Earning Money and Spending Wisely

Earning money. Earning money refers to receiving money as payment for the work you do, your behavior, and your achievement.

Spending wisely. Spending wisely refers to getting the most from the money you earned. Spending wisely will go hand in hand with saving and budgeting.

Relationship Between Earning Money and Spending Wisely.

Earning money can be referred to as cash coming in while spending can be referred to as cash going out. Therefore, balancing between earning and spending is very important. Earning more than you spend will lead to increased savings while spending more than what you earn will lead to debt.

Therefore, understanding your earnings, tracking your spending, sticking with a budget, and saving money is very important to your financial growth.

How You Can Earn Money.

There are different ways of earning money.

1. Gifts from parents, guardians, friends, and family members.
2. Work as your parent’s helper. Such as assisting in cleaning and organizing a house, washing cars, weeding the garden, assisting with babysitting, picking groceries, collecting eggs, and other tasks.
3. Tutoring your peers. Tutoring young students is done in different ways such as teaching young students in subjects you are good at, teaching a sport (e.g., Tennis, gymnastics, swimming, football, e.tc.), and teaching music lessons playing guitar, piano, and voice lessons.
4. Starting a YouTube channel and social media channels. You will be paid for the views you have per video on your YouTube channel. You can also promote your products on your YouTube channels.
5. Turning your hobbies into cash. This may involve creating artwork (drawings paintings, decoration, photography, carving, writing poems and stories), and selling both locally and online.

Tips for Spending Wisely

1. Have a budget. Budgeting is planning how to spend your finances in the future based on your income. When developing the budget, it is important to set your budget within the money you receive. Ensure your budget is realistic. Prioritize your basic needs over your wants.
2. Track your spending. It is a great idea to track how you are spending money through M-PESA GO statements even if you are sticking to your budget. Analyze and evaluate your spending and adjust, reduce, or even eliminate some expenses.
3. Set a limit on your spending. You can set a limit within a specific period. For example, M-PESA GO will help you set daily, weekly, or monthly spending limits. Setting a limit will help you control your impulse purchases as well as help you to spend within your budget. Impulse spending refers to spending on your finances without advance consideration.
4. Have a saving Plan. It is important to create a savings plan and set a realistic goal for saving money.
5. Do not be shy about asking for discounts. There is no problemin asking for a discount before you spend your money on different products such as clothing, books, laptop, and mobile phone. This will reduce the amount of money you spend on the product, hence increasing your savings.
6. Stop trying to impress your friends and colleagues. Most teenagers try to impress other friends so that they can draw people’s attention by creating an image of “AM better than you”. Another reason for trying to impress others is to fit into a certain group. As a result, you end up buying things you do not need or things you have not planned for.

Advantages of Spending Wisely

1. Helps you save for emergency situations.
2. Enables you to invest the extra money.
3. Helps you to avoid unnecessary debts.
4. Leads you to get more goods and services for a lesser price.
5. Reduce unnecessary buying and spending.