Your Ultimate Guide to Saving Money: How to Manage It When You're 20

Financial independence and the ability to manage your expenses yourself definitely take their rightful place among your brightest associations with adult life. What's more, the aspirations like these can have a significant impact on your life choices regarding, for example, your future career, your current job (if you're planning to have or already have one) and even your whole lifestyle. So, you may find yourself interested in looking for better opportunities, more advantageous offers and other effective ways to achieve your aims, whatever they may involve.

However, sooner or later you realize that money is a rather tricky life support resource. It appears to be vitally important to survive in the modern world, but at the same time it isn't so easy to obtain, especially when you're at the very beginning of the path to your own happy and financially independent future.

Good news is that now, when you're in your 20s, you still have enough time to try plenty of various opportunities which can provide you with quite decent income. Besides, you can get decent support and help (including medical insurance and, probably, even some college assignment help) from a number of special services and the programs they can provide for students.

Slightly worse news is that as you just start your more or less financially self-reliant life, you inevitably face the fact that it's quite challenging to keep the satisfactory balance between your spending and saving. Online stories about considerable student debts may make the situation even more nerve-racking. So naturally, reasonable you come to the conclusion that before it may become too late, you want to know how to avoid such kind of troubles and control the inflow and outflow of your personal finance.

Here we're going to discover a few effective strategies that can always provide you with confidence in your budget state and your financial capacity. You'll find some pieces of really practical advice on how to save your money without stinting yourself of some simple pleasure.

Several Prior Remarks Before We Move Further

Actually, many different factors can determine which ways of managing your money can turn out to be the best for you personally. That's why it would be clever now to mention some basic features of the following recommendations which can be implied in some of them.

• Firstly, these strategies are intended mostly for a single young person who doesn't have to support his or her nearest and dearest, or to share with his or her second half, however selfish it may sound. Even if you really want to spend some part of your own budget on the people you love, at first you should still learn how to support yourself and satisfy your personal basic needs.
• Secondly, the strategies are quite versatile, so they consider both facts of whether you have a job or not. These aren't some general ideas about how to survive on the regular sum of pocket money you receive from your parents. These recommendations cover the reliable ways of saving and managing your current budget and income regardless of the sources they come to you from.
• Thirdly, the potential advantage of these particular strategies is that they're oriented not only on advising you how to constantly save your money, but also on offering you the most effective ways to manage your expenses wisely. Smart money management can help you to stay always aware of your capacity to afford something pricey that you've been dreaming of for a long time.

Now let's have a direct look at the measures you can take in order to train yourself to treat money in a really adult-like way or, maybe, even much more cleverly than some grown-ups.

It's going to be the range of detailed tips or guidelines, like, for example, those which are aimed at school or college home assignment help. Well, you'd better see for yourself in order not to lose the thread.

Strategy #1: Start from Your Own Self

Whatever you want to do, to change or to gain, you should always start from analyzing your personal knowledge, skills, aspirations and dreams, as well as the specific features of your personality. Such analysis can show you what you have for achieving the set goals at the moment, what requires reconsidering and improving, as well as what you don't have and therefore still need to attain. By the way, after you make all these points out, you'll be able to understand your wishes, set the priorities and come up with some initial ideas of what you should start from.

Stay Realistic

Yes, you should realize that in order to save more money, you'll have to stint yourself of some things that could be among your regular budget items. Not for ever, of course, but until the time when you can be 100% sure that you can fully satisfy your basic needs. To put it simply, if despite your main expenses on food, transport and, let's say, the mobile Internet, you feel confident that you still have enough extra money for a rainy day, then you can certainly go order those designer sneakers or whatever, you've been looking for with eagerness for many days.

Another solution for how to save up a few dollars is to stop ordering some pricey meal or drink you're used to have every week at the particular place. Again, that's not for the rest of your days. You can look for some cheaper alternatives for your lunch menu, which are very likely to be even tastier. Or you can also explore some other places to have your lunch at, which can appear to be much cheaper and cozier.

Stay Scrupulous

Take a copybook or notebook to keep the record of your finance. Let it be something like your student record book or a diary. Agree that the note which you make in order not to forget about some particular home assignment help you to stay more organized and complete it promptly. So it's the same with recording your expenses and savings.

