Why You Should Start Saving in Your 20s

Saving money is not necessarily a complicated process, nor a particularly taboo one. However, this doesn’t stop some people from becoming a little standoffish when discussing money – perhaps due to their own shortcomings in saving for their own life. In your 20s, the necessity to save might seem distant; however, there are more reasons to start saving now than you might think. What are they?

For Your Future Self

Generally speaking, savings and financial fortitude are designed to make the life of ‘future you’ far easier. There are so many economic and environmental impacts that can make life costlier in the long run, with inflation being a leading system by which older people are rendered poorer.

As we have discovered quite acutely in the past two years, rising inflation can have a devaluing impact on the money we do have saved. When extrapolated to decades, though, £1000 saved now will not have nearly the same weight as £1000 when you reach retirement age. The sooner you start saving, particularly into a pension scheme, the more you benefit from the effects of compound interest – giving future you much more spending power.

For a Home

Of course, there are some major milestones to which we all aspire at one point or another, and a home is one of them. With homes harder to afford than ever before, this means newer generations have to work harder for their deposit. Again, the sooner you start to save, the better your chances of getting on the property ladder and out of rental homes. LISAs are fantastic financial products to this end, granting an additional government-backed 25% of your savings (up to £1000) each year provided it goes to a home or to your pension.

For Travel

So far, we have focused on the more long-term reasons to start saving early. But these reasons do not provide us with much positive feedback in the short term, and there are plenty of ways in which you can make the most of a positive attitude to savings near-immediately.

Your 20s are the perfect time of your life to travel, in part due to your physical health and also the relative freedoms you enjoy from being early in your career. The simple act of opening up savings account and depositing monthly could make some of your wilder travel ambitions come true much sooner than you think– allowing you to invest in memories as well as your future self.

Starting a Family

Of all the longer-term goals you might have in mind, starting a family might be the last on your mind. It might also be the noblest of your goals, and one to which your money will be most viscerally impactful. Putting money to one side to subsidise new costs, in the form of baby toiletries and new furniture for the little one, is a gift that you will be endlessly thanking yourself for upon discovering.