How are you with money? We all know that it doesn’t grow on trees and yet many people here in South Arica seem to think that it does. While that may seem a somewhat harsh thing to say, the fact of the matter is that without some financial savvy or literacy, people get into monetary difficulty all too easily.
If you do get into debt, you obviously must do something about it. You need to do two things. Firstly, you need to raise the cash to enable you to pay off your debts. Secondly, you need to analyze what it was that brought that debt about, (it’s often more than one thing) and try to avoid repeating the same mistake(s).
Sourcing a loan
As far as raising the money to get out of debt is concerned, you will probably have to take out a loan. The best and cheapest way of loaning money is to get from friends or family. However, you also need to be aware that borrowing from friends or relatives, can if you’re late in repaying the loan or if you can’t repay it at all, destroy any relationship.
To avoid hurting relationships, you can take a loan out with a bank or some other type of financial business. Just be sure to avoid unregistered lenders. The best way of doing this is to double check the company you are considering borrowing from are NCR (National Credit Regulator) approved.
What sort of spender are you?
The best way of staying out of debt is never to get into it in the first place. This is where you need a little bit of financial nouse, but don’t worry – it’s not rocket science. Start off by finding out with you are a proactive or a reactive spender, and if you follow this link, you’ll find some useful information to help you determine which category you come under.
If you check out the Oxford English Dictionary meaning of the word “proactive,” you’ll see that it talks about creating or being in control of a situation rather then simply responding to it. In other words, avoiding a knee-jerk reaction.
It’s a state of mind not a size of purse or wallet
It doesn’t really matter how much money you have. You can still be a proactive or a reactive spender. It’s more to do with a state of mind rather than the size of your wallet or purse. But if you intend to be proactive, the place to start is to create a budget.
Learn how to create a budget
Going by the Oxford English Dictionary meaning of the word “proactive,” it means managing the situation, and the only way of doing this is to be aware of your future, ongoing expenditure. To know what this is, you must first learn how to create a budget.
If you need some help in creating your budget, there are some tools around that you can download from the internet.
Proactively managing your finances
The key to successful budgeting, however, is to ensure that your budget includes both known expenditure and making a provision for unknown expenditure. The more things you cover, the better your budget will be.
Once you have a reliable and reasonably accurate budget, you then have all the tools you need to manage your finances proactively.
