We all know someone with more energy than us. For some unknown reason even if you can produce just as much work as they can in any given amount of time, they seem to be able to just go on for hours and hours. They seem to need less sleep than you do and even after a game of squash or whatever it is they’ll shower and just rabbit on where as you need a break. I’ll call these type of people Energizer Bunnies.

Energizer Bunnies are exhausting to watch…so how can you work on their level?

Pretty much, something’s gotta give.

You just have to focus on fewer tasks than they do and make more sacrifices. If you try to do everything that they do you will just burn out.

For the most part, I need 8 hours of sleep a night and this is how I achieve the same or better academic and financial goals as Energizer Bunnies.

Firstly, I remember one little piece of advice my daddy gave me when I was a teenager, he said “Heather, there is a time for everything.” By this, he meant that sometimes you have to give up all or most of the fun stuff for a while in order to enjoy yourself properly in the future. If you try to have all your fun now as well as get your academic or financial success it just ends up with you having to work harder for longer.

I thought he had a point so I took what he said on-board.

With this in mind:

1. I sleep for 8 hours almost every night. I rarely compromise on sleep to get work done because my quality of work is far higher and I am much more productive when I feel well rested. 
   
2. I don’t party or go clubbing much at all. Mostly because after about the age of 23 I stopped enjoying it. I’d been partying since I was 15 and it kind of got boring. If I did still enjoy partying I would just have to do it less often to produce the same amount of work as Energizer Bunnies.
   
3. I’m disciplined about my leisure time. I love going to dinner and hanging out with friends, however, because I know I can hang out and chat forever I decide how much leisure I plan on having in advance if I am working on something. Even with that kind of structure I can have plenty of unplanned fun but at the end of the day I have disciplined my mind to know that no matter how much fun I’m having, if there’s work to be done the next day fun must be cut short. 
   
4. I get help. A cleaner does all the domestic cleaning for me so I can save time. If I expend energy on cleaning I have less energy for running my business. This is one thing I don’t compromise on.

In summary, I don’t try to live the life of the Energizer Bunny. Ultimately, my idea of fun involves having more free time to hang out with my husband and kids, reading books in cafes whenever I want, eating out wherever I want and whenever I feel like it, sending my kids to good private schools and getting my cleaner to come more often. Even if the Energizer Bunny posts numerous social posts of them moving from one party to the next, flying to various exotic locations and playing lots of sport I know those are not my goals so comparing myself to them is fruitless.

The problem some find is that they do want to live the same life as their Energizer Bunny friend. If that is the case you just have to accept that in the short term you’ll need to have less fun and work harder so that in future your hard work pays you enough income to buy more leisure time.

There’s a time for everything.

When most people want something, if the cash is available or their credit limit allows for it, they will buy it without putting very much thought into it. I was thinking these thoughts the first night after waking up in our brand new super king-sized bed. I loved the way our room looked (bar the wood-effect window blinds that I would love to change into shutters when it’s possible).

 
How long had I been wanting to get a new bed and to change the general look of our bedroom? Almost five years – yes, five years - but in the intervening period our money had had other priorities so I wouldn’t allow myself the indulgence of a nicer bed: first, money was needed for the business and then I thought other parts of the house were higher priority than our bedroom.

I had wanted a Rococo bed so much, for so long that, I kid you not, I visited their website at least 100 times over the five years before I eventually called and made a purchase over the phone. Most people won’t wait five years.

What finally pushed me to buy?

Well, many of my business needs had been satisfied and being 8.5 months pregnant meant a good night’s sleep was very hard to come by so making the room more comfortable took on a new priority.

To accommodate a new and bigger bed we also had to redesign the wardrobes in our room – I waited just over 4 years to allow myself that indulgence.

I make the decisions on décor and financial investments in the house as my husband hates any of that stuff with a passion. He even hates being asked to decide on one pair of anything versus another – in fact, he had no idea which bed we were getting until he saw it in the bedroom, “Surprise me!” was what he said when I asked whether he wanted to help choose a bed. I know how lucky I am to have this kind of unilateral say.

COSTS

How much did this all cost? Not as much as I could have spent but still a hefty sum considering average pay:

• Bed including delivery & fitting: £680 (about $1000)
• Orthopaedic mattress including delivery to bedroom: £400 ($600)
• Wardrobe redesign: £1,200 (about $1800) (I bargained that down from £1,700 ($2500) and rejected a “deal” at £6,000 ($9000) from one of these mid-to-high end high pressure sales people). 
  

