Deep in the throes of a financial restructure & debt consolidation at the moment, and am keen to get a good grip on the $$ and where they are actually going. We have next to no disposable income at the moment, which makes no sense because I returned to work 6 months ago, and even after hefty increase in childcare fees, and fall in FTB, there should be at least a couple of hundred floating about at the end of the fortnight.

I found out that the banks now have a set amount that they say a 4-person family needs to live on...a it's different for each of the banks, but roughly around 2500/month. That's all the essentials outside of rent/mortgage/debt commitments. So I look at that figure and think...where's all the rest of the money going???

???

We eat cheap meat and go veggo several nights a week, scrimp on the groceries, we don't have a shoe/handbag/clothing fetish, we don't smoke or go to the pub or gamble, we stopped buying books/magazines/CDs eons ago, the dog mostly eats scraps, we all take packed lunches, I take the bus to work (no parking fees), our one real indulgence is the cleaning lady for $61 once per fortnight (which buys a whole lot of domestic harmony).

So where has the rest of my wealth gone?

I would love to hear from any of you who have identified leaky parts of your budgets (ie insurance? electricity? phone plan?) and how you went about cutting those expenses down.