Keeping a family budget is a big responsibility. But it is even harder to save and increase it. Someone uses tables, someone uses modern applications in smartphones, someone relies on memory and collects receipts. There are many ways, but the main thing is the result. How do you learn to control your expenses and plan your spending?

Vacation

A family trip is not cheap. Plan at least six months in advance, choose the dates, try to buy tickets in advance, while the price has not risen yet. Do not necessarily choose luxury hotels for a beach holiday. Often a family vacation in such places is reduced to the fact that the children spend their days at the pool with the animators, and parents at the other pool at the bar. Choose a hotel or apartment closer to the coastline and enjoy the sea, sun and air.

MPVRentals spokesperson James from customer services at MPVRentals advises booking your car rental before your flights. This is particularly true if you need to rent a 7 seater car hire or passenger minivan, as these categories do sell out quickly.

You can go on vacation by car. In this case, it is advisable to design a route so that one of the parents does not spend the whole day driving, with visits to exciting places, rest stops at bodies of water to swim, take a walk in the woods or even a bike ride. It could also be a trip to a nearby city and its environs. To make your trip comfortable, you will need the nearest rent a car to transport everything you need. You can rent a car at your local car rental center, so you can choose a hired car that is comfortable for the whole family. 

Control the costs

Financially careless man on the day of the wages and the sea is knee-deep, and the mountains over his shoulder. You go to the store and take from the shelves in the basket all that the eye fell on, not paying attention to price tags. Does this situation sound familiar? It feels good, of course, but only if you don't have to tighten your belt or go into debt by the end of the month.

Controlling expenses is the first step toward financial stability. Get into the habit of tracking how much and what you spend. Develop financial self-discipline.The best way is to manually write down your expenses for the day in the evening in a separate budget notebook. Yes, this is the XXI century, and there are special applications for this, both individual and almost all banks. This, of course, is more convenient. But when you write down expenses manually, you force your brain to remember and analyze your expenses and draw conclusions.

Plan your spending

If you do the first points correctly and honestly and keep a close eye on yourself for at least three months, you will develop a clear understanding of how much you spend over a certain period, and for how long you have enough of those or other supplies. How much is spent on groceries, how much on transportation or gasoline, how much on coffee, and how much on entertainment. Now you can plan your must-have expenses and purchases for the month ahead. Know how much you have left over. What to use the excess. How much you need to increase your income. Or if you need to save money.

Yes, you can't plan for everything. Unforeseen expenditures are going to happen. So try to build a financial safety net. It's not about saving, for example, for a vacation or an expensive purchase, but rather about an emergency fund. In case of breakage and forced replacement of important things for you, health problems, loss of job. Ideally, the emergency reserve should be equal to at least your three-month income. But, the more, the better.

Conclusion

Regardless of the method of saving the family budget, the main thing is to follow the established rules, not allowing them to change under momentary desires. The devil lies in the details: small daily expenses that we consider insignificant, "eat up" a quarter of the family budget, and go unnoticed by ourselves. If you have decided to save money, follow the accepted principles not for 1-2 months, but for at least half a year to feel the effect of managing personal funds.