Whether you are married or a single mother, being a breadwinner can be pretty tough, especially when it comes to financial issues. There will be many ups and downs along with many mistakes that can’t be avoided. Personal finance plays a vital role in one’s life since anything can happen to you which could result in heavy debts or payments. Here are some of the best financial tips if you are a mother who is a breadwinner of the family:
1. Save Every Month
When you are the head of the family, you will primarily have two main responsibilities: to earn income, and to save some income. There will always be certain unexpected situations whereby you would suddenly need a huge sum of money. For instance, when one of your children feels sick and needs to be admitted to the hospital. The bills will cost a hefty sum. Imagine if you don’t have emergency funds to pay for the hospital bills. Prioritizing savings should be your number 1 priority when you’re a breadwinner in the family. There will be times when all of the sudden your income will reduce as well if your company decides to cut costs.
2. Pay Off Your Debts
If you have debts such as car loans, credit card loans and so on, schedule a plan to know how you will be able to pay them all off. The longer you delay your debts, the more you have to pay in interest. The common debt breadwinners face would be a house loan. You can make use of a mortgage calculator with extra payments to calculate how much you need in order to pay off the housing debts. Then, you are able to create a debt repayment plan for yourself and focus primarily on paying them all off first before spending your money on other unnecessary matters. If you have a husband, it would be better to let them pay their own debts instead. Never offer to pay off their debts before settling your own as you will never know what their plans are. You may find yourself buried under a pool of debts when you’re also paying for his debts.
3. Keep Track Of Where Your Money Goes
Another tip that will tremendously help you is to track all of your expenses and income streams. By knowing which category you seem to spend most of your income on, you are able to plan out your budget better. For every bill payment you make, take note of them and put them in an excel sheet. Alternatively, you can also use a financial app such as Cleo to key in all of your monthly expenses. The advantage of these apps is that they will have AI (Artificial Intelligence) installed as well which could also have chatbots or personal assistants to help you make smarter, better financial decisions.
4. List Out Your Dreams
Spend time planning out your dream goals. Knowing your dreams is an extremely important money tip because if you don’t know what your dreams are, you can’t align your money with your goals. For instance, you will be saving up with no proper purpose. When you establish a clear path on what you plan to achieve in life, then you can work towards it by carefully planning your finances to get a rough idea of how much you need to achieve those goals. Let’s say one of your goals is to have a large family. If that’s the case, you would need to save and be mindful of your spendings. The expenses could be costly if you have many children to take care of. On top of that, you’ll need a decent size house as well. This is why it is important to identify your goals in life so you could manage your finances accordingly.
5. Start Investing
To achieve your dreams or long-term goals, investing is one of the best ways to do so. The stock market seems to be a scary place for most people. Not only is there so much to learn, but there are also multiple risks involved. Fortunately, there are many courses and informational articles which you can find online to learn more about investing. There are different types of investment options available, so you can carefully look through all of them and decide which one is best for you.
