Tips to make home budgeting easy

Let's face it, home budgeting isn't easy. Almost everyone would like to be able to spend more money than they have, but if you want to be financially healthy, this is just not a good idea.

Even though the most important attribute to have for budgeting is discipline, having a plan with some easy tips can help, too. Feel free to use some of the following tips to make it easier for your household to stay on budget.

The envelope technique

You may have noticed before that you spend less money when you're carrying cash. This is true of most people. Watching a pocketful of cash dwindle away on a shopping trip is much harder than swiping that plastic card and dealing with your bank account later. A cash budget isn't for everyone, but it can be very helpful especially for people who are new to home budgeting. Here's how cash budgeting or envelope budgeting works.

Once you've actually written a budget, figure out which sections of your budget you could pay for in cash. Common cash sections include groceries, personal items, clothes, dining out, petrol and household cleaning items. Your list of cash sections may look different from this, though.

Now, once a month – or every paycheque – make a cash withdrawal for the amount of money in each budget. For example, if you are going to spend £100 on groceries in the next two weeks, you'll withdraw £100. Put this money in an envelope marked "shopping", and each time you run by the supermarket, only spend money from this envelope. When you run out of cash, you have no money left for your food shopping.

This technique will definitely keep you from spending more than you have. It can be hard to get used to at first. When you start budgeting this way, figure out what you'll do if one envelope runs out. Most people will take money from a less important envelope to fill in the gap if they can't do without. If you run out of money for food shopping, take £10 from your eating out envelope, and skip dinner out until next weekend.

Planning ahead

One of the best home budgeting techniques is planning ahead. Whether this means you plan meals ahead or plan when to buy your children's new clothes for school, you can save a lot simply by having a plan. Here are a couple of ways that planning ahead can keep you on track with your budget.

Meal planning

The cheapest way to eat is by far to make meals from scratch. You can save even more, though, by planning your meals ahead of time. You don't have to plan exactly which meals you'll have on which days. Instead, write down a weekly list of five or six meals, and buy your groceries ahead of time. This saves you money because it can allow you to use leftovers from one meal to make another meal. It can also help you plan your meals around what's on sale at the store each week.

Clothes planning

One of your main home budgeting categories is probably clothes for your kids. You can save money by buying clothes when they're on sale a couple seasons ahead of time. Buy summer clothes for next year at the end of this summer, for example. This works best with really small children, since you can estimate what size they'll be wearing in about six months. You can also do this well by buying clothes from nice secondhand shops, but you'll never have time to shop at them all if you aren't planning ahead.

These aren't the only ways that you can make home budgeting easier. You can find lots of other ways to stick to your budget by trying new techniques, so don't be afraid to try out different ways to save money to keep yourself on track.