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Personal Finance : Using Accounting Principles Of Paying For Or Financing A Life And A Way Of Living

Decent Essays

According to our class text (Siegel and Yacht (2009)), we know that “personal finance is the process of paying for or financing a life and a way of living.” That said, we also know that using accounting principles to manage our personal finances will likely yield great success in one’s tracking and planning, financially, in the long run.

Understanding the sources (incomes) and uses (expenses) of funds, and the budget deficit/surplus that results, are core accounting measures to consider in short and long term personal financial planning. Also, grasping key concepts like how your salary/wages are earned and segmented/taxed is important in determining your net incomes. How to approach deficits and surpluses and their associated action plans come from sound accounting understanding. Accounting develops controls on how to deal with budget deficits like increasing income, reducing expenses and borrowing. Understanding how sunk costs and opportunity costs factor into alternative choices and borrowing come to us from sound accounting knowledge and play a role in personal planning. Lastly, through various standard reporting approaches, we, though accounting, can develop the ability to look at current and future personal finance decisions and health via income statements, balance sheets, ratios and other common size book keeping measures.

Three products of accounting and bookkeeping procedures that are most useful in personal financial planning would be (1) understanding and

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