can someone give me a rough idea?

[Butterfly Child]

so i 'may' be moving out of home for the first time..
and im trying to get an idea as to how much bills etc are going to cost for 2 ppl plus dd.
so use to bills and grocery bills for 6-7 ppl from living at home lol

(only if you dont mind answering)
so anyone in small families how much is your electricity bill?
grocery bills?
water bill?

and other bills just roughly so i can get an idea..?
where not going to connect a phone line as i cant really afford it. i have a prepaid phone, dont no if i should get on a cheap plan or not

[skybie]

groceries- between 120-150 a week.
elec is about 150-200
gas in summer is usually only abouy 50 but in winter has been known to go up to 300
water bill is usually about 35.

other things...ur bond and first months rent, contents insurance, car bills if u have one, the internet...ummmmm not really sure what else!

[Rainbow_Mumma]

woo exciting!! ok so a rough guide for you as to what is going out in our house. This is for 2 adults and 2 children (so may help with DP having a child too)

Food: 170 a fortnight including meat and fruit and veg
Electricity bill: 400-600 per quarter varies quite a bit on the time of the year
Water: $30 per quarter
we are on bottled gas so cant really help with that

We have our house phone so that its only connected to incoming calls and i have a great cap plan with optus very affordable and you dont have to stress about having to come up with money for a new phone if yours breaks. Also we only pay $50 a month for our net and it gets very good gb's with telstra we were paying around $80 for 12, i cant remember what we get now but its more than 12!

HTH and fingers crossed for your house hunting

[deletedit]

About 100pw for groceries for 2 adults, 2 kids and a cat
400-600 a quarter as well for electricity
water usage 20 a quarter, but we own not rent so we pay supply charge on top of that
insurance about 40pm for house and again for comprehensive car insurance (this is optional and varies something severe)
internet you can easy get for 50pm
phone is about 80pm for us but we have mobile/landline on there and are still paying out a 24 month telstra internet contract
petrol/car rego/car maintainence varies too much between households to comment

Plenty of other bills sneak up on you as you get older and start to collect Stuff that needs money spent on it. We have 3 sets of insurance (soon to be 4), 2 sets of council rates (soon to be 3), water charges (soon to be 2) and soon 3 houses worth of maintainence bills to pay. And I'm only getting $320 per fortnight in newstart right now and only have 6 months to come up with another $14k for a house deposit! Oh, to be young and house-free again ...

[Cupcake]

Water bill - we dont pay as we are renting, land lord pays it.
Electricity - is bout $200 per quarter - we dont have a dryer or air con, they will make your bill soar i think.
Food - Helps that DP is a butcher so we get cheaper meat, but i almost always budget $100-$150. I could feed myself on much less but DP is a human garbage, especially since quitting smoking! (woohoo on that one tho) Helps to buy things in bulk too, when toilet paper goes on special i normally can get about 24 rolls for $12 and that lasts us agessss. Then you will have that little bit extra each week to spend
Phone - DP is prepaid (never has his phone with him anyway ggrr) and im on a $79 cap per month, for that reason we dont really need a home phone because my mobile gets us about $600 worth of calls per month.

I think thats about it, any questions hun just ask

[Jakabella]

For our house - we own not rent:

Water $200 a quatre - thats with a front loader

Power approx $480 per qtre - we have flat screen 2x split systems and 2 computers on all the time

Gas approx $120 qtre in winter but about 60 in summer

Groccerie - $250 a F/n for 2 adults, 18 month old and 2 big dogs.

Phone / Internet approx $100 month

HTH
Kate

[~clover~]

We are a bigger family, but I'll tell you what my friend pays.
There's herself & her 2 children.

Food - $150/week
Water - $150/6 months
Electricity - $250 - 300/quater depending on time of year
Phone - $100/month, but you can get an incoming only line with Telstra...deal is that you can't have access to a mobile. You can also get local calls only.

