What to do when your savings account is approaching overdraft…

A lot of us, including me, struggle with saving money because we don’t have enough motivating goals to match them to. When we’re 18, 19 and 20 and are having the time of our lives in university, the last thing on our mind is ‘how do I save better’ or ‘where do I put my money to grow?’. Unknown to us, that these conversations to be had sooner rather than later, will either lead us into financial turmoil post university or financial success.

It’s not very hard to see why a 21 year old coming out of university with student loan and maybe some overdraft will think ‘hm, where do I invest now that I’m working?’ Whilst our formative years are our toddler years, a lot of what is learnt in early adolescence, is a strong foundation and really shapes the rest of our future adolescent years.

How do we then tackle this? We don’t want to take away the joys of university students, neither do we want to come into the real world and realise that it’s going to take more than a decent paying job to become financially successful.

Perhaps we need to introduce to young adults the principles of saving and investing in a more dynamic, easy to understand way. With apps such as Monzo (the digital bank) and Moneybox (the easiest way to start saving and investing with as little as £2), there’s little to no excuse for graduates entering the workforce being utterly confused about what to do with their money apart from spend it.
However…

Interestingly though, a lot of university students admit to knowing about saving, and knowing they should. Yet, even more would admit to not being able to keep up with it for more than a few weeks because as we know, in university “something came up”. And something would always come up unless you choose otherwise.

Your financial success is dependent on mainly one thing – intentionality.
@savespendinvest

You can’t wish upon a star to be financially successful, neither can you wait till life throws lemons at you for you to make lemonade, you must be intentional. Actively engaging in the conversation of the ‘what, why, and how’ to do with money as well as immersing yourself with the wisdom from those who have done it, through books or physical mentorship, your financial journey is yours to personalise. Whether or not you make it in life is hardly dependent on your circumstances these days, given the social media and influencer world where so much is made available to us for FREE to generate real value.

HOW?

You can learn how to trade online or create your own online course or e-book if you consider yourself more knowledgable than others in a particular area. You can train to become a coach, or go around with a camera all day and get paid good money for having good content! The options are numerous and whilst it can be overwhelming, the worst thing anyone can do is to do nothing. Start somewhere and make do with what you’ve got. 

Since I started on this journey, I’ve fallen in love with the phrase ‘fail fast and fail forward’. Get your feet wet and take [calculated & strategic] risks whilst you’re still young enough to recover fully. The only way to learn is to get your hands dirty and not just bury your head inside of books.

Savings is the first step and for me, the biggest discipline in reaching your financial goals. Here is how I got started, and you can too:

  • First have a separate savings account (preferable one you don’t see or have easy access to). Then have goals attached to your savings. (i.e. to buy a property, travel, your big birthday party, invest etc)
  •  Next, work out how much you need to achieve that target (i.e. the house I’m looking to buy requires a deposit of £30,000 etc)
  • Break down that amount into years, months or weeks and automate it as a fixed amount to go straight from your current account to the savings account after your paycheque comes in.

 

Finally, you can enjoy and live off what you have left knowing you’re one step closer to achieving your goal.

If you need help creating a saving strategy that works for you and your income, please leave us a message at info@savespendinvest.co.uk. We’re always happy to help.

 

Till next time,

Stay saving, stay savvy.

Bukiie

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