Seriously, £6,000?? They offered 8-year financing with payments of £100 per month. Most people would have jumped at that but my background in finance meant I knew they would be using mortgage-like interest and 3 years in you would barely have chipped at that £6,000. So, even if you decided to pay it all off 5 years early you would be lumbered with a total of at least £10,000 including cancellation and admin charges. BAD DEAL. 

I’m going into this story in a fair bit of detail because I know many other women handle their family’s finances or at least have a say in them and could be going through the same needs.

Personally, I never buy domestic goods on finance, you can never get a good deal. I pay cash and we save until we have that cash available.

I am a very impatient person in general but when it comes to waiting to spend I have the patience of a Japanese man.

THE MERC

As I looked at our pretty bedroom and thought these thoughts I recalled another time when I wanted something for ages: It took me five years of wanting a Mercedes before I finally decided it was time to get one. That time I was pushed by a recent diagnosis that my sister had Lupus. I was heartbroken.

It was late 2010 and I had been saving for a year based on my plan to quit the 9-to-5 day job in early 2012 to start a business.

The diagnosis just made me want to live a little so one afternoon, whilst my then-boyfriend, now husband, was sleeping – he was working night shifts – I went to the closest Mercedes dealership and committed to a £24,000 ($40,000) brand spanking new red Mercedes.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. As they only had the Merc I wanted in white I told them I would wait until they could deliver me one in red – and I would collect in a month because I was off to China. I personally consider cars consumer goods, wasting chattels, so I pay cash for cars too. No cash – no car. I went home and when Harry woke up I was like, “Guess What?”…. “We’re getting a new car.”

I also have this weird thing where I like brand new cars – a bad investment in the eyes of many Economists but my dad poisoned my head with his theories on second hand goodies – he thinks you always buy other people’s problems. However, once you get the brand new car I believe you should hold it for 7 to 10 years before upgrading. I don’t chop and change cars every 2 to 4 years like many do.

The Merc is the first ever car I purchased brand new and I have never had a problem. The first car I ever bought was second-hand and although it had only 5,000 miles on the gauge it gave me endless problems. I sold this before I started dating The Good Husband.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

In the above, I have told you about two major investments that I waited to make but I tend to wait for the right time to purchase even small items. I make bad financial decisions here and there, I’m not perfect, but from the moment I graduated I realised more and more that most people are extremely impatient when they want something and this slows down their wealth building journey.

Society drives us to make impulse decision with sleek ads.  If you added up all the money you spend that you didn’t have to, you would shock yourself; I would shock myself. Unfortunately, however, making financial progress requires you to analyse every single penny you spend like it’s your last.

You might even need to rewire your thinking and reframe your mind re. what is good value for money. For instance, what is good value for a coat?

One of my friends spends £500 on a coat and buys new ones frequently.

My first coat bought in 2002 cost £50. I had been earning a 6-figure salary (in USD) for over five years when I upgraded to a £200 Reiss coat in October 2010. As always I bought it when it was on offer, 50% off – woohoo. Almost 5 years later I am still using the same winter coat and I think it’s good for at least another 3 years.

What is good value for money to one person is not good value to another. We all have different anchors in our heads about what things are worth. If you are not where you want to be financially you need to have a good think about your views on money. Ask yourself the following:

• Can you wait to buy that thing you want?
• Do you need it at all?
• Is the price you’re seeing or being quoted really good value for money?
• Are you putting the right priority on what needs to be bought now vs. what can wait to be purchased in the future.
• Are your financial decisions stopping you from reaching financial freedom? 
• Is your taste in alignment with your budget? Or, are you constantly buying elite goods on a middle class income?

I hope you enjoyed my insights on prioritizing your finances and making sacrifices to get to your financial goals faster. I know five years sounds like a long time to wait but in each case I didn’t put a deadline of five years, it just happened – whenever I fantasized about the Merc or the bedroom I knew deep down the timing wasn’t right; something else was higher priority.

Creating realistic priorities for your finances will see you grow.

I was inspired to write this post by my cousin’s husband. I’ve known him for well over 10 years now and in all that time he’s dabbled at starting this business and that business but never succeeded.

Personally, I don’t think he was passionate about anything he started - it was always more about making money and as I explain in The Money Spot program, money has to be a by-product not the main reason for you starting something.

Anyway, he comes by the house and says, “Heather, you know, two years ago a friend of mine needed help setting up a nursing agency and she asked for my help. I helped free of charge and after everything was set up she asked me to join her as a partner in the business. I refused because I hate all the bureaucracy and box ticking required to work with the National Health Service (NHS), and today she has 80 nurses on her books.”

That didn’t mean anything to me so I started digging into the numbers. If there’s one thing you find out very quickly about me, it’s that I always jump straight into the numbers. I once met a stripper as I was walking through town and even then I started asking about the numbers right away but that’s another story.

