Keys to Successfully Managing Personal Finance
Often you hear the term ‘financial planning.’ But is it just having money and some bank balance? While it may be partially right, financial planning covers even broader aspects that limit an individual for particular periodic planning but for a more extended period.
What Is Financial Planning?
Financial planning involves analyzing the present monetary position of individuals to formulate strategies for future wants inside economic constraints. Personal financial planning is particular to every individual’s scenario and activity; subsequently, financial strategies rely mainly on the person’s earnings, living requirements, targets, and desires.
If you wish to be the manager of your personal finance, you should get in touch with us to learn each detail of your financial activities. Personal Financial Planning talks about applying financial principles and monetary decisions taken by individuals or an organisation. This concept encompasses most aspects of using and managing the available funds for an individual or a family. Overall, in personal finance, you can create a budget, save some money, and use the available credits in the form of mortgages & loans.
The key facet of personal financial planning is the individual’s capability to create and use a detailed financial plan. Simply put, personal finance defines how individuals could successfully manage their money.
Why Do People Have Personal Finance Wrong?
Firstly, there’s no such subject as personal financial planning in the regular curriculum. Thus, most people learn the dos and don’ts on the go. But, in most cases, practice makes the master, right? Wrong. We believe that “Good” Financial practices make the master, and bad financial practice will set you in debt.
Moreover, people tend to make a call out of mood instead of logical thinking. For instance, when they don’t have enough money, they may seek a loan. But, what if they cannot cope up with the installments? They create debt & the cycle may feedback itself until it spirals out of control. But you can avoid all this, or we can solve this with the right financial mindset. Ready?
Keys to Successfully Managing Personal Finance
In a perfect world, there would have been a magic formula or a simple trick that allowed you never to manage your finances again.
While that doesn’t seem feasible, there are some simple things you can do right now to improve your money situation. Try these four steps for successfully managing your personal finances. By sticking to the following four tips, your financial problems may start to diminish, and you can start to reap the rewards of lower debt along with saving for the future.
Detail Your Financial Goals
Tinker your mind to write specific, long-term financial goals. You may have a month-long trip to Europe in mind, or you want to buy an investment property, or retire early. All these goals will hugely affect how you plan your finances.
For instance, your goal to retire early is dependent on how well you save your money now. Other objectives, including starting a family, owning a home, changing careers, will affect how you manage your Personal Finances.
Once you finish writing down your financial goals, prioritize them. This organisational process ensures that you are paying the maximum attention to the ones that are of the highest importance to you. You can also list them in the order of preference, but a long-term goal like retirement planning requires you to work towards it while simultaneously working on your other goals.
Flesh out Your Plan
A financial plan is imperative for you to reach your financial goals. The best plans contain multiple steps or milestones. A sample plan that we can create for you may include creating a monthly budget & spending plan and then getting out of debt.
Once you’ve accomplished these three things and have followed your new plan thoroughly for some months, you may end up with extra cash, and you can use the money you free up from your debt payments to reach your next round of goals.
Again, it’s vital to decide what priorities are most important to you. Keep working steadily toward your long-term retirement goals, but also start to focus on the most critical near-term goals you have set for yourself.
Do you have an extravagant trip in mind? Are you thinking of investing or building your own business? These are some things to consider when deciding on your next step. Your goals, an emergency fund, and other important things will help you stop making financial decisions based on fear & help you get control of your situation.
When we create a financial plan for you, we keep the following things in mind:
- Your budget is the key to success as it gives you complete control of your financial future, and it is vital to achieving the rest of your plan.
- You should keep contributing to long-term goals and think about retirement planning, no matter what your financial plan stage is.
- Building an emergency fund is sometimes important for your financial success and stress reduction.
Make and Stick to your Budget
Your budget is perhaps the biggest tool that will help you to succeed financially. It will also allow you to create a spending plan so you can efficiently allocate your money in a way that’ll help you to reach your goals.
We can help you make your budget as high-level or detailed as you want, as long as it enables you to reach your ultimate goal of spending less than you earn, paying off the debts (if any), and eventually save for the future.
Also, your budget will help you decide how to spend your money over time. Without a plan, you might overspend on things that seem important now but don’t enhance your future. Many people get caught in this predicament and get down on themselves for not reaching the financial milestones they want for them and their family.
