Money as a Tool: How to Make Money Work For You

Learning how to make money work for you is essential if you want to build wealth. 

As human beings, we can only work for a certain number of hours in a day and a certain number of years in a lifetime. Consequently, our ability to make money is limited. 

However, money can work for us 24/7 for as long as we want, without getting tired. This is because money well invested can earn compound returns, ad infinitum. 

So, the best way to generate wealth is to use money as a wealth-generating investment tool. 

In this article, we will consider how to make your money work for you. 

Getting a control over your money

Everyone who works with a tool knows that you cannot use it to achieve a goal unless you have learnt to take control of the tool. An uncontrolled tool cannot be used in any profitable way. 

Therefore, the first step to making your money profitable is to take control of it. 

A good way to do this is to start creating a budget. With a budget, you tell your money where it should go instead of wondering where it has gone. 

The 50/30/20 rule is a popular budgeting system where you spend 50% of your income on needs, 30% on wants, and 20% on savings/investment. With this system, you more easily take control over your finances.

In addition to budgeting, you also need to invest in your financial education. The best way to control a tool is to understand its functionality. It’s the same with money. 

The more you understand it, the more you can benefit from it.

Creating a plan for your money

Once you have a hold on money as your tool, you’ll need to give it targets to achieve. Control without purpose is useless in the end. 

In the budgeting system we identified above, you can set aside 20% of your income for savings/investments. 

This 20% is the core tool for wealth generation that will earn compound interest when invested. 

But before deploying this 20% of your income, you must create an investment plan. The plan will include: 

• Personal financial goals: Why do you want to build wealth? To buy your own house? To pay your children’s school fees with cash? To leave wealth for the next generation? Whatever it is, ensure you have your financial goals clear in your mind (and your paper). It is these goals that will determine how you deploy your money. 

• Investment strategy: An investment strategy is a description of the method or system you will use to direct the 20% of your income to achieving your financial goals. Do you want to be a passive investor and invest in a portfolio of index funds or ETFs designed by a robo-advisor? Or do you want to be an active investor and build your own portfolio? Do you want to use dividend investing or growth investing to achieve those goals? 

Your investment plan must be comprehensive and well-directed towards the achievement of your goals.  

Sending your money to work

Once you have gained control over your money and created a plan for it, you can start using it to achieve your goals according to the stated plan. 

Two points are important here: 

• Stick to your budget: Creating a budget is not enough, you have to stick to it to make it work. If you are tempted to spend your savings or investment, you can automate your investment so that the amount devoted to investing can be automatically deducted from your account before you get a chance to spend it. 

• Stick to your plan: Don’t be driven by the fear and greed cycle or be controlled by what’s currently happening in the market. Stick to your investment plan as long as it has been well devised to achieve your financial goals. 

As you keep deploying the savings/investment portion of your budget to your investment plan, your money keeps growing, compounding day in and day out. Before you know it, you have already built enough wealth to achieve your financial goal(s).  

Conclusion

Sarwa is a digital investment platform that provides investors with a suite of tools that can be used to deploy money according to your unique financial goals and investment strategy. There is Sarwa Invest, which offers an automated portfolio for passive investors, and Sarwa Trade, a stock trading app for active investors.

With Sarwa, you can enjoy the benefits of compounding interest as you grow your money through various investment tools designed to fit your specific needs and risk tolerance. 

Read also: How to Make Money on YouTube: 6 Effective Strategies