Household Spending Control: Tips to Help You Get it Right (1)
By Acceler8now.com Investment Education Team
October, 2007
Three keys ways you can contribute to the financial growth of your family are by helping to earn more income, making some investments that can yield returns and capital growth, as well as ensuring expenditure control. Expenditure control is achieved largely through careful budgeting, which is the process of tying expenditure to some income allocation, so as to not only live within the means of the family but to also accommodate important goals like savings and investment. Budgeting for expenditure requires that you control spending to stay within your budget. Given that household maintenance costs constitute a significant part of a family's expenditure, there is need to manage that cost head efficiently. Much of the success that can be achieved here lies with the woman of the house who usually controls the housekeeping budget. To help you in that onerous task, here are some control tips to rein in family housekeeping cost:
Operate a Budget
That's right: the starting point of effective expenditure control is to operate a carefully drawn budget. When you set out a good plan, the challenge logically shifts to following that plan, but here, you have a working guide. You should therefore ensure a family budget that sets expenditure ceilings, based on realistic estimates.
Never Shop Without a List
When it's time to buy things, never go without a list, drawn up on the basis of the budget. In effect, what is included in your list should reflect the budget you are operating. Do your best to operate on the basis of your list and, in particular, try to avoid impulsive purchases of items not included on that list. All that would call for a lot of discipline, which hopefully, you have the willpower to exercise.
Prepare Meals and Eat in
Ordinarily, this could sound frivolous, but visit a couple of the major fast-food outlets and easily find that a lot of families are dropping out of regular cooking and eating out more frequently. Possibly something to do with socialisation, but there is some indication, too, that more people are taking the easy way out: step out and eat than sweat to cook. Eating out costs a lot more, meaning that the family budget could be thrown out of gear. The higher cost of eating out is further compounded by the quality shortcomings of food from the fast-food eateries. It becomes a typical case of paying more for less.
Cut that out of your family spending as much as possible, if you are one of those that are already heavily in the habit.
Stock-up Non-Perishables
This simply means buying in bulk, as much as your resources will permit. Buying in bulk allows you plan your visit, including choosing, for instance, the right market to go to, the best day of the week to go, etc. It also enables you bargain for and secure bulk purchase discounts.
For items that are perishable, there are those you can semi-process and refrigerate, especially as power supply appears to be improving. Tomatoes, for instance, can always be made into a puree and stored. It's all about being ever conscious of the need to save and to get best value for money.
Processed Items Cost More and Offer Less
All those tinned and processed food items you can spend a fortune on take so much money off you but give less in return. Processing, you should know, takes something off the natural food product. Often, much of the vitamins is lost. Meanwhile, additives like the preservatives to help the product maintain its shelf life will be introduced, meaning that you consume chemicals that are foreign to the item that is processed. This is worse when the products are imported, because a longer shelf life is expected, meaning more preservatives. You are better off serving your family whole, fresh food products, whose costs do not include factory overhead, other production and marketing costs as well as shipping charges.
Some Domestic Farming Is Helpful
That's if you have space to, say to grow some vegetables at home. You not only get the opportunity to eat a fresher stock, but can also save a lot of money. It may cost almost nothing to get them grown. Take it further, if you can, and all the fish you need can be grow in a pond at home. There are other options to explore. The promise always is twofold: better quality nutritional intake and cost savings.
Leftovers Are Not Necessarily Waste
Measurements are hardly ever precise, so you are bound to have excesses, either of items you buy for use or what you prepare for consumption. Avoiding waste is an important mentality to cultivate when you are concerned about your financial success and growth. You need to develop means to preserve what you can't use, even leftover food that is still wholesome. Those who want to build wealth first learn to conserve what they have: every penny counts. By being just careful with the handling of stuff you spend money to buy and keeping leftovers properly, you can accumulate a huge saving in one year - money that would have gone down the drain.
It's an Attitude
In the next part of this series, we will look at other areas of cost-saving in the household maintenance budget. One thing you need to take away from all of this is that growing financially is an attitude. If you don't have the mind set, you will take a lot of things for granted and be expecting miracles. Yet, those who succeed know that it takes a conscious effort that must also be consistent. It requires bringing a financial perspective to the things you do, especially when spending money, earning some money or investing it are at play. One way to cultivate that mind set is by continuing to read and listen to stuff that feeds your mind the money principles you need. Good luck!
 
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