The fourth step in Smart and Prudent Financial Management Series 2 is to Plan Expenses. It’s hard to plan because a lot of unexpected things will happen every day. Among the benefits of Smart and Prudent Financial Management Series 2 is to Plan Expenses are as follows:
- You can list urgent, important needs with more confidence.
- You can get through your days without thinking about lack of money.
- You are not burdened with a high monthly commitment.
For example, you can make a deduction of USD50 per month from your total monthly expenses to be used on Aidilfitri celebration next year. You can just stay at home for the third week of the weekend and enjoy your weekend by watching television. This can save more than USD50.
You can plan expenses in various forms as follows:
- Plan daily expenses
- Plan monthly expenses
- Plan annual expenses
Plan Daily Expenses
It is not difficult to plan your daily expenses. For example, you can bringUSD20 to the office where the money is used for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea. Automatically if you set in mind you can only spend max USD20 per day, you will become a disciplined person and the result is you will not complain of no money at the end of the month.
Plan Monthly Expenses
You can’t practice the way most other people do like eating out with the family when payday arrives. This is because this situation if you follow it is feared will bring a bad risk if there is an emergency to spend money during the month.
Ideally if you plan to have a meal with the family, money that should have been spent at the beginning of the month can be saved and used at the end of the month or on the next payday come in. This also makes you a patient person in doing one action even if you do good things that are not contrary to religious teachings.
Plan Annual Expenditures
If you can already get used to planning daily and monthly expenses, now you have moved on to the next phase which is plan annual expenditures.
For example, if you want to buy a new car, you have to pay an expensive insurance premium the following year. Maintenance costs are also expensive as you need to go to an authorized service center. So plan your annual expenses well, that is, if the laptop installment debt or personal loan debt has expired, then you use the excess monthly installment to buy other necessities such as buying a new car and do not have to worry about paying expensive car insurance premiums.