Keep Your Life Simple
If you want to remain in sync with your savings, you will need to work on your craving to satisfy your material desires. All the unnecessary shopping for stuff that is not needed or the number of times you visit the cinema, the number of times you go for shows in a month, or it may even be that you spend a lot of time in the betting house, all that needs to be drastically reduced because all of these are budget busters.
There has got to be a cut down on how many times you go for designer clothes, perfumes,shoes and even new technology. If you want to be able to keep up with saving good money, you will need to develop contentment and learn to appreciate what you already have. This is because material possessions don’t make you who you are.
Make Budgeting a Habit
The first time I decided to do a budget, it felt like it was a hard thing to do but I also thought if I don’t I’ll be in a world of financial trouble. So I got started that month and I had a list of everything I would be needing for that month and as I kept to that list strictly my eyes became open to all the excessive and unnecessary spending I had been making.
Someone once said that you cannot master money in its presence you can only master money in its absence. I quite agree with him because in my case if I had no plan for the money before it comes, then anything that requires that I spend money on it was good. If you don’t have a plan for money, money is going to have a plan for you. Making budgeting a habit, will help you cut back on the obvious financial drains.
Budgeting for some people can be tedious and restricting but when you consider what your paycheck reads every month, you’ll prefer to go through the tedious budgeting way. When you have a spending plan, you will know what percentage of your paycheck went to various categories, and how one irregular bill or spending spree could pull you off your path for months.
Increase Your Earning Power
You must seek out ways to advance in your career and in your ability to earn more.You can do this by qualifying for promotion. To do this, you might need to develop expertise, because in your line of profession people earn money at different levels, it will be good to shoot for the highest level. You can do that by developing the competence to solve problems at a higher level because when you do, it will automatically translate to a higher pay. Also it is important that you garner experience in your field because that is what will sometimes guide the decisions that will help your organization save cost or increase bottom line(profit). Increasing your earnings will automatically increase your capacity to save more and make bigger investments.
Change Your Priorities
The things that are important to you will determine what you’ll spend a large chunk of your income on. You must realize that living on a small salary requires that you should prioritize what you truly need because a limited amount of money would not do much. If you don’t prioritize actively, you will probably do it subconsciously, meaning you’re likely to prioritize what feels good and is convenient. This does not work very well because the very things that should receive urgent attention will get less attention and your money goes to things that have no long term value/gain.
Here’s someone’s testimony: Six months into my new lifestyle, one of my girlfriends got married out of state and invited me to the nuptials. I summed up the cost of the weekend affair, including plane tickets, hotel room, rental car, food and gifts: roughly $1,500. It would have been so easy to say yes, suck up the costs and go have a good time. I wanted to do what was expected of me by the bride, my friends and my ego. But I also knew that it would take away from honoring my priorities.
So I did not go. I saved instead. The bride was understanding, but it didn’t soften the blow I felt to my ego. With mixed emotions, I sent along a card and a gift certificate to a store on her registry, knowing in my gut that it was the right thing to do.
When you have decided that saving is a priority, your goal may come at the expense of some obvious-and some not-so-obvious-lifestyle choices. You should prioritize saving anyway.
Make Your Savings Automatic
This helps to ensure that you do not forget to set this amount aside and also do not fall into the trap of “procarastination”. I understand that there will be times when the will power to set that amount aside might be lacking in some months, but I also know that you cannot leave it to chance to remember to make a monthly deposits to your savings account. This is where making your savings automatic helps.
My advice is, set up an automatic transfer from your salary account to your savings account every month, and once the transfer is made, don’t touch it. It will make the saving process effortless. When you begin to see progress in your account balance as it moves up you get the motivation to continue saving because seeing progress feels good.
Limit Your Exposure to Adverts
There’s a whole lot of research and sophistication that goes into the packaging and advertisement of products these days. These adverts and commercials are designed to get you to buy products or services that most times you already have or can’t afford at the moment.
They go as far as presenting juicy discount offers for newer versions of products and make you feel like the one you already have is not good enough. The advertising industry tries to bombard your mind with images of their products to the point it enters your heart and you just want to buy.
Stop falling for the sales, if you did not plan/budget for it don’t fall for it. Even the installment payments for expensive things that all these marketers offer us are sometimes a trap. For instance, by the time you get a new phone that you have to spread the payment over 24months, it’s so funny that even before you’re done with the payment for that phone a newer model comes out and they even put it up on sale. This is the reason I ask that you stay away from the adverts and all these juicy deals.
As Income Increases Peg Your Expenses
Money is never enough to spend, so it is advisable to save first and spend later. Experts say we should save at least ten percent. You must fight to subdue Parkinson’s law which states that “Expenses will always rise to meet income”. So we understand why it is that when your income begins to rise you naturally want to increase your standard of living because you can now afford the things that you once coveted. But here is my advice, when you get a salary increase do not increase your standard of living just immediately but try just for a few more months to increase your savings.When you have been able to save up a reasonable amount, then you can begin to gradually raise your standard of living.