5 Money Move Musts to Start Now

FINANCE MATTERS

Liza Gaspar

The money choices you make now dictates how financially healthy you will be in the future. Start being financially healthy today and I guarantee that you’ll feel the positive effects not only on your wallet but also in your relationships with yourself and others for years to come.

1.     MAKE FINANCIAL GOAL. Identifying what you want to achieve, say, in the next 5 years, 10 years or even in the next few months give people a sense of being fully in control of their loves. Knowing what every financial and money decisions and actions you make at any point in time will result to gives you a strong sense of direction and purpose. Perhaps the most important function of clearly identifying your financial goal is it gives you a support system to ground you whenever problems and challenges strike.

2.     CREATE BUDGET. If a financial goal provides the destination, then a budget shows you how to go there. Having a budget for all of your expense items will give you a roadmap on how much money you can spend on, say, food and entertainment for a budget period which could be a week, a month, a year or whatever period you want to monitor your financial performance for. Don’t forget to include a budget for improving your financial management skills such as for buying books and attending seminars on money management.

3.     RECORD ACTUAL EXPENSES. Every day. Perhaps this is the most tedious part, but also the most rewarding. It’s tedious in that you have to keep track of every centavo you spend and rewarding in that at the end of the day, with a well-kept expenses record, you can breathe a sigh of relief that you know where your money is going to. At any given time, you should be able to look at how much you have actually spent on a budget item. Personally, I do this every day – before I go to sleep. Knowing how much you’ve spent on something gives you a sense of control on how you actually spend your hard earned money.

4.     COMPARE PERFORMANCE. With your budget and well-documented expenses, you can easily know how much budgeted-money you have remaining. For example, with the use of computer software such as Excel, you know at a glance how much you have spent, the remaining budget or if you have already overspent for, say, eating out. This ability to monitor your budget and actual expenses allows you to make immediate corrections on how you’ve been spending your money.

5.     REVISE MONEY BEHAVIOR. As I am writing this, I look at my budget for the month and see that I am in the red as regards my transportation budget. This means that I have over spent on what I intended to spent with 9 more days remaining for June! As I look into how I spent my transportation allowance, I saw that I have taken too many taxi rides. From now until the end of the month, I can therefore resolve not to take any more taxi rides which means I need to go out on time for my commitments rather than at the least minute which forces me to take a taxi so I won’t be late. In my next articles, I will discuss each of the 5 Money Move Musts in depth.

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Interesting Money Facts. Are you a math genius? I am a math geek, but I can only claim, at my best moments, average math skills. If you are a genius in solving math problems, here is your chance of earning a cool US$ 1 million. All you need to do is solve the Beal Conjecture which is finding the common numerical factor of A, B, and C in the 350-year-old math mystery that is called Fermat’s Last Theorem which is stated as: Ax + By = Cz.

The reward is offered by Texas billionaire D. Andrew Beal hence ‘Beal Conjecture.’ He has been trying to solve for the numerical factor since 1993. Whoever said math is not cool must be mistaken.What are you waiting for? Get solving. There’s a million bucks at stake.

(Liza Gaspar is a wealth coach and personal finance enthusiast. She spends her free time helping out with the projects of the Rotary Club of Makati McKinley(rcmmckinley.org) and the Gerry Roxas Leadership Awardees (grlawardees.org). Visither Web site at thegirlninja.com, email her at liza@thegirlninja.com, or visit her at facebook.com/annalizagaspar and TheGirlNinja.com.)