If you want to become happy, STUDY happiness.

If you want to be wealthy, STUDY wealth.

– Jim Rohn, famous American Motivational speaker

How one defines Success in Life ? For most of us it’s being happy, healthy and wealthy. If that is the mission of our life, we need to develop a disciplined action plan to help us fulfil it. And being a lady, adds a different flavour to it given the set of life situations we may go thru.

Many a times, it is told to us that you can’t be happy by just accumulating money. Agreed. If we want to be happy in life, we must achieve happiness for our near and dear ones. We can do that by fulfilling our dreams in life. And That surely needs money. So , though we should not blindly run behind money , we must discipline our money actions to get focused towards our life goals.

In this post, I am sharing some of the actions to get stated on your financial success story.

1 Start Early

Start from your first salary. Don’t delay. The entire world of finance is revolving around power of compounding. Growing the value of your investment multifold. The most important ingredient to experience this power is TIME. More time your money remains invested more you see the benefit. So donot delay investing. Start learning more about investment option and related pros and cons.

2 Create Emergency kitty

On our journey to chase our financial dreams, there can be many hurdles. These are the challenges which has the capacity to derail our investment plans towards our goals. These can come as medical emergencies, job loss, theft or any other way by which we are caught surprised. Mind you, not only that you have to be ready for these challenges, but for your day to day expenses like household, children education etc too. Create an emergency kitty to withstand this. Note your compulsory expenses for a month. your emergency kitty should be SIX times this monthly expense.

3 Take proper health insurance

One more hurdle in our financials journey can be ‘health’. Sudden need for hospitalisation can take away lot of savings and push us away from achieving our life goals. Take an appropriate heath insurance by deciding how much should be your Sum Insured. Answer few questions like which hospitals you might get admitted, what kind of room you prefer, conditions on renewal of health insurance, pre existing diseases that you are suffering or earlier suffered from, family history of ailments. Your health insurance should be adequate enough to fulfil these conditions of yours. Please do not choose health insurance based on premium to be paid. Read the policy document before you commit to the insurance. As additional benefit, health insurance premium help you get tax relief under 80D.

4 Analyse your Life insurance needs

Unlike health insurance, Life insurance is required only under certain conditions. There are situations where you must have Life insurance like

• You have financial liabilities (Loans) on you
• You have dependents who are financially taken care by you.

If answer to any of these questions is YES, you need life insurance. How much should be Sum Assured? In the event of claim has to be made, the amount received as claim should be adequate enough to take care of repayment of loans on you, your children education and marriage expenses and your family’s day to day expenses for future years. The type of life insurance that is recommended is TERM insurance. As additional benefit, Life insurance premium help you get tax relief under 80C.

5 Start funding your goal of ‘Financial Freedom’

As women, we keep multitasking on personal, professional and social fronts. It may happen sometimes that we may have to take a sabbatical or shifting to part time jobs to fulfil our family obligations. Be ready for such challenges. Plan your Finances in such a way that during the low key professional periods you can still sustain your financial freedom. This money can be used to plan upskilling to make a come back in main stream job market or a career change altogether or to start a business. Set your own PERSONAL life goals and invest in yourself.

So gear up, get started on your journey towards your Financial Future with these five steps.

Bon voyage