What Is Life Planning In Terms of Savings?
Having a strong financial threshold is absolutely necessary for prospering. The fact of life is that money matters. It keeps you going and enables you to protect yourself and your family from unforeseen circumstances or expenses. Saving money has its own strategic importance in life. Obviously, everyone wants to become financially secure and more stable in life. That’s why people tend to save money for numerous reasons which include; to become financially independent, to attend to emergencies and unforeseen expenses, to get out of debt, to increase their bank balance for investments and reserves, to save money for buying home, car, travel, education, retirement etc.
What Happens Without Planning Finances?
‘How much money do we need to save’ is probably the most discussed topic in peers, families, schools, colleges, and social gatherings. We need to learn the art of saving money for hard times or else we will probably get stuck miserably in severe financial crises. It becomes extremely challenging to recover from a serious financial crisis as your entire financial equation disrupts. One thing to be noticed is that not everyone is privileged enough to procure a regular paycheck. In fact, most people find it very difficult to make their ends meet or save money for hard times.
Always Save
In order to meet daily necessities, some people can budget their paychecks extremely well and they always manage to save a tiny portion of income for savings for hard times. Others face extreme level difficulties in maintaining a healthy financial life cycle, predominantly due to irregularities in monthly paychecks. Careful planning and budgeting are critically important for keeping a balance between your income and expenditures. Without creating a budgeting mechanism, you can never expect to save money—no matter how hard you may try.
Consistent Support via Financial Planning
According to the 50/30/20 rule, you must put at least 20% of your income into your saving account. By keeping 20% income as reserves, you will probably get stress-free from money-related concerns. It is absolutely necessary for people that do not have regular paychecks to make a finance budget in order to keep an eye on their income and spending schedules. There are hundreds of professions such as consultation, designing, freelancing, and commission based sales agents working for different organizations that don’t promise a regular paycheck. For such people, following guidelines can help them to save money.
Know Your Baseline
Your baseline includes bare essentials, without which you can’t live. When you don’t have a regular paycheck, you must keep a proper record of all transactions and examine your spending patterns. Your income may be unstable, but expenditures on different commodities or services are generally stable, predictable and repeatable. It includes major expenses, listed below.
Groceries: An effective budget can help you save a lot of money. Food is a category where costs can be cut significantly. Plan on buying those products that are absolutely necessary for you to consume for the month. Quite understandably, maintaining a healthy financial flow without a regular paycheck is hard, which even restricts you buying items of your own choice.
Housing and Utilities: Obviously you need to pay your monthly utility bills, rent or mortgage payments—which can’t be ignored. The costs that are incurred on house maintenance creates a major problem for you to maintain a sound financial life cycle. When you have budget issues, you can postpone them or manage to fix things yourself.
Medical: If you don’t have medical insurance, then heavy expenses on medical treatments can cost you losing each and every penny in your savings. According to a study, it is perhaps the number one reason why people go bankrupt. This indicates that life without a regular paycheck is seriously hard.
Transportation: To save money for hard times, you can use public transport instead of buying or managing a car. Going to work in your own car may be considered stress-free but looking at the cost and benefit analysis, it should be avoided.
Set Your Income Target
Everybody can roughly predict how much they can earn in a single month. The expectation should be kept high and income targets must be set so that you can get a clear picture of how much more money you need to earn to maintain a balance in your emergency fund savings. However, there is no guarantee, whether you will be able to meet your income target—all that you can do is predict it and work hard to earn it.
Open Multiple Savings Accounts
Opening multiple savings accounts is a secret tactic used to save money without a regular paycheck. The income that you earn from different sources can be smartly allocated into multiple savings accounts. A tiny portion of your income that you credit in those accounts in prosperous times will surely help you out in rough financial times.
Conclusion
Having a regular paycheck doesn’t necessarily guarantee financial safety and security. With irregular paychecks, you can still afford to save money for hard times. For saving money, it is your will and motivation that matters, not just the regular flow of monthly paychecks.
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