Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep140: Investment vs Expense: Managing your money mindset

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

✅ Get My FREE '5-Day Career Growth' Guide + Training 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Grow your career in the 9-5 corporate world with clarity, confidence and opportunities! ⚡ 👋 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — corporate career coach, ex-corporate leader who has led multimillion-dollar projects across 43 countries and creator of the ultimate career course for 9-5 professionals, The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your career in the corporate world without getting stuck with Mei Phing's 3-step framework to gain career clarity, improve work confidence and attract new job opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/5days ✅ COURSE & COACHING ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡ 📌 ABOUT MEI PHING: Mei Phing Lim is a Professional Career Coach and former Corporate Leader in the financial services and consulting industries. Mei Phing went from a shy quiet introvert to leading multimillion-dollar projects with teams from over 43 countries as the Senior Director and Head of Governance at Standard Chartered, and now teaching 9-5 professionals how to navigate the corporate world and grow their careers with her career coaching course, The Corporate Survivor™. Mei Phing has been featured as a LinkedIn Top Voice 2023, sharing expert career advice in guiding young professionals to plan, navigate and grow their careers. Mei Phing is a keynote speaker on corporate culture, work performance and career growth, and sharing perspectives on what truly takes to build a strategic and successful career without getting stuck. ✅ LEARN MORE: https://www.meiphing.com

Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hello everyone and welcome back to another day, another live stream. And this is part of my 30-day career live stream series. And thank you so much for joining.

And today I wanted to talk a little bit more about money. And this episode, or rather this live stream today, is really inspired by the conversations that I have been talking to with my friends, my connections online, and also the news of the upcoming recession and the price inflations all around the world. So naturally, the topic of money came up, and I thought that why not just cover this topic because aside from the recession period, the inflation period that we are seeing recently, money is one of those things that is very personal but it also affects us every single

day. So what I want to talk about today is actually the three different, you can call it spending, it is spending, but really defining it into three different categories that I think will shape a little bit more of the right money mindset that you need to have to weather these uncertain times. So in case you are new to me on social media and to my channels, hi, my name is Mei Ping. I'm a professional career coach and formerly corporate leader. And for most of you probably do not also know that I am a Chartered Certified Accountant. So ACCA, FCCA of the UK.

So yes, I'm qualified to talk about money and to talk about budgets and to really help you guys to really think about how to better manage your finances, for lack of a better word. So back to today's topic around money mindset. And what I've been noticing across different social media in the past few days is I think there's a lack of understanding between the differences between investment, expenses, and basically what's splurging.

And I think this lack of understanding probably is you know dictating how many people are thinking about their money and really unable to tell apart right what exactly is an investment what exactly is just like spending money with like no return with like zero results and how it can actually affect your financial future. Now, obviously, you know, I'm not a financial advisor or a financial consultant and so forth. But I will say that, you know, for me as a charter certified accountant, I have been around the topics of money for a very long time. And for those of you who also know, I'm sort of a minimalist at heart.

So in terms of like, you know, budgeting and managing my lifestyle and everything else, it's more of a probably a personal experience that I will share with you guys. Now, the baseline of surviving during uncertain times, as we all know, like one of the classic advices when we talk about money is the fact that you should save a portion of what you make. Now, the question then is, I think, how? Because I find that for a lot of people, you know, when you think of, oh, I need to save something, most of the time, like, most people just save whatever that's left, right? So, let's say you, I don't know, you make like $5,000 a month, right? And you'll probably spend everything. And then whatever that's left, I don't know, maybe it's 500 bucks

and you may think, okay, fine, I'm just going to save this much. Now that is actually an opposite approach because that means that you are not proactive with your money, you are reactive with your money. So what that means is that when you're reactive, it just means that, okay, I'm just going to pay everyone else first. And then my needs or rather your professional needs goes last or your personal life is last, which doesn't really sound like a good long-term plan, right? Not just for your career, but actually for your life. So what you want to do actually is to make sure that like you determine what is the percentage that is reasonable. And when I say reasonable, it's not exactly a number that you can easily hit, but it can be a bit of a challenge as well. Maybe setting up a 20% of

