Money Management | Managing Your Money

The money management definition developed by the National Financial Educators Council:

“Exercising the skills and knowledge on financial matters necessary to confidently take effective action that best fulfills an individual’s personal, family and global community goals.”

The first area of essential financial skills is those that enable you to manage your money effectively. Before you can do anything else, you need to understand how much money you have coming in, and how much you have going out. It is crucial that your outgoings are lower than your income, or you will have a problem.

The best way to establish this is to go through a process of creating a budget, a plan for how much money you have, and how you will spend it. Once you have established your income and expenditure, you can then start to look at whether you need to make any changes. Your ideal position is that your income more than covers all your spending needs, and you have at least some money left over each month to save into a contingency or emergency fund.

There are two main ways to achieve this:

1. Making more money, including through having a second job, internship or ‘side hustle’; and
2. Reducing your outgoings, otherwise known as spending less.

You could also simply try avoiding the temptation to spend money, for example, by removing shopping apps from your phone, or getting rid of impulse buying other ways on specific ways to save money include:

1. Saving Money on Your Car, both running costs and insurance;
2. How to Save Money on Your Phone and Phone Contract by shopping around, and particularly only paying for what you really need;
3. Saving Money on Household Bills, including utilities, broadband and phone;
4. Saving Money on Food and Groceries, including by reducing food waste;
5. Saving Money on Clothes, for example, by looking after them effectively; and
6. Saving Money on Other Purchases, including the advantages of saving up if possible, rather than buying on credit.