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Personal Financing is all about planning and execution.I was studying Finance & Personal Budgeting but I didn’t even have a plan of my own. It's ironic, I know! But to be honest, I tried and tried really hard to start budgeting and saving for myself.It took me almost 9 months to finally start budgeting for my personal finances properly and ever since then, like for almost 8 to 9 years, I am living debt-free and all my finances are very well managed. Let me tell you how I did it.All I did was follow these tips:Monthly Budget With Short-Term Financial Goals:I started implementing regular, consistent and short changes in my life. Like at the start of every week, I made a goal of saving $50 to $100 till the end of the week. This helped me keep my expenses under control. At the end of the month, there were almost $200 to $250 in my pocket with which I used to pay my debts.2. Declutter:We all have unnecessary stuff in our homes like furniture that we don’t really use and antiques that are just for show and other stuff like that. I had some too so I started to sell them on eBay. I even sold my books which I had read for like 2,3 times to my friends. It helped me keep my valuable stuff and even made me some space in my home.3. One Bill At A Time:THIS... WAS THE ULTIMATE SATISFACTION, TRUST ME!I used to pay all of my bills at the same time as soon as I get paid just to be all relieved but I never really got the relief. Then I started playing one bill at a time to gradually and slowly pay off. This really was a relief because I knew I can’t just spend since I have due dates ahead. Helped me cut down my unnecessary expenses.4. Say No To Overspending:I realized that my shopping and my meetups and hangouts with my old friends can wait as I need to save dollars some first! I started to keep very limited dollars in my pocket so whenever my friends made any sudden plans, I was not the part! I even stopped going to birthday parties so that I don’t have to buy any kind of expensive gifts.Well, there were times for which I needed new clothes so I searched for shopping sales and I found some brands offering really good discount offers. I shopped only on discount sales for a year and that wasn’t any worse, trust me!5. Extra-Hand:Well to be honest, even after doing everything possible, I was still under some weight. So I started to find smaller and short time freelance works like content writing, assignment making and started to give some kids tuition as well so that I can some extra dollars.We all face some hurdles and hardships but I think we can easily pass through with just some planning and execution. Short-term planning was a win for me! There are many solutions to everyday business problems. Recently I read this article, Top 11 Short-Term Financial Goals To Slay Your 2020 Budget, and it gives tips that I really followed plus some other tips which if I knew that time would have probably doubled the efficiency of my planning and budgeting.I hope this helps :)

I traveled Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Korea and Bali alone last month. So, here are some tips-• Book your tickets using Skyscanner• Stay in a hostel, you will feel incredibly safe there and will get to meet awesome female solo travelers.• Always carry one spare phone in case you lose one. It happened with me in Singapore and I had to buy a new one, it indeed took a toll on my traveling budget.• Always buy a new SIM (with internet pack) as soon as you land in another country, hostel/hotel wifi sucks most of the time and trust me you do need internet while traveling. Google map is your best buddy or if you just want to google vegetarian food.• Make sure that you are back to the hostel / hotel before it gets dark.• Always prefer public transportation instead of taxis. It will not just save you money, but will also ensure safety as well.• Wear decent clothes, knee-length skirts or shorts and half sleeves clothes would do. Wear what makes you comfortable, so that you can focus more on traveling. Do read about the place you are visiting. Wearing bikini in Male is stupid, but once you are in resort you don't need to worry about it too much. So, do read everything about the place.• Don't share your personal details with anyone like where you are staying or what else you are carrying or your next traveling plan.• Never leave your bag unattended.• If you are in a taxi and not sure about the direction and its dark and you are hell scared, then talk to someone over a phone and tell him/her about your situation, including car number. Talk loud enough for a driver to hear you. You can also fake that if you don't have someone to talk to.• Book your flights in such a way that you reach the airport in the morning or afternoon.In short, do not forget to use your common sense.