what you make that you need to save and really actively move towards that because the challenge of like changing the money mindset actually is to move from somebody who is very reactive with money meaning that okay I'm going to pay the whole world first and then you know we're just going to see how it goes into somebody who is like okay I want to take charge of my money and really actively manage that by setting the number that you want to by setting the number that you actually want to save and trying every single month to get a lot closer to the number so that you can hit that. So it's kind of like changing that mindset into a bit of a challenge. Now that we have gotten that part

out of the way, then I just want to dive into what I want to talk about for today's live stream. And that's really the three things. Investment, expenses in general, or splurging. Now, let's talk about investment first. And I think that a lot of people think that investment is something that needs to, that is something that is very long term and may need to generate you financial returns. And this is probably the message that you hear from a lot of financial consultants, maybe insurance people, people who want to sell you some gold mine and everything else. So the long term part is definitely true. But I think a lot of times we don't think about how investments can also be in terms

of maybe intangible benefits, something that can make our life more convenient or something can take away the stress or something that can make your career journey smoother, can help you solve a career problem. Now, all those things may not necessarily sound like financial in nature, but just think about the negative implications of not investing your money either in something that can actually generate actual financial return

or investing your money in something that could actually solve a problem in your life, your career, or your business. What's then going to happen is that you are still going to spend that money in the end, but it's just going to go into other random stuff to help you deal with stress, to help you deal with all these other symptoms that came about not solving a real problem. And solving a real problem, right, is the thing that actually gives you return on investment, or we call it ROI, return on investment for long term. So when you are investing in something, the general questions that you need to think about is number one, what is the benefit that

this investment is going to give me? Is it monetary? If it's not monetary, what exactly is the problem that is helping me to solve? Then the other part around that is for how long can i actually get access to whatever that i'm investing whether you're investing in a fund in a stock that's more monetary in nature or you are purchasing you know a program or a course or like a personal development training or something else like how long do you have access to this particular course or like this particular product that you have bought because if it's something that is just like you get it and then it's gone then like that's not long-term right it doesn't fit the long-term aspect or rather the long-term quality of what we define as an investment so really think about it

in a more long-term way but But the point I want to make here is like, don't restrict yourself to think that, okay, investment is just in the form of monetary. It's not necessarily the case, but as long as something is long-term and it kind of gives you benefit in the long-term. Now, like I said, benefit can be multiple areas. It can be actually giving you the money or it can solve a career problem, it can solve a life problem, basically reduces headache for you, right? That to me is an investment. Now, when you invest, you can choose to invest money, but you can also choose to invest your time. You can also choose to invest your effort to do something if you don't want to invest your money.

So just think about it in a more of a long-term point of view. Then the second concept I want to talk about is general expenses. Now, this is a problem that I think a lot of people also face is, like I said, right, when you guys get your monthly salary or like get your monthly income, what is the first thing that you would do? You're going to pay off your expenses. And what does expenses look like? Maybe it's the house loan. Maybe it's the car loan. Maybe it's the phone bill.

Maybe it's your monthly food budget or your monthly shopping budget. It's your monthly spa budget. It's your travel budget. All these things are expenses, right? Some of these expenses may be seen as an investment that you can kind of upgrade that. So, what would be some of the monthly spending that would be considered an investment? Maybe you bought, maybe you are paying money into, I don't know, maybe buying stocks. Okay, if that's long term, let's move it to investment.

Or maybe you are part of a professional affiliation. Like for example, I'm an ACCA member and maybe for you guys, in your specific profession, you may need to pay a membership fee. Now that may be seen as an investment as well because without that professional qualification, maybe it makes it more difficult for you to apply for a job, right? It makes you less competitive. And similarly, like I said, right, these things are a bit intangible.

