Plan your family budget!

No household management is complete without a good and balanced planning of its financial resources. When extravagance and random spending prevail, families find hardship in living and inability to develop themselves. Therefore, training in resource management was an essential determinant of the permanence of the family bond and the achievement of happiness.

Many families complain of their inability to control expenses, which forces most of them to borrow or seek loans from banks. It is the cycle that leaves psychological and social problems if expenditures are not controlled. In fact, the solution is within reach, and each family can plan its budget, and strive to follow the methods of compressing expenses to suit the multiple needs. However, it is necessary to adopt a well-thought-out plan that establishes sound consumer awareness.

The first stage of planning involves setting financial goals that help control monthly income and manage expenses. Having a goal means that you have an incentive that supports the desire to save and helps in arranging priorities, such as buying a house, traveling abroad, or providing university fees for children or others.

When you set goals clearly and specifically, you feel a psychological feeling that enhances the tendency to save, and reduces the influence of the common consumption culture around you. It is a major factor in curbing false consumerism, and indiscriminate spending based on ostentation.

The second stage is concerned with building a financial budget, including monthly income and expenditure items. The goal should not be to compress expenditures only, but also to achieve the maximum satisfaction of the family's demands within a certain period of time, while determining the consumption ceiling.

It is not possible to develop a stable and stable budget model, because families differ in the nature of income, standard of living, needs, and the general outlook on life as well. However, there are broad lines that can be considered common during planning a family budget, such as:

- Determine the main needs that are distributed between goods and services. It is categorized into three main items: food item, housing item, and clothing item. Then the sub-items that include education, transportation, and medical care, in addition to personal expenses related to social events and holidays.

- Setting a ceiling for complementary consumables that individuals cannot dispense with today, such as mobile phone credit, and the acquisition of newspapers and books, in addition to charitable contributions.

- Encouraging children to save from an early age by controlling pocket money and promoting the idea of ​​a piggy bank and its importance.

- Coordinating the process of shopping and buying things within the family, so that certain individuals are assigned to it, and their task is limited to covering the list of needs in a smaller amount, and using possible alternatives, while avoiding discount festivals that push people to buy what they do not need just because the price is cheap!

- Employing the skills, abilities and knowledge of family members to perform tasks and services that contribute to saving money, such as painting rooms, repairing some faults and others.

The most difficult step in building a budget remains achieving it, because the budget is of no use if adherence to it does not continue!

After setting the budget, the third stage comes, which is tracking and monitoring, through a continuous comparison between the set plan and actual performance, and reviewing the miscalculation that concerns the allocations of an item.

During this stage, indicators of budget success or failure appear for the family. If a relative surplus or income balance is achieved with the expenditure, this is a good thing, but if the expenses exceed the income, the family will find itself in front of two options to remedy the matter: either increase the resources through additional work, or resort to more of spending pressure.

The evaluation comes as a fourth stage to reflect the extent of the family's satisfaction with the implementation of the budget, and the success in managing its financial resource. It is a very important station because it enhances continuity in this way, and encourages investing the surplus, or at least guaranteeing financial liquidity when surprises occur.

If you don't plan your home budget, it will control you; It is the equation that determines the difference between a successful family, and one that is mired in loans, debts, and various financial problems. One of the characteristics of a rational house is that its members are inspired by budget planning rules for moderate family spending, as thanks to them they get used to identifying and covering the deficit, and knowing the surplus and ways to invest it. On the other hand, we should be wary of some factors that negatively affect the family budget, even if it is cleverly designed, foremost among them:

- Luxurious consumption, which has become a worrying phenomenon today, after its products and services are numerous, and it enjoys intense marketing campaigns. Among his most prominent models: fashion, subject to the influence of international brands, and then plastic surgery.

- Random installment, where the facilities provided by the banks encourage the expansion of purchase in installments, in addition to the desire for simulation, and imitating the affluent groups or celebrities, most of whom have become an advertising mediator to promote goods and services. If this system has some positive effects, such as enabling low-income groups to acquire expensive goods, the failures to pay deepen family problems, and have severe psychological and social consequences.

Debt, the family may have to borrow to maintain a secure economic situation, but the debt must be within reasonable limits, not often exceeding 20% ​​of the family's income so as not to affect the budget.

When you plan a tight budget for resource management, you achieve five primary goals that help develop the family and guide spending habits:

-- Adjusting expenses to match the income level.

-- Providing cash for emergencies.

-- Avoiding debt or resorting to borrowing.

-- Obtaining a financial position that enables the formulation of long-term, short-term forecasts.

-- Ensuring a comfortable and stable financial future.

The Chinese proverb says: Laws govern the humble, and righteous behavior governs the noble; Therefore, it is noble for a person to plan for the resources of his family, in a way that provides for its needs without exaggerating in spending, instead of taming his tendency to excessive consumption, and then finds himself under the pain of laws, either due to an inability to pay, or as a result of a misunderstanding of the adage: spend what is in the pocket, it will come to you What is in the unseen!