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As you’re leaving school, finishing university and getting your first job, retirement is most likely the last thing on your mind. But taking a few steps to set yourself up in your 20s can go a long way to avoiding financial stress in later life. It’s never too early to start preparing for your future.

Set some goals

It’s much easier to get what you want, if you’re clear about what exactly it is you want. We all want to have feel fulfilled, but what does this mean to you and how are you going to achieve it. Of course these goals may change but the planning will be the same.

Consider setting yourself some short, medium and long term goals.

Short term goals might be taking a holiday or buying a car. These are the things you should be putting money towards now, on a regular basis.

Medium term goals can set you up for the next stage in life. Will you want to buy a house, raise a family? You might not want to put all your money towards these right now but they will require planning and saving.

Long term goals will most likely your retirement. You superannuation fund will go a long way to determining this, so it’s important to ensure your employer is contributing correctly.

Pay down your debt

Putting aside savings for a car is all well and good, but any debts you have may affect your ability to reach your financial goals in the short to medium, or even long term. Don’t forget to include any debt repayments as part of your budget.

Budgeting

Budgeting doesn’t mean living on baked beans while you’re friends are out eating at a nice restaurant. What it does mean is being realistic about exactly how much money you are earning and spending. Creating a budget is the best way to track your expenses and avoid living beyond your means. Try some of these great budgeting apps to help you manage the process.

Automatic savings

Once you have created your budget and know exactly how much you have available, you can start saving for your goals. Setting up an automatic payment to a separate savings account will help keep you on track and stop the temptation to dip into your funds.

Sort your Super

For any job you hold over the age of 18 and earn more than $450 a month, or any job in which you work 30 hours or more per week, your employer pays out superannuation. Unless you specify otherwise, these workplaces pay your super to an account with their chosen super fund. Which means if you have had four different jobs, you could have as many as four different superannuation accounts, and be paying four sets of fees.

Combining these funds into the one superannuation account means you only pay one set of account fees, but also means it’s easier to track how much money you have to set you up for your retirement.

Setting up a small business on your own isn’t an easy task. As a one man band you have to learn how to deal with every business function from marketing to IT. One area of your business where it really pays to outsource is in the finance department and hiring a qualified accountant makes a lot of financial sense for most businesses.

Once your business starts to grow though and you begin taking on employees, the temptation is to move more and more of the businesses functions in-house. Whilst this can make sense in some areas, with payroll it really does pay to outsource.

In this article I want to look at four areas where outsourcing the payroll function can save your business a lot of money and time and prevent difficulties further down the road as you expand your workforce.

Resource Savings

Time is money in business and payroll can be very time consuming. As your business expands so too will the time needed to perform the payroll function in-house. Investing in payroll software can also be expensive and keeping it up to date is another drag on your time and resources. Factor into this the training needed to bring staff up to date with the software and any updates and developments and you can begin to see the constant drain on resources that doing your payroll in-house can be.

Staff Recruitment and Absence

One of the clear benefits of outsourcing payroll functionality to an accountancy firm is the stability and consistency it brings to developing expanding businesses. All businesses are vulnerable to the danger of key talent leaving them for sunnier pastures and retaining staff is a core part of HR strategy, especially in the early days. Outsourcing payroll effectively removes the worry of having to recruit and train a new staff member to perform this vital business function on which every employee depends. For smaller businesses, having a single individual in charge of payroll also comes with inherent risks in terms of unplanned absence. Payroll isn’t something that can be put off, so if your payroll administrator is off sick then someone else will need to fill in for them, diverting their precious time away from their core duties.

Compliance

In accounting, accuracy is paramount. The UK’s laws around payroll are strict and any mistakes due to human error can and often do result in fines. Not only is this an unnecessary and unwelcome cost, it also means your payroll administrator has to go back over their work to identify and rectify the error. Accountancy firms deal with payroll every day and have the systems and oversight procedures in place to avoid these kinds of accounting errors. Not only this but HMRC’s rules and regulations are prone to change, meaning re-training your payroll staff. The Real Time Information for PAYE changes introduced in 2013 for example, now means companies have to send a Full Payment Submission to HMRC before every payday as well as a monthly Employer Payment Summary. This can mean 76 online declarations a year. That’s a lot of man hours.

Flexibility and Scalability

Creating a successful business is harder than it’s ever been. Recent research from the Harvard Business Review suggests that the average dying age of a publically listed company is 31 years (down from 55 in 1970). Small businesses have to grow and adapt rapidly if they are to be successful and that means so too do their workforces. Unlike many other business functions, payroll isn’t just desirable but required. The consequences for not paying your staff or getting this wrong can be devastating, with the risk of serious damage to the internal reputation of your company and some fairly irate employees. Outsourcing payroll means you can scale your business quickly without the burden of having to grow your payroll functionality too. Accountancy firms have the staff and the resources to handle your growing payroll needs. For seasonal businesses who take on a lot of additional staff in certain months, this can be a real lifesaver.

One wouldn’t necessarily think of their clothes as a money maker, but what we wear vastly impacts our business success rate. Having a fine tuned business acumen includes knowing what to wear and when.

If you are heading to meet a new client, you want to dress to impress. As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression. If you show up to a meeting with a potential new client horribly dressed, they will have a terrible first impression of you. You want to leave clients with the impression that you are professional, successful, and above all else, confident you can do anything the client needs you to get done.

