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.

[peanutter]

start by getting all your bills and receipts from the past year, and see what you *actually* spend p/an on food, bills, rates, rent, clothes, books, outings, presents, alcohol, gym, petrol, public transport, newspapers - everything.

then work out where you can cut a bit back, if you can anywhere.

then allow for you to put aside $$ for each "area" every fortnight. and for savings.

I actually used to have envelopes marked "rent" "bills" "train" "slush" (pocket money) etc.

and then stick to it.

and if you don't have receipts, ask friends with a similar household to you if they will share what they allow, to give you a starting point. I did this at the start, to try to predict what our initial gas, electric, water, phone etc bills would be.

once you've got that drafted, keep solid track of it all, and then work out what you need to allow more for, and where you can trim back spending.

HTH

[emc2]

I would look at getting some kind of Visa or Mastercard DEBIT card, you can use that online.

[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.

[Miss_Dee]

Currently I pay bills as they come in and haven't been sticking to much of a budget at all. DP and I are about to combine our money and will be splitting it 50% towards living expenses (rent, food, bills, etc), 30% to savings and 20% to spend as we please. Doing that will cover all our bills, give us a very nice savings fund and still leave us with enough to have a bit of fun week to week.

[Gigi]

that sounds like a good plan Miss Dee. I know many people, for whom, just their rent/mortgage IS 50% of their income, so that's great if you can pay rent AND bills out of the 50%.

[Miss_Dee]

that sounds like a good plan Miss Dee. I know many people, for whom, just their rent/mortgage IS 50% of their income, so that's great if you can pay rent AND bills out of the 50%.

Yes, we are very lucky in that regard. Living in SA combined with living with other people means our rent is very low.

[Rowellen]

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).

DH & I have everything joint now with an account for personal spending each. We pay ourselves an allowance each month & everything else goes on mortgage/bills. I do all the budgeting & bill paying because DH has no clue. We are lucky that both of us have a similar view on finances so we have never ever disagreed or argued about money.

[Astrid]

All our money goes into a joint account that DH can't touch (he admits he can't be trusted). I then divide up the money to bills, mortgage, petrol, groceries and pocket money. DH loves to interfere though, refuses to look at the budget spreadsheet, but then complains when I say there is no money.

When we started off together, we had things seperate. DH would pay the rent, petrol, clothing and entertainment expenses. I would pay bills and groceries. It worked it out once and it pretty much worked out to be even, except after awhile whenever DH paid the rent, he would then ask me for money to get through the week, so I changed things.

[sas85]

ok, this is going to sound really nerdy, but.in my defence I just cut my working back to half a day instead of 3 and well, you our tax business fluctuates, o . . I calculated all of our projected income, and expenses on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis including extra money I wanted to pay on the mortgage and always, always overestimate if you have to, then, broke it down into a monthly average and created a spreadsheet for every month, linked it to another spreadsheet I update weekly to make sure we're not going over quota,. Thataway, I can use the credit card. bank account, cash, whatever and not let the budget get away. (I actually get a kick out of updating the spreadsheet, ech, I am getting weirder every day)