The beginning of the New Year is the best time to re-evaluate and manage your current financial situation, ditch lousy money habits and consider ways to improve your economic status. Some people use the beginning of the year as an opportunity to make a new year Resolution even though some people don’t buy into such an idea. Whether you prefer to make resolutions or not, there are still so many other means you can go about improving your finances particularly in the year 2019. However, the report released by the US government says that people spent more money in the year 2018 than they saved. Habits like this can result into economic crisis, in a bid to address the problem the government is now advising its citizens to watch how they spend money, try to pay owned debt and work towards their financial goals.
Read on to find the best ten ways to improve your finances in 2019.
Set financial goals: the most significant step you can ever take at the beginning of the New Year is for you to plan for your financial goals. Write out things you plan to achieve for the year and work towards them, this is your goals, and your goals give you direction and purpose. Remember that your goals can be for achieving different things like, paying off debts, saving and investing, net worth achievements and so on.
Build a budget: with the little budget that you have, it is essential for you to plan how you want to solve some of your financial problems from your small budget. You need to understand that it is your responsibility to cater to your expenses, pay your debts and prepare for the future. Workers that don’t have regular or fixed sources of income such as musicians, salespeople, need to be careful about maintaining a budget.
Track your expenses: tracking your expenses is as important as creating a budget. You will not be of advantage if you cannot explain how you have spent the money you have been saving. In this wise, you need to devise a system for tracking and recording your expenses. However, there are two approaches to how you can do that, you either use a simple method like the use of spreadsheet to track your expenses or use an app. if you choose to do it manually which is with spreadsheet, don’t forget to enter your costs in the spreadsheet daily, so you don’t miss anything.
Track your net worth: net worth lets you have a bigger picture of your overall financial tasks. By tracking your net worth, you will be able to build wealth most especially if you monitor it on a regular basis. it will help you know how far you have progressed in achieving your financial goals and serve as a motivator
Develop and execute critical challenges: no matter what you have set as your goal in a particular year, if you don’t do the work, you will never reach it. If you take a look at athletes, they always want to become the best in what they do even though they will not all be crowned world best in it. But the fact remains that the monotonous and repetitive activities that they execute day in day out determine their level of success. Same applied to finances, whether you stick to a budget or side hustles make sure you stay focused on your daily and weekly executions.
Utilize your credit card rewards: if you are not careful, credit cards will cause havoc to your finances, but if you manage it well you stand to gain a lot of rewards. Use the right credit card and pay your credit balance in each full month, you will be earning 2 to 10% cash back on your purchases giving you an opportunity to managing your finances. To make things easier and win more, you can go for a credit card that pays more on cash back for specific purchases.
Automate your savings: naturally, human beings love to do good things but fail to follow their set goals when it comes to savings as they quickly get distracted by life and forget to set money aside. The best way to realize such dreams is to automate your savings, that is learning to save some money for future unexpected occurrences. But there are a few numbers of ways you can go about that, but the best way is for you to use electronic transfer measures that will help you save money without necessarily doing anything.
Manage recurring bills: if you are serious about making a significant impact on your life in 2019, one of the things you should address is your monthly recurring bills. Making small savings will also help add up at the end of the year. Try to cut out things that are not compulsory although they may serve as a source of refreshment just like your cable.
Save for your children’s education: one of the most important things you should not forget to do is to save for your children’s education. A great platform that can help you with this saving app. You will be of great relief and have enough time to work on your remaining goal for the year.
Start a side hustle: at times the best way you can meet up with your finances is to find an alternative means to make more money. A side hustle can be of great benefit outside your regular job. There are lots of opportunities online that you can take advantage of; you can choose to make money online if you can set up a blog, blogs with good traffic can give you extra cash monthly so you can meet up with your finances.
It a good idea if you sit down and draw out your plan most especially on how you want to improve your finances, but the ultimate of it all is to put your ideas into action. You are bound to experience miscalculations and challenges in the process of achieving your set goals, try to address that problem and don’t let it affect your plans. With this little guide on ten ways to improve your finances in 2019, you should be able to achieve your goals without any problem.