TBH we rarely go over $100 a month with our phone bill & $50 of that is internet. Our actual calls are $10 - $20 a month. Net is $50 & line rental is $30 ish. We make probably one, maybe 2 long distance calls a month & 5 or 6 mobile calls a month.

[Daydream Believer]

Food $150 per fortnight ( we get meat from the butcher & fruit & veg from a wholesaler because it works out cheaper)
Water $30-40 \ (if you have a health care card you get a discount)
Electricity $250 per quater & Gas $30-50 in warmer months, up to $250 in old months (once agin you get a discount with a health care card)
Phone & net $100 per month we dont need a home phone but have to have it for internet where we live
Then you have to add on if you have credit cards, mobile phones, car rego, insurance, petrol, rent, etc

[Butterfly Child]

thanks everyone.

Daydream believer- do u really get a discount if you have a healthcare card or pension?

[allycat06]

Groceries: $350 a fortnight (we could be more budget concious here but we're foodies and like to eat well!)
Electricity: $100 per quarter in winter but can go up to $250 in summer thanks to air con
Gas: $50 per 2 months in summer, double that in winter
Water: $35 I think that's per quarter..I forget
Internet: $50 a month
Phone: $22 a month for landline (we only have this for the internet don't use it for calls) and $55 a month for my mobile, DH has a work phone.

if you have a HC card your utilities are discounted some of them pretty heavily which is handy

GL with moving and everything

[~clover~]

You get a pensioner rebate with electricity & if you have it direct debited, or paid through centrepay fortnightly you don't pay the $180 bond.
Not sure about water. Should find out!

[Kazmar]

Pension/health care holders get dicount yes and also you'll get rent assistance from centrelink.


We pay $125 a fortnight on elec, it s a thing we have them. I dont recieve bills just auto pay the $125
Water very little as the landlord pays it we just pay the excess Maybe $30-$50 a quater
Food, we keep ontop of it with an average of $100-$150 pw. We have a dog, cat, 2 adults and 2 kids/baby We are massive eaters too!

Gl hun sounds very exciting! My advice is stay on top of things from day dot as it can be easy to get behind. But if you keep on top you'll be fine

Are you moving in with a friend?

[Lulu]

BC, the bills must be in your name to get the discount. Arrange through your netbanking to get your bills taken out each fortnight on the day you get paid. If you are not sure, start everything off at 20/30 dollars a fortnight. You don't notice after awhile so once your food shopping is done anything left you are ok to spend.

Did you find someone to share with? WOOOO! It's very hard to do it all on your own these days. When I first moved out it was into a 2 bedroom place for $115 a week!

[Daydream Believer]

thanks everyone.

Daydream believer- do u really get a discount if you have a healthcare card or pension?

yep we get a discount on water, gas & electricity. Depending on how much you earn you can get rent assistance too

[sconeonamission]

Ok.
We have internet and mobile phones with separate companies. When we moved last time, we could only get wireless broadband internet from Telstra (the only thing anyone else could offer was dial-up ... there was no adsl on our side of the street )

So - this is my budget for a fortnight
Internet - $75
Mobile - $91 - this is for mobiles
Electricity - $50
Food - $ 170

I have other expenses - like cc, student loan and daycare, but I'll keep those a secret

My internet bill will change next month, as we are now living in an area with adsl. So it's gone from $139.95 a month to $80 a month (we had to get a home line installed, but we're not telling anyone the number and it's only there for adsl. We have a big cap on our mobiles, so we use them for everything !) Next time we move, we need to find places and contact the internet provider to see if it's an adsl area.

[deletedit]

Ok.
We have internet and mobile phones with separate companies. When we moved last time, we could only get wireless broadband internet from Telstra (the only thing anyone else could offer was dial-up ... there was no adsl on our side of the street )

We had that problem too, but the big indignity was the Telstra wireless broadband came on a really long contract, and you have to keep paying it or pay off the balance even if you never use it. We didn't think we'd move so soon, but we did.

Long contracts are evil. And Telstra love their long contracts. Whatever you do, don't sign up for anything that has a 12 or 24 or God forbid a 36 month contract when you move out of home.