Category: family budget

Budgeting For Emergency Funds?

Emergency funds are considered to be a necessity as far as financial security is concerned, since it can provide one with financial resources that one can resort to and depend on when an emergency arises such that when one is sick and have the burden of paying huge medical bills, or unexpected home or major car repair.

When one has no emergency fund, one can be obliged to acquire debt on your credit card that might take several years to repay with interest that would later cost so much more.

However by putting an extra thirty to fifty dollars every month in an individual emergency savings account one can be secured with what emergency the future may bring. In doing this, it is recommended that one regards the emergency fund as an additional bill, to be punctually paid each month.

Yes, one can and should budget and allocate the extra money for emergency fund, as this is very significant when one refers to his financial future. Here, the goal is to create savings from budgeting your income; the emergency savings should ideally be equal to at least three months your living expenditures.

What’s important is that you should steadily put a certain amount of money aside, and only use it for real emergencies.

Not like an investment, the success of ones long-term savings funds does not really count on the amount of return or interests but on placing a fixed amount of money away constantly and steadily so to have immediate access to it at all times.

In spite of ones financial status, the initial step in the process of constructing an emergency fund is by knowing where your money is presently being consumed or spent.

When one recognizes and determines where ones earnings are spent, then it will be easy for one to choose and make a decision where to trim down expenses. In other words, budget.

Budgeting is putting or setting aside money for anticipated and unanticipated future use. It is here that one sets up a goal so as to save. So set an emergency fund as your goal.

Checking, savings, money market accounts and certificates of deposits, are great places to keep ones cash that might be needed on quick notice.

The amount saved from budgeting can either go to your savings goal, emergency fund or both. One could utilize the money saved from budgeting financial expenses by saving half of it to your savings account and half of it for emergencies. This way, you achieve your goals in savings and at the same time put in funds for emergency use. Its your choice.

Self-Control and Saving Money

Self-control is one of the many virtues that is something that can be learned by each and every person. And learning it will prove to be very significant in the way people handle their finances. Possessing a sense of self-control somehow helps people to put aside money instead of spending it. It helps people to resist the terrible “itch” they get to spend money the moment they get hold of it.

This is a common pitfall for most people. Often, when people come into a certain amount of money, they have this tendency to rush out and instantly satisfy the irresistible urge to splurge on anything they lay their eyes on. This is a very dangerous mistake. Sometimes people fail to recognize the idea that the future has to be considered, too, whenever spending and savings enter the picture.

The clich “nothing is constant” still rings true until today. The stuff people see now as shiny and new will fade and rust away later. And patience and self-control makes people realize and think about the many other more important things that requires more of people’s concern, specifically money-wise.

A person’s financial success starts with a conscious effort to control one’s expenditures and save up for the future.

Realizing the high correlation of self-control and saving money, the next question is, how do we start learning and acquire this virtue of self-control, which seems so elusive? Well, there are many ways which people often take for granted. Here are some of the less complicated ones that are easier to follow. Learn them, and hope they grow on you. Try to apply these easy steps in your daily living and surely they will bear you wonderful fruits on your way to financial stability and security.

1. Do not purchase items on impulse. Consider thinking if you really need the item, or maybe you can still put it off for later when you really have the need for it.

2. Identify the your needs from wants. You wouldn’t want to spend so much on something that you may regret doing so in the future.

3. Look for a person who can serve as a role model for you and adapt a financial life similar to what he does. In this way, self-control will seem very easy when you see that others are actually doing it.

Budget Like Mom

Budgeting is truly the turf of most mothers. Aside from the traditional role imposed on mothers as the one who budgets the family finances, mothers have the instincts and foresights on what might happen in the future.

But how do moms really stretch the budget? She neither uses complicated formulas nor magic tricks but simple ingenuity and common sense. Peek in through moms secrets in budgeting and learn. Role modeling is a good way to encourage attitude, especially towards money.

1. She clearly knows where all the money goes. Usually it goes to child care apart from the housing, health insurance, food and clothing. It is unlikely for her to cut cost on her children.

2. She studies all options given to her in terms of child care. Before she decides, she examines all aspects like safety, health and education.

3. To understand more, she talks to local child-care specialists and works out schedules with her employer for bonding time with kids.

4. For working moms, it is double the effort. They take care of the house and the children and at the same time work. She incorporates practical ways to accomplish both roles.

