How To "Keep" Money Better in 2018

It took me many years of frivolity to learn what I’m about to teach you in this post.

Now you need to “Come closer” and pay serious attention to this.  

Actually, this is not my first attempt to teach people how to save money or try to convince them on why they should save money. And over the last one year doing that, I have discovered that people have a lot of reasons why they won’t save money.

“My take home is not sufficient to take me home”

I have too many responsibilities; I can’t really afford to put away some money when I have need for them”

“Actually I try, but I’m just not disciplined enough to keep money in the savings”

“Never mind I will start saving next year… when I get a pay rise… when I graduate…”

And a whole bunch of excuses like that.  Well, they say failures always have excuses, so no doubt.

Well, if you are one of these people, this post is not for you, because I’m done convincing your kind to learn to save. This post will focus on those who are willing to start saving from today. So bye, see you!!!

Well if you are still reading this, it can only mean you are ready to take action right after reading this post and start saving immediately. But if you are still not ready to take action now, you still have a chance, close the window right away and go do what you are good at, incur more expenses and avoid every opportunity to save.

If you have continued reading, then congratulations!! You are about the find out very simple strategies and tools that will help you save without stress. And that is why, the steps I am going to be giving out here are actionable steps, things you can do immediately and secure some percentage of your income for a bigger course in the near future.

Let’s get straight to the secrets.

If you have known these secrets and have found it difficult to take action, today is the best the to start. Because as the saying goes, the best time to have built a solid financial foundation, but the next best time is today.

This is how to manage your cash flow and save for the future.

Assuming you are starting from scratch. You have a paying job and some business. You basically make spurts of money from here and there. And you have this dream to start small and build an empire.

But you’ve noticed a problem; you realize that keeping the money you make is hard. Harder than even making it. You make and then you spend it all.

So some very important question arises. You begin to wonder:-

- How do you save some portion of your earnings for re-investment or fund your special projects?

- Why is it that money keeps slipping out of your hands after you make them?   

- Why is it that after every month you start afresh without a dime remaining from the previous cash you've made in the past month?  

- Should you re-invest everything you make at once, or save them till they pile up and then reinvest?     

If you've not asked yourself any of these questions then it's either you are too young to worry about money, or your parents are so horribly rich man that they pay your bills.  

If you haven’t bothered about any of the above questions, then don't worry your little head about them. Just close this post and enjoy your peaceful life.  

But if you have, and need real answers to these questions, here they are;

1. Create an "investment" savings account. Let this bank account be different from your personal account. Don't have an ATM card to this particular account.

2. When you get your income; take out a part of it FIRST. The part you take out should never be between 5-10 percent. It should never be less than 5 percent of your entire income (you can take out more if you like).

3. Take that 5 percent (or more) and keep pouring it into your investment savings account. Never touch it, not even during emergencies - that account is sacred. 

4. Use the remaining part of your income, put it into your "personal" bank account and do whatever you want with it; feeding, taking your babe out, clothing, offering...whatever. But let your hands NEVER dip into the investment account for any reason.

5. Keep saving up money in the investment account; when it gets to an amount for the type of investment you have in mind then invest it. (Be careful how you invest so you won't lose this money)

That is it.

Now if for instance you earn N100,000 monthly and you decide to put away 5% in savings, that’s 5000 you would have saved N60,000 by the end of one year. And if you decide to save 10%, you would have N120,000 after one year, that’s you paying yourself a 13th-month salary, right? It feels so good, doesn’t it?

How you can start saving right away with PiggyBank.

I promised to show you how you can start saving immediately and this is it. Whereas it will take a sometimes to open a savings account with any of the commercial banks, as recommended above, and which is something that’s not possible immediately,  PiggyBank will enable you to start saving right now with your debit card. PiggyBank is a Fintech company in Nigeria focused simply on helping their customers to save up money for important events/projects or investments in the future. It’s 100% secure and safe, covered by the same level of insurance that covers Commercial bank in Nigeria and regulated by the CBN.

Personally, piggybank is helping me save some reasonable amount of money, so I am not telling you about something  I am not using. Here’s my PiggyBank story.

If you keep putting all of your income into your personal account, you will keep spending it. And you know what that means; it's like going round in a circle. And that’s probably what you have been doing before

You make, and you lose everything and then start all over again. I've learnt that no one gets ahead in life that way.