What is Your Financial Goal?

Have you ever think what do you want to have or do in the future? I bet everyone surely does think about it. It can be: having a house, a luxurious car, Euro trip or even as simple as having a big wedding. But have you ever measured your goals in terms of money? Do you know how much money you should save today in order to get enough money to fulfill your future goals?

Financial Goal: A Dream House Facing Beautiful Lake, perhaps? :-p

I have written the first step in financial plan, managing cash flow, in my earlier post: http://indispensablelady.blogspot.com/2012/04/big-spender-vs-big-saver.html. Now let's discuss the next step to build your financial plan: determining financial goal. Without having a clear stated goal, it would be harder for us to save consistently, as we sometimes cheat ourselves, by using the saving for unnecessary spending. Whereas, if we have the goal, we know the risk of not saving: not achieving our goal timely.

Hence, there are few questions to consider when determining financial goal:

1. What are the goals?

2. How much money do you need to achieve the goals?

3. When do you want to achieve the goals?

The basic goals in financial planning are: emergency fund, pension fund, kids education fund and other general goals, such as: house fund, car fund, wedding fund, holiday fund, etc. As we could see, the goals stated above can be classified as short term goal and long term goal. Usually we classified goals that expected to achieve in less than 5 years as short term goals, while over 5 years is long term goals. However, each goal must have different time limit, which you should be determined yourself.

Then how to determine the amount of money of each goals? For emergency fund, the basic assumption is as shown below:

It means, if you are single, then your emergency fund should be at least 4 times of your monthly expenses, if you are married then the amount is bigger, and so on. The amount of monthly expenses can be obtained from your budgeted cash flow. Emergency fund is considered as short term goal, then you should already spare it from your earning since now.

For other type of goals, you need to know how much the current value of each goal and understand the concept of time value of money, where the value of money at the moment is different than the value at the future. Using future value formula, we could calculate how much money you needed at the year you want the goals to be achieved, using the current value. For example: if you want to buy a house which current price is 2,000,000 kroner within 5 years, using assumption of inflation rate of 10%, then the value of the house in the next 5 years is 3,221,020 kroner. Then it will be the amount of your financial goal.

The calculation for pension fund is a little bit more complex. Firstly you have to decide, how much is the lifestyle that you want to protect if assumed you are entering pension period right now. Usually it expressed in percentage of your current monthly expenses, from 80-120% of current monthly expenses. The amount calculated is your monthly pension expenses. Then you determine when you want to start the pension and how many years left from your current age. Using those two aspects, we could calculate the future value of your monthly pension fund. After that you should decide how long is your life expectancy, you could use the average life from elderly in your family. Lastly, you calculate total pension fund you needed to have in order to have a peaceful pension time.

The complicated calculation sometimes overwhelmed people. That's why you needed a financial planner to help you with the calculation :-D Maybe now you are wondering, why do you have to calculate the financial goal? Other than cheating minded as I mentioned earlier, by having the exact number of the financial goals, we could calculate how much money we should save now, either it one time investment or even regular investment. As you must know, the earlier you start to save, the lesser money you should save, which will help you a lot in managing your cash flow, without having to sacrifice a lot in your current lifestyle. Well, that's one of the magical thing of time value of money :-)

Hope this simple articles help you understanding the importance of financial plan better and even better if you would be able to calculate your own financial goals. Even if you couldn't, you could always contact me to create a financial plan for you, of course with a reasonable cost. Let's start planning today for better future :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Spring is Here!

As the spring season is finally started, the flowers start blooming and the weather is getting warmer. Last weekend, we went to Copenhagen Sakura Festival, held in Langelinie Park. The festival was supported by Japanese Embassy in Denmark to celebrate the cherry blossom bloom. The cherry blossom was donated by one of Japanese man, Mr. Seiichi Takaki and they were planted in that park.

