Money

Determine a spending limit on gifts
Agreeing on a total spending limit for gifts for family and friends is a good way to get your budget under control. If you have relatives who always give you something incredibly expensive, let them know in advance that you appreciate this generosity, but this year you’d like to set a limit on gifts for each other, for example, no more than five thousand. This will save you from worrying that your gift will again turn out to be much more modest. Plus, you’ll all save some money.

In addition to talking to your loved ones, take time to analyse your finances and plan your holiday shopping accordingly. Make a list of everyone you want to buy gifts for, and determine for each person an amount you feel comfortable spending. This will help you stay within reason and keep you from unpleasant surprises when you decide to check your account balance in January.

Cut down on the number of parties
It can be tricky, especially if you’re a sociable person and love all those New Year’s Eve parties. But no matter how fun they are, parties can put a huge hole in your personal budget. Especially if you buy a new outfit or even just a bottle of champagne for each one.

Instead, determine the number of events you’ll attend during the holidays and fill the rest of the days with free or inexpensive entertainment. For example, throw a cocktail party at home rather than a fancy (and obviously expensive) club, or spend a cosy weekend with friends watching Christmas movies or decorating a gingerbread house.

Offer a gift exchange
One of the quickest ways to empty your bank account before the New Year ─ is to buy gifts for everyone you know and love. This may seem like the right thing to do, after all, the holidays are made for giving gifts, but if you want to save money, it’s important to stick to a budget.

If you have a lot of friends and colleagues and usually try to make everyone happy, this time, suggest that they play Secret Santa or any other game where each participant only has to buy one gift. This way you can even approach the choice more thoughtfully and creatively, because you won’t have to come up with a lot of ideas and spend money on a large number of people at once.

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Prepare in advance
Lists are everything when you want to simplify your shopping. They are unlikely to help you save money and not to buy too much, but they will allow you not to forget anything in the hustle and bustle of the New Year. After all, it’s important to remember about gifts for everyone, party outfits and food for the New Year’s table. And lists can also be a great itinerary. You won’t have to walk around the mall looking like a confused Travolta from the meme. You’ll confidently walk into only the right shops and grab what you need. What a time saver!

But for lists to work, it’s worth preparing to make them. For example, writing “gift for mum” is fine, of course. But what exactly will you be looking for? It’s best to decide in advance. Ideally, if you do a mini-investigation on the internet and find out which shop sells it.

And do that with everything. So, don’t go looking for an outfit for a New Year’s Eve party before you’ve gone through your wardrobe and found out exactly what you need. Holiday dresses are quite expensive before New Year’s Eve, and after the holidays they will hang with discounts of up to 70%. Is it really necessary to overpay?

All in all, preparation is an important part of shopping and it can really make the process more enjoyable.

Determine a budget for shopping
The previous point orientated us to careful planning. But let’s be honest and admit that pre-holiday shopping is also fun. Lists are lists, but a Christmas ball or sequinned top thrown into the basket in a hurry can bring more joy than the brightest fireworks. If you are not very limited in funds, but just trying to save money, it’s a pity to deprive yourself of such things. But it is still worth it to limit a little.

Allocate yourself a budget, which you will spend on the necessary – gifts, groceries – and follow it. But also determine the amount you can spend on things you impulsively like. If nothing catches your eye, well, there’s money left over. But if something catches your eye, you can buy it and not beat yourself up. Self-mobilisation has never made anyone’s life better.

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What is ESG investing
ESG investments are long-term investments in companies that save the planet, improve people’s quality of life and are well managed.

To make it easier to look for such companies and invest in them, financiers and environmentalists have developed three factors, which are abbreviated as ESG: ecology, social responsibility, and corporate governance. Different indicators are embedded inside each one:

Environmental. The company must not harm the planet: badly affect the climate, produce greenhouse gases, dump waste, destroy forests, deplete natural resources and use non-renewable energy sources like petrol or diesel.

Social. A company must provide good working conditions, protect the health of workers, ensure occupational safety and gender equality, and build relationships with suppliers and customers.
Governance. The company must maintain reasonable salaries and management structure, conduct audits, develop a tax strategy, consider shareholder rights and deal with internal security.
There are many indicators, and the specific set depends on the sector in which the business operates. For example, it is important for oil companies to consider environmental factors, while banks need to consider corporate governance and customer relations.

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How to prepare for budget planning
Before you grab your calculator, it’s worth determining what financial situation you’re in today and where you’d like to get to.

Set a goal
The first step you should take before you start planning your income and expenses is to determine exactly why you want to do it in the first place. Keeping a budget is an activity that takes time and effort. Without an understanding of what goal planning helps you achieve, the endeavour can be abandoned very quickly.

Financial consultant Kumiko Love writes in her book “Thinking with Money” that the main thing here is not numbers. If there’s no motivation, there’s no point in planning. So before you start budgeting, it’s worth thinking about what life goal money will help you achieve.

This goal should not be formal, but one that evokes strong emotions. And which you would never give up if you knew that you would definitely be able to save up for your dream. For example, it is very important for one person to travel every summer, and to be in unfamiliar places. And another – to move into a spacious flat where everyone in the family will have their own room.

