9 tips for managing your family budget.

How to manage the family budget well? This question comes back when the bank account is in debt, the money is missing to finish the month. There is a week or more left to collect the salary. Before that date, the many needs of the family must be met! So, anxiety, disappointment, stress overwhelmed you and questions too.

Why can't I manage the family budget well? Because of my salary below the needs of the family? Inflation that lowers purchasing power? More and more costly needs?

Let's first take a look at the 9 essential points for keeping the family budget in good shape. Because managing the family budget well makes it possible to know and master family finances.

Motivation: What are your financial goals? The best way to mismanage the family budget is to start without motivation and without financial goals. A family budget is kept day after day, month after month and year after year. Contrary to what it might suggest, it is not tedious. But we must clearly define the goals by keeping this budget. This leads to strong motivations, deadlines, and quantified targets.

Example: switch from a debit account to a credit account in four months and reach monthly savings of x euros.

read also family budget tips

Understand the family budget: it is not a question of simply recording income, expenses and the difference between the two, but of making forecasts on all the elements of the budget. It is then possible to know in advance - for a given month - how much the expenses exceed the income. And the actions to be taken to balance the budget. Expenses: to control this side of the budget balance, it is absolutely necessary to focus on all expenses, identify them, categorize them, quantify them by period (week, month, year). Income: wages, family benefits, windfall earnings, investment income, interest received, donations, all income must be entered in the budget.

The amount to be received must be quantifiable, predictable and secure like the salary.

To note in the income an amount which must be reimbursed to us when it is a simple promise and to make expenditure forecasts on this basis seems a little light, isn't it? The result: after recording the expected expenses and income, a simple subtraction gives an idea of the state of family finances. Either, the expenses are greater than the income and it is necessary to find the necessary resources to finance the difference (most often the credit card). Either, the incomes are above expenses and the family has the means to finance its projects for the future: purchase of the family home, financing of children's higher education, savings, etc.

Savings: with inflation, the growing needs and the current state of the economy, saving is becoming more and more difficult.

I know, you've already read and heard this sentence.

I believed in this, but I can tell you this: whatever the current state of your finances you can save a fixed amount every month and reach the desired amount at the end of the year. How? 'Or' What?

The answer to the article: Yes! you can save! The proof.

Monitoring and analysis: a well-managed family budget requires regular monitoring:

- to record expenses and income,

- adapt actions in order to reduce this or that expense,

- reflect on the differences between the planned and the achievement,

- knowing perfectly where the family's money goes and what they can afford with their income.

Budget types: weekly, monthly, annual, cash-based, or more complex budget with the management of different accounts.

There are several types of budget suited to the family's financial situation.

But you must carefully choose the type of budget to use in order to adapt it to your realities, to manage the family budget well with ...

The budget supports: This involves setting up an easy filling system. The simplest is the notebook. I can still see my father carefully recording the family expenses every night.

But it would be a shame to do without today's sophisticated tools: spreadsheet (Excel, Calc, Lotus, etc.) or family budget management software for PC or Mac. Some software can even be used on smartphones.

SAFETY BELT SAVES LIVES!" CHILD SAFETY - PRIORITY

Starting today, February 14, the provisions regarding the mandatory use of seat belts and child restraint systems in vehicles come into force. With the new regulations, no other changes are made to the legislation on traffic on public roads.

Starting today, the provisions of Government Decision no. 11/2015, which transposed the Community legislation regarding the technical norms for applying the provisions of the Emergency Ordinance no. 195/2002 regarding the circulation on public roads, regarding the compulsory use of the safety belts and the systems for fixing children in seats in vehicles, introduced by the Government Ordinance no.
According to the new regulations, children up to 135 cm in height can only be transported in vehicles if they are fastened or fastened using a child restraint device.

Also, children over 135 cm in height can only be transported in vehicles if they wear adult seat belts, adjusted so that they do not pass over the neck or face area, or if they are fastened or fastened using a fastener. in the child seat. There are exceptions. Thus, the child restraint is not required if the child is in a vehicle intended for public transport, as well as in the taxi if it occupies any place other than the one in the front seat. minicab bethnal green
At the same time, it is exempted from the obligation to be fastened or caught using a child restraint device or to wear a seat belt during transport, for which the child is issued a medical exemption certificate for serious medical reasons, in to mention the condition that contraindicates the wearing of these safety systems. The driver of the vehicle has the obligation to have his medical certificate, in whose content the duration of validity must be mentioned.

In these cases, the transport of the child is carried out on the rear seats of the vehicle, and in the case of the child up to 3 years, the transport is performed under the supervision of a person other than the driver of the vehicle.

Please note that the child restraint device must be approved and suitable for the physical characteristics of the children and installed on the rear seats of the vehicle, according to the mounting instructions provided by the manufacturer, which indicates how and in what way. which types of vehicles the system can be used safely.

By way of exception, the child restraint devices can also be mounted on the front seat, by facing the opposite direction to the normal direction of travel of the vehicle, only after deactivating the front airbag corresponding to the seat.

We remind that, in accordance with the legal provisions in force, the driver of the vehicle is sanctioned with 4 - 5 fine points (390 - 487.5 lei ) and 3 penalty points in the case:

- failure to comply with the obligation to ensure that minors wear seat belts or are transported in fasteners in approved child seats, under the conditions provided by the regulation. - non-compliance with the provisions regarding the transport of children in vehicles that are not equipped with safety systems.

The aforementioned normative act does not bring any other changes to the legislation on the movement on public roads, not being "a new Road Code".

