Five Important Money Moves To Make For This New Year

As we draw a close to a whole year and usher in the New Year, all of us need to do certain things to take a relook at our financial positions. This helps us in taking stock of our funds, investments, loans and savings. When we take stock of things, it helps us right our wrongs, and hence, plan necessary changes to better our financial planning. Following are the important aspects of our funds that we need to relook at:

· Relook at retirement plans: Abhishek Gupta used to live in Mumbai. He is from Secunderabad. He inherited his father’s house in his hometown. “I had given it on rent and earning around Rs 15,000 a month. This rent used to go towards retirement planning option I had opted for. I desperately wanted to increase the contribution towards the fund. So I worked towards it, got a transfer to my hometown, gave the 1 BHK house that I owned in Mumbai on rent. It fetches me Rs 25,000 a month. So the contribution towards my retirement plan went up.”

· Review your spending habits: Take a relook at where your every pie is going. Make a list of every expense you incur and make up your mind cut down on those expenses, which can be avoided. In fact you do not have to wait for the New Year. We, at Creditvidya.com, always encourage our clients to cut expenses on a month-on-month basis.

· Do contribute to charity: Your contribution towards charity, philanthropy or national relief fund get exempted from tax under Section 80G on Income Tax Act. Not that you get to enjoy this money, at least you have the satisfaction of doing something for a social cause.

· Plan something for other sources of income: It could be a tax refund or the annual dividend you earned on the shares you held or your mutual fund investment. Make sure you plough them back for better returns. If it is itching so much to spend it, may be spend a part of it, but not the whole of it. Get habituated to saving money, don’t make it an occasion.

· Resolve to pay up some bit towards loan principal. It may be a car loan, home loan or a loan against property. Just decide and keep aside some bit to pay towards the principal. That way you save a lot of money on interest and work towards closing your loan account sooner.

About the author: Rajiv Raj is the director and co-founder ofwww.creditvidya.com.