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Start investing with your first salary

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For many young couples, saving and investing are two things that are often relegated to a later date.

The excuses vary; “There are so many things that we need to buy right now”, “We are both earning very little” or “We will start saving and investing when we grow older.” But these excuses fly in the face of financial logic. You should start saving and investing the moment you get your first paycheck. You don’t need to start with huge amounts of money.

Since people earn different amounts, let us work with percentages. You can decide to be saving 10 per cent, invest another 10 per cent and use 40 per cent for rent, shopping, fare or fuel. You will still be left with an impressive 40 per cent. Remember, my assumption here is that both husband and wife are working.

SAVING DISCIPLINE

Several options exist for saving and investing. Apart from the ordinary savings account, you can open a fixed deposit account. If you discipline yourself to be putting money into this account every month, you will be surprised at how fast it grows.

Consider joining a retirement benefit scheme. This is a sure way of ensuring that you safeguard your latter days.

Open an account for your children’s school fees or subscribe to an insurance education scheme (even if the children are not yet born). Most people overlook this with the mistaken belief that they will do something major to enable them easily pay the fees. But things do not always go as planned. You then find the parents running up and down just days before the child is about to begin Class One or Form One.

medical policy

Start saving early, however small. If you save $1,000 every month from the day you get pregnant, you will have saved $93,000 by the time the child is joining school or $177,000 at entry to Form One. Surely that will be something.

Get a medical policy for the family or at least for the children. The peace of mind that comes with knowing you are protected is unrivalled.

Open a CDS account (if you don’t have one) and invest some of your money in the stock market.

Join collective investment vehicles where you can be contributing as little as $2,000 to buy Treasury Bills and Bonds, or units in a mutual fund. Do not just wait for Initial Public Offers (IPOs).

When it comes to acquisition of expensive assets like cars, land or house, you need to devise a saving plan, because each will have a different “maturity” date. Saving for a refrigerator is short-term, a car is medium-term while a house is long-term. Yet you can be putting money into each of these kitties simultaneously.

Remember, you will never have enough money and there will always be something you would want to buy. So, why not make a conscientious decision to start saving now?

Written by: Abel Kabiru
Source: The Standard

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