Best ways to spend your hard-earned money
To ease your financial burden – this is the reason why you started freelancing, right? I mean all of us, not just you.
But because of the excitement and feeling so much happiness after receiving your first or second payment, you forgot this goal and spent your earnings unwisely.
Actually, I’m not against what you are doing or limiting yourself in spending it, because that is your hard-earned money, but I just want you to be aware of the negative consequences if you continue doing that.
Maybe not now; you won’t feel it just yet, but the negative impact will be in the long run. If you continue doing that, I must say, you are making your life miserable.
So, I’m assuming that you are still working a 9-5 job and you’re freelancing on the side. It’s possible that you have a good start in your freelancing, but here’s what might happen if you spend your earnings unwisely:
• You won’t achieve your financial goals faster.
• You will forever be working your 9-5 (I hope not!)
• There will be no financial growth (which stings for you, because this is your goal).
That’s why I wrote this blog post to give you an idea of where you can put your freelance earnings: the extra income that you are gaining aside from your monthly salary.
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Table of Contents
Where to Put Your Money?
Savings
One of the best places to put maybe 100% of your freelance earnings is added to your personal savings that you’ve already been accumulating from your salary.
Emergency Funds
So, if you already have personal savings from your monthly salary, creating your emergency fund is the best next thing to do with your freelance earnings. If an emergency situation arises, you have money set aside for this type of situation.
Travel Fund
So, I’m assuming you are doing well with your personal savings and emergency fund; however, if you are the type of person who loves to travel, putting money in your travel fund will help you achieve the budget that you need for your travels. It’s much better to have a travel fund because you can make good memories without worrying about your budget.
Expense Fund
Yep, this is where you can put your freelance earnings if you are targeting, for example, a new phone or laptop for your freelancing business. It’s also important to separate your expense fund from all of your savings so you know where you spent it.
Investments
This is what I did before when I was earning in my early freelancing days. And actually, all of the profit I gained (not so much!) and even my main capital, I used to buy all the things that I needed for relocating here in the UK.
But here’s my advice if you want to put your freelance earnings into investments: do proper research first. Start small at first. Have a self-assessment to see if you can handle the risks of investing. Invest only the money that is okay for you to forget and lose.
Because investing is not for people with faint hearts, who get easily emotional and withdraw their invested money, or for people who always panic just because there are red numbers in their investment portfolio.
So, do a deep dive into research. Learn all about the different types of investments and do not just give your money to anyone else. Always be protective. Do not let your guard down.
Freelancing Tools
Now that you are earning from your freelancing, it’s also good if you set aside a budget where you can invest in the tools that you are already using to improve your work.
For example, you can upgrade to Canva Pro if you are using the free plan. That would help you get access to premium-designed assets and advanced creation tools, create your own brand kits inside, and a lot more. Not only that, but you can deliver much better quality design work to your clients and future ones.
Another example is upgrading your plan in Notion. With the upgraded plan, it will remove file upload limits, unlock team collaboration features, create unlimited database charts, and a lot more. Now, with these premium features, you can create a much more comprehensive Notion system or templates for your clients or your own digital products that you are selling.
So, investing in freelancing tools doesn’t mean that you’re just giving away money to those companies, but it unlocks all the premium benefits and features that you need for your freelancing work, and at the same time, it gives you a good ROI in the long run
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Final Thought:
These are the smartest ways to use your freelance earnings. Although I am not saying to do all of them at once, just be wise about where to put it and how to spend it.
Maybe pick one and allocate about 80% of your freelance earnings to one of them, while the remaining 20% is all up to you.
But here’s my final advice before I finish this:
• Start small at first, and that is very okay.
• Do research on how to do them or on the one that you pick.
• If investing is your choice, please again, do a deep dive into research first, okay?
• Record, track, and monitor your earnings, especially your spending habit, so you know where your money goes.
• And the most important thing before you do any one of them is to please try your best to pay all of your debts or loans. Because this will slow down your financial growth in the future if you don’t pay your debts. Learn to budget and discipline yourself when it comes to spending so your debt will not grow, but instead, your savings will.
I hope this post helped you a lot with managing your money, especially your freelance earnings.
If you have any comments or questions, just type them down in the comment section, and I’ll do my best to reply.
Charmaine S.
“Hi, I’m Charmaine – a freelancer, blogger, and mum helping beginners start freelancing the right way. I create simple tools, templates, and guides to help you stay organised and confident.”
Find Me Here
- What are the freelance jobs that are perfect for beginners?
- What You Should Do With Your Freelance Earnings
- Why It’s Important to Have at least a Simple System in Your Freelance Business at First
- How Exactly Freelancing Works and Why You as a Beginner Should Read This
- Side Hustles I Actually Do (and Recommend)
