How To Make 2023 💵 Financially Productive & 📈 Growth Oriented?

As we say goodbye to 2022 and welcome in 2023, it’s a time for reflection and renewal. The past years have been challenging with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, economic uncertainty, inflation menace and social and political tensions. But through it all, we have persevered and come out stronger, more resilient, and more determined than ever before.

As we look ahead to the new year, it’s a time to set goals and make plans for what we hope to achieve, especially when it comes to our personal finances. Whether it’s paying off debt, saving for a down payment on a house, or simply building up an emergency fund, there are many ways that we can work towards financial stability and security🔓.

So, what can we do to improve our personal finances in 2023? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1 – 🎯 Set financial goals: What do you want to achieve with your money in the coming year? Write down your goals and come up with a plan to achieve them. Writing helps you imagine the scenario much better – for such tasks, I prefer to write physically with pen on paper instead on an electronic device.

I learnt this on one of the classes at SKILLSHARE for productivity – if you are interested to start 2023 with a real new year’s resolution than start investing in yourself. I have partnered with SKILLSHARE to let you have 1 month of free membership with my referral code below.

👨‍💻Invest in yourself by getting Skillshare membership - use the link to get 1 month free trial: https://skl.sh/3PPTM4g

2 – 👨‍💻 Create a budget: Knowing where your money is going is an important step in taking control of your finances. Make a budget that includes your income and all of your expenses, and stick to it. This need a serious thought process to start with as this can become overwhelming for starters – try to make this fun using excel as even the best of apps for personal finance dont even come near to what MS Excel has to offer. One of the such videos you might like where I discussed about Excel is linked here.

3 – 💰 Save, save, save: No matter what your financial goals may be, it’s important to have some savings set aside for emergencies or unexpected expenses. Make sure to set aside some money each month for your savings account. You have to make sure to save for emergency fund as I have discussed in the video about baby steps of Dave Ramsey OR like in one of the recent emergency fund video here.

4 – 💳 Pay off debt: If you have debt, work on paying it off as quickly as possible. This could involve consolidating your debt, negotiating with your creditors, or simply making extra payments each month. This is very important before you even start thinking about any investments. I have discussed about some loans you should never think of taking and to avoid at all cost in the video here.

5 – 🧧 Invest: Once you are done with accumulating emergency fund and also are debt free, think about investing for future. Stocks and real estate are more conventional form of investing that we know of. I have been talking about these in my videos all the time & always encourage long term approach for such investments – here are some platforms I Invest through while in the UAE:

A - SARWA - Amazing platform which you can invest for trading the US stocks as well as invest through robo investment platform. Here's the recent video I did on SARWA. You can receive $50 as referral bonus if you use the link here (T&C applies).

B - GETSTAKE - Crowdfunding platform offering you to invest in UAE properties with minimum of 2000 AED in order to start you real estate ownership journey. Here's the latest video about Getstake, you can receive 250 AED of referral bonus if you use the link here.

C - SMARTCROWD - Crowdfunding platform offering you to invest in UAE properties with minimum of 2000 AED in order to start you real estate ownership journey. Here's the latest video about SMARTCROWD, you can receive 250 AED of referral bonus if you use the link here.

6 – 📚 Educate yourself: There’s always more to learn when it comes to personal finance. Take some time to read books or articles, attend workshops or seminars, or seek out the advice of a financial professional to help you better understand your options. Make sure to stay away from pump and dump investment options like described here. Most important – subscribe to my Urdu and English language YouTube channels – you can find the link for the channels in the footer of this writeup 🙂

As we ring in the new year, let’s make a commitment to ourselves and to each other to make 2023 the best year yet, financially and otherwise. Here’s to a healthy, happy, and prosperous new year for all!

About Myself

I post 3 videos every week on my YouTube channel on the topics of productivity & personal finance specifically for expats & in general for wider Pakistani community. Besides this, I update this website / blog on weekly basis so do visit regularly for updates – To get value out of the content, please consider subscribing both the YouTube channel and the newsletter.

I have recently started the English language YouTube channel as well, you can go ahead and subscribe to that as well. Here’s the link to latest video on the English Channel

For 1-1 sessions on booking basis with the following core topics of discussion: