How Your Future Is Compromised By Not Having A Financial Plan — Scholastica Madundo
By: Scholastica Madundo
Tags: Budgeting, Money Management, Personal Finance, Tanzania, Financial Freedom

How Your Future Is Compromised By Not Having A Financial Plan

Actions result to effects.

They can be positive or negative.

Have you ever been in a very messy situation and just thought “why is this happening?”

For most cases, its happening because of something you did in the past, even if it was in the past two minutes.

Let me give you a very relatable real life example;

Today, 3th March 2020, at around 8:30am, I planned that by 10am sharp I’ll sit down and write this post. But unfortunately for me, I started 20 minutes later, since I planned to go out and buy groceries then prepare breakfast from 9:00am to 10:00am.

I ended up taking almost half an hour to just prepare, and another half an hour to eat, because it was a large breakfast and I was distracted by watching a series, and I also needed a few minutes to just let the food digest.

So in the end, when I checked the time, I realized that I spent 20 minutes more than I planned, which meant I have to squeeze my other tasks for the day to fit on my schedule.

To someone else, its just 20 minutes, to me, its a lot. I’m a sucker for doing tasks at the time I scheduled to do them. I’m pretty sure I’ll end up using the 30 minutes I planned to take a break to finish this article. So, another thing, compromised.

So the question comes: Why is this happening?

The answer is simple, I didn’t plan my time accurately and realistically that’s why I ended up using more of what I planned for a specific task.

See the keywords “plan accurately and realistically”

For me, its mostly trial and error; that is I plan something and how to do it. If it doesn’t work then I try something else. I learn from this little mistakes and I make sure I fix the problem so the effects don’t repeat themselves again. Because it is costly.

It’s the same with money. Planning for it accurately and realistically will give you positive results.

Its a very common practice in our society to let things go as they are, when it comes to money. No plan is made, when we get the money we satisfy our immediate needs and that is that.

But there is a danger to doing this.

Just think about it; how many times have you used almost half of the money you get, exactly when you got it?

Life demands so much of our money.

I have proved this by observing my own lifestyle and my peers as well.

Whenever I receive my allowance, demands just start to flow in; the electricity bill needs to get paid, then the water bill, then you need to buy some notes for class because there is a test coming up, but you also have to eat, you need to buy toiletries and what not.

And these are just the necessary things, we haven’t touched the heart’s desires and wants which by the way, if you cannot control, you will get stuck on a bankruptcy loop forever.

Life was so different back in the days. No wonder our parents and grandparents have reached this far. They had their priorities straight and they made wiser money decisions than us. If you relate our demands (here I’m referring to us, millenials) to our grandparents’ demands you will see a very big difference.

All in all, they were better money spenders than we are, even though their times were different from ours. And it is because of their discipline, that we are here today, healthy and educated. Now if we don’t wake up and follow their lead, we are doomed.

The major effect of not making a money plan is you expose yourself to future risks.

And that encompasses plenty of things, such as;

Bankruptcy;

Loaning cash which you fail to pay on time because you didn’t make a plan on how to pay them, so in the end you ask for more money to pay your previous debts,

Lack of peace due to the financial hardship that never seems to leave you and;

Unproductivity, because you have internal struggles in your mind that things are not working as you want them to and external struggles too since you can’t take care of yourself or others because you lack the means to do so.

In the end, you become unproductive because of lack of peace that was caused by endless debts and unmet necessary demands that came due to bankruptcy that was caused by your own negligence.

I’m not making up these things, I have experienced them so many times that I grew tired of it and decided to do something about it.

Everything connects. Every detail of our lives is connected to the other. You just have to identify the pattern and destroy it if it is destroying you.

So make a budget. Take a few minutes of your day to evaluate your financial position so you can know how to improve it.

We have discussed about budgeting a few times on our Instagram page, but I would like to discuss it some more in the coming days.

Wikipedia defined a budget as “a financial plan for a defined period.”

Budgets are made to lead the spender on how to use their money, to move forward. Not just spending.. but spending with a goal in mind that you intend to achieve.

And that is why, in all accurate budgets there are savings set aside either for an emergency or for something you want to buy in the future or for future investments to multiply your income.

Like I said earlier, everything connects.

When you make a budget at the beginning of the month, and plan for the money you will spend on food, electricity, transport, stationery, internet bundles, you won’t get much surprised when the moment comes to pay them.

Because you would have already set that amount aside. And those are just a few things, you may have clothes you want to buy or anything else that you value, put it into your budget and make your money work for you.

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I hope you took something away with you today. I urge you to be a responsible adult who seeks for knowledge that changes their life for the better and also who practices what s/he has learnt. Because all these are just words until you implement them. So please by all means, implement them.

Feel free to share your opinions with us on our social media platforms so we can learn from each other. We are mostly active on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/themoneyplan._/

Thank you for reading this article. Kwaherini.