Here's how to save $10,000 in 6 months.

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Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. In this video, we're going to be talking about how to save $10,000 in six months. This is a goal that I have set myself in the past; I've actually been able to achieve it quite a few times. So, in this video, I really just wanted to go through some of the pointers or really the strategy that I have used that's worked well for me and how you guys can also do the same.

So this is going to be a no BS video, we're not going to skirt around the issue; we're going to get really into the nitty-gritty: how you can actually implement a strategy and achieve the goal of saving ten thousand dollars in six months. All right, so let's get stuck into it.

The first step that you need to follow is that you have to understand where your money comes in from and where your money goes out to. Okay, you have to understand that balance for yourself. So it's not particularly glamorous, okay? It's not even particularly enjoyable; it's tedious, it's boring, but it is essential.

For example, statistics from the ABS say that the average full-time working Australian will earn about $1,714 each week, and statistics from MoneySmart showed that the average Australian that's under the age of 35, okay, single individual Australian will spend about $850 per week. What you need to do is you need to go through and figure that out for yourself.

So, like I said, it's not particularly glamorous, but the most thorough and the best way to do this is to log on to your bank account. Okay, go on to your online account and just have a look. Open up a quarter's worth of inflows and outflows, okay? All the transactions over the last three months; see if you can print that out or save it as a PDF or something, but have three months' worth of bank records and then start to categorize them.

So look at all of your income sources, categorize them, you know, full-time job income, and start tallying them up. Right? Tally up all those different transactions. Then, on the side of the expenses, you're obviously trying to categorize, you know, insurances, rent, groceries, eating out, leisure, online shopping, all of those different expenses that apply to you. Go through all those transactions and just list them, list them and tally up all the different categories to work out how much money you spend in each category, how much money comes in from your different categories of income, and how much money goes out through all your different categories of expenses.

So yes, it's going to be tedious, it's going to be annoying but it is definitely the critical first step that you have to go through so that you understand your personal financial situation.

All right, with that said, let's head in now into step two.

Okay, step two: once you've done step one, step two is all about figuring out how much more you need to save each week in order to hit your savings goal. So say you're bringing in $1,500 a week, somewhere around there, and say you're spending $1,300 a week. Okay, well obviously at the end of the week you're going to be saving $200. That's the first step because if you're at plus $200 a week, then just naturally you're going to save $5,200 across six months, across 26 weeks. Right?

So then the next step is to figure out how much more money do you need to save in order to hit your savings goal. In this case, we want to save $10,000 across six months. We know that just through what we're already doing now, we're going to save about $5,200. That means we need to find in six months an extra $4,800.

Then if you break it down, $4,800 divided by 26 weeks, then it means that we're going to have to try and find $184.62 extra each week. So what we've just done in that process is we've taken quite a lofty airy-fairy kind of goal of, you know, I want to save $10,000 in six months. We've taken that lofty goal, we've actually broken it down into clear steps or targets that we have to hit each and every week.

We know that we already go plus $200 bucks a week so we know that if we want to save $10,000 in six months, then we need to hit that extra $184-ish dollars every single week. So we've actually broken it down, and now we've got right in front of us a clear problem that we have to solve.

So that's good goal setting; we understand exactly what we need to do, and now the next step is figuring out exactly how we are going to do it. So we have two factors that influence how much money we're going to end up with at the end of the week: absolutely mind-blowing stuff.

The first factor is how much money we're pulling in, and then the next factor is how much money we're spending. Okay? So what we now need to do is go back to what we're doing in step one where we listed out all of our income and all of our expenses into different categories, and we need to find ways where we can come up with more cash.

So let's start by looking at some of those expenses. Say you're spending $80 a week in online shopping and maybe $50 a week in takeaway. Okay? If you can set yourself a task, a goal to just halve both of those expenses each week, then immediately you're going to save yourself an extra $65 per week.

Then we go, okay, so $184 minus $65, right? Now we only need to find an extra $119 per week. Then say, okay, well I'm currently working; maybe I could work a couple of extra hours per week. Say maybe it's not super realistic right now at this current time, but generally speaking, a lot of workplaces will allow their employees to take on a couple of extra hours per week, do a little bit of overtime, or whatever.

So say in normal conditions, you know, I might chip in and work an extra hour on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Okay? You know, $30 bucks an hour, that's $90 a week that you're going to get extra. Right? So immediately we can now take $90, okay, away from that $119 dollars that we needed, and now we only have to find an extra $29 a week in savings.

So maybe look back to your expenses. Do you have a gym membership? Does that cost you maybe $20 bucks a week? Is there an opportunity where you could cancel that and instead just do your workouts at the local park, or maybe at a running track, or you know, at the oval or something like that? Could you save that twenty dollars a week there?

Okay, well now we've got $29 down; now we only need to find $9 a week extra in savings, and then we've hit our target. So say maybe you're a big coffee drinker; maybe you go to work every day and buy a coffee. Now you don't have to give up coffee completely, but can you maybe go and buy coffee every second day instead of every workday? Well, there's your extra nine dollars.

