Up to three years we struggled to make ends meet each month at the end. We often find ourselves dipping into our bank overdraft and can not afford to save. With my husband's permission I have all the following:
• I developed an Excel spreadsheet and enter all your income and expenses that I have received from our bank statements.
• After some time analysis of each account, I realized that we could reduce our food bill, as it seemed to be very high. I have to admit, I was petrified that we will run out of food. But the monitoring of our purchases very carefully, I found it very easy to stick to your budget. Believe it or not, we are not overspending on food. We are really going overboard with our cleaning products!
• Next on the list was our entertainment. My husband and I both agreed that the rental DVD, dining room, and spend money on television, and so was unnecessary. We both work full days, five days a week. We have chosen to spend time with each other after a few hours of work and one hour per day earn some extra income. Sunday rest day and the day may be a DVD. We also checked on other services, we were that we were not fully used, ie: Funny car insurance and guarantees, and so on. By stopping the unnecessary services we were able to save even more money. We decided to use this extra money in settling our outstanding debt a bit faster.
• I have adjusted the spreadsheet and re-listed under what is its importance in the account. For example: Each of the financial gurus will tell you that you have to pay the same each month. This is your savings. Your little nest egg. So, I listed a number one priority for conservation, and decided to pay 5% of our total monthly income. When we covered more than half of our debt, I will increase 5% to 10% per month. Since then, I have included bonds, vehicles, and so on. After completing your spreadsheet and makes your math, I noticed that I am still a bit short. The first month we did not save, we cleaned up our credit cards. In this way, we all had a credit card payment, our 5% and save some money we save not having to pay interest on the unpaid amount of our credit cards.
• A month later, I paid 5% of monthly income on our savings account. Extra money, I left the credit card bill I settled with the previous month, was added to our overdraft, together with an agreed monthly fee. It took three months to settle the overdraft. This left us lots of money from our two credit cards and overdraft, plus a maximum monthly rate in these two accounts. I canceled my overdraft facility and that meant no more overdraft fees! I split the extra money into two parts. 50% was added to our savings did not materialize in our objective of saving 10% of our total revenue per month, while the other 50% is still used to pay towards our vehicle. In this way, we reduced our 60 months of purchase and sale agreement by 36 months. Next on the list is our bond.
In all honesty, I initially thought these guidelines will not work. I really thought our revenues were just too low. But we were pleasantly surprised. Closely monitoring our costs, especially when it comes to food and entertainment, we often end up with extra money at the end of the month. We use this extra money for two things:
1st 50% of the purchase or investment opportunities to maximize our potential to earn extra money.
2nd Other 50% is paid into a separate account. We call it our emergency account. Some costs such as vehicle or home maintenance and repair crop up, we pay from this account. If we do not have enough or we have to juggle the money out of grocery money or entertainment, or we'll keep up this bill until we have enough. It just depends on the nature of the expenditure incurred. It happened that we need to take money from our savings, we need to urgently repair the roof. I have just increased our monthly savings of up to 15% of months to repay the money we have a couple of "borrowed".
As you can see here, you really need to look for jobs than you have to take the risk of the game or to make any further debt in order to maintain their busy household. All you really need to do is take care of your finances.
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