In some cases, I do believe financial problems can be avoided altogether. However in some cases, it cannot. When you start your month with a small paycheck, and pay all your essential bills first, for those with little paychecks, sometimes even buying food can cause a financial problem. For those people, it cannot be avoided. They cannot help that they earn very little. However, I do think that it’s possible to live comfortably off a little paycheck. Here’s my thinking. If you’re a two person home with or without kids, and only one of you has a full time job that pays very little, I believe it is up to the stay-at-home parent or person, to make the most out of that little check, and to also try and find ways to bring a little extra cash into the home.
Now, my husband’s checks are not as big as most peoples, but they are not s small as other peoples either. And with four kids, I find ways to budget the money that comes into and leaves our hands. One way I have found that keeps us from facing an emergency cost that we were un-prepared for such as, our truck breaking down, is to always keep a little in savings.We take the bigger portion of our tax return & save it all year until its needed.Some months we run into problems, we pull $200 out for groceries. Another month we pull $50 out and take the kids to a movie and lunch.We keep it in reserve and use it to balance out the months that his checks don’t get us quite as far.
In some cases people with big paychecks just overspend. They spend more than they save and regret it later. They start getting the money and thinking “Ill save next month” and then when next month comes they tell themselves the same thing. Its a cycle that’s hard to break. We’ve never been overly wealthy,But there’s been months when we’ve had a lot of our paycheck left just because we budget well. Does that mean we are perfect and never splurge on things we shouldn’t? No. We do splurge once in a while and sometimes in can cause us a small panic for a moment and we think “Oh what have we done.” But with our four kids being our number one priority, better budgeting is all it took to get us on track financially because we never wanted to have to decide if the electric bill or phone bill would have to not get payed, just so we could buy food.
Although it would be nice to give a straight answer without sounding harsh, its nearly impossible. Because my feelings on this would be that, yes financial problems can most likely be avoided. Having a better understanding of where your money is going, and setting a budget and sticking to it, can show you how much you’re spending that you could be saving. It was an eye opener for us, when we set a budget last year and followed it almost to a T all year long. We realized how very little money one can live off of, yet still pay their bills and eat out once a month.