If you want to be truly well off, you need to aim to have savings and investments. These are the kinds of financial moves which have the power to create security and regular returns outside of a salary – and to generate the large sums of capital needed for buying property, ensuring a comfortable retirement and providing for family members. Creating investments should be the end game of your personal financial strategy.

If you’re reading this from a position where you’re living paycheck to paycheck, eking out those final few days before payday, perhaps caught between the demands of saving for a family home or higher education while still paying off one student loan and stuck in a cycle of escalating rent payments, the freedom and ease of having spare cash to invest can seem like a very distant prospect. But in fact, you can make it happen – you just need to create a plan and have the willpower to stick with it.

How To Get Cash To Invest

There are two main strategies to finding the cash to make investments. The first involves finding ways to boost your income, and the second involves identifying how you can cut your spending. You can choose to pursue one strategy or both – it all depends how serious you are about getting cash to invest. Either way, investing is a smart move which can offer you real financial independence, so it’s definitely worth some small sacrifices in order to get going. And the good news is you can start investing at any age – whether you’re a young adult who wants to set themselves up to travel the world or start your own business, a 40 something who wants to pay off the mortgage and the kids tuition fees or a senior citizen who needs to find a way to boost a fixed income which doesn’t involve going out to work, then you can give yourself financial freedom through investing wisely.

Pay Yourself First

This concept is part of a set of personal financial management tactics which have long been promoted by money gurus. The idea is simple – money comes into your account on payday. You pay all your outstanding bills. You pay the rest to retailers, restaurateurs and more as you spend your disposable income. But when do you get paid? Many of us have the ambition to save a set amount each month, but by the time it gets three weeks into the month, you’ve run out of cash and those good intentions never get fulfilled. Flip that cycle by setting up an automatic command with your online banking system to send money to savings the day it hits your account. Instead of an afterthought, saving then becomes a deliberate process. You can pick a certain amount or a percentage of your monthly wage. Automate the process so that you don’t have to think about it, and route the money direct into a hard-to-access high interest savings account or an investment account. That way you don’t have to think about it, and you can’t put it off. Pay yourself first and make savings and wealth creation your priority.

Choose To Spend Less

If we’re honest, most of us waste money on things we don’t need one way or another. It could be the sales ‘bargains’ which don’t fit properly and never get worn. It could be too many lunches out. Or it could be that daily latte we know well we could make at home. There aren’t many people who really can’t identify savings if they sit down and go over their personal budget. That process of budget review needs to be an ongoing thing which happens on a regular basis. This helps you to identify negative spending patterns and things like unused subscriptions that can easily be cut. Make a habit of going through your household expenses such as utilities to make sure you’re getting the absolute best deal by taking actions such as comparing electricity providers or hunting for cheap car insurance. Don’t assume your current provider is giving you a good deal – it pays to shop around for every purchase, from the routine to the extraordinary.

When you do buy things, try using cashback sites to claim back some money on every purchase. And if you do have any unsecured debt such as personal loans or credit cards, then try to get rid of it as quick as possible – all the cash you’re losing in interest payments, you could be investing for your future. Use snowballing to move debt onto an interest free platform and pay it back as fast as possible, or consider a debt consolidation loan if you have a lot of different things owing. Identify exactly how much you’re saving and instead of just allowing it to sit in your account to be frittered away, set up an order for that same amount to be transferred into savings or investment so that money doesn’t just melt away.

Turn Making Money Into An Art

Until you’re in the position where your investments are passively providing you with an income, you’re going to need to put the hustle in to earn some extra cash. The internet has opened up so many new avenues to make money aside from a full time job. From renting out your driveway with Just Park to hiring unused areas of your home to be used for storage, there are many avenues to monetising your space. You can also look at selling possessions that you aren’t using, and this can net you a fair amount if done right. You could even discover that you have a talent for selling, and become an eBay reseller – someone who uses local markets, carboots and charity shops to find items to resell for a higher price.

This can work especially well if you have a little specialist knowledge in a certain area, such as antique lighting, designer handbags or collectible children’s toys, as you are then able to spot the treasure that others take for trash. The Internet also offers plenty of opportunity for part-time virtual work, from getting paid to test out websites to working as a virtual PA. Casual piece work is easy to find and make some extra cash. Of course, if you have a particular talent, then you can use that as well. For example, love playing guitar? Set up to give lessons. Brilliantly artistic? Offer a portrait painting service. Love reading? Find some proofreading work. If you have some ingenuity there are lots of ways to create a little extra, and you can then use that cash specifically to invest, while your main occupation takes care of the bills.