Wearing professional clothes than trendy ones.
Stays elegant but simple through a combination of basic colors.
Dry cleaning costs a hefty amount, so, she dons on wash-and-wear clothes.
Tone down on accessories.
She engages in a lot of do-it-yourself habits like in cleaning spots and ironing wrinkles in her personal wardrobes.

5. Moms always shop with a list in her hand to keep track of her budget and expenses. She makes sure she does not exceed. Also, she has no time for checking out tempting stuff at the shopping mall.

No Fret Family Budget

For some, the idea of a budget is often a blur. It is frustrating to see how hard it is to do a budget and realizing that with one wrong purchase, you can actually ruin the entire thing. And this has been a perennial headache for most homemakers.

It is about time to overhaul the way people look at budgeting. It can actually be a great way to keep track of your family’s expenditures and help you evaluate the things that you spend the lion’s share of the family’s earnings on.

What is a budget? A budget is a tool for handling your finances by controlling the family’s expenditures in a way that money is enough for paying up bills, and still ensuring that savings are set aside for future expenses – vacations, or children’s education, or even for retirement.

Try these simple steps in preparing a no fret family budget, and see the benefits of intelligent spending.

1. Gather three months of your pay stubs and get your average monthly earnings.

2. Get out three months of your monthly bills. Do this for the fixed expenses like the rent, phone bill, car payments and other loans that come monthly. Add them up and get the average. Do the same for other expenses like groceries, and credit card bills.

3. Evaluate the results of your computations. Looking at your average monthly earnings against your monthly fixed expenses and other monthly expenses, think of some ways to economize. Cut back on some items that are somehow unnecessary.

4. Knowing the facts of your income and expenses, develop a family budget and try to stick to this monthly budget.

5. Now that you have a monthly budget, set up a savings account. Save up by making regular deposits to this account.

6. Keep track of this monthly family budget just to see if it is working for you. Try to fine-tune the “rough edges” of this budget as you go along.

7. If you can get hold of a personal budgeting software or spreadsheet application to keep record of your budget, the better. This will make organizing your expenses very easy.

These are the basic steps in developing and implementing a no fret, easy to stick to monthly family budget. Of course each family has diverse needs and wants. You have the freedom to develop your own monthly family budget, depending on your familys financial background and needs. No matter how you do it, just focus on the end result, which is building a savings that leads to a bright and financially stable future for your family.


“How to Save Money for Tuition Fees”

As soon as their child is born, parents can start saving up for their children’s college education.

With tuition fees climbing up yearly, it is better to have a sound financial plan so that it would not be difficult for you to send your kids off to college when they grow up.

Aside from the cash that you have saved yourself, here are the top 3 sources that can help you get your kids through college:

1. Scholarship grants
2. Part-time jobs
3. Financial aids

These are good alternative sources for your children to start off on their college education.

But as a parent, you would not want to fall in those long lines for financial aid or let your child work himself to death just to have money for tuition and other expenses.

Here are some ways on how you can have a jump start at shaving off those hard-earned bucks for your child’s college education:

1. The earlier, the better.

Start investing your money as soon as your child is born.

First, put the savings or investments under your name.

Later on, decide whether you want to transfer the account to your child’s name by the time he or she turns 15. This way, you will have minimal taxes, if at all.

However, you need to be careful when transferring account names.

Some states require a total turnover of funds once your child turns 18 or 21. This is also ineffective if, in the future, you apply for financial aid.

Also remember that tuition fees 10 or 15 years from now may double or even triple the current rates.

2. Establish a trust fund for your child.

This is a very wise plan for a child’s parents or relatives to invest in.

A trust fund is similar to a time-deposit where the money will be given to your child after a certain number of years.

After the designated time, the fund may be received in one lump sum or through an installment basis.

When building up a trust fund, check out details like the interest rates, taxes and withdrawal restrictions.

All in all, you need to approximate the costs of tuition fees, dorm room, meals, books, and other expenses that may come up.

Make sure that you invest money wisely as your child grows.

By the time that there are only two or three years to go before you send your son or daughter off to college, “lock” an ample amount of the funds by investing them in low-risk bonds to ensure that you will get to have enough for them to start their college education.

HOW TO SAVE MONEY BY DEFINING LIST OF EXPENSES

With the institution of malls, affordability of technology, and rising cost of health care, loans, and rising inflation, it has become very difficult for one to spend less and save money for future use.

