Tips to Help Save Money for Your First Home

It's 2022, you’re ready to buy a house and now you have the stress of figuring out how you are going to save enough money. Well, the first step in saving for a house is figuring out how much house you can afford.  Reach out and connect with a lender that can walk through what you qualify for, do you need to do credit repair,  and what should you expect to have set aside.    Give me a call, text or email and I will share a few lenders that I have worked with over the years that we trust.  

Once you have that number ballparked, can see how much you need to save and start the process. It doesn’t have to be painful, just follow these 5 tips and you’ll be saving money in no time.    

Budgeting

Budgeting can seem stressful, but it doesn’t have to be. There are many different choices of apps that will do all the work for you and even give you suggestions on how to better manage your spending habits. Apps such as Mint and PocketGuard give insight on what you have been spending your money on and give you tips on how to cut back and save more money.  The interfaces on both apps make it easier to see where your money is going by utilizing different graphs to make it easier to read.

Set up an automatic savings

For people who don’t find themselves putting money aside very often, this can be an easy option. Depending on your budget you can set up an automatic transfer from your accounts on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly schedule, whichever fits your lifestyle best. This is a “set it and forget it” option that will be building up savings before you know it.

Get a side hustle

Today more than ever there are so many options out there for people to earn more money with a second job or “side hustle”. Consider driving for a rideshare service or delivery such as Uber and UberEats where you can work whenever you are able to with no set hours or minimum requirements. If you are a dog person you might find dog walking or pet sitting more of your style. There are many apps out now that allow you to easily connect with people who need their dog walked or somebody to watch them for a day/night. The best part about all of these options is that they won’t interfere with your current job.

Put retirement savings on hold

If you are young and actively contributing to your retirement fund, then you can put it on pause and start putting that money into a savings account instead. Saving for retirement is stressful by itself so you just need to remind yourself this is a short-term option to help boost your savings.

Take care of your debt

Saving might seem impossible especially if you have other debt obligations to take care of. Knocking down some of your outstanding debt first will help free up more money to put toward a savings account. If you have high-interest loans, consider refinancing them and if you have a high credit card balance, try to put as much as you can to that to help in the long run with saving money.