When it comes to the money you earned and don’t want to spend recklessly, there are 2 options to keep it safe: you can either save money or invest.
Both these strategies have their advantages and disadvantages, starting from a pretty small interest rate (which barely covers inflation), when it comes to saving money and the risk of losing your capital, when it comes to investing.
This is why finding a balance between these 2 is difficult and there is no sure way to do it.
Save for an emergency fund
If you don’t have an emergency fund at the moment, you are at high risk so, before you do anything else investment wise, open a savings account or get a jar from your kitchen and start saving money.
Next time, when your car breaks or you have an emergency medical payment you won’t get into bigger debt.
An emergency fund should allow you to safely face most of every-day financial surprises, without having to borrow from a loan company or get into credit card debt.
Try to put some money away for rainy days.
Start small, you’ll probably save few hundred bucks at first, but make your way up to a 3 month expenses emergency fund and then even bigger.
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This means that, if you lost your job for instance, your emergency fund should cover at least 3 months of regular expenses until you get back on your feet.
Start investing once you have a good savings plan in place
Investing your money without taking care of your most pressing debts or having an emergency fund is just asking for trouble.
As soon as you have cleared your high interest debt (credit cards, personal loans etc.) and have an emergency fund in place, you are ready to start investing.
If you have small kids now, it’s also a good moment, since you are years away from having to pay for their college or worrying about such huge expenses. If done properly, investing can allow you to reach your next financial goals and set them for success.
This is the time when most middle class couples make most of their money, are at their highest levels of productivity, and can reach their highest goals. This period is ideal if you are thinking of becoming a shareholder, an investor or of setting up your own business.
However, be careful not to invest your money in shady propositions which promise big returns immediately. If you are looking for more exotic investment opportunities you can check out casino.netbet.ie, because at least there you will get those big returns in the proper way.
You can also look into Forex investing, if you have the time and willingness to learn how the foreign exchange market works.
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Keep a budget and closely follow your investing performances
The best way to see how you are doing financially is to keep a budget. This way you can see how much you earn on a monthly basis, how much you are able to save and how your investment portfolios are looking.
There are easy ways to keep a budget, you can use the envelope system, the 50-20-30 budget rule or keep a few categories budget that’s easy to manage.
It’s important to be consistent in your efforts, to save money every month and also be on the look for good investments.
This way, over the time, you’ll grow your net worth and be able to focus on even bigger personal finance goals.
