Living below your means

It's a blessing that both of my children are are already working. I understand what you mean. I had loans almost everywhere. I am still paying my loans which I availed when my children are still studying. As of now, I am happy to see that I can now slowly repay all these debts. I already finished some and still working on repaying all of those. I have no regrets because I know that I spend the amount for my children's education.

Its a lifestyle thing like anything else. You need to get used to it and form some habits. Food is a good way to start - buy your own and make your own, always.

I wish you luck with the budgeting and living below your means. I am an expert in paying off debt since I learned this from American money expert Dave Ramsey. He has one of his baby steps to pay off debt. You organize your debts from smallest to the largest. You try to pay off the smallest debt. While doing that you pay minimums on all your other debts. When your smallest debt has gone then you pay off the next highest one and so on. It is called the snowball method of paying off debt. The way to be successful with money is do budgeting. There is a wonderful program made in Canada which is about couples very much in debt. Gail makes them budget using jars and it is fascinating to see how much they get. They can win up to 5,000 dollars if they do everything right. Try writing down how much you spend. Good luck.

Start writing down what you (have to) spend your money on. First you write down your monthly income. Then write down what you *have* to pay for each month: rent, gas, electricity, health insurance, petrol (if you have a car), memberships in clubs, newspaper subscription(s), etc. Subtract the sum of all these expenses from your monthly income. Now think about expenses you can do without, for example car(?), eating out, hair dresser, memberships in sports clubs, subscriptions and similar things. Cancel what is possible as soon as possible. Add the money you can save in this way to the sum which remains and you know what you can spend on food, clothes and things you do for pleasure. Divide the sum through the number of days a month has and you'll know how much you can spend approximately each day. Don't be silly and spend money on silly things! It will take some time until you're debt free but it can be done.

I hope that you can get over this problems soon. I understand how it is and I think if it's impossible for now to repay, I think you can ask extension for another time. Our situation is difficult now and I hope that they will no keep on pushing you down.

To save money I usually reduce my activities outside the house, because outside there are always temptations, even when I want to buy food I just "imagine" eating that food and suddenly full, so I don't need to spend money

Start with simple things Do not buy cups of coffee, cans of cola and just snack Except as little as possible Suppose a cup of coffee is worth $ 1, multiply every day for many years You got a very large sum Successfully