Saving While On A Tight Budget? It Can Be Done
As a recent college graduate, you should have clear but maybe not so fond memories of living on a shoestring budget. You may have kept your weekly grocery shop to a minimum and become highly adept at creating culinary masterpieces out of a tin of tuna, a potato, and some sweetcorn. Your ability to budget has enabled you to venture into the world post college graduation with a mindset of frugality. Although you may have been looking forward to relinquishing the reigns of a tight budget, it pays off to remain as strict with your finances as you begin experiencing ‘real life’ for the first time. The bank of mum and dad is now firmly closed, and you have to fend for yourself.
What about savings? Your parents continually nag telling you to put something aside for a rainy day but can this be done if you are working to such a tight budget? The answer is yes. Take a look at these ways in which you can still contribute towards a healthy savings pot.
Current Finances
Before you can consider shifting some of your money across to your savings pile, you need to assess your current financial situation. If you have student loans outstanding, it pays to check out a site like consolidate student.loan and use their repayment calculator to see if you can save any money by combining your multiple debts into a single monthly repayment. This will make budgeting simpler and allow you to concentrate on other areas of debt that you may need to clear.
If you have a credit card and the interest is high, transfer the outstanding amount onto a card that has 0% interest on balances. This means every cent you put towards the debt is paying off capital and not merely interest. This way the debt will clear much quicker, and you’ll have more money to put towards savings.
It also pays to look at your outgoings. If you are paying an extortionate amount for the most sophisticated cable package, maybe tone it down a little. Put the difference into a savings account like the ones on offer at mybanktracker. If your weakness is shoes or bags or any other form of fashion accessory when shopping, you’ll need to show a little more restraint and put the money towards your savings instead.
Get Into Good Habits
When you begin saving, and you start to see the dollars stack up, you’ll be surprised at just how motivated this makes you to keep going. Soon, you’ll be shaving pennies from here, there and everywhere in an effort to eek out the most from your monthly paycheck and deposit as much as your can into your savings.
With a little tweak here and there, you can alter the balance between your expenditure and your savings to see them on a more even keel. Although your budget may be tight, there are always savings to be had to enable your to create the nest egg that your parents are so desperate for you to have.
