Household Budgeting Tips

July 26th, 2010 | Health Care | By Noha Behman

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Effective household budget is one of the most important things we should consider. Our budgets can either give us peace of mind or make us nervous, or can even lead to fights between husbands and wives. What we do really need is to make a plan for saving our money as much as we can. No one can tell what tomorrow will bring for us; we have to be prepared by saving money, which will give us a feeling of security. You should know that even small savings can reap a large reward in your total budget.

Here are few tips:

1- The first step you should take toward saving money is to be aware of the fact that there’s a big difference between needs and wants. Needs are those items necessary to sustain, such as food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. The absence of one of these items will have its harmful consequences, we cannot do without them. But wants have different story. Wants are items that may improve the quality of our lives, but we can do without it, and its absence doen’t has harmful effect on our lives. So before you buy anything ask yourself “is it a need or a want?”

2- Change your spending habits. Are you one of those who buy things as long as there’s money in their pockets or credit cards? I know people who keep buying until they become broke and wait for the coming salary to finish it too; they live in an endless cycle of spending. Fight the temptation to buy. Don’t buy any thing you won’t use “today”, buying it for merely “being attractive to you, or for using it in the future” are not enough reasons. Don’t fall in the silly trap of buying things you will never use.

3- Stop “keeping up with the joneses”. Why do we insist to buy the biggest and the best when “good, cute” things will do fine? Why do we often opt for the 100$ dinner at a fancy restaurant when a 20$ meal will be as delicious.

4- Don’t get rid of your old clothes that you can wear at home. Sometimes we get fed of going out wearing some clothes, if they are good enough wear them at home and save money buying clothes for home.

5- Try to buy most of your clothes and your children clothes in the sale; this will save you much money.

6- Switch incandescent lighting to CFL equivalent all over your house. This will save energy by 80% and the life span for CFL lights is much longer. This way you will cut your electricity bill.

9- Compare between systems of car insurance and house mortgages in order to get the best prize.

10- Drive conservatively. Aggressive driving, including hard acceleration and break, can reduce gas mileage by as much as 33%. Remove extra weight from you vehicle… each 100 extra pounds can reduce gas mileage by 2%. By this, you will save much money spent on gas.