In the past few years, the divorce rate has increased among blended and nuclear families. In the bid to support their families, the debt level has significantly risen for single parents.
Records show a doubling of people seeking help for their debt problems. The changes brought by people in their lifestyle have been another reason for incurring the debt to maintain their high-end standard of living.
Thus costing thousands of bucks in debt to the single parent. The families with limited income face trouble during the economic turbulence.
As a result, many single parents start doing a part-time job or double shifts for extra money. Due to a lack of cash, most of the single parents are not able to pay their bills like gas bills, tax bills, electricity, etc.
They find it hard to pay them so; they start cost-cutting in their other expenses. The other form of debt faced by a single parent, i.e., either the mother or father is of credit cards and hospital bills.
Some of the ways by which a single parent can better their debt situation and can maintain constant cash flow includes
Keeping the Records of their Bills
It is crucial to keep tabs on how much bills are paid and how much is left to pay. Now is the right time that you should start keeping an eye on all your bills and try making payments either partial or full but on time.
You have to maintain a record of your debt payments processed every month and also start looking for some savings which might help in paying the debt.
Preparing a Budget
It’s a good practice you’ve started preparing a budget for your monthly expense. Through this, you will be able to maintain the straightness in your expense and income. When you have your budget on the table, then you could be able to spend the money wisely and save some of your pennies for your debt payments.
Single parents face a hard time while making the payment for their debts and maintaining the monthly expenditure. If you don’t know much about how to prepare your monthly debt, you can take help either from your friends and family or get help online to prepare a responsible budget.
Looking for Ways to Payoff the Debt
If you are a single parent with a kid’s responsibility, then it becomes necessary that you have all the records for your debts. You have to look up with the plan to eliminate the debts with a low rate of interest, and you can continue paying a minimum amount of money for debts with a high rate of interest.
If we keep maintaining the balance, you will soon get rid of your debts. If you want, you can prepare the list of debt from the highest amount of debt on top and lowest amount of debt at the bottom.
Now, you will have to pay the highest amount of debt first while you will still be paying in the minimum amount for the lowest debt as well. By this, you will be able to reduce the size of the high amount of debt and gradually eliminates the low balance debt.
Emergency Plan of Action
It’s essential that you have an emergency fund collected for your hard times. This emergency fund can be started with the collection of the small amount of money and in parallel; you can save few bucks for your savings.
You will take out a tiny percentage of your income for the fund and rest you can keep for the monthly expense. By doing so, you are providing yourself an insurance cover from the debts that can be helpful in the time of emergency.
Avoid Using a Credit Card
Now that you have decided on eliminating the debts completely from your life, it is necessary that you must not use your credit card for any expenditure.
Your plans of getting rid of debts might not work if you will constantly keep using your credit card. You can start paying your bills either in cash or through a debit while going shopping, you have to avoid spending money on unnecessary items and keeping your bills to a minimum.
Analyzing the Debt and Expenses
It is very tough for the single parent to maintain a constant income for supporting the family and making the payment for debts. It becomes necessary to start looking for ways to eliminate the debts and also start analyzing your income concerning your debt and expense matter.
You have to start prioritizing the things that require your attention. The budget might not be sufficient enough to deal with both situations.
You have to think of other ways of controlling the expense like you can start living in the area with rent-controlled apartments or rent is cheaper. If you don’t want to leave the place, you can divide up your rent by getting a roommate.
You can talk to your creditors and request them to lower your interest rate. Making changes in your standard of living can also help in monitoring your debt situation and expense.
Ways of Earning Extra Cash
To improve your financial condition, you can try to take an extra shift at your current job or if you can manage with your time, you can take up another full-time or part-time job. If you have some technical skills, you can think of taking any freelancing job online.
It requires your time and in return will support you financially.
Concluding Thoughts
It is tough for many single parents to keep up with the costs of expense on a daily basis and if they have a family to look after, it becomes even tougher. You have to be smart in order to beat the challenges of debt and daily expense.
