Bringing a new member into the family doubles everything, especially the space and the family expenses. We need a new larger house and the food expense is likely to go up, as well as the diapers expense. But our salary stays the same.
Inflation has slightly increased this year. The groceries like chicken, fish, and prawn appeared to have a new higher price even though the government has put the ceiling price for each item. If then, I should expect to see a slight increase in our household expenses.
I saw the interest rate crawled up by decimal points. But I’m not in the middle of gaining anything big that I have to make a personal loan, and I’m not planning to take it just to cover our day-to-day expenses. That’s a suicide pill. All we have to do is to reduce our expenses. And here are the seven ways how to reduce my expenses for this year:
1. Cloth Diapers. Investing in cloth diapers will give a break to your expense. But you have bear the big cost initially, then you will see the return in the future. It becomes a new way to show to the people that your baby is fashionable too. More and more mothers accept the cloth diapers over disposable diapers. You can compare to how much cloth diaper and disposable diaper really cost.
2. Breastfeeding. My wife have set a new motivating goal; she wants to breastfeeding our baby until she’s 4 years old. I think it is a good idea and I encourage her intention. She started doing search for the best breastfeeding machine, shoveling the best offer in eBay, and give good opinion about it.
The breastfeeding machine, same as the cloth diapers, is expensive for the first time. But it extends as a valuable asset to you. I find an interesting article about breastfeeding milk versus animal milk.
3. Higher standard of hygiene. Keeping hygiene on a higher standard leads you to a healthier life where your family is far away from disease and infection. From washing your hands clean regularly to keeping your house clean, you can rest assured that your children are harmless from bacteria and germs. This also prevent the cost of seeing doctor every year, which we can see it rising higher than our inflation.
4. Hit the Playground or Park.I always choose shopping mall over playground. It have air-conditioner and I don’t get sweat as much as I do in the park. But the problem is once you enter through the arch of a shopping mall, your money gone in 60 seconds. Instead, I bring my children to the playground or park for playing. the temperature is naturally hotter, but I will get used to it.
5. Playing Wii with family. In 2009, Wii console costs you about RM999 in Malaysia. My main reason for buying Wii console was a gift for my wife. She wanted to do exercise to stay fit but she didn’t want to leave her babies. Going to gym only made her felt lonely and miserable. So I bought her a birthday present so that she could do the exercise inside the house.
On weekends, we rarely do our outing like we used to do. It saves us petrol and the other expense such as highway toll and parking fee, and indirectly we reduce car service expenses. Shopping expense is also reduced since we having a great time playing Wii together.
6. Cook your own food and Bring lunch to office. I’ve been bringing my lunch to office since 2007, and it practically saves you a lot of money. When I got married, my wife also doing the same as I am. On weekend, instead of going out and eat at McDonalds which we were usually did, we cook our own lunch and dinner to save money.
7. Buy your office shirt twice a year.I have counted all my expenses for clothing & accessories, and I found out that I have remarkably bought only two shirts for the last year. One was on the day of my birthday. And one was at Jusco sale. Actually I just have no temptation in buying new office wear regularly. I feel so great when I bought one shirt and used it until it faded out.
Sometimes I couldn’t watch myself get sunk with the temptation. I bought things that I don’t need and I get disappointed after that. Thank god that I have my partner to remind me to keep our expenses on track. I will keep on stopping the money from flowing out like endless rain.
So people, what are your steps to save money for this year?