Seven easy ways to achieve your financial goals

GUEST OBSERVATION

I want to share with you seven relatively easy ways to achieve your financial goals with very little personal effort. As I incorporated more and more of these small tips into my daily life, the savings started to add up and saved me thousands over the course of a year

Investors are constantly looking at ways of building wealth and accumulating assets with their focus is driven by working harder to generate more money to then invest in either, property, shares or cash. Therefore the majority of our focus is (rightly so) on our balance sheet and we pay less attention to our profit and loss. I focus on both which has helped me to build equity and wealth more quickly. At the end of the day the result is about net worth, the gap between the gross value of my assets and any debt owing.

Most Australians have debt, so let me explain some very simple strategies that have worked for me and has helped me accelerate my wealth without costing a penny. A reminder that this is of a general nature and for specific advice you should seek professional advice.

1. I prepared a personal family budget and paid attention to the detail, I was surprised how quickly I was spending money because I was not paying attention.  I also found out that Australia is an expensive country to live in. I put pen to paper to work out where my income was coming and what were my weekly and monthly expenses, basically what it cost me to live. It then allowed me to look at excessive spending and what areas could be cut back or reduced and allowed me to work out what I could put aside as if it was ‘OUT OF BOUNDS’ from a spending point of view. I sit down on a regular basis to review this and opened a separate Account to place these excess funds out of harms way and I watched the balance grow.
   
   
2. I contacted various Banks and asked for a discount on my current mortgage rates. I armed myself with competitors rates and used that as leverage and the threat of moving.  Believe me, one five minute phone call saved me thousands. I have done it successfully on numerous occasions.
   
   
3. Commentators use the term good debt (being debt that is tax deductible for example i.e. interest paid on an investment property loan) and bad debt (debt that the interest is not tax deductible i.e. your home Loan). I focused on reducing the bad debt that is not deductible, i.e. my personal home loan, credit card or car and make sure my investment loans are interest only facilities. This will still increase my overall equity but the tax benefits will help me improve my cash flow which in turn will allow me to either invest further or access the increased equity in later life.
   
   
4. I pay my mortgages on a weekly or fortnightly basis, after all the banks calculate interest daily! Who made the rules that you have to pay monthly? I contacted my bank and requested that I pay the repayments on a more regular basis…once again one phone call and its done and saved me thousands in interest over a loan period.
   
   
5. I use my credit card sensibly and use and manage the credit terms on offer versus borrowing. For example if my credit card cycle is the 20th of the month I defer payments till the 21st if possible which will gives me potentially up to 50 days before actual payment is due all interest free. Not bad trading terms.
   
   
6. I created an offset account so that any surplus funds are offset against my mortgage to reduce and save the interest.
   
   
7. I have shares and investment properties that are negatively geared so I arrange a pay as you go variation at the beginning of each year, this basically means that rather than wait till the end of the year to get a tax refund my weekly, fortnightly or monthly pay-packet are automatically increased by the refund amount. I can now use this extra cash to pay off the home loan or add to my investment portfolio.

These are simple but effective strategies that have been effective for me by increasing my cash flow which in turn, helps me to reduce my debts and add to my asset portfolio.  These small changes have resulted in significant savings.

David Naylor is co-founder and non-executive director of Chan & Naylor.