It may not specifically have monetary in nature, but it's similarly how you see as well. Like example you may choose to pursue a master's and that may be seen as a career investment because it may not translate into money today but it's going to translate into money tomorrow so it's very similar to even you know students who sign up for my online course it's first it's lifetime access and you get to use it throughout your career journey, no matter how many years you have, like 5, 10, 20, or even 30 years. And it's something that you can continuously access

across your career journey. And it may not make you money immediately, like right now, right now, but it's going to help set you up for success in the corporate world so that you're going to make money in the future. So these are, if you are, you know are saving your money or if you are spending in these type of courses, programs, or certifications that can actually help you make money in the future, solve a

problem, or make something more convenient and really increase your value, then you can upgrade that to investment. Everything else is an expense. Now, even in expenses, we have multiple categories, right? There are what I call life necessities expenses, which is, you know, food, shelter, you know, your bills and so forth, right?

You definitely need to spend. But what crosses the line into splurging is basically the need versus want so basic stuff like i mean to be honest you know we people right you know that people are actually you know we are we are very simple folks and i think that right now is actually the all the marketing and everything else that's really like screwing all of us over is in feeling like we need more things than we actually need and why I say it is because keeping a lot of things and all those things and personally for me I really love solo travel and you know before the pandemic I've actually been to 37

countries so far and like you know hundreds of cities in the world and I only travel with um with a hand luggage a lot of people find it very difficult to understand but actually when you travel, you realize that you actually don't really need as many things as you thought and it can be a very liberating thing. So that was the point that I realized that okay actually we don't really need as many things as we think. And therefore, what is deemed as an actual expense should just be things that you need. And no, the designer shoes and designer clothes is not exactly something that you need because that is an expense. And that's likely splurging because you're probably paying three you know, three times more or five times more, something a little bit similar. So again, applying the rules of whether this is long-term

and whether the benefit actually helps you solve a problem or helps you increase value in your life or your career, whether it's monetary or non-monetary, will help you make the decision of whether it's money well spent or it's money not well spent, right? And I think that the concept of splurging, now, I want to tackle this concept of splurging, right? Because I think that at the end of the day, it may look a little bit different from one person to the other. And I'm also not telling you guys that you should be living in a cave and not go anywhere and not do anything. That's definitely not true. But I think that it's very, very important to actually prioritize what is important in your life and, you know, what are some of your life values and some

of the things that you are not willing to let go. And I'm going to share, you know, my personal story with you. And, you know, as you all know, I'm mainly focused on career coaching right now. However, I do actually have several clients who worked with me for a very long time and for the clients who have you know i've worked with for such a long time sometimes we do get into like annual budgeting where i actually help them with their annual goal setting out their annual goals as well as um coming out of the budget for the entire year so like i said you know it's not really something that i um i talk about or i actually offer you know publicly but it's just something that i I talk about or I actually offer publicly,

but it's just something that I do with clients who know me a lot better. So one of the things that I always teach my clients, I'm going to share with you guys very quickly, is actually determining how would they want to enjoy the money that they make. How would you want to enjoy money that you make? But the trick is this, you're only going to choose one thing because that is the thing that, you know, you value the most and not, you know, I want to buy every single thing in the luxury shop, then that's actually not the concept. So what I normally ask them is like, in your life,

what do you think is the most important thing? For people it could be their family it could be their kids for some people you know people like me it's like i want to travel to as many countries in the world for some other people they may um they may really enjoy food and they want to enjoy like the top quality of food and so forth like i think you should pick one and that's like actually how you're gonna you know relax and find meaning in your life and that's actually where you're gonna spend your money so we're gonna pick one and actually there's one thing that um one concept i also teach this special group of clients of mine and budgeting actually across 12 categories. So actually that's something that I personally use now. I actually use like a, it's like a budget tracker thing.

