The rise in the petrol price affects everything, which means everyday goods get more expensive accordingly. The cost of transport, groceries and housing keeps going up and sadly, our income remains the same. This tells us, we need to go back to our budgets and remove items that are less important – creating new budgets.
When you do your new budget, you need to be very strict with how you use your money. You need to focus on things that you CAN NOT survive without. These are usually things like your electricity, airtime, groceries, and transport.
Electricity and Airtime:
If you use prepaid electricity, it would be great saving to note how much you spend on electricity monthly, then buy once at the beginning of the month. Knowing when and how much to buy can save you a lot of money that you can use elsewhere. You are guaranteed to make a saving when you buy bundles for your airtime, visit your network service provider to find out which bundles would fall within your needs and budget.
E.g.: With Vodacom, you can get a bundle to call any network for 60 minutes for only R12. For data, you can buy WhatsApp and social media tickets, which allow you access the platforms you might need the most instead buying actual data.
Groceries:
Most shops offer reward cards, which allow you to buy some items at a cheaper price if you have registered with them or have their store card. Having the reward cards to the shops you buy from will often prove to be worthwhile in the long run. As small as those savings and points earned may seem – eventually, it will equate to huge savings on your budget.
Transport:
The cost of taxi fares has increased sharply since the fuel price increase.
If there are buses on the route that you take daily, do a comparison between the two prices charged for the routes you take. Although you might have to get up an hour earlier to catch the bus, they do cost much less AND are safer than taxis are.
Adjusting your budget is not easy, but possible, finding other ways to increase your monthly income can also be a solution. Ultimately, you might have to cut some items out or look for other cheaper products to stay within your budget. The goal is to avoid debt where possible.
You can also visit our website to find budgeting tools to help you start your budgeting journey.
Happy Budgeting.
