How To Start Saving – Part 2

Let say you have started saving part of your net monthly salary but not consistent over the time because of some circumstances. What would be the scenario this could happen? Before that, any of us experienced it? Answer honestly so that it can be rectified. Be honest, nobody is perfect in doing anything. As a human being, people tend to do mistakes. So, learn from the mistakes to lift ourselves one (1) level higher compared to others that never attempt at all.

This scenario could happen if we started our saving with very high portion whereby it is not possible to allocate such huge portion if this is our first experience to allocate our income for the savings. Hence, be realistic with our intention where we could start with 5% our income then slowly develop discipline to maintain monthly saving. From there, we can gradually increase our saving based on annual basis with another 5%. Bear in mind that this is the portion or percentage whereby the absolute figures (savings) could be higher if there are salary increment or adjustment on annual basis.

How to increase the percentage of our savings from first year to the following years? As discussed earlier on salary increment or adjustment, there are lot more ways that we can increase our active income (hard-earned income). Some might ask how it is possible if we are just an employee with fixed monthly income and no other source of income. So, how is it possible? Is it a joke? Haha! Have you done with your laughing? Then, let us discuss how we can get extra income by maintaining our permanent job. Be frank, to discuss about how to get additional income could be a separate topic with more than 200 pages but let us just brainstorm what could possibly be done to increase our monthly income.

Definitely there are people good are certain area and willing to share it with others and the mean of doing so can be called as tuition or consultancy. So, by teaching to others with reasonable fees could surplus our normal monthly income. Great! Now you have extra source of income besides normal routine job. What?! You can’t teach? Then, you might sell something by buying in bulk and selling at retail price. Obviously we must ensure those are halal (for Muslim) and legitimate in our country.

There is indirect way to increase our saving which is by reducing our expenses, it could be unnecessary which might not be really needed but due to some circumstances we’ve been buying or subscribing. Hence, by stop buying or unsubscribing will give extra value to our savings. Again it is not difficult to allocate some portion of our salary for the savings where if we could do both scenario; increase active income and reducing expenses. By doing so, we may can allocate saving up to 20% because it is very rare case we need more than 50% of our salary if properly manage our expenses.

Last but not least, discipline and consistency is the crucial part in developing our skills for the financial freedom. All these only can be achieved with passionate to follow our plan systematically and consistently. Don’t wait my friends, start doing it because the moment you started you’re not too late.