Look at your financial plan, focusing on what’s most important to you. Asking yourself key questions about where you are now and where you want to go next can help you better prepare for the path ahead.
At the end of the day, few things are more important than supporting the ones you love. As you assess your personal goals, consider what you want for your family and closest friends. Below are some key questions to consider.
Planning for a Secure Financial Future – It’s Never Too Early to Start
Whether on the verge of retirement, sailing along mid-career, or just starting a practice, thinking ahead and planning for your future is important. Psychologists often get a late start on retirement planning for many reasons, including lengthy training, high student loan payments, and the time commitment required to build and manage a practice.
Yet, a little preparation goes a long way. The following information will help you plan for a financially secure future.
The Planning Process to Saving Success
Envision the Lifestyle You Want in the future!
A good place to start is to determine if you would like to:
- Gradually wind down your practice
- Cut back to seeing clients part-time
- Only maintain the consultation or supervision part of your practice
- Start a second career or explore new business ventures.
- Close your practice entirely
- Continue to work as long as you are able
You should also consider other plans such as travel, whether you will downsize your home, and if you will relocate geographically.
Review Your Present Financial Situation
Evaluating your current finances will help you plan for what you will need in the future.
- Calculate your assets minus your liabilities.
- Organize your expenses to understand your spending patterns.
- Examine your retirement and other investments.
Although calculations can be done manually, using personal financial software such as Quicken or Money may facilitate the process.
Create a customized plan that you are comfortable with and will help you maintain a lifestyle consistent with your retirement plans. Put concrete steps to reach your goals and stick with your plan over time.
Review Your Plan Periodically
It is not unusual for ideas about the future to change over time. Additionally, unanticipated life circumstances may require you to change your course. Review your retirement plan with your financial advisor every year or two and revise it as necessary to help you reach your goals.
Create a Nice Framework to Build on Throughout Your Life
It’s OK if you’ve already started a few of these steps, and it’s also OK if you haven’t. Just start with one task and keep going. Or tackle the whole thing on a long, rainy weekend with a big pot of coffee and a dog at your feet.
Set Your Financial Goals
It’s always good to clearly understand why you’re saving your hard-earned money. Research it online or contact a financial advisor for a sustainable plan.
Plan for taxes
It can go a long way toward helping you keep more of your money next year. A tax planner will help you understand and create a good structure.
Build an emergency fund.
All the planning in the world won’t help if life throws you a curveball and you’re not prepared financially. That’s where an emergency fund comes in handy. Small monthly savings for an emergency account will make a big difference in the long run. This money has only one purpose! Spelled “In Case of Emergency”. This could mean, for example, if the water pipes burst or you experience other unforeseen damage in your home.
It could also be that the car breaks down, or you must go to the doctor, dentist, etc. So if an accident suddenly happens, which we can’t hope for, we can at least be safe because there is a saving for this so that you at least avoid the financial worry.
Decide carefully when to use these savings.
Managing debts
Understanding and managing debt is a key part of creating a financial plan. List your income and expenses. Then, calculate the costs of your possible loans and debts. Here, you can calculate how much more per month you could pay off your debts to get rid of them faster. Start with the ones with the highest interest rate and cost you the most.
The faster you pay off your debts, the faster you can reach your dream of financial freedom.
Protect with insurances
Life can change in an instant. People with a good financial plan hope for the best but plan for the unexpected. Insurance helps with that. Talk to an insurance expert to get the best protection for you, your family, and your life situation.
Plan for retirement
Even if retirement is a long way off, think about what you want your money to do for you when you retire and create a plan to make it happen. A resource like the Principal Retirement Wellness Planner may be a good place to start.
Dare to invest
To reach your mid- and long-term goals, take your savings strategy and put an engine behind it. You are hopefully making them grow! That’s what investing can do.
What is Personal Financial Planning?
However, let’s start with the basics. What exactly does personal financial planning mean?
- It is a comprehensive plan, projecting many years into the future.
- It isn’t just for those with a lot of money.
