Learning more about managing your money isn’t just about learning the terminology or understanding complex ideas. Reflecting on your past actions, including your strengths and areas to improve, can help you become more confident and take more appropriate action. We’ve put together some of the key questions that can help you learn from your past self.
Table of contents
What is your ‘past self’?
From the first time you handled a coin as a kid, you’ve been building your financial persona. Your past self has spent money, from your first pocket money purchases to the larger things in life. Perhaps your past self has also saved up for something, borrowed money, or set up a pension.
Some of these decisions will have taken you in a positive direction. Perhaps others weren’t quite right. Looking back at your past self can help you understand how to improve in the future. But don’t forget: you don’t need to be perfect straight away. Continuing to reflect on your actions and then make small tweaks is a lifelong good habit.
Past events to reflect on
The past money events that matter to you will differ from person to person. They might include some of the following:
- Everyday spending: how you used your money for everyday essentials such as groceries, clothes or transport, either in general or at a specific point in time.
- Bigger purchases: significant spending such as a car, house or holiday.
- Borrowing: taking out a loan or using credit cards.
- Saving: opening a savings account or starting to invest.
- Periods of stress: times in your life when you have felt particularly worried or stressed about money.
- Periods of calm: times when money has felt more manageable.
- Acting on advice: where you got advice about money and how you applied it.
As you begin to reflect on your past self, try to identify the key moments that have led you to your current financial situation. These could be centred around life transitions like getting married or starting a family; long-past actions; or recent events.
A framework for reflection
It’s best to start by picking 2 or 3 key events to reflect on. If you’re struggling to choose, try thinking back to your biggest purchase of the last year.
You could consider:
- What was the context for this event? Why did you need to take action?
- What were you feeling at the time? How did you feel afterwards?
- What resources did you draw on to help you make a decision or take action?
- What went well?
- What could have been improved?
As well as your own memories and ideas, you could look back at concrete data such as your transaction logs. Maji can help you explore how much you were spending on certain categories at different time periods, for example.
Identifying patterns
Once you’ve reflected on a few past events, you may be able to identify patterns. For example:
- Emotional triggers that caused you to act in a certain way, such as overspending or panic-buying.
- Habits you’ve developed, like buying lunch when you go to work or using ‘buy now, pay later’ services.
- Influences from family and friends.
- Areas where you feel like your knowledge is lacking.
Making meaningful changes
The key part of the reflection process is making changes to improve things in the future.
It’s best to identify specific, actionable things you can do, instead of proposing vague ideas like, ‘spend less’. Remember, you don’t need to change everything at once.
For example:
- I will leave items in my online shopping basket overnight and review them in the morning to make sure I really want them.
- I will take some time to learn more about interest rates before I need to remortgage my house.
- I will check my account balance weekly.
- I will set up an automated direct debit to move money into my savings account every month.
Next time you reflect on a similar event or decision, consider whether you have applied the change or whether it needs further refinement to make it achievable.
Maji’s tools could be helpful here. For example, you could use the financial planner to work out how much to increase your pension contributions or use the spending planner to identify categories of overspending. Working with a financial coach could also be a great way to get help with learning from your past self.
