How do YOU budget?

[Arimeh]

Just curious - do you do your budget by putting small amounts of money away out of each pay for bills that will come in the future; or

Do you gather your current outstanding bills and pay them all at once out of your pay, and then use whatever is left as spending money until you get paid again?

Which works better for you and why?

[Glass half full]

Budget, what's that
Really bad with planning/managing money here. Will be watching for some tips.


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[Rowellen]

The first one. We pay ourselves a small amount for spending each month. The rest goes to our home loan offset account to save us interest until we get bills that have to be paid. I set them to be paid by BPay on the due date & pay everything I can on credit so it stays on our home loan as long as possible.

I worked out roughly what bills we have during the year and what we wanted to save & that's how I decided how much to allocate as spending money. Spending money covers meals out, clothes, entertainment & whatever else we "want". I generally spend mine on the kids lol. DH spends his on golf & gambling.

[Mak]

Initally cleared the decks with immediate bills, then broke down regular income for weekly expenses, bills, spending money, and allocated some for savings (once longer term bills like cc paid off). So we save monthly for the big stuff like car insurance/rego/rates/holiday so there is less panic at those times. It took us a few years to get the hang of it (read it took that long for DH to get my compulsive spending sorted). It definitely took a change in thought and part of that was allocating an amount for non accountable spending too.
Any pay increases have also been allocated to savings/mortgage to stop tempting us to squander it away.
I should add this was pre kids and I often bought stuff I never used or wore so there was plenty to work with, lol!
It also sounds quite anal and boring but both our personalities find it hard to cope with unexpected issues so this works better for us in the long term.

[Arimeh]

Thanks guys

We currently do the first way of doing it - but its just a little depressing when you budget right down to the very last dollar out of every pay. DH just got cut down to 4 days a week, so basically has just had a 20% pay cut.

Now its even MORE depressing....

[blessedatlast]

I'm living quite tight. I get around $850 a fortnight working 4 days and with my c'link. Hopefully now, I can work more now that I'm not studying! Anyway.. I pay $400 rent straight away, I put $50 away for bills (I only have ph and internet), I normally put $60 fuel in my car then divide the rest in half and put it in an envelope for this week and next week so I have an even amount of money. That way I don't spend big week one and live on nothing week 2. If I am really stuck with bill I can dip into savings, I managed to save when I could work more during the holidays and when I had working credits from c'link. I try not to touch that though.. I'll be better off when DP and I move back in together in another month or so.

[Mak]

Ouch - that sounds a wee bit stressful (or at least it would be here). Hope things pick up soon. x

[Erin_25]

I like small amounts to go straight to certain companies each pay so then I know what I can comfortably spend and when the bills do eventually come in they are not a suprise. I'm also terrible at saving so if I didn't do it this way we would have a massive electricity bill & not be able to pay it. It's great, we even did this with our council rates & were in credit when we sold our house. So things like Telstra, electricity/gas, rates etc put over an amount each week, then pay balance when bill comes in....usually not that much.

[MrsFabuloso]

The first way. Makes it easier to know that the bills will always be paid up in full. And if there's left overs, then we get to do something we wouldn't normally, or it goes to the next bill.

[Gigi]

i saw a financial counsellor. They ask to see your bills for last year.

They then do a breakdown.
52 weeks in a year
work it out to suit your pay cycle, so let's say you get paid each fortnight
so 26 fortnights in a year

annual bills (add 10% to last year's bill, to allow for inflation) - quarterly bills - work them all out to how much they are a fortnight.

then you know what you need to be "putting aside" each fortnight, for all those "known" bills

e.g the regular bills you get EVERY quarter, EVERY year.
plus an approximation, of the bills you get regularly, but you never know exaclty HOW MUCH they will be, like car service, dentist

for utilities, some companies let you "bank up" credit on your account
i do this with my gas and electricity, every fortnight, i pay an amount onto my account, so when the quarterly bill arrives, i am often in credit (only by a little).

so with money diverted, into prepaying accounts, and "save for the annual bills" - that means the money is NOT in my everyday account (where i might just spend it) - takes temptation away. I only let myself have access to the money that is left over, after i have done all my allocations. Doesn't leave me with much, but at least i know i can spend that money guilt free.

For day to day stuff, i take that out each week in cash.
Give myself a grocery allowance, a fruit n veg allowance, a petrol allowance and a spending allowance.
Once those amounts are gone, that is it.
i have gone back to this "cash" system, as i found it unsettling, to be buying food on EFTPOS, and never really know, how much i was spending (when i was IN the shop, wondering, if i could really afford to be buying X).

my X refused to budget with me, didn't see any point in it. he thought budgetting was only worth it, if you had money to invest. i feel the opposite, i feel the less money you have, the more crucial it is (to me) to know where every dollar is going. the less money, the more crucial the choices you make, how to spend that dollar.

the financial counsellors are good at getting you to discern between "wants and needs". but also realistic.

automating my new budget, has really destressed me. i know every fortnight, a huge chunk of my money "disappears", gets diverted from my everyday account, but it gives me peace of mind, knowing i won't be getting big bills (e.g rego), without any way to pay them, or they will be paid already (the electricity and gas).

with all the stuff in the news, about the carbon tax, everything going up, i have no idea if my new budget will still be making me calm, in a year's time - all i know is that it's working great for right now. a budget is always a work in progress. new priorities come up, nothing stays the same.

sorry to hear your hubby has had his hours cut back - that's a big adjustment.