- A financial plan safeguards you against life’s surprises.
- It includes your income, savings, investments, expenditures, debt, and insurance details.
- It helps you pay off any debt and save for a mortgage, an emergency fund, and retirement.
What are The Steps in Personal Financial Planning?
Creating a financial plan requires some time, but it’s worth it. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
1. Establish your personal financial planning goals
The first step in creating your financial plan can often be the hardest. It involves asking yourself the big questions: Where do you see yourself in five, ten, and thirty years? It asks you to consider what you value in life. One of the best ways to tackle these big questions is to think about what kind of life you’d like to live in the future and not dwell too much on the specifics.
Perhaps you like buying your place, having children, supporting them through college, and then retiring with a comfortable financial cushion. Or perhaps you’d rather focus on getting out of debt, remaining child-free, or retiring early. Whichever lifestyle sounds the most appealing to you will impact your financial plan since it will help you achieve these goals.
According to the 50-30-20 budgeting rule, a general rule of thumb is to put 20 percent of your after-tax income toward your savings. However, knowing how to split this figure can be difficult when you have multiple long-term goals. Do you put 15 percent towards your retirement and 5 percent towards your emergency fund? Or should you save up for each goal systematically? The trick is prioritizing your goals, which brings us to the next step.
2. Prioritize your goals
Now that you have an idea of the kind of life you’d like to build up to over the next thirty years, it’s important to prioritize your savings goals to match the different stages of your life. Taking the example of saving for a future with a mortgage, children, and retirement, your priorities may look like this:
- Save for a downpayment on a home
- Save for supporting your children throughout their lives
- Save for retirement
Now, of course, some of these priorities can overlap. You could simultaneously pay for your retirement while saving for your children’s trust funds, but it needs to be prioritized because supporting your kids will (most likely) happen before you retire. However, if we take the example of wanting to get out of debt and retiring early, your personal financial planning goals might be prioritized as follows:
- Save to get out of debt.
- Start saving for early retirement.
- Save for travelling around the world.
As early retirement requires a lot of money, it’s best to start saving for it as soon as possible. In this instance, the minute you get out of debt, saving for early retirement begins. However, once you’ve amassed a solid amount in your pension fund, with regular payments still being made, you can start saving for your trip worldwide that you’ll enjoy in your retirement.
3. Create a budget
Once you know where you’re headed, looking at your current financial situation is important. Personal financial planning requires you to create a budget based on all of your incomings and expenditures to assess the necessity of your invariable costs. Here’s how to create a budget:
- Make a note of all of your income and expenditures over 30 days.
- Group all of your expenditures into variable or fixed costs. Fixed costs, such as rent, car insurance, or electricity and gas bills, are invariable. Variable costs are flexible, such as money spent on groceries, nights out, and hairdressers.
- Assess your variable expenses and identify areas for reduction. Consider using a budgeting app to facilitate this process.
- Allocate a certain amount from your variable expenses to a monthly savings fund. An approach like the 50/30/20 rule might prove a valuable tool here. The idea involves allocating 50 percent of your income to your fixed costs, 30 percent to your variable costs, and 20 percent to your savings funds.
- Review your budget monthly and make adjustments where necessary. The amount you can afford to save each month will fluctuate. Rather than being disheartened that you’ve briefly strayed from your budgeting goals, accept that these ups and downs are all part of personal financial planning.
Believe it or not, creating a family budget isn’t a “one-and-done” deal. You need to update your income and expense information at least monthly to monitor your progress and look for ways to continue to save. But the hardest part is over if you’ve already completed the previous six steps. Consider this monthly budget maintenance as a time to reflect on your accomplishments, one step at a time.
Disclosure: This information is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. Please consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
About Author
Bill Wallace blends his academic background in Literature with his ventures in International Business and finance. His professional journey took him across Europe, especially in Spain, where his passion for writing evolved. Since then, armed with his literary finesse and investment acumen, he has been crafting financial content for teachers worldwide. More about me.
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