Aide-Memoire

Nearly 9,000 women signed up for the Febusave 2010 campaign, for example:

• 2,307 pledged to give up buying lunch
• 1,118 pledged to give up treats
• 162 pledged to give up taxis

These might not seem like much; but little changes like this can make a real difference to your finances.

My pledge was to stop using the car to drive to work every day. The savings from that are now going into paying my mortgage. This means that it will be paid off several years earlier and save us thousands of dollars in interest payments.  I’m going to keep up this new habit of savings going even after Febusave is over.  It’s been a really good learning experience.

Some other great bloggers who have been sharing their journey All For Women, Inside Cuisine, Strawberry Communications,  Rainbowtatt, Liz and Jarrod, Little Lioness and Beautiful you by Julie

You can see what some of the other bloggers have shared via the #febusave hash tag on twitter.

Don’t forget! If you have registered for Febusave,  at the end of February simply complete the online entry form at the Febusave site and answer “what was your secret to achieving your FebuSave goal?” in 50 words or less and you could win $5000!

For the month of February I decided to give up driving to work and bank the savings. It’s been surprisingly easy to catch the train each day, even if it does mean I need to plan ahead a bit more.

The savings have been a real eye-opener, especially when one of my friends mentioned how much that adds up to over a full year.  Putting that money into my mortgage is really going to make a difference if I keep it up after February!

Over 8,000 women have already signed up, pledging to cut back in various areas to kick start their savings for Febusave.

There’s still time left to sign up now.

I’ve been following up on my pledge to catch public transport as much as possible during February, especially for the commute to the office.

I’m finding the daily train trip gives me a few unexpected benefits in addition to saving money:

• more time to work on projects rather than concentrating on driving in the crazy Sydney traffic
• more thinking time so I can hit the ground running when I arrive at the office
• uninterrupted time to plan my day
• on the way home the I have time to disconnect my mind from work before arriving home

Also participating in Febusave has made me conscious of spending choices, and is making me question if I do really need to buy certain things.

Why not sign up too? You can do it here (and you might even win a $5,000 prize).

Sound finances give women true freedom of choice, it is the key to giving women options in life.

When @fibendall approached me about supporting the ANZ Bank’s Febusave campaign I was interested because I have first hand experience of the challenges raised by poor money management skills.

I met with the ANZ people and asked why they wanted to run this campaign.  Our conversations revealed how secret and underground women’s financial lives remain. We share openly about relationships and other personal stuff but finances remain a taboo subject. I saw that there was a genuine desire to raise awareness about these issues and to use social channels to reach women. It was clear that if ANZ gets more women customers that is a good byproduct of the campaign. But it was also clear that this was not a direct aim of the campaign. And it was on that basis that I agreed to support it.

I met with Fi & the ANZ team and we talked about the kind of issues I would like to write about.  My focus is on sharing some financial lessons learned over the years. Some of the other bloggers were interested in focusing on different aspects of women and money.  It’s been really helpful to talk with the amazing group of women who are also supporting this campaign. The open sharing of real life experiences by these women is resonating with many people.

This campaign interested me because, while ANZ has clearly identified women as a target customer segment and they have a commercial interest in more women becoming customers, they have also been running their Be Money Confident site for several years. The Febusave campaign combines the social good of breaking a taboo about women talking about and taking action on their finances with the Bank’s goal of raising awareness in a key customer segment.

Febusave is a tool in raising awareness of the importance of good financial health for women. One of the reasons I support this initiative is that it sits under the be money confident banner.

Women face different financial issues to men.  Men are already well served by financial information and spaces to share information. Some key facts about women’s ability to store up financial resources remain:

• Women have not yet achieved pay equity with men & thus their baseline earning rate is lower over the course of their working lives.
• Women often have gaps in their key earning years due to time out for childcare, either not working or working part-time, and thus they do not amass sufficient superannuation for old age.
• Women often undertake elder care responsibilities in their later career, again impacting on full-time workloads and ability to add to their superannuation stores.
• Almost 50% of marriages fail and in 2006 87% of single parent families are headed  women & the ability of these women to participate in full time work is limited.

My pledge for Febusave is to catch public transport & save the money from not using my car. What are you going to do? Why not go sign up now?

We do not often share stories about our personal finances (except perhaps to boast of some great success?) but here are some hard won lessons I have learned.

My parents were not great savers, subsisting from pay to pay in the way that many workers do. Thus I did not learn much about saving as a child.

By the time I was 21 both parents and all grandparents had passed away and I had lost contact with the few remaining older aunts and uncles. Both of my parents died intestate leaving me to sort out the disposition of their few assets for the benefit of my younger siblings. I was left to look after the family finances, leaving university and geting a job to help support the family.

Settling my parents few debts, arranging for the sale of their house and investing the proceeds for the maintenance of my youngest siblings was done by the Public Trustee.

All went well as I repeated my parent’s habit of living from pay to pay. Then a bank offered me a credit card which I accepted. It was like all my Christmases had come at once and I shopped happily, buying all the clothing and accessories I’d always loved.

I dutifully paid off the minimum balance every month and all remained well. But then I lost my job, laid off due to a downturn, and was only able to find lower paid work. No longer able to afford to pay both my rent and the credit card bill I was in trouble.

How did I get out of this problem?

1. Borrowed money from friends to pay the rent.
2. Made a payment agreement with the credit card provider (it took me years to pay that debt off).
3. Setup a budget and followed it religiously.
4. Ran my life on cash only for the next five years.
5. Built up a savings buffer so I did not have to borrow money from friends again.

What did I learn from all of this?

Everybody needs a will – those you leave behind have a hard enough time of it without dealing with intestacy. In Australia the Public Trustee in each State can help you with this (for NSW click here).

Having a household budget is important – knowing your expenses and income & keeping them in balance  reduces stress.

A savings buffer brings peace of mind – a few dollars in the bank for an emergency makes all the difference during stressful times. I found an an automatic savings plan that takes the money right from my pay directly to the bank works best for me.

Parents need to share good financial habits with their children – you will not always be around to help them and it is better for them to learn good financial habits from childhood.

Some more useful information is at Febusave.

Getting women to think about their finances, to plan and save more is important. The better control we have over our finances the more choices we have in life.

Why not click the badge below and join us for Febusave?

Women share amazing amounts of information with each other – about relationships, family, sex, fashion, friends – often in quite intimate detail.

But one of our remaining taboo areas is money. I can hardly recall any conversations with girlfriends about money and its management.

Recently I was horrified to discover that:

51% of women would last less than three months on their current savings if they lost their job and still had to pay their usual bills

Source: Be Money Confident

The ANZ Bank has launched a new campaign called Febusave via their Be Money Confident site to help women to build a saving habit.

They’ve asked several female bloggers to support the Febusave campaign. And we were all happy to support a good cause like this.

The truth is that money is not what’s important. The important thing is the freedom of choice that money provides. Building up good saving and investing habits gives women choices in life. And it allows us to model good behaviours for the next generation.

I’ve pledged to give up driving to work for Febusave & to bank the savings. What are you going to do?

Why not register now for Febusave?