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During economic hard times, the dollar loses value. When that happens jobs are harder to find, and the cost of living goes up. In fact, the reason the dollar drops is because the costs of goods and services rise without a spike in income to correspond with it. And then things like Plain Green Loans come up to help you survive your day to day expenses.  Although it’s tempting to use credit cards and get a couple of cash loans to help pull you through rough times, it makes more sense to do a better job of managing your debt. Try to cut personal expenses.

If you’re not sure what you can cut out of the personal finances, then open your checking account ledger and make a list of the following categories:

• Housing - Look at the past month’s outflow and list everything that is related to shelter here. That would include mortgage or rent, utilities and taxes.
• Transportation – Transportation would include your car payment, bus passes, insurance and fuel costs.
• Food – Add up your grocery store bills. Do not include eating out.
• Expendable – This group would include eating out, entertainment, hobbies, trips, and those things that you could do without if you had to.
• Health and Education - Include school tuition, medical insurance, and other medical costs here.

A few of these categories fall under “fixed” expenses. These are the things you have less control over. Certainly, housing, education and medical would be fixed. “Controllable” expenses would include transportation and food. You can cut food costs with coupons and sales. You can reduce transportation costs by seeing how much of your fuel expenses are connected to the expendable category.

If you had to, you could totally eliminate the expendable expenses until your personal finances improve. Put the fun money towards the necessities. Things will eventually improve.