It seems to be one of those things that we have to just grin and bear. When we are a busy parent we have to make do with certain shortcuts in life, whether this is having our groceries delivered or ordering everything online, these things make life a lot easier. But making life easier comes at a price, literally. When we order things online there’s always a delivery charge and the same goes with the groceries. And while this may make life easier we don’t end up saving anything. But when life is so expensive in every area, learning to save is one of the most difficult changes we can ever undergo. But how can we learn to save when life is so expensive?

Reading The Small Print

Time and time again this is something that we all can suffer from. The small print is incredibly boring and as such we tend to skim over it or not read it at all. But when it comes to something like credit cards you’ve got to look at the interest rates. If you have a credit card and you are trying to pay off the balance every single month but you’re not getting anywhere is it because you’ve been charged a lot of interest? Finding a cheap credit card or negotiating rates with your credit card company can make life easier. You could also transfer your balance to a different credit card. And when you find a balance transfer credit card that has as an introductory 0% APR you could save a lot of money. When you start to think about the amount of money you would save because you’re not paying any interest this money can go towards paying off debt. And if you are one of those parents that’s not able to save for a home, you may be surprised how quickly you can save for a down payment. And when you start to get into the habit of reading the small print or at least understanding interest rates, this arms you with a significant amount of knowledge in other areas of your life, whether it’s buying a car or saving up for a home. Because when you are looking for the best mortgage rates it can prove to be a minefield. But while there are companies like Altrua that can help you it’s important to have some knowledge yourself.

Mind Over Money

When we have loads of credit cards that are dragging us into debt, getting out of it is incredibly difficult. But it’s a lot to do with our approach to money. When we start to think about something like debt, we believe that because we don’t have the necessary knowledge or we aren’t given a break in life so we can’t get out of it. While you can find the best credit card deals and get help, a lot of it is to do with your own attitude towards money. For example, are you a stress spender? If you find yourself shopping to get away from a difficult scenario or you are not very careful with where your money goes and don’t check your bank balance very often, it’s these habits that can be the undoing of you. 

When you start to change your attitude towards money this is when you may get a better understanding of how much money you waste. When it comes to budgeting, the first thing people ask you to look at is how much you earn in comparison to how much you spend. Once you understand what you are spending is beyond what you are earning and making changes in your life, this is how you can finally chip away at your debt. When you are learning to save money you’ve got to remember that it’s not always an easy task. At the same time, you may think that having to save money means sacrificing a lot about your life. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. But when you begin to tackle debt or figure out why it’s impossible for you to save money, you’ve got to see if your attitude towards cash is the biggest obstacle.

Changing Lifestyle Habits

As soon as you begin to unravel the problems that stand in your way of saving money you can begin to make the appropriate changes. Lifestyle changes don’t mean cutting every single aspect of your life. You would be quite surprised to see how many small changes can make considerable alterations to your outgoings. A very commonly used example is the daily coffee. If you are someone who buys a coffee on the way into the office every day and swap this for a coffee you can make at home how much money would you be saving every week? Once you do the math and understand how much you are saving every single year this one simple lifestyle alteration can save you hundreds of dollars. Automatically you have got hundreds of dollars to put towards something worthwhile.

There are many lifestyle changes that you can do easily. A lot of these things don’t require much effort. For example, you could install energy-efficient light bulbs to cut back on your energy bills. While this is something you don’t need to think about, there are other lifestyle habits that need addressing with a focused mind. And a lot of these habits can force you to think laterally. For example, if you rely on fast foods or convenience foods, these things can eat into your budget. As convenient as they are, they are unhealthy. By batch cooking meals and using crock pots these things force you to get more creative with your food, but when you look at how much it costs per portion in comparison to your fast food meal, this is another motivator to cutting these unhealthy practices out of your life. Of course, we all want to treat ourselves on occasion but they should be a treat. We get into the habit with our children by treating them every couple of weeks because they’ve done well in school or behaved. But this is more of a habit than something that is a flash in the pan. Not only can we get our family healthier by changing our eating habits but we’re also setting good examples for our children.

Life Is Expensive…

Unfortunately, there’s no way around this but this means we’ve got to work harder with what we’ve got. Naturally, we can go and get an extra job or find a side hustle to set up but this is only necessary if everything is getting more expensive and we’re not able to cope. In addition, it’s only necessary if you don’t want to change your life at all. But this is why you have to ask yourself: what you are saving for? Saving for a rainy day is a nice habit to have but if you don’t have much money to play with anyway, saving up for a big vacation or something that will make everybody in the family happy is a far better choice. We have to prepare for the future and get things like life insurance but so many people feel they have to choose between life insurance and a happy life because of their money. It is important to address your own attitudes toward money. Some people go towards a more minimalist way of living and this has made life far better. And if you are someone who is used to a certain lifestyle and you need to buy certain things, sometimes decluttering and getting back to the basics will help. Saving is difficult in the modern-day, but it’s not impossible.