Sharing simple personal finance tips and ideas are the main goal of this blog. Hoping that by sharing simple budgeting and saving tips, basic investing knowledge and other personal finance related things, I can provide a little value to our fellow kababayans who are looking for ways to properly manage their finances.
As this blog grows, more and more tips and valuable knowledge will be share to help us achieve our financial freedom.
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Today, as I’m just getting better from a 2 days flu and fever, I will just share those previous articles that tackles about proper money management and shared simple personal finance strategy everyone can apply and use in their lives.
This is basic from what I know but can eventually help you become aware of the things you need to set and understand regarding your personal finance life. Here we go.
Personal finance Part I. Knowing what you want
1. Setting Financial goals
I believe that the foundation of a solid personal finance literacy is proper planning. Different people have different needs and goals in life and so we should not be affected of how other people working on their goals. It should all start with a plan.
The plan to have something or save for something. Let’s say for your child’s education or for your retirement. Or for your dream house or dream business. Setting smart financial goals will determine your investing decisions and investment instrument you can use to achieve those goals.
Read and learn how to set smart financial goals here.
Some example of financial goals.
1.A Emergency Fund
Since you are creating and setting your financial goals, it is wise to build a solid emergency fund first as your initial financial goal. Well this is if you still don’t have emergency fund. This is our goal for now. We’re on our way building a solid emergency fund.
Before investing or starting a business, make sure you got something you can have in case of “real emergencies”. On the article, the ABC of building emergency fund, I shared the basic and foundation of how to build an emergency fund.
1.B Insurance
Another important goal you should consider. This is to protect your family in case of your loss or disability especially if you are the bread winner. Having life insurance is also the basic and foundation of solid financial literacy. Learn more about insurance 101 here.
1.C Investing
Investing is another way to grow our money. If we are aiming for retirement, business or our child’s education, we can use some investment instrument that can help us achieve those financial goals easily. With self-discipline and perseverance, time will come that those goals will be achieve.
Investing should be aligned with your financial goals and capacity to invest. As well as your risk appetite and of course the knowledge about that investment instrument. Learn investing 101 here.
1.D Child’s education (Coming soon)
1.E Retirement (Coming soon)
1.F Other goals
Personal finance Part II. Working on them
2. Tracking your expenses
Having a smart financial goals means you are one step ahead to others. You’re also on your way to your financial freedom. As you go along, it is important to track your expenses to help you manage your budget and savings. Tracking your expenses can really help you identify unnecessary spending which can be use to other valuable things or investments. You can check my previous article here on 5 simple ways to track your expenses.
3. Budgeting
Of course, the reason why you tracked your expenses is to know where your money go right? So after knowing the “in and out” of your money, next ideal thing to do is to create a proper budget plan. Since you are aware how you spend your money, you can now set proper allocation on each expenses you have.
This way you are setting according to your spending habits and most likely everything will fall into budget. Make sure you create a smart budget which are realistic and aligned with your goals. Learn more about the basic of budgeting here.
4. Working on your goals
After you set up your goals, it is time to work on them. Since you are tracking your expenses and are budgeting according to your goals, sooner than later you’ll have them before your eyes. Depending on your goals priority, work on them one by one.
Or if you can and if possible, you can work on some of your goals altogether at the same time. Say you are building your emergency fund while paying your insurance and investing some amount at stock market.
5. Increase your cashflow
While working on your goals, you can look for other sources of income to increase your cashflow. Increasing your cashflow while sticking to your budget can really help you achieve your financial goals faster.
Check the 3 major ways to earn money online in the Philippines here. You can start a blog and make money on the side too.
Or you can check the 5 hottest and in demand work from home jobs here.
6. Re-assessing your goals
From time to time, you should check if you are still working aligned with your financial goals. Changes may come especially in different stages in life.
Your expenses may go up when you start having family or your income may increase when you started a sideline business. For whatever stage you are in your life and in working in your financial goals, it is always wise to stop and re-assess where you are.
Check and validate if your goals are still applicable to your situation if those are still what you really want. Changes is permanent in life and so to our goals.
7. Keep learning and investing in yourself
Above all the goals and plan shared and mentioned above, investing in knowledge in yourself should always be included in your goals in life. Remember that learning is the only way to increase our chances of success in everything we do.
Do not invest or dive ourselves to things we don’t understand. Invest in yourself first!
If you want to learn more about personal finance, you can follow these 8 filipino personal finance blog that could change your life. Or you can join these top 7 filipino facebook group sharing financial literacy.
You can also attend FREE investing in the stock market seminar for beginners with these companies. There could be a lot of way. Make sure that as you achieve each of those goals you have, you are growing too.
Always remember that investing in yourself is the best investment you could ever have tha will give the highest returns in the long run.
I hope this article has been informative for you. Thank you for reading. Please share to help and inspire others too. To our financial freedom, cheers!
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