15 Feb 2024
Of the over 14.9 million Bangladeshi migrants working in foreign countries, a few thousand (around 15,000) live in France. They work in France to earn a living as they cannot find sustainable jobs in their native country and send money to Bangladesh from France to offer financial support back home.
But do you think all it takes to support your family back home financially is a job abroad?
You might have to rethink your answer if it is in the affirmative.
A lot is required to sustain in a foreign country and ensure that you keep sending financial aid back home uninterrupted.
Know that one of the critically important areas is budgeting and taking control of your finances while living abroad.
Let’s understand it deeply together.
The term budget refers to estimating and calculating your income and expenses over a fixed period. This financial estimation is also based on periodic evaluations. You can make a budget if you spend money.
Making a budget is open for individuals, households, and businesses – big and small. Even governments create budgets to estimate their income and expenses and their periodic evaluations to realign if there is a gap between what is planned and what is practiced.
Creating a budget is important because it offers several benefits. For one, a budget helps you manage your money more effectively, save for hard times, and break the cycle and trap of debt. It is only through proper budgeting that, as a Bangladeshi migrant working in an expensive country like France, you can sustain yourself there, make remittances via bank transfers and also send money online to Bangladesh from France regularly without taking huge financial pain and compromising your financial needs while living abroad.
Let’s now look at the primary purposes of a budget.
Apart from being important in helping you with your financial stability, a budget also serves the following few purposes. But remember that making a budget alone does nothing. Make sure to live by the budget you have created after thoroughly analyzing your finances.
Only through budgeting can you identify your long-term financial goals and work to achieve them. Of course, your sole purpose of expatriating is not to offer financial aid so long as you work abroad. You have financial goals to achieve. A budget, therefore, helps you to achieve them.
Creating a budget and then living by it helps you avoid overspending. Remember that while you live in a foreign country alone, the temptation to overspend or spend on what you normally should not be is fairly hard to resist. But only a budget helps you resist this temptation.
As mentioned earlier, a budget can make savings easy for you if you live by it. And remember never to fall victim to the fallacy making you think that you can save only if you spend wisely. Spending wisely is not as helpful in this regard as living by a budget is.
Another critically important purpose of a budget is that it helps you prepare for emergencies. Life has the habit of throwing surprises at you. Right? If you are not prepared for them, the consequences can be grave. For financial surprises, however, a budget is the best preparation tool.
If you are not careful about your spending habits, the result can be a lack of financial instability because you will spend money carelessly and realize only later that you should have abstained from it. But a budget is the best way to know your financial habits and even monitor them.
Let’s now discuss the simple steps you can take to control your finances and reap all the benefits of living on a budget.
Although the rewards of creating a budget and living on it are many and diverse, creating a budget is not difficult. It is a simple process based on your income expense and financial plans. The following simple steps, however, can help you with budgeting and controlling your finances.
Also, remember that the online money transfer service provider you choose for your money transfer from France to Bangladesh plays a significant role in your effective financial management.
The first step is to understand personal finance, which is about knowing your income and expenses and managing them effectively. Personal finance consists of your income, spending, savings, investments, and the steps you take to protect yourself financially from the unexpected.
The next step is to know your income and expenses realistically. Many people ignore what they have at hand and instead speculate about their income and expenses in the future. Avoid this and ensure that you consider what you have currently, not what you may have in the future.
As mentioned earlier, creating a budget is not complicated, and you can create one easily. But the problem is living on it. No matter how meticulously prepared a budget is, it is useless if you cannot live on it. Living on a budget is more important than creating one.
Always remember to pay yourself first to meet life’s unexpected events. Every month, you get your salary and funds, so make sure to set aside a fixed amount for unforeseen events in life. This practice is known as Pay Yourself First.
You may have taken debts from others around you for different purposes. Make sure to shed these debts at the earliest. The best way to pay off debts is to start with the larger amount first so that you do not have to pay the interest on top of the principal amount.
One thing is certain: if you live on a budget, you will never need to borrow money from anyone for anything. But in case you still need to borrow, then borrow only what you can easily repay. You can do this if you know your current financial status realistically.
In developed countries like France, the use of credit cards is in vogue. You will also be needing your credit card while living there. So, make sure to monitor your credit score so that borrowing from the banks is easy if the need arises.
As mentioned earlier, how you choose an online money transfer service provider to make an online money transfer from France to Bangladesh has a huge impact on your finances because the process is regular and incurs costs. Right?
Therefore, if you choose ACE Money Transfer to send funds back to Bangladesh from France, you will get live and market-competitive currency exchange rates. It also comes with a wider network and 24/7 service availability, speed, safety, and much more from just one stop in exchange for a low fee. This fee is applicable only if the amount reaches a certain level below which you will likely enjoy fee-free online money transfers.
One of the biggest worries Bangladeshi migrants face while working in developed countries is the effective management of their finances. Because spending carelessly in a foreign country is a temptation they find hard to resist.
Personal finance refers to your income and spending in real-time without speculating about your financial status in the future. Personal finance includes your income, spending, savings, investments and how you protect yourself from financial emergencies.
Budgeting is the process of estimating your income and expenses over a fixed time in the future and is usually evaluated periodically. A budget can be created by anyone who spends money, including companies, governments, individuals and households.
Creating a budget and then living on it as a Bangladeshi migrant serves many purposes. Some of these purposes include achieving long-term financial goals, making savings, monitoring your financial habits, avoiding overspending and preparing for emergencies.
You can control your finances by knowing your income, devising a budget, paying yourself first, reducing debt by paying off the larger amounts first to avoid interest payments, borrowing only what you can repay, monitoring your credit score, planning for the future, and buying insurance.
Resources
(Bangladeshi Diaspora: Cultural Practices and Development Linkages | SpringerLink)
(Embassy of Bangladesh Paris - Political Relation (bangladoot-paris.org)
