Hey, guys.
It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet.
And this series is sponsored by Fidelity Investments.
When it comes to saving money, there
is a huge range of behaviors and belief systems out there.
On one side of the spectrum, there
are people who absolutely refuse to consider
saving even when their incomes would totally allow for it.
On the other end, there are people
who are obsessed with saving to the point
of self-imposed austerity.
They insist on no indulgences, no mistakes,
and, sometimes, no joy.
Ideally, we fall somewhere in the middle,
enjoying our everyday lives while still being
serious about saving money.
You know we are all about balance here at TFD.
That means I will never imply that in order
to be good with money, you need to be
a recluse living in a tiny house cut off from all society.
But I'm also here to remind you that you cannot be the rich
kids of Instagram either.
So if there is one skill to indeed master
to balance these two sides, it is
learning to balance the interests of present you
and future you.
And here are our seven tips for doing just that.
Step 1.
You have to believe that both saving and spending are
important.
It is going to be very hard to find a balance between saving
and spending if you do not see the inherent value in both.
For example, if you see savings is just something
that adults are supposed to do but you assign
no personal further value to it, it's
going to be very hard to stay the course on actually
saving money.
Conversely, if you think that spending is always
sort of inherently morally wrong,
you are going to have a hard time
spending on the things that would truly
enrich your quality of life.
But both spending and savings are true necessities
for living a fulfilled life.
Saved money provides a feeling of safety and comfort
that I truly wish for everyone.
Having money in the bank ensures that a small hiccup does not
morph into a financial disaster, but saved money also creates
opportunity and freedom.
Moving across the country, buying a home,
walking away from a job you hate, starting a business,
buying that super-hot but slightly too-expensive
wedding dress, those things all require saving money.
But with spending money, you can create joy and convenience
in your life.
You can use it to build a life that you
love every day via the choices you make
on your housing, travel, nourishment, and services
that buy back your time, just to name a few.
In order to find the balance, you
need to be clear on why you're doing both
and what they bring you.
Which brings us to our next point.
Number 2.
Write down your life goals and then put an actual price tag
on them.
Hopefully, we are TFD have convinced you
that saving money is going to be a crucial part of creating
the life of your dreams.
But you have to know what those dreams actually are.
Having a child, moving, starting a business, owning a home,
all of these are valid and none are better than the other.
But they all do have some kind of an actual tangible price
point.
So figure out what those things will actually
likely cost, whether year to year or all at once.
And it's likely that for some of them
you will be a bit shocked at the actual cost of these things.
But it's better that you confront them
ahead of time than be unprepared for them when they arrive,
or not be able to enjoy them at all because you
don't have the resources.
So once you've selected the goals that are most important
and you've determined their cost,
start to put them on a savings timeline, maybe 24 months out.
And each month you are putting toward an account
that is for that specific goal.
What you're likely to notice pretty quickly is that you
simply cannot save for all of these effectively at once.
You're going to start have to prioritizing these goals
in order of importance to you.
And you may also find that in ordering the importance of some
of these, that you can get away with something
you really enjoy for some of these goals at a lower price
point.
For example, a $50,000 wedding might not be in the cards.
But you could find a way to make a $15,000 one just as special.
And step 3 is building a budget with these goals in mind.
We've already spoken in this series
about how to build a budget that actually works for you.
But few budgets are likely to work
at all if they are not giving you a reason to work for them.
A well-constructed budget represents a good balance
between your current and future selves and instant
versus long term gratification.
But what is that budget actually working towards?
I personally think that it's helpful to think
of a budget in terms of a game.
You've got a certain amount of money coming in,
and your job is to maximize the absolute hell out of it.
And what you're likely to find is
that you're going to have to make
certain sacrifices in order to get all of the puzzle pieces
to fit.
But once you've got a good concept of order of importance
in terms of your spending and your longer term goals,
it will get easier and easier to make the sacrifices that
need to happen.
A really easy budgeting framework to use
is the 50, 30, 20 Budget.
The goal is to spend 50% of your after-tax money
on necessities like rent, insurance, and transportation,
30% on fun spending, and 20% going to savings goals.
And while it's very easy to get caught up
in the minutiae of the budget, keep in mind
that the real focus here is the 20% allotment for goals.
If you're saving enough, it doesn't really
matter how the rest of your money is allocated.
Step 4.
