Find Room in Your Budget To Save More

Time to face the facts, your guilty pleasures are making you bleed money! A 2017 survey found that 55% of Americans spend money on guilty pleasures such as alcohol, tabacco, gambling or fast food.

Now, this is the area you should have most control over. You know that if you miss a payment towards your debt, you’ll be in trouble and you can’t control that. But discretionary spending? It’s all up to you to pace yourself.

This issue is two-fold for most people. First, if you stop spending money on guilty pleasures, you’ll obviously save more money but in order to do that you have to start budgeting. Secondly, you’ll become healthier in the process- there’s a reason they’re called ‘guilty’ and not ‘wholesome’!

You can find more room to save, you just need the willpower to go through with it.

Eliminate Debt ASAP

If you think tackling debt is difficult now, think about how monumental it’ll be during retirement. The sooner you get rid of this massive expense, the more money you can save for retirement instead.

Here’s a motivational thought. Let’s say you have $1,000 right now and you really, really want a new TV. If you invest it instead, you could end up with $3,500 during retirement. The same goes for any money you set aside.

But, of course, you’re not setting much money aside if you’re slowly chipping away at your debt, are you? Use either the snowball or the avalanche method to get fid if your loan faster. The snowball method allows you to tackle the debt with the lowest interest rate first, meaning it’s easier to get into the habit of paying it off. The avalanche method works in the completely opposite way so you get rid of the highest interest faster.