Looking After Your Wallet
When you are single and childless, ending the pay month with a bank account showing zero tends not to be such a big deal. As a family however, scraping the bottom of the barrel is a whole different terrifying ball game. There are many places out there you can go to find out how to look after your finances. I'm not claiming to have a miracle cure to take you from red to black, i just want to drill some ideas into your heads so the phrase 'insufficient funds', can maybe be a thing of the past.
According to the Office For National Statistics, transport happens to be the number one sinkhole for your wallet after rent. This is very surprising to me as I would have thought its very close contender household bills would have snatched the lead. None the less, transport spending at around 73 pounds a week is the biggest killer to your financial dreams. I will make the solution as simple as possible. If you can walk or bike the distance of a journey you wish to make, then do it. You will be surprised how much you will save on fuel and public transport costs.
Growing up in a family home like many others clutter was anywhere and everywhere you looked. Apart from making your house look very untidy, this clutter is also a wasted income. Random people are salivating right this moment at the thought of buying all your old unused junk on sites like Ebay or Gumtree. Do yourself a favour and see what money making gems lurk around your family home.
Now this one really gets to me. If you head over to the Food Waste Standards Agency, you will see a statistic on their homepage that quotes, 'In the UK, we throw away 7 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year, the majority of which could have been eaten.' This makes me sick for two reasons. One, as you may have heard, there are people all over the world right now that are starving. Yet we are literally throwing food away. Two, there are roughly 65,000,000 people in the UK. This means that on average we each throw out around 0.1 tonne of food every year... I dread to think how much money could be saved here. As a nation we need to stop over buying and over cooking.
This last one may seem like a joke, but I myself have been a victim to the missing wallet. With your little ones around you trying to find their next source of entertainment, your belongings will often vanish into thin air. Now while a missing toothbrush or that comb you have with the broken teeth may make you giggle, a missing 20 pound note will probably see that smiley face tilted 180 degrees. And believe me it does happen. So once your little angels discover the game, hide mummy and daddy's stuff, make sure your most valuable possessions are always out of reach.
These are just a few ways that we can all gift ourselves with a little extra cash left over come payday. However there are many more ways to keep your finances on the rise. Head over to Money Saving Expert to read a very helpful article, '70 ways to boost your income'.
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