by Whether your goals are to meet your family’s needs, save for a better retirement, or buy a bigger house or faster car, saving is the most important way to ensure your meet your personal finance goals. And contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t have to be hard.
Check out these 10 simple ways to save money:
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1. Record your expenses
The very first step to saving is knowing how much you spend. For a whole month, keep track of every transaction you make. This means trying to record everything you buy, from a newspaper to a cup of coffee. After gathering the information, make groups of different categories, such as your mortgage, services like gas and electricity, groceries, and so on.
2. Manage your debt
Before setting your budget, it’s important to determine how much debt you have and begin repaying it before you can start saving. Once you are finished paying back the loan, you could continue to put the same amount of money aside for your savings fund.
3. Create a budget
Now that you’re clear on how much you spend monthly, build a budget to plan and help control your spending. In the budget ensure that you put some money away for emergencies, and remember to include a place for expenses that don’t occur monthly, such as car services, or home reparations.
4. Plan on saving money
Try to allocate at least 10% of your net income towards saving. If you find that with your current budget this is not possible, then you should probably cut back on more expenses if possible.
5. Set saving goals
To make it easier to start, set for yourself some achievable saving goals – both long term and short term. For the short terms goals, you could put money away to buy a new computer, bike, or car, and for your long term goals, maybe plan for your kid’s college education, retirement, or a remodeling of the house. Take time to think about what’s most important to you and what you want your money to achieve and make your goals real by writing them down.
6. Use price comparison tools
Price comparison tools are available online and will let you if there are lower prices for the item you intend to purchase available elsewhere. Sites such as Price Grabber and Shopzilla can help you save tons of dollars on many items.
7. Decide on the priorities
Different people have different priorities when it comes to saving, so you need to determine which goals are the most important to you and save accordingly.
8. Different investment and saving strategies
For your short term goals you probably want to use a regular savings account, but for your long term goals you could consider other options, such as mutual funds and stocks. Although it’s best to speak to a financial advisor before making any decisions.
9. Automatic transfers and direct debits
Automatically transferring money from your main account to your savings account makes it less likely for you to spend money, because you will never see it in your account and will make it easier to achieve your saving goals.
10. Watch the savings grow
Make a point of checking on your progress monthly. This will not only help you to stick to your saving plan but also identify loopholes in the plan and allow you to make adjustments accordingly.
