As a proud mommy and a person who is extremely dedicated to her family in every aspect, I know how knowing where and when to save money can be important to your family budget. With five lovely kids running around, sometimes saving money and keeping a strict budget sounds like a mission impossible.
However, I can say that we as a family somehow succeed to stay within the budget all the time. And I believe that it has lots to do with my neat organizational skills. Staying organized and keeping yourself always accountable helps to project your cash flows and provide just enough money to keep this machine going.
For all of you lovelies struggling to do the same, I will go ahead and share a couple of money hacks that helped my family budget to a great extent:
Mastering DIY
Knowing how to do stuff on your own or how to find an alternative for something that can be bought on the outside is a lifesaver nowadays. I always believed that woman have to be versatile enough to provide for her own family with as little money spent as possible.
This applies to literally all aspects of keeping the household — from cooking to refurbishing old furniture instead of buying new ones. Well, you cannot blame me for getting accustomed to reusing things such as clothes over and over again; not with five kids and their extraordinary growing capabilities on-board!
Buying new stuff from branded stores is always nice and it even has a ceremonial note to some families. However, this can come at a great expense and may seriously hurt your family budget. If it is not a necessity (and most of the times it is not, admit it), then you should seriously think about paying a visit to the nearby thrift shop or visiting a local garage sale.
Cutting Loose Ends
If you are not that handy when it comes to refurbishing old stuff or you prefer to order your meal instead of cooking it on your own, then there are certainly other ways on how to save money for the family. Keeping in mind the fact that nearly 80% of American families lend money from the banks, if you are living in one of them, you should overthink the ways of getting that money back and regaining the financial freedom to your family once again.
And if you have loaned money more than once and you are paying back more than one loan at the same time, that is a hell of a lot of money that you are losing on banking fees and interest on a monthly level. In order to fix that leakage, you should maybe resort to consolidating a loan or refinancing it at some point.
Either way, you may want your family to restrain from their spending habits for the time being, maybe even cancel going on a holiday or look for cheaper holiday packages. But thinking long-term, becoming debt-free again is well worth the hustle.
Conclusion
Being aware where every penny of your family budget is going and working on finding out new ways to save money is a 24/7 job. Yes, it’s a dirty one, but somebody’s gotta do it. And no matter how unattractive doing all the DIY stuff may look to some of you, believe me, you will love it when you actually start doing it.
