It is like listening to a broken record to hear financial planning experts talking about saving money. And the overused term being used to make saving money a priority is the good old boring “for a rainy day”. It is the type of answer that goes into the “it depends” category. The type of answer that can leave a candid person pulling out his hair in submission.
But really. Is there any other reasons to save your money?
There actually is.
Unless you come from the school of thought that money is meant to be earned rather than saved, there are some pretty big legitimate reasons why keeping a keen eye on where you spend your money will play a huge part of how your future pans out. Here are just 4 of them.
Buy your own house
How many more years do you intend to slug it out with landlords over rental and living conditions? And how much more pride do you intend to swallow for pay someone else’s mortgage for him? Being the owner of your own house is more than just about making a social statement. It is the clearest signal that you have grown up into your own man. You are an adult and takes your own responsibility in where and how you live.
Sure. Some might argue that by buying your own house, you are just trading dealing with a landlord with dealing with a bank. But the material difference is that you are now the owner and you own the equity that is accumulating like a savings account. In a way, instead of paying for a landlord’s mortgage, buying your own house means that you are slowly drip feeding your mega piggy bank for a rainy day.
In case you have no idea what is the meaning of all this, read up more about home equity loans.
Retirement
Retirement is not about the picture you envision in your head where you sit on a beach chair enjoying the breeze, with a notebook on your lap while taking a selfie. You actually have to put some work into making that a reality BEFORE you retire.
Different people have different ideas on how to get there. So if you have always avoided investments and buying more insurance products than you have to, you could be relying on your savings in your retirement. Surely you don’t want to sponge off your kids do you? That could make for pretty awkward Thanksgivings.
And don’t listen to what the insurance salespeople say all the time. It is not a stupid idea to not buy their products. You just have a different route towards retirement in mind. That route could very well be your savings.
Educating your children
The ideal scenario is that your kids take on part time jobs to experience the real world and pay for the own education. And if you are lucky, something inside them clicks and they go on to become their own CEO in Silicon Valley. But the odds for that to happen are slim.
To give them the best head starts in the real world, you want them to get the best education they can potentially achieve. And that, as you must have guessed, takes money. And unless you have a daddy, their grandfather, who set up an education trust for your children, you become the go-to guy when the time comes where decisions have to be made on which direction to take. Do you really want your children’s academic decisions to be determined by financial factors?
You might be able to get a study loan to fund their studies. But they come at high interest rates. And most probably, you are going to make your children liable for these mega loans in future. Imagine what kind of pressure they would be under when they have a mountain of debt to repay when they are just out seeking their own jobs.
If you have the foresight to see the magnitude of finances required to send your children to a good decorated university, surely you know that you have to start accumulating that money by saving quite a few years ahead of time. That is unless, you know that a particular windfall is coming up.
Become your own boss
You can admit it. You have always dreamed about running the show in your own business. All those years of seeing ridiculous management decisions being made out of office politics have given you an idea about how you would run an office.
All the skills and contacts you have gained from all these years of grinding it out in the workforce can potentially give you a big break if you are to go out on your own. But you need money to start your own business. And lenders are not that friendly to startups without a track record of success.
You need to buy inventory, machinery, furniture, hire staff, and more to operate a business. Yo might think that you have a home run on your hands. And it is only a matter of time before you churn out a profit. But where are you going to get that money to kick start your operations?
Are you going to borrow from your wife? Your parents? Your friends? The easiest way is to borrow from your own savings account.
Set goals for your savings
Even if any of your goals never come to fruition, the act of setting them will probably help you save a sizable sum of money. It is a great way to trick yourself into stocking up that cash. You will find that it is a great prank to play on yourself in future when you look at the balances in your personal account.