Good Morning Green Panda Friends. You may not know it, but personal finance is around us all the time.  Almost everything that we do in our lives involves personal finance because almost everything that we do in our lives involves money. When we pay for our bagel or coffee in the morning or when we pay our monthly cell phone bill online we are taking an active part in our personal finances because we are actively managing our money.

Taking an active role in managing our money means something different for everyone. When we actively manage our money and take an interest in our own personal finances it allows us the freedom to pay our bills, save for our individual personal goals, as well as save for the ultimate financial goal of saving for retirement.

What does Personal Finance mean to you?

Does Personal Finance mean earning enough money to pay your bills? For some people personal finance means paying all of our bills on time each month and it ends there.  However actively managing our money is so much more than just paying our monthly bills on time.  Before we can pay our bills each month we have to make a personal budget so that we know how much we can afford to spend on our groceries, cell phone, rent, cable, and other monthly bills.  There is no point in paying our bills on time each month if we use all of our money to pay our bills and then we have no money left over

Does Personal Finance mean saving towards your personal financial goals? For some people actively managing our money means living on less so we can save more each month.  Some of us are saving for a down payment on our first home, some people may be saving for a nice vacation, and some people may be saving to buy or lease our first car.  Regardless of our personal financial goals if we spend less we can save more money. If we live within our means and always spend less than we make then we will always be able to save some money each month.

Does Personal Finance mean saving for the long term to make sure that we can be financially stable in retirement? For some other people personal finance means saving for the ultimate long term personal goal which means that they are saving for retirement.  We may start working when we are younger in order to save for our retirement when we are older. Buying a home, taking vacations, and buying a car may only be small goals in our lives as we continue saving for the ultimate personal financial goal in retirement.  Some of us may wish to retire in a warmer climate, some of us may want to retire early and before the age of 65, and some of us may wish to retire with other people our own age in a retirement home or community.  Regardless of which personal financial goals we have for our retirement, they all require planning and saving.

Photo by shouldbecleaning

 

Tahnya Kristina

Tahnya Kristina

Tahnya is 30 years old and lives in Montreal Quebec. She graduated in 2005 from Concordia University, and she currently works for a major International Financial Institution. She recently launched http://www.mediamadam.ca/. You can follow her on Twitter @TahnyaP.