Starting a family and raising kids is expensive. Being part of a family, and properly providing for everyone, isn’t something that generally leaves you with a lot of money to spare. Disposable incomes have largely dried up in the last thirty years. If you want to stay out of debt, you’ve got to be frugal.
Unfortunately, many people starting out don’t realize the costs involved in having a family. They continue to spend money the way they did before having children and soon fall into debt.
If you’ve already got debt hanging over your head, getting what you want requires going deeper into debt. Many understand this in an esoteric way, but it doesn’t hit home immediately. It is not hard to understand, how they soon find themselves tens of thousands of dollars “in the red”, as the saying goes.
Living Beneath Your Means
The key to being debt free as a family is to live beneath your means. You want to prepare meals at home using ingredients that were purchased as cost-effectively as possible. You want to avoid making big purchases that will put you deeper into debt, and cut unnecessary spending.
If you live beneath your means long enough, you’ll be able to buy that new car or new appliances. On the contrary, if you don’t live beneath your means, you will be lucky if you can finance an older car.
Many who have neglected living under their means, have found themselves in steep debt. If you want to get out, you’re going to have to exercise some serious discipline. You can start small. Cut out the fast food, cut out the expensive coffees and cut expenses related to entertainment.
Use the internet. Get a library card. Pursue cost-saving activities that don’t require a lot of money. If your family goes to Starbucks twice a week and gets a five-dollar coffee for everybody, a four-person household could be spending $40 a week on coffee alone, that is $160 a month. Cut that out, find a better way. Make the coffee at home.
Additional Areas Of Savings
Next, look at your other expenses. One drastic, but effective, step you might take, could be to sell the mortgage on your home. This may not be ideal, but a four-person household can comfortably live in a two-bedroom apartment. Additionally, you can get about the same floor space in a “tiny home”.
If you sell your mortgage and put the money into a tiny home, then all you’re paying annually are property taxes—which will likely be much diminished from what they were. You can do this for a few years to get out of credit card and loan debt, then upgrade to a larger house once the big debts are paid off.
You could also visit sites like www.debtacademy.com to find debt solutions so you and your family can live a debt-free life. Consulting professionals can help you identify areas of spending that can be cut from the budget, resulting in a quicker way out of debt.
Overcoming The Worst-Case Scenario
Still, there will always be situations where no amount of cost-effective living can overcome debt. In these scenarios, you may want to seek outside help through crowdfunding campaigns on Plumfund for example.
Between cutting unnecessary costs, seeking professional assistance, and getting funding through the crowdfunding when those methods don’t work, you can get out of debt; it just may take time.
This is a sponsored guest post that does not necessarily represent the ideals or views of Mommy Ramblings.
