13 Ways To Shake Up Your Finances This Year
It’s safe to say that we all want to be able to find ourselves in the very best financial situation possible. Yet, that’s not always that easy to do. When you know that you have set goals that you’d love to be able to work on, you may feel as if you want to be able to reach them as quickly as possible. But sometimes, it just doesn’t work like that.
When we set goals, depending on what they are, they can take months or years to achieve. But the whole idea of them is to guide us and keep us on track to get to where we want to be. And this very much applies whether we are setting goals for work or our personal finances. So if you know that you want to be able to save a certain amount, grow your income, or so anything else with your money, you can make it happen.
So, when you know that you want to change your financial situation, this is where you start – with goal setting. You’re going to want to make sure that you know what you want to be able to achieve. It doesn’t matter exactly what your financial goals are – just what you know that you want to be able to achieve something and drive your financial situation forward. And how exactly are you going to do that?
Well, if you know that you’re ready to turn things around financially and really start to work towards financial security and success, you may find that some of these thirteen tips will help you.
1. Do A financial Health Check
To start with, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re looking at your personal finances and seeing where you’re at. You’ll want to have a top level view of everything – what you earn, what money you have where, and even any debt that you have (and we will talk about that next). Because to work towards a goal, you need to know where you’re starting from.
2. Know What You Owe
Then, you’re going to want to make sure that you know how much debt you have, if any. One of your major goals should be to pay off your debt. That starts by being transparent then coming up with a plan for how you’re going to pay it all off.
3. Get A Safety Net Together
From here, you’re then going to want to make sure that you are able to get yourself a bit of a safety net together too. Having savings behind you is important for when you have any unexpected bills come in. This can also make you feel a bit more comfortable and secure too.
4. Cut Your Expenses
Now you’re going to want to try and take a look at what you’re paying out on. Because no matter how much you earn, it’s good to make sure that you keep your expenses low and to the essentials too. This will free up more disposable income. So think about what you can cut out.
5. Switch Your Bills
The next thing that you’re going to want to do here is take a look at the bills you’re paying. Most of the time, you won’t be able to cut out the essentials, but you can take a look at them and see if you can get them down. It could be in the form of working with someone like Plenti to lower the cost of the debt payments you make and consolidate them. It could be that you switch energy providers. Or you move over some of your personal bills to a cheaper plan. Just be sure to do what you can here.
6. Work For A Raise
And then you’re going to want to think about the opposite side of the previous few points and do what you can to earn more too. The first way to do this is for you to get a pay rise . It’s important for you to make sure that you’re being paid what you’re worth. Take a look at what you’re earning now and know where you want to be. Then put the work in to show that you deserve to earn more – and be sure to have facts and statistics to back up your reasonings for why you believe this.
7. Get A Second Job
But if you know that’s going to take a while, you could also think about getting a second job too. This won’t be for everyone, but if you’re serious about bringing more money in, you may find that getting a second job is going to be just perfect for you here. You could do something part time around your full time work or take on some casual hours so that you can top up your earnings too.
8. Start A Side Hustle
The next thing that you could think about doing is starting a side-hustle. Maybe you have some free time in the evenings and weekends and have always considering doing your own thing? It could work out well for you to start building up a business and get a further income from it.
9. Earn More From Home
From here, you might also want to think about how you can earn so much more money from home too. And this isn’t in the sense of a professional business venture, but smaller ways that you can add more money to your income.
Maybe you like the idea of buying and selling items on eBay to make a small profit monthly?
It’s now easier than ever to work out the fees you’ll have to pay through selling on eBay using this america ebay fees calculator. It could even be that you want to rent out a room or storage space (such as the garage or driveway) for a fee too? There are lots of ways that you can look to earn more.
10. Start To Save
And at this point, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re starting to put a bit more money into savings. You may find that you just want to get money saved for something in the future, so start to try and build it up as much as you can. You’ll feel more secure when you do.
11. Try Investing
From here, you may want to think of different ways that you can invest your money too. Maybe you know that your savings aren’t really working hard enough for you. If you don’t need to access some of them for a while, tying them up could mean that you get a much better return. You may even find that investing in stocks over a period of several years could really help you to get your financial situation into a very wealthy situation.
12. Save For Something Big
At this point, it could even be that you want to be able to save for something pretty big as well. Maybe you want to be able to buy your first home? Saving for a house is such a big job and it can take you a while to do, but it’s definitely worth doing. Here, you’re going to want to be realistic with how much you need to be able to save and how you’re going to do it. If it takes years, that’s fine. Just be sure that you know in your mind what you need to save and then start to make it happen.
13. Plan For Your Retirement
And finally, you then have the option to be thinking about your future too. When you’re young, this can be something that you just feel like is so far away that you needn’t really worry about it today – but that’s really not true. In reality, the earlier you start saving for your retirement, the less you will need to put away on a monthly basis and the more you will have available when it’s time to take your pension. So really start to think about this now.
In conclusion, you’ll see that there’s a wealth of ways for you to be able to really shake up and change your financial situation – and that can work quite well. No matter what your own particular personal financial goals are, there will be a range of options you could work on here to change your situation.
From saving to earning more to getting out of debt to focusing on your financial future, there is so much that you can do to really give yourself a financial health check. And yes, everything may take a while and you may find that nothing really changes with your situation overnight, but by taking the steps you will find that it all pays off for you at some point.
So get started, be patient, and keep putting the work in. Because a few months or a year from now you’ll find that you’re in a great position and it will be all down to your hard work.
