Thoughts for Reducing Expenses

By Lynn Daniels

Most folks struggle with debt, and often find that they cannot reduce their debt because they are barely making ends meet. Do not feel bad, tons of folks are in that situation and try very hard to get fix it.

Where to start is one of the hardest things to figure out. A good starting point is a budget. If you do not have a budget and are living check to check you will find that you can never get ahead. So you should start with a budget.

Take all of your bills and sort them into three categories. The three categories are: Necessary Living Expenses, such as Mortgage or Rent payments, Utilities, transportation to and from work, student loan payments. The second stack should be important bills such as car payments, food (only for cooking not for eating out). Finally, the last category should be for things like credit card balances or other less important bills.

Finally, the last stack you should tackle is your bills such as your credit card balances. This is the stack that you should take any money you have saved and use it to reduce your balances. Do not put anything more on your credit card debt and get your balance down. By making the time to get your budget lined up and find those simple nooks of cash, you can reduce your debt and start saving some money.

It can be done even though you will see that you have some tough choices to make. These choices often are not what you want to do but see that they need to be made. My family had a hard time giving up dining out, but now I have a son that wants to be a chef and go to culinary school, all because we started cooking at home. Make it a family event and that will help. My children were ages 12 and-- when we started the budget and it brought us much closer together. Make the time to work with your family on this family problem. Including your children in the situation also helps them understand the needs of the family.

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