Get Rid Of Your Family’s Debt By Cutting Back Just 10% Of Your Flexible Spending
If your family is like most, you need to get rid of that debt burden. Finding additional money to pay down debt is a challenge. If you're already working as much as possible, where can you go to find more money? You're already tracking your expenses because you've drawn up a good family budget. But, tracking your money doesn't really help track down more money, it just keeps your bills current and gives you an idea of where the money is going. The way to find more money to pay on your credit cards is by stealing it right off the top of your budget. Where do you have the most wiggle-room in your budget? How about you start by taking 10% right off the top of each and every flexible expense you have.
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 - According to both the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, families spend about 10% to 13% of their income on food. Some other studies even indicate that there are families who spend as much as 20% of their income on food.
You need to figure out what your family spends on groceries every month as a percentage of income. If you are in the 20% range, you've got your work cut out for you. But, you can also see what a nice chunk of change you'll have if you take 10% right off the top of any grocery budget.
Just to make things simple, let's say that you spend $100 a week on food. If you imagine your shopping cart, could you remove just $10 worth of items? If it's hard to give up your favorite luxuries, imagine the money you'll have in your pocketbook at the end of five weeks of skimming just $10 off the top of your food budget. How does $50 extra paid toward your debt reduction feel? Now can you remove a few items from your cart?
Having an extra $50 to pay down your debt makes life a whole lot easier. And, getting that extra money is easy when you skim just 10% from the grocery budget. Once you get used to that extra money, you'll be happy to remove those luxury items from your grocery cart! And, when you start seeing your credit card debt drop faster and faster each month, you'll be happy to cut back even more.
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.
Don't forget church thrift shops. These have always been a good resource for resale items, but these days they have flourished even more. Mother's groups are another good place to find and exchange clothing items for your young children. Of course, if you have teenage children, something a little more to their liking would be to join a clothing exchange online. Look into sites like FreeStyle Clothing Exchange, which has an upbeat, young message to their mission, including the desire to recycle fashion to help save the planet. Teenagers are likely to be more agreeable when cutting back on their clothing budget when it's funky, fun, and relevant to the times.
GASOLINE - Even if you have become accustomed to filling up the car whenever you want, you can break this habit. A budget that assumes you fill up your car three times a month at, say, $50 each time, allows you to spend $150 a month for gasoline. What if you only allowed yourself $45 three times a month? Would it impact your driving habits that much? That $15 savings each month could start to put a dent in your credit card debt over time.
A mere $15 each month may seem like a drop in the bucket, but over a year's time it amounts to $180 available to you. Paying that amount on just one credit card makes a difference, especially as the payments are made each month and the interest charged to you keeps dropping and dropping with each payment. This is no chump change!
We've become accustomed to hopping in our cars whenever we please and driving where ever we want. If you skim 10% off the top of your gasoline budget to help pay down your debt, you may need to think twice before you take the car and run to the grocery store. Could you bike instead, or walk? Is there bus transportation in your area? How about consolidating your trips with other friends and neighbors with the same need? Car-pooling to work or play dates is certainly an option that many folks are talking about again.
Most parents know how time consuming it is to drive their kids back and forth to all their extra-curricular events. But, the cost of burning gasoline running all around is even more disturbing when you're trying to save money. Re-think your routes and see if there isn't a more reasonable way to deliver the kids to their events. This may involve one child having to wait with you for another child to complete an event before they can go home. Running one child home before running another child to their event may not be wise when trying to conserve your gasoline.
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.
Related posts:
