Financial freedom – today, tomorrow, and afterward?

Introduction

What’s important to you in life? In your day-to-day, today and tomorrow, next month? How do you pass the time? What do you use your time for? Work, family, friends, your home, your health…clothes and the hair salon? Wonderful!

And what place does money take? What place do your finances take? Not such a high one? Then you’re just like quite a lot of us. Financial clarity, autonomy, and freedom are so unbelievably important!

The following tips will get you off to a simple start in finally being able to take care of your money. Invest an extra-large dose of courage in yourself, in your dreams and goals – preferably right now.

1. Clarity of mind – be decisive!

Take yourself, your money, and your outlook on money seriously! A good money mindset and financial autonomy provide strength and freedom! Money is a precious resource (because it’s all too often scarce). Very few of us have “too much” money. Treasure what you have! Invest your time and energy into these issues, and deal with them – and yourself – consciously.

2. Security – for your future dreams

Many of us gladly put tomorrow off a little longer and push it just past the horizon…and along with that push goes the subject of financial security for old age. It’s part of human nature. We’d prefer to occupy ourselves with the here and now rather than with the future, even more so for the topics that are already sticky and awkward for us.

Financial arrangements for retirement are nevertheless extremely important for us women! Let’s work our brains here together for a minute. Think about everything you still want to do in the next 20, 30, 40, and 50 years. What you want to set up, the dreams you want to fulfill, what’s supposed to happen in your life. Create a vision board: Write, paint, sketch, cut out and paste a hodgepodge collage of your future. What do you dream of? Imagine what you can accomplish. Strike from the record old convictions such as “everything is just too expensive,” and don’t even replace them. Now you can draw up concrete plans based on your vision board. And set yourself goals based on those. Because when you write out your dream in the form of a concrete goal and draw up realistic individual steps from this, you motivate yourself to make financial provisions for it.

3. Cash check-in

What are you going to live off of when you don’t want to (or can’t) work to earn your money anymore?

Ask yourself this question with intention and in a state of calmness. Think about it. Write out your associations and thoughts. Ideally, you’ll link these words with numbers and then really reach some good clarity. Pull out your government pension information. That’s where you’ll find how much your pension entitlements to this point total up to. If you have taken out a private pension or if a corporate retirement plan is on the horizon, list those out. Now what else? Brokerage account statement? Property ownership? Compile everything that’s yours on paper.

Now start calculating: Which of these sources will provide you retirement payouts? Which of them are a sure thing and which are more volatile (more of a crapshoot)? Could you live well off of what’s there (or what will be coming in)? And for how long? If you want to live to 95 and don’t have income from work anymore starting at 65, that means you’ll have to plan a budget for a healthy 30 years.

It’s not out of the question that you’ll find a financial void here. Well, there’s no time like the present, so start building your wealth. And the time to do it is now!

4. Get going!

The absolute most important thing on this path is that you set off on it. That you get started. It’s not as important how and who with – the main thing is that you make space for the issue of retirement provisions. And that you invest your time in yourself and your future dreams. The rest will follow…promise!

Here are a few points of inspiration you can implement easily. Pick three points and just go for it!

• List out your expenses. Every single one. Starting tomorrow. Write them out, sorted by category. Every day.
• Set yourself a weekly budget (e.g., 120 euros), and hold yourself to it. Don’t spend any more then what you budgeted.
• Write up an overview of all your debts: monthly principal, remaining amount due, and date of the last installment. Sometime when you’re feeling relaxed, think about if and when you might be able to pay them off sooner, for example by new income sources. Which of your debts could you refinance to save as much interest as possible? That’s particularly easy to do with the rather older loan agreements.
• Calculate how much of your take-home pay you can save and invest – on top of your government pension. 10%? 5%? Any amount counts, no matter how small! Ideally, it’ll be at least 10%. If that’s not doable, you should try to bring in more (i.e., increase your earnings) and/or spend less.
• Salary is the keyword: When actually was your last pay raise? Are you still satisfied with that? Or do you believe that the value you bring to the company warrants more pay? Do you feel that your performance is acknowledge and valued?
• Organize your personal documents, and then sort through all your financial records.

Compile an overview of all your insurance policies. Terminate those you don’t need anymore. Can you get the same benefits for less? That’s often the case with old insurance contracts. If you renegotiate or go with an alternative, you can pretty easily save several hundred euros a year…and put that directly toward your retirement provisions.