Write down the sums of your each and every expenditure mentioning its date and what exactly you spent your money on. On another page keep the record of the sum you've managed to save for some period of time. When you get some extra income, add it to the total sum. Also, you can write down your possible expenses in advance in order to see how much money you may need for a week or the whole month. Or set the sum you allow yourself to spend during the week and try your best not to exceed it.

Stay Disciplined

If you have even a very small part of that sum of money which you've initially planned to save for a particular purpose, refrain from spending it on something else anyway (unless it's about your health or your family issues, of course). Your financial goal, that's how such purpose is also called, is very significant for your finance management. It can help you to see clearly how you can handle your expenditures in order to save the sum you need during a certain period of time.

Stay Independent

If you want to succeed in managing your money, try not to borrow even a single dollar either from your family or friends. The same is about banks and loans they provide. However, if you plan to purchase something expensive, like a gadget or, maybe, a car, then applying for bank loan is definitely a right decision.

Nevertheless, you should remember that each loan means getting into a certain kind of debt. Besides, although your friend's unlikely to set the interest on your loan, you'll have to pay it to the bank adding the interest to the total sum you've borrowed.

In order to catch the general idea of what interest is, imagine that you need some little home assignment help and you ask someone for it. This person agrees to do some task you, but only on the condition that next month you'll help him or her twice. That's the principle of loan and interest.

So, if you think you can go without another loan, you'd better not take it despite the fact that, yes, you can't afford something at the moment and, yes, you have to wait until you save enough money for it. This may sound too severe, but it does work.

Strategy #2: Open a Bank Account

Provided that you're 16 or older and you've already saved a sum of money, you can open your personal deposit account and operate it independently. However, you should be aware that when applying for it, you must mention the source of the money which you're going to put into this account regularly. When you have a deposit account, the interest is paid to you by the bank, because the bank uses your money to give loans to other people and businesses.

You'll see that having a personal account really helps to develop a strong saving habit. Besides, you can be sure that you always have your own money at your disposal and actually no one has a right to use it without your consent.

So, a personal saving account will definitely be a better option for you as a student than taking a bank loan at your own peril. Of course, your bank will provide with the so-called debt assignment help (when your debt can be paid by a third party) in case you can't manage to pay the loan off. But your parents won't be very happy to become this third party, that's for sure.

5 Types of Saving Accounts

Here you'll find the brief descriptions for five main types of saving accounts available, as well as some handy info on their advantages and disadvantages. In order to find out more details about the specific features each of them possess, you can ask your parents or friends who have already had the similar banking experience. Also, you can consult a banking service specialist to get some professional advice.

• Regular Saving Account: you can sign up for it either in person or online. This account is easy to operate and it features lower commitment. However, the interest rate turns to be rather low.
• Online Saving Account: as the name implies, you can operate this type of account exclusively online, but not in person. Sometimes such accounts are provided by traditional banks as well. The interest rate is usually higher, and no minimum deposits or daily balance are required. However, the access to money may take quite much time.
• Money Market Deposit Account or MMA: it provides high interest and is quite flexible, but it poses restrictions on withdrawal and requirements on and minimum balance. An extra monthly fee may also be required.
• Certificate of Deposit or CD: while offering high rates of interest that rise every year, this account is rather inflexible. You can withdraw your money only during the set term, otherwise you'll have to pay extra fee.
• Automatic Savings Plans: they're said to be the most effective for training yourself to save your money regularly. With such a plan, offered by a traditional bank, you can set an amount of money which you'll regularly save on other accounts. The sum will be transferred automatically.

Strategy #3: Look for Free Alternatives of Your Paid Habits

Nowadays you can find many free options or good discounts for a large variety of activities. By the way, don't forget that you're still a student. So, loads of great opportunities are free or almost free of charge for you. Check up on the following suggestions.

Look for Free Entertainment

Throw some cozy home party instead of going to bar. If the weather is fine, why not take some sandwiches and go to the park instead of the cafй? The library is a nice free place to find necessary materials and friendly guys that can provide you with some home assignment help.

Hunt Student Discounts

Check cinemas, cafes, museums and other cultural establishments that can provide discounts for students. Don't lose your chance to attend some really great event for very reasonable price!

Go Volunteering

Various volunteering programs can offer you plenty of opportunities! You'll make new friends, get an unforgettable experience and discover one little truth: you should manage your money so effectively that it could never deprive you of some really great things that you can actually get for free.