Success is in your hand!

Monday, August 24, 2015

Recipe To Achieve Your Financial Goal

I read an article from CNBC which reported that "Study shown 33% of Americans have NO financial plan!" and it's alarming to them. But what about Malaysia? Think about it, how many of you actually have one? Or do we even know what is a financial plan? Well, here's a good definition of financial plan that I really like. 




It's true isn't it? When we look back at our lives, we made so many bad decisions that we wish we had not. Yes, some said that we may learn from mistakes and never repeat again, but some said opportunity only knocks once too! If you were given the chance to make an informed decision, wouldn't you wish to make the right one?


I really can't stress enough the importance of having a financial plan, it is like having a recipe to cook. So I will walk you through about a Lemon Cake from a website that I really like!



Let's start making Lemon Cake!

1. Decide The Dish You Want to Cook - Goal Setting
Always begin with the ends in mind! Before you start cooking, you simply gotta know what's the end product first! So in this case, we are going to bake a lemon cake! And we always gotta be specific and measurable, serving for 2 as tea break and serving for 6 as dessert could make a huge difference! 


Tips: So be it a big goal such as buying a private island in 10 years time or a small goal like owning a car in 3 years time, you just gotta be specific and know how much the future value is needed to achieve the goals.


2. What Ingredients You Already Have - Current Position
We always do that, aren't we? We opened up our cupboard and refrigerator to look for egg, lemon, flour, sugar and salt. And we also checked the quantity of those ingredients and if they are enough to bake our lemon cake. In fact, instead of just checking, we would even take all those needed out and put onto our table so that we can have a clear look


Tips: Start with finding out your current financial position, record down and calculate everything from your income to expenses and asset to liability. You need to be able to have a top-down clear view of all of your personal finances.


3. Get All Ingredients and Put All Together - Filling The Gap
After having a clear look of what we have, we can start shopping for what we do not have! This is straightforward right, just go and grab whatever we need. Once everything are on the table we can start putting all together. Beat the eggs, mixed all the ingredients together, pour the batter and put into the oven. Now wait for some time to bake! 


Tips: Once you know the gap or the shortfall, plan and execute, maximize the resources to fill the gap. This is the critical part where you will need adequate financial literacy as well as the experience. With the right vehicles and sufficient amount of time, success is not far away!



Now, did you realized the importance of recipe? 
A financial plan is like the recipe, you will need to set your own financial goal, find out how much is needed for the goal, how much is the current financial standing, how much is the gap in between and most importantly, how to fill the gap comprehensively.   

Interested to find out how much the financial plan cost?


Enjoy the cake - Goal achieve
Time's up! Take the cake out from the oven!

But wait.....



Recipe is not working?!
Be it under-cooked, flat-as-pancake, burnt, sunken or cracked, this is what usually happens right? So what went wrong even with the recipe? That's very common right! Even with the recipe, we can still fail! 

A recipe can never tell you everything, afterall, there are a lot of variation, such as the type of oven, brand of ingredients and every other little details that need to take care of. And experience would come in handy, which explains why those bakery chef success most of the time


Life is short
It works the same for financial plan as there is no financial plan that could one-size-fit-all. Each individual will need their own customize or tailor made financial plan. There's where a financial advisor like #YourFinanceDoctor comes into the picture to add in the personal touch.


In cooking, you can trial and error, learn from experience and finally baked a lemon cake successfully! But in our lives, just like his favorite quote, "人生有多少个十年? (How many decade do we have?)"




How many bad decisions you can afford to make?




To answer the question that I have asked in the beginning, I supposed we both know that probably it would be less than 1% for Malaysian that have financial plan! Sad to say that one of our Vision 2020 is to become a high income nation, but with 5 years to go and the lack of financial literacy, can we really make it? Or just the rich becomes richer to bring up the average of income? 






Well, I hope after reading this post, you will be on the "right" side to make more right decisions and be on the rich side to get richer! Cheers!  





Start Your 1st Right Decision by Engaging #YourFinanceDoctor!



p/s: cake and ingredient photo taken from my favorite website - eatlittlebird.com.

8 comments:

  1. Nice article, thanks for sharing the tips on financial goal which is i am not good to manage my financial hahahaha...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Financial goal must be everyone target in their life

    ReplyDelete
  3. Key utama ialah berjimat cermat walau bila-bila masa sekali pun bukan tengah bulan je berjimat. Kalau sikap berjimat dah sebati dengan kita nescaya keadaan kewangan kita akan bertambah baik, InsyaAllah

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lovely Tips that can guide me how to manage my financial.. i always make a bad decission exspecially about shopping .. huhu

    ReplyDelete
  5. best sangat tips ni .. bukan senang nak achieve smart financial !! planning tu sangat penting ..

    ReplyDelete
  6. Kena pandai berjimat cermat.... pada era ekonomi yang semakin meningkat.. jika tidak terbeban dengan hutang keliling pinggang

    ReplyDelete
  7. yes is a good tips to replan our own financial so we can achieve a new goal next year. Sometime the plan will not work as what we have plan but sit down and create another option for your financial. Happy New Year

    ReplyDelete

Feel free to comment! Thank you!

Henry Tan - Your Finance Doctor © 2014. All Rights Reserved | Powered By Blogger | Blogger Templates | Designed by-Dapinder

UA-40859242-2