One thing most people don’t realise about budgeting is that it’s not about the money. It’s about you. Budgeting is personal development in disguise. If you know what you want out of your money, progress will happen – whether you have a lot of it or a little. The thing is, most of us don’t realise what we really want from our money.

Analyse your current income and expenses
The second important step is to determine exactly how you spend your money now. To do this, it’s worth analysing your income and expenses for at least three months. This will allow you to see patterns that may surprise you.

You can study your income and spending history in your mobile bank. Or you can start recording all your personal transactions right from the beginning of the next month and keep doing this until you have enough data to analyse.

This step is important: this way you won’t be taking figures for your future budget from the ceiling or from some financial guru’s social networks. We all have different priorities. Some of us will never give up a fitness centre membership. And someone will easily replace cardio exercises on the track in the gym with a morning jog in the nearest public garden. But will plan a manicure and eyebrow colouring, even if they have to arrange a couple of extra days of unloading.

Therefore, it is worth analysing what expenses you have repeated from month to month. And which of them you are not ready to give up. And at the same time to see if you are not spending much more than you thought on some not very important little things. Like a takeaway cup of coffee in the morning. It may not be an important ritual for you, but just a habitual action that you repeat automatically.

How to budget if your income is unstable
Freelancers who do private commissions sometimes find themselves in a situation of instability. This month orders and money may be plenty, and next month it may be much less. In such circumstances, planning is even more necessary than with a stable and predictable income.

You will need a table with five columns: one for income and four for expenses. You can make a separate file-table or prepare a paper notebook.

Write down all income
For those who receive a fixed salary on the card, it is easier to do this: you know in advance when and how much money will come. If payments come irregularly, it is worth writing down each one. And then select two dates – for example, the 10th and 25th of the month.

Consider these days as paydays. And allow yourself to use the money that came for a fortnight, only after the next checkpoint – one of the scheduled dates. This way, you won’t be tempted to immediately spend the money you’ve received and then stay broke.

In addition, it is always a good idea to start planning your expenses with an unstable budget from the worst-case scenario. That is, imagine that you will have the least income in a month of what you had, for example, for six months.

We recommend budgeting according to the worst-case scenario, i.e. the lowest possible amount of income and the highest possible amount of expenses. To be prepared for the worst, you have to plan for the worst, right?

Determine the fixed costs
This is the second column of the table. This is where all the money you will be required to pay. These expenses are often talked about in materials that deal with financial planning.

Usually utilities and minimum loan payments are entered in this column. But it’s not uncommon to forget internet and mobile phone bills, as well as subscriptions to online cinemas or other digital products. And then there are the amounts that need to be paid every few months. For example, it could be a payment for a sports subscription.

Also, taxes are sometimes not added here, because you may get a different amount each month. But for an individual entrepreneur or self-employed person, this is an important part of mandatory expenses.

Therefore, it is worth at the beginning of the month to enter in this column absolutely all planned payments, even if they do not exceed a couple of hundred rubles. The amount that will be needed to pay the tax, you can find out, for example, in the application “My tax” for the self-employed. Or calculate it yourself.

And then it is worth planning which of the mandatory expenses will be paid on the first, and which – on the second “payday”. And put appropriate reminders in the calendar.

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Selling Irish land
One day in the early noughties, an enterprising Irishman named Pat Burke from Tipperary was travelling to America for a funeral, and a family friend asked him to bring a handful of Irish land with him. Well, so that the deceased would rest not in American dirt, but in his native Hibernian soil.

Pat appreciated the idea and started shipping Irish soil to America by the sack.

He charged $15 for one pound (2.2 kilograms) of soil. And in 2006, when the business first opened, Irish-Americans bought 240 tonnes of soil from Burke for more than a million dollars.

This soil is collected in Tipperary and cleaned of germs and fungi – otherwise US Customs won’t let it through. Then it’s tested by the Irish Department of Agriculture and sent to the US and Canada.

And the Irish buy native soil not only to use it for funerals, but also to fill it into the foundations of their new houses. Well, to feel their native country under their feet even abroad. They also throw earth at weddings like confetti – for good luck.

Creating the same songs
A musician named Matt Farley found a way to make $23,000 a year making songs for Spotify and iTunes. Using about 60 aliases and fictional band names, he has composed over 14,000 songs on a wide variety of topics.

The principle is this: Matt writes a song with a title containing popular search keywords and uploads it to the streaming services. Lots of people searching for music at random stumble across his work, and the track gathers a lot of listens.

Farley, for example, recorded 500 versions of a song with the lyrics “…, will you go to prom with me?” in which only the name of the girl being invited changed. Millions of high schoolers looking for music to impress their girlfriends listen to Matt’s track – and he gets a solid payout from the streaming service.

It seems to be the moment when you can say about a song: “Oh my God, it’s just about me!”.

Matt also writes songs for holidays like birthday parties or wedding anniversaries. Or songs that can be used to apologise to a girl who’s been wronged – just use her name.

As Farley himself admits, his songs aren’t particularly cool, but they are profitable. So, it takes him $50 to record one album of 100 songs, and 90 per cent of his records return the investment.

In addition, Matt Farley composes quite serious lyrical works with his band Moes Haven, but, according to him, it’s not so profitable.

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