With us for all our main quarterly bills we put x amount towards them each fortnight that comes straight out of bank account automatically when the bill arrives they are usually in or close to credit. I have never had a CC in my life. I have always been a firm believer if "we don't have the money then we don't get it" I do now however have a visa debit but that is using your own money anyway. I make sure our account always has a minimum of $1000 in it. So I if I see my bank account with $1500 then I think "right we have $500". The $1000 is for emergencies. Came in handy when our deep freezer died a week before Christmas last year.
As for shopping I now do it all online. It adds it up for you as you add to the trolley. I always felt stupid carrying a calculator around the shops. If you only have $250 for shopping one week and you go over then you can have a good look at your list and see if there is something that you can do without to the following week. It is also easy to avoid temptation.
My husband doesn't earn a great deal per week and we border on low income, but I just can't be bothered doing the paperwork for it to submit to centrelink. We survive. The kids are fed, dressed and the bills get paid. That is the main things.
We started on being more of a 'cash' family a couple of years ago.
We have a budget, but it is a fairly loose one. Our budget is in two parts; bills and living.
For the bills part I have an excel spreadsheet listing all the bills we get (rates, elec, gas, rego, mortgage, etc) and approx how much they are per year or month etc. I then work out what this equates to fortnightly for each one, add up the total and but this aside as 'bills' money each fortnight when we get paid.
The living part is a bit looser I guess. I have worked out approx how much we spend on petrol and food each fortnight and then we give ourselves a few hundred extra for 'extras' (e.g. haircuts, clothes, dinners out, buying random things at the shops......). We take this money out of our account at the beginning of each fortnight. This way we know exactly how much we have 'left' and we can make educated decisions about what we want to buy or do with our money based on how much we have left.
Each fortnight I also have a 'potential savings' part (income minus bills and living expenses). TBH a lot of this ends up going towards the credit card each fortnight (well, at least lately anyway as we have just built a new house and are doing gardens and stuff) as we use it for any extra things we want or for car servicing or emergencies or stuff like that. That being said, unless I make a payment onto it late (by accident) we never pay any interest on it, so we are not over-using it if you know what I mean..... We also do have a set minimum amount that we save each fortnight and we also pay extra into our loan....
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