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Achieving financial freedom is the goal of many people. It is a stage where you can make life decisions without being stressed about financial impact since you are prepared financially. In this article, you will learn five things that can lead to your financial freedom.
1. Spend Cautiously
It is quite easy to swipe your card or spend a stack of cash in your pocket without a second thought. If you want to get financial stability, you need to change your spending habits and stop for a moment and think every time you spend money.
Before you make any purchase ask yourself a few questions like do you need it? How much does it improve your quality of life? How much are you going to enjoy it? Are you buying it for the sake of a status symbol to show your neighbors and friends?
This type of questioning may help you determine the worthiness of your purchase and prevent you from splurging on things that are not that important.
2. Invest a Portion of Savings in Growth
Just saving some each month won’t help in achieving financial freedom. As inflation rises, you need to ensure your savings outpace the inflation. You can achieve this by investing some portions of savings in growth.
Several tax savings instruments like low-cost mutual funds help your money grow. Mutual funds are safer than stock market investment as mutual funds spread your money across the broad swath of companies. By investing in mutual funds, you will save yourself from unreasonable risk on one asset.
3. Pay Down Debt
Debt costs you more money in the form of interest. Hence, you need to tackle the debt with determination and strategy. If you have a credit card debt with a higher interest rate, pay it aggressively (more than monthly due) while keeping up with minimum payments on other debt.
If you have multiple debts with more or less same interest rates, you can follow the popular debt payment strategy of paying off the lowest balance first and then moving on to repay the other lowest balance in line. This way, you can reduce the number of debts and get debt-free.
4. Reduce Expenses
If you look closely at your monthly expenses, you can undoubtedly find some unnecessary expenses. You can start making a budget to track down your expenses and goals. When you look at your budget carefully, you can consider where you can cut down costs.
For example, do you need that gym or club membership? Do you need a fancy cable package? Can you give up your smoking habit? The key to making a budget is adopting a systematic approach to reduce unnecessary expenses that do not affect your quality of life. When the whole system is in place, controlling your spending becomes natural.
5. Build an Emergency Fund
An emergency can strike you anytime, and you need to be prepared for it. Building an emergency fund ensures all your money is not tied up, which can be hard to get at difficult times.
You can build a cash reserve in your bank for emergencies. The fund should be large enough to cover six months of expenses. Make sure you start saving every month towards your emergency fund, as building a large emergency fund takes time.
The path to financial freedom isn't quick and easy. You need to have complete control over your finances, which is the fruit of hard work, proper planning, sacrifice, and time.