Savings can help you get in good financial shape

Savings Month (July) also marks the beginning of the second half of the year. It is yet another great time to look at your savings and make critical decisions.

Whether you want to keep the savings plan you started with at the beginning of the year, tone things down or up the game. There’s no better time than now.

I strongly believe in making my own rules when it comes to savings. As previously shared, the only rule you cannot break or adjust to suit yourself is discipline. Everything else will follow. This year has been a disaster when it comes to my savings. It’s partly cloudy for a few reasons. However, I’m still saving.

I usually start the year with savings plans but this year was different. Notwithstanding the lack of savings plans, I’ve been disciplined. There are no negotiations when it comes to that. And by disaster I just mean, I don’t have a target for 2024 (hides in shame). I don’t even have a reason for not having a savings plan. I’ve just been saving however much I want each month. But I can’t go on like this.

The one thing I’ve learnt through my savings journey is that if you’re honest with yourself, you can do better.

And so, I’m taking a different route for the remainder of the year. You too can do it. Maybe you haven’t been able to start saving due to other responsibilities, but I encourage you to go back to the drawing board.

In my books, how we start the year does not determine how we end it. We can finish strong.

Ester Ochse, product head at FNB Integrated Advice, says being intentional about saving money during tough economic times like these is just as important as saving when life is good.

“In fact, it’s arguably more prudent during tough economic times. Think of it this way: the incredibly high interest rates and prohibitive borrowing costs makes it the best time to save more. Similarly, the same high interest rates that make goods and services so expensive also mean that consumers can get more bang for their savings bucks,” says Ochse. 

“How does one begin their journey to getting into good financial shape by the time Savings Month 2025 comes round?”

You just have to take that first step.

Ochse shares tips on saving for short- or long-term financial goals:

Start small: While many of us understand the importance of making saving money an integral part of our financial fitness journey, emotionally and psychologically there may be some blocks that prevent us from progressing.

The thought of having to save money, or even the thought of how far behind you might be in your savings journey, can be daunting. To make the journey more manageable, it’s important to start small.

Once you build small habits, like reducing how many energy drinks or takeaways you buy in a week, you can incrementally turn up the ambition and intensity as you move along in your journey to better financial fitness.

Set small milestones for yourself, at the beginning, build regular habits, and stick with them so that you can build up the muscle memory of saving.

Make budgeting central to you plan of attack: Budgeting and saving can be a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, but regardless of which one comes first in your life, both are incredibly important and impact each other in equal weighting. Once you’ve established that you’re going to start small, having a clear understanding of where your money goes every month is key – and it starts with having a set budget.

Budgeting your personal finances has become much easier over the years. There are myriad resources out there, like mobile applications in your device’s application marketplace dedicated to budgeting, and even budgeting-focused features and tools in your banking app.

Automate everything: Some innovative people in the financial services industry seemingly understood just how difficult taking that first, and even subsequent, step to becoming a habitual saver. As such, banks have made cultivating the habit of saving so easy that we’re running out of excuses not to save.

Think of automating your savings like having a financial remote control in your hand. You could just walk up to your TV and press some buttons on it to turn up the volume or the brightness or the contrast. But these days you don’t have to walk up – you can do all that with your remote control.

Automating your savings through your banking application serves pretty much the same purpose but in a setting that’s slightly more high stakes than just turning up the volume so you can hear your favourite comedian’s joke.

Setting up automated transfers from a main account to a savings account takes away the fuss of needing to remember to do it and eliminates the actual admin, making consumers habitual savers with very little effort. It also goes back the old adage of save and then spend.

Maximise on loyalty programmes: Rewards programmes can be invaluable in one’s journey to financial freedom. Look at it this way: just as time for your savings habit rolls around every month, so does the opportunity to free up your cash flow by using loyalty programmes to maximise on readily available virtual money instead of real money.

Loyalty programmes can often be our saving grace in our day-to-day lives and even more so as you scale back on our spending and save.

More jedi mind tricks: The more distraction-free one can make their savings environment, the more successful one can become in their journey to financial fitness. A lot of it is in the mind. But also, out of sight out of mind. Becoming financially unrecognisable by the time the next Savings Month comes around will take some small, smart, and intentional changes.

These changes will add up, as long as you stick to them, and they will lead you well on your way to financial independence and financial freedom, come rain or shine.

As we say goodbye to July, I want to remind you that it is never too late to start anything.

Your situation can still be turned around for good. You can still set new savings goals, start putting money away, adjust your plans and finish strong for a secure future.

That’s exactly what I intend to do.