Having healthy personal finances is just a matter of habit and discipline. It doesn’t matter if you earn a lot or a little, not taking care of your expenses could put your balance in the red.
Here are the steps you must follow to improve your home economy:
The first step in financial planning is to be clear about your income and what your main expenses are.
It is very easy to do it, for this you can use mobile applications, a spreadsheet or even pencil and paper. All you need is consistency, but the benefits of budgeting are worth it.
Start by putting all the income in one column, in this case, your salary. Then, in another column, list all the expenses, such as rent, utilities, food, transportation, and outings.
The balance should be that your income is greater than the total expenses you have each month.
In case your expenses are exceeding your income, it is convenient to break them down further .
In one column, identify the essentials such as the payment of rent, electricity, water and food. In yet another you can add occasional expenses, such as going out with friends or family, vacations, buying books, movies or music.
In a third column it identifies the fixed but dispensable ones, for example, subscriptions to movie or music services on the internet.
You don’t need to eliminate all the occasional or expendable expenses, it’s about taking stock of which ones are most important to you and which ones you really use.
For example, it may be that you are paying for a movie streaming service and you never watch it; Or maybe you have the most expensive phone plan, but don’t make use of everything it offers either, so you could downgrade it to a cheaper one.
Eliminating expenses is vital if you want to move your finances to the positive side and start saving in the future.
Another area in which you can save is ant expenses. They are called that because they are small amounts, but once you count all of them it can be a significant amount.
This is where, for example, the coffee you buy every day on the way to work, cigarettes, sweets, chewing gum, soda or even tips come in.
Suppose you pay 50 pesos for a coffee and stop buying it, a week you would be saving 250 pesos, in a month you would have 1,000 pesos saved.
Make a list of all these little expenses and see which ones you could eliminate.
Setting goals will make it easier to maintain your discipline. For example, if you want to save just for the sake of it, maybe in a couple of months it will make you give up. However, saving for a vacation will keep you on the line until you achieve your goal.
The important thing is that they are realistic goals and that they go according to your ability to save, to avoid getting frustrated if you cannot achieve them by setting very high goals.
Follow these steps, maintain discipline and you will ensure that the finances of your home are always healthy.
Hi, my name’s Gina Long. I'm a successful businesswoman and love to stay healthy. I consider health and wealth to be an essential part of my makeup. In this blog, I talk about these things that are essential to me and hopefully my readers.
Click to read on
