This week is all about budgeting and saving. Listen to this episode, because you want to feel more in charge of your finances even with the current costs of living being so high.
If you want to tackle this or any other area of your life head on, check out the Calm Resilient Mama Project, my 1-on-1 coaching program, because you can make powerful changes even if it all feels too overwhelming and impossible right now.
Transcript:
Empower your finances: Budgeting tips for mamas (Episode 31)
“Welcome to the Calm Resilient Mama Podcast. I’m Cindy Graham-Schmidt. I’m a Life Coach and mama of two. On this podcast I share with you coaching tools and tips to help you deal with challenges that life and motherhood throw at you. I will help you to enjoy your life more TODAY, because tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone.
Hey mama,
How are you?
Today I want to talk about budgeting and saving, because of the currently high costs of living and because I’m currently very passionate about learning more about financial literacy.
I started a thread in my Facebook group, the Calm Resilient Mama Club, where everyone can share their favourite budgeting and saving tips with each other, and I thought this would be a good and relevant topic for the podcast too.
Before I go ahead and share some budgeting tips, I want to make sure that you know that that’s all they are, tips! This isn’t meant to be financial advice or anything like that, it’s simply things that I have learned and used myself, and you can decide for yourself and for your situation, if you want to go ahead and give them a try too.
So without further ado, here are my top budgeting tips at the moment.
The first one is probably a very obvious one, but still worth mentioning: aim to spend less money than you have coming in. In order to do that, you need to be fully aware of both what comes in and what goes out. If you don’t know those numbers, that would be a good place to start. Go over your bank statements from the last 3 months and get a good overview.
My second tip basically builds on the previous tip: make a family budget that includes all your expenses and, ideally, allows for saving. Recently, I even started having different bank accounts for different things. For example, one account for all essentiel direct debits, one for spending money to pay for all our groceries etc.,one for personal spending money, one high interest savings account for emergency funds and other savings accounts for specific goals. At first that seemed overwhelming, but I noticed it makes it a lot easier to stick to our budget.
My third tip plays into the budget as well: check if there are any expenses that you can reduce. For example, for me recently that was finding a cheaper brand of nappies that still works with my daughter’s sensitive skin. This could also be about comparing insurance prices, phone providers, buying more home brand products or shopping at different stores than you normally would, being more energy efficient or buying second hand clothes. Those are just some ideas of reducing costs.
My fourth tip is meal planning. Every week I make a plan for the next week of what I’m going to cook. This reduces the cost, because we only buy what we really need. It reduces food wastage AND it reduces overwhelm, because you don’t have to ask yourself every day what you’ll make for dinner and frantically run to the shops, because you’re missing any ingredients. As I’m actively working on reducing our grocery costs recently, I started to make sure I include 2-3 budget friendly meals each week.
So mama, what do you think? Are there any ideas here that’ll help you to reduce your cost of living, even if just by a bit? I really hope that this episode helps you to feel a bit more empowered about your financial situation and that it encourages you to tackle it head on instead of letting overwhelm run the show. This isn’t an easy topic, but it’s one we need to be able to talk about. Which is another tip in itself I guess, talk to your loved ones. Talk about your finances with the people that are involved. Talk about it if it worries or stresses you. You don’t have to carry this on your own. Talk about it to find solutions and ways to move forward. Money definitely isn’t everything, but it’s also not a topic we should shy away from. And even if you’re a stay-at-home mum and don’t get paid for all the work that you do, personal finances and financial literacy are still topics that are relevant to you. They are still important topics even if there’s no payday for you every fortnight or every month. You still get to learn and make empowered decisions for yourself and for your family. Not just because you need to with the current high costs of living, but because you deserve to feel knowledgeable and in charge of your finances.
If you want support in tackling this or any other area of your life, check out the Calm Resilient Mama Project, my 1-on-1 coaching program, on my website www.cindygrahamschmidt.com.
Also, two more tips that came from mums in my Facebook group, the Calm Resilient Mama Club, that I wanted to share with you:
- “No more bubble tea”, if you have an obsession with that, then this tip might be for you.
- And the other one was to only go to shops, if you really really have to and there’s no way around it.
That’s it from me for today. Talk to you next time.”