# 5 Mistakes New Supervisors Make With Money Management **Related Reading:** [Read more here](https://skillcoaching.bigcartel.com/blog) | [Other insights](https://web.colby.edu/zccher20/2021/03/02/administration-training/) Twenty-three years ago, I got promoted to my first supervisor role at a mid-sized manufacturing company in Geelong. Thought I knew everything about money management because I'd been balancing my own chequebook since I was sixteen and had watched enough episodes of The Business to consider myself financially savvy. Boy, was I wrong. Within six months, I'd managed to blow through our quarterly training budget in eight weeks, approve overtime that sent our labour costs through the roof, and somehow convinced myself that the latest productivity software would solve all our problems. Spoiler alert: it didn't. The thing about stepping into supervision is that suddenly you're not just managing your own money anymore - you're responsible for budgets that could feed a small village, and every financial decision you make ripples through the entire organisation. Yet most companies hand you the keys to the kingdom with about as much financial training as they'd give to a work experience kid. After watching countless new supervisors make the same bone-headed mistakes I did (and helping clean up the mess afterwards), I've identified the five most common financial blunders that turn promising leaders into budget-busting nightmares. ## Mistake #1: Treating the Company Credit Card Like Monopoly Money This is the big one, and it usually happens within the first month. New supervisors see that shiny company credit card and suddenly everything becomes "essential for the team." Premium coffee for the office kitchen? Essential. Brand new ergonomic chairs when the current ones are perfectly fine? Critical for productivity. That fancy team-building workshop in Byron Bay? Absolutely necessary for morale. I've seen supervisors spend $3,000 on office supplies in their first week because they confused being generous with being responsible. The reality is that every dollar you spend is a dollar that can't be invested elsewhere - maybe in actual staff training or equipment that would genuinely improve performance. The fix is simple but requires discipline: tr