In these uncertain times, saving money is a must to weather through any storm.
In this article, we’ll look at how developers can save money by following some easy to follow habits.
An Emergency Fund is a Must
We should never take any income source for granted. Finding a job may be hard, layoffs can happen, and business revenue can vanish overnight.
Therefore, we all need to save money no matter what we’re doing for income.
Just put some money in our savings account and don’t touch it.
Even with interest rates as low as it is today, we still get interest accrued from putting money in our savings accounts.
Anything will grow big over time because of compounding interest. Even if we put only a little bit in, we can save a lot if we’re patient.
Like anything that worth our time pursuing, saving money is going to be a long marathon.
Since most developers make more money than people in many other jobs, saving for an emergency is a must.
There’s just no excuse not to do it.
Create a Budget
We should create a budget based on what we make. This means that we should budget to spend less than we spend.
I know that’s easier than done. But we can all do it. We can save on rent by living with roommates.
We can eat out less, cancel cable, go for cheaper Internet and phone plans, etc.
If we want to save money, we can’t have fun too much outside. The minute we step out of our home is the moment that we start spending money most of the time.
Unless we’re just walking around our neighborhood, we’re going to spend money.
We’ve to pay to take the bus, drive, go for drinks, eat out, skiing, etc.
As soon as we go out, money flies out of our wallets. Therefore, it’s time to forego some things so that we can enjoy ourselves when we’re older and jobs are harder and harder to find.
Instead of going for a vacation far away, stay nearby, and don’t go so far. Also, sleeping in at home is also a great way to spend our vacations.
It’s also important if we want to retire. Leave the vacations for when we retire.
Stash Our Cash in Envelopes
We can also stash away cash in envelopes and don’t touch them. This way, we won’t spend them.
Also, we do the same with the money that we’re going to spend.
Swiping cards takes no effort and we can’t see what we’re spending directly when we’re spending them.
That’s bad because it’s very likely that we’ll overspend as we can’t see what we’ve spent.
Therefore, it’s better to spend cash instead of using debit and credit cards.
Credit cards are the worst because the interest rates for overdraft is insane. The interest rate that we have to pay for late-payments and overdrafts are double-digit high, so we shouldn’t use it much.
Save Automatically
We can set up an automatic transfer to a savings account under our name automatically.
This way, we always stash away money there.
Then we shouldn’t touch our savings account ever unless we’ve got a real emergency.
We got to do this for our own good.
Start Small But Think Big
Saving money is a marathon. We got to appreciate every small win.
Otherwise, we’ll give up very easily.
Since developers make more money that a lot of people, small wins can also be big wins.
We’ve to resist the urge to spend and stash money away. Then we pat ourselves on the back every time that we save a portion of our paycheck.
If that’s not enough to motivate us, think about the fact that we can retire earlier and be free to do whatever we want earlier we save now.
Start Saving For Our Retirement
The software development career generally isn’t too long-lasting. There just aren’t too many 60+-year-old developers writing Ruby or JavaScript code.
With all the young developers that can do the same thing for fraction of the pay, it’s no wonder that most places aren’t hiring many older developers for things that entry and mid-level developers can do.
Therefore, we may retire earlier than we expect. This means that we should start saving today.
Conclusion
We just got to save money as developers. It’s not going to be a long-lasting career for a lot of people.
Therefore, we got to prepare for retirement whether we want to or not.
Also, we got to save for a rainy day. If we don’t want to save anything, think about how we can use the money we stashed away to enjoy retirement sooner.
