SWEET Global Ministries - Building & Preserving Wealth

BUILDING AND PRESERVING WEALTH
By Yvonne Brown, LFS

The first step in any financial planning process is to understand where you stand in terms of your finances. Many times, people don't understand the importance of maintaining a budget, and therefore have no idea where their money is going. How many times have we looked at our financial state, and known that we have money coming in each month, but look at our finances at the end of the month and can't figure out where all of our money has gone, and have nothing to show for it.

The one thing that we are not taught in school and oftentimes, not even at home, is how to manage our finances. I don't know about anybody else, but my parents (whom I love dearly) had the best of intentions for their children based on what they knew. They opened a savings account for my sisters and I when we were in grade school, and showed us the basics on how to make deposits and withdraws. That was about the extent of my money management training. Everything else I had to pick up on my own. Unfortunately, this is the scenario for too many of us. We learned often by trial, and mostly by error how to manage our finances. Yes, there are those households where parents start their children at early ages with an understanding of saving, budgeting, and investing money but, estimates show that about 80% of people have very little insight on how to manage their money. This monthly series will provide you with some information that you can apply to your financial situation. This twelve-month plan will teach us how to be better stewards over our finances. Your questions and comments are welcome.