When the situations calls for drastic measures are you ready to downsize and substitute to ensure your finances remains afloat?
A person with so many financial commitments like having a family to support, a house loan, a car loan and monthly bills to pay may be faced with having to downsize and substitute.
Downsizing and substituting means replacing your current properties or lifestyle to a “cheaper†version.
Examples are:
• Your abode
If your current home is too expensive, where the loan or mortgage is too much and the maintenance fees plus the utilities are high every month, switching to a cheaper home is more practical.
• Your vehicle
Nowadays, it is normal to have two cars for every household. If you find that two cars are expensive to maintain, then reducing to one car may be the answer. The other option is to switch to two modest and affordable vehicles.
• Your lifestyle
There are so many areas which can be adjusted with regards to lifestyle. For example, if you are addicted to brewed coffee from Starbucks every morning, you can instead purchase a coffee maker and make your own every morning. This should save more money over the long term. Another example is if you pay a membership fee to a gym which you only attend once a week. It makes sense to cancel the membership and invest the money in buying sports equipment. This again saves money in the long run. Do not splurge immediately on expensive equipment but slowly build up your money first to acquire them one by one.
Downsizing and substitution makes it less painful to manage your money. This is preferable to eliminating expenses where you sacrifice and give up something. Rather than total elimination, you find a cheaper alternative that is more budget friendly. Do you think downsizing and substitution would work for you?
Read other articles by Jacquelyn at WParent.com on parenting matters and Tips4Everyone.com on solving marriage problems.
9 replies to "Downsize and Substitute"
I agree when come to desperate situation, we all have to downsize everything around us. But in the long run, I feel downsize is not a solution. down size is to increse our net income by cutting the expense. I feel increasing the input is more practical. but again i agree downsize is good for desperate solution, since we are close to nothing to eat to survicve, what we got to lose to downsize stuff like house, car etc?
Persoanlly I still opt to increase my income for more net income rather then cutting expenses,i feel make more money is more practical. Methods like putting more effort in career learning, know more people to better develope our career future or even job hopper to get better experience for more rewarding jobs kind of method.
I just have one very simple question in my mind, if we choose to downsize our self to increase our net income, why do we need to study so hard for degree or any education recognization?We spend so much time, effort and money for that degree? Dont we can do something better than downsize? Well I mean people with no education know how to down size; We put so much effort in educating our self, we should be more capable to earn more money by working in more challenging and rewarding job-more money!.Personlly I read and have a feeling that all rich people do not really get rich by how much they save, but is how much they make each year with very aggressive idea or pro-active mindset in their job with passion. I think we should find a way to ignite our passion in our job and thus make us the very best in what we do in office. this is one of the idea from KC Lao book of Money Making Tips, which i really like it.
Actually there are many things that we can make to
reduce our spend every day. Stop wasting money and
think for future
In economic problem, please use your money wisely.
If not, you will suffer. Just get anything that really important
than that is not importance should be isolate
I think we could all cut back a little and choose more carefully when to progress in the first place.
Totally agree. We should live frugally. Focusing on “needs” and reduce “wants” is a sure way to save. Anyhow, my 2 cents comment is that it will be easier to save $1 than earn $1 nowsaday.
Hi,
Great piece of advise, event most of us know, but most do not practice this, but whoever practice this piece of advise, hes seen the return himself! When 8th voyager say it is harder to do than say, yes correct and Sayeed said think end in mind, that is also correct but the main thing here… are you living the life for yourself or others? if you just want people to see u as successfull but in real u are not any nearer to it then forget it, when you are really in trouble all your so called ‘pride’ you have all these while will be also perished and you might come to a level non-repairable…
so think again, you want to be finacially free of debt or you want people to look at you and ‘think’ u r rich? i prefer the earlier….
downsizing can also lead you to save better, once you see the return of your investment for example, you will be more motivated to run a normal / adequate lifestyle..
Well said Bujang…heads off to you.
Excellent article.
Well if you have ready earlier article on “From Credit Card Debt to Owning Six Houses”, i think the main strategy was to downsize.
Yes, very much agree that it is easier said than done. My suggestion would be focus on end in mind, plan the objective and set the target date of recovery. That would leave you to downsize for that time period without much pain…it is temporary.
Focus and you can do it.
It is more easy to say than do.
Like the Chinese saying: “从ä¿å…¥å¥¢æ˜“, 从奢入ä¿éš¾”, meaning it is easy to upsize, and difficult to downsize.
Therefore, think twice before going into lucrative lifestyle, even when you can affort it, because it is really very very difficult to turn back.