Money’s tight for a lot of people right now. How could it not be with the economy having so many troubles in recent times? It really brings home the need to earn more for a lot of people, me included.

Earning enough money to get by is important, but it’s only a part of the picture. Have you also considered what you’re spending and saving?

Review Your Spending Habits

The quickest way to have more money in the bank is to simply spend less. It’s something you have a significant amount of control over. While some costs are harder to cut than others, any work you do on your spending habits can have a real impact on the money you can save for emergencies and other needs.

Rent and mortgage payments are a great example of major monthly expenses that you may not be able to easily cut, but if you can decrease them the effect on your finances can be tremendous. You first have to be certain the the cost of decreasing your rent or mortgage payments will be worth it, whether you do so by moving or by refinancing. Either of those comes with costs that must be considered to be certain that the change will pay for itself in a reasonable period.

Your little habits matter too. How often do you eat out? How many trips do you make to Starbucks? How many times do you just grab a quick candy bar for yourself in the checkout line at the grocery store?

These little indulgences might be adding up for you. Could you cut them out or way back? This could save you quite a bit of money.

Make Sure You’re Really Saving Where You Think You Are

There are a lot of ways to save money. I mentioned a couple just above. But some people make major mistakes when they try to save money.

Coupons and sales are hard to resist for some. They see that they’re saving money off the full price and the part of their brain that says “do I really need this?” shuts down. They buy anyway.

If you buy what you don’t need, you aren’t saving no matter how good the deal was in other terms. You really have to think about what saving money means. Coupons and sales are great for the things you really need, but beyond that they’re just temptations.

Saving also means putting money aside for emergencies, retirement and so forth. If you don’t have accounts where you’re putting money aside for the future, that’s another area to work on.

Are You Earning Enough?

There comes a point where your earnings do matter, of course. It’s important to note that you can have money troubles no matter how much you earn, so it’s not entirely what you earn that makes the difference. That’s why you should look at how you spend and save money first.

If you’ve cut down your spending as much as you can and simplified your lifestyle, you may still need to earn more. It may be time to look at ways to bring in a bit of extra, from working more hours at your job to finding ways to increase your business income. When you need more money you have to find a way to get it.

Any time you get a new service, you probably shopped around to be certain that you got the best deal for the price. You may not have always chosen the cheapest, but rather the best combination of services and cost that you could find for your area.

Have you reviewed it lately?

It can really pay to review what you’re spending on the various services you need around your home, such as cell phone contracts, internet services and so forth. The best deal last year isn’t always the best deal this year. And if you’re not stuck in a contract or it’s about to expire, you should think about if it’s time for a change.

Check the Package Deals

Many times but not every time you can get a package deal that covers a number of services for your needs around the home that is better than buying individual services. Other times buying just the services you need works best.

You may be able to combine home phone, cell phone, cable TV, DVR service and internet services onto one bill. You may do better to buy just a few of those from one company. Shop around and find out.

Take contract length into consideration. A two year contract may not be a bad deal if it saves you a good bit of money and you don’t plan on moving anytime soon. But find out what happens if you do move, just in case. Life has a funny way of catching us off guard.

You can easily check out Verizon Residential Service and companies local to your area online.

Check Your Insurance

How are the rates on your car insurance? Homeowners or renters insurance? Has your situation changed in any way that could change your rates for the better?

Many companies will offer you better rate for carrying two or more types of insurance with them. Just be sure that the total is the best you can get and that you have confidence in the insurance company carrying your policies.

Credit Cards

What are your credit cards costing you? With all the recent changes, did your rates go up? Any new fees?

Shopping around for a better deal on your credit cards can save you quite a bit, especially if you’re still trying to pay off a balance. Best is always to get rid of the balance, but this is real life and that isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Matter of fact, sometimes it’s really miserably hard.

This isn’t as easy some ways as it once was. Credit card companies have been more cautious lately about who they extend credit to.

You may also be able to convince your current credit card company to simply decrease your interest rate. The call shouldn’t take too long, and if it works the time is well spent.

You won’t have control over what some of your bills cost you, aside from cutting back on how much you use the service. You don’t exactly have a lot of say in what your water costs you, for example. Only way to cut that bill is to use less water. Other household bills are similar.

But when you have control over the basic costs, take advantage. Shop around and bring your costs down where you can while still getting what you need.

Most parents have to be careful with their money. Raising a family isn’t cheap. Even when you have a good income, it pays to know where your money is going?

Are you teaching your kids the same thing?

Even when money is tight it’s easy to want to give your kids everything they want. Doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea, just that it’s something easy to do. But kids don’t need everything that they want.

There are a few aspects to being smart about money.

Want vs. Need

Teaching your kids to understand the difference between wanting and needing is a vital step to take. It’s something you can teach even when you’re giving them something just because they want it. That doesn’t make it an easy lesson to learn.

Kids want lots of things. Often lots and lots of things if they watch much television at all, talk to friends at school and so forth. It’s the simple desire to have what they think others have.

The things that are needed are pretty easy to explain, but don’t assume children won’t be mentally adding in some of the things they want. The younger kids are, the more wants feel like needs. Just keep explaining that things they need are things they must have for life. Wants are the things that are more fun to have.

Keeping to a Budget

We all know how little fun it is to keep to a budget much of the time. It’s work, especially if the budget is a tight one.

You have a few ways to teach your child to keep to a budget. Giving an allowance is one way. It helps if you expect parts of the allowance to be used in certain ways.

The requirements you give will vary by your child’s age. Younger kids you might only expect to put some of the money into savings or give some to a charity or your church. Older kids might be expected to include paying for school lunches. Still older kids could be expected to budget for their clothes, cell phone and other items that you’ve been paying for.

