The so-called financial planning is to learn to handle and use money effectively and rationally. If you want to manage money, you must first have goals and plans.
Only when you have a goal can you know where to go; only when you have a plan can you know how to go. Make the most of your spending to meet your daily needs to the maximum extent.
How to scientifically formulate financial management goals and plans
Financial management goals can be divided according to time:
Short-term goals: 1 year;
Mid-term goal: 3-5 years;
Long-term goal: 5-10 years.
To formulate a complete financial management goal, you can start from the long-term goal and work backward to the short-term goal, or vice versa.
For example, if you have relatively clear expectations for your life in the next 10-15 years, you can first set long-term goals, and then work backwards from this long-term goal to the short-term to determine how to achieve your expectations. What goals should you achieve at each stage?
We can also set short-term goals first, determine what we can achieve in the short term, and then determine the subsequent stages step by step to complete the determination of mid-term and long-term goals.
Having a goal and then formulating a plan to achieve the goal is planning.
Let’s give an example:
For example, Xiao Wang’s situation is as follows. He plans to buy a house at the end of 20, but what should he do if the down payment is not enough?
If Xiao Wang doesn’t want to borrow money, he needs to save 4,167 yuan every month. Then Xiao Wang will never be able to do it just by saving expenses. What Xiao Wang needs to consider at this time is:
1. Save expenses and save more every month;
2. Strive for a salary increase and earn more every month;
3. Work a part-time job to earn more every month;
4. Increase your parents’ investment and your own savings to increase investment returns and increase capital gains.
All four options can be chosen, or several methods can be taken at the same time. This is a short-term plan.
When setting specific financial management goals and plans, many factors must be considered, otherwise the goals set cannot be achieved and the motivation to continue implementation will be affected.
So, what are the principles that need to be followed when setting financial goals?
1. Financial management goals must be specific and digital.
For example, you may want to live a better life after retirement, and you must have 2 million anyway. In addition, you may need to buy a house in a school district in two years to make it convenient for your children to go to school. In third-tier cities, the down payment is about 500,000 yuan, but your friend invites you to travel to Europe in a month. You are very excited after not traveling for a long time. A half-month trip to Europe costs about 20,000 yuan. In addition, your husband wants to go on a trip to Europe again. When buying a car, he settled on a car priced at 360,000 yuan, which required a down payment of 150,000 yuan.
2. You may have many financial goals, but these goals are prioritized. You should determine your current goals based on your life stage and investment attributes.
These are financial management goals, but our abilities are limited and it is impossible to achieve all goals at the same time, so we need to make priority judgments and complete them one by one.
We start with a person who has the ability to make money. There are eight main financial management goals in his life.
These 8 financial management goals do not need to be carried out at the same time. You can focus on them according to your stage of life.
Personal "investment attributes" cannot be ignored
"Investment attributes" are your own preference for investment risks, that is, how much risk you can bear. If you are a conservative investor but insist on investing in stocks, you may suffer because you cannot bear the losses.
Only by understanding your own investment attributes can you make a financial plan that suits you.
1. Financial management goals must be realistic
For example, if you set a financial goal, the principal of 100,000 will become 300,000 in 3 years, which is triple. Then you need to invest in financial products with an annualized return of 66.7%. This income is really too high. Even in business, it is not easy to achieve this profit. So this setting is unreasonable.
The annualized return you need to set should not exceed 15%, which is easier to achieve.
2. Financial management goals should consider external factors
Two points must be considered when setting financial management goals, one is risk and the other is inflation.
First, resist and transfer risks. We can do this by purchasing insurance. Therefore, when we set up a financial plan, we must set aside a portion of the money to buy insurance.