Hello everyone, my name is Sophie Wreford and welcome to Episode 1 of Willday Podcasts. Today we will discuss a few tips and tricks for how to increase your savings and investments. I’ll briefly touch on best approaches for how to boost your savings and a few key techniques to help you achieve your financial goals, such as increasing your income, decreasing your expenditure, or amending your strategy or aims.

When considering the best approach to saving, there are a couple of things you have to think about. Firstly, ensuring these payments are committed and regular is one of the easiest ways to make sure that you’re going to be saving every month. Even if it’s little, ensuring it’s often and making these payments automatic can help you save more towards your retirement. The second thing is to ensure that you save before you spend. Warren Buffett says that you should be spending what is left after saving and not saving what is left after spending, which is what most of us do. However, unfortunately, recently people haven’t had as much disposable income with the cost of living increasing. So we’re going to discuss a few ways that you can still make the most of your savings and investments. We’re going to look at increasing your income, decreasing your expenditure, changing the amount of risk within your portfolio as well as changing the aims of your investments.

When considering your income level, it might seem a little bit facetious to say you want to increase your income—obviously all of us would love more income if we could have it. However, there are a few things you might realistically be able to apply in your life that you haven’t considered before. For example, are there any promotions available at your current job? Perhaps a new job in a similar field which pays better? It may require taking on an additional qualification or skill, however it can make you worth more to an employer in the longer term. While you might have to pay for some of these, there are now lots of free course options on platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube. Another thing you might not have considered is selling unwanted items. I don’t know about you guys, but my house is absolutely full of stuff that I don’t use and selling these on sites such as Vinted, eBay or Depop can be a great easy way to bring in some additional income.

My third tip is to just start a side hustle for some people this could look like literally just having a second job. For example, if you worked 9:00 to 5:00 in an office format, doing something that’s after hours so evenings or weekends can be helpful. Or there are now lots of online opportunities for people such as reselling items or what we call affiliate marketing, which where companies will literally pay you to just promote their product. Another option if you’re a homeowner, would be to rent out a spare room. As long as this income is kept below £7000 a year, there will be no additional tax to pay as you won’t have to claim it on a self-assessment.

Our second key topic is going to be looking at how to decrease your expenditure. One of the best ways to do this is actually to just set up a formal budget. It might take a little bit of time and effort initially, however, over the longer term, this can be really beneficial. Make sure that you don’t use a method that you’re not gonna actually utilise. For example, if you hate Excel, don’t put it on a spreadsheet. However, make sure that it is simple and effective, and it’s something that you are realistically going to be able to stick to. When setting up a budget, you have to get really brutal about what essential expenditure actually looks like for you. This only includes your non-negotiables, your bills. It doesn’t include the coffee that you get on the way into work every morning—I’m sorry. After you’ve determined what your essential expenditure is, everything that’s left over is what we call your discretionary spending and here is where we can make the most impact with your budget. In his book, The Automatic Millionaire, David Bach talks about what he calls the ‘latte factor’, and this is how really small expenditures of, you know, a few pounds a day add up to thousands over the years and can really make a difference in your savings and investments. You should cut any discretionary expenditure that you are able to, for example, walking instead of driving now that the sun has come out in the UK, cooking at home instead of dining out, taking a look at what you’re buying in the supermarket. You know, despite what they say, it doesn’t have to be Heinz everyone.

Having said all that, and while you should cut spending in areas, you are able to don’t stop doing things that you love altogether because it won’t be realistic to keep that budget in the longer term. If you love buying yourself lunch every day, just buy it once a week and bring it with you the rest of the week. Forcing yourself to stop doing everything you love is not going to be sustainable over the longer term, even though it might save you some money.

Our third key topic is taking more risk within your investments. As a general rule of thumb in investing, we say that if you take more risk, it’s likely that you will see a higher return. However, this obviously isn’t guaranteed. While it may well be advisable for you to increase the risk of your portfolio, you have to feel confident if you’re going to be doing this on your own. If you’re in a situation like this where you’re thinking about potentially taking some more risk, it’s really best to see a financial adviser. If you’re in the Leicester area, give us a call or come visit our offices!

Our final key topic today is changing your investment aims. For example, extending the investment timeline. While you may have wanted to retire at 60 and not 65, immediately you’ve got five more years of saving and investing to help you reach that goal.

Alternatively, you can just reduce your expectations. If you are hoping to retire on an income of £40,000 a year, decreasing this expectation to £35,000 a year means that you’ve got £5,000 less to fined. Even though you might not want to do this, it can really help make your goals that much more achievable.

Now I know that I have overwhelmed you with information today, but if there is one thing that you take away, please let it be the importance of monitoring your progress. There’s no point implementing something if you’re not checking that you’re staying on track.

Thank you so much for listening and joining us on our first episode of Willday Podcasts. If you’ve enjoyed listening, please give us a follow and share with a friend and stay tuned for Episode 2!