Family Budgets: Helpful Suggestions for Saving

You and your spouse have come to an agreement on family budgets. Part of that budget and part of your goal as a family is to have a regular savings program and save for high-priced items. The plan sounds great but how you go about implementing the plan is another issue altogether. The task seems quite difficult and overwhelming. The key to remember to help you get started saving is to start small. Take small steps to start getting in the habit of savings.

Think of this: if you were to just put aside one dollar a day you would have $365 at the end of the year to put into savings. Just two dollars a day would double that. Think about it carefully. Some of us spend two dollars a day just buying coffee at the coffee shop when we could maybe cut back and find another more economical way to get our coffee, such as have our coffee fix in the morning right before leaving for work. We could start at the one dollar a day and over time increase it to $5 a day or $150 a month. $150 a month is $1,800 a year in savings. It adds up very fast.

Some experts suggest that a family should set aside 10% of their income for savings. However, if a family studies their budget and realizes that they cannot save 10% then it would be wise to save whatever they can. It would be better to save 1% than to not save any money at all. The key is to start small, as the overall task won’t look so overwhelming. Just look around and carefully analyze where you spend your money on a daily basis. Look at the small things like those two sodas you buy from the vending machine everyday. You could buy a week’s worth of soda at the grocery store at a much cheaper price and put it in the refrigerator at work for usually a lot less and save the difference.

Solving the Fight - Married Couples Should Budget and Spend Together

Whether you are newly married, or have been married for years, you may have noticed that one of the biggest problems you face as a couple is your finances. For many couples, problems in discussing finances are a source of constant stress and tension, and can lead to divorce in the most extreme cases.

As a couple sharing your lives together, it is important to share the finances as well. You should be a team - and your personal and family finances should be worked out together to make for smooth sailing in your married life. Relying on one person or the other to solely maintain the finances leads to stress and fighting. You should both be responsible for the financial stability of your household. It is necessary for the couple to sit down and be involved in not only budgeting the money that one or both parties brings into the home, but the spending of this money as well. This ensures that not only one person is making all of the financial decisions, but that you are doing it as equal partners in your relationship.

Setting a budget - not only for your day-to-day household expenses, but for yourselves as well - is a surefire way to ensure that one party is not spending more money than the other. It is also important to add that shopping for the household should be done by both parties. When just one partner shops for the entire household, the dividers of the budget begin to blur and one partner may feel as though the partner who shops for the house is spending more money.

In order to minimize your fights over financial matters and family budgets, you will find that working them out together will keep you happy for years to come.