Ant expenses are small expenses that a certain family has and that are unnecessary due to the daily life that this has.
These are small sums of money of daily and everyday origin that negatively affect the budget from a family. It is about losses of money from simple things every day that we do not pay attention but that damage our budget and increase our debt. Ant expenses can be the mid-morning coffee, a chewing gum, a cigarette, the tip we offer, etc.
Characteristics of ant expenses
The spending ant have the following characteristics:
- They are avoidable or replaceable by other more profitable products
- They are everyday expenses: daily, weekly or monthly
- They tend to go unnoticed or we give it importance
- They are not counted, but we know that at the end of the month they usually generate a large sum
How do we identify ant expenses?
Once we know the characteristics that ant expenses represent, it is time to know how to identify them.
Ideally, when we have a small expense, of little value and with the characteristics that we have indicated above, we write it down in a notebook or on our mobile.
In this way, we can keep track of those expenses that we spend throughout the month. For example: if we spend an average of 20 cents on a cigarette and consume two a day, at the end of the month we have consumed 60 cigarettes, spending 12 euros per month.
How to avoid ant expenses?
It is a type of expenses that, whether we want to or not, we can identify and avoid them. The best way to eliminate ant expenses is replacing them with other types of expenses. For example, replace the 20-cent cigarette with 5-cent candies. Another option is to rationalize the amount of money that we will spend on these types of expenses. For example: "this month I will spend only 5 euros on cigarettes" ...