The urgent important approach to financial planning

This is April, the start of the new financial year 2011-2012 and the time for financial planning has come yet again. We need not dread financial planning which sounds very complicated. We need need not look at financial planning as mere tax saving, where people wake up in March (the last month of the financial year) and run round investing money in tax saving instruments. We need to look at financial planning holistically which addresses our long term and short term need and does much more than tax planning. We can simplify the financial planning process by using the simple urgent important approach


The urgent important approach to financial planning looks at all your personal finance goals and classifies them based them on their overall importance to you and the urgency by which you need to execute on it. Classifying your goals based on their importance an the urgency on which you need to execute on them creates the road map for a great financial plan.

Urgent-Important Matrix for Financial planning

The goals shown in the matrix are examples and can be modified based on an individual's financial condition.

Its always good to start of the planning process in the first month of the year as it gives us the full year to execute on our plans.