So anyway, but anyway, before you start tracking your expenses or anything, I normally teach like, you know, 12 categories of what I call essential expenses and then like these holiday expenses, right? So essential expenses could be like, okay know, 12 categories of what I call essential expenses and then like these holiday expenses, right? So essential expenses could be like, okay, food, groceries, transport. Let me see what I have on my list. I actually have it on my list. So, okay, so it's food, groceries, transport, then obviously well-being, right? Maybe you have some personal expenses, maybe parents, rental, household, you have right maybe you have some personal expenses maybe parents rental household you have bills you have professional qualifications that you definitely

need to pay investment then you can move into like the shopping budget and you can also get into the travel budget now why you should plan your money annually is so that you don't lose the big picture on actually what you are saving towards and how you are saving. So I know it sounds a bit confusing right now, but I'm just going to actually break it down to you. Now, if you set a monthly budget, then you are not seeing things in big picture because you will feel like, let's say, for example, you want to buy, I don't know, maybe you want to buy a car or you want to invest in a program or you want to buy like a bag or something. If you look at your monthly budget, then it's only this amount of money. And what's going to happen is that this amount is not enough for you to go and buy that thing that makes you happy, like I said, right? Well, whatever the value is,

it's not going to be enough for you to get that thing. And therefore, you may actually choose an alternative, but you're not going to be happy because that is that one thing why you're working so hard for. And I'll give you a real example. This is actually something that my client told me. So my client is a person who really loves buying bags, right?

But in the past, she used to have like a monthly shopping budget and her budget was like literally only this much. And it was never enough to buy that whatever bag that she wanted. So she wanted like nice bag every year. So what then happens is that she takes this money and then she buys multiple bags, but it's not the one that she wants. And every month she will come back complaining about, okay, this and that and stuff like that.

Now, the point I'm trying to make here is that actually it's better to make a big purchase that you want versus multiple small useless purchases that don't mean anything. If that's that thing that you really value in your life. So for example, for me, I'm a person who really loves traveling and I would say that in the past,

the reason why I work so hard at work to make more money is so that I have more money to travel. Like, that's the truth. So, for me, what I'll do is that I will actually put a percentage of my annual budget a year. In terms of the money that I'll save, I actually put a specific portion aside and it's actually a huge amount of,

it's actually a huge percentage of the money that I make every year. And it's for travel. So it's that big amount. And this, you know, every year I know that I have this amount of budget to travel. And everything else we have to move around. So I'm okay to move my shopping budget or to move my food budget and

everything else to make this travel budget happen. So you should choose something that you care about and something that you actually want to invest in versus just going into everything. I'll give you guys another example. And this was actually an example that one of my students told me. And in case you all don't know, I actually have an online program at www.thecorporsurvivor.co. Basically, this is an online course for nine to five corporate professionals to get confident and visible at their workplace with the right mindset, skill set, as well as visibility strategy. So this was actually something that one of my students told me. And what my students told me, one of this particular student told me was that ever since I launched the program, and anyway, this student just joined me like a few days ago.

So this student told me that ever since, you know, Mei Ping, ever since I saw you launch the program, I've always told myself that I'm going to try to save some money so that I can join you. But you see the keyword is this, right? I am going to try. So that, then that means is, you know, whatever that's left. And most of the time for many of us, what's left? Nothing. If it's not important enough, you're not proactive about it, then you're not going to save any money.

Because if you don't really see it as a real investment, then you are not going to put aside any money. Because you can't tell apart the investment versus expense. And expense is like competing with your phone bill and your internet bill. That's going to be very tricky, right? Like if you're putting something that can help you in your life or your career forward

and you're kind of putting it in the wrong category, you're just not going to prioritize it. So only a few days ago, this student actually came back to me and said that I kind of like had to reset my mindset around this and now I decided that, okay, I'm going to put aside this amount of money to actually invest in my career.

And I think that this is something that's going to pay forward. So I decided to like carve out the money right now and actually get the program first. And hopefully by the year end, I'm going to get a great increment and promotion based on all the methods that you're going to teach. And hopefully, you know,

by the time I'm going to make my money back. And it's long-term anyway. And probably next year, he's probably going to look for another job and so forth. So I think the point I'm trying to make here is that if you are going to try to make something happen, it's not going to happen. I'm just going to tell you right now, it's not going to happen. Because it's not important.

