Personal Finance - TOP5 saving tips

First thing I would create a budget. What are your income and expenses, and what are your assets and liabilities? If you have not read Robert Kiyosaki’s book ” "Rich Dad Poor Dad " I would suggest that you would read it. At least it was an eye opener for me. After I read the book, I first time really understood the difference between asset and liability.

About the budgeting overall, I have an excel-template for this and I will share it for at some point (it is only now for personal use and it needs some fine-tuning to be suitable for everyone). But in general, the savings are coming from the small purchases and when we are investigating the expenses in a year perspective, the amounts start to be huge. For example, if you buy a 2 – 2,5€ coffee in the morning every workday, total expenses for one year is around 500 euros. You can easily wait with your coffee until you get to the office and then drink your coffee (which is paid by your employer).

About the savings, here is my TOP5 tips:

1. Check the cost of insurances, electricity and loans. Ask best offers from competitors and change the company if you get a good offer. (it is not uncommon that companies raise their prices +5% every year)
2. Skip the canteen lunch and eat homemade food (you can easily save 3 to 4€ per day, +1000€ per year)
3. In grocery store, use premade list and shopping basket instead of cart.
4. Buy inexpensive or discount products. These are so called, grocery store branded or labeled foods, milks and etc. It is common that the manufacturer of these products is the same than the more expensive ones and the product can be even the same, it is only branded differently.
5.  Pay everything on time to avoid huge credit card interests and if possible, use cash.

And here is a rule that I try to follow; use money to experience, not to material (new games, fancy clothes, new phone and etc.) It is always fun to look back what you have done or experienced. I am quite sure that you don’t remember the expensive clothes that you had 10 years ago, but you can remember one thing what you did first time (for example, swimming naked in the icy lake after the sauna). 

Regards,

CVM