How to Manage Your Money?

Money management refers to use of money in the right way which involves creating a budget, understanding cash expenses and incomes along with tracking the money spent, saving some income for investment and future use, removing avoidable expenses and also having a track of all items to understand the cash spending and generation.

Look at these personal finance statistics in the US which could actually shock you;

50% of Americans have less than one month’s income saved for a rainy day. If you have to believe the financial advisors, you need at least six month’s income saved for it.
30% have less than $1,000 in all bank accounts at any point in time
Americans have over $950 Billion in credit card debt
In total 1/3rd of Americans confess to having not saved anything at all for retirement

Over 50% of mortgage applicants don’t realize that their credit score was the main reason for their loan application rejection

If you recognize yourself in any of those statisticsStatistics Statistics is the science behind identifying, collecting, organizing and summarizing, analyzing, interpreting, and finally, presenting such data, either qualitative or quantitative, which helps make better and effective decisions with relevance.read more and want to reverse the situation, start your money management now. It is no rocket science and just keeping a simple rule in mind “You need to spend less than you earn”.

In order to start money management, you need to calculate and analyze your net worth & cash flow, get your credit reports, know your credit score, and create monthly and yearly budgets. Only after following these steps, you will be able to gauge where exactly you stand financially.
The next thing you will need to do is set definite targets of where you actually want to be financial.

To show you how you could do it, I have created this infographic for you that will help you create a budget, pay off debts, and start saving.

8 Simple Steps to Managing Your Money – Infographics

Steps to manage your money are as follows

Record your Balance Sheet
• List and calculate all your assets such as banks accounts, home, vehicle, stocks etc..
• List and calculate all your debts such as home loan, car loan, other loan, credit card etc..
Calculate your Net Worth
Assets – Debts = Net Worth
Record your Income Statement
• List any income such as salary, your income from stocks/bonds etc.
• List expenses such as monthly expenditure (calculate an average spent of at least 3 months)
Calculate your Cash Flow
Income – Expenses = Monthly Cash Flow
Once the monthly income and expenses are listed and calculated from step 3, calculate the money that came in and that went out. *Do not forget to include your credit card payments.
Know your Credit Score
Credit reports are available for free and you can know your credit score by paying a nominal fee to credit reporting agencies. It is to determine your credit worthiness.
Analyze Step #2, #4 and #5

Compare these standards to yours, find out where you stand financially.
Setup Budgets
Once you know your spending history, you need to budget how much you want to allocate to each category every month. There are also online budget planner available.
Keep Track of your Budgets
Its important to know where you stand financially. Again keeping a track of your budget gives you an accurate idea of where you spent your money during a month/year.

Infographics

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Source: How to Manage Your Money? (wallstreetmojo.com)

If you are good at managing your money it can help you stay in control of your finances and it can help you reach your targets and pay off any debts. There are a number of ways you can do this.

You can use a good online budget planner to work out your budget in minutes. With that, you will be able to see how much spare cash you have left after paying off your most important bills.
You can maintain a spending diary which will help you keep a closer eye on your spending. This would be a good way to keep a track of where you are spending your money and what on.
Aim to pay off your debts first, especially those with the highest interest rates.
Watch out for non-essential expenses that can be avoided in your budget. Ask yourself a question of whether a particular expense is a “want” or is it a “need”. Of course, you need to cut down on things which are wants.
The balance number in your checkbook is a critical one as it would tell you exactly how much money you have currently. Ensure you keep an accurate checkbook which includes all the records including ATM/Visa Check Card transactions, checks, deposits. This will help you review where exactly you spend and save.
Credit card debts are the easiest of traps to fall into. So try and minimize the usage of credit cards as much as possible.
Acquaint yourself with diverse investment options. The more knowledge you have about financial instruments and possibilities, the better off you’ll be when it comes to investing your money. You will just need to find out which one would be the correct one for you and your needs.
You never know when you would need a huge sum of money in case of an emergency. For such situations having good insurance coverage can really help overcome those crises.
Though I am mentioning it the last it is one of the most important points, you need to organize funds towards financial goals such as debt reduction, saving for a down payment, investing for retirement. It’s most important to just start doing it, whichever method you choose.

All this may seem complicated and boring but you need to take the first step and start this process. After which you just need to take care and pay attention to what you’re doing with your money.

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How to Manage Your Money?