Saving vs Spending

Managing the balance between living for today and saving for tomorrow can be difficult, especially if you’re just starting your career and you’re not used to having money coming in every month.

It’s important to get into good habits early and strike a good balance between enjoying yourself now and saving for the future.

Setting yourself up with savings is vital to ensure you have a safety net should something happen but also so you can do things in the future like taking nice holidays, buying your first home, starting a family or maybe even starting your own business.

The key here is learning how to budget. Make sure you understand what’s coming in and going out each month. You can download our Budget Planner to help with this:

A good guide then is to allocate 50% of your monthly budget to needs, 30% to wants and 20% to savings. Make sure you automate the savings element, so it just happens each month.

Then allow yourself the occasional treat. If saving forces you to stop doing things you enjoy then you’ll just feel deprived and are less likely to make it an ongoing habit.

Give yourself a weekly budget or ‘fun fund’ and either withdraw that in cash leaving your cards at home or put it into one account and only take that card with you.  

There’ll inevitably be months where you need to dip into savings for one reason or another but aim to make these the exception, not the rule.