts. They come from my day to day activities, and I'm happy along the journey, not just
with the destination. And I think, to me, that's really really important.
Yeah, that's huge. I feel like there's probably a lot of people listening who are getting excited by the idea of what they can do.
And I hope so because like New Year, new financial goals, babies.
The perfect time to be looking at this. So let's head to a really quick break and when we come back, I want to ask you a bit more about how we can start looking for and celebrating those small money goals so we can all have.
Our best to yet good quote Jess, have your best to you yet.
All right, we're back VD, and I'm feeling very excited about the idea of setting some small money goals. I'm sure everybody else listening is as well.
No, it's just twenty twenty four the year of celebration.
I love that it's this year, one big party. This year is our year, Jess. I feel it.
I do genuinely feel like we are making the conscious decision just to have the best you yet like I feel like you're doing this too. You're like end of twenty twenty three absolute trash. If you listen to our Friday Drinks episodes, you know what Jess is going through. Iykiyk. But I guess my whole entire point is to, I guess, celebrate more often and give ourselves the credit that we deserve.
I guess the more you can prove to yourself that you can in fact achieve small money goals, even life goals, like it doesn't just have to be small money goals. It's going to build your confidence. Yeah, you're going to be like I can do this. I've done it before. If I can deal with ten bucks, just so I could do it with twenty bucks, could be twenty, I could do it with forty, and it just compounds from there. It's like investing, but investing in yourself. Oh that I did,
there done, But you don't. As I said in the first half of the episode, you're not just gonna immediately wake up with all this motivation and all this self discipline and I guess a plan to create financial freedom. We actually need to bring it down into smaller blocks. And these things sadly don't happen overnight. Like I could. I wish you know you and I could wake up one day and be like we today, today's the day we're going to create financial freedom. We'll be financially free tomorrow.
Just imagine.
It's just not going to happen. And that's okay, But as human beings, we are the worst. It delayed gratification, So like, let's work with that and give you some gratification along the way. To do that, we need to make the goals smaller because it turns out weird, but money is not infinite.
That seems kind of Rude's kind of rude.
Not okay, but like, we don't actually have enough of it to achieve absolutely everything at once, and if you do, I really want am enbus. But to why are you listening to my podcast if you're a multi billionaire?
Yeah?
Weird?
Okay, but hi welcome. If you need some financial advice, I might go back into business, But I guess as long as we don't put too much pressure on ourselves, that's the plan. So we're going to celebrate small goals this year, but we're also going to take the pressure off because life is tough right now, and I think we need to acknowledge that too, because even if you're like the setting small financial goals sounds really sexy, I do not have fifty bucks in my budget right now.
How about we just remember that every part of your life is a season, and right now you're going through a season that is a little bit more complex, a little bit more pressure, And that's okay. But you don't always have to be saving and investing. I think so many times you hear from financial content creators like you cannot stop. You have to invest consistently and regularly. Don't get me wrong, that's where the power of compound interest comes in. But if life is getting in the way.
You take that pressure off yourself and you do you and I'm proud that one day you'll be back on the horse.
Yeah.
I think there are lots of people who listen to the show who are maybe learning about things that are quite in the place to implement yet, and I feel like there is but.
You'll be ready.
Yeah, you don't undervalue the power of educating yourself, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And like, if you're listening to this and going, oh, I want to set goals, what would those goals look likely? Even if you're just thinking the goals and you're not, we can be aspirational.
We can make a plan. We can be like, oh, well, in the future, you know, maybe one to daycare is over, or maybe once you're out of personal debt, or maybe once you get a job again, like you can get back on track with these things. But that doesn't mean we have to like hide from the fact that we want to achieve these things in the future. Isn't it motivational to like be like, no, no, no, I'm totally capable. I just don't have the right tool in my hand right now.
And that is setting yourself up for success just as much as setting those goals could be as well. Exactly, I know that you love a tactical, tangible way to do things.
I love setting a goal, I love a plan, I love a spreadsheet.
Save It's like the perfect woman to be running this episode. So tell me have you got anything for us when it comes to goal setting?
