Learning to use creative ways to save money will help yourself to increase savings and investments for your future. There are multiple ways to reach goals for investments and savings from imaginary bills, side work, and taking advantage of employee match programs.
Imaginary bills
An example would be if your rent is $1,500 now, but you want to buy a house and you want to force yourself to save extra. Pay your rent and take out another $300 for “rent” and put that money into savings or investments. This trick can be used with any bill, finding areas to cut to put the extra money aside is a create way to boost savings and investments to reach goals.
Side work
Learning a skill to do a job in your free time to boost income or getting a second job. Summer or weekends is a perfect time for many people to work a second job. For teachers, Summers are a great time to generate extra income. Depending on your work schedule getting a part-time job, maybe you can only work one or two days a week, but this could bring in an extra $400 or more of income.
With a savings goal, an extra amount could help you reach that goal and put you into a better spot sooner.
Employee match programs
These programs are not offered by everyone but can be a useful tool to save for retirement. This may not generate income for yourself directly now, but long-term it helps build for later in life. Employers may offer a 3% 401k match program, meaning if you put $1,000 in your 401k through their company’s plan there will put in $30 extra. That may seem like not much, but this is for long-term planning and if you put that to $20,500 which is the max in 2024, it is an extra $615 dollar to grow in your retirement plan.
Creating a plan to further your financial health in the near and far future is important. Learning to create a budget and taking advantage of options and opportunities to better yourself can drastically increase your lifestyle.
Each decision made today can affect yourself later on, so create a plan and goals to know where you want to be and a plan to get there.