Financial Tricks That Work With Everyday Life

In an age like this, click bait can be a welcome relief from the seemingly endless news reports about the latest terrorist attack in Manchester or Trump flub in the White House. That is until you open up the article that promises to reveal how a young professional has managed to retire in their 30s to travel the world.

It’s not just one. The Internet is full of these articles claiming they can help you become rich. Click after click, you skim these articles in hopes of finding the financial secret that could unlock untold wealth in your future, and every time your dreams are dashed.

Those well-off Millennials claim they can thank ambition, hard work, and perseverance for their lot in life, but their good fortune has nothing to do with these resume buzz words and all to do with their family. You too could be financially secure if your parents paid off your student loans, a family friend helped you land a $100k job right out of college, and you still live rent-free in your aunt’s Manhattan penthouse looking over Central Park.

It’s at this point you realize you should draw a line. Click bait is great for finding a heartwarming story about an abandoned kitten finding a forever home, but when it comes to financial advice, you should be a little more particular.

Once you start digging through legitimate sources, you’ll realize there isn’t a single, magical answer to your financial woes. Unless, of course, you consider being born rich a valid answer! The rest of us plebes have to consider our finances as a product of a series of tiny decisions. Good or bad, the way we choose to spend each dollar can have a profound effect on our financial standing.

Like the individual grains of sand that make up the Sahara Desert, individual financial decisions are insignificant until you pile them up with others. They have a way of adding up! Make enough bad ones and you’ll find your budget compromised and your account balance dangerously low. Make enough good ones and you’ll be able to drag yourself out of financial straits.

It may be slow going, but when you adopt the following tips into your daily life, you’ll eventually see the positive effects of your habits.

• Unfollow Rich Instagram: It may be tempting to see how the other side lives, but it can also affect your mental health in ways that put your finances at risk. Seeing the lifestyles of the rich and famous, like those listed on the top 10 billionaires of IG list, can skew our priorities. When we see people spending money on clothes, food, makeup, and jewellery, it normalizes these splurges and it can be hard to say no to these temptations in our own lives. Before you know it, you can find yourself unavailable to pay your cell phone bill because you just had to buy the latest Patek Philippe watch.
• Give Yourself Time: Impulse buying is one of the biggest threats to your budget. You see something you need to have and you snatch it up before you can really reflect on whether it’s actually necessary to your life or it’s just some hot item you think you need.

This impulse item is different for everyone. Whether it’s the upcoming Samsung S8 or a new Apple Watch Nike+ to match your shoes, give yourself some time to think over this purchase. While some experts suggest waiting a full month, you should be able to identify these impulse buys for what they are within a couple of days.

• Consider Smart Small Dollar Loans: Without that $100k a year job, there will be times in your life when your budget simply can’t afford all of the necessary purchases you’re required to make. A costly and unexpected repair to your car, a household appliance, or your HVAC system can leave you wondering how you’ll make ends meets. A small dollar loan can be a practical way to pay for these repairs.

The trick is to find a small dollar loan with rates, terms, and conditions that fit within your capabilities. Some small dollar loans come with strict repayment terms tied to your next payday, making it hard to pay them back on time. Installment loans from a lender like MoneyKey give you more flexibility when settling your debts, giving you more time to pay off what you owe.  Rather than being due all at once on one date, these products are paid back in installments over a series of weeks. Open up a new tab to apply for an online installment loan and see if its terms and conditions are something you can handle.

Compared to a rich aunt and generous parents, these tips may seem plain and crude, but there’s beauty to their simplicity. By virtue of being small, it’s easier adopting these changes into your daily life so you can start taking advantage of their money-saving tactics sooner. While they may never pay the bills like a $100k job, these tricks can help normal people save some extra cash each week.