So obviously, these small goals are going to build up our confidence, and in my head, they actually create like a snowball effect. It's like debt reduction. We've talked about the avalanche method. We've also hystorically talked about the snowball method, and that's where like, you have a really small snowball and drop it at the top of the mountain and as it starts to roll down, it starts to pick
up more and more snow and bigger and bigger. And you know, a snowflake tiny, not gonna have an impact on anything, but get heaps of them together and you have a snowball and I could literally throw it at you, sligh. That would be so fun. You've never been to the snow so no, have you been to the.
Snow I saw it once on top of Mountain ten.
Now, yeah, Okay, I remember this conversation because I feel like this year, I'm gonna take you to the snow and I'm going to put you on some skis, push.
Mountain, achieve your goals by it's.
Your best use. Yeah, Jessica, you wait, you wait, But I guess on your own small money wins, they can just feel boring. Yeah, they can feel black. It's not that exciting. So I think we need to tap into the power of small winds so that I guess they have meaning and they don't feel like useless tasks that you don't know why you did them. And I guess
we need to start seeing it that way. It's a bit of a mind frame reset as well, and we need to talk about I guess, recognizing why they matter and giving yourself credit for that, because how many times do you do something you're like, yeah, I guess it was the right thing to do, Like on to the next, onto the next, no worries. But let's give ourselves credit for stuff like that and celebrate them as they happen.
I'm not saying you need to have a party every single time you have a money win, jess or like to crack a bottle of expensive champagne to celebrate that you saved fifty dollars, but you spent eighty dollars on the shampas. Like, that's not the type of celebrating. I think it's more of a like be proud of yourself. Cayge a minute. They're like, oh, yeah, I did it, and I'm going to do it again. Like I think that that's really important. Obviously, share it with us. There
are so many ways that you can actually celebrate. I'm liszt scal. I love this episode. I've reminded you that I'm stat scale, I'm quote scale, and so list girl also spreadsheet girl. Oh god, do you know in Vegas they have a spreadsheet competition.
You would win?
I have no I don't know if i'd win, but like if I was ever single, that might be where I go to find another husband.
Yeah, the love of your life. You're a real outside of spreadsheets.
Just think the guy who's a freaking the sheets. Anyway, very well done. Given I am the queen of lists, I have clearly written you a list to help you keep the momentum up. So first things first, do you celebrate your wins? Obviously, because we're not going to be going hard every single time we have a small money win,
because you should be having them regularly. We're going to keep a journal, like we're going to keep a list of things that we have won, a list of wins that you want to achieve, because obviously all of these wins are going to add up, and all of the little things that you're doing in the list, you might think they're their mundane, but I promise when you get to the end of the year and you reflect on them, you're going to have this book of all the stuff
that you did for you. Isn't that kind of cool to like flip through and I don't know. I like reading my diary from when I was younger and I look at it and I go, oh, gosh, that was lame, but also go boo, like I love it. So I think keeping a list is going to keep your momentum up, but it also kind of keeps you accountable because you're
writing that list. Yeap the done list as well. So not just these ideas that you're going to achieve, write those down, but obviously write down the things that you've actually learned. Make room and make space, celebrate them, find a little accountability partner like Jess, I know if I did something, I do usually text you to tell you. But if you don't have that friend or that person in your life, oh she's on the money's there. We
have our money wins and confessions. Thread Also, don't be too harsh on yourself when you don't achieve something like even if it was little and you're like, far, I can't even achieve that, that's fine. Let's talk about it. Post it in the group. What went wrong? How can I help you reframe that so that one you see it as a learning instead of something that was really awful that happened to you. But two, how do we do it better next time? Is there something else we
need to tweak? Like, I promise, we've got.
Your back, so does the rest of the community.
So does the rest of the community. And then I guess, remember why you're here and why you're doing it. Like we always say on the podcast, when in doubt, zoom out. Sometimes you might be doubting why you're doing little things. Zoom out. You're creating this level of financial literacy for yourself that you have never had. You are teaching yourself this confidence that you have never had. You're teaching yourself these positive habits and behaviors that you've never had, Like,
isn't that cool? Let's zoom out and see why we're doing this. It's not just because you want another fifty bucks in your account, Jess, Like it is from little things, big things grow.
Yeah, And you're doing the groundwork so that the big things that seem so huge now eventually don't seem so big.
And it can take time, but I promise it is worth it.
Yeah. Absolutely, But before we go, can you tell me is there anything we should be avoiding when we're setting these small money goals?
