Managing personal finance is a difficult thing to do for most people, some people think that managing finance is one of the challenging things. Sometimes managing your finances can also be a tedious thing, disappointing if you think your finances not improve. But you must do the process of managing your personal finances because it is important. You must know well how managing your finances if you want to have good finances. Actually, to manage or track your personal finances is not a difficult matter, managing personal finance is an easy thing to learn. You only need time and discipline from yourself so you can manage your finances well. If you want to track your finances well, here are some ways you can try:
- Using a personal finance application
Nowadays, many people who not paying attention to their personal finances, maybe they earn a lot, but they don’t use their money wisely and not even a few who are in debt to fulfill their desires. To be able to manage your personal finances well, you must use a personal finance application because it will be very helpful and also make it easier for you to manage and track your personal finances every day. Now, there are many types of financial applications that you can download on your phone and also your PC. Various types of applications are used to tabulate, track, and also analyze your expenses every day. You will be greatly facilitated because there are many types of applications that not only work as budget makers but also help you to manage your financial system or concept.
You can choose the personal finance application that suits your needs because each application has its own advantages. When you have chosen one type of financial application that would suit your needs, you must have a commitment that you will use the application seriously to manage your personal finances. We suggest that you choose a complete application that is also connected to your bank account and maybe your retirement account so that it will make it easier for you later.
- Application with a reminder feature
For those of you who might have bills every month, we have some application with reminder features. We recommend that you use the following applications so you don’t forget to pay your monthly bills. Here are some personal finance applications with a reminder feature:
– Mint
– Personal Capital
– Pocket Expense
- Application with connected to a personal bank account features
Besides personal finance applications with the addition of a reminder feature, there is also a personal finance application with features that can connect your account with a personal bank account, this feature makes it easier for you to check your personal finances thoroughly. Here are some types of personal finance applications that have features that can be directly connected to your bank’s personal account and also have a simple interface that’s easy to use:
– Money level
– Bill Guard
- Application with analysis features and manual input
There are some people who want their personal finance application account to be connected to their bank account or their retirement account, so they can better track their finance. But there are also some people who don’t want to enter their own personal bank account for security reasons, if you don’t want to share a personal bank account and want an application with manual input features then you can use some of the applications below:
– You Need a Budget
– Mvelopes
Those are some applications that you can use to manage and control your personal finances. By using this application, you will be facilitated more because you can check your financial condition anywhere and anytime through your smartphone.
- Take notes in your notebook
Actually, there are so many methods that you can do to track on your personal finances besides the things we mentioned above. Even though technology is now increasingly sophisticated, in fact, there are still many people who like to make things manually. For example, if you don’t like using personal finance applications or you might not like to make a spreadsheet because it is troublesome, then you can write your personal finances in a notebook. This method is one of the easiest methods to do, you can write all kinds of transactions that you have done in your notebook. But make sure to always carry your personal financial notebook so you can find out where your money goes. You can write it in weekly or monthly, so you can find out your personal financial recapitulation. It doesn’t matter if you want to use a notebook for expenses and spreadsheets on your computer. After getting your financial recapitulation every month, you can put it in your spreadsheet so that it makes it easier for you to carry out financial controls.
You can make this notebook as simple as you want, you can choose to use your personal financial notebook to record expenses as well as your routine income. Some people choose to use personal notes instead of using applications because they really want something simpler. Usually, people who use notebooks as their personal financial trackers will only track cash, but not combine them with their bank accounts.
- Make a clear system
If you want to use money wisely, you must track and pay attention to your financial condition. You cannot live without paying attention to how your money works because it can make you wasteful. Maybe some people think if managing finance is a very difficult thing to do, actually managing finances is something that is quite easy and also simple. One of the most important things we have to do when we want to maintain or control our finances is to make a clear system. You have to create a system, one of the things you have to do when making the financial system is being consistent. Make sure that you make a system or special note about your finances, if you want to create a good system, you must enter all important information regarding your finances.
For example, you have to record detailed information such as dates, the amount of money you earn and also you spend, up to categories. By recording the detailed information, it can make you know how your financial patterns are. The most appropriate way for you to be less consistent is to always record it every time you get and spend money. So that it will become a habit and you will never forget to enter it. For those of you who are still confused in creating a category, then you can make it like this. Starting from utility costs, household expenses, food ingredients, health care, personal expenses, and others. By creating a clear system for your finances, you can control your finances well.
- Analyze your finances at the end of the month
To control your finances well there are actually many methods that you can do, for the method as we have said above. Like for example, you use a manual method such as recording it in a small notebook or want to use an application that you can download on your smartphone or on your PC. But one thing you have to do is to do your financial analysis at the end of the month so that you know what is being issued and later can cut costs if you don’t need them. For those of you who don’t know how to analyze finances well then on this occasion, we will give tips for you.
The first thing you have to do if you want to analyze money at the end of the month is to add up all your expenses, then after finding the total, you can compare the number of your expenses with your income in that month. If you have spent more than your income, of course, there are things you have to re-identify. Try to look at what categories make you wasteful like that, and in the next month, you can make changes so that what you spend does not exceed your income. For simplicity, we recommend that you add up the expenses per category so that you can find out which categories your expenses need to be improved. By making data analysis like this, it will really help you when you want to know which categories make you wasteful and can help you to cut down on excessive spending.
- Understand financial analysis in financial applications
As we explained above, to track your personal finance, we can use applications. Now technology is increasingly sophisticated so we can use it to pay attention to our personal finances. The more types of financial applications that we can choose to serve as personal finance controllers. In addition to manually conducting expense analysis at the end of each month, you must also study and understand financial analysis on the application that you downloaded. Because surely in the application there is a financial analysis every month, even every week. You have to learn it and maybe have to understand how your financial charts are if there really are so you can find out how your personal finances are flowing and can also overcome if your expenses in this month exceed your income.
Make sure that you can really read your monthly personal financial statements in the application that you downloaded. Even some personal finance applications also provide additional features such as guides on how to save money. Knowing how to analyze personal finance can help you to use money wisely and can help you save money. Therefore, we recommend that you use a personal finance application with features that suit your needs because each individual must have different needs in managing their finances. But if you still feel confused then you can try to use financial advisor’s help or financial planner so you can understand how to analyze finances manually or using applications.
Those are some points that we can give you all about how to track your personal finance? Now all of you have understood the good and right way to track and control your personal finances. Hopefully, this article is useful to you!
