1. Pay Yourself First
Financial Goals for 2022
Saving money for the future and planning your retirement are among your most important financial activities. Treat them like this. Identify in advance how much you want to save each month and take this money out of your current account immediately after payday, rather than saving what is left over at the end of the month. Yes, from time to time you will need to dip into your savings – but at least now there are savings there to allow you to do so.
2. Live Within Your Means
Financial Goals for 2022
First of all, do you have a household budget? Because if you don’t, you should… Identifying what you currently spend every month and what you should be spending each month are an important step in getting your finances under control. The next step is to live within your means, and this means that your income should comfortably exceed your spending. If it, doesn’t it’s time to either rein in your spending or cut some items from the budget.
3. Review Your Mortgage, If You Have One
We are all guilty of avoiding the things we don’t like discussing and dealing with. The mortgage being one of those things. But this is the one we should discuss. You should review the rate you are paying and checking if a better rate is available. With rates as low as 2.25% available, you need to check if you are paying more, if so, can you avail of the cheap rates. Some lenders will even contribute to the cost of switching your mortgage to them. For more the cash back offers https://advicefirst.ie/blog/mortgage-cashback-offers/
4. Review Your Insurances
Financial Goals for 2022
Don’t skimp on insurances, some of them are legal requirements such as car insurance and indeed the requirement for life insurance usually forms part of your mortgage contract. You need to have enough in case anything goes wrong. However, we also see situations where people have too much cover, where they are over-insured. We can help you to identify the right level of life assurance and income protection that you need to ensure that your financial goals can be achieved, no matter what happens in the future. Talk to us about the right level of cover for you.
5. Don’t Tie All Your Money Up
We are definitely in favour of people taking a medium to long term view with their investments. This gives you a more realistic opportunity to achieve returns at a level of risk that you are comfortable taking. However, we also believe that keeping some money accessible is really important. You might want to (or have to) take a few months off work, do some significant work to your house, or financially help a family member. Allow yourself the luxury of being able to do these things. So yes, invest. Just not every euro that you have.
6. Clear Your Debts
Debt is the drag on all your finances and once these are cleared, everything you earn is pretty much for you. Actively look to pay off your debts. There are many different ways of doing this, negotiating better interest rates, paying off high interest rate debts first or paying off your smallest debts first (known as the snowball effect). Talk to us and we’ll give you a steer on how best to do this.
There are goals here that you can implement immediately. We would love to help you get them in place!
