Some tips for saving seem reasonable, however, they might not be effective or even turn out to be harmful for people in dire straits. When a person is saving money not because of excitement to practice self-discipline or a dream to invest money into something truly expensive, saving is needed because such an individual can hardly meet one’s own basic needs and the needs of his or her family. In such a situation most of the typical recommendations for saving simply do not work.
Saving 10% of a salary
One of the most popular tips on saving you can come across will tele you to save 10% of your salary. As you can imagine, people living on a low budget might not be able to do it. This sum of money is usually spent on some pleasant but unnecessary things and for really tight budget the situation is absolutely different. If your salary is enough only on the most basic things, taking 10% of it can reduce the quality of your life significantly.
What can you do in such a case?
Unfortunately, saving money for a rainy day is even more important for people with rather modest income. For that reason, you should try to save any extra money you might get sometimes such as for example money gifts received from your family or friends during holidays. Even if the amount of saved money is rather modest, it might be extremely helpful in a critic situation.
Not buying unnecessary things
This is a major recommendation for anyone who wants to save money. Certainly, if you do not buy things which you actually do not need, you will waste less money, however, how one can do it when there is no money for unnecessary things?
What can you do in such a case?
In fact, if you look at your purchases, you will see there are some things which you can actually not buy at all or swap for cheaper alternatives without any notable decrease in the quality of life. For instance, for some people purchasing cigarettes or alcohol goes without saying. If bad habits are quite strong, the amount of money spent on these goods can turn out to be rather large within a month.
Saving money on medicines
The modern market of pharmacological products is really large offering presumably the same active substances for prices of a wide range. Some people recommend to choose the cheaper options as, according to them, there is no difference between a cheaper medicine and its more expensive alternative version.
In the reality, it is difficult to tell when drugs available for different prices are really the same or there are some differences which can have effects on your health. Such differences can come not out of the additional substances included into a medicine, but also from the overall quality of the product. As a result, medicines which seem to be equal can have different effectiveness or different side effects. Experimenting with such drugs especially in the case of serious medical conditions can cause even more health problems requiring finances for treating.
What can you do if you still want to save money on medicines?
Even though for some doctors keeping up with the entire range of new medicines might be rather difficult while some doctors are particularly willing to offer you the drugs which have been handed to them by pharmacological companies, it is still better to consult them before choosing any cheaper alternative to the medicine which has been prescribed to you.