First and foremost this is not a write up on what financial institution to go to with how many percent of returns if you invest in this and that. I’ll be sharing with you the many different ways to organise and reduce the stresses of dealing with your finances, hence bettering your relationship with money .
I’ve only recently been up-skilling my financial literacy in the last few years which is making quite a turn over with how I deal with my finances. And I’m grateful for it.
What are the two letters we hate receiving in the mail? Letters from the bank and our monthly bills. So let’s get into it.
1.Responsibilities ,Others and Investments ( ROI )
Let’s start from basics. This is your other ROI . You’re going to organize your finances into 3 categories. 1. Responsibilities ( whatever bills and expenditures ) 2. Others ( personal allowances for the month ) 3. Investments ( Money set aside for investments and savings ).
Segregating your finances like this will allow you to see on paper what you need to set aside and NOT spend to ensure your monthly expenses are dealt with. It looks intimidating I know but it’ll ease up the way you spend money and that’s always something to look forward to. Don’t forget to put in loans under Responsibilities (R) if you have any. Even credit card expenses and pet care. The other investments ( for example the CPF insvt ), that are not included in your monthly expenditures cos it doesn’t affect your income since it’s taken from your CPF and not your own pocket, can also be written down here so you know roughly what you invested in. You can also put in your hobby, if you spend on it monthly. This is a visual of where your money is going. This also puts you in a place of awareness, so as to not overspend your earnings. Cos that’s what people always do. They spend money they don’t have.
2.Meet Up with a Good Financial Advisor
I know it’s hard to find a really good one so ask around for recommendations from family and friends, or you may ask from the companies that you already have insurance with, it just makes things easier. Your own insurance agent hopefully can guide you to better policies and progressive investments. Let your money work for you and after 10-20 years of growth, you’ll get to reap its benefits or redirect that growth to your retirement.
3.Limit Expenses Not Savings
So when you have an ROI (above) it’s easy now to see how much you can set aside. Usually, we over budget our expenditure and limit our savings. For example, you’ll purposely set aside $500 for savings every month. I mean you can do that definitely, but a more beneficial way is to put everything that you have left (after setting aside your ROI above) into another savings account. This way, you’re limiting your expenses rather than your savings.
4.Name Your Different Accounts
So now that you know how segregation is important in this case, you’ll now get to build up your savings by labeling it. Depending on your bank, create multiple accounts for multiple things. For instance, you have the account that your pay comes into (which is your main savings account), then you can create another account for holiday expenses, allowances or rewards. It’s all up to you. Most banks these days do allow you to name your accounts and the fantastic thing is, you can do it digitally, even with your current ones. Some banks even have policies or banking methods that help you segregate.
Here’s some examples you can do on your own:
- Pay-Yourself or Save-As You- Earn Account is money you dump into after setting aside your ROI. So instead of limiting your savings to $500 per month, you limit your expenses. So ensure you have $2,305 (look at ROI diagram above) for your expenditure and whatever earnings left over, just dump it into this account. You’ll be surprised that some months you can dump at least $1000 into it and by the end of the year, poof! you have money you didn’t know you had.
- Loans Payments Account as the name explains is an account to dump part of that ROI into this for all your loans available. Like credit cards, renovation or personal loans etc.
- Monthly Account is for all your expenses (R) that you need to deal with monthly. So put the $2,305 (like above ROI grand total) into this account so you don’t worry that you might spend it.
- Rewards Account is set aside for your holidays, personal pampering or fun outings. This could be a joint account or personal (I prefer personal) . We save and save all month, all year and we don’t even get to spend just a little bit? No, right? This will give you that something-to -look-forward-to kinda feeling at the end of every month. You won’t want to torture yourself all month long and not at least do some self care or enjoy your hard earned money.
5.Fengshui Your Wallet
This is more of a spiritual and energy thing. Mind you, it’s not some mumbo jumbo from a book. Fengshui is years and years of ancient Chinese philosophy that explains the concept of “chi” or energy. Small tips that you can implement in your daily life will improve your relationship with money in ways you never thought were important. Get this from Fengshui practitioners themselves and explore what you can do to attract good energy into your money area.
The main points are:
A) Upgrade your wallet if its torn and tattered. You don’t want to keep using an old wallet till way past its expiry cos it doesn’t attract good energy.
B) Designate a place to put your wallet at after you’re home from soccer practice or back from grocery shopping etc. Respect your wallet by giving it a home (money area on a console).
C) Declutter your wallet often so that old receipts can be thrown away. Receipts don’t attract good energy.
D) Don’t overbulk your wallet. We tend to love bulking it up with tons of credit cards and rewards cards what have you. Minimize the cards you use as credit cards is a sign of debt and we don’t want to keep attracting that. A wallet that’s light and easy to manage will be a breeze to bring around.
E) Arrange the money in your wallet. By denomination, arrange it properly with the faces facing the right way, neatly arranged. Organizing it like this will de-stress you from looking for change when you’re going about your day and scrummaging for cash.
F) Neat and good looking notes will attract good energy so if you always have money crumpled up, flatten it out or iron it out. Try to get rid of torn or really old notes too. Don’t fold your notes into a tiny little purse. I got rid of my minimalist little zipper purse way back when I learned about this and it does shift the energies, amazingly. It’s best straighten out long and proud.
G) Always keep cash in it. Don’t ever leave your wallet empty. Whatever amount of cash you want to put is up to you (though there’s an auspicious number some say), but as long as you maintain cash in it, there will be steady flow of good clean wealth energy that comes in. I think maintain it at $100 or maybe slightly more. Empty wallets attract bad energy and bad moods.
H) Keep it clean. If you’re so used to leaving it on the kitchen counter or somewhere lost on the dorm room floor, leaving it dirty and and messed up, please do the due diligence to clean and wipe it down. Don’t let it sit on that coffee stain overnight and allow it to marinate in the orgy of dining table leftovers.
I hope these small tips can somehow change your relationship with money in a big way. It sure did for me and I’m the worst when it comes down to it so this was major. It shifted the energies around my wealth and finance so much that I had to share the experience.
I pray all the best in your future financial endeavours and God bless!
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