Assume you hit the power ball and over night you are set to receive several million dollars. While many people think winning the lottery is a dream come true, it’s also a curse with enormous responsibility that will require a great deal of courage and great professional advice to allow you to enjoy the winnings.The first place to go is a local bank, open a safety deposit box, if you don’t already have one, and store your winning ticket until it’s time to collect the winnings. There is no hurry. I probably can’t stress this point enough. Taking the time to formulate a plan for the money before a penny is collected is critical. The money you pay towards the professionals on the front end will be the best money you ever spent.In no certain order I’d contact an attorney, accountant, a good financial planner and a bank with a trust department. If you can withhold your excitement, have all of them in the same room at the same time and have a lengthy discussion of the winnings, your personal goals and immediate plans and discuss a long term strategy for handling the money. Without doing a deep dive you want to know one thing immediately. Will you accept the money as a lump sum or will you accept the payment as an annuity? There are pros and cons to both and you want to make an informed decision.Next you and your attorney and accountant are going to want to talk to the lottery commission to set up the mechanism for collecting the winnings. Only a fool would accept a check and drive home. The money needs to be direct deposited into a bank.With your attorney you will want to discuss whether its advisable to set up a corporation or business entity to hold the money, and whether you want to set up trusts for you and your family members and any number of other legal ways to divide the money and keep it safe and preserved. If you look at your attorney and ask him of his opinions on Alaskan Self Settled Trusts, and he doesn’t know what you are talking about, you might need another lawyer. You will also need to draft a Will the sooner the better.With your accountant, you want to know the tax ramifications of the winnings and the various tax strategies to limit or lower the taxes now and in the future because in the end, the vast majority of your winnings are going to paid to the government in the form of taxes.With your financial planner, you are going to want to know how to best invest the vast majority of your money, and assess both the risks and benefits of certain investments. The watch word here is diversification, you probably will end up with dozens of individual investments spread across a variety of areas, from rank and file bonds, to more sophisticated mutual funds, real estate and business investments.Statistically we know that the majority of lottery winners end up going bankrupt. The same is true of the majority of professional athletes who come into substantial wealth at a young age without sufficient training. The average person doesn’t know how to handle vast wealth because the average person doesn’t have and doesn’t know to have the necessary skills to transition from a person who spends nearly everything they make from pay check to pay check to a person who invests nearly everything and learns to live within an arbitrary budget.Living within an arbitrary budget is much more difficult than it sounds. Having a budget of 500 thousand to 1 million dollars a year sounds like a ton of money — and it is a ton of money — but your life style will evolve as you discover ways to spend 10 to 20 times your current income. A trip to Paris to go shoe shopping is within your grasp, buying a condo in the Greek Islands is something you can do. Hiring a staff of people to manage your new properties means you never have to cook or clean again. You can buy a private jet and hire a pilot. These life style choices are within your reach, and your life style starts to resemble what you do as a regular person. You spend what you make each year without paying attention to the consequences. Maybe you always wanted to go to Las Vegas — stay in the emperors suit at Caesar's Palace — and blow a million dollars playing in the high stakes room. That might be okay, if it was a one off — but next month you do the same thing. Maybe you want to help the underprivileged and decide to build wing to the hospital. It’s a 30 Million dollar project to start but with cost over runs and unforeseen delays, you’re up over 100 million and no way to back out. Point is this, there are a lot of temptations that come with having vast wealth, and you don’t know how these temptations will come at you — but rest assured — they will come — and all of those temptations have one goal — separating you from your money.Critical in the decision making process are a team of professionals who know advanced wealth planning strategies, advanced tax strategies and advanced wealth investment strategies.Since there seems to be some interest in this answer maybe a little more discussion is in order.Let’s assume I win 500 million in the next power ball. First I’d secure the ticket to make sure it isn’t lost, stolen, otherwise destroyed or defaced in a way that renders the ticket useless. Immediately open a safety deposit box. I believe the winner has at least 180 days to collect the winnings but the lottery rules need to be consulted. There is time to make solid plans before the winnings are collected. I’d use the time wisely.My next step