How to Live on a Budget: a Guide to Saving Money
Johanna Ljungblom
Let’s face it, budgeting can be HARD. Not just writing out your budget, but sticking to it. Sure, you may have your budget all set, but how do you can you stay within your means while still enjoying yourself? Take a look at few tricks that can help you to stay in your budget!
Dating on a Budget
While we all want to meet that special someone, we’d love to do it without having to spend a fortune. For women, the cost of beauty appointments and sometimes daycare, if they are divorced, can add up pretty quickly. Men might feel obliged to pay for the date to keep up appearances. For both genders, dating can get very expensive.
For a first date, choose something like coffee or lunch that is generally inexpensive. If the chemistry isn’t there, you haven’t spent too much. The setting can be casual and the date can be informal.
As the relationship progresses, couples can be inventive about the dates they go on. The summer is typically easier to plan than the winter since most outdoor dates are very inexpensive. There are lots of outdoor festivals, which are free or low cost and very fun. Hiking, picnicking, sports, and long walks on the beach are ideal and very inexpensive dates.
Try to save money for a few special dates to spice things up a bit. Explore new areas in town; visit the museums and art galleries. Remember that dating doesn’t have to be expensive to be fun and with a little planning, you will be able to date within your budget.
Use Money Management Software
Many people in American have a problem with managing their checking account, savings account, and credit cards, setting up a budget, and keeping to it. Purchasing and taking advantage of money management software such as Microsoft Money, Quicken, Home Budget for Dummies and many more is an easy and fast way to set up a budget and track the money that you have coming in and going out.
Keeping to a strict budget is not always an easy task, but a budget is the best way to ensure that you are not overspending on non-essential items and services. There are many different products on the market right now as far as money management software, choosing the right budgeting software program is essential to helping you to keep to your monthly budget. Each software program has it’s own style and set up. When deciding on a money management software program it is important to keep your individual needs in mind.
If you need to track investments and savings accounts along with your personal checking account and credit cards, you may want to purchase a different software program than someone who simply wants to track their personal checking and savings accounts. Several software companies offer their own version of personal and small business money management software programs, they are very similar to each other. Be certain to judge the strengths and merits of each against your own needs to ensure you get the right product for you. You may want to check out our list of great online finance tools to use.
Eating Organic or Fresh On A Budget
We would all like to eat healthy, but many studies now claim that the people who have less money are the ones that eat the worst diets. Some reasons for this are that carbohydrates and processed foods are relatively cheap when compared to fresh fruits and vegetables at your local grocery store. To find organic and local fresh produce at a good price, you need to widen your shopping habits to include farmers markets and ethnic food places.
The healthiest fruits and vegetables, as well as the cheapest, are really the ones that are grown locally and are in season. There is no cost for transporting them to your area and farmers generally do not try to sell at a high price to the local public. Simply choosing to visit local farmers markets and local farms can help you eat organic or fresh on a budget. Some local farms even have buyer’s clubs where you can pay in advance to get fresh shipments of fruits and vegetables during the growing season. They are called CSA’s which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Look for one online in your area.
Vacationing on a Budget
While free travel may be out of the question for most of us, cheap travel is definitely feasible. Some people who are not that well off financially believe that they just don’t have the finances needed for travel, or worse don’t have the credit needed to take a trip. In truth, however, almost anyone can come up with the money needed for travel, without having to take out a loan. Even those who have bad or no credit have taken dream trips simply by planning ahead and using the free resources from the internet, as well as gathering information from various agencies. Information on travel is free to anyone who has access to a library, the internet, or someone who is an experienced traveler.
First of all, make the time to travel. If you do want to travel, and do so as close to free as possible, you will need to devote some time to information gathering. This means that it is not enough to simply pick up a single travel guide and skim through it. You must think in terms of budget traveling. Don’t discount this kind of travel, some of the best travel stories come from people who have gone the route of traveling on shoestring budgets.
