Surely you have ever looked at a boy or a girl and thought: What wonderful years! And that's true. Life when we are little consists of playing, learning simple things that most of us like, meeting new friends and little else. Your only worries are learning to go to the bathroom by yourself and being the first in line to go out for recess.
It is true that at that age we do not worry about anything, but it is not the time to do it , it is the time to enjoy and develop a personality according to our tastes. Children do not care where my mom or dad gets the money to buy me a new toy, what's more, we don't even consider that food or household items have to be bought.
When we grow up and enter adolescence , we already have a little more awareness about money, its functions, what you want to achieve with it. Many parents at this age begin to pay their child and he has to learn to manage it as he likes. You can spend it all in a day or on a weekend, you can decide to save a part to save money, you can save everything and then spend it all at once on a larger purchase ... But hey, after all, they are not amounts of money very large so they do not have much responsibility if, for whatever reason, they do not know how to manage it well.
The next step is not experienced by many people and others experience it before for whatever reason, but many of us have lived in an intermediate step between living with your parents and being independent . This situation can occur due to studies, for example, many people are going to study outside their country or city, but they are too young to have savings that allow them to live without working. In these cases, the common thing is that the parents take charge of the expenses that these studies entail, so you already have to acquire much more knowledge about money and use it wisely because poor money management can be a very upset. great for you and your family. In addition, many people take the opportunity to look for a temporary job with which they can earn extra money for their tastes, hobbies or whatever they want.
And then there comes the complicated thing: adult life . It is that moment in which you stop depending economically on your parents and start living your life further away from them (in economic matters of course). Now is when the difficult comes. You start paying bills, hiring basic services such as internet, heating, electricity ... and others that are not so basic but that you like to have in your life.
You are the only person responsible for knowing how to handle the money you earn and managing it efficiently and safely. Do you know the 50/30/20 rule? It is a rule that defines some parameters that you must follow as a guide to achieve economic stability and very useful for day to day. Read on if you want to know this rule about finances and money management:
- 50: This number indicates the maximum percentage you should spend on basic products and services such as a mortgage or rent, food, gasoline, consumer bills (water, electricity, gas, internet ...). It is important that, if with these expenses you do not reach 50% of your salary, you do not allocate it to the leisure budget, but to the savings budget.
- 30: Here come the expenses that we can consider leisure or whim, such as buying some clothes for fashion, going out with friends for a drink or with your partner to have dinner out, going on a trip ... these are the things in life that we love the most. They like them and they give that spark necessary to avoid falling into an absolute routine. In the same way, if you have done everything you had in mind for that month and you do not reach 30%, be careful and save it.
- 20: Savings. Life is full of unforeseen events so it is necessary to have a savings mattress that can get you out of a jam. These contingencies can be more bearable things such as breaking glasses or an appliance, celebrating a birthday ... but then we can find much bigger unforeseen events that can ruin our lives if we do not have money saved, such as, for example, losing your job, the arrival of an unplanned baby, an illness ... There are also purchases for which it is necessary to save money for a time to dedicate to them. That money should be saved from 30% of leisure but even so, many times we will have to pull the savings to be able to get it. A new house, a car, a wedding, a more expensive trip than usual ...
Keeping track of what we spend is much easier when we use tools that help us track and organize expenses. Now, you can have a lot of computer programs for your Windows computer with which you can have absolute control of your income, expenses and benefits for the month.
Do not hesitate to download the programs designed for personal finance on your computer and you just enter the data and let the program be the one in charge of calculating the percentages and all the necessary operations.