Current statistics show that banks are showing a considerable decline on each bank account holders savings and have shown an increased in the number of withdrawals per month leaving people little money to spend before the next salary strikes their account.

Along this fact shows a relative increase in the amount of spending made in private institutions marketing different products.

While these facts and a host of temptations are a commonplace scenario in the real world, there are many ways by which you can keep yourself from getting into the hype and aid you in creating and developing your personal and unique habit of saving a few dollars from your basic salary.

Compulsive Buying Given enough money, 7 out of 10 people lure into the idea of buying a personal item they like in a store at a first glance.

In a simulated sociological study, people who originally planned on window-shopping ended up buying personal stuff if they are taking their personal bankcards with them.

If you are doing window-shopping, limit your spending to a few bucks and try making your list the next time you plan on buying such items. Buy only the store items you need and abandon those that do not satisfy an immediate need.

Budgeting Along with your pursuit to saving money, it is also important to keep an organized and effective, yet reasonable budgeting technique. Budgeting eliminates buying temptations that would tend to build up during malling and help you save money along the process due to preformed lists of items you need to buy.

Performing Price Comparison The World Wide Web provides a great avenue on providing a checklist of prices on specific items that you plan on buying.

This is great for you if you are into bulk buying and plan on conducting your malling activity in one place. This will give you a good idea if the usual store from where you usually get all your everyday household needs provides you a reasonable price for specific products.

Take All the Convenience At Home Lunch, snacks, and major meals are something which you can prepare at home. If you are serious on saving money, you can prepare all this from home and get away with some amenities of the gut by replacing soda with water. This is not only beneficial to your pocket but does a great deal for your health as well.

High-low Numbers: Tips on Saving Money on Clothes

Are you craving for the newest designer clothes, a pretty tank top, and that pretty dress? All this fashion comes at a price you choose.

Buying clothes these days is always a choice between the designer-made outfit or those cheap but quality items that you could pull together and express your personality in many different ways.

Most experts contend that clothes can definitely make or break a person. They say that your personality is usually reflected on how you dress up. But it does not necessarily mean that good fashion would absolutely mean expensive clothes.

Hence, you can still make a remarkable fashion statement without having to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars just for your clothes.

Here is a list of some money-saving tips when buying clothes that would turn other peoples heads to you but would not definitely break your wallet.

1. Do the math

Choosing fashionable clothes can be really tricky, not unless you know how to do the math! So before you buy three sets of clothes that would cost you hundreds of dollars, try to go for the budget-friendly dozen of items that you can even match alternatively.

The number of expensive items that your money can buy is definitely doubled or even tripled when you buy cheaper ones but can still make a good fashion statement.

2. Know what you want

Saving money is definitely based on knowing what you want whenever you spend your money on something. If you know what you want, this means that you have researched the item, have compared them with the other items, you will be able to come up with the lowest price of the product.

3. Drive your way to a thrift store

Usually, these thrift stores are non-profit organizations. This means that they are usually operating for charity. They give their proceeds to some charitable institutions.

Hence, the prices of the clothes being sold in the thrift store are absolutely cheaper than the ones being sold in the department store. So that would mean many savings for you.

Best of all, you do not only get to save more money, you get to do some charity work as well.

The bottom line here is that when shopping for clothes, do not shop for the brand name, shop for the quality.

Nowadays, you just have to be practical. Better spend your money on more important things than those designer clothes.

The Benefits of Using Money Saving Coupons

One great irony of life is that people find it so easy to spend money and yet, they find it doubly hard to save money.

Almost 80% of the consumers, according to some surveys, tend to spend their money easily and find it hard to save even just 10% of their income or any amount of their earnings. They always insist that they have more expenses than they can handle; that is why it is so hard for them to really create a hefty amount for savings.

What people do not know is that they can easily save more money even on their daily expenses if they just know how to do it.

The point is that if they were really wise consumers, they would definitely take advantage of freebies and discount items that can absolutely cut their expenses almost in half.

One of the best examples is the utilization of money saving coupons.

The problem is that many people are still not aware of the benefits that money saving coupons can give. They contend that these freebies just offer such a little amount of money and that they can be better off without it.

Therefore, for those who are not yet fully aware of the benefits they can derive from these money saving coupons and what they can do in order to save more money, here is a list of some of tips on how to use these coupons for a cause:

1. Look for the right places

If you are not yet aware of the right places where you can get excellent money saving coupons, try to look in your local newspaper, especially the Sunday editions. Its one of the best places where you can get discount coupons.