Simply Savings is a good website for budget tips - to gain access to the Vault of tips, it's a paid subscription. Maybe your local library might have their "$21 Food Challenge Simply Savings" book, about feeding your family for a week, on the contents of your fridge/pantry and spending $21 at the supermarket. Even if you do it for one week out of four, that's one week you save heaps at the supermarket.

With tax rebate time coming up very soon, and Family Supplement - those amounts might help to provide you with a "buffer", for unexpected events, car needing exxy repairs, larger annual bills.

best of luck with the readjustment. it takes work.

[deletedit]

We get a lot of small pays in each fortnight - the biggest is $550. Then some other ones once a month.

My pay goes on the pay-in-advance thing and any smaller bills, say under $300. Partner's goes on food. FTA goes on mortgage. Monthly pays go on any large bills (these have always been house related - land clearing, replacing windows, buying a fence etc). It seems to work. Our house deposit is in a high interest account that is hard to get to so that is where all our savings comes from, just interest on that.

I should really start saving for a car but we are going to be so close to the edge when we get the second mortgage that I think all our tax returns and any of our house deposit we don't use are just going to go straight on the new mortgage. We have one of those low income loans so for the first couple of years our payments won't even cover the interest, so the lower we can get the new loan the better.

[emc2]

I'm on Centrelink benefits so I've been using Centrepay to put aside money on my power bill - $20 a fortnight. Then my phone and internet is a monthly direct debit. My mobile is prepaid.

I mix things up a bit, I am renting government housing these days, but I opted out of their automated system, as when I was working I kept triggering reviews, which staff should have ignored, but didn't, and it caused a lot of hassles.

So some things I budget every fortnight for but at the same time I might buy some items in bulk which last for months.

My situation has changed again now I have bubs and I am trying to save as much of that baby bonus as I can. Well I will be after a few more purchases lol. My Mum says I have enough flat nappies for twins now!

[KittyK]

I do the first one. I even have a budget book I didn't include the electricity, rates or water though and I have decided to do that from now using my last bills as a guide. I find it easier knowing that we won't ever be out of pocket a huge chunk of money because i will always have money there for the bills that come in.

[~me~]

My DH has an excel spreadsheet that I have to put in our bills and expenses including 'play money' or what we call 'rations'. At the end of the year he tallies up the total cost and fortnightly expenditure and we put it into a bills bank account.
Works great.

[Sopdet]

At the moment I have an account that I pay all the bills out of. I transfer money from my pay into it every week. The bill account I have regular direct debits onto bills (gas, electricity, home phone, mobile), this account also has the rent come out of it monthly as well as my gym membership plus car & health insurance. I don't carry that keycard around so I can't be tempted. I am building up to have that account with a couple of months buffer in there.

I put more money weekly into that account than is needed so it can accrue for the big bills like rego.

I also have a spreadsheet that I track my spending on (today's is going to be a little bit scary when I put it all in, since I had a retail therapy morning).

I actually try not to carry my cards at all, I take out cash on pay day and that is what I use for groceries, petrol and general living expenses for the week. I take lunch most days.

[Jakabella]

We do the second way. I pay the mortgage payment out of my bank (yes we still have seperate bank accounts! It just works better for us) and my car loan and a monthly payment of our insurance - all direct debit and anything thats left in there will just accumulate into some form of savings (not much now days!) and DH pays all the bills out of his pay - so we pay all that are due in the f/n in full - and then pay a bit off any larger bills that we have (like the electricity bill thats like $600 ever 3 months!!) the any thats left is spent on stuff (eg clothes for us and kids, some takeaways, DH's peterol ect) DH transfers the groccery money to me as soon as his pay goes in and I get a f/n's worth of food.

Does any of that make sense???

HTH
Kate xox

[Beautiful Disaster]

Just curious - do you do your budget by putting small amounts of money away out of each pay for bills that will come in the future; or

Do you gather your current outstanding bills and pay them all at once out of your pay, and then use whatever is left as spending money until you get paid again?

Which works better for you and why?

Ditto

[Gigi]

three things i would like to do, aspire to, to improve my budgetting, is
- learn how to put my budget on an Excel spreadsheet
- learn how to do a meal plan (as described in the Simply Savings $21 book)
- grow some herbs, vegies to reduce my veg bill

I've just come out of a unhealthy r'ship, where we didn't have a family budget, my X flat out refused to discuss money management with me, and foisted many family bills onto me. So I've had experience of what NOT to do. what DOESN"T work.

I am curious, what the other side of that coin is. How people in functioning couples, do the money/bills together. So that it's fair. Unsure if this means shared accounts, or separate. I suppose it's complicated if you do things like buy a big asset (house) together. I've just never known what people in functioning r'ships do about this (i was brought up never to ask about money, so now i'm ignorant). It would be nice to know, JIC an elephant falls out of the sky, and i find myself in another r'ship (right now, that seems SO unlikely). I've only ever gone out with guys who
- earn more than me
- have moths in their wallets, but when they go without basics, i cannot help myself, and buy them what they need, even though i know darn well, they should buy it themselves.