Goals Of Financial Management - 4 Personal Financial Goals

Remember those financial goals you make back at the beginning of this year? With the year drawing to an end, and with Fall just ahead, it is a good time to revisit your financial goals. It is also a good time to check if any of those goals have gone awry. Here are some financial must-do things or this Fall.

Create an emergency fund

This September has 5 Fridays, which means an extra week’s worth of paycheck! If you are getting this huge benefit, consider to use this bonus to start building your emergency fund. Even small amounts of emergency fund can help you during times of car repairs, medical expenses, unexpected emergencies, and more. A good place to start doing this from is your high-yield online savings account.

Already have a good enough emergency fund nest? Then use that bonus towards paying your mortgage debt or credit card debt, or even planning to use it next year.

Oh and by the way, this December has 5 Fridays as well!

Increase your retirement savings

Are you maximizing your PF or Provident Fund? If so, this is a good time to consider making an increase to this contribution.

The minimum goal for provident fund should be to contribute enough to get any employer in the future to match your current company’s offer. If it is possible, boost your contribution by 10% or even by 15% by the end of this year.

You can contribute up to a certain amount per year, and this amount is tax-deductible. If you are older than 50, you can add another certain amount to build up your retirement egg nest.

Save something for those shopping splurges

Special days for encouraging shopping sprees and increased consumerism are many. There are days like Black Friday when you are bombarded by huge discounts and price offs. Of course people buy! Even those who are not in the habit of splurging find it hard to stop themselves.

At times like these, what you can do is arrange an automatic weekly transfer of a certain amount to your savings account from the beginning of September. Thus, when Black Friday does come, you’ll have enough funds to buy things.

Understand that the huge discounts only set you up for buying something big or expensive, which mitigates the discount cost for the sellers.

Use technologies to pay off debt faster

Why not let technology help you out? For instance there are tools which let you see when you shall be debt-free based on your current assets and liabilities. Using these can fine-tune your finances in ways would not have imagined possible!

Goals Of Financial Management - 4 Personal Financial Goals

Remember those financial goals you make back at the beginning of this year? With the year drawing to an end, and with Fall just ahead, it is a good time to revisit your financial goals. It is also a good time to check if any of those goals have gone awry. Here are some financial must-do things or this Fall.

Create an emergency fund

This September has 5 Fridays, which means an extra week’s worth of paycheck! If you are getting this huge benefit, consider to use this bonus to start building your emergency fund. Even small amounts of emergency fund can help you during times of car repairs, medical expenses, unexpected emergencies, and more. A good place to start doing this from is your high-yield online savings account.

Already have a good enough emergency fund nest? Then use that bonus towards paying your mortgage debt or credit card debt, or even planning to use it next year.

Oh and by the way, this December has 5 Fridays as well!

Increase your retirement savings

Are you maximizing your PF or Provident Fund? If so, this is a good time to consider making an increase to this contribution.

The minimum goal for provident fund should be to contribute enough to get any employer in the future to match your current company’s offer. If it is possible, boost your contribution by 10% or even by 15% by the end of this year.

You can contribute up to a certain amount per year, and this amount is tax-deductible. If you are older than 50, you can add another certain amount to build up your retirement egg nest.

Save something for those shopping splurges

Special days for encouraging shopping sprees and increased consumerism are many. There are days like Black Friday when you are bombarded by huge discounts and price offs. Of course people buy! Even those who are not in the habit of splurging find it hard to stop themselves.

At times like these, what you can do is arrange an automatic weekly transfer of a certain amount to your savings account from the beginning of September. Thus, when Black Friday does come, you’ll have enough funds to buy things.

Understand that the huge discounts only set you up for buying something big or expensive, which mitigates the discount cost for the sellers.
Use technologies to pay off debt faster

Why not let technology help you out? For instance there are tools which let you see when you shall be debt-free based on your current assets and liabilities. Using these can fine-tune your finances in ways would not have imagined possible!

