If you know you’re digging yourself into a financial hole then now is the time to stop and take action, here are 6 simple tips to help you face up to your money problems and and get back on course.
Face Up To What You Owe
If you’re ticking along aware you owe money but not sure just how much you owe you need to get everything sorted. If you’re the sort of person who doesn’t check your bank balance from one month to the next and you just wait until your card gets declined this is going to be the hardest step for you. Open all your old bank statements, get all your credit cards, store cards and any other payments you have set up and make a list of everything and how much money you owe. You may have managed for the past few months or even years just keeping a running total in your head and just waiting until your card gets declined to know you’ve reached your limit but this isn’t a sustainable lifestyle choice and eventually it’s going to catch up with you. This is scary and very daunting but I promise it will be worth the end feeling once you’ve got everything sorted.
Set Up Online And Phone Banking
So now you know how bad your finances have been historically you need to make sure they never get that bad again. You have to make a promise to yourself that you’re going to check your main account balance as often as possible, no more throwing the statements straight in the bin, open them and take in what’s been spent and where. Talk to your bank about setting up online and telephone banking so you know exactly what you’ve got and when you’ve got it at any time. If you only get paper statements once a month this is too long to go without knowing exactly what’s happening. Some banks will even text or email you when your account is almost empty or even send you daily or weekly updates, these services often incur a fee so try and discipline yourself to check your accounts yourself.
Make A Note Of Where You Could Save
You know how much money you have and you know where it’s going on a regular basis but you’ve got yourself into debt because at some point your outgoings were greater than your incomings and if you’ve always pushed your finances to the back of your mind there’s a good chance you’re still spending more than you’re bringing in. This may sound like a cliché but every little really does help so look at where you’re spending money you don’t have to; what’s more important, your subscription to Cosmo or getting out of debt? Do you really need to swing by Starbucks on your way to the office each morning? Could you make your own pack lunch? The hardest thing here is breaking habits but if you do something every day it only takes two weeks to break that habit and before you know it you won’t miss that expensive morning coffee or that sandwich from the deli.
Create A Budget
The trick to creating a budget if you know you’re not very good at sticking to them is to budget in a margin for error. Accept that at times you’re going to have a little wobble so don’t just give up after one slip up. Look at all the areas of your life you spend money on at the moment and label them one, two or three. One is for essential things like rent and bills, two is for things that would make your life uncomfortable if you had to live without like a top of the range mobile phone or internet and three is for things that you enjoy but really aren’t essential like drinking at the weekend and getting takeaways (it’s more than possible to have a night out just drinking soft drinks once in a while). Now you can see exactly what you’ve got coming in and you can see what needs to go out and what you would like to go out. If you slip up this month something in option three has to be left out next month.
Sell What You Can
If you’ve been spending more than you’re earning for months or even years there’s a good chance you’ve acquired a lot of ‘stuff’. Take a good hard look at all this ‘stuff’ and sell anything that you don’t really need, old MP3 players, shoes, clothes, DVDs etc can all go online and be sold. Be careful doing this though, there are many companies who offer you cash for your old phones, gold, DVD’s etc. The prices they offer are usually massively under what you’d be able to get if you just went to the effort of selling them yourself. If you don’t have any material things to sell you can always sell your time (or more commonly known as get a job or a second job). This could be anything from helping behind the bar or your local pub for a couple of nights a week to doing work online through freelancing sites.
Admit When You Need Help
It could be a case that you really don’t think you can manage by yourself in which case it’s time to seek some help. Most high street banks offer money management advice free of charge and they won’t judge or criticise you, they will offer honest and productive advice. They will usually be able to consolidate all your debts onto one loan which you should find easier to manage each month but always check the small print first to make sure you’re not going to end up paying more APR than you are now. It might be you’ve got a family member who can help you out; they might be able to take care of your debts for you so you’re just paying them back but you’ll need to be able to prove you’re serious about starting a new. If things have really come to a head and you’re finding your being chased for money you just don’t have you will need to seek legal advice from a trained professional.
Sussex solicitors Bennett Griffin can offer expert legal advice for anyone seriously concerned about their debt levels as well as advice on all other areas of personal law
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