Personal finance and budget planning: part 1
It’s the answer that makes most profligate spenders blench and give up on financial management for another day. Personal finance and budget planning go together like bread and butter. Forget getting rich quick, winning the lottery or making a million out of property … the boring but uncomfortable truth is that to get rich you first have to get organised and to get organised you start with budget planning.
Most of us adopt a financial plan that’s rather like trying to fill a bath with the plug still out. Answer this simple question. Who’s richer - your pal who earns £100,000 a year but spends £101,000, or the friend who earns £20,000 and spends only £19,000. You may argue the former, that you need outlandish amounts of consumer goods in order to make your life bearable … and that edging steadily into debt is but a small price to pay. I’d have to demur. Show me a man who says he’s happy spending himself into ever deeper debt and I’ll show you someone in denial. Actually, I don’t have to. You KNOW that you have issues with this stuff, or you wouldn’t be reading this right? Okay, assuming we accept that it’s a problem, if we COULD show you a way to pretty much maintain your present lifestyle, while gradually eroding your debts, you’d take it right? After all that would leave you more to spend on the things you really want.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be running a series of feature-ettes on personal finance and budget planning, or ‘how to get richer without really trying’. I can promise you it will be relatively painless. I can even hazard a guess that it will be fun at times (yes really). And I guarantee I can find you £2000 each year you didn’t even know you had. See you next time.
