Once back-to-school operation knocks at our door, all involving costs can make it challenging for some families to make ends meet. There are many ways to get financial support, which will help you to face these costs provided by the local education authorities, charities or parent´s associations.

Some of the examples from where you can get help for are:

• Free school meals

Local education maintained schools must provide a free meal to students if their parents receive either: income-based Jobseekers Allowance, income-related employments, income support, universal credit, pension credit, support for asylum seekers or Child Tax Credit.

• School transport

In order to ensure that a child gets to the nearest school from his house, local education authorities must provide for transport and if necessary, it will be free of charge.

Mere mortals have a limited mobile data plan which is sometimes hard to get by with and excess usage can result in terrifying phone bills. Nevertheless there are some tips to reduce data usage and avoid being upset later.

Here are the best 5:

• ALWAYS use Wi-Fi at home and at work

It may sound simple, but if we set the Wi-Fi of our house and work in our phone we can save a lot data usage. After all, these are the 2 places where we spent most time and we use Internet most.

• Set limits and alerts to data usage

Most smartphones have the option to set up limits and alerts to your data usage. This is done by an internal data monitor, which you can access through Settings-Data Usage and you will be able to see your overall consumption plus the one per App. You can set your limit; let´s say 2GB and an alert at 1,8GB to be aware that you are reaching it. The monitor is very useful to know which App consumes most and limit your usage!

Having children is definitively one of the most rewarding experiences of life, but we all know how suffocating expenses can be; especially if you have more than one. Food, clothes, education, sports, leisure are only some of the costs that you will have to face when they start growing. The UK Government offers Child Benefit to help families who are finding it hard to make ends meet.

If you have just given birth, we suggest that you claim for Child Benefit before your baby is 3 moths old, if you want to start receiving this help as soon as he comes to life as it is only backdated 3 months from the date your application is received. Anyone taking care of a child has the right to claim these benefit no matter if you are not their parent, until they are 16 years old or 20; if they are enrolled in full-time education. You can claim it for each child you are responsible for.

The first thing you need to take into account to manage your savings well is to spend time on it. Take at least half an hour every week to study your finances and elaborate a picture of the situation. You can download your bank statement and go through all the expenses and bills, highlight the ones you don´t really know where they come from and add your daily receipts. By doing this you will understand what your mandatory expenses are and how many unnecessary things you purchase monthly. This will also allow you to understand on what you spend most money. With all this information you will be ready to make a monthly budget with all your fixed-costs.

One of the most common mistakes is to spend more than you earn. Credit cards are very dangerous if you don´t use them smartly and this also applies to micro-credits. Before asking for a loan you should make a budget that reflects your income and expenses and revise if you can really afford it.