7 Effective Tips to improve your personal finances!

Financial planning” is one of the most important aspect of our life. managing your finance smartly and effectively could make a major difference in your overall enjoyment and quality of life.  

During this year (2020) “Covid 19 pandemic” has caused massive disruption to global economy. A larger number of populations facing financial strain due to loss of employment or changes in their income and working schedule.  as a result of this stressful situation, so many of us will face different challenges to manage and protect our finances.  

Honestly, being a medical science graduate, finance had never been a subject of much interest for me. But now as a responsible grown-up and a mommy of two, I take my “finance management” seriously. For this purpose, I am always ready to learn and adopt the ways that keep my money matters in order.  

 During last 3-4 months (because of lock down), I had gotten some spare time. And utilize this time for researching and exploring the better ways of financial management.  

While doing this research, I had learnt some smart ways to improve our financial health. In this post, I am sharing that secrets that will surely help you in good “Financial management”.  Read the post to know more! 

Make an assessment and track your net worth 

Make an assessment is first and most important step of managing your finances. You need to do a little math to making an assessment and calculate your net worth mean the difference between your assets and debt. This assessment will tell you where you stand financially, and help you plan better for achieving your financial goals with ease and proper vision. This tracking not only helps you in highlighting your success but also helps in identify areas that requires improvement. 

Create a detail plan about your financial goals  

This one is second important step; you need to take out a proper time and write down your both kinds of financial goals, long term such as early retirement and short term such as plan a trip to aboard. Setting the financial goals will form a foundation and give you a proper vision that will help you in effective finance management. 

Budget is the best tool to manage your finances effectively 

Creating a budget is next most important step that will succeed you financially.  you need to create a personal budget (either on monthly or annual basis). Budget is most important tool that helps you in planning for expenses, reduce the extra expenses, saving for future and plan for emergency fund.  

There are various methods to form a personal budget. But as a basic approach, you can follow these steps. Such as: 

• Calculate your total income- first you need to write down or listed the all income sources of you. Make sure to include extra income too, if you have any additional income source (such as having a blog that generate some revenue or any part time job or hobby that add some extra bucks in your pocket) 
• Track your expenses- though it may sound little boring but tracking your expenses is equally important. You can use modern tools like spread sheet or can use old fashioned pen and paper for keeping a record of your expenses. Dividing expenses in various categories (such as entertainment, transport, education and household) helps you in getting a better idea about expenses.  
• Subtract the expenses from income. This step will give you an idea about how much money you will have as saved amount. And if your expenses are higher than your income, then it alarms you to pay attention on both factors that is increasing the income and reduce the expenses.  

Try to Stick on budget and make lifestyle changes if needed 

Try to stick on your planned budget. Usually people who earn more, have a higher chance of spend more on luxury and other lifestyle things. This phenomenon is called “lifestyle inflation”. This excessive spending can affect your planned budget negatively and you may find it hard to stick on your planned budget. 

Though certain expenses (such as house rent, collage fee) are fixed and but we can do lots of modification in our other lifestyle habits such as entertainment or eating out, to cut down the extra expenses and can save a decent amount of money per month. 

Savings and investing 

Savings are important part of good financial management. Try to put a fixed and decent amount of money from your regular income as a saving is best way to ensure that you are planning well for future and saving a good amount for important events of life. 

Like saving, investing properly is smart way to increase your wealth, and you can take professional advice for getting best investing options as per your need and preferences.  

Take out emergency fund 

Life can take any unpredictable turn at any moment. And you need to keep this factor in mind while managing your finances. Take out a decent amount as an “emergency fund” is good idea to feel safe and be prepared for adverse situations.  

Use of financial calculators 

We lived-in high-tech era and nowadays technology has over powered all aspects of our life. In fact, use of technologies has made lots of things easier than before. Use of financial calculators is one of the best ways to keep a track of your money, so you can make better plan for the future.   

Use of financial calculators will allow you to safely consolidate, manage and control your money all in one place. 

While reading and exploring more on this topic, I came across one of the finest and reliable website sources for effective finance management. This source helps us to solve our personal finances issue and save our time and money efficiently.  

The name of this reliable resource is “Pigly”. What is Pigly all about? What are unique features of it? How it can help you in managing your personal finances? Read the post to know more. 

What is Pigly? 

Pigly is a reliable source for managing your personal finances smartly and effectively. It has been designed by IT and communication professionals who are dedicated to provide and help people solve their personal financial issues and make them money smart. 

Pigly has a wide range of helpful tools like savings, credit cards, vehicle, loans, debt budgeting and business. All these tools and calculators are reviewed by experts to ensure accuracy and reliability. 

Use of these tools are absolutely free and you can use it even without registration.  

Let’s get an insight about each tool. 

Savings 

This calculator helps investors determine how much interest they will earn based on a single deposit, a recurring set of deposits or a combination of both. Along with this, this calculator also provides estimates of income taxes due and the after-tax future value of a periodic investment. Saving calculators have different categories such as education, retirement and investing and you can any of these, as per your need and requirements.  

Mortgage payment calculator 

This calculator helps home buyer estimate their monthly principle and payment along with the full PITI (principal, interest, taxes and insurance) mortgage payment, when buying a home.  

Credit card 

Nowadays, each day we get plenty of offers of credit cards from different companies. And these multiple offers create a confusion for best selection.  This calculator, helps you to select the best deal. You just need to enter your initial account balance and the terms for each card, and then this calculator will use the fixed payments you enter to figure out which card is a better deal.  

Vehicle 

This calculator helps you to estimate monthly payment on an auto loan. And also allow you to estimate an affordable vehicle price based on your current savings and monthly budget.  

Loan payment calculator 

This calculator helps you to estimate quickly the monthly payment on a loan. 

Debt  

This calculator helps you to figure out when a given debt will paid off along with how much interest you will spend on the debt and the average monthly interest. 

Business 

There are different categories for business calculators such as commercial loans, court judgment and multi-level marketing (MLM) downstream member calculators. And each one can be used to estimate different commissions as per your business requirements.  

How to use these financial calculators? 

Using these financial calculators is super easy and hassle free. Here I am sharing one of example, “Debt financial calculator” (with screen shots) for easy understanding. 

In this you first need to fill your details like regular debt payment amount, percentage interest, remaining principle balance, payment per year etc, and this calculator helps you to figure out when a given debt will be paid off along how much interest you will spend on debt and the monthly interest.

For using each calculator, you need to fill out some important details (such as). these details vary as per your selection of calculation. When you are done with calculation, you can use the button at the bottom of the calculator to create a printable authorization schedule. 

My personal experience

I had talk to my husband to help in this and asked him to use few of these calculators to know his feedback. he has used few of these calculators and here is his experiences/ suggestions about the Pigly.

1. He liked vehicle, loan, and debt financial calculators and had no problem while using this.
2. While, for using budget calculators, he had felt that there should be a facility of add fixed amount apart from adding percentages. adding of this facility will make this calculator much user friendly and useful.
3. Also, for saving calculators, he felt the need of having a state select facility. this facility can help a lot in calculating tax as per state rules.

Conclusion 

As a conclusion, I would say, “” We lived in a high-tech digital era and having smart tools for managing our finances is a smart decision. Pigly is a good source that had wide varieties of financial calculators that will help you in managing your finances smartly. I had a mixed experience while using these financial calculators, and I would recommended this to others as well. Try it to be money smart and I am sure you will love it”.