Plan your financial life and always stay in the blue!

Record expenses

The most effective way to start saving money is to record all the expenses you usually have. This goes beyond mandatory expenses such as water, electricity, telephone, internet and gas, for example. Superfluous expenses should also be included, so that you have a real dimension of how much they compromise your budget.

Learn how to identify and eliminate unnecessary expenses

A good way is to create an expense spreadsheet and, preferably, leave it in a cloud system, so that people who live with you can follow it – in the case of a family, for example, or even to be able to access it on different devices. , not just when you’re at home.

You can create a spreadsheet in Excel and host it on the cloud system you usually use, use Google Sheets or apps that help with financial organization. It is also possible to save all the notes and make a calculation at the end, or simply pull the bank statement from the last few months.

Whether with the help of the internet or a notebook, the medium used is what matters the least. As long as both the value of the day-to-day coffee and that unexpected purchase on a weekend are calculated, recording expenses is the first step in drawing up a plan on how to improve your financial life.

Take time to talk about how you’re going to use the money

Those who live with family members need to talk about how the money should be used. For this, it is important to take into account the expenses and needs of each member so that, together, they can find a solution that is not onerous for the family as a whole.

And who lives alone or is solely responsible for financial planning, how do they do it? That’s what we’re going to answer in the next topic.

Create goals for your spending

After organizing what is spent and what comes in as income, it is important to create a goal. A spreadsheet allows you to visualize the best time to buy your car or even change your cell phone, for example. It is common that in a month the budget is more compromised – as in January, for example, month of paying insurance, IPVA, IPTU etc.

There are several expert recommendations on how your money should be spent. According to Samy Dana, PhD in Business Administration and professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), the ideal is to separate expenses as follows:

• 35% with household expenses: water, electricity, internet and rent , for example.
• 25% with food, including supermarket, snacks and meals away from home.
• 15% to invest in education, such as college, graduate and courses.
• 10% for health and beauty, including medical insurance, medicines, haircuts, manicures, etc.
• 5% with transportation such as subway rides or fuel for your car.
• 10% with leisure and extras.

How much should I save per month?

The expense calculation should only be done after extracting the percentage intended for investment from your gross income. Like this?

Your entire salary, plus the salary of other family members who live with you, form gross income. From this income, it is necessary to separate a percentage to save. There are several ways to do this: save it in your savings account, make a low-risk investment or even make a consortium.

If you are not in the habit of saving , it is worth starting with a low percentage. Ideally, it should be at least 10%. From the moment you create the habit, consider increasing this percentage. According to specialists in financial planning, the ideal is to reserve 30% of the monthly income and carry out various investments, such as investing in retirement (at least 20%).

Make purchases with cash

You can walk without a real in your pocket, but if you have a debit or credit card – or, in many cases, even a mobile application that makes payments – it is very easy to spend on unnecessary purchases.

The problem is that, when we pass the card, we don’t have the real dimension of how much that expense impacts on our budget. Therefore, it is recommended to transact with cash, so that you really ‘feel’ how much you are spending.

In addition, if you decide to go shopping at a supermarket, and you already have money, you run less risk of filling your cart with items that are not essential in your daily life.

Direct money to the right places

Did you receive it on the last day of the month and already have open accounts? Don’t delay to settle everything as soon as possible. After all, you don’t have to wait for your due date to pay your water, credit card, or college tuition. In addition to running the risk of paying a late fee, in this ‘waiting time’ until payment there is a risk of exaggerating in superfluous expenses.

Do not blame yourself; it’s really tempting to take a day to go out and spend more, especially when you know that the bill is full.

For this very reason, the ideal is to pay all debts as soon as possible and direct the amount you are going to save to an account or application. Remember that it is possible to plan up to 10% of your income for leisure and, if you happen to extrapolate, try to organize yourself as much as possible so that your financial life is not compromised.