In today's world, we are surrounded by different things or place where we can purchase and spend our money even online or in actual grocery stores. We can't deny that when we see a good and presentable thing (or food) it quickly catch our attention like hypnotizing us and buy it. When this "hypnotizing" thing happened, we can't control ourselves and spend as long as we have a money on our hands. In this case, we are forgetting the essence of saving.
When it comes to saving, the most important thing is to track your expenses to be able to manage your finances correctly, you can use different applications that can be download on Playstore or Appstore where we can input our expenses and track it easily, but did you know that there's a study on Psychological science that when a student are taking notes using their hands, it is more effective and make them learn easily compared to those students who take their notes on their laptop or any gadgets.
Hence, tracking and recording your expenses manually (using your hand) is more effective than using applications. Imagine that you wrote your (financial) goal on your notebook, you can easily remember it when you want to spend and decide not to buy your desires because you want to achieve your goal.
If you are worrying on how can you do it, the answer is simple! Kakeibo Notebook to the rescue!
What is Kakeibo?
Kakeibo is a manual tracking of your finance to be able to save money and stick on your budget so you can achieve your financial goal. According to JJS or Journal of Japanese Studies, this concept was credited to Hani Makoto. She is a female journalist who published a magazine where the respondents or target audience are the housewives and states that housewives should have a freedom in financial decisions.
How to use Kakeibo?
In Kakeibo, you can purchase an intstant Kakeibo notebook on different stores or you can make your own personal Kakeibo notebook using an ordinary notebook.
Kakeibo method of saving is easy and has four questions to answer:
How much is your available money?
How much do you want to save?
How much money are you spending?
How can you improve?
To achieve your saving goal, here are the things that you need to do:
MAKE AN ANNUAL PLAN
In this section, all you need to do is to review your expenses last year and use it as a reference on the present year. You need to include the expenses on your annual plan such as expenses on vacation, occasion, insurance and etcetera.
Taking note of them can make you easily to track your expected expenses for this year.
MAKE A MONTHLY PLAN
After doing the annual plan, next is your monthly plan and it is starting on the following questions:
How much money that will come in?
How much money that will go out?
By answering these questions, you can easily track your expected savings and expenses. Here's the example:
Let say there will be an expected money that will come in to you for this month. It is from your work, freelancing, and any other expected income.
Next is to track your fixed monthly expenses, it includes your rental apartment, Netflix subscription, monthly internet, electric and water bill and other fixed expenses.
Thirdly, the difference of your expected monthly income and fixed monthly expenses. The answer will be the money left. (Income - expenses = money left)
The money left will be your daily budget or the money that you can spend but take note that you also need to save for your savings. In this point, you need to decide how much do you want to save? After answering that question, subtract the money left in your desired savings and the answer will be divided in to 4 and it will be your possible expenses every week.
To make it simple and clear, let me give you an example:
Let's assume that you are expecting $2500 money that will come in this month and there's a $1000 that will come out, in short your fixed expenses. Subtract these two ($2500 - $1000 = $1500) and you will get $1500 left meaning, it will be your money left.
Now, you decided to save $250 per month so subtract it to your money left ($1500 - $250 = $1250) and you will get $1250. This $1250 will be your budget thus, you need to divide it into four ($1250 ÷ 4 = $312.5) and you will get $312.5, it means your weekly expenses will be $312.5.
By analyzing this simple math, you can save $250 every month and when you multiply it to the number of months every year (which is 12) you will get $3000 savings annually.
Take note that your foods, entertainment and other expenses are still not included so you might consider it on recording your expenses. The computed saving is just an estimate so you will have an idea on how much you can save every month.
You can also include the purpose of your saving and how much is your goal so it will motivate you to track your expenses and save more money.
If you can't still get it, you can watch this video so you will easily understand what Kakeibo method is.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
I consider this as a smart way of method in saving money and I can say that this is really effective. Based on what I have read and watched, Japan was a poor country before not until Makoto introduced Kakeibo on Japanese people, this Kakeibo method of saving was also supported by their government that's why no doubts why their country is one of the richest country in this world.
Sources:
•https://www.moneycrashers.com/kakeibo-japanese-budgeting-method-save-money
•https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797614524581
•https://www.jstor.org/stable/133391
Photos are from YouTube
Not sure pero may nabasa ako na 'yang kakeibo is inintroduced ni Hani Makoto after world war para makatulong sa Japanese families na maka survive sa gutom. Which is pretty effective naman dahil hanggang ngayon kinikilala 😅