Specialist
Now that January is gone and with the first monthly pay cheque of 2023 arrived, this might just be the time to set some financial priorities for the remainder of the year!
As a firm of financial advisors, our experience from meeting customers tells us that the
greatest difficulty for most people is simply trying to identify what is a financial priority in
any given year. This can be anything from changing the car to moving house or from a family holiday to saving more or finally setting up your pension plan. The list is endless, but your financial priorities should be influenced by what is important to you. This means, you need to honestly look at yourself and your financial situation and decide what you want.
Your spending habits will give you a good place to start. You can get an idea of what is important to you by reviewing your spending over the last few months. If you’re disappointed by what you see, then you can make changes so that your spending comes in line with what you want to accomplish. Even if you are satisfied with what you see, you can use your past to supply you with ideas for your priorities this year.
Whatever your financial priorities are, write them down (all of them) and rank each one in
terms of its importance to you! There is no shortage of professional advice outlining what
your financial priorities should be, but with this new year, you should decide what’s a
priority for you and what’s not! In doing so, it’s important to understand the cost of each
priority and in order to help you understand this, getting a handle on your monthly spending
for the remainder of the year is important. In addition, rather than try to pay for your
priorities in one go or as a lump sum payment, choose to pay monthly and spread the cost
over time, if possible.
With so much talk in the air about inflation, many people have cut back on certain things
because they feel they should or perhaps worst still, they now can’t afford to buy certain
things. If this is you, the importance of having priorities is crucial in order to ensure you’re
controlling your money as opposed to it controlling you! It’s also important to be able to
identify where savings can be made to the cost of your lifestyle. This is not something that
happens over-night so remaining patient and giving it time is key.
Having ranked your financial priorities for 2023, it’s crucial to review where you are with
each one regularly. If you do decide to make a significant purchase this year, reflect for a
few moments by asking yourself if the spend will help or hinder you achieve your financial
priorities for the year.
Finally, always remember the priorities you have identified for 2023 can change as life
circumstances get in the way for any number of reasons. Should this happen, don’t be hard
on yourself, review the priority, perhaps work on the next one and by making a required
change it will help you in the long run.
By Conor Murray of CMCC Financial Solutions