1. Establish specific goals

• Saving is easier when you have clear goals.
• Buy a house
• Retirement
• Put your kids through college.
• Take a trip around the world. 
• Give an amount of money to charity

To make your plan solid, it is essential that your goals have cost and time pre-established.  Once they are clear to you, you need to prioritize them.  

Whatever your objective is, it must be specific. Calculate how many weeks or months are between here and then. Divide the estimated cost by the number of weeks or months. This will be the amount you need to save weekly/monthly to achieve it. Remember, a goal is a dream with a deadline to happen.

2. If you don’t see it, you don’t miss it
Save and invest a percentage (5 to 10%) of your gross annual earnings. This might be more difficult than it seams. Make sure you create a solid budget that allows you to monitor your expenses, and plan on how you are going to start saving.     
We recommend that once you have your expenses under control, you make monthly transfers to your savings account. To start saving, sometimes is easier to have part of your income transferred regularly to your savings account or mutual fund. The idea is that if you don’t see it, you won’t miss it.
3. Keep and emergency fund
Before compromising your recently established savings and investments which were so difficult to reach, make sure you can count on an amount at least correspondent to six months of expenses saved on an emergency fund, so you can be afloat in case of a rainy day. Keeping a liquid amount will guarantee that you won’t need to sell out investments with the market down, and you will always have quick access to it.

4. Pay your credit card
If you are trying to save while you have a large credit card balance, if your interest is around 20%, think that paying it out represents a guarantee return of 20%. Once you have paid off your credit cards, use it only for convenience, and pay the complete balance every month.

5. Insure your family
Moments of crises like loosing your job, a lawsuit, sickness or accidents may be financially devastating if you are not properly insured. The key to a good insurance policy is to be covered only for financial losses so big you could not handle. If someone else depends on your income, you need an appropriate life insurance. Long term disability is important while you need your job income. Make sure you have appropriate liability coverage for your home and for your car.

To save on annual premiums, you could raise your deductable or eliminate double coverage. And when you buy insurance (life, house, disability, auto), make sure you look for different options.

6. Buy a home
Buying a real estate like a home will give you and your family security. Even though it is a substantial expense, it is an investment that will give you important benefits. You should consider several aspects before choosing which loan to take on. 

7. Take advantage of the benefits from your employer and union savings fund, as well as of the complementary pension plans offered by different operators. 
If your employer or your company’s union offer a savings fund you should contribute with part of your salary monthly, take advantage of it, because usually the company or union grant you an amount equivalent to the amount you contributed. Your contributions to the savings fund mean that your investments may increase faster than anywhere else. 

Likewise, if you want to plan a future and guarantee better quality of life during your retirement, be informed and take advantage (when possible) of complementary pension plans.  
Enjoy benefits of the Insurance of Disability, Retirement and Life insurances (IVM): According to Article 23 of the IVM Regulation, the pension for retirement and disability is calculated by averaging out the last 240 past monthly salaries or earnings, accrued by the insured, revised by inflation, based on the consumer price index. 

8. Diversify your investments
When you need to manage risks and maximize your returns, diversifying is the way. It is important to diversify among three kinds of assets: cash, stocks and bonds. Once you have figured out a strategy to divide among these three kinds of investments, it is important to diversify inside each one of them. That means comparing multiple stocks from different types of industries, and buying bonds with different maturities. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Besides, don’t make the mistake of putting most your money on “safe” investments, like savings accounts and money market funds. In the long run, inflation and taxes would eat up your money’s purchasing power in those “safe harbors”.
Between risk and returns, all investments carry some compensation. Diversity reduces unnecessary risks by dividing your money among different investments. Besides diversity, the most effective strategy is to keep investing continuously, with a long term perspective.

9. Prepare a Last Will and Testament
The only way we are able to dispose of our estate and rights, and declare and enforce dues after death is through a Last Will and Testament.
There are several ways to prepare a Will, but the most common is a public open testament, which must be signed before a Public Notary, who will write down the will with clauses describing the person’s wishes regarding the disposition of his/her estate, rights and obligations.
Therefore, it is important that we elaborate our Will and Testament, so that our will be executed, and so that we don’t forsake our loved ones. You should start by preparing an inventory of everything you own, and by deciding who is going to get what; in case of a minor beneficiary, you have to designate a legal guardian that will represent the minor exclusively.