These were the numbers:

• The agency only deals with contracts rather than filling in day spots here and there. This means that they place their nurses in a hospital for 3 or 6 months and sometimes longer.
• The hospital pays the agency £41/hour per nurse
• The agency pays their nurses £29/hour
• The agency therefore keeps £12/hour (£41-£29) – essentially this is their fee for finding the jobs, negotiating contracts and so on. 
  

If every nurse works 8 hours / day and works just 20 days /month – how much does the agency earn per month?

They get: 

£12 x 8 hours x 20 days x 80 nurses = £153,600 (that’s about $250,000) PER MONTH

The costs of running this kind of agency even with two or three well-paid staff will only be a fraction of this. I am guessing £30,000 ($50,000) per month at the most

THAT IS AN INSANE AMOUNT OF MONEY.

Keep in mind that many nurses will frequently choose to work the 12 hour shift and will frequently work 22 to 24 days per month so most of the time this number will be higher.

My cousin’s husband is already a medical professional and he lost out on this opportunity for the simple reason that he didn’t want to deal with a few forms. That is outrageous.

Why Can’t He Join The Practice Now?

Initially he could have joined the business with his input being his hard work because that’s what both him and the other party had to offer; setup costs were affordable. However, you can’t join a business that is making almost £2m ($3m) a year already without making an equity investment and with that level of revenue he can’t afford to buy an equity stake.

Why Should He Have Joined Despite Hating Paperwork

Yes, I am big proponent of running a business you are passionate about but…

…The fact is, no matter what your passion is, to get the job done there will always, always be tasks involved that you hate. Despite this, as your business grows, you can pass those tasks on to someone else: an employee or even a third-party company. You just have to put your head down and get things done in the early days until you get to that stage.

In the end, he lost out big time and all it took this lady to grow the business to this size was two years. Two years is nothing, when you’re busy it passes by in the blink of an eyelid.

To show you just how much this lady (of African origin like myself) is living it up: He was chatting with her, telling her about all the costs he had at that time with his wife and kids going on holiday etc. and without him even asking she brought out a cheque and gifted him £5,000 ($8,000) just like that! Who does that?

That’s what I call #success.

It’s so easy to take risks when you have very little to lose. However, when you’ve worked hard and accumulated a few resources you can stop yourself from growing even bigger because you’re too scared of losing the little that you have.

I am going to stop talking in parables and cut straight through to the point with an example from my own life.

When I started working at Goldman Sachs in 2005 I was in the awesome position of having no debt although I also had no money. By the time my first pay cheque arrived there was less than £100 in my bank account.

That year, I saved like crazy and by the end of my first year workingI was able to buy my very first property.

• Value: £250,000. 
• Deposit: £12,500

There were obviously quite a few othercosts involved like taxes, legal costs, furniture and I also had to refurbish the skanky bathroom before I could ever use it. However, being an astute saver had paid off.

Fast forward six years to 2012 and the property value had shot up to over £500,000 so I was sitting on a fair amount of equity especially as the debt had been paid down to about £210,000. To be quite honest, it made me feel rather wealthy and I didn’t want to lose it. I had by now rented out the property and the tenant was effectively paying down my mortgage very nicely.

My mortgage interest rate was enviably low and monthly rental were MUCH higher; a very comfortable position to be in.

In early 2013 I realized I would need money to fund a project and getting a bank loan as a solopreneur in Great Britain is extremely difficult. My only options were to release equity in my home or in my first house.

In early 2014 an estate agent told me they could easily sell my house for £575-600k. I loved the idea but selling was not an option at all as too much of the money would be eaten by taxes. When you have equity the most efficient way to release it is with a loan. You don’t have to incur the taxes.

I avoided making the decision but by late 2012 property prices seemed to have slipped to about £525-550k. That was my wake up call. I made a major realization:

If you sit on equity, especially equity trapped in a property, it could be there one day and gone the next. The most financially astute decision is to release it and re-invest in something else. Once you get the extra money via a re-mortgage that equity becomes real money that you can use and grow.

The low interest rate made me want to keep the mortgage I had but that’s not a good enough reason because rental income is subject to taxation anyway.

It isn’t always possible to get the mortgage you want but I learnt three key lessons:

• If you have equity in a buy-to let, get as much out as you can (especially if interest rates are low) and invest in something that will build more wealth
• If possible, pay yourself a salary or a dividend totalling £20,000 or more because lenders feel more secure if they can see a “stable income”
• If your salary is low add your husband (or wife) to the mortgage to give lenders more comfort

Do you think releasing equity from property and other wealth is crucial to building more wealth?