Financial Planning: Why Should We Have It?
Key Points
- Financial planning is a lifelong process of managing your current financial status and determining future goals and strategies to help you achieve them.
- With a sound financial plan, anyone could become successful in achieving their financial goals.
- Financial planning is the most important and necessary step in protecting your future.
Whether saving for a smartphone or buying your first house, you must have goals. Your financial situation changes constantly, and without any direction, it can leave people feeling lost about the next steps they should take.
There’s no denying the importance of managing your finances well. It is a necessary step if you want to be able to reach all those goals and live up to expectations. However, action is always harder, especially when you find something you want to buy (collectable, gaming headset etc.) and can’t resist purchasing it.
We all know how hard it is to meet our financial goals. It can be challenging if you don’t have the correct understanding of your finances and the proper ways that will help you manage them wisely, but this doesn’t mean there isn’t hope! With some preparation, anyone could become successful in achieving their targets.
Therefore, this article will list the importance of sound financial planning. So, you could start to improve your financial discipline and achieve your future financial goals sooner.
What is financial planning?
Financial planning is a lifelong process of managing your current financial status and determining future goals and strategies to help you achieve them.
Financial planning is an essential part of your life. It ensures you have covered all aspects in case anything goes wrong, such as covering up the loss of your investment or emergency cases. Financial planning ensures you’re on track to achieve your financial goals and helps prepare for the unforeseen.
Types of financial planning
Two types of financial planning are short-term and long-term financial planning.
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- Short-term financial plan
Financial planning is identifying your financial needs and fixing them with strategies to help meet your financial goals. If these plans lead within one year, they can be considered “short-term”. The act of short-term financial planning helps corporations increase their supplies, inventory orders and payrolls.
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- Long-term financial plan
Long-term financial planning is an essential process to take place for a company’s long-term success. This strategy looks at projected revenues and expenditures over the next few years. Still, also factors such as economic conditions and future expenses might come into play. It is crucial and necessary for cash flow enhancement, research and development, company expansion and more.
What can I benefit from financial planning?
Financial planning is essential for many reasons. Here are some of the most significant benefits:
1. Enable to identify financial lapse and fix it
Financial planning is essential to making sure your finances stay on track. Proper financial planning can help you to identify potential financial oversights. For instance, you might identify outstanding credit card balances that you may have accidentally forgotten. Therefore, you can solve it earlier without much trouble.
2. Opportunity to maximize your assets
Financial planning is crucial in managing your finances, so your resources are efficiently managed. Some good questions to ask yourself can be:
- How can you set up emergency funds?
- Which types of investment generate higher interest rates than basic savings accounts?
- How can you generate more income while spending much?
- How do you maximize your income tax returns?
- The mentality of owning your assets is crucial to their success. You need an attitude allowing your support to do the magic for you, not just the other way around!
3. Allow you to measure progress
The best way to ensure you’re on track with your finances is by having a financial plan. You’ll be able to measure the progress towards all those goals and set estimated deadlines for when they need to be achieved! It is a great way to keep yourself motivated and know how much time it will take before you reach your goal.
4. Improves cash flow
Financial planning allows you to have a healthier cash flow by identifying and prioritizing essential obligations. It will help improve your current situation, in which it’s easy for expenses to be extravagant without considering the long-term effects on future finances!
Financial planning mindset
Before creating your financial plan, you should settle down with your thoughts.
1. Identify what you ‘need’
You may be in a difficult financial position, but there is hope for the future if you learn to distinguish between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’. ‘Needs’ include food, rent or mortgage payment, and insurance coverage, whereas ‘wants’ have things like new clothes every week that only come with an expensive price tag.
Therefore, differentiating between your ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ will help reduce your financial debt and start your financial planning.
2. Saving habit is needed
You should always keep track of your expenses and avoid using a credit card if possible, which will help you plan for the future more confidently. You will know how much money goes into savings each month, which can then go towards investments or other important goals!
Investing in a well-established fund that can provide you with stability and security is key to ensuring your financial future. It would help if you aimed to allocate 10% to 30% of your income into savings and investments. This will act as an emergency fund for unforeseen circumstances, such as getting sick or injured, while also helping cover the cost of accidents during this period.
How do I personalize my financial plan?
When you begin to understand the importance of financial planning, then it is time for action.
- Set up your personal financial goals
- All relevant financial data needed to collate
- Analyze the data
- Create a financial plan according to your data
- Start the plan with action
- Monitor and review the plan regularly
With a sound financial plan, you can prepare for the future and keep your loved ones safe during difficult times.
Verdict
Financial planning is the most important and necessary step in protecting your future. It’s about creating a roadmap for all aspects of life, from as little as changing a mobile phone to marriage or family obligations. Even if you’re rich or not, everyone needs their own “financial plan”.
Related: Top 5 High-Risk Investments in Malaysia | Top 5 Low-Risk Investments in Malaysia
