Tag: save

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Financial Health & Home Savings Wellness

5 Things To Do For Your Future Without Spending

5 Things You Can Do For Your Future Self That Don’t Cost A Dime

So many people have a good idea of where they want to be in the future. We envision ourselves working until a certain age in a career that we love, often living in a particular area in our dream home, while not worrying about money, and being able to live a life that we enjoy.

While this is something that many people can admit that they do, often advice on how to get there can seem sparse. But luckily there is some good information out there, and we’ve compiled 5 of the best things you can do today to put yourself on a better path for the future, for free.

1.   Start the habits that you want to see your future self practicing.

This goes for just about anything, from quitting smoking, exercise more consistently, painting, reading more, spending money more sensibly, literally anything. If you take small steps to incorporate this new activity or habit into your life, it will be easier to carry that small step into additional actions. If you are wanting to start a new hobby or learn a new skill, try to set aside 30 minutes a day to work on that activity. It will pay dividends.

2.   Keep your credit in the back of your mind.

It is used to score you for so many things, it just makes sense to keep your credit in as good of shape as you can. This means monitoring your credit and credit score, paying down old debt if you have any, and improving your credit where possible.

3.   Automate your saving and investing.

With apps like Stash, Acorns, Robinhood, and even Cashapp, you can automate saving and investing your money. Make sure you aren’t letting all your money sit and die of inflation in a savings account, though. Keep a liquid emergency fund, and invest the rest in stocks, bonds, and crypto to generate passive and retirement income with almost zero effort over time.

4.   Learn the difference in various retirement accounts before you need one.

The best time to start investing is whenever you can start. Employer-offered funds like a 401(k) are perfect starting points, particularly with many companies offering matching up to a certain point. Not only is it smart to invest early and often, but you can invest from pre-tax money to reduce your tax liability, and an employer match is basically free money.

5.   Test yourself monthly by cutting out one paid “extra” each month.

This can be almost anything that you pay for as an extra. One of the many streaming services, eating at a particular fast-food restaurant, a subscription box, and so on would be a perfect example. You cancel or cut one out for a month, and see if you can live without it. Many times we forget that we have grown attached to many “needs” that are actually well-disguised “wants”. Skipping a month here and there can save big bucks and build big discipline.

Categories
Financial Savings

Basic Budgeting Tips Everyone Should Know

Budgeting

Whether you are a million-dollar earner or one of the tens of millions of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, the foundation of every successful financial strategy is budgeting. You need to know where every penny you earn is going if you are going to become the master of your own financial future.

Despite what you may think, budgeting does not rely on strict spending control and eliminating all fun and enjoyment from your life. The biggest benefit to having a budget is to understand your own spending habits and being familiar with your unique financial situation.

The best decisions come from a place of education, so it is essential that you understand how you are spending and allocating your money. Let’s take a look at some of the most vital budgeting tips that everyone should be utilizing.

1.   Use A Worksheet

This isn’t the 1970s, so why create your budget as if it was? Use a spreadsheet that you can constantly keep updated, this will make it easy to stay current. There are also a number of resources for using premade budget templates that can be used with Excel or Google Sheets. These can have a number of categories, expense types, and more, to help you track your money with more detail than ever before.

2.   Understand Overspending

One of the many reasons that you may want to create a budget is to identify areas or categories where you may be overspending. Overspending can throw off your budget since it takes allowances from other categories. Once you know where your overspending tends to happen, you can understand your overspending habits, and begin to put a stop to them.

3.   Keep Your Goals In Sight

Budgeting can be hard without a goal to work on saving toward. This reward can be crucial to your success in budgeting and saving. Start with small goals, and work up from there. Maybe set a small reward for when you’ve managed to save your first $100, then another reward at $250, or even $500. Make sure you keep a mix of short-term and long-term goals so that you can budget for several things at once. Make sure you record your goals and maintain accountability.

4.   Automate Your Savings

This is another way that you can leverage technology to help you reign in your finances. One of the more challenging things about budgeting is saving, but now there are apps that can make this an effortless step. There are ways to not only automate savings deposits from your paycheck but also to deposit smaller amounts automatically.

For example, you can have $20 automatically sent to savings when your check is direct deposited. There are also apps that will round up a debit card purchase to the next dollar and put the rounded change in a savings account for you. This may not seem significant, but if you round up a dollar a day, that’s roughly $30 per month that can be saved without effort.