And just by looking at a couple of these different expenses or maybe income categories and just tweaking them a little bit, then all of a sudden you can hit—I mean what I just said none of that was particularly unrealistic. It's not like I said, "Oh, you need to have a second job and you need to work an extra 20 hours a week or anything." No, no; all those things were genuinely pretty realistic.

Now for you, you might choose different expenses, and I didn't even touch on, you know, areas where you can save a lot of money, things like finding better bank accounts, or you know, finding a better home loan or something like that. So there are definitely different options. Now these ones might not work for you, but this is why it's so individual. You have to go through those categories yourself.

Say you absolutely love buying coffee; you can never live without, you know, buying coffee from your local barista, then don't worry about that expense. Maybe chip away something like buying clothes online or something like that. Chip away at a different expense.

But as you can see, even through this example, we were saving $200 bucks a week; we needed to find the extra $184, and you know we found a couple of different ways that were pretty realistic, and now we can do it. Now we're saving whatever it is, or whatever, and you know that applied over 26 weeks, and we are going to hit $10,000, 26 weeks, six months; we're going to hit the target of saving $10 grand in six months.

So it's not particularly revolutionary, but they're the big three steps that are actually going to help you set a financial goal, a savings goal, and actually go out and achieve it. Right? You first of all, you have to understand where your money is going, where it's coming in from, how much is coming in, where it's going out to, how much is going out; that's the first step.

Then the second step is figuring out how much extra per week you need to save to be able to hit the goal that you're looking at. And then thirdly, it's all about going back to those expenses and finding different ways that you can tweak the way you live or the expenses that you make or the income that you generate to actually make sure that you hit that extra little bit per week in savings so that over time, week after week after week, you actually hit your goal.

But even with that said, there is a key fourth step to actually making sure you achieve your goal, and this is by far the most important step. It is more important than the three steps I was just talking about just then.

And this important step, the fourth important step, is to actually make sure you follow through. Achieving a goal like saving this amount of money is going to require some unpleasant sacrifices. Right? There are going to be times where you get home from work and oh you just want to open up UberEats, and you just want to order that lasagna and have it delivered straight to your door. It's going to be unpleasant saying no to that and actually making that lasagna yourself. There are going to be sacrifices, but find whatever works for you.

Whatever you can use to motivate yourself; use all the tricks in the book to actually make sure that you follow through. Now obviously, you understand your motivational strategies much better than what I would, but for me, like just thinking about the end goal is oftentimes enough to keep me disciplined.

Just thinking about, you know, ten thousand dollars I'm going to have in six months if I follow this plan. I mean think about, you know, how rich you feel when you're just holding like, you know, five fifty-dollar notes in your hand. You know, you feel like you're the richest man alive. Well imagine instead of holding five of those fifty-dollar notes, imagine you're holding two hundred; that's ten thousand dollars. That's pretty motivating!

That certainly gets me fired up and ready to save some money! But you know, maybe that doesn't work for you; maybe it takes something extra. Maybe you need to embark on this challenge with a friend so that you too can keep yourselves accountable to this saving goal. Maybe you need to have, you know, a checklist that you come back in each week. You tick, tick, tick; I did this, I did this, I did this.

Maybe you set up, I don't know, some sort of scale beside your bed, and every week you move your scale along closer and closer to ten thousand dollars. Just find whatever works for you, whatever motivates you, whatever gets you geared up and ready to go and ready to smash some goals. Ready to go out and do a one-hour cycle class; use that as motivation to help you smash your savings goals.

Because although these numbers, like ten thousand dollars in six months, seems like a big goal and a lot of money—once you start breaking it down week by week and you know what you have to do in every single week and if you do those steps, then you know you're going to get there; then all of a sudden it does become much more realistic.

And if you can keep yourself motivated, then I absolutely guarantee you'll be able to do this. I, like I said at the top of the video, I've done it before; I've done it multiple times over, and it's all about just breaking it down step by step.

Okay, but anyway, that's it for this video guys. I hope you enjoyed it; I hope that kind of gave you an insight into how I apply myself and try and achieve these goals for me, these different steps that I take, and you know how I keep myself fired up and keep pushing towards these goals.

I'd love to hear from you guys; have you guys maybe achieved a big financial goal in the past? And how did you plan for it? What are some of the strategies that you put in place to keep yourself going, to make it breaking it down into perhaps realistic chunks, or just to keep yourself fired up for the journey, I suppose?

So anyway, leave that stuff down in the comments section below; leave a like on the video if you did enjoy it or if you found it useful. But that's it from me for today. If you'd like to learn about either some tax saving tips for Australians—if you're an Australian out there—or if you'd like to learn about my personal investing strategies, then definitely check out the links down in the description.

Go over to Profitful and check out. I've made some courses on those topics, so check those out. But that'll do me for today guys. Thanks very much for watching, and I'll see you guys in the next video. [Music]

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