Are you trying to change your financial outlook?  Are you looking to make a difference in your family’s financial health?  It’s a big deal though, making changes like this. We work and work all year long and sometimes it seems like we have not much time left over at the end of the work week with very little money at the end of it.  So how can we reverse it? How can we switch up our financial life so we are always chasing the almighty dollar? Well the simple answer is that we change our habits. We need to make different choices in order to make a true difference.  One of the ways in which we need to change is by changing how we make purchases.

Are you considering making a big purchase in the near future?  This is something that definitely needs to be considered before you do it and here are 5 questions you should ask yourself before every big purchase:

1. Is this a want or a need?  This is not to say that you shouldn’t spend money on wants, but if your budget is low, you need to reconsider how much you are spending and why you are spending.
2. Can you afford two of them?  This may seem silly since you only want one of them, but the truth is, if you absolutely can’t afford two of them, than 1 is more than likely going to tax your budget.
3. Can you pay for it with cash? There are very few things that you should ever purchase on credit.  If you are looking to buy something that you can’t afford to pay cash for, you probably shouldn’t buy it.
4. Can you buy it used?  There is a great market out there for used items.  Can your purchase be made used? You can likely save a large amount of money if you are able to buy it second-hand.
5. Is it worth the amount of work you need to do for it?  Let’s say that you make $20 per hour and you are looking at spending $100 on something.  Is this item genuinely worth spending 5 hours at work for? This is one of my favorite questions.  It has kept me from quite a few frivolous purchases.