Frugality cannot be the sole cornerstone of our personal finance strategy.Because we can’t save more than what we earn and saving by itself leads to losses, due to inflation devaluing your money.

Saving Through Frugality

You should automate what you can so you don’t have to keep off the discipline to do those things. Automating aspects of your personal finance can afford you more time and mental capacity to focus on other aspects of life.

Automation Is Easier Than Discipline

When you buy mutual funds, you are charged a purchase fee upfront. This is a one-time payment to the fund management institution. Annually, you will be charged with a percentage of management fees, commonly known as “expense ratio”, which can be expensive.Beware when advisors at your bank recommend mutual funds to buy. They might be earning a sales commission.

The Problem With Mutual Funds

“It’s not about your resources, it’s about your resourcefulness.”

<ol><li>Saving: automatically transfer every month from your income into a savings account. </li><li>Investing: do “dollar-cost averaging” if you’re familiar with the cave eats of trading stocks, ETFs, bonds or mutual funds. It consists of a stock trading account set to automatically buy them for a fixed amount of money every month.</li><li>Reinvesting: reinvest the yields from your investments by instructing your manager to buy stocks with the money.</li></ol>

Automating For Better Personal Finances

One way to save money is to identify and cut down on recurring expenses that don’t add value to your life. A good rule of thumb is to cancel if it is something you might want to use “someday.”Even if the recurring expense offers you value, you can investigate how you can reduce it without sacrificing comfort in your daily life.

Reduce Recurring Expenses

<ul><li>Financial fees. Consider negotiating them with your banker or changing banks. </li><li>Interest for short-term debt. If you cannot avoid it completely, then use a bank that charges less interest.</li><li>Stocks brokerage account fees. Usually comes as monthly account fees and trading fees. </li><li>Mutual funds management fees or “expense ratio.” Those are charged annually and can go over 2%. </li></ul>

Common Recurring Expenses

By following the conventional path of "school to loan to university to work" you risk running into serious debt. Being creative is a potential way to lessen or eliminate that.Maybe finding a different and cheaper way of doing the same thing, doing a yard sale or getting a side job… Put your mind to it and you may find ways to get a financial boost.

Be Creative To Afford What You Want

In personal finance, using frugality to save money is an obvious option. The less money you spend, the more money you save. You can find thousands of blogs with tips on not buying your espresso at a coffee shop, making your own soap or thrift shopping.

The Problem With Mutual Funds

Personal finance tips that don't require frugality

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