4 Money Habits you need to stop, and quickly!
Today, we have a special appearance from Ola, Wealth.ng’s personal wealth advisor. Remember her? If you do not know about Ola, please read about her here.
As the year is getting to a close, she shares with us, from her wealth of knowledge, tips she believes would be of great help in the coming year. She talks about habits, how they affect us and 4 bad money habits that need to be removed from our lives.
What are Habits?
Habits are small decisions you make and actions you take regularly. These habits form your behavior and ultimately affect how your life turns out. With money, whatever you train yourself to do everyday would eventually affect your financial future. Hmm, I had to read that again!
So, what are your goals? Do you want to build sustainable wealth? Then, the following habits need to go.
1. Spending all your earnings and then some more
You should not be spending all that you earn from either your white collar job (9–5), freelance jobs or your personal business. If you do this, it would mean that you would likely never be able to build wealth for yourself. Worse than this is when you spend more than you earn, what this would do is that because you are not living within your means, you would be seen to occasionally take loans to cover your expenses and end up in debt., not with Detty December staring you in the face and FOMO giving you the chills.
I hear an excuse coming right up from your end about how what you currently earn is not sufficient for your needs and while that can be understandable especially in this country where we all reside, it is still a habit that needs to go. Let’s save some and invest for the rainy day shall we.
2. No preparation for Emergencies
It is not news that unexpected things happen. A not so distant while ago, Covid-19 happened, like a thief in the night and it’s still lingering. The lockdown was announced and we saw how people close to us and even some of us, lost jobs and got slashes in salaries. For anyone who was not adequately prepared for something like this, adapting would have been tough and might have taken a toll on their mental health.
So, what should you do? Calculate your monthly expenses (say N30,000) for at least three months (this would be N90,000) and have this saved up somewhere. Add more to it regularly as well. What this would do is that, it would help you avoid situations where you have to rely on people to fend for yourself when emergencies come.
3. Waiting until there’s more money before saving or investing
There’s a saying that goes, “Whoever is faithful in little, would be faithful in much”. Truthfully, waiting to earn or have millions before saving or investing would only mean one thing, you would never get to save or invest. We all know that it is only on very rare occasions that you start your first job earning 7 or 8 figures and above. Most times, in the job market, salaries start from the bottom and work their way up.
No matter how little you earn, take some of this out (say 20%) and save/invest periodically. On Wealth.ng, you can start investing with as little as N1,000 in WealthCash and you can increase this as you earn more. Another interesting thing is that you can automate your investments if you would have a hard time remembering to do this yourself. Ultimately, our job is to take the stress off you.
4. Taking money out of your savings or breaking your investments
Hear me, you cannot grow wealth if you keep breaking your investments and that is the gospel truth. When you have a goal and you set up your investments and savings plan towards the goal, ensure to see it through by locking it away. Do not let lack of discipline affect your financial future.
The truth is, like I said earlier, there would always be emergencies and that is the reason to set funds for emergencies aside. This way, you’d leave your money and let it work for you, as it should.
Of course, like you know, you cannot take out bad habits without replacing them with good ones, you would just go back to ground zero. So, what are things to do instead?
- Live within your means, do not let the fear of missing out mar your plans towards financial freedom
- Prepare for emergencies. Like I said, make sure at every point in time, you have emergency funds equivalent to your expenses for at least three months.
- Save as you go. It’s almost time for that end of year bonus. Whether it is substantial or not, take out some of it and save.
- Do not, I repeat, do not break your investments or savings. Remain disciplined.
It was great catching up with you and sharing these tips. As your personal Wealth Advisor, I believe they would be of great help to you now and in the new year.
As usual, you can chat with Ola on Whatsapp for your Investment needs.
Compliments of the Season and Grow your wealth with ease on Wealth.ng!!!