And in your money mindset, it's in the wrong category. If something is in the general expenses category, it's basically competing with like your shoes and your bags and like, you know, your fancy food and like, you know, your heels. I don't know, like I think you must be able to really segregate what exactly is an investment that has a long-term benefit, that has a long-term value, monetary or non-monetary, and to be able to compartmentalize that and really ask yourself whether, am I ready to increase my value, whether it's net worth, if it's talking about money, or you're actually increasing your value at the workplace

so that you can attract more opportunities because at the end of the day, like magic does not happen overnight. If you're going to behave like how you behave and like just throwing money around like all these random things

or, you know, throwing money around to solve a symptom, like I give you an example. Let's say you are really stressed out at work because you don't actually understand how the corporate world works solve a symptom, like I give you an example, let's say you are really stressed out at work, because you don't actually understand how the corporate world works, and you are very unhappy at work, and that results in you, you know, going out drinking every Friday, because you want to

complain to your friends, or like that results in you like booking, you know, weekly spa appointments, or like weekly massage appointments, because you feel so stressed out or that results in you um you know buying i don't know essential oils or something because you can't sleep or something like that now all these right are basically symptoms of a problem that that's not solving the problem right so what that's what i would consider um an expense because it's not something that you're going to make back it's not actually contributing to anything in the long term it's probably like a short term sort of thing that you are trying to tackle and it's going to be a repetitive expense for sure and for some people they may even splurge and i'll be like okay god let's get a let's do a weekend staycation because

i can't deal with my boss right now let's go for a weekend staycation every week because I hate my colleagues. Like, really ask yourself, like, where is your money mindset at? Because even though, you know, we all think that we, I think for most people, you know, they think that they're thinking long term. But I can tell you that for many people that I speak to, most people don't have a very good money mindset. Most people are actually very short term. And worst thing, most people don't have a very good money mindset. Most people are actually very short-term. And worst thing, most people don't actually know how to manage their money.

They can't tell apart all these investments and everything else. And I'll tell you guys a very quick funny story as well. As you all know, I'm a charter certified accountant. And therefore, I have many friends who are also accountants as well. And you will be very surprised that sometimes the accountants who are

very great at managing their company's money, their company's finances, are actually really bad in managing their own money. And you may find it very surprising, but I've honestly, I've seen so many accountants and a lot of them are my friends, a lot of them are my connections in my network that actually have very bad money mindset, very bad money habits, and yeah, just basically spending all of it away. So the point I want to give, you know, mention to you guys is, you know, at the end of the day, you are the CEO of your own life. You are the CEO of your own career, and you are the CEO of your money. So if you don't take charge, you're just going to pay

everyone and pay everyone for things that actually do not solve a real problem or like do not actually increase your value, doesn't help you make more money, doesn't give you more opportunities. Basically, like you are making that call. Now, you made that, you know, you're just going with the flow. You're not making a decision, but no. And this is actually a quote that I used to tell a lot of my accountant friends, and I'll say that, you know, don't tell me what you value, but show me what you value. And when I say show me what you value is, show me your expense tracker, show me your expense tracker, me your expense tracker show me how show me where you've been spending your money and i will tell you what you value in your life and what you

actually value because it's very easy to say oh yeah maybe i really care about my career but sure i think that's fine but i think that you need to um be honest with yourself and just say that yep you know my career is not important to me right now and that's fine. But don't say that, well, I really care about my career, but ABCDE. And I hear this a lot, to be honest, guys, because as you all know, nowadays, I'm a career coach and I also have an online program, as I mentioned to you all just now, called The Corporate Survivor. And therefore, I actually receive many DMs every day from people who ask, you know, how to work with me and blah, blah. And as usual, right, one of the comments that I also hear sometimes

is that, oh, Mei Ping, you know, can you give it to me for free? I think your service is very expensive. I was expecting to pay $10, you know, that kind of nonsense. And sometimes I feel like, okay, but at the end of the day, it's like actually what you value, right? Because like, I can't tell you what you value. And, you know, I'm going to tell that same quote that I told all my accountant's friends is like,

don't tell me what you value, but like show me what you value. Because if that's something that, you know, it's like you will invest in something that you value. Whether you invest money, you invest time, energy, or effort, you are investing something. Because, you know, time is also money. Effort can also translate into money, right? Energy is also money because energy is attention, right?