Unfortunately, the weather was not nice when we went there, it was cloudy and a little bit rainy. However, we still enjoyed the friendliness environment, met a lot of Indonesian people, even the Indonesian Ambassador. Most of all, the Japanese food we bought from the stalls are delicious! We bought the yakiniku rice (the beef is soooo tender) and japanese curry rice (it smells and taste so good). Too bad we couldn't find the takoyaki that is famous for its taste.

Here's some of the pictures I've taken at the festival. Enjoy!

Japanese Wind Chime - Zen Garden Bell

Costume Play

People meet under Sakura trees

If you happen to notice that the color of Sakura on the first picture is pink while on the others are white, it is because the first picture was taken a week before. I found the beautiful cherry blossom tree near the Amalienborg castle. Apparently the cherry blossom turns color, at the beginning of spring it has pink color, then it changes into white and later on into green. I like the pink color better, though :-D

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Menu Planning

The never ending question is "What's for Dinner?" I've never realized how confusing it is to determine menu for everyday meals, especially when you have to cook for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole week. Having someone else cooked for me back at home, I have never had to think about what I am going to eat. And yet, I am quite cranky if I have to eat the same dish over and over again.

So here I am, living on my own now and have to think what do I have to cook and groceries I have to buy at the beginning of the week for supplies. I noticed that without planning first, I often ran out of supplies hence limiting my cooking option. Moreover, it is frustrating not knowing what to cook while your stomach already growling, asking to be fed.

I used to jot down a weekly menu plan on a paper, but I realized, sometimes I forgot where to put the paper and then I didn't stick to the schedule. Yet, after a week passed by, the notes turned into rubbish. Today I'm making the note with Adobe Photoshop to make it prettier and I put it down in my desktop so I could easily read it when needed. In order to make the shopping easier, I have jotted down the supplies I will need to buy for the week. So, basically it is an integrated menu planning and shopping list. Pretty efficient, right?

Let me share with you the menu planner I created. Hopefully it will give you inspirations to create a similar one :)

Ow, and don't forget to check this blog:
http://thehomesihavemade.blogspot.com/2012/02/magnetic-menu-board-part-1.html.
She's done an amazing job by creating this magnetic menu planning. Totally inspiring!

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

His Plan is Better than Yours

My today's post is gonna be a little bit religious since I got inspiration from the priest's homily. Yes, I grew up in Catholic family, which is quite active at church and we go to church every week. I could say I was raised into a good Catholic girl and has good relationship with God. However I must say there were times that I feel very distant from God. The worst was like 5 years ago, I was having a very breakdown period in my life, where everything I wanted just fell into pieces. I got used to achieve anything that I want easily as I planned and at that moment, it frustrated me as I couldn't make life ran as I wanted it to be. I was very unhappy and felt lonely almost all the time.

Nevertheless, God always find a way to pull me back to His way. I began to start wondering, what God wanted from me, what He thought is the best for me because all I wanted is just be happy again and embrace my life. At first I struggled in listening to Him. I even wondered how do you know whether it is God's voice or it is my mind saying things I wanted to hear. Then my best friend once reminded me when I told her about my confusion in understanding God's will, she said, maybe it's not because God didn't show you what you should do, He had lead the way, it's you who didn't want to hear and accept it because His way is different than what you expected. Her words stroked me quite hard.

From that moment on, I realized that God spoke to me in many ways, one of them is through closest friends' advices. However it is me who chose to blind my eyes and cover my ears as His way is different than my will. Then I changed my prayer from begging things to work out as I wanted, into praying so that I could listen to His word and follow His will. Afterwards, my life got a whole lot better and it turned out His plan is always way so much better than ours. I received a lot more blessing and happiness I couldn't even imagine I would get if I didn't follow His plan. Couldn't feel more grateful having God lead my life this far. He is truly my shepherd and now I surrender my life to His plan, to His calling, wherever He may lead, I will follow, because now I know, His plan is always beautiful and He will guide me through difficult times as long as I follow His path.

At the end of the homily, the priest sang this song, which is beautifully expressing how I feel:

Shepherd of my soul I give you full control,

Wherever You may lead I will follow.

I have made the choice to listen for Your voice,

Wherever You may lead I will go.

