Money Jar Budget Advice
Work Lunches: How Much Could You Save By Brown Bagging It?
It can cost you a heckuva lot of money buying your work lunch every day. There are several indulgences you could likely cut back on including eating lunch out and buying your coffee on the way to work every day. Treat yourself to a great travel mug and make coffee at home and start packing your lunch.
If you really enjoy going out at the lunch break, go out for a walk or to window shop and leave debit and credit cards back at the office or at home. Some will eat lunch at their desk and go for a walk to increase their fitness and get away from work for a bit.
If you’d like to see just how much of an impact saving lunch money and eating sensibly could have on your bank account, do a quick calculation. If you’re spending $7 a day on your lunch, you’re spending almost $1700.00 a year on lunches when you could easily factor a bagged lunch into your weekly grocery budget.
If you want to treat yourself to lunch and a morning coffee once a week, go for it. You’ll still be saving money every week without entirely depriving yourself. Consider assigning a weekly budget in your money jars or envelopes for treats such as going out to lunch once in a while instead of every day.
The Debt Consolidation Danger
When you decide it’s time to shuffle things around to change your financial situation, consolidation can seem like an easy answer. If you’ve got several bill payments throughout the month at hefty interest rates, having a single lower payment can make a lot of sense. It can save you on interest, enable you to get a budget together and allow you to free up some cash flow. But there’s a hidden danger in consolidations that you need to carefully consider before moving forward.
Don’t Run Up Your Debts Again
As soon as those credit card balances are cleared up by the consolidation loan cancel the accounts. Far too many people consolidate mutliple times until they can do so no more. Many people will consolidate and then start racking up their credit cards all over again because now their maxed out cards have $0 balances. so fast forward a few months and you’ve got that big monthly loan payment for your previous consolidation and you’ve now got credit card balances again and you’re suddenly so cash strapped that you’re barely making minimum payments (and sometimes missing payments altogether).
Avoid the trap by being pennywise and cancelling those credit cards once you’ve consolidated them. Instead of hanging onto them ‘in case of emergency’, save a cash emergency fund in a high interest bearing bank account that you can access if there is an emergency. This way you won’t pay interest when you use your emergency fund.
Staying on budget with a cash budget system like the money jar budget and using credit wisely can minimise those emergencies becuase you’ll have extra money for when it rains.
Tools for Your Money Jar Budget
When you decide you’re ready to put your budget plan in action, you’ll need jars or envelopes. Anything will do and it doesn’t have to be fancy but here are a few ideas:
-Coloured pencil cases with labels for each category of your variable budget
-Mason Jars with Labels
-Spice Jars
-Cute Piggy Banks from the dollar store
-Paper Envelopes will even do.
Here are some category ideas for your jars:
-Groceries
-Gas
-Clothing and Gifts
-Emergency Fund
-Transportation
-Entertainment
-Miscellaneous Fund
The miscellaneous fund jar is a good one. You can use it for something on your wish list like a vacation or a new tv set. When you have money left over at the end of the week, instead of spending it all, put it in your fund jar!
Whatever system you use, you’ll find that the envelope or money jar budget system is a great way to use cash instead of credit to live on. Happy Budgeting!