Savvy Family Savings: Tips to Lower Your Expenses

The old adage is true – money certainly doesn’t grow on trees. In fact, when you have a family, money can seem to be scarce fairly frequently. As the number of people in your household goes up, unfortunately, so do expenses.

However, there are many ways you can help your family save some much needed cash.  These can be small savings like cutting down your dining out expenses to large savings like adding bundled services like satellitestarinternet to help you cut down costs.  Using the savvy saving tips listed below will help you keep an eye on that penny jar and watch it grow into some significant savings!

Extend Your Family Phone Plan

Most of the time, phone companies are quite happy to offer you savings depending on the number of people you have included in your phone plan. Why not take advantage of this by including external family members as well as your nearest and dearest?

Grandparents, aunts, uncles and even cousins can all be included to help you save money. So you don’t talk to them every week – so what? When you do, at least you can be sure that you are making some substantial savings by having them on your phone plan!

Make Coffee Yourself

Starbucks seems to come under a lot of heat these days. Whether people are blaming the company for deforestation or simply just complaining that it is taking over Main Street, someone always has something bad to say about it. Well, you can do your part by avoiding take-out coffee altogether!

The average cup of coffee from Starbucks costs around $3 – if you add up all the mocha lattes you’ve had over the years, that comes to quite a large amount. Make your own coffee at home if you simply can’t do without your caffeine fix.

Use Hostels Abroad

Every family needs a break once in a while, and it can be good for you to get out of your comfort zone and visit a new city or country. However, who says that it needs to cost you an arm and a leg? Although hotels are often relaxing and it can be pleasant to be waited on hand and foot, they can also be very expensive.

Hostels, on the other hand, cost a pittance compared to the price of an upscale hotel. Sure, you may have to share your room with a group of drunken backpacking German students, but at least your family will have an abundance of stories to tell in years to come!

Cut Your Own Hair

Every family needs to spend money regularly on necessities such as food and bills. Despite this, there are many everyday activities that cost money that can be eliminated altogether, such as going to the barber. Nobody is suggesting that you let your family become a gang of long-haired ‘flower children,’ but you can save a few dollars here and there by cutting your own hair.

This is particularly good if you have small boys, as they hate going to the barbers at the best of times. Of course, probably the cheapest and quickest way of doing this is to shave your head – but it would take a brave family to do this all at the same time!

Share Parties Between Two

Children’s birthdays can often be expensive occasions – what with the presents and the party favors, the costs can soon mount up. However, if you have two children, you can slim costs down by throwing two birthday parties on the same day.

This will ensure that you are only spending money on cake and ice-cream for one big event during the year, rather than two. If you are particularly skilled with a calendar, you could even try to conceive your children so that they are born around Christmas time – that way you can roll Christmas and birthday into one, as well!

Watch What You Eat

The weekly grocery-store shopping trip is one of the largest expenses a family can have. If you want to cut down on this large bill, you can make sure your family eats simple food like soup.

You can still put plenty of vegetables into the soup so that your family is getting the required amount of nutrients, but it is certainly better for your purse strings than buying steak once a week! So cut down the meat, and enjoy your vegetable soup.

Make Do And Mend

The sad fact is items like clothing wear out over time and begin to get holes in them. When this happens, the natural reaction is to throw out old garments and go on a shopping spree to replace them. However, this is a definite drain on your financial resources, so pick up a sewing needle and thread and darn, darn, darn!

If your clothes are really beyond saving, you can always use items like old shirts as rags for dusting or cleaning the house – anything other than simply throwing them out and having to buy new things!

Send Your Children Abroad(!)

It is a well known fact that school fees in the US cost a lot more than in other countries. Not only do most European students study for a shorter time than their US counterparts (which keeps their fees down), but the overall costs are usually much lower as well.

Of course, everybody wants the best education possible for their child, but if you find that you might be struggling to keep up with the tuition payments, it is worth considering colleges abroad where your child might get more brains for their bucks. Just make sure you keep the exchange rate in mind when signing up for a course!

CONCLUSION

Having a family is expensive in this day and age. However, by following the above tips you can help keep your essential expenses down and make it easier for everybody to make ends meet.

Images

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