How To Take Charge of Your Personal Finance

We are now in the last quarter (Q4) of the year. Like play like play we have less than 3 months left in 2019. How’s your 2019 so far?

This is usually the part when most people begin to panic. They look back and wonder whether they have accomplished enough or not.

They remember their abandoned New Year’s resolution and try to rush through it.

Did you know the most common resolution has to do with either health or money?

I am not a health guru but I know a few things about money. So let’s talk about that instead.

Do you have any money goals for this year? What about next year? The next 5 years? 10?

If you’re like most people, your goals (money or otherwise) are short-term. While there is nothing wrong in that, I want you to start looking ahead. Way ahead.

If you had told me 10 years ago that my bank account will look the way it does today, I would have called you an enemy of progress.

My New Year’s resolution used to be, “This is the year I make it. 20[10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18] is my year.” Its 2019 and we’re still trying to ‘make it’.

But you see, I didn’t quite have a goal or a plan. And that’s why my 2019 is different.

I still haven’t ‘made it’ yet but I know exactly when I will.

This ‘it’ many of us want to ‘make’ is abstract. It doesn’t exist unless you name it. Attach a figure to it.

Instead of “I will make it,” change it to “I will make [amount] this year.” Name it then develop an action plan.

About two months ago I would have become homeless if not because had a system in place for such emergencies.

Look, I’m not saying I have this all figured out but this little change in goalsetting had a major impact on not just my finances but also in my professional life.

I want you to have a clear vision of what your financial situation will look like in 10, 20, 30 years from now.

Nobody told me in school that this is how the rich accumulate wealth – they set a target, hit the target, repeat.

Vision (goals) is one of the main reason why the rich keep getting richer and the rest of us are down here scrapping for their left-overs.

If you’re tired of scraping then it’s time to take charge of your personal finance.

How to go about it.

If you haven’t done so already, I want you to create a vision after reading this post. We can work on it together if you’d like. (Yup, really. Just leave a comment below).

Start with a short-term vision. Keep it simple.

Use this to get you started: Write down your

• Current monthly income (how much you earn from all your sources)
• Current monthly savings (how much you save)
• Current monthly expenses (break it down into categories e.g food, transportation, etc)
• Income goals one year from today (how much you want to earn)
• Savings goals one year from today (how much you want to save)

You don’t need to wait for a new year to do this. You can start today. Right now. If you procrastinate, you may never get around to do it.