While it’s certainly not the most important thing to be concerned about in life, and won’t necessarily bring you happiness, money really does make the world go round in many instances, and if you have financial commitments to stick to and people to look after, it can be extremely stressful and worrying trying to make ends meet.
Want to get yourself out of a personal financial rut, and need some inspiration? Here are a few tips and pieces of advice that might help to put you on the right track.
Plugging holes and filling gaps
If you’re the type of person that is scared to check their bank balance a few days before payday or have a bunch of different outgoings direct debits that you struggle to even identify, it might be time to stop pulling the wool over your eyes and get to the root of the financial issue so that you can help to set yourself on the right course to financial freedom. Sit down with a pen and paper (or in front of your online banking page) and go through every outgoing payment and an impending bill that you can think of.
Be on the lookout for bills that you might be able to cut down and shave a few pounds off – such as out of date phone contracts that can be upgraded or broadband agreements that can be changed – and if there are any payments that you don’t recognise or services you no longer use, cancel them altogether in order to save some more money.
Before long, you’ll notice an accumulating fund that you can then put back into other things.
Curb unnecessary spending
Getting into a better habit with your spending and changing your attitude with regard to money can really help to help your monthly wage go further. Think about the things that are important to you, the things that you need to purchase, and the things that you can probably afford to go without.
A good way of curbing your spending is to start a savings challenge, or a game that you can push yourself with, such as the 1p savings challenge.
There’s also the basic stuff, such as making a shopping list before going to the supermarket rather than just throwing things you don’t need in the trolley.
Save and invest your money
Building up a savings pot for a rainy day is an efficient way of giving yourself reassurance and confidence each day. If you have a financial cushion in place, you’ll often feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders, as you won’t be blindsided by payments that take all of your money and leave you in the lurch.
If you have a good amount of savings, you might also want to invest your money for the future. If you can afford to allocate the capital, property investment is a good investment strategy, as if you’re investing for buy to let purposes you can make a consistent secondary income stream through rental yield payments. RWinvest has a ton of different guides on this if you don’t know where to get started.
Reach out for help
If you feel like you’re at a dead-end and don’t know where to go next, there is always someone that can try to help you with financial stress, and impending bills and payments. You can also consult accountants and get advice for selecting an accounting tool like cloud-based QuickBooks based on desktop as a service technology which might help you to be on the top of your bookkeeping work. Speak to friends and family around you for support, and perhaps even contact a financial adviser for further help.
Dennis Relojo-Howell is the managing director of Psychreg.