At BoxPFA, we believe in building relationships, so you should celebrate small victories along the way with us – your financial family. For instance, you can congratulate yourself once you pay off your debt or reward yourself when you successfully stick to your budget for three months solidly.
Invest as Per Your Risk Tolerance
Investment is yet another vital component of personal finance. Investment helps compound your wealth, and that’s necessary to address your financial goals. However, you must always invest as per your risk tolerance and, more importantly, always invest in well-regulated instruments.
Suppose if you have a moderate risk tolerance, you can invest in hybrid instruments that give the best of both worlds, such as equities and debt. Keep invested until you realise your financial goals, and periodically review your portfolio with us to ensure you are on track to achieving them.
What have we learned?
Effective financial planning can shape your life and improve it in ways you couldn’t have imagined. Each of these tips mentioned above is to manage your personal finance successfully. They can have a profound impact on your financial health, and their cumulative results may prove to be life-changing. Try to incorporate some of these steps into your personal management efforts to gain control of your finances.
Put Your Trust in BoxPFA, and don’t be afraid to ask for our advice
Once we help you get ready with your financial plans, and when you’re ready to begin investing, you must consider speaking to our financial planner at BoxPFA, who could help you make better investment decisions. Our Certified Financial Planners and other financial advisors will guide you through all investment options and will share the risks involved in each of them.
At BoxPFA, our experts believe that being disciplined with your spending and sticking to a budget will help you in effective financial management. In case you face any difficulty, our Certified Financial Planners will always be there for you to get your finances on track.
With the help of our sound financial knowledge, you’ll be able to find a way that can help you work towards your goals as quickly as possible. Our Financial Planners can also help you with your budget and requirement, which is an additional advantage.
March ‘18, busiest yet
Last month in a financial year is usually hectic for all enterprises. So is the case for Indian wealth management industry. e.g. It is a good time for us to review the year gone by with respect to client portfolios tilts, performance contribution analysis, fund managers sticking to OUR plans, updating our outlook through the lens of economic data and any advisable last minute portfolio tax action before the financial year ends.
It is also a good time to plan the portfolio and tax tactics for the coming year.
Come March 2018, a unique additional confluence of regulatory ripples and tax changes will be added to the above activities.
1. Regulatory ripples — SEBI has (re) defined the investment universe category boundaries and also limited the categories for Mutual Funds in India. As per SEBI circular dates, this will need to be effected by Feb ’18 end.
The first level impact of this will be causing Mutual Fund houses to merge / close / rename / change the fund portfolios to bring it in line with SEBI definition.
The second level impact of this will be that client portfolios may undergo a change / deviation with respect to the desired portfolio construct. e.g. A client may need, and have, an equity portfolio with 65% in large-cap companies. However, post implementation of SEBI order, the emerging client portfolio may have a reduced allocation with only 40% left in large-cap equities. This will need a review and re-alignment of the portfolio funds to bring it back to the desired shape.
Ideally, fund houses will allow investors to carry out these re-adjustments without having to pay the exit loads, if applicable. This looks to be the case so far for the Mutual Fund houses who have announced their rejigs. DSP BlackRock
2. Tax changes — Feb 2018 saw a historic change in the way equity investors will be taxed in India. After more than a decade of enjoying 0% tax on long-term gains on equity, the tax rate has been hiked to 10% of the long-term gains.
For a wealth professional, the catch is with the date of applicability. Although, the announcement was made on 1st Feb 2018, the tax exemption continues till March ’18.
Hence, for example, we will be reviewing the status of all equity investments done till March ’17 (one year before the date of applicability threshold). This may lead to a situation where we may book all long-term equity profits in March ’18. It is also possible that there may be a long-term loss. Again it may be advisable to book it too. But in April ’18. That will allows us to book capital losses, which are further allowed to be set-off against other capital gains (which is not the case if the losses are booked in March itself!).
For our firm there is even more on the anvil! We are trying to figure out the possible regulatory stance with respect to the advisory business model in India. And then working on restructuring the organisation structure and work flows around it.
For us it’s a long ‘march’ ahead.
