Are you a child, a teen, or a young adult at the university? Whichever the case, the fact is that you may be young, but there are still some values and skills you must learn now so that you don’t end up being a poor, broke adult!
Agreed, it can be tough and stressful growing up—the strict rules, the many new responsibilities, the academic challenges, the emotional rollercoaster, and many expectations. But one of the biggest challenges is money management—handling money wisely.
Most, if not all, of your financial decisions are still taken by your parents. You are just concerned with asking for money and spending it joyfully, mostly on your personal needs, entertainment, and with friends however you want, without having to worry about food, rent, school fees, or paying many other bills.
Even older teens and young adults in boarding schools or university hostels still find it difficult to prudently manage their money or save. They just can’t cope and still make gazillions of phone calls to their parents from school, asking for bailouts, like a bankrupt bank! Their pocket money, which was meant for the whole term, had finished in just two weeks—some even in less than one week!
Unfortunately, from a young age, some young people have learned to beg and borrow all sorts of things from friends and colleagues at school: money, books, clothes, shoes, and even personal items such as underwear! They don’t even care that they’ve lost their reputation and have become puppets on a string for their mates, who now call the shots because they are indebted to them, controlling their actions and possibly making their lives miserable.
Unknowing, they are gradually cultivating the bad habits that would make them adult spendthrifts, extravagant, reckless, and wasteful spenders, unrepentant and chronic borrowers, beggars, and debtors!
Hopefully, you can learn to save now that you are young so that you won’t wind up working in old age when you are unable to work!
There are ways to break the bad habit and save your future, and that is by learning and adopting better money management habits. If you master the habit of saving prudently, you’ll thank your young self later as an adult.
Top Money Saving Tips
1. Open a Savings Account
- Learn to save. Even kids can learn to save if their parents get them a piggy bank! Let kids learn how to save, no matter how little. Kids can be given little tokens of money to save as rewards for good and exceptional behaviour. It is the mastery of the habit, not what little money they’ve saved, that is important.
- Open a bank savings account, or if you can’t open one by yourself yet, ask your parents to help you open a bank account. Many banks have child savings accounts for children and teenagers, where they stand to benefit from the many packages that abound in banks for young savers, like birthday gifts, child education scholarships, and even a sponsored vacation!
- Open a second savings account, either with the same bank or another bank. Sounds tiring, right? But it is a lifesaver. I know you may have already had a savings account to which your parents transfer money, but perhaps you’re not using it wisely because it is tied to your ATM card, which makes you spend more freely. Open another savings account, which would serve as the account where you keep all your savings and spare cash. It is best that this second account shouldn’t have an ATM card, while you retain the other savings/ATM account strictly for your weekly allowance and daily expenses.
The plus is that you’ll earn more interest on your money. How?
It’s just a simple equation:
The more money + the longer the stay = the higher the interest!
Remember, ‘little drops of water make an ocean’
2. Don’t save or hide your money in funny places.
It’s not wise because your money wouldn’t grow; it may go missing, and you may even forget where you hid it! Please don’t even think about putting your money in some tiny hole under your mattress, some cupboard, or other funny places! Forget it; smart thieves will always smell your money out!
3. Know your Cost of Living
Have an estimate or budget of how much you spend on a weekly or monthly basis on important and necessary things e.g. transportation, phone credit card, food, entertainment, etc., and leave exactly the total of that estimate in your savings/ATM account for easy withdrawal access. If you leave more money than you need, you will have excess money and may be tempted to spend more than is necessary on unimportant stuff.
4. Plan your expenses
Spend wisely. Always make a list whenever you go shopping. Plan what you want to buy and know what you want to buy. Don’t just buy things based on a whim or impulse, or perhaps just because you like it. Always ask, “Do I really need this?”
5. Give yourself allowance
Become a mini-parent to yourself and give yourself allowances for entertainment. If you spend the whole amount you planned to spend in a month within a week, don’t withdraw any more money and instead learn to suck up the inconvenience of zero entertainment through the remainder of the month. There should be no going to your second savings account to withdraw. It is called discipline!
6. Learn to be stingy sometimes
It is good to be a giver; we can give to charity, church, the needy, friends, and relatives in need. We all want to be ‘nice girls and boys’ to be accepted and loved, but it is also important that we are wise and have some sense! You should know when to say ‘no’ to some people who have become exploiters of your generosity! When people know you are too lax and that they can easily get things from you, they may start to take advantage of it, and believe me, some will never pay back, and it doesn’t increase your appeal.
7. Become Frugal
Look for creative ways to save money. Treat your personal belongings with care so that you don’t have to replace them often and so they can last and serve for longer. Don’t waste food and resources; learn to save. If you are going somewhere and you aren’t in a hurry and the distance is trekkable, you can start on an early stroll just to curb your expenses. If you are going to school, always endeavour to eat breakfast at home and try to bring snacks from home or the dorm too, instead of having to buy them every time from the tuck shop. Also, if new items are too expensive, you can get second-hand items sometimes.
8. Be Organized
Be detailed, learn from a young age to keep receipts, and take financial documents seriously. Always take a second look at your ATM receipts, bank transaction receipts, and account balance. Be calculative, learn to track your expenses, and watch out for fraudulent withdrawals.
I hope these tips helped.
For children to learn more about good character, rewards, and early saving culture, you can read my children’s book titled Naughty Tomi’s Fat Piggy Bank.
