Personal finance tips for beginners

 Hey guys today i am talking about 10 personal finance tips that you need to know if you're a beginner. some stuff that i really think was beneficial for me when i was transitioning from the age of 19 to 21. because this was the age where my income almost 10 times and you know i was absolutely overwhelmed with everything like taxes, like how to save money, invest money ,etc.

 Where are the areas i should invest my money in? what are the returns like? why does it returns even matter? all of this stuff so i hope that these tips will help you no matter what your age is. I am pretty sure you will get something from this.

 Now if you want to be better with your finances there's one book that i highly recommend to anyone it's called fu money by dan lok. Now i don't really know how dan lok is as a person however his book impacted my mentality a lot. Being from a middle class family my middle class mentality would tell me that money is really hard to make. money is evil and when you have money at hand you will become a bad person. however, like over the years i've realized that the more money you have the most satisfied life you can lead. Because financial stress is something that will be less in your life and fu money obviously helped me change more of my thoughts about money too. So i highly recommend you guys to read this book. This book is actually available for free on dan lok's website. Another book that i highly recommend is the financial diet. This is also a very amazing book debt and credit are two areas that the financial diet really focuses on on both their youtube channel and the book and i highly suggest you guys to read it now without any further ado. let's get into today's topic  

The first thing that you need to remember when you are taking control of your personal finances is that you need to keep in mind why exactly you need to be in control of your personal finance. It gets really hard to have a control over yourself when you don't really know why you are doing it.

 What i suggest is that take a step back and think about your money goals six months from now, one year from now and five months from now. How much money do you want to be making at these particular steps? how much money should you have invested by let's say, the age of 30? how much money do you want to own do you want to own an apartment or a car? or is there any significant amount of investment that you want to do in your life? just think about all that. Because when you have those goals in mind, saving money and investing money becomes much much much more purposeful.  money is just a tool to buy things and if you don't attribute some cause to it, it really feels very hollow and it makes you hollow as a person even if you are not attributing it to a cause. Make sure that you're always attributing some cause to your money. This tip has helped me so much in being more purposeful with my money in saving much more money and investing it in the right places so i will highly recommend that.

 The next thing that i'll recommend is that when you are in your growing years, always make sure that you have more than one or two streams of income. Because any day you can get laid off especially in this recent times many many people got laid off from their jobs. And those who had only one stream of income had to start looking desperately for another job again. When you have multiple streams of income even if let's say, you have four or five streams of income even if you lose one or two of them.  you can always depend on the rest of the three and also once again you have enough time to grow up two more streams of income. because you're not worried that you're not making any income at all.

 popular ways to add to your income would be starting freelancing. I am someone who has been into freelancing for several years. With freelancing even if you have like one or two hours extra a day you can easily add 1000 to 3000 to your monthly income.

 

Another thing that you can do is if you have something extra you can rent it out.  These days even furniture is being rented out. So check out what are the options available for you and you might find something that will be lucrative.

 You can also go for fixed deposits which give you quarterly interest. However, that's not the best way to set up a stream of income because of several reasons which i probably will cover in a different post on savings, investments, etc. But yeah these are some ways by which you can set up a second stream of income. 

You can also look for extra gigs and extra work in your area or in your field.

 The next thing that i'll advise if you want to have a better hold of your personal finances is talk among your family, among the people you live with and among the people with whom your finances are tied. What I see is very common in middle class families is that we don't talk about money and when we do we have a very negative approach towards it. Like most children don't know how much money their parents have. most even spouses don't know how much their spouse have and what happens is that when there's a crisis or something, these things are revealed suddenly and you are at a tight position. So when you have healthy conversations around money you will have a healthy life around money too. Having conversations about money is extremely important and always make sure that if you have some joint expenses you always take equal share in it if possible.

 Another thing that i'll highly recommend if you want to be better at your personal finances is that never ever spend more than 50 percent of your income if possible. Now this is like a privilege not everyone can do it however try to increase your income if you don't feel like your present income is going to enable you to do that. Because I feel like the beauty of life lies in simplicity. Make sure that you are not tying up happiness and you know joy with things that don't cost you any money. and keep your costs as minimum as you can. So that let's say something bad where to happen tomorrow, money won't be a problem for you because if you are someone who attaches happiness and everything with money and let's say you lost a stream of income you will be immediately worried that money is not coming in anymore. but if  your basic needs are at least covered by one stream of income or your basic expenses are not that high, you won't be in that terrible position. obviously this is not something that you should depend on. But something that you can definitely add in your life. 

 Next thing that i'll tell is that know your worth. If you are stuck at a job that you don't think is paying you to the full. If you're stuck at a job where you don't feel fulfilled and you feel like you're underpaid you probably are. So what I suggest is that you start looking for more jobs. I don't suggest quitting your job unless you have got another or you have built up another stream of income which at least covers your basics. If not it is actually equivalent to your salary because happiness matters a lot and when you're realizing your potential, you are more likely to make more money there's only so much that you can achieve only by saving saving saving. At the end of the day you have to increase your income. because otherwise,  by pinching every penny you still just have pennies. right? So make sure that your focus is more on increasing your income than saving a lot of money. Saving is important but increasing your income of automatically means that, you'll be able to save more money.

 The next tip will be something that I don't see a lot of financial gurus talking about. This is taking care of your health. Now your health is literally, your wealth and medical bills are so high. Automatically, when you are taking care of your health you will end up losing much less money on medical bills every year. As you guys know we really need to take more care of ourselves, than ever before in the present situation. So always put your health first. I am someone who has almost lost her health. because I was so crazily working at a certain point of time because I thought that if I don't work very hard at this age i'll end up nowhere. But it really affected my health very badly and for almost a week I could literally not even get out of bed and it affected me very badly. I'm pretty sure people who overwork themselves end up very sick as well. If you end up getting sick and losing a lot of money in medical bills what use was making that money in the first place? So always take care of your health. I feel like that is so important

 Another tip that I'll give you guys if you're a beginner in person personal finance is that, read a lot of books because a lot of us don't even have any idea about how to use money. How to have a better approach towards money, how should i manage my money well. We are having a lot of transitions especially between the age of 20 to 30. we'll probably get our first few jobs, most of us will get our first jobs in this age. A lot of us will also get married and also some of us will probably also start families and so many transitions. If you have the same ideology, if you use the same strategy of managing money at every level of your life, it's not gonna work.

So read a lot of books and get experiences of a lot of other people before you. Decide what to do with your money i guess this is gonna help you a lot. I also wanna say that you don't need huge amount of money to be happy or it's not something that i will really advocate. But you should have enough so that if you're in any emergency, if your family is in any emergency, you are capable of supporting them. I think  a lot of us like most of us probably want to make a lot of money because of our family, because we want to give them a very good life. Most of us have ambition not for ourselves but rather for our families and that is super precious keep holding on to that. 

Thanks for reading and let me know tips you use to manage your personal finance in the comments section.