Sure you can pay attention on penny stocks to watch when it comes to investing, but before you go down that road, it’s a good idea to take a look at your overall personal finance to ensure you’re on the right track. Although it may be decades before you retire, it’s never too early to start preparing, so the better money moves you can make now, will set you up for success in the present and future, the more you can free up extra money.
Check Your Credit Report
With the amount of fraud there is these days you never know who has your info, whether it was stolen at the gas pump, or while you left it out paying a bar tab, even stores and credit bureaus are having information compromised, so it’s a good idea to check to ensure all accounts are up to date and accurate. The major credit bureaus offer a free copy of your credit report, although you will have to see your credit score on your monthly credit card statements to ensure you continue to trend in the right direction.
Take Advantage of Credit Card Rewards
There are so many credit cards out there these days that you probably get hounded with offers every day. Instead of putting them directly in the trash or recycle bin, check out the rewards. By selecting a card with cashback rewards in the form of points or dollars just by making the purchases you would be making anyways, so ignoring this benefit would be leaving free money on the table. APR is important, but you should avoid carrying over a balance each month as that just leads to debt problems down the road, sometimes making it hard to get out, so it’s best not to even start now.
Reduce Unnecessary Expenses
To really free up extra money you need to reduce your hard-earned dollars that are going out, so that may involve making sacrifices. A good place to start is avoiding going out to eat and opting for going grocery shopping instead, as preparing meals at home instead of going out or grabbing carrying will have instant savings. Beyond that, if you are looking to save a hundred or two, you can get rid of cable, that you probably don’t watch many of the channels anyways to necessitate paying every month, where you can go for a streaming service instead, of which you’re probably paying for one now anyways.
Build Yourself a Cushion
You never know what life will throw at you so it’s best to be as prepared as you can be. If you can put a few months’ worth of expenses in an account to have in case unexpected charges do come up such as car repair, vet bill, or even a job loss, you can avoid putting on a credit card and save yourself from probably going into debt for a while if you’re not able to cover now, and paying back monthly will interest will throw your budget off for sure.
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