Having Your Cake And Eating It: A Guide To Being Financially Sensible In Your 20s

When you are in your 20s, life isn’t about “preparation” or “planning” or anything that involves looking beyond the next couple of years of your life. As long as you have an expendable income and have the means necessary to enjoy yourself, that is all what most of us require. But you may hit the point midway through your 20s where the trappings of what is considered “adult” and you may look back on the money you have squandered. Is there any way to prepare ourselves before we finally do the honorable thing and “settle down” while also not wasting our formative years?

Compartmentalize Your Bank Accounts

If you are planning to have a family in the future, you will need to put money aside. A lot of people are now feeling the pressure to either have a family or a career, not both! The rising costs of housing mean that we are stuck with rentals when we could be paying less on a bought property. But due to many banks being less than accommodating in helping people to find a home now, especially if you are self-employed, it means that saving really is the only way to be financially sensible. So, have a portion of your pay go into a savings account. That way you are leaving yourself enough money to live off, plus you are preparing for the future, and you won’t feel tempted to spend the money because it is sitting in your bank account!

Do You Need All Those Credit Cards?

Ah, the age-old question. I’m sure you do to an extent, and you can argue that they are helping your credit score. But they are only helping if you pay off the debt as soon as you incur it! The companies with the best credit repair reviews explain the best ways to damage bad credit. The one common thread through each company’s advice is to pay your credit cards off completely. The more cards you have, the more interest you will have in total, and the harder it will be to pay them all off. By all means, you need credit cards for big payments, but if you don’t pay off any of the debt it isn’t helping you to repair your credit score, and it becomes a vicious cycle, one that you will really struggle to get out of.

Don’t Feel The Burden Of Saving

This may be the most important of all. The thing to do is to set goals, short-term ones as well as long-term ones. A short-term one can be a big expense, like going to visit a friend overseas. A long-term one can be a down payment on a home. By setting goals that you will feel good about, it will reduce the feeling of burden, which is something that is more common for people in their 20s than it ever has been in the past. Phone bills and car parts costing a small fortune means that we may feel like we are constantly in debt, but with some careful planning and learning how to enjoy your money sensibly, you can have your cake and eat it in the financial sense!