[The following is a guest post, offering tips/advice on being able to pay your bills even when on a low income.]
If you are a low-income earner, you may be struggling to make ends meet as everyday living costs continue to rise. It may feel like you do not have enough money coming in to help pay for all your bills each month. This can leave you stressed and feeling like you will never overcome your debt.
The good news is that no matter how much money you earn, there are effective steps you can take to get control of your finances and cover all of your expenses. Below is a look at some basic steps you can follow to track you money and pay all of your bills each month.
How To Pay All Your Bills On A Low Income
Track Spending
The first step to taking control of your finances is to start tracking where you are spending your money. Keep receipts or utilize online banking transaction summaries to review how you are spending your money.
Determine how much money you are spending in different categories, such as food, housing, utilities, transport, entertainment and miscellaneous each week. You may be surprise at where you are spending your money. This can then be put into a budget.
Set-Up a Budget
Using the information from above, creating a household budget based on your current spending habits. Look over this budget carefully, and determine in what areas you can cut back and spend less money. Now create a new budget using this new information and amounts.
Be sure to create a realistic budget that you will be able to stick to in the upcoming months. Creating an impractical budget may look good on paper, but will be impossible to keep. A poorly created budget can easily fail, resulting back to old spending habits and further financial issues.
Get Your Benefits
If you find after creating a budget that you do not have enough money coming in to cover all of your expenses, it is a sign that you may need additional financial support. Visit the gov.uk website and see if you and your family qualify for income support or other benefits.
These benefits are designed to help low-income earner offset some of the household expenses, so do not be afraid or ashamed to use these services. This may be just the extra amount of support you need to pay all your bills at the end of the month.
Have a No Debt Policy
Obtaining a loan, may seem like the solution to all of your financial problems, but if you are already having a hard time paying your bills an additional loan will only increase this problem. Make a commitment to establish a no debt policy and instead look for alternatives to borrowing money.
You should start by talking to your lenders and try to make payment arrangements, maybe securing an additional part-time job, or seeking help from a local charity or church.
Start Saving
Once you get control of your budget and start keeping track of how you are spending your money, you will be able to start setting a little bit of savings aside each month. Even if you can only save a little bit out of each pay check, it will start to add up over time. This will give you a safety net if an unexpected expense occurs or you have a loss of wages due to an illness, injury or loss of job.
These tips will help you be more accountable to your spending habits and help you set the necessary funds aside to pay your bills. You may also be alerted to the fact that you need to seek out some financial support because you do not have enough income coming in to pay all your bills. Together these steps will help you get your finances back on track, pay all of your bills, and hopefully start a savings account to protect your future.
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Eva (1)
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This is a really important topic. I started out with a low income and high expenses (husband in grad school with high tuition) and we found clever ways to live really cheaply. I still remember the green shag carpet from our first apartment.
Hahaha…I wish I could see some pictures of that! Have you ever written about your full financial story (from the low income to where you are now)?
Good advice. As they say, the longest journey begins with a single step. Much peace of mind can be had by writing down these four things:
Monthly income
Monthly expenses
Monthly debt payments
Total debt owed
A simple way to see what your whole financial picture looks like.
Very true. Too often we make the process much more complicated than it needs to be.