We budget and pay regular bills like electricity and gas, phone, water, rent, insurances, internet etc automatically each fn, and then spend about $300 a fn on everything else (food, entertainment, fuel, clothes, prepaid credit for phone, pay tv, swimming for DD, medication for me, chiro if i need to go). our budget is very tight at the moment, so there is minimal "splurging" - our one big luxury is pay tv - everything else is worked into the budget. there isn't much wiggle room right now (at all!), but we're surviving, and the alternative means me working a hell of a lot more hours to counter the loss of ftb and paying higher taxes, and it's hard to justify it...