When it comes to expanding your budget, many people discuss the benefits of diversifying your income streams. This is an amazing step to take and will serve you well in creating more space in your budget. Sure, you need an upfront investment/spend to realize these 3 ways to save money for long-term.
However, you should also be considering ways to reduce your crucial expenses. Electricity, transport and a roof over our heads are expenses that nobody can really eliminate from their expenses – they’re non-negotiable needs that we can’t go without.
While this is something that will never change, there are ways to drastically reduce and even completely eliminate these needs from our monthly or weekly budgets.
Here’s how you can manage that.
Solar Energy
We all need to power our homes and lives. We need electricity for light, cooking, heating, cleaning, entertainment, everything.
The truth is, we use a lot of energy.
This might be an expense that you don’t really consider, but you could remove your electric bill from your budget by going solar.
Switching to solar is an expensive investment, but in a few years, it will be paid for and then you can start reaping the benefits of one less expense on your budget and more dollars in your pocket.
There are various options and solutions to look into, such as deep cycle solar batteries, solar panels, and others on the market.
Get in touch with a professional to find the best option for you and your home.
Electric Vehicles
The future of internal combustion engines is looking grim. Not only is our traditional way of travel expensive, but it’s terrible for the planet and our lungs as well.
Switching over to electric might be the best solution for you.
With more and more EVs popping up in the market, your choices are getting vaster and soon, going electric won’t be any more expensive than buying a ‘normal’ car.
If you combine the above two forces and decide to go solar and purchase an electric vehicle, you won’t even be spending any money on charging your car.
The maintenance costs on electric vehicles are far lower than ICEs, which means your monthly and yearly vehicle costs will be reduced to a negligible amount.
Buying Property
This is a huge investment to make, but it’s an important consideration if you’re the type of person who wants to settle down.
Monthly or weekly rent is an expense that cripples many people across the world.
The need for a roof over your head can’t be avoided and rent and utilities are expensive in most countries.
Buying property and paying a mortgage instead of rent won’t necessarily make any improvements to your budget for many, many years.
However, once your mortgage is paid, you’ll be living in your own home at no cost other than your own maintenance.
The idea of owning property appeals to many since your monthly repayments are going towards ownership of something, rather than straight into someone else’s back pocket.
An extra benefit is that if you do end up wanting to move out of your home, you can rent it out and bring in a passive income.
Overall good points about saving money, but I’m still on the fence about getting an electric vehicle for many reasons, especially in rural areas. As it stands now in many countries around the world who have EVs, they are using electricity generated from coal power plants and are lowering the baseload power from the grid. They are also not environmentally friendly when you consider the inputs needed (raw materials) and mining and refining to create all of those batteries and components. And what do you do when the batteries go dead? I’ve read somewhere that a new EV can cost less than replacing the batteries.