You can find enormous quantities of budget travel information for free on the internet. Some of the best places to look are on the sites and blogs of experienced travelers or the forums of travel sites. For example, you could ask something like, “I want to travel to Europe, but I want to do so without having to pay an arm and a leg. Any tips on how to do this on the cheap?” You will probably be inundated with more information than you know what to do with. You may be given some bad information on such pages, but much of it can prove to be the most useful information you find. To its credit, the budget travel community is quite good at pointing out bad information when it sees it, and does an excellent job of self-regulation.
The most important thing to do is to begin your quest. Some of the best searches you could make would be for “cheap travel”, “budget travel” or some other combination of “travel” and words describing inexpensive or free. The library also has lots of budget travel resources available to the public for the price of a library card (free). The Lonely Planet guides and website are one of the most excellent sources for information on budget traveling available today. There’s no excuse for not being able to hit the road on a short budget. Invest your time in research, and you’ll be off in no time flat. Kayak and Hipmunk are both good sites for finding some great travel deals. Additionally, some websites such as Homeexchange.com will allow you to swap your housing with another person or family during your vacation time.
Managing Money during the Holidays
Thanksgiving is coming fast and families are making plans for the approaching holiday season. This time of year brings out much joy, and more wallets as people begin to shop for presents for their loved ones and make plans for travel. For many, the holiday season may be one of cheer, but also one that can hurt the budget severely if proper money management is not in place.
While many people plan ahead for the holiday season, there are still people out there that that end up making quick changes to their budgets so that they can get by. The best way to manage money during this time of year is to shop for the best deals; even after Black Friday there are plenty of great deals to be found.
It is presumed that the day after Thanksgiving is the best day to find deals, but the truth is that many department stores will run weekend sales throughout the season. Many of these deals can are as equally money saving as those that are featured on Black Friday. Another great way to make your dollar go even farther during the holiday season is to shop online. Shopping online not only allows for you to shop great sales, but also saves gas money since there is no drive involved in online shopping. Another advantage of shopping online is the added incentives that online retailers tend to offer. Some will offer free shipping, free shipping upgrades to overnight, free gift-wrapping or even more discounts if your order is over a certain amount.
The key to proper money management over the holidays, or really at time of year, is to not jump into any purchase with haste. Taking a minute to browse the different options available can allow for anyone at any income level to have a happy and cheerful holiday. We recently started posting a Deals of the Week blog which has been getting more impressive as the holiday season approaches! Check out the latest one here.
Making Things Last
In a throwaway culture, we’ve forgotten something all our great-grandparents knew: make things last as long as possible. They’d probably be shocked to see disposable razors and wonder why we don’t ever repair our clothing anymore. Even though these practices may seem counter-culture in this day and age; they are very wise money management tools. Cultivating the knowledge of maintaining and re-using our resources can save you money and get you out of debt.
Food is one thing that can last a lot longer and reach a lot farther than many of us know. There are many cultures that do not rely on meat in all their meals and include nutritious legumes and vegetables with sides like rice or potatoes. These foods are nutritious, delicious and inexpensive. Anytime you want to make a meal bigger without a high cost, remember to add more legumes, grains, and vegetables to it.
When buying clothing look for clothes made from durable fabrics like denim and cotton. Look for metal zippers instead of nylon zippers, which break easily. Do not buy clothing with too many buttons or extra accessories sewn in that might spoil the article of clothing if one was lost. Learn to sew or invest in a good relationship with your local tailor. It is far cheaper to fix an article of clothing than it is to buy a new one. It’s also easy to recycle old pieces of clothing into new ones with a few modifications: if a long skirt is torn near the bottom, it can be made into a short skirt. Trousers can become shorts. Long-sleeves can become short-sleeves. If you live in a warm-weather winter climate, leather is expensive but it lasts many, many years. This will turn out to be a wise investment in the end.
There are lots of other clever tricks that can help you cut corners on your budget and save you money during this difficult time. Using these tips is a great way to get on the right page right away. Be sure to check back here to find more nifty ways to save!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2011 at 11:06 am and is filed under Budgets & Money Management. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
