How Can Financial Planning Help You?

Helps you achieve your goals

You want to buy a house? Houses can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. You want to travel and see the world? That needs money as well. With financial planning, you can learn to gather the necessary amount needed to achieve those goals and make your dreams a reality.

Provides direction and helps ensure you are on track

Always refer back to your plan to make sure you are doing the right things that bring you closer to your goals. If you find that you are off-track, you can make the necessary changes to put you back in the right direction.

Creates a future you can look forward to

Imagine yourself lying on the beach, enjoying your retirement comfortably. Or finally stepping foot into a house you can call your own. Yes, these things can become a reality, with financial planning.

Peace of mind

You can sleep soundly knowing that you have a plan that will help you set aside money for your bills, food on the table, as well as for your future, such as your children’s education. Everyone has goals that they want to achieve. Unfortunately, not all goals come for free.

Lifestyles and Life Stages

Financial planning depends on how you live your life (lifestyle), as well as where you are in life (life stage). Your priorities will determine how you will manage your money — for goals that are short-term and coming up soon, you will need to set aside a higher amount; for goals that are a long way away, you can set aside a smaller amount as you have more time to accumulate the money.

What are your financial goals?

List your top three financial goals, including how much you think it will cost and when you aim to achieve your goal. From there, you can calculate how much you need to save monthly in order to achieve your goal.

Budgeting

Budgeting goal

• Make sure you don’t spend more than what you have or earn.
• To start budgeting, you must understand your needs and wants. Having ‘ wants’ is not a problem — however, before you begin thinking about your wants, you must make sure that your everyday needs and essentials are met first.
• At the same time, it is also important that you set aside some of your salary to save for your future. It is all about balance; balancing your needs and wants, as well as balancing your today and your tomorrow.

If you ever find yourself strapped for cash, remember REI:

Make your own budget!

Below is an example of a budget. Follow the template to create your own!