I am another one who pays for everything fortnightly as I am bad at having money in the bank, I just spend it. I treat savings like I treat my bills, it gets put away at the start of the fortnight, the same day that the pay goes into the bank- I BPAY a set amount onto all of my bills fortnightly, put some money into savings and then some money into our christmas account. I only shop once a fortnight, and this has cut down my spending heaps, it limits the amount of times I go to the shop and stops that extra little thing here and there that add up. DH and I also get play money, this is money that we can spend on whatever we want, coffee, lunch, books, etc without having to justify it to the other.
I think in terms of savings you have to look at it like another bill, pay it first not try and make sure you have some left over at the end IYKWIM
We don't budget as such, but we do use the 'play money' system. I put my entire salary into the mortgage (trying to clear it ASAP!), and then we split DH's pay (fn) as 3/5ths into a shared everyday a/c, and 1/5th each for personal stuff like clothes and haircuts. The ~$50 extra goes into savings. Anything left at the end of the f/n gets added to the savings a/c. We use the c/c for bigger bills, but pay this out of the shared each fortnight too, so far we haven't gone over the limit or had to go into our savings so it works pretty well.
Last edited by kass; June 30th, 2010 at 08:06 PM.
: took out $ amounts - talking money is hard! :)
We are another that pays everything fortnightly so that we are always ahead.
The hardest part for me is I really want to save some money but never feel like we will get there... because then it comes to choices such as do i take out private health, do we get the car serviced, insure the car, go visit family interstate.... urgh the cycle is awful. I don't think we are in a position to save yet as both cars need servicing, one rego still needs to be transferred, and we have to go to nsw to pick up the other car. Once that is out of the way then we will probably be more committed to savings in general but until then I find it extremely difficult because the piddly amounts just get spent!
Those of you who mentioned Bpaying an amount onto your bills every week - how do you know how much they will be? Or do you just say put $20 on them and then if its extra pay that? (does that question even make sense )
Sammy- My elec & gas is with AGL, and they do bill smoothing, they add up what they think you will use for a year, and average this out and set an amount for you...my gas is $11 a week, and my elec is $28 per week.
My phone bill is always the same, if there is any difference it is only small and I pay the difference.
With my water bill I pay $15 per week, and end up being about $5 in credit before the next bill is issued.
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