 The need to save in today's age cannot be overemphasized. As a young person, you will certainly aspire to have a higher income someday so that you can afford the things you want. Waiting on promotion is not a good plan, you may get fired. The 2020 pandemic has clearly shown why savings is so important. When you have savings, you can plan towards investing from the money saved, you can even afford things that you want when you save a huge amount of money over time. In today's video, I'm going to share with you 14 strategies to reach your saving goals faster in your 30s. If you're new here, click the subscribe button for more awesome videos like this one. 1. Create a monthly budget. This seems like a no-brainer and yet so many people spend without a budget, sitting down to write a list that will decide what to spend on can seem stressful. Luckily, there are apps that can help you create a budget. Some of them even save the budget and suggest it so that you don't have to rewrite the entire list for the next month. 2. Pay yourself. This is a core personal finance principle that helps you to work hard towards your financial freedom. If you work very hard and you are paid $100,000 per month, for example, and you save 60% and then spend the rest on transport, feeding, utilities, rent and subscriptions. Do you think you'll be happy in 6 months time? The answer is yes and no. You'll be happy because you're meeting your financial savings goal. However, you'll be unhappy because all the money seems to be going somewhere and none of this is coming to you. 3. Join a savings community. It may amaze you just how easy it is to save when you do it with other people. You don't have to save in the same accounts with them. I personally don't recommend it. You can join to be motivated by the stories of others who have successfully saved and met their financial goals. Some people have become millionaires through savings. 4. Open several savings accounts. You may have realized by now that saving for your personal development and luxury in the same account is a disaster. You will hardly have anything left for personal development. What you can do is to have several accounts and save in different ones for different purposes. That way, you'll be able to track your finances better. Some savings apps will allow you to put more than one debit card. This is especially useful when you have several accounts, designate the account properly and save them from there. It may also be platforms that allow you to use one account but have several saving wallets. That way, you avoid the stress of opening accounts in the bank. 5. Cut down on luxury items. Luxury items are the bane of financial freedom. If you don't leave below your income now, you may never have a time when you can. It may not be easy, but you have to try. Having one more burger may affect your budget for the month and make you take a loan to cover something else or reduce your savings to accommodate it. It is just better to let them be. Once you've met your goals, then you can splurge. 6. Turn off your TV. Did you know that your TV may be making you unproductive? How many hours do you spend on TV in a day? Probably an average of 3 hours. If you spend 3 hours and 5 hours daily, ticking up freelance jobs and delivering, how much would you have at the end of the month? Assuming each job pays you an average of $25 per job and you have 2 jobs a day. If you worked every day in the entire month, you would have made $750. Why are you losing your money on your TV? Watching TV during the weekend is not bad, but watching TV every day may be costing more in productivity than you care to know. 7. Increase your income stream. Your stream of income is important. The more streams of income you have, the faster you can meet your financial goals. How many streams of income do you currently have? This will determine how fast you can meet your targets. You can increase your streams of income by learning new skills so that you can start earning from them, starting a side hustle or applying for promotion. 8. Set savings target for each month. It is imperative that you have an amount in mind for each month. This is to help you not feel like you are not living anymore because you are saving all your money for a largely uncertain future. Instead, set a target that is at least not above 30%. That way, you can still live your life and do whatever you want to do. 9. Automate your savings. This is actually to help you follow up with your savings. If you have a savings app, automate your savings. This function will enable them to withdraw the set amount in a monthly basis. This process is automatic. You don't even have to set a reminder. The app collects the money as soon as you get the paycheck. Imagine if you didn't have to make the decision. It can improve your savings by 19% if you don't fall into the temptation of deactivating it. 10. Save from every income you get. This is the hard part. When you have saved from your main income source, if you also save a portion of every other income into your savings, you will meet your target faster. However, you cannot automate this one because it requires you to actually save it yourself on the savings app. Unless your savings app has a feature that can apply a 30% deduction on all income into your account. But then, this could mean that even money that is earmatched for business will be included in the deduction. This is why you can't automate this type of saving. Discipline yourself until you can do it comfortably. Your future self will thank you for it. 11. Use savings app. Instead of using a traditional piggy bank, use a savings app. Piggy banks are ideal for coins. There are also small saving boxes that serve as savings save. The problem is that you have the code to lock it and unlock it at any time. Typically, savings apps will charge you for a percentage of your money as a penalty if you withdraw before the time is up. This ordinarily means that you will be less likely to withdraw from a savings app than you will from a piggy bank. People break their piggy banks all the time in America. 12. Track your goals. How much do you want to be worth in the next 10 years? How much do you need to save to invest in the instruments that will help you have that? It is always good to outline your financial goals clearly. That way, you can tell when you will reach it. If your target is $1 million, you should be able to, at every point in time, tell how long it will take you to get there with your rate of savings. If you cannot, you're probably not following it up. Do you know how depressing it can be if after two years, you can't really tell if you're meeting your goals or not. 13. Set your goals on days that have meanings to you. It is best to make financial goals on days that have meanings to you. Dates like birthday or new years might propel you to work harder than you ordinarily would on a normal day. This is perhaps because those days call for introspection. They are the few days when you actually sit down to think about your life. Your birthday is one of those days. Find the courage to try. Your life is in your hands and no one can change it. Accept you. 14. Set realistic goals. What is worse than setting unrealistic goals is setting no goals at all. Do not set goals that will make you doubt if it is possible. For example, don't give yourself a target of one year to make $1 million from an income of $70,000 per annum, even if you save $1,750 a month, which is 30% of $5,833 with the above income per annum. You will only have $21,000 a year from savings if you are consistent. At that rate, it will take you 47 years to become a millionaire. This isn't something very appealing, is it? You are better of searching for a higher paying job and freelancing to support your goals.