5 ways to learn about money - for free

Financial literacy is important. And who doesn’t love free money resources? Today I’d like to share with you where I go to learn about money and all things personal finance - without paying a cent.

Eventbrite

You’ll find plenty of free money events on Eventbrite. Simply sign up for free, and in your ‘Interests’, go to the ‘Business’ section and select ‘ Finance’.

You’ll be recommended local workshops and seminars about property, savings, investments, and much more - with a mix of paid and free events!

Sorted

Sorted is made by the New Zealand and is dedicated to helping New Zealanders sort out their money. You can create your own dashboard to track your money goals, plus make use of the handy calculators - including mortgage, debt, Kiwisaver, investing, and more.

Podcasts

A fun and easy way to learn about money for free is through podcasts. You can learn about money and improve your financial literary while driving, working out, grocery shopping - practically anything! Some personal finance podcasts I would recommend are She’s On The Money, My Millennial Money, and the New Zealand podcast, It’s No Secret.

Library

It’s free to sign up to your local library, plus free to request them to buy the books you want to read. Some of my favourite personal finance books are The Richest Man in Babylon, Smashed Avocado, Money Diaries, You are a Badass at Making Money, and of course, Mindful with Money.

Social media

Follow banks and finance companies on social media, so you’ll know when they host workshops, webinars, and more. Westpac hosts free Managing Your Money workshops on topics like budgeting, saving, buying your first home, insurance, and more. I also love YouTube personal finance channels, like The Financial Diet, Aja Dang, and Sorelle Amore Finance.

Good luck!

Sophia

Lockdown diary #1: staying sane with books, TV & ASMR

Happy Sunday! It’s officially our second weekend in lockdown in New Zealand. Compared to our first lockdown on 26th March 2020, this lockdown, I’ve somehow found myself feeling more restless. Perhaps it was that the first lockdown gave many of us the chance to slow down, spend time with loved ones, devote ourselves to our personal projects, and look within - something many of us didn’t realise we needed. When I look back, I remember fondly how heartwarming it was to see people collectively making dalgona coffee, baking banana bread, working from home for the first time, and exploring a whole new way of living.

This lockdown, my husband and I are both working from home full-time. We live with my husband’s best friend who isn’t currently working, and is also fully vaccinated, so he has helped get groceries for the three of us. At night, we cook and share warm, hearty meals and enjoy a good TV show. Life is quiet, peaceful, ordinary; yet I still find myself caught up in moments of stress, anxiety, and negative emotions - some of which are lingering emotions from past trauma earlier in the year, and some I can only attribute to our current climate of uncertainty. It’s sometimes hard not to spiral, catastrophise, and wonder, ‘What if…?’

If you could also use a distraction, today I’d like to share with you six things keeping me sane this lockdown.

NEON

This lockdown, I thought I’d be cheeky and sign up to a free trial of NEON just to watch The White Lotus. I’d heard of the show from reviews of Nine Perfect Strangers, which my husband and I are enjoying on Amazon Prime (we got it for free when we upgraded our 2degrees internet plan). After binge-watching The White Lotus, I signed up for a subscription because I was so blown away by the amazing variety of movies and TV shows - most of which I like more than the ones on Netflix! There’s Broken Hearts Gallery, a quirky, whimsical romantic comedy. There’s Bombshell, the star-studded movie about the Fox News sexual harassment scandal. There’s bloody Game of Thrones! On my list are The Discovery of Witches, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Five Bedrooms, with more to come, I’m sure.

If you’re curious, you can grab a 14 day trial at neontv.co.nz. I got the annual subscription to save $31 per year ($15.99 per month vs. $159.99 for the year).

My reading stack

In our first weekend in lockdown, I finished Before You Knew My Name, a dark, soul-stirring thriller by New Zealand author Jacqueline Bublitz. Over these two weeks, when I haven’t been reading comforting books that help me stay calm and balanced, fiction has been my go-to choice for escapism. I’ve just started The Covered Wife by Wellington-born author Lisa Emanuel, another thriller that I’m really enjoying.

Next on my reading list is The Girl and the Goddess, Nikita Gill’s magical story in verse inspired by Hindu mythology - a story sure to inspire awe and wonder.

