How to better manage your personal finance in 4 steps

Growing to have your own personal finance can be a dream and a nightmare. While financial independence is most people’s goal in life, it comes with great responsibilities. Most often than not, many individuals are not really prepared to deal with them. 

Of course, that can cause serious issues and even get people in a situation that they think they can never get out of. If you’re finding yourself a bit lost on how to manage your money properly, don’t worry — OneBlinc is here to help! In this article, we’ll talk all about financial management, so you can make the best use of your money!

1. Write it all down

Money can be hard to manage. That’s why you have to be very organized when it comes to it. The best way to do that is by putting everything you own down on paper. Start with your monthly salary and physical goods, such as furniture and electronics.

If you have a side job or any other source of income, put that into account too. All that is part of your personal finance and should be clear for you to plan your next steps. Do everything you can to never overstep the boundaries those numbers tell you. 

If your monthly income is $1000, always avoid spending more than that. Emergencies can happen, but we’ll talk more about that later. Starting from the basics will be really useful to guide you through our next financial advice.

2. Set your priorities 

Finally, you can start spending your own money on everything important to you! Keyword: important. When thinking about personal finance, you must set what is a priority and what can be set aside for now or even discarded from your expenses.

In order to do this, start from the basics. Housing, transportation, food, water, health, internet, and electricity usually are on top of everything else. If you still have some money left after calculating your expenses with those priorities, start adding your second to the highest features.

Remember that your priorities must be set based on your and your family’s necessities. If you have a child, for example, providing school supplies should be a priority. If you own a pet, healthcare is something you must consider. 

You can organize all that using many tools, there’s no need to be fancy. Start by making a simple list by hand or on a document on your computer. To get things summarized in a more detailed way, consider using an Excel spreadsheet, an oldie but goldie.

3. See the bigger picture

Now that you’ve established what is needed at this moment, it’s time to think about the future. Do you plan on going to college or plan for your child to go to college, perhaps? Maybe, one day, you can even push a trip to the Bahamas into the plans. Write down everything you wish for later and prioritize them.

As you can see, prioritizing is one of the principles of personal finance. It helps to understand where your money is heading and where you actually want it to go if you have some savings. 

Having goals, even if they’re believed to be almost unreachable, is a great way to have a guide on where to go. So not only think about what’s more to least important, but also think about your personal finance timely — as in, “what do I need to do beforehand in order to reach this goal of mine?”

4. Save, save, save

Learning how to save money can be really bothersome and, sometimes, not an interest of yours. But there’s a reason why it’s so important: unexpected things happen. If you don’t have the funds to fix whatever problems appear your way, you might have to deal with an even bigger problem. 

That’s why saving money is so important when it comes to financial education. If you’re having trouble saving, turn back to that second step we talked about. Remember your priorities and save a bit of money for each one of them. It doesn’t have to be much. Work with what you can.

Set that money aside, somewhere you know you’ll only be able to turn to when it’s really needed. In that spreadsheet you made on our second step, add a “savings” column. There, you’ll be able to define how much you saved for each priority every month. 

If you have any debt, it can be hard to save money. The good news is that, nowadays, some tools will help you negotiate your debt and even create an action plan to save money whilst paying off what you owe. 

OneBlinc is here for you

Whether something didn’t go as planned or things got a bit out of control, OneBlinc is here to help you overcome any financial challenges you’re going through right now! Learn more about us and get to know how we work.