How To Level Up Your Money Game in 2022

As we are slowly adjusting to the new year, it’s common for people to take stock, reflect and make plans on how to approach the next 52 weeks. Individuals and corporate organisations tend to make social media posts describing the year in review, detailing their wins (and losses if they are inclined to share), and in some cases, sharing what they hope to achieve in the new year.

This introspection, planning and projection also extends to finances, too. It would be surprising if people didn’t make concrete attempts to properly structure their finances in the new year. Neglecting to keep track of your expenses in the previous year, and failing to draw up a strategy to expand your income, are recipes for disaster. It is particularly important to think up new ways to diversify your revenue streams if you live in Nigeria: inflation is at an all-time high, exchange rates fluctuate daily, and the economy is more volatile than ever. Thus, it’s necessary to stay ahead of the game and remain afloat.

Here are a few ways to level up your money game in 2022:

1.      Set short-term goals.

Segmenting your budget becomes a much clearer practice when you know what you want out of your finances. When you reflect on what you’d like to achieve right now, consider things like paying off any debt, setting an emergency fund or tracking your monthly spending. When you set short-term goals about how you want to handle your finances, you will begin to spend less, save more and understand the complex idea of personal finance.

The journey toward improving your financial situation starts with changing your spending habits. Some changes may be easier to adapt to than others. But if you’re committed to the process, you’ll end up with improved finance management skills.

2.  Draw up a budget.

Your entire year’s financial success likely rests on having a decent budget. It’s important to conduct a detailed analysis of your income, expenses, and investments. This makes it easier to keep track of where your earnings are going, and ensure that you don’t live above your means.

3.  Review your subscriptions.

Look at every service you subscribe to and see if there are any you could eliminate. Sometimes you sign up for a free 30-day trial and forget to cancel when the trial ends. You tell yourself you’ll cancel the subscription before the next automatic deduction and life happens and you forget yet again. Download a tracking app or reshuffle your calendar if you need to be updated on when to cancel certain subscriptions, because some of the monthly deductions may be unplanned, and cause a dent to your finances.

4.  Try to reduce your indebtedness

Coming up with a plan to reduce what you owe is really important, even if you have to make some financial sacrifices to do it. If you cannot reduce your debt to zero, try to minimise the rate at which you borroe. In order to enjoy your financial freedom, it is important that you have control over how much money you owe, no matter what the purpose of the debt. Ultimately, you want to wake up each day knowing that you have full control over your financial situation.

5.  Start investing

Saving is good, but investing is one of the most viable ways to make your money start working for you. Set a monthly plan of investing a certain portion of your earnings every month and stick with it, regardless of what is going on in the markets. Don’t try to time the markets: this is because the markets are smarter than you are, and work independently of your projections. Think long term, act long term, be disciplined and you will get to your goals.

To learn more about investing, you can try out the Wealth.ng marketplace on Paga. Wealth.ng is an investment marketplace that makes it easy for you to invest money in treasury bills, stocks, mutual funds, and real estate. With Wealth.ng, you can grow wealth by investing in any of the treasury bills, stocks and other securities listed on the platform. You can monitor your investments in real time and see how much interest accrues to you when your investment matures.

Wealth.ng holds your hand through the investment process and guides your hand each step of the way. You have total control over your investments, and you can make changes to your personal profile settings at any time.

In managing your finances, it’s important that you keep track of your spending, and this is one of the services provided by Paga, Nigeria’s leading payment solutions provider. One way the platform does this is by allowing you to set up recurring payments. This means that you can set up your account in a manner that it will be debited a specific amount at a specified time of the month for a particular service.

A recurring payment is designed to take away the burden of initiating a regular payment while ensuring you do not miss the payment. It is simple to set up. To do this:

–          Log into your Paga account

–          Select “recurring payments” from the list of services

–          Create a new recurring payment

–          Select the service you want to create a recurring payment for

–          Fill out the details of the recipient/beneficiary

–          Set up the schedule and fill all required fields

–          Review the details and confirm the transaction.

Ultimately, levelling up your money game in 2022 is something that would require conscious effort and deliberate steps. Few things are sweeter than attaining financial freedom, and implementing these tips brings you one step closer to that goal.