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

hiya all,

i would love to see your budgeting list for bills, everyday living etc. would love to see if there's things we can improve on, or maybe we're doing OK etc.

i do this every fortnight. it's fun sorting out! we have a shared bank account, with about 10 separate accounts inside it, named Rent, Bills, Food etc.

Rent: $640.00
Bills: $100.00
Food: $300.00
Petrol: $70.00
Phone Bills: $60.00
Cleaner: $100.00
Internet: $60.00
Credit Card: $150.00
Rego: $50.00

TOTAL = $1,530.00
Spending Money: $1,470.00

we make around $3k per fortnight, but we never EVER seem to have $1.5k to spend on anything we like. i just don't understand lol. they say the more money you make, the more you spend. well i'm going to try and change that. DF and i need to start saving for a house deposit.

Is your 3k before or after tax? That would take a big chunk out of your 1.5K.

I don't budget. I'm fortunate that I don't need to.

Very very sad compared to yours lol

We recieve 590 one week and just under 1000 the next. So 1500 a fn
400 goes to shopping
400 to rent
120 on public transport
120ish in fuel
70 on bills (minimum - sometimes more depending on what comes in)
100 on some kind of laybuy'd essential
14 on playgroup/ mothers group (sometimes more if its my week to provide morning tea)

= 1224

We're usually paying back someone from the previous week, when we've borrowed from them

I know Ive missed things because we always *just* scrape through, occasionally, we dont. I'll have to think about it...

Divvy that's after tax. i do love my budgeting lists... i get excited when it's pay day and i can work it all out... strange i know :lol:

yay so there's others out there who do "the list" too :lol:. damn Calluna, $120 on public transport :( that sucks!! your rent seems really good though! wish ours was that!

Our rent is only cheap because we live with my MIL. I dunno if you saw my thread the other day, but in summary, it fking sucks. Lol!
DF works in the city so gets the bus to and from work, and I use about 20 a week to get to the city to meet him for lunch once a week, go shopping and to get to playgroup as I dont drive.

we get about $2300 in a fortnight

rent= $500
health= $30
gas= $30
Elect= $70
food= $400
petrol= $200
OSHC= $60
Child care = $46
credit card= $200
loan = $200
ins (cars x 2, house, life)= $100
rego x 2= $60
phones (internet, house, mob) = $75
extras (Radio rentals, RAA) = $30
savings = $100
bdays account= $50

= $2150

and then of course there is the extras we forget, just general spending etc so we barely make even

i have a spreadsheet set up that does all this - don't have the figures, but i have everything in there and just jiggle the numbers if/when it's needed. have budgeted through until christmas at this point. will contemplate next year when i have some more time

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 :hide:)

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

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.

I do have an unrealistic budget somewhere lol

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 :(

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.

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

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!!

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 :rolleyes:

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

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!!!

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.

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.