Making Money Work For You-- Holiday Resolutions!

One of the basic rules of making money is to ensure that money works for you and is not delaying your financial goals.

Where am i coming from? Here are a few questions which will help you get my drift.

1. How much money do you have in your account which is over your emergency fund which is not invested into anything better than your savings account rate?
2. How many cheques you have lying around in your house which you have not deposited yet into your account?-- these could be loans that have been returned, dividend cheques, refund cheques-- Anything.
3. How much money do you have in your kids piggy bank which she has not yet used and invested? ( remember you can earn upto 1500Rs per annum on interest in your kids account Tax free in India)
4. Do you have any money lying in the form of vouchers which you have not used yet? Are they near expiry?
5. How many reward points do you have that you could use for your travel, redemption of gifts ( instead of buying something for christmas/ New year). These could be credit card reward points, Frequent flier reward points, I Mint, Fuel card... the list is endless
6. How many times have you paid out delayed credit card bills and telephone charges in the recent months?
7. Do you have an understanding of the money that is lying in all of your accounts?-- we always seem to accumulate multiple accounts as we go from one job to the other-- maybe some accounts have become dormant?

I hope the above questions have all the answers as-- "Yeah i do that-- i am good.. no issues there."

If not-- then you are not letting your money work hard-- and are letting it remain idle.. and delaying your financial goals.

What should you be doing?
1. Review your financial health every once a month-- either through offline calculations or using online tools like Artha Money. ( the artha money website looks really good--- but i just need to understand it a little better in terms of the security it offers me)
2. Have a plan for money beyond your emergency fund-- you have multiple options available-- short term funds, long term funds, debt funds etc etc... reach out to a financial planner.
3. Act--- the best thing that you can do is to act-- ensure your plan is executed.

I wrote this blog because this is exactly what i plan to ensure happens for my financials in this next few days of holidays that i have- even if i dont get the highest returns possible-- i will definately have more than the 3% piddly amount that i have in my savings a/c.

Best of luck-- happy investing

Enjoy the Christmas jingle from the TV channel NICK... i loved the jingle!!! Merry Xmas!