Managing your personal finance is always a hassle. Allocating your money accordingly and keeping a track of the money you are spending is difficult. I genuinely like the way our mentality about money works. Being conservative about our money and spending it wisely, sometimes not. But whatever money-related transaction you make teaches you something about how you go about your life. Money after all is the most valuable asset you can own.
Being a college student I always wanted to be financially independent so that I don’t have to ask for money from my parents for my personal use. But there are tons of things you need to understand about money. Let's go step by step.
The 50-30-20 rule. This rule is a great starter for your personal finance journey. You don’t need to think much about it. So according to the 50-30-20 rule. Use your 50% of the income for your necessities, 20% on savings and investments, and the rest 30% for your wants. Your needs can include anything from food to the last minute stationary expense which you cannot replace but have to buy it. Your wants should include things which you desire for. Whatever you desire should go in the wants column so that you know you bought it because you desired that thing. Investments and savings should constitute 20% of your income. Remember first you invest and then you spend your money for your wants. That’s why I mentioned the 20% thing before the 30% wants ;)
Educate yourself. When it comes to money it's a wide topic with tons of things to learn. You need to keep learning about investments, taxation, personal finance. Also, when you learn these things then take a note of the various terms you come across. This helped me a lot. Knowing what some abbreviations and confusing terms mean makes the process much easier. There are various YouTubers posting videos about personal finance. You just need to find these peeps.
Maintain a ledger-ish thingy. When you spend your money or you lend money to someone you need to note it down somewhere coz our mind isn’t made to hold things it's just made to come up with ideas. So you can make an Excel sheet to maintain all your expenses. Once you keep a habit of tracking all your expenses it becomes easier for you to know where your money is going? Until you don’t know where you are spending your money you can’t make a good financial decision. I maintain my expense sheet monthly.
That’s my expense sheet. (I know I haven’t maintained the date column). I also mention who paid for the expense so that’s easier to know to whom I have to pay if my roommates pay for me. Include the perceive column its absolutely sick. It shows why you made the transaction was it a want, need, or luxury. Also,
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