Finance Fun on Friday
How much money did you invest in yourself last month? It is a tricky question because we pay what we need and want throughout the month without giving much thought to it. If we don’t give much thought to what we are actually paying chances are that a lot of money that could’ve been invested in yourself is wasted. This is the reason why every person should have a money plan, why waste our money when we instead could spend it on making ourselves happier on a deeper level.
We plan our future, we plan what to wear, we plan what to cook. We can make plans for everything to make sure we are on track, save time or just because we think that it’s fun. Do we also have a plan for our money? I mentioned last week that without a plan anything can happen and this can be exciting while living our life, but it is not so exciting when it comes to our money.
It is not always the case that big spenders have a more unhealthy life, but it is often the case that people with unhealthy lives spend more. Your finances and your health are connected in more ways than you might think and bad spending many times are also bad for your budget. Taking care of your finances are equally important as taking care of your health and neither should be neglected.
Better late than never is a phrase I use a bit too often in life and last week I finally took the time to sit down and fill in my own budget of the year. Yes, I know, it’s 4,5 months late to start. The point is that even if it’s a bit late to start you will still get several great benefits from filling in the previous months and it’s not very time consuming either, it took me less than 1 hour. With your budget in place you can then start to control your personal finances for the upcoming months.
Having money when you need it can have a huge impact on your life. It means that when unexpected expenses appear it will not be a risk and when opportunities appear in your life money will not hold you back. To be able to manage expenses that weren’t planned we need savings, but we can easily lose track or forget the purpose of the savings when we just stack it on our bank account. It could even be demotivating to start saving when we don’t see why we are doing it. Let’s do something different with our savings, let’s give it a purpose!
The highlight of the day is lunchtime, at least if you, like me, love food. We have around 90 meals per month if we count breakfast, lunch and dinner. That’s many moments of joy but also moments of money spent. Food is often one of our biggest expenses and it is also one of the expenses we can influence a lot if we want to save money.
Tomorrow is a new month so let’s do a money management challenge, the April envelope challenge! This is perfect if you feel a bit stuck with your personal finances, if budgeting just isn’t that much fun or if you want some change and excitement in your financial life.
During one month we manage to spend a lot of money, but one question we all should ask ourselves is, are we spending or wasting our money? The difference between spending and wasting is that when you spend money you are buying something that you really need or value, something that matters, and when you are wasting money you are buying things you could live equally well without
Happy new financially sustainable year! With a new year come new beginnings, new opportunities and it is also the time for new year’s resolutions. Some people love them and some people don’t like them at all. Personally I am one of those who love them! There are however one fact we all know about new year’s resolutions, we are not very likely to succeed and statistics indicate that the majority who makes a new year’s resolution will fail (and I don’t think this was a surprise to anyone). Even though I fall into the category of the failing majority, and I still haven’t managed to do a full pull up which was my new year’s resolution 10 years ago, I still love them! I do not think that my past failures should influence my future hopes.