Your finances aren't static | Personal opinion

josevas217 (80)in PussFi 🐈 • 14 days ago

Hello friends of the PusF community, good day to all. Today I want to talk to you about something we often overlook, but which can truly make the difference between having financial stability and living in constant money stress: maintaining proper control of our personal finances. But I'm not talking about doing it just once and forgetting about it. No, I mean constantly reviewing, adjusting, and moving things around as needed.

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The truth is, many of us create a budget at the beginning of the year, or when we decide to organize our finances, and we think that's enough, that everything is settled and we don't need to touch it again. But the reality is that things change, and they change constantly. Inflation is there, silently working against our money, making what allows us to live comfortably today no longer sufficient in six months or a year.

That's why I consider it essential to review our finances regularly. I'd say every two months is a good interval, because that way we can detect any imbalances early on. When we review regularly, we can see if the money we allocate for food is no longer stretching as far as it used to, or if utility costs have increased and we need to adjust our budget in other areas to compensate.

But it's not just about expenses; we also need to keep an eye on our investments. That investment that seemed profitable a few months ago might not be so profitable anymore, or perhaps there are better opportunities in the market that we should be taking advantage of. Money can't just sit idle, because while we're not putting it to use, the economy is moving, and if we don't adapt, we'll lose out.

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Furthermore, there's another important factor: our personal circumstances also change. Perhaps you got a raise at work, or conversely, your income decreased. Maybe a new expense arose that you didn't have before, like a loan payment, or perhaps you managed to eliminate a debt and now have more disposable income. All of this requires us to adjust our financial plan, because if we don't, we'll be working with outdated information.

The thing is, when we don't review our finances regularly, problems accumulate little by little, without us even realizing it, until one day we find ourselves short of money and we don't know when it happened. It's like when we don't pay attention to our health and suddenly find ourselves with an advanced illness; the same thing happens with money. If we don't constantly monitor it, the problems become much bigger.

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And it doesn't have to be complicated, really. Just sitting down for a couple of hours every two months to review your expenses, income, investments, and debts is enough. You can do it in a spreadsheet, a phone app, or even a notebook if you're more traditional. The important thing isn't the method, but consistency.

The key is to be honest with ourselves during these reviews. It's not about deceiving ourselves by saying everything is fine when it isn't, but about identifying problem areas and making decisions about them. Perhaps we need to adjust our lifestyle, look for ways to increase our income, or simply better allocate what we have, don´t You think?.