Financial Management for Women - Set your Financial Goals

Breaking the persistent shackles of patriarchy, the women of India have established their strong presence in almost all walks of life, thus emerging as an empowered lot. But how empowered are women in handling their money? Patriarchy is still extant when it comes to managing finances, and the average Indian woman has been somewhat diffident in taking independent financial decisions.

Financial management strategies must be customized to suit one’s requirements; there isn’t any handbook! Whether you are a young girl or an elderly lady, a risk-taker or risk-averse, single or married – all of these and several other factors will influence your style and technique of money management.

Let’s get you started on the basics of ‘intelligent financing.’

Set Your Financial Goals

You toil hard to earn money. You earn money to realize your dreams. But you can only realize those dreams when you appropriately channelize your earnings towards certain goals. Thus, the first step to dexterous money management is setting your short-term and some long-term financial goals. Analyze your current financial status, understand your financial obligations, parley with your spouse and figure out your priorities; then find a pragmatic way of venturing towards them.

Plan Your Budget

Once you have defined your financial goals, understood your financial standing and identified what you wish to accomplish, it’s time to set a budget plan that is in sync with your goals. Whether you customize a budget for yourself or adopt an existing budgeting model, school yourself to stick to it with the strongest determination.

Attend to the Emergencies

Crisis always lurks around the corner; you never know when you might meet one – an accident, an unplanned job switch, a medical emergency, and the list goes on. Protect yourself with an emergency fund. Save enough to be able to sustain for at least six months without a steady income. Get a health insurance; a life insurance policy as well, in case you have dependents. Make steady contributions to your retirement fund every month. Safeguard your future.
Be Financially Educated

Well, this is the pinnacle of all challenges. Financial education is the stepping stone to financial independence. Understand your salary structure, know all about income tax, acquaint yourself with the money market and learn about investment opportunities. You could talk to a professional advisor or a financially-knowledgeable acquaintance. Or you could just let Mr. Google enlighten you.
Park Your Money Safely

Learn the techniques of saving money. Stocks, bonds, shares, equities, mutual funds, term deposits, property, savings – myriad investment options are available. Understand their nuances and invest wisely. Spread your portfolio across multiple modes of investment.

Diving into the cryptic world of money management can be quite overwhelming. However, Indian women have proved their mettle – proficiently juggling their household and professional responsibilities. Money management will be a breeze once these ambidextrous ladies overcome their spurious apprehensions and assume an assertive role in their financial lives.

Goals Of Financial Management - 4 Personal Financial Goals

Remember those financial goals you make back at the beginning of this year? With the year drawing to an end, and with Fall just ahead, it is a good time to revisit your financial goals. It is also a good time to check if any of those goals have gone awry. Here are some financial must-do things or this Fall.

Create an emergency fund

This September has 5 Fridays, which means an extra week’s worth of paycheck! If you are getting this huge benefit, consider to use this bonus to start building your emergency fund. Even small amounts of emergency fund can help you during times of car repairs, medical expenses, unexpected emergencies, and more. A good place to start doing this from is your high-yield online savings account.

Already have a good enough emergency fund nest? Then use that bonus towards paying your mortgage debt or credit card debt, or even planning to use it next year.

Oh and by the way, this December has 5 Fridays as well!
Increase your retirement savings

Are you maximizing your PF or Provident Fund? If so, this is a good time to consider making an increase to this contribution.

The minimum goal for provident fund should be to contribute enough to get any employer in the future to match your current company’s offer. If it is possible, boost your contribution by 10% or even by 15% by the end of this year.

You can contribute up to a certain amount per year, and this amount is tax-deductible. If you are older than 50, you can add another certain amount to build up your retirement egg nest.

Save something for those shopping splurges

Special days for encouraging shopping sprees and increased consumerism are many. There are days like Black Friday when you are bombarded by huge discounts and price offs. Of course people buy! Even those who are not in the habit of splurging find it hard to stop themselves.

At times like these, what you can do is arrange an automatic weekly transfer of a certain amount to your savings account from the beginning of September. Thus, when Black Friday does come, you’ll have enough funds to buy things.

