Wow, time flies so fast. It’s already February, can you believe it? There must be some financial resolutions that you want to realize this year. If not, it's not too late. You can use the 4 new year’s financial resolutions from Jago.
While it's still fresh, Jagoans, one of Jago MultiFintamins, Dani Rachmat will share his budgeting tips to help you achieve this year's financial resolutions. You shouldn’t put your financial resolutions on hold. Months will pass and then boom, suddenly it's the end of the year and no resolutions have been realized at all.
Budgeting Tips from Dani Rachmat to Realize Financial Resolutions
1. Planning and managing your finances must start from now, regardless of how much money you have
The mistake of many people, according to Dani's observations, is that they wait until they have a lot of money to start planning and managing their finances. They also wait to save and invest.
"Actually, if you don't start to manage it from now on, you won’t build the habit, you can't suddenly invest when you have a lot of money. When you have little money and you start managing it, you’ll get used to it. Even when you have a lot of money, but you haven’t built the financial habit, it’ll be hard to do it," said Dani.
So, Jagoans, whatever your financial resolution, whether it's building an emergency fund or buying a house, you have to start now if you want to make it come true. If you want to start investing to secure the future, you have to start setting aside money from now on.
Regarding investment, Dani emphasized "when you have 100 thousand, it’s better to invest it right away instead of losing the money and having no investment at all. It doesn't matter if you start small, what's important is consistency."
2. Prioritizing payments for debts and obligations
For budgeting, Dani emphasized the importance of paying off debt first if any (maximum 30%). After that, you can prioritize monthly needs such as paying electricity, water and internet bills. Then, if you have other obligations, they also need to be prioritized.
Saving and investing can be done after paying off debt, setting aside money for monthly needs and other obligations. Afterwards, you are free to spend the rest of the money.
3. Saving and investing should always be done early
Still related to tip #2, making sure to save and invest upfront is very important. "When saving and investing are done later, they’re often not realized," Dani added.
Dani always uses auto debit so that savings and investments are always done at the beginning of the month. With automation, saving and investing will be consistent.
4. Setting SMART financial goals
Dani emphasized that when setting financial goals or resolutions, it is best to apply the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound) criteria.
“For example, when someone says their financial resolution is to buy a house, but can't explain further, they just want to buy a house, this means it's not SMART. If someone says they want to buy a house worth 10 billion within 6 months, but their monthly income makes it impossible to achieve the goal, this means that it is not realistic and SMART, because realistic is one of SMART's criteria)," Dani gave an example.
Dani Rachmat's Way of Budgeting in the Jago Application
Taking advantage of advances in digital technology, Dani uses the Jago application to help him budget. How does Dani do budgeting in the Jago application?
“First, create as many Pockets as needed. On payday, I transfer money to each Pocket according to the previously set budget. Then, I just need to be disciplined in using the budget,” Dani explained .
You may be wondering, if there are so many needs, can you separate them all in the Jago application? You really can, Jagoans, because there are 20 Saving Pockets and 20 Spending Pockets that you can create.
To pay various expenses, Dani doesn't need to transfer manually because the Jago application has the Plan Ahead feature.
“I just need to set a payment schedule, how much to transfer and choose a destination account. Then, payments will be completed automatically,” Dani said.
One more thing related to budgeting that is no less important, Dani added, is to always keep the cash flow positive. Therefore, it is necessary to track your cash flow. Dani can monitor expenses at any time to find out what the money has been used for.
In addition, Dani also relies on the Spend Analysis feature, which can group expenses based on their respective categories and display the total percentage of expenses per category to more easily and practically monitor expenses and ensure that they are still within the budget.
Are you ready to realize all your financial resolutions this year? You can follow the budgeting tips from Dani Rachmat above. The Jago application can be downloaded here if you don't have it yet.
