Pay off Debt and still Enjoy your Luxuries through
Personal Finance Budgeting

Probably, one of the biggest mistakes you can make with personal finance budgeting is to only develop a personal household budget to saving money on the bare essentials: groceries, insurance, rent, electricity, mortgage, car payment etc.

Why it’s the wrong way you can make with personal finance budgeting?

Because you should consider that you’re not going to stick to a budget like that forever, any longer than you are going to stick to a fat loss diet of grapefruit, cottage cheese and lettuce forever.

There is a much better way of financial planning you are going to do to reach your goals.

First of all, write down a list of all the luxuries that you frequently spend dollars on. Be absolutely honest with yourself, look through and through your credit card bills to find purchases from the past few months. May be you need to job your memory.

Some of the things you’ll find might be:

  • Restaurants
  • Beauty salon
  • Cable TV
  • Museum visits
  • Vacation
  • Movies
  • Birthday/Xmas Gifts
  • Children’s Toys
  • Clothing purchases
  • Video games
  • Expenses on lunch with co-workers
  • Monthly fee of your gym membership

This is absolutely no exercise in self-torture. I am really not here to force you to look over all of the things that you are giving up.

Here’s what you need to do now: For every luxuries that you love and can’t afford, think about a low-cost or no cost alternative and list it.

This actually gets quite fun once you get going. After all, doing a personal budget planning in this way is really helpful not to pass on things you love.

Here are some money saving tips to consider:

  • Cut down your expense on beauty salon. Either switch to a cheaper one, or try to find a beauty school in your neighborhood. They often provide very low cost services, including manicures and pedicures, haircuts and color done by their students on particular days. In general, the students are operating under the supervising of a teacher. And try to visit the beauty salon less often. Add quite a few weeks in between your usual visit time.
  • Museum Visits: Looking for free nights you can go.
  • Gifts: Keep a gift drawer. Lookout really good sales and try to buy things when they are at a very low price, even months ahead. You’ll never be scrambling at the last minute that way, which tends to lead to spending more than necessary. If you are on a really tight budget, make handwritten gift certificates for all of your family members, convertible for one “get out of chores free” night, one hour of one-on-one time with dad or mom or doing whatever your kid wants. It must be reasonably of course.
  • Clothes: There are great savings at thrift stores, consignment stores, and end-of-season sales.
  • Toys: Try to getting it at children’s consignment stores.
  • Movies: Make an event of matinees, or movie nights with your family at home. Purchase a big box of candy and make popcorn. This will cost you a tiny fraction of what you have to pay at the movie theater.
  • Gym Membership: If possible try to perform exercise work outs at home and quit the expensive gym. To improve your health form a fitness group with co-workers, and walk or jog 20 to 30 minutes of your lunch hour. On weekends you can bicycle with friends. Take the stairs whenever possible and take the dogs on long walks.

As you can see, there are a lot of great possibilities how a reasonable personal finance budgeting can help you save money to get out of debt without abstaining from your luxuries.