Pyramid of Needs for Wealth management

Pyramid is used to in different needs analysis. Food, behavior, money etc.
When analysing why people do what they do, Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, developed a simple tool to explain why people do things. This is called Maslow's theory. He and other researchers found that people were motivated to do things by their basic human needs. He put these needs into the shape of a triangle with the basic human needs - Physical, Safety and Social needs at the bottom and the higher human needs like Self esteem, self fulfillment at the top.

Working on the same principle, a good financial plans must address the basic needs first before the social and emotional need.
So doing it as a pyramid, its often represented as shown in this figure
Financial plans fail when the pyramid is not balanced as it should be. If priorities on the top of the pyramid are addressed before the base, it would end up in a out of balance and hence fail.
This is a simple but a very effective tool I use to analyse any financial planning. You can review yours too and send in your comments. Swarna

Income vs Expense

Time and again, we have to go to basic to manage the income vs expense matrix.

There has been a lot told and written on how to manage the balance and of course ultimately save for a better living standard. Pyramid of needs, NEEDS vs WANTS etc.

Yesterday I attended a workshop on Money sense conducted by a STAR trainer called Abu.
His success story is very interesting on how a GOAL in life is so important (www.abangabu.com)

I would like to share some interesting ways he uses to manage money.

He uses the Compass to explain it in a simple way. Like the compass helps a person lost in a jungle to move to civilisation, the financial compass can help spend wisely and hence mange money well.Now looking at the financial compass, E- stands for Essentials. Food, clothing, children's education, house rent/mortgage payments, medical expenses all go into this category. This can constitutes upto 60% of your income.

N- signifies Necessities. Education, insurance, medical cover, savings etc come under this category. Up to 40 % of your income should go into these expenses.

Both these categories should be High priority in any ones financial plan.

Now looking W- Waste, things that account for unplanned items like spending on taxi because of waking up late, eating out unnecessarily. You can look back at your spending patterns and identify what you can categories under this. At anytime, this portion of expenses shouldn't be more than 5% your income.

Last but not the least is S- STUPID, SILLY expenses. These expenses are those we do to satisfy our False Prestige or EGO. To show off that we are doing well when the fact is not so.

Talking about this section, a lot can be said about how the RICH present themselves. For example, Warren Buffet the richest man on Earth, says his success is Simplicity. He still lives in a house he bought with his first income, travels by economy class and doesn't buy things he doesn't need. There are a lot of such examples.

Like the saying goes " Empty Vessels make more noise" its always the not so financially savvy who spend on POMP & SHOW. This component of expenses shouldn't be more than 5% of the income.

So, using these NEWS categories, one can easily plan for financial freedom. So next time you go shopping take your COMPASS along.