Downsizing your finances may be necessary if you lose income or find yourself with unexpected expenses. Downsizing can be either temporary or more long term. But one thing is clear, when you downsize, you will give yourself the breathing room you need to get yourself back on track.
Downsizing can be a bit traumatic at first. You may be used to a certain way of doing things, and learning a new way can be challenging. But the nice thing about downsizing is that it gives you the time to make the choices you want to make that work for your family.
The first thing that you want to do is get started right away, If you lose a job, go an apply for unemployment. Find out what you can really afford per month and then cancel anything that is over that amount and not necessary. For example, you may not want to cancel or downgrade your cable bill, but in some cases that can save $100 or more a month, money that may remove some of your financial stress. Gym memberships, gifts and music lessons are some things that you might want to put on hold for the moment.
Food, clothing and recreation are areas where downsizing can usually be done quite easily with commitment and a little creativity. Figure out exactly how much you can spend per month or per week on these area.
If you normally go out to eat for $40 per week, challenge yourself to do the same for $20. You can choose to eat at a lower cost restaurant (pizza or Chinese buffet), go out for appetizers or desert instead of dinner, etc.
There is plenty of free entertainment around, especially during the holidays: visit a tree lighting, a free choral concert, community crafts, etc. Or, just take a few free movies from the library (or $1 movies from Redbox) and enjoy them at home.
For clothing, try to update your existing wardrobe, shop at consignment or thrift stores, have a clothing exchange, or make do for a while with what you already have.
You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here!
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