So I think, I guess the point here is that I hope that in today's live stream, you know, think, really, really be honest. I think the word here is be honest about your money mindset, you know, kind of where you are. And are you objectively distinguishing the difference between investment and you're just, you know, just spending money as a general expense and even splurging on the unnecessary stuff.

I think only you can, you know, look into your lifestyle and then look into what you're spending money on and actually what you're prioritizing. Because, you know, to be honest, like that is truly what you value. If you say that you value

this one thing, but you're not investing any, you know, money, time, energy and effort, actually you don't really value it. You know, versus, you know, trying to convince me or trying to convince

whoever else online. Otherwise, I think, you know versus you know trying to convince me or trying to convince whoever else online otherwise i think you know the process of like self-reflection and really you know looking a little bit more into your own habits and how you're actually thinking about money how you're thinking about investments that i think will serve you better in the long run so i hope that you find today's live stream insightful. I hope that it kind of gets you thinking about kind of where you are

in terms of your money mindset. I know this is something that a lot of people kind of don't talk about in this perspective because everybody wants to talk about like, you know, making money,

becoming a billionaire, driving a Lamborghini. But unfortunately, I am an accountant, so I think it's my responsibility to tell you guys like, please learn how to manage your money and learn how to manage your money

and learn how to really identify what is an investment that can actually help you increase your value and I think that you may find life a lot more fulfilling this way

and I hope that I've kind of given you guys some very interesting insights to really think about so thanks everyone yes I actually have been to 37 countries and i'm

still very very thankful about it actually and i think that the fact that i have been to so many countries makes me feel um that right now it kind of kind of helps me in what i'm doing right now as a career coach because currently i actually have clients from over 40 countries including a lot of countries that i've never been to i have have clients in Angola, Kenya, Sierra Leone. I have clients in Canada. I've never even been to Canada, right? I also have clients like Egypt. Okay, UK I've been,

but I also have clients in Ireland and everywhere else. So anyway, there are tons of countries that a lot of my clients and my students are currently at. And I always tell them that hopefully one day I can actually visit you guys. Like I recently had a client a few months ago from New Zealand and I was telling her that I made plans, but it didn't work out.

But hopefully I hope that, you know, when all the pandemic, you know, is over and everything stabilizes, I can travel a little bit more. But yeah, yeah. The message I want to send to you guys and i know that you know today's live stream is a little bit of an on the rambling side because you know usually i talk about careers but i hope that you find the uh the insights and the perspectives that i share about money um you learn something and if you learn something watching live right now maybe drop me

drop a yes in the comments uh i would really love to hear that. You know, money is not something that I talk about often, even though many people request from me, saying they may be an accountant, like, talk more about money, right? Want to hear what you think about, like, budgets and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, let me know

if you learn something or find something insightful from today's money sharing. And probably I'm going to share a bit more from time to time. But I definitely started sharing a little bit more from time to time but I definitely started sharing a little bit more on TikTok as well so if you guys want to follow me on TikTok just search Mingping then I think I should be able to pop up so thank you so much for joining today hope you

guys learned something interesting and I really challenge you to really rethink your money mindset or whether it's actually helping you in your life, in your career, or it's actually holding you back because, you know, your money mindset is out of control. So with that, I'll see you guys tomorrow. And if you want to check out the replays for the 30-day career live stream series, you can check it out on my Spotify as well as on my YouTube. So I will see you guys tomorrow at 9 o'clock Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong time. And till then, please learn how to manage your money. Bye.