Stronger Middle Class Indonesians

Have you ever thought of making a change? A change to your life or even to your country? A change to be a better person or to make Indonesia to be a better nation?

Well, you can start from yourself.

My purpose in writing this post is to acknowledge who ever stops in this blog and reads this post to make a simple change starting from yourself. In order to help you develop your country and also managing your life in a better way, you can simply start by making an improvement. I, myself, have been doing this after I read a book called "Untuk Indonesia Yang Kuat: 100 Cara Untuk Tidak Miskin." 

After reading the book, I concluded that: we can all gather around and participate as  Stronger Middle Class Indonesians. 

And maybe you are wondering, what is that? what is the purpose? and is that a community?

Nope. It is basically a mission that came from Ligwina Hananto, the author of the book. She invites us to take part in this new group she invented. She wants us to actively participate in running this big mission. She wants us to forget all the things that we used to hear, "the government can not do anything" or "Indonesia can not be a developed country". 

Stop complaining about what they did to us, and let's all participate to make middle class Indonesian to be a stronger people.

And how can we accomplish that?

Middle class Indonesians refer to those who are able to get a good job, receive a good education, earn an enough income, and even build their own business. We are a group of people that actually doesn't really need Government's attention. Our family are able to pay taxes and also our school fees. However, according to Ligwina, the reality seems to be different. As she is a CEO of a financial planning company, sure she has been experiencing a lot in dealing with her clients. And she found out that middle class people often have money issues. We are the people who need to work in order to earn some money.

Middle class Indonesians are sure able to buy books, eat at a fancy restaurant, and even spend money on good clothes and bags. But sometimes, as we keep on living with this kind of lifestyle, we soon forget about savings and investments. If we continue to spend our money in our younger age, how are we supposed to live when we get old later on? If we keep on spending money on such unimportant things, how are we supposed to make savings to build a house or to enroll our future kids to a good university? 

Let's save this middle class people!

We can start by making a good financial planning for ourselves. This planning includes financial records, financial goals and the plan on how we can reach the goal. Living in Indonesia with this kind of lifestyle is somehow frustrating. By earning a so-so income, many people are still able to hang out every weekend, hire a maid, and even go on a holiday every time they got their free time. But how can we all keep on living like this until we are retired?

Investment would be the best answer.

Invest for your pension funds! 

We can start doing investment from now on, investment for our pension funds or even for our educational funds. 

But those types of investment are only part of a comprehensive financial planning. As it is mentioned earlier, we need to have our financial records. Because in this way, we are able to track down all of our incomes and expenses, as well as our money condition at the first place. We have to know what are the assets we own. After knowing the flow of our money, we need to know what is our future financial goal? Saving our money for pension funds or perhaps getting $500 at the end of the year can be considered as one of our financial goals. Truthfully speaking, having a goal will definitely make us think twice before we spend our money. Because we keep telling our mind that achieving our goal is better. This financial goal helps a lot when it comes to saving. 

So now we know our first condition and our financial goal, now it's time to make a plan in order to achieve the goal. Simple as that, in my opinion, we can deduct some of our income and save it. For example, we can simply put aside 5% or 10% of our income monthly and keep that money in some place we make sure that we will not ever touch it unless.. we really need it. We can save it in a safety box, or in a bank account. 

But how do I do it personally? I opened two bank accounts, one is used to put the money that I would like to spend (where I can take my money) and the other one for keeping my money for saving. So every time I want to take some money, I can always use the first bank account. Try not to mix both of them because once I did it like that and I had faced some problems in distinguishing how much money I can spend and how much money I have saved. 

In the book, you can find a lot of things I didn't mention it here. The author has made the book as simple as possible so it is very understandable. It is a very good book for a every people. Once you read the book, I'm sure you will get inspired to make your financial condition to be better.

And when all middle class Indonesian have the same way of thinking, we might be able to develop our country to be a better one. We will hopefully not face some problem like poverty, for example. 

So, let's invest, save up some money, and start a good financial planning from now on.