Youth Tips

1. Power of time

Making a ton of money right now probably isn’t happening at the moment and may not be a big deal at the moment. What is a big deal? In this moment, in the past and future, is TIME! Your time matters and is a big deal throughout your life, time is something you can never get back so make sure every moment in your time counts. People usually do not think about or associate time with money, but your money has a lot of your time! Think about this:

At the end of your summer job, you invest $1000 at a 5% rate of return and let’s say for the next 50 years you contribute $0. Do you know how much you will have at the end of those 50 years? A total of $11,467.49. YES, that’s correct you will have $11,467.49 from investing $1,000.

If you had 30 years for your money to grow, you would have $4,321.99 at the end of those 30 years. Time is rarely on our side but it’s on your side if you start investing today.

2. Habits

Practice saving and investing money now earlier in life this will help build healthy saving habits that will stay with you throughout life. Take advantage of the time you have today, every dollar you earn from a job, an allowance or even if it’s a gift, practice the habit of saving a portion and investing in your future today!

3. Track Your Spending

Tracking money earned, money spent and money saved helps create a budget for you, allowing you to be able to track spending and saving patterns. You may be working jobs that usually pay in cash, and cash is hard to track, it tends to “burn a hole in our pockets”.

Best way to track cash income is to establish a relationship with Fort Worth City Credit Union for many reasons not only to track your income. In the future when you are ready to purchase a home and need a loan, a long track record with good history with your financial institution can be very helpful in the lending process. Research various types of accounts offered as you will find certain types of accounts charge fees for not maintaining a specific minimum balance or may require a minimum monthly deposit amount. You will want to open a checking and a savings account. Remember, you’re saving half of every dollar you get so half goes into checking and half into savings. Your spending money comes out of your checking account and you should never withdraw money from your savings account, only deposit money! You can get a debit card for your checking account to use for purchases and paying bills. You can also deposit money into your savings and checking account at an ATM using your debit card.

4. Get Educated

The more you know about money and finances and your money and finances the less stress you will have throughout life! There’s tons of money budgeting apps, online resources to help expand your knowledge about saving and investing and help guide you in building your portfolio. Mint, You Need A Budget and Quicken, are great for beginners and easy to use.

5. It’s So Early

If you ask people older than you what their biggest financial regret is, a lot of them will tell you that they wished they had started getting serious about money much earlier than they did. Remember, putting off saving and investing your money now gets more difficult for you to do the older you get. Don’t have the same regret decades down the road that so many adults have. Start saving now!