Dressing yourself in Macy’s is gong to convey all of the right messages. If you show up to a client meeting dressed in second-hand clothes or faded and stained suits, nothing you say will be able to convince a client that you can accomplish what they need from you. Dressing in Charles Tyrwhitt however, demonstrates that you have a history of success. Showing up to a client meeting wearing the finest of clothes demonstrates to your clients that you can succeed. When you demonstrate this, you earn their trust and their account.

It might seem odd to think that how you dress can impact your financial success, but our appearance plays a large role in how we interact with others. Dressing for success is critical in business. If you dress well, you will find your list of clients expanding and your income increasing. By contrast, neglecting your appearance will only bring you frustration and hard times financially.

Make sure to take care of your business by taking care of your appearance. You need to invest in quality wear above all else- get some shoes that shine, keep your slacks crisp, and make sure your tie is on straight. Never wear the same suit twice to a meeting with a client- so make sure you keep at least four to five different sets of suits in your closet. You’ll want to be prepared at all times to let your suit do the talking for you.

So, you’ve done your research. You know a well-balanced investment portfolio should ideally include exposure to bullion. But do you go with gold or silver? Truth be told, there’s no one correct answer to that question – at least not one that’s applicable to every investor. Learn the key differences between gold and silver and base your decision on factors including how long you plan to hold onto your investment, how much you are able to invest and what sort of risk profile you want to adopt. Remember, both metals offer inflationary protection and carry no credit risk, whilst each has taken its turn in the limelight as far as past price performance goes. The canniest of investors are likely to go for a long play investment in both metals. Read on, and find out more.

The Case for gold

Gold’s volatility factor is up to 70 percent lower than silver’s. Gold also carries more prestige. This is largely due to its rarity. The yellow metal is 18 times rarer than silver. And new discoveries are on the wane. Production has likewise fallen considerably over the last decade. Meanwhile, central banks are still buying up large quantities of the stuff, which is encouraging. Over the longer term, gold’s price has performed exceedingly well. Also in its favour is gold’s unrivalled status as the accepted alternative to currencies. The yellow metal has been used to store wealth for more than 3,000 years. You simply cannot say this of silver.

The case for silver

Silver has much going for it as a savvy investment choice, though its volatility means it is more speculative than gold. Notably, silver is more widely used in industrial applications. Whatsmore, the industries it’s used in – like, solar power and electronics – are growing. Sterling silver jewellery is still a popular gift idea and many people are indulging in silver jewelry for themselves as well. Silver’s price may be currently weak, yet it is this very weakness forcing producers to scale back operations. These aforementioned factors, at some point, are likely to affect silver’s supply and demand ratio to the point where its price will be pushed up. In addition, analysts concur silver may well offer investors better value than gold, as the gold/silver price ratio is currently further apart than it theoretically should be. Finally, even though VAT must be paid on silver purchases, it remains, of course, much cheaper per ounce than gold to buy. This offers those with even only US$1000 in capital to invest in bullion, an ‘in’ into the market.

To conclude

Silver or gold? Each is likely a good investment choice over the longer term. Yet as you’ve just read, they have their differences. Which is precisely why many advisors would suggest owning both. If you choose a total exposure to bullion amounting to 10 percent of your portfolio for instance, go ahead and split that 10 percent between silver and gold. How you weigh the split largely depends on your views on the health of the stock market and worldwide industrial growth.

The same health insurance policy can cost you differently at different life stages. We explain why this happens.

Taking life insurance in today’s times of uncertainty is de rigueur for any responsible person. While lifestyle diseases and serious illnesses like cancer are on the rise, the world is also witnessing unprecedented acts of terrorism and natural disasters. All in all, life is quite unsafe all over the world. But while we can exercise no control over how the world behaves and affects us, we can certainly safeguard ourselves and our families with life and health insurance policies.

However, the timing of purchase is crucial: any financial planner and insurance advisor will tell you that the younger you are when you buy life and health insurance plans in India, the lower your premium payments will be. There is a curious correlation between one’s age and how affordable or expensive the insurance plans become. This correlation changes with:

The 20s: A person has a job with a modest income, possibly a first job. The policy holder has relatively lesser family responsibilities and can easily pay the health insurance policy premiums. A person in their 20s is also healthier and fitter than his older counterparts, so the chance of disease is lower. Also, insurers estimate a larger life span for the policy holder, hence the sum assured will be higher while the premium payments will be lower.

The 30s: By this time, a person is married and has a family, while also having a stable job. His income is also higher than in the previous decade, while his health profile may not be as good as earlier. Insurers anticipate that certain lifestyle diseases like diabetes and cardiac problems take root in this decade. Also, your profession and lifestyle can have a bearing on the premiums of your health insurance policy. If you are employed in a line of work that puts you in danger (such as the police force, fire brigade, mining and construction, etc.) the insurer will insist on a higher premium payment for you.

The 40s and 50s: Premiums on health insurance plans will be much higher as compared to those a person in his 20s would pay. Insurers anticipate a lower life expectancy for the customer at this stage, along with many varied expenses at home (children’s higher education, medical treatment costs for self and parents, home mortgage payments, etc.) and so, the premiums will be larger. Insurers will also insist on a detailed health profile to eliminate the possibility of unknown diseases, critical illnesses, disorders arising out of smoking and substance abuse, etc.

The 60s: Most insurers do not give health insurance policies in India to people who have crossed the age of 60 years. People in this age group have retired from active duty, hence they do not have an income from which they can pay their health premiums. Secondly, it is costlier to insure a person past the age of 60 because of a high incidence of poor health and diseases. Instead of taking individual health plans in their 60s, people in this age group should look at getting included in the family health plans of their children.