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My parents taught me to earn and save money from an early age. I had a checkbook before I was 10, I was in the stock market club in fifth grade, and I got a job as soon as legally possible. I’ve always balanced my checkbook, had a credit card before I was 18, paid it monthly, and even learned to file my own taxes. You could say that I was quite financially responsible at any age. I took a risk moving across the country when I was 22 and lost my savings trying to “survive”. So when I got pregnant, I was practically starting over. Fortunately, I already had the skills and ingenuity to make it work. Now, with my small family of 3, I am taking seriously all the things I could have done before to ensure our financial stability. Take advantage of my mistake and see if you can implement any of these now sooner than you’d like.

budget your money

To budget your money, you first need to know what you’re currently earning and what you’re spending your money on. List your bills first, major bills first, right down to expenses that vary from month to month, like utilities, gas, food, etc. and finally complete a month’s categories such as gifts, donations, meals/entertainment, and personal care. to know what you are spending in these unrecorded categories. After budgeting for a month’s expenses, you can assess where you’re spending unnecessarily. Maybe there was a category out of control before this experiment, or your car insurance, cell phone, or cable bill can be negotiated. Now you know how much you need to earn each month to live and where you’d like to cut back.

Satisfy your need to succeed or spend

Everyone should have an experience where they set a financial goal and broke it. I think it’s relevant to future financial success. It sucks if you have kids before you can do and reach a goal and now you’re living paycheck to paycheck or have little room in your budget to save or invest. Consider setting a goal before you have children so that you can benefit from the experience of carrying out your vision. This can also be fun for someone who has cut much of the budget and left little room for shopping, something that they may have liked a lot before. You can start with an emergency fund goal of $500.00 to $1,000.00 (adjust as needed) and then save for something you really want, a trip to visit your aunt in California, a 52-inch flat screen.

plan your meals

The third highest expense in most families’ budgets is groceries, so I’m planning a lot of meals right now. Learning to cook and eat healthy is an important part of the life of a single person or family, saving money on that food is disastrous for the monthly family budget. You can electronically view grocery store ads online or like ours, in your app. I start making my shopping list based on what’s on sale. If there are coupons available to you, I put them on my list and try to make meals out of what’s already on sale. It takes time to set the pace, but my family has saved at least 200.00 a month just doing these things.

make a pantry

I would never have considered doing this as one person, but it’s brilliant. The space you dedicate to it as a pantry does not have to be very large. This is where you’ll put canned/boxed foods and personal care items that you find at deep discounts or just to have more on hand. Good foods to keep there are boxes of cereal, jelly and pudding, cake/muffin mix, jiffy cornbread mix, peanut butter, chili beans and tomatoes, and tomato soup. I also like to store things like extra deodorant, shaving cream, shampoo, conditioner, toothbrush, and toothpaste.

Switch to the dollar store

Not everything has to be bought at the dollar store, but many items can be purchased without worrying about their quality. Getting used to shopping at the dollar store as regularly as you do at the supermarket will keep you in a frugal enough mindset to keep your financial goals at the center of your spending. There are so many alternately purchasable items there that I’ll save my favorites for another article. Simply find the closest dollar store to your home and walk the aisles, jotting down things you’d consider buying instead of where you currently are for a much higher cost.

Save or Invest

I owned my own business from age 22 to 24 and didn’t want to miss out on the 401K benefits offered to business employees, so I went to my credit union to learn about IRAs, an account retirement for people who work. for themselves. There my adviser congratulated me for seeing him so young because “I only have time on my side!” He was absolutely right. With any investment, it’s best to have most of the time on your side. 401Ks are only offered to employees, so that wasn’t an option for me. My IRA didn’t make any money in the 4 years I kept it, but things could change. It was still as if I had saved it! If you have the option to start a 401K with your employer, do it! His employer often matches his contributions, which he would not be able to take advantage of if he was self-employed. If neither of these options are available to you, due to your job or lack of funds, simply open a savings account, be realistic about what you can contribute each month, and commit to it.

Within a year I turned my financial situation around with my ingenuity and my inability to give up with a child on the way. When I got pregnant I had 3,000 credit card debt and no money. By the time he was born, I had fully prepared myself for him, paid off credit card debt, saved up for 2 months of maternity leave, and had a couple thousand dollars cushion in my bank account. 10 months later, I am a stay-at-home mom with a home business and contributing to our savings regularly, including my son’s separate account. I don’t think we’ll fall into hard times like that again, but in case we do, I’ll have all the systems in place!

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