The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our cash flows due to job losses and demise of loved ones in the family, has been felt by many of us and has exposed those without a financial plan.
Over the past decade, financial planning has gained importance. You can either seek an expert for your financial planning exercise or do it yourself. But there are steps involved in making a healthy financial plan.
Ask: What am I saving for?
The first step is to have clearly-defined financial goals. You could have a single or multiple goals, depending on where you stand in your life cycle. A millennial with a first job may have just one goal: to save for post-graduate education. A family would, typically, have many goals at the same time: funding children’s education, buying a house, planning for retirement and so on.
How much risk can you actually take?
One of the most important aspects of financial planning is risk profiling. Avoid investing haphazardly in risky products that could ruin your finances. Get analysed your risk-taking capacity by answering a set of questions online or with your financial advisor. It will help you understand your risk appetite.
Through risk profiling, at PrudentFP, we can determine your emotional and financial risk tolerance, as well as the risk perception. Formulating the risk-profile of the investor helps us in deciding the debt-equity mix to be incorporated in the portfolio, which investments could achieve the financial goals within the timeframes and risk levels.
Manage your cash flows well
Get a clear understanding of the cash flows that you have, from your regular salary and other sources such as rental income and royalty.
Most of the investors are much behind the basic goal of building the emergency corpus for six months of expenses, because they use credit products to maintain cash flows. Avoid converting your monthly purchases on credit cards to equated monthly instalments (EMIs) because interest rates on credit cards are higher. You could end up in a debt trap.
Do not overspend, analyse the monthly expenses and restrain yourself within the allocated budget.
These days, millennial investors are using credit products to manage cashflows. For instance, they swipe their credit cards for necessities towards the end of the month or apply to a fintech for personal loans to holiday. These are risky tools being used to manage cashflows. “If you cannot take care of short-term cash flow requirements, your long-term planning fails.
Get your inflation right for various expenses
Things get expensive over time. It’s called inflation. But, it’s incorrect to assume one rate of inflation for all your needs. Costs of some items go up more than others.
At the same time, you have to be conservative about saving up for expenses that are largely non-negotiable – your children’s education and medical expenses, for example. You must assume a higher inflation for such heads because you want a bigger corpus when you reach your goals. Therefore, you save some more, every month.
At PrudentFP, we typically assume grocery items to increase 7 percent every year, education costs to rise by 10 percent, medicines, tests and doctor consultation costs to surge by 12 percent every year.
Review the financial plan and portfolio
Don’t just make your financial plan and forget about it. Review it occasionally. Are you nearing your goals or straying away from them? “Any changes in the investor’s life situation, for instance, a baby’s birth, inheritance etc. will affect the financial plan.
The equity and debt markets are volatile, and so you must rebalance your portfolio from time to time. “Your investment portfolio checks might happen more frequently, may be every three or six months.
We’re ready to help you with any questions you might still have?
Suresh Kumar Narula is founder and Principal Financial Planner at Prudent Financial Planners. He has earned the professional CERITIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER and got registered with SEBI as Investment Advisor. He writes on personal and financial planning articles and got published in Dainik Bhaskar, Business Bhaskar and The Financial Planner’s Guild, India. He is also a member of Financial Planner’s Guild India ( An association of practicing SEBI registered Investment advisers) to create awareness about Financial Planning in general public, promote professional excellence and ensure high quality practice standards. Suresh received his an M.com from Himachal Pardesh University and an MFC from Punjab University, Chandigarh. He can be reached at info@prudentfp.in