Tips to Grow Your Pot of Gold this St. Patrick’s Day
St Patrick’s Day is approaching, making now the perfect time to think about how you can grow your pot of gold. Read along as we give you simple tips on how you can grow your wealth.
Set a Goal
Before you dive in and try to increase your wealth, it’s essential to make clear goals. Having goals makes it easier to know what you can do to reach them, and they also keep you motivated. There are numerous financial goals you can have, and you can have multiple at the same time. It will be a lot more difficult to grow your wealth if you’re trying to do it blindly. Here are examples of financial goals:
- Buy a home
- Save for education
- Save for retirement
- Buy a car
- Build an emergency fund
Have a Budget and Stick to It
It may be easier to set a budget, but it’s harder to actually follow it. Having a budget and sticking to it is one of the best ways you can save money and increase your wealth. If you’re struggling to keep a budget, we wrote a blog to help you find the budget style for you. There are multiple ways to budget, and they don’t all work for everyone. Sometimes you need to try a couple of different budgeting styles to find the one that works for you. Read our blog about finding your budget style.
It’s important to note that your budget may fluctuate throughout your life. For example, you may need to adjust your budget if you lose your job, receive a pay raise, or incur unexpected costs.
In a time when unexpected costs are rising, having an emergency fund is extremely beneficial. If you have an emergency fund built up before one occurs, there might not be as big a financial burden as there could be otherwise. It’s recommended to have at least three to six months of expenses in your emergency fund, that way, you’re well prepared. You can learn more about emergency funds in our blog post.
Reduce Unnecessary Expenses
There are plenty of things we all spend money on unnecessarily. For example, you might be paying for subscriptions that you don’t use very often. It may be wise to review your subscriptions and cancel any you don’t need or use.
Another example is going out to eat often. Making meals at home can save you a lot of money and you might not realize that. If you go out to eat for most meals, try making your meals at home instead and see if you save any money doing so.
Another way you might have unnecessary expenses is impulse spending. If you see something online or in-store that you love and don’t think twice before buying, you could be making an impulse purchase. You should buy things intentionally and with purpose, rather than purchasing things without much thought. You could find yourself in credit card debt very quickly if you make purchases without contemplating. Read our blog to learn how you can get out and stay out of credit card debt.
Automate Your Savings
If you struggle to save, setting up automatic savings could help you significantly. You can have a portion of your paycheck automatically go to your savings, so that you’re only spending the remaining amount and not touching your savings unless absolutely necessary. Before you know it, you’ll have a good amount in your savings and be headed in the right direction.
Explore Investment Options
There are several different investment options available. It can be overwhelming getting started, so you should do your research on all the available options before you choose how you’d like to invest your money. Some different types of investments are:
- Stocks: A piece of ownership of a public or private company
- Bonds: You lend money to borrowers for a certain amount of time
- Exchange-traded funds: A basket of securities that trades on an exchange, similar to a stock
- Mutual funds: A wide variety of investments, such as stocks and bonds
Each investment comes with a different level of risk. From what we listed above, bonds would be the lowest risk, followed by mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and then stocks being the highest risk.