How to pay yourself first

It’s the best way to save money – setting money aside every time you get paid. Send a chunk of money to your savings before your bills. This way you make sure saving is a priority for you and your whānau, and money is flowing towards your goals.

When your pay gets put in your bank account who actually gets paid from it? Your landlord? The bank and mortgage repayments? The power company? Your favorite takeaways? What about you?

When you get paid, pay yourself first.

Now I know what you're thinking. What does that even mean?

Well, each time you get paid the first thing you should do is send a chunk of money to your savings and investments. Before you pay things like bills and shopping, and takeaways, and everything else. That will make such a difference to building a savings habit.

So if you really want savings, then pay yourself first. To do this, make a separate savings or investment account and set up an automatic payment as soon as your pay comes in. If you and your partner or whanau are saving together you can also make it a joint account. That way you can be sure you're actually getting paid and keeping some of your money.

Chances are that if we don't prioritize it and we pay our bills and do our weekly spending and then some unexpected
spending, and then a few treats, there won't be anything left over to save.

It's a good idea to define why you are saving to make it meaningful. Set some goals that reinforce what you wanna have what you wanna do, what you wanna be in the future and then pull yourself towards it by paying yourself first. You deserve to keep some of your money and have your money flowing towards your goals.

So how much should you pay yourself? Well, if your debts are under control, then make it count. Be generous to yourself
and pay yourself enough to move towards your goals, but not so much that you have to borrow money at high interest rates or miss any debt repayments.

Start with a small amount and build the habit of making payments consistently for a couple of months in a row. ]And then see if you can increase it over time.

Check out the Sorted budgeting tool. It'll help you work out how much you can save towards your goals.

You can even set up separate bank accounts for your different goals. Have one for the house deposit, one for the whanau holiday, one for Christmas presents, maybe even one for the wedding. And then you can confidently sit back and watch your savings grow.

So pay yourself first to make savings a priority for you and your whanau.