What is the main difference between a financially literate person and an illiterate one? A bank account with seven zeros? Real estate in sunny California? Or perhaps a collection of Fabergé eggs? No. It’s much simpler than that: a financially literate person spends less than he earns. Let’s take a look at easy tips to help you afford more.
Fixed Costs
Determine what you spend money on each month – utilities, rent, credit groceries, etc. Write them out on a sheet of paper. These will be your “fixed items of expenditure,” FIE for short. Then subtract the FIE from your income. This will leave you with money to manage.
What’s About Leisure Time?
You shouldn’t deprive yourself of leisure and entertainment. But they, too, should be approached wisely. Instead of going to an expensive restaurant, you can sometimes (and better often) prefer a nice picnic in the woods. Or instead of visiting a Vance land-based casino, try games on a casino online Apple Pay website.
Written Accounting
To understand where your money goes, you need to keep track of it. Make a spreadsheet in Excel or Notepad and enter information about expenses and income there every day.
Over several months you will be able to track the dynamics and understand what adjustments you can make.
Change Your Habits
We spend a lot of money on bad habits that can be easily broken up with. Just remember to turn off the lights every time we leave the room, turn off the faucet while brushing our teeth, or use the shower more often instead of a full bathtub. The small steps method brings great results.
Put Money in an Envelope
There’s a wonderful rule called “pay yourself. “Pay yourself” means setting aside a minimum of 10% of your monthly income. If you can do more, great!
Such a healthy financial habit will help you create a safety cushion if trouble tries to catch you off guard.
Financial Discipline
Willpower and discipline are important in saving money. You can’t open the “envelope” every time you want to make an impulse purchase. It’s only for emergencies.
To “protect” money from yourself, you can open a deposit in a bank and make sure that for withdrawing money before the deadline, the bank deprives you of interest.
Prefer Wholesale to Retail
Some things – particularly groceries – can be bought in bulk. Pasta, cereal, flour, olives, oil and other food products can be bought cheaper at wholesale, and sometimes at a good discount. But you should remember about expiration dates.
Buy Things Out of Season
Buying things out of season, you can save over 50% of the budget that is spent each year to buy these goods. Swimsuits and panamas in winter, fur coats and boots in summer.
Purchase Gifts at the Right Time
Don’t buy a gift at the last minute: you’ll spend more money and instead of “the right” thing, you’ll get some random crap that won’t make you happy. If we are talking about gifts for national holidays, the day before it, you will see inflated prices and empty shelves. Is that a shame? You bet it is.
Remember That Quality Is More Important Than Quantity
Practicality is the property of purchased things, which is worth paying attention to. It’s better to buy one expensive but quality pair of shoes than to buy three pairs of cheaper ones. The latter are unlikely to serve you for more than one season.
It’s better to overpay at the beginning, but to save a lot later.
There Is Never Much Money
To feel confident, you need to have several sources of income.
Which of the skills you have can be monetized? Maybe you know French or are good at photography? Think about what you can and love to do – and get paid for it.
Closet Review
Going clothes shopping just to have fun is a straightforward way to lose money. If you think you need new things, it’s worth doing a closet review first and objectively assessing whether you’re really missing something. This will also help you get rid of damaged items.
Choose Your Gym Carefully
Don’t buy a gym membership until you’ve been going to a single class for a couple of months. It may seem disadvantageous, because a subscription is much cheaper. But you will lose more money if it turns out that you don’t like the trainer, there is no suitable time for classes, and the location of the gym isn’t the best.