What Time Is It? Pick-N-Time?
Long ago, picking time was time, for me, to prepare and go to work, picking cotton, but today it’s time to go to work, on my money, to ensure I forever avoid poverty or hard economic times, which I also wish you avoid to and is the very reason I’ve create the Easy Financial Planning Routine, consisting of Planning Season, the EFP User Manual, and the EFP Application.
In just a few months, we will begin a new year, and it’s a good time for you to organize your finances. But to organize, you should not wait until the last moments. So, start now because it’s Pick-N-Time! The time for anyone to start planning their finances for next year—2025. I’m here to present Pick-N-Time’s Easy Financial Planning Routine and its components (a time, procedures, & a tool), designed for your financial success.
Basic financial planning has done so much good for me, I wish to share with others my fantastic technique, the Easy Financial Planner application or tool, which I used, to now be debt free, great credit scores and with excellent financial stability, and foresight of my financial affairs, in upcoming months.
Budgeting, or easy financial planning is not DNA science. It is simple arithmetic—mostly adding and subtracting. And let’s be clear “budgeting” is not retirement, insurance, investment, tax, college, or estate planning. Budgeting or easy (basic) financial planning is only about the amounts, balances or values of your incomes, expenses, assets and liabilities. We can only really add, subtract, multiply, or divide these to obtain other results. How hard is that? Not very!
However, what is hard, in fact so difficult for some (hopefully not you) to do, is what to me was obvious, when I had the chance to do so, but not too late, I began to do a budget. But why keep a budget? I did this to avoid poverty and hard economic times (and likely jail) I knew would come in the future. I did and do so now, what many people won’t dare do. They will complain about the economy, suffer poverty and all that comes with it, before they engage in this “lowly-five letters word activity”, it’s seeming beneath their dignity, this slimy little disrespected and misunderstood BUDGET. The sight of which, to many, brings up the ideas of difficult number crunching; how little money they have; and most of all, the idea of keeping a budget means you are weak minded (need to write stuff down), poor, destitute and therefore must ration your money. Let me tell you, if I was a big greedy banker, etc., that’s just how I want you to think. I want you to be mis-informed or un-educated, irresponsible and careless (unplanned) enough with your money, that you’ll fall for all my ads—to get your money. But I’m glad I’m not a big banker. I’m on the other—your side—as a consumer.
Poverty and economic hard times are not jokes and this happens to people, in all times, places, and categories of society. Me, coming out of a small town in rural Mississippi, I was on a trajectory, due to lack of opportunity and oppressive conditions, toward continued poverty, possibly even incarceration.
But smart as I was, and am, I had to figure a way to get out, stay out and avoid what I knew would be a life like hell, if I didn’t. I had to get out and stay out of poverty—I had been there too long—and I had to avoid jail, which for many is a result of poverty. As of this date, I can say my solution for avoiding poverty has paid off handsomely, in the past and continue to do so now—and I never been to ‘The Po Po Inn’, even with their ‘soft padded rooms’ and ‘shiny cell bars w/a view’, not even to visit!!!
My Easy Financial Planning or budgeting solution has an organic inspiration from home, with my mother’s habit of tearing off a piece of a grocery bag or using the back of an old envelope, to try figure thing$ out. From that, I learned and later bought myself a Commodore 64 computer and Microsoft’s Multiplan spreadsheet, to try duplicate what mom did on paper. I was lucky, at the grocery store one day, while in the checkout line, I noticed Consumer Report magazine, with the title “Where Does All the Money Go”. I fan through it, see many different layouts for budgets and other financial worksheets. I had to and purchased it! By this time, I had upgraded my computer, and Microsoft’s Excel was released. Since Multiplan was its predecessor, it was easy to save Multiplan files into Excel. In addition, I had completed my financial accounting degree, and later as part of my engineering planner career, attended a 6-month intensive Industrial Engineering Training Program, which essentially is ‘managerial accounting’, instead of ‘financial accounting’ techniques and training.
Furthermore, as an engineering planner, in my federal career, I had the chance to attend many Microsoft applications classes, to improve my understanding of and ability to program with VBA. Yes, I understand there are many other programming languages available, but I believe MS Excel is the most widely available, relatively easy to understand, by the masses and is very flexible.
Pick-N-Time’s Easy Financial Planner application, with its accompanying Planning Season (Oct 1 – Dec 31) and User Manual, gives you all you need to accomplish budgeting (or setting out your plans and goals), for one year at a time, in a complete and efficient manner.
