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 Nisha. I'm a qualified accountant with nine 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 any sort of discomfort.
They would rather act like that information didn't exist. This is maybe why you'd 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 burying 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 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 in step five.
The guideline is to keep that number below 60% of your net income. Again, this cell 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 gigabytes 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 maths part. Second is often overlooked is 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 healthcare, 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 it's 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 three month, six 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 ticking 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 list 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 contributions up to a certain percentage of your net income. For example, if you contribute 5% of your net income, your employer will match that 5%.
You can continue this until you've received the full match. You don't need to go any further at this point. The second reason why this is a great option is that it reduces your taxable income this year.
And this isn't something that you can backdate. You can't use your last year's allowance this year. So if you don't use it up, if you don't use that employer matching contribution this year, you've lost it. Whilst taking this step in, you should also begin saving three to six months worth of your essential living costs.
That same amount that you calculated in step one. and you do this to build out an emergency fund. This fund is a bigger safety net for you to fall back on those bigger unexpected but inevitable life shocks.
If you lose your job you don't want to be worrying about how you're going to pay your bills or being forced to take on the first available job that comes at you just so you can make ends meet. In most cases you will be fine for three months of your living costs purely your living costs but if you're in a high-risk industry with a lot of layoffs or if you're self-employed with an unsteady income then six to nine months is even better. Step six, your ROI. People have different views on how they should allocate their money between step six and step seven.
My view is that the easiest way to make more money is through getting a pay rise or through starting a side hustle. And to do this, you need to invest in your own return, in your skill set, in your knowledge, in the extra value that you can bring. The extra money that you can bring on the side or through a pay rise can then be invested into the next steps in the order that I discuss them.
The reason why I've done it in this order is because if you focus on step seven or step eight first, that journey to wealth becomes more prolonged. The best solution, if you can afford to do it, is to choose to do them alongside each other. If you have enough money to do them both alongside each other, then that's the option when you want to go. Because by starting early with investing, you're on the right side of the curve when it comes to compounding and the exponential growth you can have when time is on your side is life-changing. So the first thing to do is make sure you're fully utilizing any tax-free accounts that are available to you.
So for instance, a Roth IRA, if you're in the US or if you're in the UK, there are different types of ISAs. The one I'm referring to more specifically is the stocks and shares ISA. I've linked some of my favorite in the description below, including Trading 212, which lets you start investing for as little as £1. Trading 212 lets you invest in stocks, index funds, ETFs.
and user-made portfolios. And if you're in the UK, it lets you do it through an ISA. So the money you make through capital gains and dividends is tax-free.
What I like about Trading 212 is that it's one of the most innovative platforms available. They were one of the first to introduce fractional shares. And now with their most recent announcements, you can also earn interest on your uninvested cash. So that's currently 5% on your GBP balance, 5.1% on your US dollar balance and 4.2% on your Euro balance. And this is paid daily and there's no limitations to the amount that you can hold uninvested.
So whether you're ready to start investing at this step or you want to start maximizing your earnings on your uninvested cash, you can check out Trading 212 and get a free share worth up to £100 by verifying your account and making a minimum deposit of £1 and then using the promo code NISHA, N-I-S-C-H-A through the menu bar. Step A, the opportunity cost. When it comes to investing additional income, there is always an opportunity cost in how you decide to allocate that money and what you could have done with that money instead.
But really, it comes down to what you want to prioritize and how you want to carve out your life. At this point, some people might think that the best option is to fully pay down their mortgage and live in their house completely debt free without any stress. This means they have the freedom to go part time. and start a side hustle or a business that they've always wanted to.
It can mean they could travel for an extended period of time without worrying about mortgage payments. Or it might mean fully paying off your student loan so you can take some risks and choose a different career path. Other people might find it a better option to continue investing in things like private equity, peer-to-peer lending, and also making use of taxable investment accounts.
What do you do here? There's no right or wrong when it comes to this step. It's about using the additional income you have.
in a way that fits your risk appetite, your income category, and the vision that you have for your life. That's how I allocate my money on payday. If you want to get started with step one, then this video over here covers everything from how much you should be spending on the different categories to the tools and techniques you can use when it comes to managing your finances.
If you found this video useful, I would love for you to subscribe. Over 70% of people who watch my channel have not subscribed and it would mean the world to me. Thank you so much for watching and see you in the next video.