Five tips to help you save on current expenses

The current economic climate coupled with challenges of income instability, petrol and electricity price increases requires consumers to have a good handle on how to manage their expenses effectively, focus on their essentials and curb unnecessary spending.
Dhashni Naidoo, FNB consumer education programme manager, said, “In a household budget, expenses can be categorised into needs and wants. Needs are essential things in our lives, such as food, housing and medical costs.
“Wants are luxuries and things that we can do without, such as entertainment, luxury clothes and eating out.
“Expenses can be further categorised into fixed, variable or changing expenses.
“Fixed expenses are the costs that you can plan for because they don’t change from month to month, such as rent, insurance or funeral covers.
“Variable expenses, on the other hand, are expenses that keep changing based on usage. For example, electricity, groceries, airtime or data costs.”

Also read: Save more monthly with these #CashClever tips

Naidoo shared five tips to help you save on current expenses:
Utilities
• Switch off appliances, such as computers once fully charged and lights that are not in use.
• Switch off your geyser during the day or at night (off-peak) or invest in a timer.
• Check for leaks and fix these because they can cause wastage, which will increase your monthly spending.
• Reduce usage of water by cutting down on watering the lawn.
• Use data and airtime sparingly. Always shop around for the best prices.
Subscriptions
• Check if you still require all your various subscriptions and club memberships. For example, do you require a pay-tv subscription? If so, can you reduce your expenses by carefully choosing an option suitable for your pocket?
• Review all your various subscriptions for things like magazines, clubs or gym to see if you are using these.
• Ask yourself how much do I use this? Do I need this? Can I live without this?

Also read: Simple ways to save electricity

Entertainment
• Look for activities you can do at home or for free as a family, reducing spending on transport and entrance fees.
• Watch your spending on birthdays, gifts and celebrations and find less costly ways to give gifts and to celebrate special moments.
Food
• Cook at home as much as possible, cut down on takeaways, when going to work or school, prepare your lunch at home.
This will mean you spend less on takeaways and convenience food bought at petrol stations or work.
• Reduce the number of times you host braais and parties to save on food. Encourage friends to bring and share when hosting.
Track your spending
• You can track how you are spending using pen and paper, excel sheets and collecting all your receipts and adding up how you spend.
You can also use apps that help you track your spending and give you alerts when you are over-spending.
Certain phone providers allow you to put a limit to how much airtime/data you want to spend per month, and if you are 70 per cent, 80 per cent or 90 per cent to reaching this limit, you are sent alerts.
Certain banks and finance apps have similar trackers to help you manage your expenses and they send you alerts if you exceed 50 per cent or more of your allocation.
“Look at all your expenses and make a list of things you should stop spending on, things you can reduce spending on, and things you can keep spending on. If you want to reduce, you have to make the decision and act accordingly, and making the necessary sacrifices,” concluded Naidoo.

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