Taking into account the provisions of Government Decision no. 1,091 of December 10, 2014, for establishing the minimum gross basic wage in the country guaranteed in payment, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, as well as the provisions of the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 195/2002 regarding the movement on public roads, starting with January 1, 2015, a fine point represents, in value, 97.5 lei.

The use of personal protective equipment for road safety: comparison between observed and reported data

Andrea Nucera 1, Alfredo Ruta 2, Laura Marinaro 3 and Maria Chiara Antoniotti 1
1 Suprazonal Epidemiology Service, ASL NO, Novara
2 Epidemiology, ASL CN2, Cuneo
3 Integrated Prevention Department, ASL VC, Vercelli

Road accidents are the main cause of death and disability in the population under 40 years of age and represent a priority health problem in Italy (1). Among the measures aimed at mitigating the consequences, individual safety devices have shown great practical efficacy (2). For this purpose, the Highway Code lays down the obligation to use a helmet for motorcyclists and safety belts for those traveling by car. To monitor compliance with the legislation on the obligation to wear these safety devices and to verify the effectiveness of the policies aimed at promoting their use, it is necessary to reliably measure their current use.

Most commonly, the prevalence of use is measured as a reported habit, through self-filled interviews or questionnaires, or as behavior observed directly on the street. Both methods have advantages and limitations, for example observational studies are more precise but are expensive and based on one-off observations. On the other hand, interview-based studies are economic but may offer a deformed image of reality, because respondents often tend to present their habitual behavior as conforming to prudence and norms, while in reality, it may not be so (3).

Starting from 2007, in the health companies of the Piedmont region, as in most ASLs in Italy, the data reported on the use of safety devices are reported regularly, every year, by the surveillance system Passi (Healthcare Company Progress for Health in Italy) (4), but there are no assessments regarding their validity. Since in Piedmont, during the continuous collection of data carried out by the PASSI system, the use of safety devices in cars and motorcycles was detected, through observation, we were able to compare the results of the two systems, in order to assess the validity of the data reported.

Between April 2007 and March 2008, in the Piedmont region, suitably trained ASL staff conducted the Project "Road Accident Surveillance Activities" (ASIS) detecting, through road observation, the use of individual protection systems for road safety, in particular, "by estimating the proportion of front and rear drivers and passengers who use the seat belt, the proportion of motorcycle drivers who wear helmets and the proportion of children correctly insured by child seats" (5). For this purpose, a protocol has been prepared in which the methods of detection and sampling sites have been defined, specifying the observation points, by type of road, in order to achieve representativeness of the regional road network (5). Gatwick Airport Minicabs Service
In the period June 2007-December 2008, the PASSI surveillance system estimated the habits of the population regarding the use of security systems, by telephone interview on a representative sample of the population aged between 18 and 69, with the aim, between the other, to estimate the reported prevalence of use of the safety devices. To facilitate the comparison between the two data collections, only the responses of people who declared to use the "always" were taken into consideration. The comparison was made on the head obtained from the results obtained by the two detection systems.

The table shows the percentages of use of the security systems at the regional level and the confidence limits. For the use of the front seat belt, the prevalence of habit estimated by PASSI is 13 percentage points higher than the prevalence estimated by direct observation, a statistically significant difference.

For the rear belt, the difference between the reported habit and the observed behavior is 3 percentage points, with overlapping of the confidence intervals and, as regards the use of the helmet, the estimates are both very high and identical.

The results of this study show that, in Piedmont, the PASSI surveillance returns a reliable picture regarding the use of the helmet and the rear belt, while it tends to provide too positive a description of the use of the front belt. In fact, in this case, we are led to believe that 9 out of 10 front travelers wear the belt, while the observed figure is between 7 and 8 out of ten.

This result is not unexpected, because several studies have shown that the prevalences based on self-reported data are generally higher than those drawn from observational data, a fact - generally attributed to a bias of social desirability - so in countries like ours, in where the mandatory legislation is in force, should be corrected by a factor between 1.2 and 1.4 (6).

However, it is necessary to report the limits of the comparison between ASIS and PASSI. First of all, the two surveys reveal different phenomena and the prevalences are calculated with different numerators and denominators, so a rigorous comparison is not possible. In ASIS the behavior adopted by the occupants, even non-residents, of vehicles circulating in the ASL/region territory is studied, while in Passi the habit of drivers/passengers residing in that ASL/region is studied, regardless of where and how much they circulated.

Furthermore, PASSI interviews people between 18 and 69 years of age, therefore it excludes minors who are common users of motorized two-wheelers and older people who also drive and are transported by car.

Finally, in the ASIS study, certain categories of means of transport are excluded from the observation, such as trucks, public transport and police vehicles and carabinieri, whose safety habits are not described, but which may be different from the rest of the sample.

While taking into account these limits, the comparison, in general terms, supports the idea that the data reported on the use of road safety devices can be better interpreted taking into account the results of the more expensive observational studies, carried out at multi-annual intervals. In fact, the advantages of studies based on telephone interviews, such as PASSI, are the regular availability of data at low costs, in addition to the representativeness of the local population and the possibility of studying the individual characteristics associated with non-compliant behaviors. Furthermore, due to the characteristic of the PASSI surveillance of continuously collecting information, it is possible to detect changes in behavior deriving from appropriate information campaigns.

Specifically, it can be concluded that PASSI, in Piedmont, produced in 2007-08 an image practically superimposable to that provided by direct observation, to monitor the use of the motorcycle helmet and the belt for travelers on the rear seats of the auto, while it provided a higher estimate of the use of the front seat belt compared to ASIS. it is necessary to take these values ​​into account when interpreting the data correctly so that they can be used by law enforcement, planners and decision-makers.