ASMR / ambience videos

Recently, I have become weirdly addicted to ASMR / ambience videos on YouTube. It started with video recommendations for RainRider Ambience and Alley of Ambience, which I immediately fell in love with. These 3D soundscapes are so soothing, not to mention beautiful to look at! They also provide a very welcome escape from the reality of being home 24/7 with nowhere to go. I love having a video playing on the TV in the background, so that even while I’m working, I can imagine I’m relaxing in a cosy spring garden or having a picnic in front of the fire by a waterfall - all with the sounds of birdsong, flowing water, and crackling flames.

If you’d like something more ethereal, you can also transport yourself to an enchanted forest. Reminiscing your travels? There’s gorgeous cultural locations, like a Japanese onsen.

Trying new recipes + supporting local businesses

In times like these, I feel extremely blessed that we still have access to supermarkets and meal kit deliveries. My husband and I have been using HelloFresh for years, but this lockdown we’ve decided to expand our repertoire and try out new recipes we wouldn’t normally try. Trying new things helps infuse fun and novelty into your life, no matter how small. Last night, we made a delicious Chocolate Toffee Pudding with Poached Pears. Coming this week are Cherry Cream Pancake Stack and Spiced Carrot & Nut Cake with Orange Buttercream Icing. How good do they look?! If you’re keen to try HelloFresh for the first time, you can score $100 off here.

Another company I’ve supported this lockdown is EcoRoll, who make cashmere-soft, environmentally friendly bamboo toilet paper. They’re wrapped in colourful designs that will definitely brighten up your bathroom! To me, this was a great alternative to going to the supermarket for toilet paper that may or may not have all been bought by panic shoppers.

Keeping busy with passion projects

Every lockdown, I try to stay busy by immersing myself in things I am deeply passionate about. It makes time go by quicker! This time, I’m proud to have created this very blog and online store, mindfulwithmoneynz.com. I’m going to sound like an ad, but I was truly surprised by how easy it was to set this up on Squarespace. It took three days from start to finish, including choosing a design template, personalising the colours, uploading my book as a product, setting up e-commerce with Stripe, transferring blog posts, creating pages & categories, and more.

The book itself has been one of my passion projects over the last few months - I am currently writing the second edition, soon to be released!

When I’m not blogging or writing my book, I do my online study - which is less of a passion project and more personal development. When I get easily distracted, listening to binaural beats or planting a tree helps.

Gratitude

Cheesy I know, but gratitude is a powerful way to pull ourselves out of a dark place and overcome something us humans all have: negativity bias. Gratitude turns what we have into enough when we actively focus on the small, positive things in life. What is going right, instead of what is going wrong. Plans that are going as we’d hoped, instead of falling apart. Things that remain steady and consistent in our life, despite spontaneous erratic changes in our external world (like sudden lockdowns).

I have my struggles with overcoming negativity bias, which is why I write in a gratitude journal every day. It’s a habit that’s low effort, high reward: making myself list three good things that happened in my day every day is a small price to pay to literally transform my mindset into being more optimistic, open-minded, and adaptable to change. A bonus is that, on bad days, it is uplifting to flip through and remind yourself of all the good things that have happened that you would’ve otherwise forgotten about!

Here are my three things that I’m grateful for, not just today but for the whole of lockdown:

• I’m grateful that during a global pandemic, I am safe at home, with everything I could possibly need: a warm, dry home, heating, fresh food, my laptop, access to entertainment and education, books, and the time to read, write, create, and dream.

• I’m grateful that I work in an essential service, and don’t have to worry about income. I’m grateful that many who may need it can get financial support and mental health support too.

• I’m grateful to be in a country that has absolutely excelled at their COVID response - we’ve made international headlines for how successful we’ve been at effectively having eliminated COVID previously, which gives me hope that it will happen again. I know we have received criticism for locking down the country over 1 case, but it was clearly a wise decision given that number has now increased to 429. That makes me grateful to be in a country where we’re constantly encouraged to wear masks, use contact tracing, socially distance, and be kind.
  
  I watched a YouTube video of someone who has experienced lockdown both in California and in New Zealand, and describes how much better it has been in New Zealand due to our ‘team of 5 million’ mentality and clear, communicative daily updates from the government. How blessed we are to have lived life perfectly normal for the past six months, when we could've had it worse.

