Afterpay Anxiety + Top Money Tips + 🌮🍱 Canteen Cash

The money stuff that you wish they taught in school

Jan 18, 2024

You know when you’re in class and someone asks a question and you go:

“Oh, I was going to ask that” or,
“Oh, I didn’t have that question before, but now I want to know the answer to it”

That’s what this is supposed to be like (but with money stuff, not English or Biology).

The format of this newsletter is simple:

3 questions from teenagers and young adults like you and my answers.
💬🤔 Got your own question about money that you want to ask? If you send it through this week there’s a good chance you’ll get an answer next week! You can submit it here (and it can be totally anonymous if you prefer 🙂).
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Your Questions & Answers

🌮🍱 Canteen Cash
Afterpay Anxiety
Top Money Tips

🌮🍱 Canteen Cash

Q. “My new school has a really good canteen and I want to be able to buy stuff from it when school starts. But I don’t get enough pocket money. How can I get more?
-Liam, 12, Qld“

Answer

Hey Liam! This is a great question. My tip is to say something like this to your parents:

“I’m excited to try the canteen at my new school. But I don’t have enough pocket money at the moment to save and buy the things that I want and also spend money at the canteen.
Would it be ok if I did something extra to help at home with the chores? And if I do that, could we talk about me having a higher amount of pocket money?”

This might work for a few reasons:

It shows your parents you’re excited about your new school (they’ll love that).
It shows your parents that you understand that money comes from work.
It shows your parents that you are willing to help out more in exchange for something you want.
It shows your parents that you’ve thought about your pocket money and how you’d like to spend and save it.

And just remember, they might still say ‘no’. That’s ok. They will probably have a really good reason for why they say that. You can always try again at the start of next term!

Good luck with your new school mate!

Afterpay Anxiety

Q. “I opened got Afterpay before Black Friday to help pay for stuff. I meant to pay it back but didn’t get as many shifts at work, then used it for Christmas stuff too. Now I owe heaps and it’s stressing me out and there’s late fees. What do I do, I feel so stupid.“
-Anon

Answer

Hey Anon. Alright, first thing you need to know is this: you are not stupid.

You made a decision to use a service. It hasn’t worked out like you planned. It happens to heaps of us. And it’s worth saying again: you are not stupid.

If you want to, you can choose to look at this as a chance to learn something. And then you can take what you’ve learned to make money decisions that suit you better next time.

Buying Now, Paying Later

Ok. It must be super stressful having a big amount owing and then also having late fees being added on top of that.

Afterpay (and heaps of other services like it) help you split the cost of stuff into 4 equal parts. If you pay it all back on time, there’s no late fees. If you miss a payment, those fees kick in.

The problem that some of us have with these types of services is that they trick our brains a little bit.

We could spend $100 today to get those shoes express shipped and to our door tomorrow.
OR, we can get those same shoes, at the same time and only spend $25 today and the rest later. Way better, right?

Maybe not.

Because if you repeat that a few times then you can end up spending more than you can pay back when those repayments are due.
And it gets harder to keep track of what you’ve spent, and what you owe.
And if you get less shifts at work or have a big unexpected expense (like your car breaking down or something) then you can’t make those repayments.

It sounds like that’s what’s happened to you.

Next Steps

Here’s some options you could choose. Pick whichever combination that you feel most comfortable with:

Pay it off. Pay off the amounts in full, as quickly as you can using your savings (if you have them). Rebuild your savings once the amount owing is paid off.
Get some help. If you don’t have the savings to do it, ask your parents for a loan and pay back the money you owe to the company. Then pay back your parents instead. Why is that better? Well, they probably won’t charge you late fees. You might not want to tell your parents about this (if you haven’t already). But they’ll probably want to know so that they can help you, and they probably wouldn’t want you to feel anxious alone.
Plan. Make a plan to pay off the debt / your parents. For example, maybe 50% of every pay from your part-time job will go towards getting rid what you owe.
Check your options. Contact the company to see if they will pause the late fees if you commit to paying back the amounts owing in a certain amount of time. Most companies are pretty good with helping customers out in situations like this, but you do have to ask.
Close the account. It sounds like this whole situation has caused you some stress. Is it worth having the temptation of using the account again? Or next time, could you just use your savings to buy what you really wanted and leave those things you couldn’t afford?

I’m sorry that you’ve got this stress in your life to start the year. But you’ve got the tools you need to make a plan and follow it to fix the problem. I hope something you read in this answer is helpful to you.

Top Money Tips

Q. “Hey Ry, I’m trying to learn to be good with money cause heaps of people I know aren’t and just spend their cash on stupid stuff. Don’t know where to start though. Do you have like a ‘top 3’ of tips so I can start somewhere?“
-Jai, 17, NSW

Answer

Hey Jai. Just wanted to give you a big congrats for two things: deciding you want to be good with money, and more importantly, doing something about it by writing this question. That is such a good sign that you’re already on the right track. Nice one.

Ok, so I’ve never thought about a ‘top 3 rules’ sort of thing before today.

But your question made me think about what they might be. These are the money ideas that have been most valuable to me from when I was a teenager up until now.

I think they’ll keep being the most valuable guiding ideas about money that me and my wife have. And lots of people I know who are good with money do similar things, which is also a good sign.

I save a percentage of every paycheck. It’s not about the dollars saved. It’s about the habit. When I earned $16 an hour working part time at high school and uni I saved 20% of every pay. Some weeks I earned around $100 so the amount saved was only $20. Didn’t matter. It was about the habit of doing it every week.
Now I have a full time job and earn more. But I do the same thing. 20% is saved from every pay. That means that when a big unexpected (bad) expense comes up, I can pay it without the stress. And when something unexpected (but good) comes up, I can pay for it without having to save or take a loan. Which leads me to my next rule for myself…
If I can’t afford it, I don’t buy it. This could be shoes, a car or a holiday. If you can’t afford it with the cash you have, don’t buy it.
Of course, there’s plenty of ways to get around not being able to afford stuff with the money you have in your account today.
Credit cards. Afterpay. Car loans.
They all come with a cost. That cost is ‘interest’. Interest is the price a lender charges you to give you money you don’t have. You end up paying back way more than the thing costs. If you want something enough, you’ll save enough money to buy it.
Money comes from work. Pretty simple. If you want more of it, you need to work more. Later on, you can learn about investing. But at the beginning, this is the main rule: money comes from work.
And it’s not just about doing more hours and working harder. It’s about working smarter too. So, studying or doing an apprenticeship to get a better job later? That’s working smarter, even if it might mean less hours at your part-time job and less money in the short-term.

I don’t know if those are the best tips out there. But they’re the ones that I’ve gotten the most value from so far in my life.

Also, learning about money stuff is a lifelong sort of thing. Don’t worry if you don’t feel like you don’t know much right now. You learn this stuff slowly, and by consistently adding to your previous knowledge. This newsletter is meant to help with that. Keep reading and learning about different money situations.

And write in whenever you like, as often as you like. I’ll try to help out wherever I can!

Thanks for Reading

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