Obviously, positive mindset is everything. If you're going to be negative about it, we're not going to get very far, very quickly. I don't know if you know this. Quotes scal are you? Yeah? Quote Scout, Jess. Quote here comparison is the thief of all joy. That's a classic. Yeah, it's a classic quote. It's so true though I've never been quoted. I just quote other people, So one day maybe if I stopped stealing everybody else's quotes, I could
come up with my own. But it's true, right in every single area of our lives, we need to cut out this idea of comparison. So we need to cut out the idea that I would compare myself to your financial goals and vice versa. But when it comes to small things, you shouldn't just be avoiding comparing yourself to each other and your peers and your friends. You should actually be avoiding comparing yourself to pass you. Yeah, because past you they did the best they could, but they
might not have been as good at it. Also, they might have been great at it. Like maybe one time you saved for a house and our life has completely changed. Yess, you've got young kids, you're not that on top of finances. Maybe finances used to be really easy, and you're like, I used to be able to do this, Why can't I do it now? Skin ourselves a little bit of
grace and understand why that might be the case. As I've said before, life is about seasons, and sometimes we go through easier seasons, sometimes we go through harder seasons, And I think it's really important to just, I guess, look at that, but also not compare a little stuff to our big stuff and go, oh, well, that goal doesn't matter because I want to save for a house future, If that makes sense. Totally. I watched a Ted talk recently. It was actually a snippet from a TikTok, but it
was a Ted talk. I feel like I'm really good at TikTok. And the talk was called Weighing Ants. I told you I was going to bring here we go.
I was wondering.
So there's an educator out there called Mrnaz Bassiri, and they said that we can't take the tiniest wins and accomplishments of our lives and throw them on the scales and expect to see the needle move. But Jess, I told you earlier, ants are really vowerful. So ants have been documented here this is now becoming she's on the ant fax instead of she's on the money. But ants have been documented to be able to carry up to
twenty times their own body weight. And if a human could lift twenty times their own body weight, Jess, they'd be able to lift like just over two thousand kilograms. Wow, I mean, she's on the ant facts. But also the purpose of that is from little things, big things grow, and those small money wins they become the big money wins,
and to me they are so wildly important. And then I guess what you need to really really remember is that small wins are honestly more important in so many ways than the really big ones, like ticking off life milestones. I totally get it. But your beliefs, your values, your behaviors are being reiterated every time you celebrate a small goal,
set a small goal, achieve a small goal. Because often just looking at your small wins in a series, often this can only happen in hindsight, like keeping a journal, you can just see how much progress you've made and how much maybe your mindset has changed. And we can do that this year. Like I think that that is so beautiful, and I think being able to seize that opportunity and go, no, I can really do this, Like it's a small step in the right direction.
Yeah, one hundred percent. I feel like that is really exemplified in on our website on the freebies page, the savings have Oh they're my favorite, They're wonderful, and we have them for one time. We've just redesigned them so they're all in the new branding. Guys, so if you have the old ones, go get the new ones. Yeah,
they're in one thousand and twenty thousand dollars increment. And the idea is that you take a said amount of money every week, can you pop it in, So you have fifty two deposits that you make over the course of the year. And those deposits range everywhere from you know, maybe one hundred dollars, some of them are seven dollars.
And there's also like a free weeks like you have no cash hole, it's okay with Alex, We've given you a free pass.
Yeah, but it's one of those things where I think people would look at and go seven dollars.
That's the point.
That's not going to get me to a thousand. But those little things, when you put them all together, they add up to a lot. And like you said, sometimes keeping track of that is such a good way to be able to reflect on all the small things that you've done to put yourself first, which I just think is.
I'm as usual Galie though. Like I love a spreadsheet, I love a tracker. I left printing things out and putting them on my walls. I love a vision board. You do too, Like if I can see it, I can believe it. If you can believe it, I can achieve it. Oh, I'm going to see myself. Well, I'm going to see myself out.
It's enough for today.
I think, you know what, we could even cut that one out. That's fine. I just know that our produce aren't though. They're like she's straight under the bus. If she thought she was having a good year this year, she is not. But I feel like this has been a fun EP. Thank you for joining me. I love a little Wednesday EP, but also I feel like it's been a good one. Get ourselves back on track and start smashing goals that could be back on Friday. Don't
you worry, and we'll see you then. Guys, have the best week.
Bye.
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