ITS IMPORTANT TO SAVE

One of the core things that a person needs to do order to prepare for emergencies, major purchases, and retirement is to save money. Saving money is not hard but it takes consciousness and intention. When I tell people they can save $5 dollars a day, then often think I’m crazy. I can’t possibly save a whole five dollars a day, can I!? Yes you can. Let’s look at it this way. Many of us spend money on things that cost us daily and we don’t realize how much it costs us until we need the money. So if saving $5 a day is crazy but how is it that some of us spend more than $150 monthly on cable television. Now that’s an average American household and I know that some of you spend less than this maybe around $60 to $75. But add in all of the streaming services and whatnot and you’re probably pushing close to $150.

So let’s assume you spend $150+ on entertainment & cable television. That’s $1800 a year! If we divide that by 365 days, guess what we get?

$5 dollars a day 😊

Not that hard then is it? That’s $5 a day for a service that you use probably no more than an average 5-6 hours a week.

What can you do with $5 dollars a day? Well if you just saved $5 a day, at the end of the year you’d have $1800. In 5 years, you’d have $9000. In 10 years, $18,000 dollars. That’s just cash savings.

BETTER THAN JUST SAVING CASH

But what if you put that money into an investment account. If you are in the US, you can contribute to a Roth IRA and make that money compound, working for you. Now when I say “compound” I am not talking about compound interest. I’m talking about a compound return. That means that through the growth of the investment I put my money into, it will roll over and be reinvested into that investment and grow. It has nothing to do with interest.

We can estimate how much companies will grow based on their economic activity. If we estimate that a group of companies we’ve invested in will grow an average of 6% per year, and we reinvest that increase back into the same companies, what will happen? Let’s assume you are 25 years old, will retire at 65 years old, and pay 25% in taxes.

After 40 years, with only putting $1800 into a Roth IRA account, you’d have nearly $280k.

I know what some of you are saying: What good is 265k at 65 years old? Well let’s look at another example. Instead of only putting $1800 in, let’s max out every year. That means we’ll start with $1800 in our account, and then contribute $6000 a year with the same %6 estimated return (which remember is low).

Do this and you’d have almost one million dollars stashed away.

Want to try it yourself? Here’s the calculator I used.

BUT I’M WORRIED I’M INVESTING IN HARAM…

I understand that you are sensitive to investing into things that go against your values. I am the same. So what can you easily put into a Roth IRA that would save you the time of having to do Sharia compliance?

There are now a number of mutual funds, ETFs, and tools you can use to easily build a portfolio that only invests in shariah compliant (read: Halal) stocks and funds. Use the following tickers: $SPUS, $HLAL, $AMANX, $AMAGX, $AMDWX, $IMANX, $ADJEX, $WISEX as well as a few others.

If you want to buy individual stocks and need to see if they are Shariah compliant or not, you can sign up to Zoya.Finance, a free app that lists all the stocks in the US and gives you a report on whether they are shariah compliant. I am the company’s Shariah Advisor and supervise the screening logic used for the app.

WHAT IS STOPPING YOU?

You. You are stopping you. There’s no shortage of resources out there to educate yourself. But you are afraid. You are worried. You don’t want to jump into the unknown. Not investing and just leaving your cash sitting there is because you don’t know if it will earn anything is like saying you won’t pray today because you might miss a prayer tomorrow. It’s an illogical position and one based on fear. How can you get past your fears? Education.

The point here is, it’s not that hard and its not impossible. You can do this if you simply take very deliberate steps to putting money away for yourself first before spending it on things that you hardly use.

Want to learn more about retirements accounts like your IRA?

I’ve created a video course that covers all the essentials and more. 3 and 1/2 hours of content on 401k accounts, IRA accounts, Health Savings Accounts, and other important information. This course covers the details of investments and retirement accounts, the Islamic financial ethics to be considered, and how to purify your earnings in these accounts.

You can sign up to this course here.