Everyone has their own way to manage their money, if you do not have one yet, probably you may want to starts off by picking one that best suits you and convenient to you. For years, I do not have a proper way in managing my money, I simply wrote them down in a piece of paper 2 or 3 days before the paycheck reaches me or sometime in an excel spreadsheet. I started off with a simple one, income minus expenses and the balance will be my cashflow, merely use for entertainment. It served the purpose for me to know how much I can spend on that particular month after minuses all my loans/debts and expenses. It works fine for me and sometimes it doesn't matches what I had planned earlier, how much I can spend and how much I can save, I would say most of the time, I'll overspent.
It's inevitable doodad or temptation would cause you to overspent that month, no matter how magnificent your plan is, without discipline, the plan won't succeed. I learned the hard way and earlier I had mentioned that I wrote them down in a piece of paper or excel spreadsheet, I do not kept or file them anywhere. I just memorized them and spent accordingly to the figure in mind. Although previously method served the purpose but it's not the way, because I do not know where the money goes. So, one free day I sat down and think, what's the best way to enhanced my financial situation to better track my money as well as saving more money. I came out with all these questions and answered them.
1) What's my objective for saving?
2) What's my goals after saving?
3) What strategies can I use?
4) What tools available that I can use to better track my money?
5) Am I wasting time planning all this?
After answering all the questions, now that I know what I want. I have a better picture of what is my objective and goals, I am better now to manage my money because I have a goal to achieve that would review back after 6 months whether I am wasting time or not. I scoured the internet looking for the best available software to track my money. You can find the best personal finance software here. If you find it complicated, you may want to start off with this excel spreadsheet that come with charts.
I had never tried Quicken, but I like Microsoft Money so far, although for Malaysian, we are unable to download our financial information to the application but we can manually create transaction and bump in all transaction from account created. It works perfect for me, now that I can track where my money goes with all the reports provided inside Microsoft Money. The only things that I need is disciplined to sticks to my goals and update it regularly.
There are many available free personal finance budgeting online, unfortunately, it was not meant to be use by country outside United States as these online personal finance site are able to let you download your financial details from the bank to your open account in the website and help you track your transaction and the good thing about it is that you can learned from other members of this site to exchange ideas and discussed.
Lastly, how do you manage your money? whether is it necessary for me? I would say "YES", personal finance is for everyone, let's take a look at a bigger picture, a country need to have proper financial management to determined the in/out flow of money to ensure better economy. A company need to have proper financial management to ensure business sustainability. Finally, individuals need to applies personal finance to prevent money problems from happening to you. The no.1 stress in Malaysia is money, do you want to be stress free? I bet you would say "YES". Start now then…
