Now with a new year, comes resolutions. I came across an insightful series of articles that is based on a book that I've read before - The Richest Man in Babylon.
Reading the posts, I tried to look for my book, but couldn't find it. Sigh, lost another book to dunno who.
What the articles say makes sense - first we have to pay ourselves 10% of our money before we get any chance to spend it. I personally think it made a lot of sense, and although in our case our government makes it compulsary for us to sock away 11% of our salary before we even get to touch it, I think it's best to ignore that bunch of money because we don't really have much control over it.
That aside, the first few steps of my financial renaissance has made its mark.
- I've started using Quicken to track my expenses. - I've made a still-being-finetuned-budget, and consciously try to keep to it.
However, this budget is based on a full figure salary of an average 28 yrs old Malaysian, which means I'm still spending way too much. It would be ideal if I can still do 2 things out of this budget of mine:
i) Save 10% out of it ii) Buy a car
Of course, doing both at the same time right away would be too ambitious, and plain silly. Hence my 2007 financial resolution: to be able to save 10% out of my budget, and to be able to buy a car out of it. I would be the first to admit that it is an audacious ambition, but hey, if it's not tough enough, it is not a resolution. ;-)
I'll repeat again that it's silly to be overly ambitious and be of the mindset that we can change things overnight. The fact is that we can't, no matter how much in control we think we are.
Therefore, what I'll do is this. I will follow and finetune my budget for 3 months, January, February and March. In April I will attempt to modify the budget for a 10% savings BEFORE any of it even sees the daylight. I will do this for another 3 months, April, May, June, by which time I will seriously consider purchasing a car within the limits of this budget of mine, even with the 10% savings imposed. This will seriously limit the choice of cars that I can buy, but then again this is a discussion for some other day.
