Paying down your family’s debt may be your top priority right now, but how do you find extra money to do that? You’re already working two or three jobs, so how can you put your hands on some more cash to pay off your credit cards? Your budget seems pretty tight, but there’s a little bit of room that you may be overlooking. Your flexible spending is an arbitrary figure, based on past expenditures, so couldn’t you take those expenses on your budget and just swipe 10% right off the top?
Your family budget consists of expenses that are fixed and expenses that are flexible. Typically, a family has an estimated expense each month for food, clothing, and gas for the cars. This estimate usually is based on a history of spending. Let’s take a look at what would happen if you chose to steal a little money from each of these expense categories.
FOOD – Families spend somewhere in the range of 10% to 13% of their income on food. This is according to both the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Other studies even indicate that some families spend as much as 20% of their income on food.
What percentage of your income are you currently spending at the grocery store? If you are spending 20% of your income on food, there will be some real changes made here. Even if you are in the other smaller range of percentage, change is hard when it comes to food, but you’ll see what happens if you just take 10% off the top of your food budget.
If we use a simple little example here, you’ll see just how easy 10% off the top of your food budget will be. If you shop once a week and spend $100 on groceries, imagine just $10 worth of items removed from your cart. It may be hard to give up some of your favorite items, but when you imagine doing this for five weeks, I’ll bet it gets easier. With $50 extra in your pocketbook, you can send in another payment to those nasty credit cards and get closer and closer to paying them off.
Paying down your debt with that “extra” $50 begins to really make sense when you consider doing this every month. Those payments rapidly snowball because you’re reducing the interest on your credit cards and paying more and more toward the principle. It just makes good sense.
CLOTHING – A family’s clothing expense depends largely on the age and lifestyle of your family members. If you tend to shop for clothing whenever and where ever you please, skimming 10% off your budget may be a great way to get that extra cash to pay down your debt. Once you learn a few new shopping techniques, you’ll be able to dress the family for less, and may even enjoy the challenge. But, you will need to break your boutique habit immediately.
With so many folks in the same circumstances these days, it’s not surprising that consignment clothing and resale clothing shops are booming. Search your community and you will find new shops opening almost every month, along with the standard resale shops that we all know. If you need professional attire, you’ll find many of the new consignment shops catering to professionals, but don’t stop there. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find many of the charity-supported shops have expanded.
Thrift shops run by a church are still a good place to browse. There have also been a growing number of Moms and Tots play groups that spend just as much time swapping kids clothing as they do playing. If you have teenagers at home you may have a more difficult time convincing them to go with you to the consignment shop. However, for your progressive teenager, there are sites like FreeStyle Clothing Exchange that have the right look, fashion, and attitude to appeal to teenagers. The mission and message is also forward-thinking. They believe that exchanging fashion is the “green” thing to do, which makes it the “cool” thing to do.
GASOLINE – This may be a difficult habit to break if you typically pull into the gas station anytime you want. Driving on a strictly budgeted allowance is difficult, but not impossible. Let’s say you fill up your car three times a month and it costs you, just pick a number, $50 every time. If you could reduce your monthly consumption by just $15 a month, that adds up over time and can really impact your debt reduction plan.
If you’re thinking that $15 each month doesn’t matter, that is $180 you could save over a year. I’m thinking that at least one of your credit cards could use an extra $180 payment this year. You and your driving habits won’t even miss it!
Cutting back on your driving to save money is a tough decision to make, but it can be done. Consider every time you get into the car whether or not this particular errand can be done another way. Could you walk, take a bus, or ride your bike? If commuting to work takes up a large part of your driving, are there alternatives, at least once or twice a week? Other people you work with may be trying to reduce their gasoline bills, too, and car-pooling may the answer.
One of the most difficult driving habits to break is just going where you’ve always gone in exactly the same way. The most costly gas burner is driving kids around to their events. Re-evaluating your route during these trips may be necessary. Running children from event to event may need to involve some downtime for one or more child, as you may not be able to deliver them back home before the next event. Bring some books and snacks along in the car because Junior may have to sit with you and wait for Sister.
The flexible expenses you’ve included in your family budget have at least a 10% cushion that you can easily skim from. Your figures were derived from what you’ve spent in the past, and you’ve been over-spending if you can’t pay off your debt. That soft-cushion in the flexible expense budget has to go because it simply has not been working so well for you.
It’s time for you to get to work finding some cash. Go through the list of flexible expenses that are in your own family budget. Calculate 10% off the top of each flexible expense for the month and add those amounts up. Won’t it be great to be able to send that found money to your creditors and finally pay down that debt! Take this opportunity to make a real difference in your family’s financial future.
Your budget begins with tracking your money, but that alone isn’t enough to get rid of debt. Lowering Your Monthly Bills and Curbing Those Wasteful Spending habits will soon have you on your way to ridding yourself of that nasty debt!