Appoint Yourself as Your Family’s Accountant!
Whether you’re the breadwinner or the stay at home parent, no one knows your family’s finances better than you. If you keep a close eye what goes in and out your accounts each month, put some cash away for other financial targets and even keep track of your bank’s interest rates, then you’re a prime candidate to take on the role of your family’s accountant.
Many people professionally handle their family’s finances. Apart from not having to pay out extortionate costs to external accounts, you can have the peace of mind that your money is in safe hands. If you feel that your family’s finances need a closer look, there’s many ways you can analyse your accounts in order to determine where you’re going wrong.
Group meeting
Firstly, get all of your family together. Whether it’s just your wife’s financial interests you’re looking after or you’re entire family from brothers and sisters to parents, make sure they bring all their bank statements, receipts and relevant paperwork. If you’ve got nothing to compare, then you can’t calculate expenditure.
Use this information to decide where you’re leaking money, from outgoings and income to price changes and tax increases. People’s needs change, and if you’ve got children those needs are changing all the time. Allocate everyone a budget. By doing this, you can put a cap on the maximum amount one person can spent. Obviously not all budgets are the same, but once you get some feed back into how everyone is spending their budget, you can look to reduce them individually and begin to balance your family’s finances.
Be honest
Make sure you understand each other. If your family isn’t honest about their finances they you won’t be able to accurately calculate their money problems. Unless you’re a millionaire, we all have to make our money stretch as far as it can. However if you’re playing with an figure that’s actually considerably less than what you’ve calculated, then you’ll end up overspending and placing your family in further financial debt.
Furthermore, make sure you all know what each other is doing to help. There’s no use one person cutting back on all their expenditures while another continues to blow the savings you’re making. Ask for receipts, invoices and any other record of money – the more you know about what’s being spent, the easier it will make getting your money back on track.
Sell sell sell!
If you’re struggling to refinance your family’s debt, then controlling cash flow is key to ending up in the black. The first thing to do is to identify where individuals are overspending and figure out ways to pull them back. Also asses your assets and decide how you can use them to your advantage. For example, sell your second car, or rent out the holiday home. If you’ve got old mobile phones lying around the house, sell them online, and do the same for all you’re unwanted CDs and DVDs. A car boot sale is never a bad option when your house is cluttered with junk too!
