How to save your future...
How you manage, spend, and invest your
money can have a profound impact on your life, yet very few schools teach these
important skills. Learning financial savvy can take a while, but the basics are
fairly simple and never
change. Here’s where to get started.
You were probably taught some basic
math growing up, but too many people make it all the way to adulthood without
ever learning basic money management. Skills like creating a budget, investing
for the future, or even how credit cards work are startlingly rare skills. If
you’re in need of a Money 101, we’ll cover the basics for beginners, while also
giving you the resources you need to learn more.
The Golden Rules
of Personal Finance
Managing your finances feels like
nothing but a lot of paperwork and numbers. You make X amount of dollars, you spend
Y amount, and you try to make sure Y is less than X. However, your finances are
just as much about psychology, habits, and the values you choose to live by.
Put another way, your mindset matters just as much as the math.
Beneath all the software and the
budgets, there are a few rules that will always help improve your financial
life:
- Spend
less money than you earn: If you earn $30,000/year and
you spend $31,000/year, you’ll end up in a spiral of debt that’s hard to
walk away from. If you spend exactly as much as you earn every year,
you’ll never be prepared for emergencies or major life changes. Spending
less than you earn allows you the freedom to save, to prepare for the
future, and deal with the inevitable crises that life throws at you. The
bigger the gap between your income and
your spending, the better.
- Always
plan for the future: This doesn’t just mean
retirement. When a store offers to let you pay off some gadget in 6 months
with no interest, you need to know you can pay it off,
or avoid that deal. Establishing an emergency fund will allow you to deal
with unexpected car repairs or medical bills. Having a retirement plan
will ensure you have income when you’re unable to work anymore. Your
finances should always look forward beyond the current month.
- Make
your money make more money: Want to know how the rich keep
getting richer? It’s because money can grow while you sleep, provided you
save some of it. Properly invested money earns more money over time. Don’t just
sock all your cash away in a low-interest savings account. Invest in
things that will earn you more money than you had before. Sometimes that’s
an investment account, but sometimes it’s starting a business, or even
getting an education to get a better paying job.
The most important personal finance rules don’t change.
What your grandparents did may not work for you. There will always be newer,
better tools to manage your money. However, spending less than you earn will
always be beneficial. Investing your money will always be better than doing
nothing with it. And planning for the future will always be
better than blowing your paycheck as soon as you get it.
How
to save your future
So, you’ve started budgeting your
money, you’re building credit, and you’re spending less than you earn. Maybe it
took you a couple months, but you’re finally in control of your finances.
Great! Now comes the next part: saving for the future. If you’re anything like I used
to be, you probably haven’t thought much about the future.
Maybe it seems too far away to matter, or maybe it feels impossible and
overwhelming. However, the earlier you start saving, the more money you’ll have
later on in life—and the less effort you’ll spend trying to get there later on.
Having your money in a savings account
will help you save for little things, like your emergency fund or a new
computer. But your real, long-term savings are going toward something far more
important: retirement. Yes, one day, you’ll want to stop working, and you’ll
need a big chunk of savings to keep you going in your golden years, and a
little savings account isn’t the best way to do that. That’s where investments
come in. If you can put your savings into some fairly simple, low-risk
investments, it’ll make money for you while you sleep—and over the course of
years and decades, that can add up to an awful lot. This is how you save enough
to retire one day.
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