Business Day (Nigeria)

Reasons why you can’t save money

-

Alot of us find it burdensome to cultivate this habit of saving money. The first thing which may have come to your mind is that you don’t have enough money to save. If you think this article is about to further highlight that, you’ll be surprised to find that how much you earn, is not to blame this time. What other reasons might cause you to find yourself on this side of the savings wall?

Your taste keeps increasing

You probably first complained that you weren’t earning enough for starters and couldn’t possibly save any money. Now you got a raise or business started booming and you still wind up broke! It’s probably because you started overindulg­ing in the finer things in life- expensive clothes, hair, restaurant­s, jewelry, luxury cars or whatever the case may be. All this while, you could have increased your net worth - the value of these things depreciate­s with time. Start building your liquid asset base with an investment account that doubles as a way to save money and learn to find satisfacti­on in the simpler things.

You keep comparing yourself to others So, you’re the only one in your group who isn’t driving a Camry, so you’ve not been to all the expensive places and so what? If you can afford it easily, without debt or risk of going broke, go right ahead to spend as you wish. But if you know that you cannot, please stop yourself before it’s too late. Envy is a deadly sin which makes people do very bad things.

You have poor spending habits

As soon as money gets into your account, you can’t seem to keep things calm right? When you splurge on frivolitie­s and completely forget about your bills or personal goals, the result is an extravagan­t lifestyle without the funds to keep it up. While it may not happen overnight, your habits determine the quality of your life. Consider taking short classes on personal finance management or downloadin­g simple personal finance tools to help you navigate your expenses.

You procrastin­ate

You don’t pay yourself first. Take a certain percentage of your salary, and allocate it to savings- savings is for you and all your big plans. Think of it as your mini salary. The remainder is what you’ll be left with to use for bills and other expenses. Bad savers are often procrastin­ators, so they continuous­ly tell themselves they’ll save later. Set workable reminders to do this every month if need be.

You are way too nice

Are you the family ATM? Do you freely lend money to anyone who asks? It would be harder to save money if you honestly try to keep up with every demand people around you have. Work to get over your fear of being seen as the “bad guy”, and practice saying “no” every now when it is unhealthy and detrimenta­l to your peace of mind. Work out how you plan to lend money, especially if you know that the money is unlikely to come back. If it helps, decide a working percentage of said amount that you are comfortabl­e losing.

If your life has been so great for you moneywise, you probably won’t think much of savings but if your life is sort of unpredicta­ble and

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Nigeria