Shop Wisely
Spend Wisely
   Save Wisely
    with eWyzly

“Pay yourself first” is the first rule of personal finance. This means saving money from every paycheck before paying for rent, utilities, food, transportation or entertainment.

Why?  Because you’re working to make your life better, not to pay off your landlord’s mortgage or enrich the electric company’s shareholders.

When you start to save, it’s important to open up a savings account.  If you leave your savings in your checking account, it will most likely disappear on pizza and beer. 

If you’re not making a lot of money, savings will be hard, but not impossible.  Click here for 20 simple ways to save money without tightening your belt too much.  Even if you make good money, saving could be difficult, because most of us expand our lifestyle to fit our paycheck.

If you’re young, it doesn’t really matter how much you save today. The most important thing is to develop a habit of consistent savings.  It could be as little as $10 a week. True, this will not make you financially independent, even when invested wisely, but once you’ve established a savings habit, you can easily increase your contribution as your circumstances improve.

How much should you save? Set an initial savings goal of three to six times your monthly cost of living to get you through a temporary job loss or other emergency like the COVID lockdown.”

Most of us work hard for our money.  When we invest, we put our money to work for us.

After you fund your rainy-day account, you can start to think about investing.  Lower risk investments like municipal bonds earn less money. Higher risk investments like stocks earn more, but put you at greater risk of loss. This is why most people balance potential gains and losses by diversifying their investments with a mix of stocks, bonds, cash, and other assets.

In a well-balanced portfolio, gains in one asset class will offset losses in another with the idea that total asset value will grow over time.  As your personal goals and circumstances change and as market conditions vary, it’s a good idea to review and rebalance your portfolio every year or so.

If you’re young with a long investment horizon, you can afford to invest more of your money in stocks with the expectations of higher returns.  Even if the market turns south several times, you have plenty of time to recover before reaching traditional retirement age. 

If you don’t have the intestinal fortitude for high risk stocks, you should consider a more conservative approach to investing.  Likewise, if you’re older and don’t have the luxury of time, a lower risk investment strategy will help protect your principal investment, even if it means lower returns.

A few years ago, I wrote The $500 Cup of Coffee, a Lifestye Approach to Financial Independence.  At the time, my sister, Kristin, was the primary breadwinner for a family of four. Working from home while homeschooling her son, Max, she was very busy and under a lot of stress.  She’d relax by shopping online.  Most of the time she didn’t buy anything.  She just looked.

After our conversation, I began to think about how people shop for lots of reasons beyond acquiring stuff, like relaxation, socialization and stress relief.

Who hasn’t benefited from a healthy dose of retail therapy? Unfortunately, buyer’s remorse frequently sets in when the credit card bills arrive.  I began to wonder about boosting the shopping experience by transforming spending into savings.

The Fun Way to Shop, the Smart Way to Save

Several years after publishing The $500 Cup of Coffee, I finally translated my thoughts into action.  With the help of others, I developed eWyzly to help shoppers build wealth over time through consistent savings.  Taking a fun approach to the serious business of personal finances and money management, eWyzly plays like a game that rewards you for saving.