Several tips for creating personal financial calendar easily
Managing finances isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are many unplanned expenses along with expected ones. While it’s relatively easy to estimate how much you would need for taxes and bills and such, there are always other things for which you need money. Besides, planning finances can be tiresome and complicated. But be unprepared in that regard can be disastrous. You must know your assets and liabilities to be ready for every turn of circumstances.
According to experts, creating your personal finance calendar is the first step in the right direction. A such calendar is essentially a personal tool. It helps you observe your finances and set financial goals for a certain period. You can divide time periods yearly, quarterly, or monthly.
What are the advantages of creating a personal financial calendar?
First of all, it helps you have an unobstructed outlook on the year and your expenses. Besides, a personal financial calendar saves you from overspending. And if things still get messy, it will help you better distribute your expenses and stay in your salary range.
Most people create a new calendar at the beginning of the new year. They can review the past year’s expenses and set new goals while taking into account past experience. However, you can do it whenever you prefer; there is no absolute rule about that. If you don’t have much experience in planning it, though, here are several simple tips to help you create your own calendar.
The first step – assess your financial situation
You should assess your financial position before creating a financial calendar. Write down your personal assets and liabilities and determine your net worth. After that, you can more easily set goals for the coming year.
You should consider everything – your account balance, investments, debt load, credit card debt, and even credit score. Furthermore, carefully examine your spending during the previous year. Where did you overspend? Should you spend more money on something else instead? You can also use apps to track your spending habits.
Furthermore, calculate how much you earn during the month and year without taxes. The money which you have left after you pay for taxes and bills is your spending budget during the month.
The second step – write down your fixed yearly expenses
You should estimate your fixed yearly expenditure. That includes your mortgage, rent payments, light and water bills, taxes, school fees, and so on.
This list is a crucial part of making your personal finance calendar because you need to know how much you are spending to calculate how much you have left for other expenses. Write down due dates for the payments as well, so you don’t forget to make them.
The third step – make a list of your intended expenses
There are always some expenses, which are peculiar to only this particular year. You may want to renovate your living room or take holidays somewhere exotic.
Write down all such activities which will take extra from your budget and plan carefully how to save money for them over the coming months.
Furthermore, you should add an estimated amount of what you may spend on food, entertainment, medicals, and miscellaneous. That will help you to avoid overspending.
Step five – what are your financial goals?
Consider what do you want to achieve this year and think about how to manage that. Making plans ahead will help you enormously. You might find ways to save money for your goals, even if that seems impossible at the moment.
Savings are crucial as we don’t know what the future brings. Take Covid-19 pandemic. Lots of people didn’t have any savings when the coronavirus struck. However, thousands lost their jobs in the recurring economic crisis or were forced to weather several months of lockdowns without salaries. You should be prepared for such occurrences. Having a financial calendar will help to track your saving and expenses.
