Do you struggle from week to week trying to make ends meet? Are you consistently going without things that you really wish you could afford? Well I have some possible and practical solutions to your dilemma:1.TIPS TO HELP YOUR BUDGET STRETCH FURTHER.
There are many ideas that you could adopt to help your hard earned dollars buy more than you could before (or so it seems!) ·Do you take your lunch to work? You could save between $15 -$25 per week, if you packed it yourself. You’d have to make it interesting so you weren’t tempted to go and buy something else. ·Make your lunchbox food, and that of your children, rather than buying stuff. It is so much cheaper and often tastier! Start making cakes, biscuits and slices etc. If you have a bread maker, make bread and home made rolls for
kids. Get them to design their own shapes, they’ll love it. If you add up costs of bought biscuits, cakes, muesli bars, etc, you’d realise this could be a huge saving, and considerably better for you. It’s just a training and prioritising exercise, you can do it if you really really want to save money. ·Do you eat out regularly, or have a coffee or supper at a café? Why not consider having friends over or going to their place for tea or a night out. Play games, watch a video, whatever. This would be great fun but importantly, A LOT CHEAPER. One video hire for $7 compared to all of you paying $12 each to go to movies. A meal out could cost $70 for 2 people quite easily, and that often doesn’t include drinks. You could have a great dinner party for that – and share it around at friend’s places so you all get a turn of cooking and resting as well as sharing costs. ·Menu planning is a great way I’ve found to reduce my weekly shopping bill. Menu planning involves deciding at start of week what you’ll eat EVERY night (and day) that week. Include a couple of pasta dishes or cheapies like tuna mornay or whatever. Determine what ingredients you’ll need for all these meals and then only shop for those items. You’ll find you wont have waste and you wont buy ‘on spur of moment’ items. This could also save about $20 - $50 per week (depending on your family and tastes etc)
If you put your mind to it, I’m sure you could come up with heaps more ideas of HOW you could make your income go further.
2.If you have your belt pulled in as tightly as you can, and you really can’t find any areas of your life that you could spend less, then perhaps you could try and increase your income. I don’t mean ask your boss for a pay rise either. There are many ideas of earning extra income at home e.g. home based business ideas or running your own internet business. Both of these ideas are cheap and easy to start up, you just have to know how and where. I won’t go into any detail here, you may want to chase up some of my other articles later.
