Want to save more and improve your financial well-being? Are you stuck with bad financial decisions? Living your best life can start today. It’s not a trick, and there’s no magic to it. You have to be smart in your plans. This article will give you insights to help you make money in your productive years and keep it. From cultivating good money habits to budgeting, you will find tips to help you save more and have a healthy financial life.
Without further ado, here are seven tips to be clever with your money and improve your financial wellbeing.
1. Read From The Pros
Managing your finances can be confusing, but learning from experts is an excellent place to start. As Kyle Burbank over at https://moneyat30.com reveals, millennials are especially prone to making financial mistakes along the way. This is why it pays to borrow some wisdom from the experts.
You can go online or to the local library, where you’ll find tons of books on financial wellness. Try to use free resources and only buy what you can afford. Alternatively, you can purchase a few personal finance books, some of which are readily available in the second-hand market. A few that could be worth your time include:
- Why Didn’t They Teach Me This in School
- Broke Millennial
- The One-Page Financial Plan
- The Total Money Makeover
- The Simple Path to Wealth
2. Work With A Budget
The best financial planners are those who use a budget. Having a budget prevents you from overspending. Plus, it helps you to differentiate between needs and wants quickly. How? You make a list of the items you need to take care of, such as food and shelter; and then have another column on your wants such as designer shoes. With such a list, you’ll learn how to prioritize the needs and only buy the wants when you have more money.
3. Develop Saving Habits Early
Whether you’re doing it for retirement or the next big trip, learning to save early has enormous benefits. For instance, saving for retirement from a young age means you can save as little as you can afford to. If you’re not sure how to go about it, you can set some money goals and start small. Besides, if you make it fun, you’re more likely to have a successful saving plan.
4. Cut Back On Expenses
The one sure way to have more money in your pocket is to spend less than you earn. Do an audit of your expenditure to decide what needs reduction. Some of the things you can do are:
- Stop eating out as it’s costly
- Cancel cable
- Take public transport or walk to work if possible
- Use energy-saving bulbs
- Keep your cell phone bills low
5. Get Out Of Debt
Clearing debt is easier said than done, but it’s doable. Apart from pulling you down financially, debt can damage your credit score. If you have a monthly plan, you can start by offsetting more than the minimum payment. Another way to clear debt fast is using the snowball method. With this method, you start by offsetting the smallest debt while paying small amounts for the enormous debts.
6. Have An Emergency Fund
You can’t predict an emergency, and it’s, therefore, hard to plan for it. For this reason, building an emergency fund is a necessity. The emergency fund comes in handy for issues such as car repairs, preventing interference with your budget.
Are you wondering how to build an emergency fund? Think about how much money you’d need to cover three to six months of your expenses and save that. It’s also important to know where to save money, whether it’s financial markets or a savings account.
7. Make More Money
Boosting your income is one of the ways to ensure you have more money to save. If you’re employed, you can earn more money in your thirties by renegotiating your salary to get higher pay. However, you have to qualify your request. Alternatively, you can take up more jobs if it doesn’t drain you emotionally or physically.
Also, you could pick up a side hustle. Depending on your skills, you could start freelance writing, transcription, selling printables, or become a virtual assistant. Still, you can go for a passive income strategy such as affiliate marketing.
The bottomline is that if you want to do well financially, you can start by setting up a budget. Numbers don’t lie, so making a list of your expenses and prioritizing will work in your favor. Additionally, clearing your debt will unburden you, and soon enough, you’ll have more to spend and save.
Besides, if you don’t know how to start, get yourself a good personal finance book. Learn from professionals how to get your finances under control. What’s more, they might even teach you how to boost your income. Which of these strategies will you start using?