Be it in a quiet pasture or by a gentle stream,

The Shepherd of my soul is by my side.

Should I face a mighty mountain or a valley dark and deep,

The Shepherd of my soul will be my guide.

Shepherd of my soul 

Oh You have made me whole,

Where ever I hear You call how my tears flow.

How I feel your love how I want to serve gladly give my heart to You O Lord.

Be it in the flowing river or in the quiet night,

The Shepherd of my soul is by my side.

Should I face the stormy weather or the dangers of this world.

The Shepherd of my soul will be my guide.

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Organizing Your Kitchen

It's been such a busy day for me. The container which carried my stuff from Indonesia, just came yesterday and we truly brought so many stuff from home! You could imagine how such a mess our apartment is at the moment.
I dedicated all of my time today to organize my kitchen, since there are so many kitchen appliances and utensils I brought from home, to minimize the cost. Since, almost every thing in here is way so expensive. Fortunately my brand new kitchen is super awesome. It has so many shelves so I could put all the stuff in.
Despite all the mess, I am quite enjoying it. I want to make my kitchen so organized and neat so it will look tidy and I'm pretty sure that an organized kitchen helps you to get things more quickly during cooking process.
Since I'm not finished organizing it, I will post the result later on. However, I stumbled on few blogs showing how the bloggers organized their kitchen cabinet and I got few inspirations from them. Let me share with you some of the blogs. But I warn you, these blogs made me want to run to IKEA or supermarket to buy some organizer stuff, so just be careful with your pockets :-D

1. http://abowlfulloflemons.blogspot.com/2011/02/week-4-challenge-kitchen-organization.html
I love how the wire shelving is hanged inside the cabinet door, it creates more space in the cabinet and specified items can be found easily without having to take out other items first.

2. http://www.kevinandamanda.com/whatsnew/house-and-home/kitchen-cabinet-organization.html
This blogger use slotted organizer racks from Walmart to organize its baking dish, a smarter way then stacking your baking dishes. Hence, when you need one baking dish, you don't need to take everything out.

3. http://ariannabelle.com/blog/2012/01/beautifully-labeled-pantry.html
This blogger featured few bloggers who organized their kitchens beautifully. I love how they use matching jars and custom designed label to store basic spices.

4. http://orgjunkie.com/2012/03/spring-into-organization-my-organized-kitchen.html
Basically this is the best one from all of the above. She used wire shelves, organizer racks, boxes and shelf insert to make everything look so neat and organized.

I have searched the IKEA website to look for some organizer stuff, I could find the boxes and shelf insert, however I couldn't find any of organizer racks. Do you know any shop similar to Container Store in Copenhagen? Can't wait to do the shopping for my lovely kitchen :)

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Those Tiny Little Feet

This is my 26 weeks of pregnancy and the baby starts kicking a little bit harder than before, sometimes I could even feel his feet underneath my stomach. The question I often heard during my pregnancy is how do you feel being pregnant?

For guys or those who has never been pregnant perhaps wondering, how would it feel to have another living soul inside your body. Well, I used to stumble for a while for answering such question. Not that I don't feel anything, but it's a little bit hard to put your feelings into words. Nevertheless, I try to share it with you on this special post :)

Firstly, it is my husband who suspicious that I am pregnant. At that time I often asked him to eat some specific foods, which is quite rare. I used to let him pick the restaurants or foods to eat. However, we were waiting for the news of job application in Copenhagen, which my husband applied to. I said, "Let's do the pregnancy test when we have received the news from Denmark's office, hence, whatever the result of job interview is, we would have good news :)"

A couple of days later, I went to the gym and when I did the cardio, I felt a little bit ache around my stomach. I decided to stop the cardio, because I thought if I really was pregnant, I didn't want to harm the baby. On the next day, he is notified that he got the job. As promise before, I took the pregnancy test that night and the result is positive. I couldn't forget the look of my husband, he lost his word and looked surprise, because the month before, we did the test since my period was late for two weeks, but it was negative. However, we really excited to welcome the little baby, we hugged for a moment and told our family the two good news.

