budget Tag

Posts tagged 'budget'

28 Easy Ways to Save Money When You Go Shopping

Shopping was a different experience in the past year. The changes the COVID-19 pandemic caused were good for some, because it was an opportunity to save money. But for others, it increased the shopping costs and left them spending more than ever before.

It’s important to understand that we shop to gain a feeling. Even when we buy food, we try to increase our feeling of variety. We could all survive perfectly well on potatoes or bread and butter all day, but that wouldn’t satisfy our need for variety.

I remember years ago I did juice cleanse, and the thing I missed the most was … chewing. I could get all the nutrients I needed from the juice, but it just didn’t give me the satisfaction of chewing.

Shopping for things we need is not the same as “going shopping”. The problem is that today, people are so stressed that even simple grocery shopping is no longer just buying what we need. Instead, it’s become stocking the cupboard with things we don’t need.

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Family Wealth Fitness

Stacks of money of increasing height sprouting plants

Everybody wants their family to be happy, healthy and wealthy. Of course, if you are not born into wealth, you need to grow it with understanding, planning and lots of practice. In other words, increase your “family wealth fitness”.

Looking at how we build physical fitness is a great way to understand wealth creation. To be healthy, we need to be physically fit, and to be wealthy, we need to be financially fit.

Just like physical fitness sits on a scale, wealth fitness sits on a scale. The first stage in physical fitness is to have enough energy and strength to do your regular day-to-day activities and to enjoy your body. The second stage is to build enough stamina to handle sickness and unusual physical challenges well.

Financial fitness is the same. First, you build financial stability, so you can have what you want, manage the day-to-day financial needs easily and enjoy your life. Then, you can build a money buffer large enough to cover large purchases and unplanned expresses.

This post is part 10 of 10 in the series Happily Wealthy Family

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Pocket Money: Parents’ Dysfunctional Attitudes

Pocket money is a topic that concerns many parents. “When to start, if at all?” and “How much to give?” are questions that almost every parent struggles with. To answer these questions, most parents should first answer the following question:

Why do I want to give my child pocket money?

I grew up in a poor family and pocket money was never an option for me. Only when I was 14 and we moved to a new town (which was only slightly bigger than the small town I grew up in), I discovered there was such a thing as pocket money.

I was so surprised. My parents had so little that whenever we asked my dad to buy us something, he said, “We don’t have money”. Therefore, in my mind, pocket money was part of wealthy kids’ life.

But it does not have to be.

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Negative Beliefs About Money

Empty wallet comes from negative thoughts about money

I was born in a poor family and I think the people in my family had poor beliefs about money. I made it my goal to raise my kids with rich and wealthy beliefs about money.

I think I did. You see, poor people adopt beliefs to justify the fact that they do not have money. Because of their beliefs, they do not take certain opportunities to gain money and their situation remains the same.

My job as a mother is to keep my kids away from those thoughts.

Most people think that in order to have money, you need to make, earn or win it. I think that in order to have money, we have to have good thoughts and beliefs about money, about making money, about finances and wealthy people.

This post is part 8 of 10 in the series Happily Wealthy Family

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Consistency is Key to Good Parenting

In my last post, I Learned it From the Best we talked about how influential parenting is for a child’s future. In the long term, some things parents do are positive and some are negative. But which ones are positive? Which parenting styles are good for your children? In this post, I want to go into detail about the importance of consistency – the value of giving consistent rewards, punishments, attention and praise.

In early childhood, parenting in general gives children a toolkit of skills and beliefs they can take with them. It helps them deal with the challenges that life puts in their paths. If parents give their child positive, useful tools, then they are well equipped for the future. Things like praise and attention give confidence. On the other hand, parents who give their children bad habits and poor attitudes are setting them up for struggle. Addictive behaviors and poor eating habits are examples of unhelpful tools.

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No Flights Policy: How to Reduce Expenses

Money is very tight in many families. We want so many things for our kids and for our family that it seems like there is never enough. This week, I had sessions with many clients who wanted to improve their financial situation. One of them earned $50,000 a year and owed $42,000. One was a single mother who had spent all her savings on tutoring. Another one spent a fortune on supplements and health professionals, and all the rest told me variation of the same story: money is tight.

Every family may reach a point in life when there is just not enough money to survive the next month. It is inevitable that some life circumstance will change the flow of money that we count on to manage our daily life. If you go over your life and ask yourself when your supply of money was at risk or when it stopped entirely, you are likely to find that it happened a lot.

We were in this situation many times in our life. It happened when Gal’s company had a wave of redundancies, whenever his contract ended somewhere in the world and we had to move ourselves from one county to another (no income, lots of expenses), after September 11 2001, when Gal had cancer and took time to recover and when we had something big and special that ate into our savings, like going overseas to see our families. Every time we stopped working, our family was at risk of not having enough to pay the bills.

Saving for a rainy day was always our solution for those situations, but saving is never enough. Sometimes, a big wave comes along and wipes you out. Gal lost his job twice after we had bought a property. We are not fortunetellers.

This post is part 7 of 10 in the series Happily Wealthy Family

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How to Be Your Own Financial Planner

This weekend, we had some friends over for a barbeque with their kids. The place was full of lively conversation, food and games and time went by quickly.

Since the men had not seen one another for a few weeks, we did a round of updates and Wayne told us he was planning to change his line of work and become a financial planner. As soon as he mentioned the words “financial planner”, the rest of us changed facial expressions and posture and it was clear we all had strong feelings about this profession.

This was by no means personal, because we like Wayne a lot, but we had all been visited by a financial planner or two and had all chosen not to use them. From that starting point, we felt Wayne was starting “on the back foot” and was headed into difficult, unpleasant territory.

As we talked, some interesting points emerged, which I would like to share with you, because they can help you become your very own financial planner and stop looking for one, if you are.

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8 Good Reasons to Be a Rich Parent

Financial struggles can put a lot of strain on family life. When I talk to people about the challenges in their life, many of them say that shortage of money is the main source of their difficulties. In this new series, I am giving you tips on how to be richer, starting with why to be richer!
“We don’t spend enough time with the kids, because we have to go to work and earn money”, they say.

“We can’t give our kids what they need, because we don’t have enough money”, they complain.

“We can’t even take time off for proper vacations to rejuvenate, because there is just not enough money to fund them”, they are ashamed to admit.

“Our kids can’t engage in hobbies and extracurricular activities, because they are too expensive for our family budget”, they tell me in despair.

There are many other versions of the same challenge. If you have ever heard yourself saying any of them about your own family or if you have ever caught yourself thinking like this, then you are at the right place. If you have ever wondered if it is possible to have a family and be wealthy and happy at the same time, keep reading!

This post is part 1 of 10 in the series Happily Wealthy Family

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