How to get the most out of your salary
It can seem hard to get ahead with the rising cost of living in Australia, however, with a well thought out plan and action, it is very possible to make more off the back of your salary.
Here are a few of my top tips
Tip 1 - Save
In order to make money, you are going to need some savings. If possible, I recommend trying to following the 50/30/20 rule. That means that 50% of your after-tax wage will be spent on essential items, such as rent, groceries, utilities, transport. 20% will go towards debt or savings and 30% goes towards wants and needs. If you can save more than 20% however, that will assist in getting you where you want to be quicker.
I recommend keeping the money that you are saving in a separate account, ideally one that you can’t easily see. As they say “out of sight, out of mind”. I would also look into a savings account that is high interest so that you can make some money off of our savings. You can do that by finding a high interest savings account, or if you know that you won’t need to touch that money for 6 months, you may even consider a long-term high interest account, as the long term accounts often come with a larger amount of interest.
Tip 2 - A secondary saving hack
In addition to saving money from your wage, consider downloading a micro-investing app, such as Raiz. These apps essentially round up all of your purchases and then save the difference, so if you spend 60 cents, it will round it up to $1 and put the remaining 40 cents into the stock market for you. While it won’t make you loads of money in the short-term, it is a surprisingly effective way to accumulate a successful portfolio over a long period of time.
Tip 3 - Utilise your skills and part with anything you don't need
A lot of people feel that they are stuck with just their salary and have no other way of making income. However, there are a lot of websites now that allow people to either sell their skills or sell items they no longer need, and these sites can really help you make up some buffer money. If you are a good writer, can illustrate, are good at book keeping etc. consider putting yourself on one of these skill based sites and you can pick up some jobs when you want more cash.
Additionally, scope out your wardrobe/ household items every 3-6 months to see if you can get sell anything you don’t need. Put all of the money you make from this activity into savings.
Tip 4 - Invest in something that can make you residual income
Now that you have saved some money and made a little more, consider investing your money to get a residual return. There are lot of options, from investing into the stock market, property bonds or even purchasing physical gold and silver. Make sure you speak to an expert before choosing your investment, but all of these options have the potential to make you a fair bit of money off of your initial deposit, provided that you invest wisely.
Tip 5 - Super
Lastly, if you are nearly 40-45 years old, you may want to consider salary sacrificing. Your super fund will invest the money for you, and over the years until you turn 65 and can claim your super, the money will keep growing. The more money you have in there, the more it grows. It is also a great way to reduce your taxable income.
Gerry Incollingo is the MD of LCI Partners, a firm that specialises in accounting advisory, lending, wealth, property, insurance and legal.