Obviously, the allowance should be increased depending on what you expect your child to budget for.

Just how challenging you make budgeting for your child depends on what you think your child is ready for. You don’t want to make a child budget for school lunches if he or she has never dealt with a budget before. But the more you can teach your child to do well on a budget, the better the lesson.

You can do a lightweight version of this when shopping for clothes with your child if you don’t want to do it through an allowance. Give them a budget for the particular things they need to shop for at the time. Give them some motivation to do well, and help them to see that spending wisely means being able to buy more of what they want, or that they get to save money for something else.

Have Your Child Earn Money

You have many options for allowing your child to earn money. An allowance for chores is one way, but don’t forget to consider the possibility of teaching your child the value of running their own business.

This can be as simple as running a traditional lemonade stand or as current as helping your child to start a website and earning money online. Figure out what’s right for you and your child and put some effort into it.

There’s a lot of value in teaching your child to run a business. It’s good for children to see being an entrepreneur as an option in life. It’s good for them to see that it doesn’t always work out. It’s good for them to learn the skills involved in running a business.

If you do let your child run an online business, you’ll probably have to keep most things in your name. Many companies won’t allow someone under 18 to have a contract with them. There are some things kids can do, such as making things to try to sell online, but it’s still likely going to require some parental supervision.

Letting your child earn his or her own money is an amazing lesson, especially for children who aren’t old enough for most jobs. They learn what it takes to earn money. They may better understand why you say there isn’t enough money for this or that.

Encourage Savings

Do your best to help your children understand the importance of having some money saved up. They can save for larger purchases they want, for college, for that first car.

This is an important lesson even if your kids earn money on their own. Think of it as building the habit of not living paycheck to paycheck early on.

Exactly how you go about teaching your kids to be smart about money depends on your child’s personality and your own beliefs about money. But you can start them from a very early age and help them to be smart about it throughout their lives.

Having one parent be home with the kids often means living on a pretty tight budget. Even when the at home parent works, it’s often not enough to really ease the budget crunch. But being frugal all the time isn’t much fun.

Some of the problem can come from having to think about practically every purchase, no matter how necessary. It’s skipping your favorite treats. It’s telling the kids “no” all too often when they want a treat. It’s seeing friends and family be so much freer about how they spend money, and knowing you can’t do it.

Do You Have Any Options?

Some people say that you always have options. That’s true to a degree, but you can’t always exercise them right away. There aren’t many times that you can suddenly earn more money because you want to do more fun stuff. And you can’t just decide to splurge if you’re living paycheck to paycheck… at least not if you want a roof over your family’s head, working utilities and enough food to eat.

But you do have the option to try to bring in more money, if what you really want is an overall lifestyle change. You won’t be able to get it right away most likely, even if you were to start working outside the home, but you can set goals.

But I Want It Nooooooow!

Sometimes you can work in the small splurges. It’s wonderful when things work out that way. If you can afford to indulge yourself or your family just a little while being frugal, do so. It can really help ease some of the strain caused by being so careful with your finances.

If you can’t, it may be wiser to go over why you’re trying to save money in the first place. To an appropriate extent, this can be discussed with children. They shouldn’t be burdened too much with their parents’ financial problems, but knowing why they can’t have everything they want isn’t going to hurt them.

Especially if they watch a lot of television, kids want things. Lots of things. It often seems like they want everything they see.

Frugal or not, that’s not going to happen, right?

With that in mind, even as you say no because money is tight, think about how often you’d be saying no even if it weren’t. “No” is a great word for kids to hear when they’re trying to get you to buy stuff they don’t need. “Save your own money” isn’t a bad choice either.

When it’s stuff you want, think about what you want most. Do you want the shiny whatsit or do you want to meet your financial goals more? As a grownup, you should be able to decide sensibly whether or not you should indulge… even when you aren’t feeling like being sensible.

Get Support

No, not money. Find friends, family members, your spouse or significant other, and make sure you have emotional support for your choices. It’s particularly helpful to have the support of others who also need to be frugal. It can be a bit of a competition to see who can keep being frugal, save the most money, stick best to the budget, whatever.

Being frugal is much easier if you don’t feel alone in it.

And yes, it can still be exhausting. But you can get past that and keep working towards your goals.

We’re still on a really tight budget here. There’s just so much to recover from after my husband was out of work for so long. I don’t exactly trust to the stability of his new job either, as it’s in the travel industry. Not exactly prime for this kind of economy.

One thing I do right now is to buy whole chicken, rather than just boneless or bone-in parts. The initial cooking can take a bit of extra effort, but the savings makes it well worthwhile. Sale prices on the whole chickens are less than sale prices on the various parts.

Thank goodness whole doesn’t include head or feet, though! Not quite ready to deal with that much.

One chicken means several meals. The first one is your basic roasted chicken. My favorite is a slow roasted variety that takes about 5 hours in the oven. Not something to do on a really hot day, even though the temperature is low. The chicken is rubbed all over with seasonings, stuffed with garlic and/or onions, and cooked at 250 degrees F. Comes out very tender.

The leftovers are currently sufficient for dinner a second night, although I don’t expect that trend to last much longer, as the kids are getting bigger. But they can also be used for lunches. Leftover chicken goes great in salads, for example.

Next comes the homemade chicken soup. I don’t necessarily make this right away; the leftovers go just fine in the freezer so I can save them for when the weather is right for chicken soup.

These meals come out to be very inexpensive. They also taste really great. The amount of chicken soup I make in each batch lasts for several meals, and my daughter has often enjoyed it in a Thermos at school. Sometimes I even freeze excess.