Posted by More money can’t fix bad spending habits.
Anonymous
Financial planning is key to many things we do in our lives. Money doesn’t bring happiness but let’s face it does make it so much easier to make decisions. Usually money is the restrictive factor for most decisions. This year, we’ve decided to work towards becoming debt free and save for our house deposit.
There are three ways to go about this –
1. Managing existing finances – We’ve decided to use this monthly finances planner (free pdf template). We have listed down our fixed expenses and our variable (but non negotiable eg. groceries, gas, gym) expenses. We are setting a percentage to go into our loan (going well over the minimum payment) and the most of the rest into our house deposit savings. This being said at this stage we have our emergency savings and a little bit into our house deposit saved.
2. Decreasing expenses – We have listed our specific expenses and allowed a little bit extra room for weekly date nights and other expenses that may come up. Making sure that is within the limit we have set is going to be key.
3. Increasing income – This is definitely more of a long term one. Jay and I work hard in our full time positions. I also have had an Etsy store and a handmade store for over 7 years which provides a consistent bit of side hustle income. This year I intend to make increase the revenue by 10% for my handmade stores and all of it will go into our daily expenses. Other examples for income could be selling stuff you have but don’t need on Facebook marketplace, using upwork, working weekends etc.
Book of the Month for January is ‘I will teach you to be rich’ by Ramit Sethi. It has been awesome. It has inspired me to automate my savings and set and use money dials effectively. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is starting to think about finally taking control of your finances. Come to terms with your income and expenses. and mainly, spend on the things you love by saving on things that don’t bring you joy.
Are you doing things a little bit different with your finances? I would love to know.
PS – If you wanted to have a look at my handmade store – its called Handmade Over coffee. Let me know what you think ;).
Planning Over Coffee 