HOW TO MANAGE YOUR SALARY WISELY
Life is much easier when you have good financial skills. How you spend your money impacts your credit score and the amount of debt you end up carrying. If you’re struggling with money management, for example, you’re living paycheck to paycheck despite making more than enough money, here are some tips to improve your financial habits.
1. Tabulate All Fixed Monthly Commitments
Fixed monthly commitments are the easiest to set aside a portion of your salary for and usually include hire purchase (car loan), rent or home loan, phone bill (you should be able to roughly gauge), study loans and life premiums amongst other easily estimated variables.
2. Set Up a Monthly Emergency Fund
As soon as you have complied to the preceding sub-heading, the remainder of your salary would completely depend on your control of expenses and they can be regarded as spending for ‘wants’ rather than the ‘needs’ in life. This next step is needed to help regulate frivolous spending. The smallest bit of savings would add to a larger number if it remained untouched and can be of help on a rainy day.
3. Set a Savings Goal
Set targets that are realistic and achievable at first, because we don’t want to end up throwing in the towel half way do we? Should they be met religiously every month, challenge yourself to higher targets and you will see your savings multiply tremendously.
4. Set a Spending Limit
Spending in this category encompasses expenses that include groceries, car servicing, home up keeping, entertainment and many more. Most of which are conscious spending but some appear as though a sneak attack was being planned the whole time! Push the bar as low as you can and treat yourself to a fancy dinner from excess money that you didn’t expect to save! If you think you’d manage better with a credit card, go ahead and capitalise on cash back credit cardsor many others available for selection while cold hard cash stacks up in your bank accounts.
5. Lock Your Salary Savings!
One of the best ways to ensure that your effort doesn’t go to waste is to lock your savings up! Keep the chains for something a little more exciting because we’re talking about stashing them in trusted fixed deposit accounts. You’d surely dread your blood, sweat and tears go to absolute waste as you lose all gained interest if so much as a dime is withdrawn – so don’t you touch them!
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