Tips for when you’ve got that unexpected bill to pay and you’re skint.
Crash Saving for the Truly Tight Moments
Every person has one time in their lives where he/she is caught short of ready cash for an important bill or item.
Perhaps the hot water system has blown up and you need $1000 NOW. Or your car’s engine has blown up and you need $2500 NOW. Or your teenage daughter has racked up a HUGE telephone bill to her temporarily overseas boyfriend and you need $800 NOW.
Here are a collection of crash saving tips. Using one, some or all of them should result in substantial cash savings in the short term. DO NOT USE THIS AS AN EVERYDAY BUDGET, HOWEVER. Life, after all, is meant to be lived, not endured!
One of the most drastic solutions, only recommended for extreme cases, is to quit your job and take the holiday savings and use that. You had better hope you have another job to go straight to in that case or you may be saving up more problems for later which also require crash saving!
A less drastic but almost as good solution is to take your holidays from your work, and do a temporary or casual job during your holidays, in effect earning TWO incomes for the duration. You can do things such as fruit picking or office temping just to name a couple of possible temporary positions. If you do not have holidays owing, see if you can get a second job outside of your normal job hours. Ask your manager, family and friends if they have any after hours work such as cleaning!
Type up some flyers advertising cleaning, lawnmowing, weeding and other odd jobs and drop them into the letterboxes of all the houses within walking distance. Make sure you indicate in the flyers your hourly charge … don’t forget to include the possibility of a discount for pensioners, and for those homeowners who allow you to use their lawnmower or cleaning equipment rather than yours.
Have a garage sale! Declutter your house TOTALLY! Is there a kerbside collection in your area? Go around and pick up anything you can clean up and resell at your garage sale! Ask your family for their cast off clothes, Tupperware and general junk to help you out! One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. After the garage sale, box up whatever is left and take to a local market when there is one, and sell as much as you can. After the market, box up what is left and take it to a secondhand shop and take whatever they give you for the rest of the stuff. Clothes can be taken to a consignment store or sold to a preloved clothes store. Pawnshops are good for the electronic stuff and cds. They don’t give you much but anything is better than nothing!
Read more: http://gomestic.com/homemaking/crash-saving-for-the-truly-tight-moments/#ixzz1Dc9ZW4zk
Take the metals to the scrap metal place, such as metal frames, aluminum cans, copper nick nacks and whatnot, and sell it to them. Check old printers for their empty cartridges and sell them to the refill places. Take broken wooden furniture to the furniture restoration place and sell it to them. Chop up whatever they don’t buy and sell it as firewood.
The Pantry Grab is a favorite. Go RIGHT through your pantry and write down every little thing you have in there, then sit down and create a menu for as many days as possible based on what you have in your pantry. Then ONLY go to a greengrocer and butcher to buy your milk, bread, and meat, avoid supermarkets and shopping malls completely. Buy lots of cans of baked beans and make every second night baked bean night. Nutritious, filling and CHEAP! Do this for a few weeks and you should at the very least HALVE your grocery bill. Put the extra saved towards that big bill you are crash saving for!
Rice is a good healthy filler for mealtimes, as is pasta. Use them as your staples, NOT meat. Eat plenty of good vegetables, and fruit to fill up between meals, staying healthy is cheaper than going to the doctor’s and paying for prescriptions.
Leave your purse at home whenever you go out. ONLY take a set amount of cash with you if you DO shop. Freeze the credit card in a cup of water!
Need to read the paper? Go to the library! Need to get a dvd or video to entertain the kids on rainy days? Go to the library! Need a nice novel to wind down in the evening with? Go to the library! Just gotta listen to that music cd? Go to the library!
Got bicycles? Ride them! If someplace is within 5 kilometres, ride your bike there. An added bonus is you are less inclined to spend money if you have to bring your purchase home on your bicycle. Same thing works the same way if you do not have a bike and decide to walk instead of burning petrol.
Get sociable and invite yourself out every second night for dinner to a different friend or family member. Don’t worry, once the emergency saving is over you will be able to return the favours!
Cut off the internet and pay television. This is only temporary and anyway you are too busy creating interesting meals from what is in the pantry, and walking around town to save petrol! Block long distance calls from your phone and tell your children they have to put 30c into a money box every time they use your phone.
Smoking? It’d be nice to be able to just give up wouldn’t it? At the very least cut down, and use roll your owns, they cost less than a third of the price of tailormades. Booze? Live without it. It’s only temporary. Takeaways? Forget it. Stay home and if you want to eat out, set the table up in the backyard!
Crash saving is like crash dieting, good for immediate results; however, for long term financial health, you should have a sustainable budget with provision for future unforeseen emergencies.
Crash saving is only a temporary band aid solution for the immediate need. It will not be a permanent fix. However it will help you over your current financial hump and get you set to start again from scratch.
Now, go get that bill paid!
http://gomestic.com/consumer-information/the-art-of-the-thrifty-shopper/
Read more: http://gomestic.com/homemaking/crash-saving-for-the-truly-tight-moments/#ixzz1DcA3Fcli
No comments:
Post a Comment