Saving for retirement is a must for being safe, happy and healthy in your golden years. You do not want to work your fingers to bone for the rest of your life, so it makes sense to get yourself a Roth IRA right as you begin your life in the working world. You get to save money, add compound interest over the years and avoid taxes in retirement.
A Roth IRA is a very specific retirement account. You fund it with after-tax dollars, so that means you can avoid paying taxes on the withdrawals after you turn 59 and a half. That is a great way to make money as you get older.
One of the keys to funding your Roth IRA is by having an effective budget. That means being able to track your expenses and spending habits and looking to fix them objectively. That can mean some hard decisions about changing habits but you can really make a difference in your savings if you are willing to think out of the box.
One of the best ways to save money is to really cut down on your time watching television. Television is like a drug, a soothing experience that allows you to be passive and power down your nervous system. But it can also steal hours away from you that could be spent building new skills, learning new things and being better at getting things done, rather than paying other people to do them.
Look at your collections. All of your possessions can cost you money in time spent, storage, and mental space. Also in lost potential income. Do you have a whole bunch of baseball cards left over from your youth? Or a collection of DVDs from your 2000s years of buying movies at WalMart and Target? Try to sell them on eBay. You can get them out of your house and make some money in the process. Also you can stop spending money on new things for your collections. The same goes for clothes, shoes, boots and any other material thing.
Before you go shopping, always write a list. Do that for groceries, home goods and any other shopping trip that you take. When you have a list and you stick to it, you can really reduce your spending on unnecessary extras.
It also helps to learn how to cook. Going out to eat can be fun and convenient, but if you are not going to fund your Roth IRA by spending all your money at restaurants. Avoiding eating out, especially at fast food joints and convenience stores will also make you more healthy and allow you to cut down on doctor visits and medical expenses. Drink more water too. When you ditch the soda, you can get healthier, again, and spend way less on beverages.
Basically saving money for your Roth IRA can come down to finding the discipline. You need to be able to say no to buying things you don’t need and figuring out a way to find internal contentedness. That is a key to being happy and financially solvent.