Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1171482
26.09.19 TRENDSETTERS MASSIMO COSTA IN today's world, knowing how to manage your finances, plan for the future and ensure your spending is sustainable is essential. Financial literary becomes all the more im- portant when it comes to things like ensur- ing you have enough money to enter into a major undertaking, such as taking on a loan, and to making sure you have enough funds to cover you when the time comes to retire. Dealing with the multiple aspects of finan- cial management can be difficult for some, but one web portal, Gemma.gov.mt, can help with this. Ġemma is a retirement and financial ca- pability initiative which forms part of the government's strategy on retirement income and financial literacy. The Ġemma website, which is updated bi-weekly, contains a wealth of information for the public on financial matters. One very useful aspect of the portal is a "Calculators" section, which allows users to use a variety of tools to make calculations related to things such as monthly expense tracking, wedding budgets, loan repayments, yearly budget planning, retirement nest egg estimations, baby costs, tax calculations. The calculators, which are downloaded in Excel format, are easy to use, and simply re- quire the user to input the necessary infor- mation to make the required calculations. The baby planner, for instance, asks the user to input the costs involved in setting up a baby's nursery and travel accessories, the costs related to feeding the child, and the costs for clothing, bathing and changing. Apart from help- ing parents by listing what their initial costs will be for these ne- cessities, it also con- veniently provides a total cost calcula- tion, therefore giving them an idea on how much money they will essentially need to spend to provide the essential for their baby. Together, the cal- culators cover much of the current and future expenses and financial planning which most people will need to look into in the course of their lives. There therefore provide an invalu- able tool which in boosting people's knowledge of their own financial capa- bility. From planning your wedding budget to managing baby costs, Gemma has you covered