Having a household budget makes managing the family finances a lot easier. A well-designed plan provides a clear picture of how your income compares to your monthly expenses. With it, you can be mindful of spending, save money, and maintain your bills. As beneficial as having a budget and sticking to it can be, it only works if you’ve remembered to include all of your expenses. No matter how infrequent, if you don’t set aside money for household matters like those to be discussed below, you could find yourself dealing with a financial emergency.
Appliance Upgrades
Like most things in life, appliances get old and begin to cause more problems than they’re worth. A furnace goes from helping to keep the house warm to costing you an arm and a leg on replacement parts and jacking up your energy bill. A refrigerator starts off as a mechanism for storing your food but if out of date, can ruin your food and raise energy costs. In other words, every appliance in your home will need to be replaced with time. As these appliances can cost several hundred or thousand dollars, it probably bests that you start setting aside a little money each month to prepare for it.
Pest Control
Think your home is pretty clean so you’ll never have a need for a professional exterminator? That may not always be the case. In fact, pests make their way into clean homes all the time in search of shelter or water sources. Some insects and pests simply invade your home because of your geographical location. For instance, if you live in Middle Tennessee, your home may be invaded by wasps, a common pest in that area. You’ll need an exterminator in Nashville. If you don’t have the money in the budget, you risk letting your family get stung or wasps building nests throughout your house.
Emergency Repairs
Even the most well-maintained home will require repairs at some point. You just never know what could go wrong where you’ll need to hire a professional right away. The garage door could break, shingles may fall off your roof from a bad storm, a pipe could have frozen and burst to cause flooding, there are just so many variables that could go wrong at any time that you need to be prepared. A few thousand bucks in an account somewhere allow you to handle the problem quickly before it makes a bigger mess.
Lawn Care
Though many homeowners opt to mow their own lawns, shovel their own snow, and rake their own leaves, there are still times they may need a landscaping company or tree specialist. If you have a lot of trees surrounding your property, they could become a problem over time. Old trees are at risk for falling onto your property while overgrown roots can destroy your foundation. There are circumstances where an expert is needed before a serious accident occurs.
Home Improvement
The longer you live in your house the more wear and tear you put on it. There may come times when you need to make some improvements to your space. Replacing old furniture, repainting bland or dingy walls, installing new fixtures, and other simple tasks may be necessary to keep the place looking and feeling like home. Though not as urgent as some of the other expenses discussed, it’s still nice to have some money in the budget to invest in your home when you’d like.
Budgets are great for managing your family finances. They help you to make the most of your hard-earned money. If you’re going to set yourself up for success as a homeowner, however, you’ll need to make sure that you’re creating a buffer and emergency savings so that you can cover the unfortunate, but common events that could go wrong with your house. That way you don’t have to scramble for cash when the need is urgent.
