Savings

Experts believe that our lifetime relationship with money is mainly formed when we are children. It’s not simply a case of whether our parents had enough money when we were growing up, or not. It’s more a case of how they dealt with money matters, if money was discussed, and whether money caused stress beyond the fact that few families ever have as much money as they would like.

When it comes to money, your priorities, needs, and goals change as you move through life. In your twenties, you have a vastly different relationship with money than you do in your sixties, but it is important to recognise that at each stage of your life, the financial decisions you make can impact or enhance your financial future, regardless of how far away that might seem.

As retirement approaches, many people can have conflicting feelings. The opportunity to stop working and spend more time doing the things you enjoy and seeing more of the people you love is an exciting prospect. However, having worked for, perhaps, 40 or 50 years, the prospect of such a dramatic change can be deeply unsettling.

When the temperature starts to rise and the days lengthen, spring is clearly upon us. For many people, the changes of the season, from Winter to Spring, inspires them to declutter and spring clean their homes in preparation for the warm, sunny months ahead. This year why not also take the opportunity to give your finances a thorough dusting down, to ensure they are also in good shape for Summer and beyond? Here are a few tips to help you do it:

4. Choose the right time

As with many things in life, timing can be everything when it comes to asking for a pay rise. Don’t try to have a conversation with your manager in the middle of a busy office, at the end of another meeting or just because you are both in the kitchen making a coffee!

In an ideal world, our employers will always value the work we do and pay us what we are worth. That doesn’t always happen though. For many people, the pandemic has increased the likelihood of them feeling undervalued and underpaid, as working from home has made them less visible to their line managers, roles have changed, and greater demand is put on us in order to help our employers navigate what has been an economically challenging period.

A group of people who are frequently overlooked when it comes to financial tips and guidance are those who fall into the “middle earner” bracket. Middle earners are neither the highest paid, lowest paid, or the poor and, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (“OECD”) around 60% of workers across Europe fall into this category.

When it comes to creating a better financial future, we know it’s important to have an emergency fund which is easily accessible (see “Building an Emergency Fund”). For this reason, people will often save money in a bank account which ensures your money doesn’t decrease in value and you can usually access it if you need it. However, with interest rates being low it does mean that there is a risk your money doesn’t grow quickly enough in a bank account to keep pace with the increased cost of living.

Why is it that some people find money easy to deal with, regardless of how much they have, whereas for others it is a cause of stress and anxiety? Your relationship with money will be determined by the feelings and thoughts you have from your life experiences. It’s not simply about whether there was enough money in your household as you grew up though. If that were the case, people from poor backgrounds would always be bad with money, and the wealthy would always be good, which simply isn’t true.