Manage Your Money Like a Grownup

YOUR DREAMS MATTER

This book is about freedom. Yes, yes, I know it says on the cover that it's about money, but that's just a decoy to bamboozle the adults. (Did it work? In my experience, adults are EASILY BAMBOOZLED.) Really, what I want to talk to you about is how to live the life you actually want to live, not the life that the world wants to force you into.

I bet you have some big dreams for your life. Maybe something like one of these?

Skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing your way through the wildest wild places on earth

Making art, or music, or movies that people talk about for years

Saving the world through work or activism that improves the fate of people, animals and the planet

Buying a parent/guardian the house they've always wanted, so they can live in the comfort they deserve

Becoming a sports star or athlete at the top of their game

Having a huge circle of friends who go on adventures together all around the world

Being a celebrity Twitch streamer or YouTuber who gets to share their obsessions with their fans

Having a big family and lots of time to spend with them

Inventing something or starting a company that solves one of the world's big problems

Becoming a master chef and wowing the world with your delicious creations

Studying all sorts of different things that interest you

Living a humble life in nature without stress or worry.

Now let me ask you a question: how many of the adults you know seem to be living the lives that they dreamt of when they were your age? Or rather, how many of them seem to hate their jobs? Have you ever thought about why that happens: why so many kids with big dreams grow up into adults who feel trapped?

The reality is, anything you want to do with your life costs money. It costs money to support the people you care about. It costs money to have enough free time to practise the sport or art you love until you get good at it. It costs money to start a business or go on adventures or buy a surfboard. It also costs money to do more basic things like buy food to stay alive!

If you don't work out how to control your money, you end up spending your whole adult life just trying to make money and never actually enjoying the life you are living. Money ends up controlling you.

Have you ever started dreaming about what you want your life to look like, only to find yourself feeling a bit unsure about it all? Your dreams are just great - you start feeling yourself rise and rise like you are on a hot-air balloon ride over a game park, drifting into the sunset - BUT then when you think about how to make this all happen, you're suddenly back on Earth (with a bump)?

This book's about how to keep the gas turned on, and the hot-air balloon rising.

The better you understand how money works, the more you can use it as a tool to get the life you really want. When you're not in control of money, any money that comes into your life leaves it very quickly, which means that you have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to earn more of it, every day. The funny thing is that the best way to NOT have to think about money a lot is to understand it very well. Understanding money means you don't have to stress about it, so you can rather think about more fun things.1

So, this book is for you, even if you don't care about getting rich. This book is about how to better your chances of living the life YOU want to live, rather than just having to do any job that will pay you money. This book is for you if you've ever worried that there might be a bit of a gap between your future dreams and being 'practical'. And, if you've decided not to think about money/growing up/saving because it all looks a bit boring, and you'd rather be having fun, this book is for you too.

Because really, this isn't a book about money at all. It's a book about freedom.

Have a chat with your parents or guardians about their jobs. What did they dream of becoming when they grew up? What do they like about their jobs now? What don't they like? How did they end up doing what they do?

OH, HELLO!

But wait! How rude of me. Let me introduce myself: my name's Sam. And this is my cat, Digby. Digby doesn't know much about money because he pays rent in furballs. But he's cute, anyway, so I told him he could help write this book.

When I was a kid, the thing I really wanted to do with my life was write books, because I love books more than anything (okay, fine, except Digby). But there was just one problem: I had no idea how to go about actually doing that! Writing books isn't a job that someone will give you and pay you a salary to do. And I was REALLY BAD at managing money (but very good at spending it) so I ended up spending my 20s doing a bunch of really weird jobs, including dressing up like the Easter Bunny, handing out pamphlets at robots and writing letters on behalf of Ronald McDonald (no, really).2 Eventually I realised that no one was going to give me the job I wanted, so I was going to have to invent it for myself - which meant figuring out how money works.

So, I went and learnt everything I could learn about money. I even got myself a job in the finance industry so that I could learn about it from the inside. And I learnt a SHOCKING SECRET . dun dun duuuuun . money is actually really easy to understand!

I was really irritated when I learnt this, because I thought, Why did no one teach me how money works when I was young, so that I could be much further ahead by now? Because it really IS simple. You'll see.

Ever since then I've made it my mission to share this secret with everyone I know. My friends started avoiding me because I just wanted to tell them about money all the time. So that's why I'm turning to you, a fresh new audience to pelt with money facts!

Only joking.

Seriously.

But also, I wrote this book because I want you to get a head start and not have to spend your 20s pretending to be a fast-food mascot like I did.

I wrote this book especially for kids up to about 14, because if you're older than that you can probably just read the other book I wrote for adults (it has much more swearing in it, sorry! I need my mouth washed out with soap). But if you're reading this at 18 or 48, no problem. I read kids' books too! (John Green is pretty much my favourite writer and I will FIGHT anyone who says a bad thing about him.) Just enjoy. You'll be able to skip some of the chapters when you DO read my other book. Or maybe you're one of those really precocious six-year-olds like the ones from MasterChef, in which case, hello to you too!

Whoever you are, I'm really glad you're here. And I hope we can be friends.

TOO YOUNG? SAYS WHO?!

This book gives you the nuts-and-bolts low-down on one of the things that dominate most people's lives: money. Because believe me, it can dominate lives, no matter what kind of family you're from.

Maybe your family seems to have a lot of it, and there's no stress and it seems like there's a solid plan. Maybe your family struggles a bit, but holds it together. Maybe it seems like quite a big problem, one you'd rather not know anything about. Just another one of those adult problems that seems a lifetime away.

Right?

Wrong.

You know you're young. I know you're young. But I promise you, this is stuff you want to know now.

Here's why.

a) Good habits

The ideas and habits that you pick up at this stage in your life will shape you forever. Sure, you're probably not going to earn HUGE amounts of cash in your teen years (unless you're a kid celebrity or something), but it's still the best time to learn how to earn, spend and save money well. The good habits you need to manage a R100 birthday present today are the same habits that you'll need to manage the R1 million you'll earn one day.3 It's like practising any sport or spending time on any passion - the hours you put in now will lay the foundation for success later.

It's like how people who grow up to be amazing athletes or artists start training when they're young. Serena Williams, the best tennis player in the world, started training when she was three years old. She said:

When I was a kid I trained really, really, really hard. And I think that's so important for kids out there that want to grow up and be the best. Ask any professional player. You train really hard. You train for hours. I remember in the summer, we would train from, I think it was from like 9:00 to 11:00 and then 1:00 to 6:00. And then on Saturdays, we would train from 9:00 to 12:00. And then we would have Sundays off. So we trained a lot. We practised hours and hours and hours. And obviously when you get older, you don't practise as much, but you're building a really strong foundation when you're younger so you can have a solid foundation that doesn't shake when you...