Proactively manage your debt.
Contrary to how it might seem, finding financial balance
is actually pretty advanced in terms of money management.
So if you're watching this and feeling like none of it
applies to you because you're bogged down by debt,
I hear you.
And that is OK, because not everyone
is going to be able to turn around and suddenly save
20% of their income.
For you, a more immediate proactive step
could be finding a more intentional way
of managing your debt.
What exactly this entails will depend on your situation.
It could mean ramping up your monthly payments
from the minimum, looking into refinancing
or different repayment options, or even just really writing
down and understanding all of your debts
and where they stand so that you can
start to take a hold of them.
Which is, in and of itself, an incredibly powerful move
if you've been hiding from your debts.
Don't feel bad if the part of your life that you're
in right now is going super-hard on your debt versus ramping up
your savings.
That is not only extremely admirable,
it's also a crucial first step to making sure
that you can reach these higher-level goals.
Step 5 is learning to cherish the things that you already
own.
There is simply no way to have a conversation about living
a balanced and fulfilled life without also
learning how to appreciate what is already in that life.
On the one hand, I want to believe
that we are all on some level savvy enough
to be impervious to all of the various influences of marketing
and social media and all of the various dynamics
that are constantly bearing down on us
and encouraging us to spend money.
But on the other hand, even I-- many times-- have fallen
prey to buying something because it was marketed effectively
to me, or I was envious, or I felt insecure about myself,
or simply because I was bored and thought
that online shopping would resolve that.
Which it never, ever does.
I know what it's like to want material items
to fix boredom or insecurity.
And because I know this feeling firsthand,
I believe it is essential that we are frequently
taking stock of what's in our life
and being actively grateful for those things.
Doing inventory of our own wardrobes
and, for example, challenging ourselves
to do an entire month of outfit combinations
we've never made before with the things we already own.
And other practices that make really proactive use of what
is already in our lives are good ways
to combat the feeling that you are simply
one purchase away from feeling like a better person.
Step 6 is developing free hobbies.
I do beat this drum quite a bit here on TFD,
but it's because it is a truly life-changing way
to approach your day to day.
Part of spending, as we mentioned,
often comes from boredom.
And part of boredom is, frankly, from having
time with which we're not really doing anything that relevant
or enriching.
And it's a shame.
Because now that we have the internet,
there is basically a limitless amount
of free, interesting stuff and like-minded people
that we could constantly be filling our time with.
We have libraries, museums with free days,
parks, meet-up groups around basically every hobby
you could want.
Now you can find tons of groups online and via Zoom
with which to share interests.
You can learn basically any skill for free
on the internet at this point.
And even just committing yourself
to exploring a new part of your city
can be a very valuable way to spend an afternoon.
The point is, making sure that we are as much filling
our time with things that are enriching but
also not costing us money is both great
for making our life feel better on a day-to-day basis
but also taking away all of that bored free time which we might
otherwise be filling with mindless spending
or going out to get a bunch of margaritas
we don't need to be drinking.
Lastly, for the 7th and final step, automate like hell.
If you are someone who generally feels exhausted
by the day-to-day tasks of life, and the idea
of actively managing your money in any substantial way
makes you feel incredibly fatigued,
the answer is to automate as much of it as possible.
And that's not just a good way to relieve yourself
of the feeling that managing your money
is yet another task to put on your calendar.
It's also a good way to ensure that you will actually do it.
As mentioned earlier in this series,
one of the biggest hurdles to saving
is often the act of taking money from one account
and putting it to another, not only because it's
an extra task you can easily forget to do,
but also because you've already mentally incorporated
that money into your spending.
This means automatic transfers to places like your emergency
fund or maybe your IRA--
if you have a 401k at work, your workplace
might actually already be doing this.
But there are probably several more ways
in which you could automate the process of managing your money.
And ultimately, finding balance, financial or otherwise,
is about making the most valuable use
of every hour of your day.
Because time is, quite frankly, the one resource we cannot buy
more of.
But we can make space for more of it
by taking up less of our time with tasks
that don't really serve us and don't need to be done manually.
So go out of your way to find that financial balance,
because I promise you it will be worth it.
And as I mentioned, this video is sponsored
by Fidelity Investments.
They are here to help you reach your savings goals.
So if you're looking for a way to finally start investing what
you save, check out Fidelity.