Personal Financial Planning Process
A key component of personal finance is financial planning, which is a dynamic process that requires regular monitoring and reevaluation. In general, it involves five steps:
- Assessment: A person's financial situation is assessed by compiling simplified versions of financial statements including balance sheets and income statements. A personal balance sheet lists the values of personal assets (e.g., car, house, clothes, stocks, bank account), along with personal liabilities (e.g., credit card debt, bank loan, mortgage). A personal income statement lists personal income and expenses.
- Goal setting: Having multiple goals is common, including a mix of short term and long term goals. For example, a long-term goal would be to "retire at age 65 with a personal net worth of $1,000,000," while a short-term goal would be to "save up for a new computer in the next month." Setting financial goals helps to direct financial planning. Goal setting is done with an objective to meet certain financial requirements.
- Creating a plan: The financial plan details how to accomplish the goals. It could include, for example, reducing unnecessary expenses, increasing the employment income, or investing in the stock market.
- Execution: Execution of a financial plan often requires discipline and perseverance. Many people obtain assistance from professionals such as accountants, financial planners, investment advisers, and lawyers.
- Monitoring and reassessment: As time passes, the financial plan must be monitored for possible adjustments or reassessments.
Typical goals most adults and young adults have are paying off credit card and/or student loan debt, investing for retirement, investing for college costs for children, paying medical expenses, and planning for passing on their property to their heirs (which is known as estate planning).
Read more about this topic: Personal Finance
Famous quotes containing the words personal, financial, planning and/or process:
“Your children don’t have equal talents now and they won’t have equal opportunities later in life. You may be able to divide resources equally in childhood, but your best efforts won’t succeed in shielding them from personal or physical crises. . . . Your heart will be broken a thousand times if you really expect to equalize your children’s happiness by striving to love them equally.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“... aside from the financial aspect, [there] is more: the life of my work. I feel that is all I came into the world for, and have failed dismally if it is not a success.”
—Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930)
“Judge Bedford: Planning on having children?
David: Naturally.
Judge Bedford: Good, then I know what to get you for a wedding present.
David: Yeah? What’s that?
Judge Bedford: A vasectomy.”
—Dale Launer (b. 1953)
“A designer who is not also a couturier, who hasn’t learned the most refined mysteries of physically creating his models, is like a sculptor who gives his drawings to another man, an artisan, to accomplish. For him the truncated process of creating will always be an interrupted act of love, and his style will bear the shame of it, the impoverishment.”
—Yves Saint Laurent (b. 1936)