Understand that the huge discounts only set you up for buying something big or expensive, which mitigates the discount cost for the sellers.

Use technologies to pay off debt faster

Why not let technology help you out? For instance there are tools which let you see when you shall be debt-free based on your current assets and liabilities. Using these can fine-tune your finances in ways would not have imagined possible!

Financial Management - How Can Freelancers Manage Their Money?

There are many benefits when you are your own boss. You can work when you want to, with whom you want to. You have the luxury of choosing your own clients, and can even work in your pajamas! In fact, working from the beach has always been the dream for freelancers!

However, at the end of the day, things are not always so good. For freelancers, life is not a party because there is a price to be paid for becoming one. First of all, income flow is uneven, and unless you pay close attention to it, you can fall into debt. Secondly, you miss out on employer benefits. Thirdly, you are the only one, on top of managing your business, who needs to manage your personal finances.

In this article, we at mymoneykarma shall help you to get your financial home in order, and will give you tips to make money by freelancing!
Track your income

The very first thing to do is to know how much you are making, or what your income is. Do you know what your income was last month or last week? Was it more or less than the previous period a year ago?

One financial expert says that freelancers have more predictable income flows than those who are not into freelancing. Most of them do not know or track their income, and feel overwhelmed when their financial situation becomes overwhelming, unmanageable and unpredictable.

On the other hand, if you do have a historic view of your income, it gets easier to prepare for the lean times of the year, especially if you have seasonal projects and repeat clients. Freelancing world can be irregular, but historic insights of your personal finance can give you some financial stability. Want to track your freelance income and expenses? Just use a separate bank account, a simple spreadsheet or a free app.
Plan to meet your tax obligations

You might be freelancing, but that doesn’t mean you can sneak away from paying your taxes. And that is one of the things which make this line or work tough by itself. It can get stressful in a hurry.

If you work in a corporate office, employers shield you from some taxes. But when you freelance, there is no such lenient shield. You’ll have to pay all your taxes yourself. But it is not so hard as it looks. Here’s what you got to do. Make an educated guess on your yearly earnings, and then make estimated quarterly payments to help you stay on track on taxes. If you can, use the previous year’s tax return as a baseline to work from.

There are, of course, things that you can deduct. These include expenses for professional development, work-related car use, and business expenses. And you can also deduct health insurance premiums, if you meet some requirements. To make sure that your tax season is smooth, learn all about the different tax rules for freelancers.
Create a budget

When you are a freelancer, budgeting may seem impossible. However, it does not have to be that way. You can use the 50/30/20 budgeting methods. In this method, 50% of your monthly income goes towards meeting your necessities post-income tax deduction, 30% towards meeting your needs, and 20% towards your savings and repaying debt.

Here are other smart things you can do:

• Stash away Rs. 50000 for emergencies.
• Save for retirement
• Pay off your bad debt first
• Don’t stop saving for emergencies
• Pay off your other debts
  

Get insured

Did you know that as much as 20% of freelancers are uninsured? And this is from a 2016 data. Today, with more and more freelancers joining the market, you can be rest assured that this percentage has increased. If you don’t have insurance coverage, you’ll have problems facing financial hardships in case of medical emergencies, health problems, and the like.

Here are your insurance options:

• Health insurance
• Car insurance
• Life insurance
  

Set competitive rates

It is always a good idea to periodically reevaluate whether or not you are compensated adequately for your efforts. According to what you find, you may need to adjust or change the price of your services. In one popular freelancing site, around half of the freelancers said they want to raise their rates the past year, and more than half opined that they planned to raise their rates the next year.

In this sense, freelancers are in a much better position. They are in control of their rates, and thus over how much they can make. This is a freedom most working people don’t have. So if you, as a freelancer, have a lot of expenses, think hard about increasing your rates.

When you earn more money, you remove financial pressure from yourself and can create a budget.

How can you be sure of which rate to have?

Talk to other freelancers. Go to sites like Glassdoor.com and see the average rate for your industry and for one of your skills and experience. When you find the average salary, break that down into hourly rate.

