Financial stability is often hampered by tiny and imperceptible expenses that, when accumulated, unbalance the family economy. These are known as "ant expenses" and, although they are seemingly harmless little money leaks, they can shake the family budget and make it difficult to make ends meet.
Typical examples of ant spending include buying coffee each morning or a snack during a break at work, subscriptions to apps or services that are rarely used, and impulse purchases online.
And although a coffee every morning represents between one and two euros, if that is multiplied by the 30 days of the month, the expense rises to 60 euros: a significant amount of money that would not be spent to buy coffee in the market, for example.
“One of the reasons why ant spending is so dangerous is that, being small amounts, we tend not to pay much attention to it. It's easy to justify them by saying 'it's just a coffee' or 'it's only five euros'. However, when we add all these expenses, the result is quite high”, they explain from HelpMyCash.com, a website dedicated to comparing financial products. But how can ant expenses be reduced?
The first step is to identify which are those money leaks that unbalance the family economy. To do this, from HelpMyCash they advise creating a budget, which consists of writing down in a spreadsheet or notebook all the expenses of the last three or six months. Once this is done, they suggest classifying expenses into "fixed" expenses, such as rent, subscriptions or utility bills, and "variables", such as coffee every day, to determine how much money will be spent on each expense each month. .
There are free budget templates that allow you to organize and classify expenses and, from there, identify ant expenses and determine how far they can be reduced.
"We are not saying that buying coffee in the morning is wrong, but if ant expenses represent a high percentage of the payroll, it is convenient to reduce them. Not only because they can make it difficult to get to the end of the month, but also because, in case of having a high payroll, that money could be used for investment or to fulfill other more relevant objectives, such as taking a trip," they explain from HelpMyCash.
Buying is very easy. So much so that you don't even need to get off the couch to make an impulse purchase. But many times, those things that are acquired on the Internet end up being unnecessary and constitute a significant expense in the budget. For this reason, from HelpMyCash they advise "letting at least two days pass between the first time you see the product and the moment of purchase. If after this time, we are still interested in buying it, we will know that it is not an impulse purchase, but something that we really need or want to buy," they explain.
The same applies to the sales or sales season. If you find a product in a store that motivates you to buy it, you need to ask yourself to what extent that purchase is useful or if it is an impulsive act.
Today, many services work through subscriptions: from the music library to streaming TV, including premium applications that are purchased from the App Store or Google Play. And although, separately, these subscriptions may seem inexpensive, when added together they add up to a significant monthly expense.
"We recommend reviewing the subscriptions carefully and keeping only those that are actually used. Otherwise, we will be feeding the ant expenses that make it difficult to make ends meet or prevent saving for more interesting projects," they emphasize from HelpMyCash.
And it is that, in short, one of the keys to organizing the economy, reaching the end of the month calmly, reaching the savings objectives in the medium term and, mainly, avoiding the financial stress that money does not reach is to reduce the ant expenses.
