How long have you been struggling with money problems now? If you’re like most people then it will have more than once promised yourself that things would turn around at some point in the near future, only to find yourself still in the precise same position. In many ways it’s a lot like the old New Year’s resolution to get in shape. You feel psyched for it at the time, and yet it seems that a year later you’ve made no progress.
The question you need to ask then, is what’s going wrong, and why can’t you make the impact that you’ve been trying to? In all likelihood it’s down to a number of factors, both economic and psychological. Read on and let’s take a look at what you can do to start making positive changes that actually happen.
Stop Putting it Off
Have you ever planned to save money and then told yourself that you’d wait ‘just until the end of this month’? Perhaps right now times are tough and you really don’t have the available funds to put anything into the bank for saving. Thus you pledge to wait until the end of the month and start to really save once it has passed.
The problem with this plan though is that the end of the month will come and then you’ll find that once again you have a lot of outgoings to deal with. Here’s the deal: it will never be a great time to save money. It will never be convenient or easy to stop spending so much, so there’s no point in putting it off. If you want to see some real changes that actually happen, then you need to start taking action right now. So why don’t you go and send some cash into your savings account right now? If you have a mobile banking app then sending a tenner this minute won’t be hard at all!
Cut Out The Little Things
A big problem that many of us have is that we equate financial comfort with salary. In other words we presume that the reason we aren’t rich yet is simply that we aren’t earning enough.
This however is nonsense – the reason most people feel the financial ‘pinch’ is actually that they have a lot of outgoings compared to their income. Don’t focus too much on ‘gross income’ – instead look at your net profit. Then, once you’ve started thinking like that, look at all the small little ways you can reduce the cost of living for yourself. Here the small things really do make a difference – so that means cancelling your Netflix subscription or selling that extra car that you never use.
Learn to Say No
A lot of our unnecessary spending is a result of other people. Now that may sound harsh, but it’s true: we tend to lose money because people invite us out or they goad us to have a few extra beers after work: all of which costs money and is hard to predict/prepare for.
Learning to say ‘no’ then might be the first big step you need to take in order to start saving money, living more comfortably and getting closer to that house…
