Take the steps to put your money in the green this year

Photo by Alice Pasqual on Unsplash

Habits are hard to break and most people don’t realise that they pick them up from a relatively young age. The first step to change is to realise what bad habits you’ve formed, so read below and start mastering yours to make an immediate, positive effect on your personal finances.

Paying yourself before you pay your debt

It’s payday and naturally you feel like you have a lot of money in the bank, so why not make that purchase you’ve had your eye on this month? Wrong. This bad decision is the main contributing factor on your finances as you slowly realise you still need to pay for all the bills, credit cards etc. and need to make drastic decisions as to work out how to make ends meet.

The simplest way is to make sure you pay off the necessities first, such as rent, debt, money you owe. This change will allow you to look forward to how you will spend the remainder of your money.

2. Not budgeting

You’ll never be able to get on top of your finances without setting yourself a budget. It is one of the most important steps to giving yourself financial freedom. A budget allows you to keep track of all the money you are earning, how much is being taken out and most importantly how much you have left remaining. Knowing this information enables you to keep making changes to stop going into the minus and start putting money aside for savings, and eventually investments.

Budgeting doesn’t have to be a big effort. With Zeux, you can track all your spending on each transaction and also use it to see where your money is making returns on your investments. Sign up here at: www.zeux.com

3. Relying on credit cards and loans

We’ve heard the expression “living beyond your means” and it’s never been more true when you use credit as a means to keep your lifestyle. This is because the added interest on credit cards and loans can easily spiral out of control and in the end, you can only afford to pay the interest part of the loan.

The first step is to remove your dependency on using credit, so stop buying additional purchases or increasing your credit limit, the sooner you pay these off the better. The next step is to re-adjust your lifestyle to live within your earnings, and budgeting will help with this.

No purchase is more important than living in debt.

4. Convenience buying

Convenience is one of the biggest influencing factors in any purchase. It’s how most retail stores work. You’re waiting in line and in the queue you will see all sorts of drinks, snacks and tech gadgets. What’s the harm? It’s been a long day at work, you come home and you aren’t in the mood to cook, so you order takeaway? Again, what’s the harm? It doesn’t happen all the time, except it does. It’s become a regular habit and now you are spending much more than you expect to, every week. These add up and instead of being a little over budget, it’s in the hundreds.

Time to cut down. Go grocery shopping before the start of the week and plan/prepare your meals for Monday through to Friday., This way you will persuade yourself to eat what you have and you will save yourself some extra money doing it too. Don’t buy that overpriced latte on the way to work, you can drink all the coffee you want once you arrive there, it’s free too! A little effort in holding back and you could end up with a bit of extra cash at the end of the month which you can put towards your savings or pay off your debts earlier.

5. Buying the extras we don’t really need

Go large, add a drink, get another “insert here” for only £1 more. It sounds like the greatest bargain ever and we all love a great deal. But is it a great deal when you can’t even use, eat or drink the extra you’ve just paid for?

These ‘extras’ add up and although you feel like a winner, in fact it’s the opposite when you realise you’ve thrown away almost £10 per week. That extra £40 per month could have been used to help elsewhere, and even if you pocketed it, that’s almost an extra £500 a year! Be smarter about your spending, only pay for what you need.

This year take control of your money and start making positive changes to your finances. Check out our other helpful tips and articles on here.