Personal Financial Planning

You will make financial decisions all your life. Sometimes you can see those decisions coming and plan deliberately; sometimes, well, stuff happens, and you are faced with a more sudden decision. Personal financial planning is about making deliberate decisions that allow you to get closer to your goals or sudden decisions that allow you to stay on track, even when things take an unexpected turn.

The idea of personal financial planning is really no different from the idea of planning most anything: you figure out where you’d like to be, where you are, and how to go from here to there. The process is complicated by the number of factors to consider, by their complex relationships to each other, and by the profound nature of these decisions, because how you finance your life will, to a large extent, determine the life that you live. The process is also, often enormously, complicated by risk: you are often making decisions with plenty of information, but little certainty or even predictability.

Personal financial planning is a lifelong process. Your time horizon is as long as can be—until the very end of your life—and during that time your circumstances will change in predictable and unpredictable ways. A financial plan has to be re-evaluated, adjusted, and re-adjusted. It has to be flexible enough to be responsive to unanticipated needs and desires, robust enough to advance toward goals, and all the while be able to protect from un-imagined risks.

One of the most critical resources in the planning process is information. We live in a world awash in information—and no shortage of advice—but to use that information well you have to understand what it is telling you, why it matters, where it comes from, and how to use it in the planning process. You need to be able to put that information in context, before you can use it wisely. That context includes factors in your individual situation that affect your financial thinking, and factors in the wider economy that affect your financial decision making.

Financial literacy is a core component of the Kyusa curriculum that empowers youth to better plan and manage their finances. We cover the module in the two months training for out of school youth and now we are beginning to offer it in schools and youth groups. To be part of this great offer, send us an email on: kyusa.uganda@gmail.com Feel free to make a recommendation or referral for a young person that can benefit from our programs. We shall be happy to hear from you you.

Sources:
Siegel, R. &Yacht, C. (2009). Personal Financial Planning, Chapter One.