Remember, I indicated above, “Budgeting or easy (basic) financial planning is only about the amounts, balances or values of your incomes, expenses, assets and liabilities. We can only really add, subtract, multiply, or divide these to obtain other results,”. These I consider the primary things every consumer should focus on, to ensure their financial stability.
The EFP application eliminates all the number crunching, you simply enter your data and get back information, which you can use for better decision making, and live a more stable, comfortable and secure life.
To get started, first realize the hold objective is to (between Oct 1 and Dec 31, 2024) create your basic financial plan for the year 2025, broken down by months.
I call this whole process, the Easy Financial Planning Routine. It consists of the time: Planning Season; the procedures: EFP User Manual and the application: the Easy Financial Planner ‘Your Money GPS’, to guide you through, the financing of your goals and objectives, one year at a time, broken down by month.
Planning Season is to bring attention to and to designate an idea time for thinking about and creating your plans, for the next year. It is also established to draw attention to the fact, comparative to Tax Season, Planning Season should be more important to your finances. In fact, it is far more so, but not having a budget does not get you locked in jail, but you could get locked in poverty.
EFP User Manual, it lays out all the steps and procedures for using the EFP application. The User Manual is interactive, meaning, go to the Table of Contents, hold down Control Key and select a topic, to be taken to that place in the manual. This also works on the page of Figures and Illustrations, in the back.
EFP Application, is a VBA application, made in Microsoft Excel, widely used and easy to learn. The application’s Dashboard is divided into several parts:
- Monthly Budgets and Reports
- Mortgage & Debts & Reports
- Financial Tools
- Command Buttons
- Notes & Remarks
With the Monthly Budgets comes a Cash Flow Summary and an Annual Budget Summary report. Each budget captures your Incomes and Expenses, in 4 sections (Income, Living Expenses, Mortgage & Debt Expenses, Misc. Expenses.
Mortgage and Debet provide 2 Mortgage Amortization Schedules for setting up and manager mortgage loans and escrow accounts; 12 Debt Registers, to which you can assign a debt account (car loan, credit cards, etc.), then record and track all charges, interest, refunds or payments, to that account; and it provide a Debt Transaction Summary and a Monthly Debt Summary, useful in monitoring and analyzing your debts. I just love summaries, because they take your raw data and give you back information, with which you can make better decisions.
Financial Tools, this section includes the Calendar, Name Manager, Property Manager, Net Worth, and Tax Report.
- Calendar – gives you 3 options; for setting the year; select, display & transfer pay dates to all budgets.
- Name Manager – you establish three name list (Incomes, Living & Debt Expense, and Misc. Expense. (Living, mortgage & debts all in same list)
- Property Manager – you enter manually (or from a Debt Register) property you have purchased and own, as part of your assets. Items listed by location in and around your home, including local rented storage.
- Net Worth – you compute your beginning net worth, for each month or the year, then record your ending net worth (month or year) to see your progress in closing your ‘wealth gap’.
- Tax Report (new) –on any Budget or in any Debt Register, you can check an item, if it is tax deductible or tax significant. The items will appear in this report. At tax time, never miss a deduction or forget untaxed income.
Command Buttons – Include 4 large button on the upper right, for accessing:
- User Manual and other instructions
- Save and Continue Working (use this often!)
- Exit & Save or Exit & Not Save
- Save File with New Name (use every subsequent October) *
Notes & Remarks –you can record notes and reminders of things to do, then sort them by date.
* Planning Season (Oct-Dec) initially, and then every year thereafter (in Oct), you make a copy of your current file (i.e. My2024Finanes), save it with a new name (i.e. My2025Finances), then clear all budgets and Debt Registers, for rebuilding your 2025 income and expenses and debts, in next year’s planning. This save with new name, prevent you from starting from stretch. You retain all the data in the Name Manager, Property Manager, and Mortgage Amortization Schedule. You only, in the new file, clear and rebuild the budgets and debts payments, in the Debt Registers, along with a few other tasks, such as adjusting your beginning escrow balance and balances in other asset accounts.
View the Easy Financial Planner application on YouTube. Go to my website www.pickntime.com, from Support page, click the YouTube link, at bottom, to go to the channel fold. While on the website, check out other articles on our Blog page and the Store for other products or services.
In closing, don’t deny yourself the chance to get your finances in order and relieve any financial stress. So, get onboard the Easy Financial Planning Routine, and begin closing your wealth gap.
Be Prosperous
FaraJi AH GoreDenna
Owner/Developer
Pick-N-Time, LLC
www.pickntime.com
801-425-9173