Ways to Save (4) - Retire Early

Early retirement is getting more and more difficult. The environment around us are getting more and more upmarket, prices of lifestyle items are getting more expensive, there are more lifestyle norms to adhere to if you want to stay with the time. With these, it is, of course difficult to save and retire early.

Create a Personal Income Statement
This can help you understand your own cashflow. By listing down your income and expenses/liability, it helps us understand where we could have reduce in spending and how to increase our savings at the end of each month.

Clothings and accessories
How often do we stop ourselves from spending on an item just because it looks nice, rather than because we need it? People want to dress well to impress, and that means spending more. We can actually dress well with little budget if we know how to carry ourselve well and know how to seek out bargins.

Car
Rather than changing that current car every three years, we could have driven it longer and not bothered about who is changing to what fancy new car. Else for many, we could switch to public transport.

Stay out of debt
Avoid spending what we couldn't pay off at the end of the month. It is not uncommon to see people who spends future money, eg, people spends large sums just because bonus time is around the corner and they could have paid off the credit card bills when bonus arrives. Staying out of debt also means, cutting short our loans on small ticket items which includes car loan, keeping it to 2-3 years (I know, it's difficult)

The Simple Life
Live modestly and avoid spending on fancy stuff, eat in, avoid expensive meals, get some health insurance policy, invest money in safe vehicles, spend lesser and save more for investing and spend wisely. Make your money work for you.

Downsize
Rather than living in a bigger home and paying part of the mortgage in cash, downsize and avoid cash payments (but using your provident funds). The same applies to car, get a modest car than a big executive car. Not only do smaller capacity car comes cheaper, it is also more friendly to your monthly fuel bills.

Invest Your Retirement Savings
This will help your money beat inflation and growing it.