Financial Tuesday: Five steps to build your personal savings budget

Daunting as it may be, your budget is a blueprint to managing your financial wealth and success.

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Himal Parbhoo, from FNB, outlined a few steps that will help you start and manage your personal savings budget:

• Step one. Identify the amount of money you have coming in. This step is important as it will define how much money you can contribute to your household expenses, servicing your debt, savings and investments.
• Step Two. Track your spending through your budget. Monitor what your daily and monthly expenses are and try and eliminate all unnecessary expenditure. This will encourage you to look at ways in which you can save more and reduce debt.
• Step three. A well-defined set of financial goals is important; so, define your short, medium and long-term goals. Your goals will help in ensuring that you allocate your money appropriately within your budget.
• Step four. Look at your current spending habits and adjust them if need be. Hasty purchases can be avoided if you know what your needs, wants and responsibilities are. Rather concentrate on things that are important like savings for emergencies, unexpected expenses and specific goals such as holiday’s and anniversaries and longer-term goals such as education and retirement.
• Step five. Review and keep checking in with your budget. Give yourself a timeline and ensure that you are actively working towards your savings goals.