[Guest Post By Joniel at Supremacy]
After you start a family, a lot of things change forever, and your expenses are a major part of that change. To help adjust with the ever-increasing costs and still make the best of the situation, here are a few budgeting tips for families that could make all the difference.
Create a Separate Budget for Each Expense
The hardest, as well as the most necessary part, is, of course, separating the budget into multiple smaller ones. Sit with your partner and figure out how much of what needs to be allocated to every expense from clothing, rent, and food, to family vacations and yearly savings. Once you have worked out a budget for the year, sticking to it strictly is mandatory, or it simply can’t work.
Be Conscious about Your Clothing Expenses
Most of us are used to spending a lot of money on clothes, which may no longer be as feasible as before. Now that you have additional expenses, cut down on the number of clothes that you buy each year because you probably have more than enough already.
Not that you should stop indulging yourself completely and right away because that’s impractical, but you should definitely wean it down so that the total expense never exceeds the pre-set budget for your personal clothing items. This applies to both partners and the kids as well.
Get Stuff for Free
“Free stuff“ might sound odd to those who do not know about company giveaways, but after your first visit to Just Freebies, you might be surprised at how many there are actually!
Sign up on the website and always keep an eye out for the new arrivals because they have freebies listed and updated continuously, from a wide range of industries that include nearly everything from perfumes, skincare products, and make-up, to baby care products and even older kids’ stuff as well.
Think about the Future When It Comes to the Kid’s Bed
When your toddler is old enough to sleep in his/her own bed, you have a decision to make. Do you want to spend money on a toddler’s bed, when you know that it will be useless in a few years’ time?
A full-sized bed will be useful for as long as necessary, even when that baby of yours has grown up into a young adult and about to leave for college. You will spend money on a good bed once, instead of having to upgrade your child’s bed every few years.
Just in case you have more than one child in the future, and they have to share the same room, that extra space will save you even more money.
Become a Discount Hawk!
The advent of eCommerce has made shopping cheaper than we ever thought would be possible. Paying full price for nearly anything is no longer necessary, but you need to pay special attention to yearly sales, bulk purchase discounts, etc., to save more on expensive buys.
In fact, in order to compete with their online counterparts, even the offline, brick-and-mortar stores and supermarkets often have heavy discounts going on as well, so don’t rule those out either. With the discounts, combined with the freebies, you may very well be quite pleasantly surprised at the amount of money saved by the end of the year!
Budgeting is not always easy, but it’s necessary, nonetheless. Even if you are in a position where you do not have to think about financial worries right now, it is important to have a budget in place, so that you can build a sizable savings pot for both the future of your children and your post-retirement life.