The first trimester, I wasn't feel very healthy, I got nausea a lot and sometimes vomit, I couldn't eat or smell certain foods, such as garlic, rice and other food with strong taste. I was having a hard time to sleep at night and often felt dizzy and sleepy. I remembered I rejected every activities and chose to stay at home all day. However, I didn't have much to do at home since staring at computer or watching TV more than 30 minutes caused me nausea and dizzy. I experienced mood swings during the that time as I felt helpless not knowing how to handle my own body.

After I got to the second trimester, I got over with the nausea and dizziness. I got back to my activities and had my daily schedule full with the moving preparation. Physically, I started to gain weight, had bigger tummy and slowly changed my type of clothes into the loosen one. While mentally, I began to be more mature by controlling emotion and being responsible.

Recently I found the article regarding hypnobirthing, a relaxation technique that helps you to experience the birth labor with calmer mind and attitude, which in consequence helps to reduce the pain and stress during labor. I bought the book and started to listen to the CD attached to practice the hypnobirthing at home. Having more knowledge about the importance of relaxation in facing the life changes and accepting the natural process of birth labor, influenced me in someway by having more positive attitudes towards life and the pregnancy.

As a result, I don't stress out even though I live on my own now, apart from close family and no one to help cleaning the house, doing laundry or cooking. In contrary, I am enjoying the changes and embracing the experiences. I also engage more with the baby, talking to him everyday, playing classical music for him and practicing the hypnobirthing relaxation once or twice a day. I feel more closer to the baby and I believe he starts to understand my words as he kicked me with those tiny little feet when I asked him to.

Now, I just couldn't wait to welcome him to the world, showering him with love and tenderness and getting ready to be a good mother for him.

I love you my baby, see you soon in 3 months :)

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Making New Friends

A stranger is just a friend waiting to happen

- Corrie B-

New environment means meeting new people and creating new circle of friends. Despite of the excitement of getting to know new people, I always feel a little bit of anxiety entering a new group of friends. The thought of will I suit well to the group or will I be accepted by them is haunted me every time  I stepped in to a new society.

I remembered before high school I was very introvert and shy around new people. The attitude sometimes acknowledged by arrogant for others, while the truth is I didn't know how to communicate with strangers. I was not good at breaking the ice or making an interesting conversation with people I just met. However, since I joined one youth community at church, I learned how to speak in public, met a lot of new people and new member every year. It helped me gain more confidence and somehow made me easier to start conversation with new people. As a result, I am getting easier to have new circle of friends in every stage of my life.

I realized that the progress was even faster when I entered university. I used to have only small group of close friends, mostly just 2 or 3 friends, because I couldn't feel comfortable being in a big group, with too many people. However in university I managed to have a big group of close friends, the number even more than 10 persons and I could feel comfortable being around all of them. We even still manage to meet at least twice a year just to keep updated with each other news. Until now, they are still the most precious group of friends I've ever had :)

And now, moving to this entirely new city, I have the urge to make another group of friends. I couldn't imagine how stressful life would be without having a social life. Being unemployed and full time house wife makes it seems more complicated. Having no activities but staying at home, is absolutely keeping me off radar from having new friends. Nonetheless, God is good, He hears my prayer. Before the searching of new friends is getting more stressful, one of my husband's friend's wife texted me two days ago, asking me to contact her if I need a friend to talk or just to hang out. She even asked me to join her meeting another housewives on this Wednesday at a coffee shop on city centre.

Then, this morning, we met at this coffee shop, me, her and another housewife. There are supposed to be another two moms joined us, however since their kids refused to go to daycare, they should take care of them at home. We talked and shared stories, mostly regarding pregnancy, raising a child and relationship with family, since we have quite few similarities, new moms (or mom to be) and full time housewives with a lot of spare time. After a while being out of social life, I could say I had a pretty good time and looking forward for our next meeting.

Hopefully, this could be my new circle of friends in Copenhagen :)

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady