iAfrica Image: Pexels Share with your network! The current economic environment coupled with further challenges of income instability, petrol and electricity price increases requires consumers to have a good handle on how to manage their expenses effectively, focus on their essentials and curb unnecessary spending. Dhashni Naidoo, FNB Consumer Education Programme Manager says, “In a household budget, expenses can be categorised into needs and wants. Needs are essential things in our lives such as food, housing and medical costs. Wants are luxuries and things that we can possibly do without such as entertainment, luxury clothes, eating out. Expenses can be further categorised into fixed, variable or changing expenses. Fixed expenses are the costs that you can plan for because they don’t change from month to month such as rent, insurance or funeral covers. Variable expenses on the other hand, are expenses that keep changing based on usage. For example, electricity, groceries, airtime or data costs.”