Wedding experience: Finacial Planning

Honestly I am no big expert on the topic financial planning. My biggest expense til date would have been my wedding banquet. And that is one hefty package. So am I the right person to dish out advise. I guess not.

But I do know enough to keep me afloat and get me by comfortably.

If you do a search, you would find plenty of advises out there. Go look up your financial planner (formerly known as insurance agent). They be happy to share with you on their experience. But ermmm be extremely careful with them. They tend to be vampire in disguise.

Among us all, we would encounter those whom "live for the moment". They spend almost as much as they earned. At times spending money they do not have yet. This is definitely not ideal. You never know when would future money stop coming in and debts would always be there waiting.

Just the day after my wedding, my wife and I sat down in our room to open the ang pao collected. We spent plenty of time stacking similar denomination together and then recounted everything again. We need to be sure that these well wishes are correctly tallied.

Throughout my wedding, I had made payment for the majority of the stuffs. I had insisted to my parents that I would be bearing all costs and they need not help me. A large part of me feels that as a son, I should be bearing all the expenses. I would just want my folks to be part of this event.

I had estimated on the total cost of the wedding. Set aside plenty of savings to be used. And when the day comes to make the final payment, I felt a sense of liberation. To me, I have finally clear this last debt. No longer would I need to keep my spending on hold.

Its worth to note that the cost of the entire event aint cheap. If I had not work for at least 3 years, I wont know how am I going to pull this off. Looking at the ang pao collected, you would imagine that this would go back to my personal bank account.

But we didnt.

We decided beforehand that all these would go into our joint accounts. The well wishes given to us by our family and friends are intended for us to be happily ever after.

We opened 2 accounts in our name. One for our housing commitments and another for our other expenses. I taken time to analyze our big commitment. Its going to be a 30 year loan and we would both need to be working to be able to finance it comfortably.

We decided that we would put in our salary equally to our housing account. The amount we gave should be equal to the monthly loan we have to pay. This would ensure that the original amount inside would be left untouched and form our buffer. I estimated that in the worst case scenario where both of us are jobless, this amount should last us 8 months.

On the other account, it is more relax. It could be known as our lifestyle account. We are free to spend from it without cap and top it up at a fixed amount. This would help pay off for our coming renovation works and furnishing. Later on this account would help settle for our future kids expenses and other misc.

The main concept which I had for these 2 differing accounts, is that there would always be a roof for heads, whereas our lifestyle account could adapt.

The crazy thing about financial planning is that, there is no fixed rule. It gets even crazier that the planning is bounded to adapted to the economy concerns.