what does your "bills/everyday living" list look like?
M&D i dont budget (we are lucky that we dont need to either but i am always conscious of how and when we spend. to me there are things that I am not sure you have factored in.
Does bills cover elec gas water insurance (car, contents, health) $5200 pa wouldn't cover our bills for that
Not sure what credit card covers - is it a debt or just miscellaneous expenses - maybe it would be worth you actually categorising what that expenditure is.
Also, things like coffees, bought lunches ($10 each a day is $200 a fortnight) meals out, haircuts (DH and my haircuts cost $150 combined every 6 weeks which is $50 a fortnight) all add up really quickly.
Maybe make a deal with your DH where you write down everything you spend money on for a month and see where the leakage is.
Have a look at your accounts - account for every cent spent in your last fortnight and work out where that $1500 is going. If you could save $3000 a month for a house deposit you'll have a good one within 12-24 months.
We're on one income ATM which varies quite a bit as DP's a shiftworker - can vary by as much as $1500 a fortnight (on top of his normal salary), sometimes he can earn an extra $500 per day if he's worked a lot of shifts or it's a public holiday etc.
Anyhow, I have no idea how we're spending so much money. We don't have a mortgage but our bills are astronomical because a) we live in a very cold area and b) the kids and I are home a lot. I pay $150 a fortnight on bills by direct debit but still get huge bills. I need to up the stuff on direct debit.
We also spend too much on petrol because I like to take the kids out and about to the other towns around here (nearest apart from our local town are about 15km away).
Other big areas of spending for us are holidays (DP went to Europe for a month) and clothes (me, which I justified this year because of DP's holiday).
Plus rates. Private health insurance and DP's dental bill (he has shocking teeth).
I don't budget either. I should but I don't. Some weeks we're scraping the bottom of the barrel other weeks we are cruising. We're only on one income with the base rate of that being just under $700 a week. We also get just over $500 in centrelink allowances, and currently receive a low income health care card. When I was made redundant from full time work we consolidated all of our debts and put everything onto the Mortgage so we were only paying off one debt each fortnight. We still do that now, if we need to buy a new car, do house renovations or whatever we take the money against the Mortgage. Makes the Mortgage end date longer, but we're still only paying the one major thing. Due to doing that I managed to scrounge up an extra $90 a fortnight that I put onto my mortgage voluntarily. I can cancel that at any time if I need to.
If I get a job next year, which is my goal, we'll loose a lot of our benefits and the low income health care card. So I will be back to paying over $100 a month in medication alone. I plan to put so much of the income I will receive onto the mortgage as well, if I can afford too since I will have to factor in the cost of petrol etc once working.
My list is below, I have it on a spreadsheet and its calculated weekly, monthly, quaterly and yearly. It get supdated every 3-4 months, its good to see where we are spending money and it means each week we know how much to put away to cover the bills. (I can be a bit OTT with my organising sometimes lol )
Child Care
Car Insurance
House Insurance
Health Isurance
Life Insurance
Mobile
Home Phone
Internet
Rates
Gas
Electricity
Rego
Water
Union Fees
Car Service/Tyres
Visa/Bank Fees
School/Fees Uniform
Swimming
Nursing Rego
Hair
Petrol
Food/Groceries
Holiday
Pets
Gifts
Kids Savings
Medical/Dental
Mortgage Minimum
Extra Repayments
Clothes
Spending
House Maintenance/Furniture
Garden
Entertainment
Nothing like a cuddle from DD after a hard day's work!
Oct 2007
in my own world
3,267
Before mat leave we were on 4.5k a fortnight after tax so got use not having to budget.
Now we are on 2k a fortnight and find we are struggling bad. Im too scared to budget because everytime i do i just feel depressed as all the money seems to go ti bills which seems to never end and we are always redrawing from the homeloan which is sad seeing we were doing so well at paying off our loan.
what does your "bills/everyday living" list look like?
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