One of the most challenging phases of being an adult is managing finances. Pair that up with building a successful career, and it just gets harder to deal with.
While a lot of people will say that success in anything might involve a dash of luck, it still often requires a great deal of hard work, commitment, and planning. May it be in setting up your ideal career, building a balanced personal life, or even managing your personal finances, knowing how to be intentional as you go along will help you become better at planning out your next moves.
Zooming in on your career, your success in your chosen field depends on a lot of different factors. These include coming up with a career plan, establishing career goals, doing realistic self-assessment, and having the ability to make informed decisions. What’s more interesting is that these same factors can also be applied as you set up ways on how you can manage your personal finances. Aside from that, your career and personal financial planning are closely entwined. How? Simply because changes in one can cause major effects on the other.
In this guide, we further outline the factors you need to consider when you conduct your personal financial planning for career success.
The process of planning itself
Let’s admit it, not everyone has enough capacity to plan ahead and take most things into consideration early on. This is applicable for almost any aspect of our life, and it’s usually a common thing to experience this struggle. However, working on your ability to be intentional in your career and financial planning is more than possible!
Taking it one career goal at a time might work best for you if you think you get easily overwhelmed with planning everything at once. Listing your short-term goals first before your long-term ones or vice versa is also another great way to keep the process simple yet effective.
Besides, it will be better for you to have your career goals outlined in such a way that these can help remind you of how far you’ve come toward your dream career and financial status. In the same way, being fully familiar with your own expectations and aspirations can also guide your career choices. If where you are right now doesn’t align with where you aspire to be moving forward, you might have to shake things up a bit and double-check your personal financial planning priorities.
The money involved
Planning your finances and building your dream career both involve your budget considerations and spending habits. Being disciplined enough to be wise about money may be hard for a lot of people, but this is actually one of the top things that set them apart from the rest.
Also, your budget for your current income and expenses contributes to a long-term plan for saving and investing. Hence, knowing your small to bigger financial goals helps you figure out how you must allot your resources to the lifestyle you need to adopt.
Depending on your chosen career path, education can be costly, too. Moreover, many job positions require advanced degrees, certifications, and licenses. So, it’s a great move to include educational costs in your financial plan and understand how you will pay for these expenses.
Further, what you can do is to set a straightforward system for you to track your short- and long-term goals that involve your career in a few months’ or years’ time. You can be as heavily detailed as you want, but it’s a must for you to keep the basics. These include your specific career action plans or goals, how much time and money you are willing to commit, and the initial timeline of when and how you aim to accomplish such goals. This way, your efforts can be more aligned to the action plans you need to do to meet them.
The ability to stay in touch with reality
Your financial and career plans can both be successful when they are kept realistic. How so?
Often, people tend to overestimate (if not underestimate) their capabilities to turn their goals into reality. Aside from personal issues, the struggle to stay in touch with reality is a common dilemma. However, it’s an important tip to step back, assess your strengths and weaknesses, and use this relevant information to help you maximize your plans.
For example, if you are that spontaneous type of person, you might want to have a financial plan or career plan with enough wiggle room and allow you to make unplanned expenditures every now and then. Of course, this is without breaking the budget. You can also apply the same concept in your career planning! Practicing adaptability and flexibility and weaving these into work environments or career paths that highly value these traits can also be a great option for you. At the end of the day, the most crucial thing you must do is assess how you work and deal with challenges that keep you grounded. Would you rather go with the flow or begin to make drastic changes? Answer this question as you carefully plan out your next steps in managing your personal finances in relation to your career goals as well.
The way of handling and processing information
To better guide you, the way you organize and present the data you can gather about your situation will be a key determining factor allowing you to make informed decisions.
How do you keep track of your finances? Do you have an automated budgeting system in place? Are you able to monitor your monthly or weekly expenses and see where you can adjust to have more savings? How does your budgeting system look like? Does it align with your short- and long-term goals to achieve the career you want to build for yourself?
Your ability to organize personal financial plans requires some similar skills that you’ll be needing to succeed in your chosen career. While there are other key things you need to consider too, you need to make decisions in both aspects of your life through reliable data.
For a more detailed guide on why you should start planning your finances as early as you can, check out this blog where we list the top benefits of financial planning not just for your career but also for your personal life.
Now that you have an idea of how your personal financial planning can impact your career plans, you can start revamping your methods and align these two together. As a result, you’d be more open to more innovative ways on how you must organize your financial and career goals in a way that’s easier for you to grasp, manage, and achieve in the long run.
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