Building Your Savings to Create Wealth and Stability
You are in a place in your life where you are motivated to get in a better financial position and you are looking to create a savings with some more financial stability. The great news is, it is totally doable, regardless of your income. Creating wealth and stability is less about how much you make and more about what you do with the money you have.
1. Create a Budget
As with most steps to financial freedom, it all starts with a written budget. You may get tired of hearing this, but there is a reason it comes up over and over again- it’s because it works. When we go off of memory and don’t have a written plan, even the best efforts and intentions tend to go sideways. Until you have a written plan, you won’t know what you can or can’t afford for the month while still working toward your goals. Write out your budget and look for the expenses you can adjust or eliminate. Set a percentage or amount for savings- even if it is $5. The amount you can save will inevitably go up, it is more important at this point to just set some healthy habits in place. Review your budget throughout the month and stick to it.
2. Automate your savings
Once you decide on the amount you can save, set up the withdrawal automatically. Have a separate account that is harder to access to transfer the funds in to. Don’t have a debit card or easy online transfer associated with your new savings account. Make it difficult to access your money and you will be less likely to use it. If you have to speak with a teller at a bank to access your money, you will be less tempted to think about it as being usable.
3. Sell things you don’t need
When you are looking to boost your savings account, sometimes you don’t need to look any further than your own home. Do you have collectibles sitting around that no longer bring you joy? Or would you have more joy if you had more financial stability? Look to sites like offerup, letgo, ebay and Cragislist to offload some of your stuff and make some side cash. The result is a cleaner house with less stuff to dust and a fuller, healthier savings account to boot.
4. Pick up a side job
Don’t know where to start? Take inventory of the things you are good at or like to do that don’t bring you a ton of stress. Are you great with dogs? Try being a dog walker or dog sitter on the side. It can pay great and give flexibility in your schedule. Maybe you are great with kids and have a few hours to babysit here or there. Or maybe you a magician with web design and can scrape together some extra cash working on the side for sites like Fiverr or Upwork. Do something that is fun and light that can supplement your growing financial stability.
5. Live below your means
Don’t use credit cards as tempting as they can be. The interest alone can put you in a never-ending spiral of debt that just keeps building, making it hard to climb your way out. If you don’t have the money for it, don’t buy it. And if you need it, figure out another way to raise the cash.
Credit cards don’t help you out of a jam, they make the jam worse, doubling over and creating a longer-term problem.
As small as some things may seem, they all come together to paint the bigger picture of your financial stability and future. Saving towards your future and emergencies is one of the best ways to create the financial future that you deserve for you and your loved ones.