5 Ways to Reduce Money-Related Stress - Financial Management

Most of us think that if we just had more money, we would not have any problems in life. But then how will you explain the money-related stress which the rich people are in? It only takes one bankruptcy to propel back an affluent person into the lower ranks of society, let’s not forget. So it is not a question of having more money. It is more about better money management.

So, how can you have less money-related stress in life?

In this blog, we are going to show you 5 ways to de-money-stress!

Don’t monitor your accounts too much: It is not a healthy habit to log in to your savings or checking account each day to check your funds. No, it is not healthy at all. It is paranoia. Neither is it healthy to get text messages after every change in your account. Look, you are not Sherlock Holmes. Don’t try to be. It is highly stressful, does not help anything, and besides there is no mystery!

Focus on needs only: You may think that you really NEED the latest smartphone or the latest sports car, but those luxury items are not what you need. Those are your WANTS. In other words, you can do without them. Things you actually need are food, clothing, shelter and love. Once you cut down the frivolous things from your life, you'll know how many things you do not need. It’s actually liberating to know how much you can live without.

Set up spending limits: It can also be freeing to know how much money you can save by not spending. Set up a budget or limits to what you can actually spend per month. Leave a little bit of flexibility in the beginning, in case this is the first time you are setting spending limits or making a budget. If you wish, you can make it a hard limit. It’s totally your choice, but know that the latter brings results faster.

Designate an amount for everything, from eating out to entertainment. That way, when you do spend on them, you can do so guilt-free. And if money runs out? Well, you’ll know where you overspent and you can improve on that next month. This tip alone slashes down your money-related stress level!

Use money as a tool: Money is only a tool to use for buying things. If you already live a comfortable life, what then is the use of more money? You can save that instead of spending everything now! More money, if you are living a comfortable life already, won’t bring additional comfort or security. Remember, money is just a means of exchange.

Having money does not equal happiness always: More money does not always bring more happiness nor improve the quality of your life. People find joy when they have little money too, while some of the wealthiest people in the world are unhappy. Try finding joy in other things in your life apart from money. Be grateful for the things you do have.

Goals Of Financial Management - 4 Personal Financial Goals

Remember those financial goals you make back at the beginning of this year? With the year drawing to an end, and with Fall just ahead, it is a good time to revisit your financial goals. It is also a good time to check if any of those goals have gone awry. Here are some financial must-do things or this Fall.

Create an emergency fund

This September has 5 Fridays, which means an extra week’s worth of paycheck! If you are getting this huge benefit, consider to use this bonus to start building your emergency fund. Even small amounts of emergency fund can help you during times of car repairs, medical expenses, unexpected emergencies, and more. A good place to start doing this from is your high-yield online savings account.

Already have a good enough emergency fund nest? Then use that bonus towards paying your mortgage debt or credit card debt, or even planning to use it next year.

Oh and by the way, this December has 5 Fridays as well!
Increase your retirement savings

Are you maximizing your PF or Provident Fund? If so, this is a good time to consider making an increase to this contribution.

The minimum goal for provident fund should be to contribute enough to get any employer in the future to match your current company’s offer. If it is possible, boost your contribution by 10% or even by 15% by the end of this year.

You can contribute up to a certain amount per year, and this amount is tax-deductible. If you are older than 50, you can add another certain amount to build up your retirement egg nest.
Save something for those shopping splurges

 Special days for encouraging shopping sprees and increased consumerism are many. There are days like Black Friday when you are bombarded by huge discounts and price offs. Of course people buy! Even those who are not in the habit of splurging find it hard to stop themselves.

At times like these, what you can do is arrange an automatic weekly transfer of a certain amount to your savings account from the beginning of September. Thus, when Black Friday does come, you’ll have enough funds to buy things.

Understand that the huge discounts only set you up for buying something big or expensive, which mitigates the discount cost for the sellers.
Use technologies to pay off debt faster

Why not let technology help you out? For instance there are tools which let you see when you shall be debt-free based on your current assets and liabilities. Using these can fine-tune your finances in ways would not have imagined possible!