7 Ways To Build Your Wealth In 2015

A new year brings renewed energy to strive for one’s goals and dreams. And key to that pursuit is money.Whether you’ve set your sights on launching a business or buying a house, you can’t achieve it without having enough cash. Even if your dream is to spend more time with family, what will free up that time is having the financial security to not need to spend those precious hours working.

1. Cut the excesses 
Take a look at your monthly and annual recurring expenses:rent gym membership, phone, cable, Internet, DSTV,GOTV etc, bank fees, credit card annual fee, car insurance. Which of these do you no longer use much? If you have  Premium DSTV subscription and you don't watch at least 60% of the channels. Cut the subscription.
Scrutinize every monthly expense this way — against usage and value — and cut or lower any that you’re not using or that aren’t providing you your money’s worth.

2. Get a budget you can stick to.
If you find it hard to stay on track with your budget, keep it simple. Start with your take-home pay, which should already be reduced by the amount of your pension.
Subtract housing, transportation, utilities and feeding (force yourself to stick to a figure you know you can hit every month). Ideally, they should total no more than 50% of your monthly take-home.
Then take at least 20% of that amount to allocate for debt, savings. This is your financial goals money.
With the remaining amount (which should be no more than 30% of your monthly paycheck), divide that by 4.33 to get your weekly allowance. This amount is what you have to spend on everything else: clothing, dining out, entertainment, classes, household supplies, toiletries, books, etc. Take it out in cash weekly, spend it down until it’s gone and then get creative until the next week.

3. Make a plan to get out of debt.
 As long as you stick to a budget that keeps you from going further in the red and follow a plan to pay down your debt, all it will take is time until you’ve paid it off. To get started now, make a list of all your debts by interest rate, ordered highest to lowest, plus their minimum monthly payments. From now on, take your financial goals money and apportion it toward the debt, paying minimums on all your debt except the highest interest-rate one, which gets the rest of the money. After you pay that debt off, move your second-highest interest-rate debt into the top spot and repeat.


4. Earn more money.
To get out of debt faster, make more money any way you can. Come up with a plan for requesting a raise, and then ensure your success by avoiding these mistakes.
Also, pick up a side job and shovel the extra income toward your debt: Pick up freelance work, start generating passive income, declutter and sell your discards such as electronics or designer items, do odd jobs online, tutor, and do whatever else you can to earn an extra naira. Then — and this is the crucial last step — take what you earn and ship it off to your creditors.


5. Automate your savings.
If you don’t have debt, take that financial goals chunk of your take-home pay, and put it toward savings and retirement. (Depending on your debt vs. savings vs. retirement savings and timeline, you may also want to work toward two or all three goals simultaneously.) After subtracting the amount to contribute to retirement (more below), decide how much you can allot to your savings goals. The calculation will be based partly on how much those items cost, your timeline, and however much you can spare of the 20%, whether it’s the full amount or just a portion of it.

6. Remind yourself what you’re saving for.
Sometimes, delayed gratification is a drag. To stave off spontaneous purchases not aligned with your goals, put visual reminders of what you’re saving for in places where you’ll see them: a photo of Patagonia on your desk, a shot of your dream house on your fridge, the logo of your new venture inside your wallet. Whatever you’re dreaming of, get an irresistible image of it, and put it in places you frequently see so you don’t forget the reason for all these budget rules.


7. Set up a regular transfer and purchase of investments.
To automate your savings, set up weekly, biweekly or monthly transfers into your savings account, and then also be sure to set up a regular purchase of the investments you’ve chosen for your account so your transfers don’t sit in cash but get invested right away. As for how to invest, follow three main rules: keep your costs low, diversify with investments like index funds, exchange-traded funds or target-date funds, and be as tax-efficient as possible,

It’s not fun, but building wealth often comes down to fairly mundane habits like the ones listed above. If you can follow through on all the above tips for the rest of the year, come December, you’ll be looking at a higher net worth figure, appreciating your progress toward your goals or savoring the joy of achieving them.