Do This Every Time You Get Paid. Accountant Payday Routine

when it comes to Payday it's hard to know what to do with your money you get paid and before you know it your bank account is at zero again if you're new here I'm Nischa I'm a qualified accountant with 9 years of experience working in banking and in this video I wanted to walk you through the eight things you need to do as soon as you get paid the very first thing you want to do is know your reference point that is Step number one there is something called the ostrich effect which is a cognitive bias that causes people to avoid any information that can make them feel sort of discomfort they would rather act like that information didn't exist this is maybe why you rather not check your bank account after a big night out or you'd avoid looking and facing your debt but this idea of just bearing your head in the sand when it comes to your finances is a big part of why a third of the UK and 64% of the US population lives paycheck to paycheck the solution isn't as hard as what people make it out to be calculate exactly what you spend on housing groceries Transportation Insurance over over the next month as well as any other costs that make up your essential living expenses next you want to figure out how much of that makes up your total net income you can do this using your own method if you want to use a free template that I use there's one Linked In the description so you list out all the costs in the First Column that says fundamentals and add your net income at the top and then this cell to the right in this box here is a number you need to know that number now becomes your reference point it's what you're going to come back to in the next step and and in step five the guideline is to keep that number below 60% of your net income again this sale will tell you where you're at if it's over go through each of the items and think about whether you can reduce it maybe if you're living in a two-bedroom flat you can rent out your spare room or whether you can swap it for a cheaper alternative maybe you don't actually need 50 GB of data on your phone contract knowing your reference point helps you immediately move on to step two the quick solution fund being good with money involves two things first is understanding the basics the basic math part second is often overlooked it's the psychological aspect sometimes even if the numbers suggest one choice the best choice might actually be the one that makes you feel more comfortable this idea is important both for this step and for step seven imagine the psychological comfort of knowing that even if your car breaks down if your boiler fails or if you need Urgent health Care it will all be taken care of you don't have to go into debt to pay for these emergencies that is what the benefit of a solution fund is the psychological comfort and the peace of mind just from having this fund tucked away somewhere and knowing you can get access to it that's hard to quantify the aim is to take the total of your one month living expenses that you calculated in step one and save them in a solution fund save it in a place where you can get high interest and as easy to access when you get to one month of expenses you can pause there it isn't necessary to build up a fully fledged 3 to 6 month emergency fund at this point instead we are now going to focus on the most mathematical sensible approach which leads US directly onto step three what's better than buying something now and not having to pay for it months or years down the line the answer is not overpaying for it let me explain in the UK the average credit card debt per person is just over £1,200 and in the US it's just over $5,700 we use debt to buy everything from clothes gifts Furniture if you're not paying it off you're overpaying if you pay for an iPhone with your credit card which has a 22% interest rate then that £1,000 or $1,000 iPhone isn't costing you $1,000 anymore after a year it would have cost you $1,220 that is $220 more than what you should have paid so if you have high interest debt instead of keeping it taken by and separately working on building a savings fund what you want to do instead is cancel them out use your savings to pay off your debt you might be thinking how does that make sense everywhere you hear it's about saving and I'm telling you to use your savings to pay off your debt well debt usually costs more than savings earn if you have 1,000 sitting in your savings account earning 5% a year after one year you would have made 1,050 essentially you're $170 worse off than if you had used that money to pay off your high interest debt instead so what's the best way to approach this step one list out all the debt that you have that has an interest rate of above 7 or 8% step two decide how you're going to pay off whether you're going to use a snowball or the Avalanche method the snowball is the psychological optimal route simply put it means paying off the smallest of your loans as quickly as possible and once that debt is paid you take the money that was used for that payment onto the next smallest debt the idea of this is that once you see that you're able to pay off a loan and you have that under your belt you have the motivation to keep going but there are times where the additional time and the additional money investment of the strategy doesn't make sense and that's when the Avalanche method comes in Instead This focuses on paying off the loan with the highest interest rate First Once the highest interest debt is paid you put that money towards the account with the next highest interest rate and then the next one and so on until you're done step three use your savings to focus that debt in the order of which you chose a little side note here depending on how much you're saving and where you're located the interest through your savings can also be taxed that makes the benefit of using extra savings to continue and stay at this step rather than saving it even more Justified now you have a little more freedom to do what you want but first let's move on to step four this has come in lower on my less than you would see on other personal finance channels and the reason for that is that it essentially involves sacrificing your current disposable income for a future pay increase in my opinion there's no point in planning for your financial future if your present finances aren't even in order and so only once the last step is complete then you should focus on employer match retirement contributions in most countries you have to opt into this plan and call your HR department to get you enrolled in the UK by default you're automatically enrolled into your workplace pension scheme 10% of people choose to opt out if you're in that 10% I'm hoping is to do one of the steps above if it isn't then you can focus on this step until you've maximized all the benefits it's worth making use of this for two reasons firstly it's free money from your employer that typically matches your 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