I hope you’ve found a few ideas and inspiration to stay sane, happy and healthy this lockdown. To those in New Zealand living south of Auckland, I envy you for being able to move to level 3 from Tuesday! To Auckland and Northland, kia kaha 💗

Love,

Sophia

Five books to read in lockdown

Last week, on August 17th, I was celebrating my birthday with my husband when the unexpected happened. We were at our favourite local Italian restaurant, enjoying creamy seafood marinara pasta and lamb gnocchi paired with prosecco and old-fashioned. Earlier that day, news had spread that there’d been a positive COVID-19 community case in New Zealand for the first time in six months.

The TVs in the restaurant were all playing the 6pm government announcement, and we joined our fellow diners as we held our breath, awaiting what this would mean for us.

Lockdown for 7 days.

Over 5 days of lockdown, so far our national community cases have risen from 1 to 72. With most cases being from Auckland, it’s unlikely our city’s lockdown will be limited to 7 days. It’s hard to describe my emotions at the moment: a mix of anxious, discouraged, optimistic, restless, determined, devastated, and content.

If you’ve also been on an emotional rollercoaster, I’d love to share with you five books to read during lockdown - five of my favourite books, and words that are perfect for this strange time we’re in.

Where Hope Comes From - Nikita Gill

A beautiful, hopeful book. If I could recommend only one book for anyone experiencing anxiety during lockdown, it would be this one.

In this poetry book, published 2021, Nikita Gill explores our collective trauma through the life cycle of a star. She invites us, the reader, to feel connected to the universe, by taking us on a journey through the five stages of grief to the five stages of hope.

Nikita Gill has a way with words - I’m a big fan of her other books, Great Goddesses and Fierce Fairytales - and Where Hope Comes From is no different. The poems in this book will remind you that what you’re experiencing is normal. It will remind you that you don’t need to be productive every second of the day. It will remind you that it is okay if all you do is breathe, take it slow, and survive another day. It will reignite your hope.

The Comfort Book - Matt Haig

Another fresh 2021 publication, The Comfort Book is a collection of reflections on hope, survival, and the messy miracle of being alive. There’s philosophy, self-reflection and anecdotes, lessons learned from nature, animals and famous people, lists, and inspirational reminders.

The Comfort Book is, indeed, comforting. It doesn’t try to tell you that everything will magically get better. It doesn’t make you feel guilty for going through a tough time. It’s calm, patient, and hopeful - and allow you to see more of life’s beauty and possibility.

This One Wild and Precious Life - Sarah Wilson

In This One Wild and Precious Life, Sarah Wilson uses science, literature, philosophy, and her own personal journey to encourage us to overcome our collective despair and disconnection. Chapters of research and commentary are interlaced with stories of her travels to places like Crete, Los Angeles, Jordan, Australia, and Japan. Along the way, she explores our crisis of connection, loneliness, social media, capitalism, climate change, and coronavirus.

This is perfect if you’re feeling contemplative and in search of a deep read.

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

‘To realise one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.’

The Alchemist is an inspiring, fascinating novel that is always powerful and uplifting, no matter what I’m going through.

Paulo Coelho’s story follows Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who travels from Spain to Egypt in search of a treasure. Along the way, he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. What starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within.

One of my favourite books, I re-read this novel often - sometimes when I like some light reading that’s also deeply evocative, sometimes when I need encouragement during tough times. Because of how simply it’s written, this is also a brilliant book for those who want to get into reading more often, but don’t know where to start.

Home Body - Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur named her latest poetry book ‘Home Body’ because, she says, these are synonyms for each other.

after being disconnected for so long
my mind and body are finally
coming back to each other

- home body

If I could describe this book in one word, it would be cosy. This book feels like a warm hug for the soul, full of short but captivating poems that will help you cultivate feelings of self-love. Rupi Kaur also addresses topics like racism, sexual abuse, and trauma, giving victims the knowledge that they are not alone, and that healing is possible. A beautiful, raw, and honest poetry book that will resonate with those who have gone through similar struggles, or for those looking for a thought-provoking, introspective read.

If you are looking for mental health support this lockdown, you can get help from the Mental Health Foundation. You can also follow them on Instagram for helpful tips to take care of yourself during this time - even if it is simply taking a deep breath.

As I write this, the government is due to release our latest COVID-19 update, with the decision on whether to extend lockdown being announced at 4pm tonight. Wherever you are, I hope you are staying safe and well. x

Love,

Sophia