Managing your finances is one of those ‘adult’ issues you can never truly escape. It is a sad fact of life that money will always be the forefront of our daily life as we journey through adulthood. But how well do you really know your finances and how hard is it to keep your budget in check to make sure you have enough money to pay for everything you need?

How Well Do You Really Know Your Finances?

First of all, you really need to know how your financial activity affects you and your financial self. If you want to find out more, there is a financial health test you can take over on Sunny Loans. Sunny Loans provide short-term loans payable in instalments from £100 to £2,500 and have come up with a quiz to test the nation and how well we know our finances. Because you can’t improve your financial self if you have no idea what any of it means, can you?

I took the test to see how much I really know after 17 years of living independently and ‘adulting’. The fact is, I scored 4 out of 7 in the test. One answer I know I knew but clicked the wrong one. But still, it shows me that after 17 years, I don’t know as much as I thought I did.

How Good Are You At Controlling your Spending?

I will always hold my hands up and admit; I am not the best at budgeting. I am a spender, and I fear I will always be like this. But being a single parent means I have to take responsibility for managing my finances to make sure everything I need to pay is paid. For this reason, I do have a supervised bank account. This means that my bank budgets for me and only lets me spend anything that is left over.

But I am far from organised when it comes to my finances. Working part-time and earning an income from the blog means things can get really tricky, especially if I don’t make as much I need to via blogging, my VA work and other income avenues I pursue daily. That being said, I can do a few things to make sure I stay on top of my budgeting and make sure everything is paid for.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Controlling My Budget in 2019.

Organising My Direct Debits

If I don’t need it or use it, it has to be cancelled. I am already quite strict with this, but it never hurts to check I am not paying for something I could do without/don’t use. For example, my gym membership for myself and Olivia hasn’t been used for 3 months now. In 2019, if I don’t use it regularly by the end of February, I need to cancel it.

Reducing My Insurances

This is always a good one to check. This year my car insurance and breakdown cover actually increased by a couple of pounds each. But I stuck with them as I didn’t have enough to pay a deposit to another company. In 2019 I aimed to plan for this to reduce my outgoings.

Savings

Okay, so I am part of the 32% of the country with no or less than £500 of savings. I need to rectify this and will be looking at opening a savings account to transfer over even just a small amount each week when I get paid.

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Budget Planner

I regularly use a diary for work purposes, but I know I would definitely benefit from using a budgeting planner. This would help me see exactly where my money goes and where I can be implementing savings or making adjustments to what I spend. For example, this year, I have eaten out a lot and ordered a fair few takeaways, reducing this could massively impact my finances. This would free up extra money to pay bills and some debts I am working towards clearing.

Expand My VA Work

This is something I am working hard on progressing with. In 2019 I hoped to able to add more clients to my VA portfolio. This would give my finances a boost and help me out with budgeting and my financial security.

How do you see your financial future developing in 2019?

Are you aware of your financial situation, or do you need to take the quiz to see how well you know your finances?