AD | Collaborative post
John and I are now both getting close to our mid 30s and we’re beginning to think more and more about what we want when we’re older. I’m not necessarily talking about when we retire but in the next 10 or 20 years. While we are lucky that John has a good pension, and has been paying into it for quite some time due to being in the same job for so long, I don’t have the same thing so we need to be savvy about planning our financial future.
Regular savings
At the moment, we’re not really in a position to put much away in the way of savings. Finances are quite tight right now but one day they won’t be. Even if we managed to put 50p a week away for now and increase it as and when we can this would help us start to build some money for later in life. These savings wouldn’t have to be towards retirement but they might make things a bit easier down the line if we ended up needing something big doing to the house etc.
Better budgeting
In the past we probably haven’t been the most sensible of people and have lived outside of our means sometimes. Now that we have Erin we are a lot more conscious about how much money we are spending and what we are spending the money on. When we were both working full time and before Erin was born we never really stuck to a strict budget but we can’t do that any more. If we want to go on holiday or have nice days out we have to work these into our budget each month.
In order to have a better future financially, budgeting will be a really important factor and it’s something we will have to revisit from time to time to adjust depending on our situation.
Additional income
Of course, one of the easiest ways to achieve both of the previous points is to have more money. Earning more means being able to have a slightly less strict budget or an additional income could mean more regular savings each month. Unfortunately, having access to additional income isn’t that easy but there are lots of different things we could try.
I already sell items on Facebook when we no longer need or use them and this has helped us to pay for days our or holiday spending money in the past. It would be a good idea to put 50p or £1 from each sale away into savings because these amounts would really add up. It’s surprising what you can sell online and I have gotten rid of loads of items that would have been cluttering up our house otherwise.
We are very lucky that we own our own home with the help of a mortgage. We bought at the perfect time as house prices have risen quite a lot in our area over the past 4 years. I found this handy calculator online which showed me that our house has risen in value by about £48,000 already! Our house could have made us a really nice lump sum already so I’ll be keeping an eye on this over the years!
I wish I’d thought about, or actually cared about these kinds of things when I was younger as we’d be in a much better position now. Getting older seems to have crept up on me but at least it’s not too late to start planning and making things better!
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