Personal Finance

Optimize Your Finances Throughout the Year with These Tips

Optimize Your Finances Throughout the Year with These Tips

Last Updated : March 29, 2022, 3:42 p.m.

We Indians celebrate everything from the arrival of the new year to the festivals that follow. For some, every day is a ‘Happening Day’. Milestones such as job promotions, kids topping in academics, the arrival of newborns only make your year good. However, amidst all these, many of us go on to spend way too much and put our future at stake. It’s important to enjoy as well as optimize finances to keep reaping rewards. So, if you’re looking to have both, you’re at the right place! Here we will suggest some tips that you can incorporate to stay financially strong throughout the year.

So, How Should You Plan Your Finances for the Year?

The planning should happen based on what you want and need to do in a year. Wants will imply any travel plan that’s on your mind for long, getting your kids admitted to the top educational institutions, wedding (if any), etc. Needs will be your daily expenses, school/college fees for kids, seasonal expenses, etc. All that will shape your financial strategy for the year.

Optimize Your Travel Expenses

For some, travelling is a passion – they roam to learn and witness new things around the world. According to India Today, 73% of India’s population explore the country for adventure, whereas 27% go abroad to do so. The recent COVID-induced disruption did put a brake on such expeditions. But as India has opened up the skies, people are jamming airports like before. The same rush you can witness in other modes of travel such as buses and trains.

Travelling involves expenses on tickets, accommodation, roaming costs, etc. A successful trip, in financial terms, would depend on how you do all that for less. We, at Wishfin , a popular financial marketplace known for its unbiased financial advisories, look to give you an optimized financial solution for your travel needs. All you need to do is visit our website and do the following –

  • Go to ‘Wishes’
  • Select Travel
  • Select the destination you want to visit
  • Mention the number of travellers
  • Provide your vacation budget
  • Tell your monthly income
  • Mention the amount you’ve saved for travel
  • The EMI you can pay (if you want to trip with a loan)
  • Share you email ID

After doing these, our wish calculator will tell you whether you can travel based on your details. If it tells you to wait for a while but you can’t, choose a destination that will incur you less.

Examine Your Travel Finance Minutely

Given the expenses involved in travelling, one can take a loan or use a credit card to book trips. But we should also look carefully at what we are paying in return. If you’re planning a loan, make sure to grab it at the lowest interest rate. And, if you want to book trips via credit cards, make sure to use the rewards and air miles you’ve earned so far. This will help you save huge on your travel. Besides taking credits, use your travel corpus too. Debt-savings combo helps!

Optimize Expenses on ACs & Other Consumer Durables During Summer

Electricity bills go up considerably during the summer owing to the extensive use of ACs, refrigerators and other consumer durables. But the cost rises more when one takes out a loan to buy these products. You can avoid this by using your savings to buy the same. And if you and your spouse are working, there’s no need to take a loan. Further, stay away from no-cost EMI schemes, which mean no interest. But some manufacturers raise the prices of products and play with the minds of customers with such bait. The hike in the price leads to no benefits for you. Before booking no-cost EMI offers, check the price of such products at other places. That will give you an idea of whether the no-cost offer stays true to its definition.

Be Rational While Spending on the Festivities

Once summer finishes, India goes into a festive drive from Rakshabandhan and Janmasthami to Navratri and Diwali. The list of festivals is long and so remains the expenses of most during such times. Buying accessories, cars, mobile phones, festival foods & others remains normal during the festive season. While some of them are unavoidable, many are not! Unavoidable expenses would mostly be the festival foods and accessories. But stuff like mobile phones can still be avoided despite heavy discounts. More so when you already have a phone with the necessary functions.

So, buying the same and, that too on credit, to match the lifestyle of peers will prove not only costly but unproductive too. The value of mobile phones (including iPhones) depreciates much faster and could fetch you a value much less than the money spent on it (purchase price + interest cost). So, check your income and responsibilities and make decisions accordingly.

Keep Investing Throughout the Year

You’ll need to keep investing to meet any unforeseen expenses that may arise during the year. In that regard, investing in stuff that allows you liquidity at all times will make sense. So, stuff like mutual funds and stocks will help you the most as they are highly liquid. You can even book a short-term fixed deposit or a recurring deposit to meet such unforeseen demands. Use your salary effectively for such investments.

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