There are so many ways that, as a parent, we can be looking to make life easier for the whole family.

Naturally, when we start to think about the more difficult circumstances, the underlying problem is usually our money situation. When we hit financial troubles, or struggle to pay a bill on time, it’s these things that can negatively impact our attitudes to life. It’s never a healthy thing to go through, especially if the costs are rising, but you are unable to make them.

As such, we can begin to get desperate and think about selling off our worldly possessions. But instead, we need to think about our money situation, and fixing it, not just so we seem richer, but we are actually benefiting our life as a result… 

Identifying The Biggest Financial Problems

Sometimes it’s pretty straightforward that there is one major issue that eats into our finances. Sometimes it can be a credit card or something that we feel we’ve never got around to fixing. This could be our energy provider or the fact that our car is too much of a drain on our finances. The main reason we have to identify the biggest financial problem in our lives is that we can finally begin to take on these massive issues and do something about it.

When we’re looking to make certain payments, but we feel we don’t have the capital behind us, it’s important that if we can get into the habit of making a big payment upfront as a major investment, it benefits our mindset as well as paying off an important bill. It can be very difficult to acquire a certain amount of cash, but there are companies like Buddy Loans that can provide you with a certain amount, depending on your needs. As soon as you address the elephant in the room, you’ve taken the biggest step towards fixing your finances for good.

Becoming More Aware Of Your Spending Habits

The fact of the matter is we don’t know how much we spend on certain things. So many payments are automated these days that if we have an abundance of credit cards, will never know exactly how much we are paying every month. But this is where apps like Plum come in handy.

They can give you a detailed breakdown every single day of what your money is actually going on. And when we are looking to break the cycle of debt or find out our spending habits, the first thing we need to do is understand exactly how we spend our money, where it goes, and if we can, by seeing exactly what we spend on a given day, make positive changes to our outgoings and our mindset at the same time.

The big problem we have on a personal level is that we don’t want to make changes in our lifestyle. But if money is that much of a problem, by getting an understanding of how much we actually spend on things, only then can we begin to make positive steps in the right direction.

Beginning To Budget

Budgeting is one of the most basic tools that we need to have in our arsenal. But it’s surprising how many people don’t start to budget until it is way too late. Once we get an understanding of how much we spend, we can then start to curb our finances, not so that we feel somewhat limited, but that we can stay within our means. Because of credit cards and the ability to pay for things a bit later, we never necessary live within our means.

Instead, if we begin to budget and look at how much we earn in comparison to how much is outgoing if we can start to stick to a more reasonable figure, and use this is a template for living a better life, then we will feel the benefits. Budgeting is quite a difficult thing to get used to at the outset because you feel like you’re going without. But some people like budgeting because it gives them a purpose. If you’re not so methodical, you can use budgeting as a way to give you a purpose.

For example, you could think about the money that you will save and spend it on something worthwhile, like a vacation. Ultimately, people want to save money for a major purpose. So if you want to buy a house, or you want to provide for the children a bit more, giving yourself that purpose will help infinitely.

Implementing Changes In Your Lifestyle

This is possibly the hardest part of fixing your money situation. Changing your lifestyle can be a big shock to the system. But this is where that underlying purpose can help. Much like people that want to lose weight and have a target weight in mind, the same applies in terms of your spending. There are things that you can do, especially when looking at all of your outgoings, if you make simple, but manageable changes, this could blow the operation wide open.

A very good example that is used a lot is the morning coffee. Swapping your cappuccino on the way into the office for one you make at home will make massive changes in your budget. And the big problem that we have in terms of our mindset is that we think that it’s one simple and insignificant thing, but then we multiply it by the number of times we purchased it within a year, and that figure becomes a major wake up call. 

Fixing our life isn’t an overnight job. And when we are looking to fix our financial situation, it’s as much about changing our attitudes towards money as it is about understanding how much we actually have. Once we realize that it’s the money situation that’s dragging us down, once we begin to put the stops in place so that we will have more financial freedom, we will naturally feel happier.

But this is not to say that having more money equate to happiness. It’s more about the fact that if you understand that you can live within your means and do it well, regardless of how much or little you think you earn, this is when you will feel like a richer person on the inside.