Purchasing power
Six key tips to manage your domestic budget well
How to avoid being indelicated with your management, insurer or taxes, and try to put money aside? An expert gives his tips.
Establishing a budget every month makes it possible to clearly view the financial situation of the household and to better control it.
GETTY IMAGES
Rent, health insurance, energy, constrained expenses increase. Wages and pensions do not always follow. Household finances are more and more stress.
In this context, to best hold a domestic budget, or optimize the existing, is all the more essential (in both directions of the term). Here are several recommendations to avoid overdrafts and save money.
Budget
The council may seem naive. And yet, some do not do it, or not regularly and/or not in detail or precisely. However, this is the basis.
“Budgeting is putting your resources and expenses face to face. This allows you to have a better vision of your financial situation, and to control it better, ”explains Adrien Busch. The Vaudois is a social worker at CSP Geneva. He intervenes with people who encounter financial, temporary or chronic difficulties to help them control their domestic budget and purify their debts.
According to the social worker, establishing a budget can be a psychologically difficult exercise for some. “This is an introspective approach: it requires questioning your relationship to money, it also refers to its financial situation,” he explains. People who have money problems sometimes do not budget, because they immediately know that their accounts will not be balanced. Consequently, for them, making a budget is unpleasant: it reminds them of their difficulties, that they experience as a personal failure. ”
Prioritize your expenses
Expenses must be divided into two categories. The first, the most important, is that of constrained expenses: rents, energy, insurance, transport, food, taxes, taxes, and debts, in particular. The second is that of modular expenses: sport, leisure, culture, pocket money, etc.
“Make a budget is also making choices,” says Adrien Busch. Constrained expenses are compulsory and must be honored as a priority. Among them, the rent takes precedence over everything else, because from an unpaid rent, the risk is great to see its lease terminated and an expulsion of the pronounced accommodation. Just after must follow insurance, energy, taxes and taxes, and food of course. ”
What about debts? “They must also be treated as a priority, advises Adrien Busch. In the event that several loans must be reimbursed, it is necessary to start by honoring those who present the smallest amounts, because it is easier and faster to settle, which makes it possible to rationalize the total number of loans. For the older ones, in the event of difficulties, it is necessary to warn as soon as possible the creditors and to negotiate with them a solution, as a re -engagement. ” And to insist: “Above all, avoid contracting new debts.”
If the situation requires cutting in the charges, you must analyze your expenses, see if it is possible to reduce the amount of some of them, for example, by changing health insurance fund, or even to suspend or remove certain others, such as the fitness subscription, continues the social worker. “It is again a very personal, intimate question, each with different needs, values and priorities.”
For Adrien Bush, social worker at CSP Geneva, to do a budget, “is an introspective approach: this requires questioning his relationship to money”.
PATRICK MARTIN
Pay permanent
This banking service is to automatically execute recurring payments on behalf of the account holder. “For people who have financial difficulties or who can sometimes spend more than desired, this system makes it possible to ensure that constrained expenses, such as rent or health insurance, will be well paid and in priority. Provided, of course, that the account is supplied upstream, so as not to find itself uncovered, “explains Adrien Busch.
Favor the cash with a bank card
An Australian academic study has shown that bank cards encourage us to spend more only with species (banknotes and coins). Psychologically, money being dematerialized, we are less aware of our purchases, their frequency and their value. This can complicate the good hold of our budget.
On the contrary, physical money makes it possible to materialize your expenses, to better aware them and to control them better. By paying in cash, we know in real time what we have left. This avoids making differences from your budget. “Liquid can therefore be an excellent safeguard” as the case may be, says Adrien Busch.
Use envelopes
The system consists in using paper envelopes or plastic pockets (there are small specific budget binders sold inexpensive on the internet). As soon as you receive your salary or pension, you insert in each of them the sums in tickets you must or that you wish to allocate to the various household expenditure stations: food, fuel, pocket money, etc.
The principle may seem old, but it is as simple as it is effective: it allows you to better manage your budget (because money is physical, read higher) and to avoid overdrafts, even (bonuses) to save money. “We can see these savings as a reward, which is good for morale,” says Adrien Busch.
At this point, you will find additional external content. If you accept that cookies are placed by external suppliers and that personal data are transmitted to them, you must allow all cookies and directly display external content.
Anticipate your expenses
Marriage, birth, death, dismissal, divorce, move, important events of life upset budgetary balances, either by increasing the charges, or by reducing income, or even both.
“Hence the interest in anticipating the financial impacts of such events as soon as possible, for example, by putting money aside and/or by reducing certain expenses,” advises Adrien Busch.
“Latest news”
Do you want to stay at the top of the info? “24 hours” offers you two meetings a day, not to miss anything of what is happening in your canton, in Switzerland or in the world.
Other newsletters
Did you find an error? Please report it to us.
