Is it important to have Goals oriented Savings?

Is it important to have Goals oriented Savings?

A friend of mine is earning a lakh a month, and when I asked him, how much is he saving per month, his reply was close to 30k per month. While saving 30% of monthly income is a good savings rate, when I asked him if he has assigned any of the goals to his savings, he went bonkers. Even, as per World Bank Data Gross Domestic Savings for Indians in the year 2014 was 29%. But savings without goals is like doing multiple graduations in various courses without knowing the purpose. Remember those good old movies, where our Hero used to keep money in different kitchen utensils for different purposes – Behan ki shaadi, Naya Ghar, etc. etc.

There are many benefits of assigning goals to your savings be it in any asset class – Gold, Equity, Debt. In fact one can select asset class depending on the goals. If Goal is for short term like 1 year or so, one can look at fixed income instruments like FD’s or Debt Mutual Funds. And if Goal if for longer duration like 20 years, one can take advantage of equity returns over this longer span.

Assigning Goals also reduces the chances of using that money/savings for some other purpose. It is a Human tendency to use money for other things when it is not assigned to any particular goal. Only if I know I am saving this money for my Daughter’s higher education, I will not touch it for a foreign trip.

In a nut shell, when you start savings, don’t forget to sit with your family members and financial planner to assign goals to your savings. It will indeed give better direction to your savings.

Charu Hastir, CFPCM is founder member of www.theriteplan.com. Rite plan is an online financial planning portal created to achieve a single objective of providing easy and Do It Yourself Financial Planning to netizens. Rite Plan is wholly owned by Tikkun Olam Financial Planning Services LLP. Please visit: https://theriteplan.com/index.php?route=common/home/

Comments

Before you hire a Financial Planner!

We all have access to financial advisors in the form of our parents, siblings, or some friend who keeps on reading financial blogs to help us out with our financial queries. Though this all sounds good but at some point, in our lives we do realize the importance of professional advice and tend to go searching for a Financial Planner. There are pressing questions in our mind like how much to save for our child’s education, will I run out of money in my retirement?
There is no doubt that a certified financial planner will help you chalk out your future in a better manner than any of your friends. But, the answer to these questions vary from individual to individual. Your family circumstances, lifestyle, income, expenses, etc. Though a financial planner is supposed to give advice in your best interests but sometimes you do get to meet people who are more concerned about their own interests rather than client’s and you end up owning the products you never needed. Yes, there are rules/re…

Is everybody else richer than you?

Our neighbours are going on a vacation again…
OMG! How many times he changes his mobile phone…
What! She bought a new car…

I am feeling stuck ☹
You open your Facebook account and see most of your friends enjoying, having fun time, going on long trips, showing off their newly bought car as if it is just a toy car. In the end, you log out from Facebook wondering what on earth are you doing? How do they get to spend so much of their money while you are entrapped in this vicious saving cycle – saving for your Retirement, saving for your child’s education, paying EMI for that Home loan of yours, etc. etc.
What we forget to understand is that there are sides of people’s life which we can’t see. We are only seeing the happy parts – thanks to Social Media. We don’t see the hardships people undergo to possess what they have, or worst their wrong money decisions and its impact on their life in the long run.
PEER PRESSURE Peer pressure is the direct influence on people by the peers (people who are pa…

Should you start Big when it comes to your investments?

The other day I met a Startup entrepreneur who was just talking about the importance of starting and that also starting big. As per him, a small game or investment had more chances of failure in comparison to playing big. I could understand being an entrepreneur myself that he is only thinking about launching big obviously with the backing of some deep pocketed private equity firm. But hey, I have also seen start ups who started small and made it big eventually slowly and steadily step by step. Same is the case when it comes to investments. Should we start only when we have a big chunk sitting in our bank account or should we start small in systematic manner slowly accumulating our wealth. Let’s hear out some benefits of investing regularly rather than waiting to strike gold with the larger chunk of money.
1.Less fear of markets If you are a regular investor who invest systematically, you don’t need to time the markets as your investments are going to the markets in regular manner wi…

The Rite Plan

Search This Blog