Unlock Financial Freedom,Managing Your Money and Gaining Wealth: The Ultimate Step by Step Guide
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How to Manage Your Money: Financial Planning and achieving your financial goals: A Basic Guide
Personal financial management is critical in order to get out of the rat race and start accumulating assets. Whether you are a beginner or trying to correct your bad habits in handling money, learning how to handle your money can make a huge difference in your life. What I will do in this guide, is to lead you through the process of how to manage your money, where to put it and how to ensure that it is growing in the right environment.
Step 1: Understanding Your Revenue and Costs
However, any financial plan that you want to make has to start with understanding your income and expenses. Begin with noting down all your and your family’s source of income (your wages, business income, freelance earnings, etc.) and monthly expenditure (rent, utility bills, groceries, transport, etc.).
How to do it:
• Create a budget: You can put your income and expenditure in a budgeting app or just write them down. Mint or YNAB (You Need A Budget) will assist you in categorizing and tracking how you spend your money.
• Analyze: If you look for things to be optimized then you will find areas where you can reduce the usage. For instance, you may spend more in eating out than you should. Spend these savings in a better way by investing in a business or saving for an emergency.
Step 2: Build an Emergency Fund
An emergency fund is cash for those moments of need, or, for example, sudden illness, layoff, or car breakdown. It is wise that one saves between three to six months’ worth of living expense in a readily accessible liquid form. This gives you the financial stability that you require and the mumbo jumbo.
How to do it:
• Open a high-yield savings account: Choose a savings account with a better interest rate than the interest rates of normal banks. Savings with online banks are usually pretty rewarding.
• Set a target: If putting together six months emergency fund appears steep, then how about setting incremental monthly goals? For instance, not spending the money which is only ₹10,000 and putting it directly towards the ambition.
Step 3: Pay Off High-Interest Debt
Credit debt, or the debt in general, can become a significant source of concern in a relatively short amount of time. If you are tangled in high interest debt then you should repay it first before going for investment. Other aspects of the debt can also accrue, and this means that the longer that you are postponing settling your dues, the more you will need to pay.
How to do it:
• Debt Snowball Method: ,only make minimum payments as you focus on paying off the smallest debt. When one of them is paid off, go ahead to the next smallest amount and so on.
• Debt Avalanche Method: Or otherwise, all the required debts are to be repaid with the highest interest rates in order to minimize the overall interest charge.
Step 4: Start Saving and Investing
After learning how to put aside and protect money for a rainy day through the creation of an emergency fund as well as paying off high-interest bearing debts, people should start focusing on ways of increasing their worth through investing. The following are some of the forms that you’re allow to use in fixing the money but remember it has to be done early and regularly.
Where to Invest:
• Stock Market: The fluctuating returns demonstrate that the stock market provides even better returns after the long term, but it has relatively high risks. You can begin with either index funds or Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which afford the investor a broad market portfolio.
• Bonds: Bonds are relatively safer investment, they give more fixed income, periodic income. While such investments are relatively safer than most of the shares, they usually yield relatively lower profit.
• Mutual Funds: A mutual fund where investment capital collected from many investors are used to invest in stocks, bonds or other securities. A great choice for beginners due to the diversification of your portfolio.
• Real Estate: They can gain financial growth and steady income when they have the capital to invest in properties. You may also go with Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in case you do not finding a property and dealing with its management appealing.
How to do it:
• Start small: It’s a common misconception that you must have a large sum of money in order to invest. Most brokers such as Zerodha or Groww let you invest with small amounts of capital.
• Automate your investments: Make automatic regular purchases of mutual funds or ETFs to apply benefit inclined dollar – cost averaging where you purchase more units when prices are low and lesser when prices are high.
Step 5: Financial planning and Budgeting – Check and Adjust
That is why, once the financial plan has been initiated, it should be regularly reviewed and corrected. Sometimes, your income, expenditure, and other financial targets might change, and therefore, the plan your make should also be flexible.
How to do it:
• Review your budget monthly: Always keep a budget and make sure that you stay as close to that as possible.
• Reassess your investments: You probably won’t need to adjust your portfolio often to achieve your financial goals, but it’s good to review it on occasion. If you have served your targets for the short term, it is appropriate to go for more risky investments for the long term.
• Seek professional advice: If you need help making decisions about your money or your investments, you may want to speak with a financial planner.
About the Creator
Gopal kumar
My name is Gopal Kumar, and to my credit, I have been studying personal finance for the last 4 years. My journey started when I decided to pay attention on the aspect of financial management and budgeting.
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Are there any free apps available in India that can help with our finances or planning or budgeting etc ?