Football can teach us how to be Better With Money

The eyes of football fans are currently on the 2022 World Cup in Qatar in the hope that the team they support will do well (or avoid a humiliating early exit from the competition, at the very least!).

There will undoubtedly be some great performances and incredible goals. There will also be fouls aplenty and the occasional blunder along the way.

Watching highly skilled and highly paid footballers plying their trade on the World’s greatest football stage can be great escapism from the day-to-day financial turmoil many of us currently face. However, football can also teach us some valuable lessons regarding managing our finances and becoming Better With Money.

For example, teams will step onto the pitch with a plan for how they will approach every match. They will have assessed the opposition and the fitness and form of their own players. They will have devised tactics and they will be ready to adapt if, during a match, things don’t go quite as planned. In the same way, we should have in place a plan and tactics for how we manage our finances each month in the form of a budget, which should be reviewed, tweaked, and updated regularly to help us tackle whatever financial challenges we must face. However, whilst football pundits will talk about players “giving 110%”, a good budget always keeps something in reserve to help us deal with the unexpected.

A football team will also do better if its players stay focused and avoid making rash decisions and costly mistakes. With our finances, we need to do the same. Sure, an impulse purchase can make us feel like a winner, but if it risks derailing our finances, it is akin to a footballer making a two-footed diving challenge in their own penalty area – reckless.

Also, goals are equally crucial in both football and our finances. Sometimes a goal in football will involve gradual build-up play and exquisite skill. Other times it will result from a moment of luck or sheer brilliance. Regardless of how the ball ends up in the back of the net, goals win matches. With our finances, achieving goals is essential for us to win our financial battles. We set ourselves a goal to pay off debts within a specific time, save an amount each month, or cut down on wasteful spending. Whatever our financial goals, achieving them helps ease financial pressure and takes us one step closer to financial victory. Whether you celebrate achieving a financial goal with a backflip or robot dance is entirely up to you. But celebrate them, you should!

Argentinian footballing legend Diego Maradona once said: “When people succeed, it is because of hard work. Luck has nothing to do with success.” At Better With Money we agree that there is no luck involved in becoming more money minded. However, it also needn’t be hard work. Our financial education webinars and courses cover a range of money-related topics and are specifically designed to be interesting and accessible. We help equip employees with the tools, knowledge, and skills they need to become Better With Money and feel like winners, regardless of what happens in Qatar.

If you would like to find out how Better With Money’s courses provide financial education in the workplace and help people make better money decisions, please get in touch.