A household book makes saving easier
A budget book offers many ways to make it easier to organize your own finances. Michael Herte from the Schleswig-Holstein consumer advice center explains to the NDR: “The household book reveals the many small holes from which our money trickles out and prevents us from building up assets.” For example, it is advisable to keep the receipt with every purchase for a few months in order to observe personal consumer behavior, to analyze the receipts and to determine whether one tends to make impulsive impulse purchases. If this is the case, making shopping lists and following them closely can be a good strategy to avoid unnecessary spending. You should always check your stock of food and the planned menu and avoid running out of food by shopping regularly instead of excessive bulk purchases. Price comparison portals on the Internet and test reports can be used to determine the optimal price-performance ratio for other purchases.
Such habit changes can increase the monthly savings rate, leaving more money at the end of each month that can be wisely invested. In order to achieve an increased savings rate, a precise analysis of ongoing income and expenditure and their comparison is essential, as t-online explains. The income includes, for example, salary, child benefit, other social benefits and interest on capital that is actually available to you. In addition to the cost of groceries, everyday expenses typically include things such as rent and all utilities or loans, water costs, insurance, savings, monthly tickets or fuel bills for the car, as well as drugstore items and clothing.
Digital or the old-fashioned way?
If you don’t want to bother with tiresome paperwork when keeping the household book, there are a variety of digital options to organize your finances. According to the NDR, there are many apps that you can use to keep your household book on your smartphone. Of course, even using simple spreadsheet software like Excel can work wonders in terms of simplicity and clarity. In addition, however, there is also a wide range of special software solutions that guide and support the user in personal bookkeeping, so that this work can also be done on the computer. According to Utopia, such programs often have various interfaces with which account data can be read in as well as features that allow amounts to be entered regularly so that they do not have to be re-entered every month. In addition, many of these programs are also equipped with functions that allow the management of current contracts such as insurance or savings contracts. Only one advantage of the digital household book is the enormously increased clarity of income and expenditure through the presentation in the form of diagrams and graphics, which makes the evaluation much easier compared to pen and paper.
Thomas Weschle / Editor finanzen.net
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