How to budget and save money

Saving money can seem so far away, it's hard to put the money away when you have so many things that you want to buy. Learn more about it here.

With your first job comes money!

Whilst it is great to have some financial freedom, knowing and understanding how to budget and save is key to you achieving goals and gaining your financial well-being.

Budgeting and saving are two main key factors in empowering you to make your own financial decisions.

Budgeting

Budgeting involves creating a structured plan for managing your incoming and outgoing money. Your budget will be your financial roadmap, helping you make informed decisions about spending and saving.

Saving

Savings, on the other hand, are the funds set aside for future use or unexpected expenses. This is the way to get to the bigger picture goal – like saving for a car, a holiday at the end of school or just affording a high-ticket item.

Together, budgeting and savings will create a strong financial foundation, promoting financial stability, reducing stress, and enabling you to make your financial dreams a reality. In this guide, we'll delve into the essential principles, strategies, and tips for effective budgeting and savings.

Now you know what a budget is, how do you get one?

A budget is a plan – the plan will detail your income and expenses over a specific period, like yearly, monthly or weekly.

To get started on a budget, it's best to write a list of all your expenses for the period (like monthly).

Expenses are the money that goes out. Things like your phone payments, subscriptions to services like YouTube, Spotify, Twitch, Patreon etc, gaming, meals, clothing and more.

Need some more help? Check out our Monthly Budget Planner here.

Once you have them all written down, then you can compare that list to how much money you make (your 'Income').

Your income could be money you are earning from your casual, Part-Time job or pocket money etc.

You can write the list down on paper, in a spreadsheet (both google sheets and Microsoft excel have templates!) or there are even apps that can assist you.

Some banking apps also have tracking for your expenses so that you can see all of the outgoing money when you use your card to buy things.

You can also add “savings” into your budget – this might be a set amount or everything that you have left over at the end of the month.

Let’s talk more about savings

A savings plan can help you break down a larger goal into smaller bites to make it easier to achieve.

For instance, you might want to buy a car when you turn 17 in two years, and you want to save $12,000 for this car.

If we break this down by months, you have 24 months to save which means you need $500 per month ($12,000/24 = $500)

or you might want to look at this weekly, you have 104 weeks to save which means you need to save $115 per week ($12,000/104 = $115).

Want to start small? Download our $250 Savings Tracker here!

Or get to that goal quicker and give yourself a challenge with our $1000 saving tracker!

Saving money can seem so far away, it's hard to put the money away when you can have so many things that you want to buy. This is totally true, although when you save now it will allow for more significant rewards in the future, this is called delayed gratification.

Find out more

It really depends on what you are saving for, if you have a specific goal, you can save that amount each week/month. Or if you don’t have a goal but want to start to put some money aside, you can put 10-20% of your pay away.
Many banks have savings trackers or goal setting in their mobile apps. You can add it to a spreadsheet or even better print out our savings trackers! We have one for $250 and $1000!
The savings goals are broken down into 20 bite sized chunks, each week/month you decide how much to put into your savings account and then you can cross it off or print it out and colour it in.
Yes, you can open a second bank account for savings. The benefits of this are that you can’t spend the money using your card unless you transfer the money from the savings account to the transaction account. The other benefit of a savings account is that some offer additional Interest available on the money you have saved.
Interest rates is a fee that you either pay or earn when you borrow or save money. When you borrow money (like get a loan) you pay the interest rate. When you save money, you earn the interest rate.
If you earn 4% interest on your saving account that means an extra 4% per annum, or year. And you have $5000 in your account your interest would be $200 per year in “bonus” money just for having your money in the bank. Most banks will pay this monthly and the next month you will get interest on the interest earnt! (This is called compound interest.
The more money you have in the account the more money that you make in interest, which means more money in the account and more interest! And this keeps on going whilst you have money in the savings account.

How to budget and save money

With your first job comes money!

Budgeting

Saving

Now you know what a budget is, how do you get one?

Let’s talk more about savings

Find out more

Find out more

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