Involve Your Household

Fighting debt as a team (as a household) usually, yields greater and faster results than doing so individually.

Closing your eyes when it’s raining can never stop the rain.  Equally, however long the clouds can struggle to hide the sun, it doesn’t mean that there is no sun.

Instead of waking up the next morning and issuing an executive order; cutting on all major family’s expenses, call your household to a meeting, then open up and clearly state to them the need of re-looking into family’s expenditure and adjusting it accordingly.

The truth is, involving the members of your family into re-looking and adjusting family’s expenditure will get you greater and faster results. If young children are part of the household, call them to the meeting as well, but you can spare them all the finer details of the debt(s). However, you have a duty to make then understand why the changes you are suggesting are vital.

Did you know that involving young children in deciding on which items to cut back on exposes them at such a tender age to knowing the difference between the vital basic human needs, and the sometimes not-so-necessary human desires.

Fighting debt as a team (as a household) usually, yields greater and faster results than doing so individually. And do you know how you and your household leak money, day in day out? Here are the eighteen most common ways:

  1. Impulse buying: You just walk into say a supermarket and start purchasing items simply because it’s payday and you have money in abundance. At the end of the day, you realize that you’ve purchased more of the items you don’t need than those you are in dire need of. And what’s the disclaimer on that purchase receipt? ‘Goods once sold cannot be returned or exchanged.’
  1. Purchasing more goods or services outside your budgetary allocation: Also commonly referred to as excessive spending, this is one of the leading causes of money leak! And on a lighter note, you should note that even governments are run on budgets.
  1. Spending just to please other people: I prefer terming this as unsolicited philanthropy. It may also be in the form of spending out of peer influence. You decide to spend your money on unworthy items or services just to make you not fall out of place with your peers.
  1. Spending beyond your means: Your mode of transport, where you live and what you eat should always be in alignment within your income if your year to live a financially stress-free lifestyle.
  1. Emotional-driven spending: Spending out of rage, past disappointment, or simply to prove someone wrong. In most cases, this pushes affected persons into buying more of liabilities than assets.
  1. Spending on wrong investments: Those that are hurriedly done without the input of relevant investment professionals, they always backfire and eventually make you waste a lot of money.
  1. That ‘mentor influence’: Spending on goods and services that your ‘mentor’ or someone you look up to may be in possession of i.e. a new trendy cloth or a sleek car, without giving due consideration to your purchasing power. You then rush to borrow money and after a few months, that item becomes out of fashion. Do you shop for the next trendy item in the market? Such will always make you leak endless amount of money.
  1. Delegating your spending responsibility: You send other people to purchase for you goods and services though you have time and even means of transport to access these items. This mostly results in paying unclear prices and even compensating the person you have sent with avoidable monetary or nonmonetary rewards.
  1. Abusing debit and credit cards: Withdrawing small sums of cash at the automated teller machines (ATMs), on a regular basis. You end up paying more for the withdrawal charges. Equally, withdrawing money at alternative money providers charging higher service rates exposes you to paying more charges at the end of the day. And exhausting the limit on your credit card makes you pay higher interest charges at the end of the day, hence leaking your money.
  1. Speed spending: Some people, especially men, are always in a hurry to spend in a hurry, without giving due regard to the value of items or services they purchase.
  1. Corrupting a service: Hiding in the name of ‘a thank you tip,’ to secure services you truly deserve. Well, to offer a tip is human, but to offer a ‘tip’ with a left hand and expect your ‘purchase’ with a right hand is an abuse of that ‘tip,’ and worse if the ‘tip’ involved is money.
  1. The ‘gift-curse’: Unending urge to give out your hard earned valuable assets freely as gifts, even unto people who will never appreciate your reward.
  1. Over celebration: This may be due to some great achievement, but celebrated beyond your means of income.
  1. Spending on avoidable emergencies: Spending on sudden natural and or un-natural emergencies which sometimes may be within one’s control i.e. sudden job loss and or sickness. One ought to be prepared for such rainy days by taking an investment or an insurance cover. Have an emergency kitty where you can run to and access money for such emergencies.
  1. Abusing phone credit: The emergence of smartphones phones has given rise to endless mobile phone applications which heavily rely on the internet to function. And to access these social applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc. via these smartphones, you must have a functioning internet connection. But instead of acquiring Internet bundles, or connecting to some free Wifi hotspot, most people rely on their phone’s airtime; which is expensive in the long run. Also, continuous borrowing of phone credit makes you incur extra expenses especially if you get the credit for a fee.
  1. Those little things you don’t take seriously in the house: Non-use of energy saving bulbs, non-switching of electric gadgets not in use, lack of knowledge of basic prices of items, leaving money in the pockets of worn clothes you are giving out for washing et al. These are hot spots for money leaks.
  1. Late payments of loans: Doing this usually attracts penalties from the lenders and creditors in the form of increased interest payment on that credit.
  1. Opting to pay interest on a borrowed loan for a longer duration of time, instead of paying part of the principal, or even all of it: Whether the loan amount is small or big, opting to pay just the interest, and not the full loan or part of it, is always an expensive undertaking in the long run.

Key Points

  • Call your household to a meeting. Then open up and clearly state to them the need of re-looking into family’s expenditure, and adjusting it accordingly.
  • If there are children as part of the household, call them to the meeting as well, but you can spare them all the finer details of the debt(s). However, you should make then understand why the changes you are suggesting are vital.
  • Need a way out of debt and you have a structured settlement or annuity that pays you monthly? If so, there is good news as this source can help you get the highest yield on your structured settlement or annuity. So you can get out of debt and stop the financial stress that you’ve been under.
  • Fighting debt as a team (as a household) usually, yields greater and faster results than doing so individually.