Personal financial planning and control

1- Financial education: the principle of financial education is: to know how to get, spend, save, and invest your money to develop a better quality of life. A financial education will lead you to the realization of future plans, and the main tool that consolidates this process is budget control;

2- How to elaborate budget control: 1st step – Define your monthly expenses (those which are part of your daily, such as energy, gas, rent, alimentation, etc.) and put them in a spreadsheet. 2nd step – List your income and obligations to pay in a year time span. Compare them with the money you’re going to receive and try to figure out a balance between them. Expenses with food and rent hardly can be reduced or eliminated, although your telephone and energy consumption can be with some effort, representing an important economy at the end of the month.

3- Planning investments: Decide your goal: to buy a new car, take a dream vacation or simply save for your retirement, find out how much money you will need, and then calculate your investment options.

4- Financial planning: Evaluating your life goals, learning to buy (to make choices), avoiding waste, revising necessities and priorities. It is important to establish your goals, observe opportunities, elaborate a budget, and elaborate an action plan.

5- How to elaborate an action plan: The four “W's" and two “H's”:
Deciding: “W”hat to do, “W”hy to do it, “W”ho will do it, “W”hen to do it, “H”ow to do it, and “H”ow much will cost.