The Importance of a Budget Planner

Source - http://kclau.com/wealth-management/budget-planner
by jacquelyn
in Wealth Management

In a survey done in 2008, only about 28% of Malaysians have a monthly budget. Either you are extremely rich that you cannot be bothered to keep track of your money or you do not have any money or income to keep track of in the first place, you have no desire whatsoever to do it. However most of us fall somewhere in the middle rung, meaning we are not so rich as to completely disregard where our money is going.


People normally make excuses when it comes to doing a budget planner. The work is tedious, it is a useless exercise, my income is too small, etc. They start to complain even before they attempt to do it. The bad thing is you also hear them lament “I don’t know where my money went!” or something similar. You hear this complain often enough even from people who earn a decent income.


Well, to this people, they better listen up. This is where a budget planner becomes handy and useful. A budget planner helps you plan your day to day expenses. The fact is everyone spends money daily such as when you buy food, when you make a call, when you switch on the fan, etc.
Having a budget planner helps in the following ways:
It shows your spending pattern. Maybe you have been spending 20 percent of your income on the lottery and you did not realize it yet.


Assist you in doing proper allocation of your money. For example, 10 percent on food, 15 percent on savings, 10 percent on debt repayment, etc.
It stops you from spending money you do not have. Who knows, maybe you have been trying to live a RM100,000 lifestyle on a RM50,000 annual income.
Assist you in your debt-repayment plan.
Assist you in achieving your financial goals faster.


A budget planner is really an important part of your financial planning. You cannot simply say you want to save 20 percent of your income when you do not have the amount to save in the first place. If you want to know whether you have or not, start to plan now. Go to the internet and type in “budget planner” or “free budget software” and you will get free samples of it.


Basically, you will be tracking your monthly income, your day to day spending, your big expenses (e.g. loans, utility bills, insurance, tax, etc.) and knowing your balance at the end of the month, positive or negative cashflow. Once you do this and keep doing it as part of your financial planning, you stop asking the question “Where did all my money go?”