(Excerpt taken from Money Radiance)
By Jon Kho
In order to draft a financial plan, we need to have a good perspective of money. Let us use the 4 Cs of life, namely, Create, Cover, Control, and Celebrate.
1. Create
Create is the stage where one starts receiving and handling money. This is the stage of exploration, where we get the idea that money is essential in our daily life. We think of a lot of ways to create money, such as asking for allowance from our parents when we go to school or receiving our paycheck month in and month out while we actively work for money. This stage is the foundation of it all.
2. Cover
Cover is the stage of protection where one safeguards the money. When we start to draft our financial plan, we create the possibilities of what money could achieve for us and implement it to adjust our lifestyle. But we are to constantly check and review where we are in this process. We need to follow the plan that we started and make sure to follow the implementations we set to reach our goal. We need to improve our state in each and every way.
3. Control
Control is the stage of allocation where one prepares for the expected and the unexpected life experiences. It is in controlling money that we prepare ahead and build more funds that we do not have yet. Not only do we use our hard-earned money to create funds for us, we also build funds that can duplicate our worth by using other people’s money.
4. Celebrate
Celebrate is the stage of enjoyment where one lives out the fruits of one’s labor. Having created enough money to generate funds for ourselves, being able to sustain it as we cover grounds that may mean the downfall of what we started, and taking control of those unexpected realities of life, we can move on to celebrate what we have and pass it on to our family.
The 4 Cs
No matter what age we start in this journey, what is important is that we take it and try living it out as soon as we are given the opportunity. This is because we have a limit as to where we can still pursue our goals, as mentioned earlier. There will come a time that it is too late for us to start with anything substantial.
