Keeping Tabs on Household Expenses

The latest news from Statistics Canada is not promising: household debt is now positioned at an all-time high of 164.6 percent. What this indicates is that Canadians can no longer think of themselves being frugal with expenses because these figures indicate the exact opposite. As most experts at accounting in Vancouver will say, this is a worrying scenario for the economy. In order to deal with this situation, it is vital that households must look at ways to keep tabs on their debt levels. Here are a few ways that you can adopt to help keep your expenses low.

Prioritize Your Expenses
Make a list of all your household expenses and figure out where you spend the most. Then prepare a list of expenses in the order of their importance for your family. This will give you a perspective that can be helpful in taming expenses. Suddenly, you can now see that the international cruise vacation you are planning is going to burn a major hole in your pocket; perhaps a trip to someplace new within the country will work just as well to help you unwind. Think about the things you have always been spending on from a fresh outlook, asking if you really need to continue the expense. Say you always read the news online; do you really need to have a newspaper subscription?

Cut Down on Impulse Buys
Before buying something, think long and hard about whether you really need it and what difference the item is going to make to your life. Always go shopping with a list of things you truly need, and make it a point to pick just those, ignoring all the others. Pay with cash because it makes you more aware of how much you are spending, and serves as a wake-up call to dump any unnecessary item you picked up on impulse – when you pay with a card, the impact does not strike you as hard because you only see it in your bank statement much later.

Plug Financial Leaks
There are several expenses that can drain your financial resources; identify these and work on plugging the leaks. For example, check if you are incurring some penalty or late fees for paying your bills late. Can you save on fuel expenses by moving home closer to your place of work? Are your electricity bills higher than expected because of a faulty air conditioning system that you have put off repairing? These aspects will vary from one family to another and the key is to find what you need to do to plug the leaks. If it helps, you can even consider getting rid of credit cards that give you a false sense of security that drives you to spend more than you can afford.

For people loath to do their own accounting Vancouver is truly an expensive city to live in. However, with a little patience and a simple system of noting down your expenses over the month, you can soon begin to cut down your household expenses to manageable levels.