Financial advisers offer money saving tips as inflation rises

Everywhere you look, prices are going up, making it hard to stay afloat, let alone save for a rainy day

GOLDEN TRIANGLE, Miss. (WCBI)- Everywhere you look, prices are going up, making it hard to stay afloat, let alone save for a rainy day.

“Whether it’s eggs or a gallon of milk so you have to have a budget and know what your fixed expenses are, but you also need to have some wiggle room in there some excess that hopefully you can put into savings, but if costs keep going up, you’ll have somewhere to go to,” said financial adviser of Finacial Concepts Scott Ferguson.

Ferguson said he anticipates prices will begin to decrease soon but knows that they will trend upward again eventually.

That’s why he and his team try to help people learn to save for a rainy day.

“Especially in a rising cost world, but you definitely want to set those disciplines now of building those emergency funds, so even if it’s something small. $5 to $10 a month that you’re setting aside do that and build that habit and then a couple of months turn that into $20 or $30 and so forth ever so slowly building that fund up,” said Ferguson.

Some find it more difficult to save than others, and that can take a mental as well as financial toll. MSU Extension Family Resource Management Specialist Becky Smith knows that all too well, so she encourages self-care.

“We put ourselves in our best place when we are taking care of ourselves and keeping ourselves out of that scarcity fear-based state of mind where we can spend a lot of time in right now like how am I going to make it to the end of the month,” said Smith.

When you can’t do it on your own she said it’s best to talk with close family and friends about planning a budget and learning to save.

“Just being able to talk about it and get everyone on the same team and then you can brainstorm together about how do we want to have fun you know with a lower budget and there are a lot of ways to do that and that’s leadership and people will feel like this makes me feel better,” said Smith.

Both financial advisers encourage people to know when and where their money is going out of their accounts, and when prices go up, it’s not a bad idea to grab the cheaper options.

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