Financial straight-talker Dave Ramsey tells people to “live like nobody else (now) so that you can live like nobody else (later).”
The truth is that life is filled with wealthy individuals on meagre income aswell as those households struggling despite bringing in impressive amounts of cash. In most cases, it really isn’t a matter of what you have so much as what you do with it.
In a future series, I’ll be dealing with creating and managing a household budget – that balance between how much you earn and how much you actually need. For now, I’ve decided to start with the simple and practical things you can do today to cut back living expenses.
Baby steps can make a difference. A little effort and planning has helped our family cut almost $100 each week off the grocery bill alone. That’s a whopping $5,200 saving each year just at the supermarket! I’ll be using the frugal Family series to share the everyday hints, tips, recipes and ideas we used to accomplish that goal and others.
Article by Christie Lewis
Christie is Practice Manager at Alan Lewis Accountants . Besides accounting, her passion is for all things small business (and blogging, of course). You can contact Christie directly at christie@lewistaxation.com.au.
Christie has written 799 awesome articles for us at Alan Lewis Accountants – BLOG
Twitter: @christielewis
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Whilst our local ALDI was very cheap. My wife and I found that we would budget $200 for food but end up going over every week as they would have extras. So we changed to Safeways Homeshop and now we control the price and have it delivered for $6. The advantage is that the kids (aged 4 &2) aren’t grabbing chocolates, coco pops etc. We don’t spend the time and petrol driving to the supermarket and if we need anything extra such as milk we can pop round to the local milk bar for emergencies
@Ian,
$6.00 delivery sounds like quite a bargain compared to shopping with a couple of toddlers. I know when I take my own children into the store with me, it ALWAYS costs (significantly) more, no matter how determined I am to stick strictly to a list.
With the cost of fuel being what it is, such a reasonable delivery fee sounds like a real time and cost-saver… not to mention less stressful!
I have to admit that the busier we’ve become, the less organised I am at home and the more the household budget blows out very quickly. The last time I checked none of our local grocery stores (Coles or Woolworths) offered online shopping with delivery to our postcode. I’ll have to check again.