what does your "bills/everyday living" list look like?

[PumpkinZulu]

We're about 1.5k a f/n. we're used to living on very little and our lifestyle reflects that.

Food - $400
Rent - $700
Bills - $210 (Internet, elec and gas, phones, midwife etc)

= $1310

The rest goes on any clothes etc we might need, some leisure, and sometimes saving. Bring on DH to finishing his degree and having a better paying job, and the kids being old enough for me to study/work! Unfortunately we haven't saved very much lately

[Tinks]

I don't budget as such but I have worked out how much my bills are per year and pay small amounts by direct debit into them weekly so I never have to pay huge bills and whatever is left over at the end of the week after I buy food I can spend.

[~*familyof3*~]

wow i feel a lilttle poor now. We get less then whats been posted on here a f/n

[~clover~]

In total I get about $1400/fn.

Rent $390
Food $400-$500
Gas $30ish
Electricity $40-$50
Petrol $60
Phone $60
Mobile $15
School lunches $36
Insurance $45
Kids savings $80

Thats $1266 if shopping is at its max. It usually is, but at the moment I'm trying to save $400/fn, so we're being tight on food & the kids aren't getting lunches. Doing the shopping here to save petrol money probably isn't helping, since average food prices here are more. Though its not much cheaper in the next town over.

Whatever is left I might buy takeaway, or an after school walk to the shops for a drink/chocolate.

I really need to tighten it even more though. Every week I seem to be transferring about $100 of my savings back coz its needed for something Its hard when I don't have the extra money for a social life, but things come up, so I hit the savings
Can't wait for our holiday. Going to be worth it! But can't wait til its over too, so I can stop stressing & trying so hard to save!

I can't get a job unless I move. There's no day care here. Can't wait til I can though!!

[Amy_jellybean]

With me now on maternity leave we have a budget, we have never had one before but to be honest im finiding it very interesting seeing where our money goes

With me on mat leave now we clear just over $8000 per month. Hubby is paid 15th -15th so we budget monthly.

Every dollar is now accounted for and we dont have 'spare' dollars in our budget or it is tempting to spend it, so we allocate it to a category, normally savings.

This money each month covers:

Mortgage - we pay about $400 per month more than required.
Food Shopping
Home phone and Internet
Both Mobiles
Private Health Cover
Ob Appointments (Obviously this wont need to be budgeted in another 10 weeks!!!)
Gifts
Personal Loan - We pay about $200 per month more than required.
Car Loan - Pay the minimum payment as the personal loan has a higher interest rate.
Slush money for DH
Slush money for me
Petrol
Savings
This month I have also allocated a lump sum to my baby shower to cover food, decorations etc.

We also averaged out electricity, gas, water usage, water rates, land rates, car insurance and home and contents insurance from last year and put a certain amount away each month to cover these bills when they come in.

For us our savings account has a x amount = $0. Ie. if the savings account has less than xxx then we cant afford it.

I have started using the budget software You Need A Budget and have found it really good so far.

Aim x

[~StarBright~]

Our income has been up and down the last year or so, lately we have been down to my wage and clink benefits.. until next week when DH gets paid for his first week of his new job!!

I have to alternate my bills to pay some fortnightly, some monthly and rent weekly. I sometimes have to split my monthly bills over a few weeks and i am always calling people to make payment arrangements!!!! It sucks!!! But generally over a month its a bit like this....

REnt 1460
Phone?net mobile 250
insurance 75
car payment 465
flexi rent 147
debt payment 360
daycare 360
electricity 200
food 600 ish
fuel 350 ish

so 4267 over the month we would only make about 4200 so i am always shuffling and the shopping budget gets doesnt always get to be so big Its sad when you see that your outgoing is higher than your incoming and there really isnt room for extras until we get things like tax returns (which co incide with rego) and FTB advances (which i get around the kids birthdays) and CCR Man i am sad now.. except that from now on we will loose our centrelink money and double it back with a second income.. so we will raise to about 5200 which will be very nice!! Except that for the next few weeks we will be using the extra money to catch up on some bills we are behind on at the moment and we have a car to fix and a new 2nd hand car to buy.. not to mention this thing coming up called christmas!!! It just never ends!!!

[~TT40~]

We never use to budget, with me being on a decent enough wage to not need to. But now we are only on DH's wage, and FTB. My only income is the FTB and I get about $80 fortnight. Dh earns about $900 a week. I feel broke and like we are struggling, but that is only because when I was working I was earning $2000 a fn. So its a big change of lifestyle for us, and atm we are still working out how to keep afloat...and I think we are only just keeping our nose above water...
DH puts $400 a week into our offset account and I put my whole $40 a week in there too. from there we pay our mortgage and all our bills out of it. Fortuantly we did plan ahead and put a tiny bit more (like a couple of extra dollars - basically me just rounding everything up) than we need in there, and we pay more than we have to on the mortgage. so if something bad happens, we do have enough money in there to make cover an extra month on the mortgage so we don't loose the house, and gives us a little extra time before we fall in a heap.
whatever is left in DH's bank account (after the $400) is used to buy food and petrol etc.. so we don't actually end up with anything left at the end of the week. We are getting better, but it is a big change in lifestyle we are still getting use to.

forgot to add, our only debt is the house, we own all our cars etc.. so no car loans or anything like that. our bills are just our mobs, internet, water, and electric.

[Gigi]

if i don't save for it, i can't do it, so have alot of accounts for everything i can think of that i consider most important.
no credit cards, only debit cards, safer for me.

i have found direct debiting to be very helpful, no more big bills, as i am paying all of them by the fortnight really. This was taught to me by a charity financial counselling service years ago. The most important lesson was to look at each expense - is this a want? or a need? And you can't necessarily have everything on your "need" list either, need to prioritise it, work out opportunity cost.