Top tips for achieving financial freedom May 3, 2018

Top tips for achieving financial freedom

What is financial freedom for you? We are constantly in financial debt whether we realise it or not. In this day and age it’s hard not to, banks are offering credit cards at a drop of a hat even if you have poor credit history. They might offer you 0% on purchases for 2 years but this can add up if you are not on top of making the repayments.

You might have a student loan or a mortgage that you pay out every month from your hard earned wages. People tend to get into a cycle of just paying off what is due at the end of the month endlessly for years but never find a way try to achieve financial freedom from all the restrictions.

Financial freedom is important if you want your money to grow, it is essential that you have your financial affairs in order. It’s easy to earn the money but much harder to hold on to it for a long period of time. Families and other responsibilities can be very expensive. So here are some top tips to achieving financial freedom:

Firstly you will need to take a good look at yourself and your spending habits. Go through all your debts and see the total that they come to. Once you have the total of all the debt you will able to assess the damage. The questions you need to ask yourself are firstly am I living beyond my paycheck? If you are there is nothing to be ashamed of as we all do it, if our expenses surpass our earning we add it to the credit card and vow to pay it off next month.

Once you have gone through your expenses and laid everything on the table it’s important to see whether the spending is for necessities or if they are your wants, do you frequently go out and spend money on things that are not necessary to your daily life. There is nothing wrong with treating yourself once in a while but when this becomes frequent then it can be a problem. This exercise will teach you about your spending habits.

With the increased interest rates and the stagnant wages it can be hard to create an emergency fund but it’s not impossible. When you know how much you owe the creditors, it can be daunting to know that if you lost your job, you can lose your home if it is on mortgage. The bank are usually not very sympathetic to different situations, more interest will make your situation worse. Start by saving at least £100.00 each month to ensure that if anything happened you will be covered.

If you are someone that has different debts such as credit card, student finance, mortgage and car payments, why not consolidate your debts into one. Credit card interest is usually very high and mortgage rate are usually a steady low rate so why not re mortgage and pay off your high interest debts. This will mean that your monthly mortgage bill will be higher but you will still be saving money in the long run.

It is very normal to neglect our own needs for the daily hustle and bustle. Never get stuck in a financial rut and always continue to educate yourself. You need to take time every week and think about your finances. You can embark on financial risk management courses, an FRM course will teach you different ways of managing the financial risk so your heart is at peace and you can speak better at night.

London TFE offer different financial risk management training to ensure that you are well equipped to handle your finances and help you achieve freedom from them.

Struggling with your finances? Read more about our financial risk management course.