When you have a lot of work or you have to cater to your children all day long, you may find it impossible to keep up with the housekeeping. Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t like to come home to a clean and nice smelling house. If this is how you feel, it may be the right time to assess your earnings to see if you can afford a professional cleaning service.
Let’s take a closer look at a few steps that could help you create a monthly budget, in order to determine whether you can afford residential cleaning services or not.
1. Create A Budgeting Worksheet
The first thing to do is to create a household budgeting worksheet to help you keep tabs on your monthly and yearly expenditures. You can search for a printable budget chart, if you want. However, if you prefer to have it in electronic format, you’ll want to search for a spreadsheet program like Excel. All these programs come with budget templates you can use as model. Create columns for income and for different expenses such as childcare, school, groceries, clothing, and loan or mortgage payments. If you can’t remember what you spend your money on, you can take a look at your bank statements for the past few months.
2. Don’t Leave Anything Out
If you are like most people, chances are you’re going to forget your yearly expenses such as annual credit card fees and car insurance payments. If you want to avoid cash flow problems, you can try to set aside a small amount every month to put against these expenses. In addition, include all your known outliers in your budget. If you know you’ll have to replace your car tires in July, add that expense to your budget spreadsheet. Even tracking small expenses like your daily latte can help you gain a better understanding of your spending habits. By writing down everything that you spend, you’ll see at a glance whether there’s room for hiring a professional household cleaning service.
3. Plan When It Suits You
Big one-time expenses can create a hole in your household budget if you don’t prepare yourself for them. In fact, you should have an emergency fund to access whenever needed. There are software programs and apps that can help you set monetary goals and track your progress on weekly basis. Use them to save for the things you love and for creating your emergency fund.
4. Allow Some Room For Leisure
You should include dinners with friends, outdoor and camping weekends and other such small pleasures in your budget. If you are too strict, you’ll become frustrated and miserable, and that’s something you surely don’t want.
5. Shop Around For Housekeeping Services
Once you have your budget spreadsheet, you’ll be able to assess at a glance whether you can afford to hire a professional cleaning service. If you do, consider shopping around to find the best value for money. Try to get several quotes from different providers. you don’t need to choose the cheapest of them, but a side by side comparison will allow you to gain a better understanding of the local market for such services. Before hiring anyone, consider checking out client references, reviews and testimonials.
If you decide that you can’t afford cleaning services, you should take a second look at your budget. Perhaps you can cut some unnecessary expenses to make room for professional cleaning.
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