Usually, different establishments provide discount coupons to entice consumers to buy their products. Thats why they use the paper to distribute their freebies.

2. Shop online

Online businesses also provide money saving coupons. What people do not know is that online discount coupons provide more money saving percentage than what the newspapers can give.

Best of all, it is so easy to accumulate discount coupons. All you have to do is to sign up for the online business and you can easily get some of their freebies.

3. Coupons are great money savers

The very advantage of money saving coupons is that they can cut your bill to almost 50%.

Indeed, using money saving coupons can definitely save you more money than what you have expected. So, for those who do not know this yet, try to cut more coupons and start saving.

Tips on how to Save Effectively in Banks

Many of us think that putting our money in the bank is a secure and wise way of saving. Yes, this is true if we are wise in dealing with banks. Banks are not charitable institutions, these are profit-driven entities which charge different kinds of fees and do all sorts of schemes to take away some of your money. The savings that you can get in being wise in making bank transactions can add up after some time and let you use your money where you want to.

Here are some tips on how to effectively save money in the bank:

Mind the Opportunity Cost

Think about the factors that are affecting your money in the bank. Are there fees that the bank is asking you to pay for keeping and using your own money? How much? Are they requiring a minimum balance for holding an account? You might be interested in other alternatives that are available out there, waiting for your investment. You should always factor in the opportunities that you are deprived of because you are putting your money in the bank. You might also be interested in taking a look into the terms of other banks. Probably the bank that can best suit your needs is out there waiting for you.

Book Balancing

Always bear in mind to have your checkbooks balanced at the end of every month. Issuing bounced checks can cost you a lot. The average fee for issuing checks with insufficient funds is $20. If you are not aware of the problem, you can easily issue several bounced checks in a certain period of time and this is very costly indeed.

Tame the ATM Machines

The best practice in using ATM machines is to avoid using ATM machines of other banks. This way, you will save on ATM fees. However, it wouldn’t hurt if you also knew the ATM machines of other banks which do not charge fees.

E-banking

With the advent of globalization, everything is becoming electronic. This is also true in the banking world and technology is quickly becoming a benchmark of competition. E-banking can save you some money from transportation costs and more importantly, it will save you time. The time you spend waiting at the bank can be used for some other productive activities.

Truly, putting your money in the bank is a wise way of saving money, but only if you are wise enough to prevent the bank from chipping away your wealth. In saving, it is not only the benefits such as annual returns which you should consider, you should always think about the costs involved in the process.


“Essential Money Saving Tips for Students”

It is easy to get caught in the rush of things when you are in college. In the midst of studying, part-time jobs, socializing and extracurricular activities that you have, you are most likely to forget one of the most important things, which is straightening out your finances.

Here are some tips on how you can save money as a student:

1. Plan ahead.

If possible, do this even before you move into your dorm room.

Check if you are eligible for scholarships and other grants before signing up for any form of student loan.

Construct a cash flow. First, where do you expect to get money from? Make a list of your “income”, be it from your parents, your student loan or your part-time job.

Then forecast your expected monthly or weekly expenses for food, books, etc. Once you have set aside a budget, be strict with yourself and stick to it.

You will never know what unexpected expenses would come your way so it is better to have a downfall for financial emergencies.

2. Save on food.

One of the major expenses that you have as a student which you might have ignored when you were still living with your parents is your food allowance. Avoid eating at fast food outlets, as this is most likely to ruin your budget. Pack your lunch and plan your meals as much as you can.

3. Take full advantage of student discounts.

Those ID’s in your wallet are not just for show. Student ID’s and memberships in organizations are honored in several establishments which offer discounts.

Also, patronize a certain establishment regularly and you are bound to get bonus cards for being a loyal customer.

4. Use your cash as much as you can.

Since you already have a draft of the items where you will spend your money, it is easier to monitor your cash flow. Avoid using your debit card when you have cash with you. Use your credit cards or write checks only in emergencies. Having debit cards, credit cards and checks handy might lead you to overspend.

5. Keep yourself busy.

Join clubs according to your field of interest.

Keeping busy will let your mind wander and help you stay away from things that you are likely to spend money on when you get bored. Examples of these are snacks, movie tickets or game rentals.

You will be surprised at the amount of money that you will actually save by spending less on luxury items, following your budget plan and saving for financial emergencies that you are most likely to get as a college student.