How to live on a budget

Entertainment

There are many reasons why you have to keep an eye on your budget. Maybe you are saving up for a house, a holiday or a car. Or you simply do not earn enough money at the moment to be able to buy anything you want. Whatever the reason, it is always smart to have a budget and know what you do with your money, because there is always room for improvement. And it really does not have to be annoying to keep an eye on your budget. There are many small things that you can change in your habits that will make sure that you have more money left at the end of the month. In this blog we will explain a few things you can do to start saving money.


Subscriptions

Most people pay a lot of money every month to subscriptions. Think about the subscriptions that you pay for every month. Some examples of subscriptions that many people have are the gym, a Netflix account, a Spotify account, an internet subscription and a mobile phone subscription. These might not be your biggest expenses, but you have to pay every month, even if you hardly use it. If you cancel a subscription, this will save you some money every month.

Do you have an expensive gym subscription while you hardly ever go? Do not be ashamed, it happens the best. But it might be better for your wallet to cancel the subscription and do your workout at home. There are many sports and exercises that you can do without going to the gym. For example, go running in your neighborhood or do exercises at home with tutorials. There is plenty to do that does not cost you any money.

The same goes for a Spotify subscription, for example. Of course this is a nice website/app to use, but there are also alternatives which are cheaper or do not cost you any money at all. For example consider the radio. Listening to the radio, like here on Radioguide, is completely free! This way you save some money and you might also discover new music you like.

Unfortunately, there are also subscriptions that are a bit harder to just cancel, such as your internet subscription or your telephone subscription. What you can try is looking for cheaper alternatives and switch to those.

 

Food

People spend a large part of their income on food. Of course this makes sense, because we have to eat every day. However, there are ways to save money on this. Eating out is generally a lot more expensive than cooking at home. To save money you should limit the evenings that you eat out. Groceries also cost a lot of money every week. Try to go to a cheaper supermarket, do not always buy the most expensive brands and pay attention to the sales.


Recycling

Think about your own buying habits. Do you really need al these things? We make it a habit to buy things we like when we are in the store, but that we never actually use. We browse online stores and send packages from all over the world to our homes. Not only do we buy many things we do not need, it has also become very uncommon to repair things that are broken. Why repair a hole in your sock? Is is much easier to simply buy a new pair right? Well, it is better for your bank account as well as the environment to recycle more instead of throwing things away and buying new ones. So, reason enough to give it a try!

Think about your shoes or boots. After wearing them every day, they might get some bald spots or the colour fades a bit. If the shoes are still comfortable, why would you throw them away? You can repair them with leather paint, like tintura per pelle or angelus paint, this is paint that you can use for painting leather shoes in whatever colour you like. So not only can you use it for repairing shoes, but also for giving them a new colour that you prefer.

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