Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Make Sure You Set Aside Money for These March Expenses

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One of the hardest parts of trying to develop and maintain a budget is the irregular expenses.  You might have a $600 car insurance payment that is only due twice a year.  Some people budget for these by setting aside a little money each month for each irregular expense, while others choose to face them as they come.  If you use the latter strategy, make sure you set aside money for these March expenses.

Make Sure You Set Aside Money for These March Expenses

Bookkeeper and Accountant

Ah, tax time.  The procrastinators among us have less than a month to get our taxes filed.  If you own your own business, you will likely have bookkeeping expenses.  Then, you’ll need to pay the accountant to file your taxes.  This can quickly add up to several hundred dollars.  Many people forget to budget for this expense because it only happens once a year.  (And let’s face it, for the rest of the year, many of us want to forget all about filing income taxes.)

Taxes

And then there are the taxes themselves.  Sure, many individuals break even or get a refund, but for those of us who don’t, we’ll need to pony up and pay anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars to the federal government.  As tax situations vary yearly, there’s really no way to adequately estimate how much these taxes will be ahead of time.

Easter

Make Sure You Set Aside Money for These March
Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Easter is in April this year, and it brings with it many small expenses.  You may need to buy new clothes for the Easter religious service, and then, of course, there’s all the candy to fill the Easter baskets.  Although Easter never seems like it should be an expensive holiday to me, I’m always surprised by how much we spend on this holiday.

High School Special Expenses

Spring brings so many expenses for high school students, especially upper classmen.

Prom

Make Sure You Set Aside Money for These March
Photo by Tai’s Captures on Unsplash

Prom will be fast approaching.  Now is a good time to determine how much money you will contribute to your child’s prom.  Will you buy the tickets?  Buy the dress or rent the tux?  Pay for the dinner out?  How much do you expect your child to pay for, or will you pay for everything?

ACTs and SATs

If your child is college bound, she will likely be taking either the ACT, SAT or PSAT this spring.  You’ll likely be paying between $20 and $60 for each of these tests.  You’ll want to have money set aside for these expenses.

College Visits

If your child is a senior, he has likely received his college acceptance letters, and if you haven’t already done so, you may want to take a trip to visit the college to see if it’s a good fit.  That’s fairly inexpensive to do if the college is within a few hours of your home, but if it’s farther, it will likely cost a couple hundred dollars at least.

Final Thoughts

To make sure your budget stays balanced, make sure you set aside money for these March expenses.  You’ll be glad that you did, and you’ll head into April with a healthy budget.

Simple Ways to Save Even When Money Is Tight

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For the 15 years my husband and I have been married, we’ve always shared just one car.  Actually, most of the time I’ve been the one with the car—first because I had to drive to work while he could easily take the train, and, once I became a stay-at-home mom, because I usually had the kids that I needed to transport while he could commute by public transportation.

While he’s been a good sport about this situation, the time has come to finally buy another car that he can use.

The problem?  We don’t want to take out a car loan because doing so would create a serious strain on our budget.  We want to pay cash instead.

But how do you save money for a car when you feel like there’s absolutely NO wiggle room in your budget?  Here are the strategies we’re using.

Save Cash Back from Credit Cards

Our credit card regularly gives us cash back.  For the first three months of 2016, we’ve earned just shy of $150 in cash back.  If we continue at this pace, we’ll have an extra $600 in cash back thanks to using, and paying off, our credit card each month for as many purchases as we can.

Save Whenever You Receive Discounts on Regular Expenses

This is my favorite way to save because there are so many opportunities to save this way!

For instance, at Christmas, we received a postcard from our car repair shop offering 10% off our next car repair.  I held onto that, and just last week we had a $284 car repair.  We saved $28 thanks to the postcard, and that money went right in our car fund.

We took a vacation recently and stopped by Denny’s on our last day when we had eaten up all the food we had brought with us in the cooler.  Our total was $39, but for some reason, the cashier decided to give us a $6 discount.  I put that money right in our car fund.

Our grocery store gives fuel rewards points for shopping.  For every $100 spent in groceries, you get 10 cents off your next gallon of gas.  If you buy a gift card, your reward points are for double that amount.  I send any of those savings to our car fund.  Just today I put 19 gallons in my tank, and I got 20 cents off per gallon.  I put that $3.80 into our car fund.

Save Change or a Specific Bill

I don’t use this strategy anymore because we typically use credit cards for our purchases, but when I was using cash a lot, I never spent the change and earmarked it all for a specific fund.  One time, I went several months saving all of the $5 bills I got and used them to pay down debt.

To be sure, none of these savings strategies is growing our car fund at an impressive rate.  However, we ARE saving something using ways we save in our everyday lives.  We’re consciously, physically setting aside our savings, which is a great way to save when your budget is tight and you feel like you have no wiggle room.

Do you save like this?  If so, what are your favorite strategies?

 

Are Extracurricular Activities Necessary for Young Children?

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Little Amber is performing in her first dance recital.  She’s only three years old.  She feels pretty in her sparkly costume, and she likes the way her mom has done her hair.  But, she can’t remember many of the dance moves.  She and her classmates spend most of their time on the stage looking to the wings where their dance teacher hides from the audience behind the curtain and performs the moves with the girls.

Amber’s parents pay for dance recital pictures as well as a DVD to capture the memories.  In all, they spend about $200 on the recital, in addition to the regular lessons they pay for all year.

Plenty of parents have their young children in extracurricular activities and can relate to the experience and the price.  As parents we’re told again and again how vital extracurricular activities are for our children, but is this myth true?

Do we need to have our children in expensive extracurricular activities?

Falling for the Myth

Extracurricular ActivitiesWhen my oldest child was 4, we enrolled him in a few extracurricular activities.  This continued until he was 7 at which time we decided to get gazelle intense.  Our two youngest children had no opportunity to be involved in expensive extracurricular activities because of our tight budget.

What have I noticed?  While my oldest was a busy kid thanks to school, homework, and extracurriculars, my two youngest (now 5 and 6) have a lot more free time AND play time.  Sure, they fight (often), but I also see how creative they are.  Every day they’re coming up with new stories to act out and games to play.  Contrary to the myth that kids need to be involved in extracurricular activities, I find that my younger two seem to be better off without all of the extracurricular activities.

Are Extracurricular Activities in Preschool Necessary?

We’ve also bought into the myth that kids need to start a sport or activity early—the earlier the better.  If your daughter is going to have any chance of being successful in dance or gymnastics, she should start at 3 or 4.

But that’s not necessarily true.

“Misty Copeland, who has been promoted to top dancer at the prestigious American Ballet Theatre in New York. . .started ballet lessons at 13” (NPR).

Do You Have to Outsource?

You may think, rightly so, that some lessons like swim lessons shouldn’t wait until your children are older.  I would agree with that.  However, do you have to outsource the swim lessons?  Just this summer, I looked into swim lessons for my kids.  They were going to cost $200 for 5 days’ worth of lessons, 15 minutes per day per child.  Yikes!

Instead, my husband started taking the kids to the pool one by one and teaching them how to swim.  They love the one-on-one time with dad, and we love that we don’t have to pay $600 to teach three kids how to swim!

If you have your children in extracurricular activities, there’s nothing wrong with that.  However, if you choose not to, or you can’t because you can’t currently afford extracurricular activities, know that there are plenty of other ways to teach your children things like swimming.  Some of our best athletes, like Misty Copeland, don’t even begin their sport until their teens.  Your children will be fine.

How important do you think extracurricular activities are to young children?  Do you have your children enrolled in extracurricular activities, or do you choose not to?