if I wasn’t an attorney would be to go to a bank with a trust department who will be able to put me in touch with capable attorneys, accountants and financial planners. I know of one locally, and I’d establish an account for the lottery proceeds.There is one immediate question that needs to be addressed —whether I’d take the money in a lump sum or allow the money to be paid out over a term of years. There are pros and cons to both approaches. A little internet research will advises me to take the lump sum because the investment potential exceeds the payoff potential through the lottery annuity fund. With that said, it’s not a decision to be taken lightly and deserves several hours of research and discussion before the ultimate decision is made. I will say this, for the ordinary citizen without the skill set to manage large amounts of money, taking the annuity and allowing the payout over a term of years is a solid choice because it denies access to vast majority of the wealth over a long term of years. Over that time I’d eventually learn how to manage money wisely. However everyone is different and has different goals and objectives. While everyone dreams of the day, they can be free of the normal day to day bills, mortgages, car payments, and credit card payments, those bills are a tiny fraction of the winnings to the extent they are practically a non-factor. Self control is hard.With the plans in place, it’s time to collect the winnings.Since I know that as soon as the winnings are collected, my name and face are going to out in the public, I know that a lot of people are going to come to me asking for money. I’m going to be an instant celebrity, and people I barely know, and good friends alike are going to approach me asking for money. If I give one person money, everyone will get in line to ask for their “perceived fair share.” This is where I have to be tough and smart. Tough because I’m going to say no to a lot of people and be criticized for those decisions. But I also have to be smart. Other than paying of my bills and other expenses, I will concentrate on dividing the money into trusts for the people that you want to protect. I’d set up a spend thrift trust for each person I care about with a bank as a trustee, and provide the corpus of the trust with enough money that 3–5% per year payout would add up to a nice check every year. Refer all calls from family to their trustee whose job it is to make the decisions regarding accessing some or all of the wealth in their individual trust.For example assume I made a spend thrift trust for crazy Uncle Ivan, who then decides he wants to invest a million dollars in Bitcoins. I want the trustee to deal with this situation. And ultimately I want the Trustee to say no. Uncle Ivan keeps his income stream and I maintain peace in the family.I’d also establish a couple of charitable trusts to funnel donations to worthy causes. Wealthy people call these foundations. Essentially an attorney helps set up a mechanism or a procedure where if someone is asking for a hand out, they are directed to the foundation or the charitable trust to assess whether they receive money and ultimately how much. I can pay a nice salary to people who willingly serve on your foundation’s board who will make these decisions for me. People who might criticize such an approach don’t understand the enormous pressure that can be applied by a handful of people who will not take no for an answer.I’m going to create layers and layers of professionals whose job it is to spend my money wisely, while also compartmentalizing the assets with only a tiny fraction of the money being at “risk.”The vast majority of the money, after taxes, is going to end up being invested, the financial planner becomes a crucial component to your professional team. I’m risk adverse, so I’d invest a very large percentage of the money in low yield/low risk investments like municipal bonds. I’m doing this for a few reasons. One, it’s a lot of money and I don’t need much return on my investment. Second, these sorts of investments are practically on auto-pilot so I’m not going to be worried day in and day out about whether I making money or losing money. Third, I don’t want anyone to have the ability to write a check and access the vast majority of the money. I want there to be steps. For example if I were interested in having access to one million dollars, I’d have to contact the financial planner and decide on which investment I’m accessing, talk to the accountant about the potential tax consequences, wait a day or two for the trade to come in, and wait for the money to be deposited in a discretionary spending account. At any point I can change my mind and reinvest the money.I’d diversify the remaining money across high end stocks (Dow Jones blue chip stocks) and real estate, depending on my interest in investing or “playing” with the money more or less as a hobby. I’d stay away from risky business ventures or start ups or anyone who comes to me trying to sell me on the next great idea. On the contrary, if I saw a business that I wanted to invest in, then I’d allocate money, (money I’m willing to lose) towards that investment. My goal is to have most of the money invested within 30–60 days, leaving me to enjoy my new found wealth. Once everything is put in place and I have reasonable checks and controls over the majority of the wealth, I’d find a couple of nice places to live and retire.