Budget...Give me yours...I wanna stop the casual spending!

[Faithful Mumma]

Okay, so...
We are pretty much all up to date with our bills. I am totally happy and satisfied with this part of our budget (and proud of us too!)
Mortgage is on track.
Utilities- I pay a set amount each week ($55 for Phone/Net/Mobile, $28 electricity, $11 gas, $15 for water & $50 for Rates all set to come out automatically in my net banking)
Childcare- I have set my online banking to pay this automatically each week $73.95
School fee's- FTB A covers this amount fortnightly.
Insurances come out monthly.
Our debt agreement (nearly all paid! yipeeee, we will be "debt free" other than the mortgage) comes out weekly.

But we have little to noooo savings

We do fine week to week, but we tend to always eat up our surplus with mindless shopping....like an extra visit to the supermarket ($75 this morning....not really essential), take away (maybe $60 a week) $10 here, $20 there, $50 there...etc etc. The weeks where we do seem to have extra seem to fall when we have bills like the Rego due etc.
I tried an "envelope" system a few weeks back (have a wallet with lots of zippered compartments, and that did seem to work well, we were just not committed...

so I have decided that we are going to strip our budget back to basics!!!

What do you do to do this?????

[Laranna]

Write down every single cent you spend for a week or two or more. You'll see exactly where it's going and it's easier to see what things you can cut out.

[Faithful Mumma]

Yep, I really think I need to be more organised and do that....along with Meal planning I think...

[Mak]

Planning is the key - same as you have done with your bills!
Meal planning here - include lunches and snacks so you have it all covered and be realistic - perhaps book a coffee/cake date instead of lunch out and schedule one takeaway say per fortnight/week so you do not feel deprived.
We have more play dates at parks/beach etc than cafes which we used to all the time -much better for the kids too.
I joined the library and DVD shop rather than buying both - also we have upgraded our antenna so are cancelling pay tv as we watch the new freeview channels more than the pay tv.
Good luck - in the end most of it was me sticking to the plan in the end. Remember to factor in other things like clothes/haircuts otherwise you may feel deprived and go overboard!

[~clover~]

Now we can, we sometimes will have take away one night a week.
Occasionally I'll go out for lunch or coffee, but only every few weeks. I'll go to friends houses for that instead.
I do meal plan every week. Always have. Occasionally if something is on special, I'll buy extra to get a bit ahead, stocked up.
I do all our shopping at once, once a week. We might slip down the supermarket for bread & milk on occasion, or sour cream or something, but if I do that I try really hard to not look at anything else, lol. I buy what I need & thats it.
I buy cake mixes for dessert etc. Last week though, I indulged & bought a mudcake.... Might be hard to avoid that every week
I buy mostly home brand stuff. Shampoo & cond, toilet paper & stuff on special only.
We get 3 pays each week. One of DH's has $50 that goes into savings every week. The other 2 have $20 a week go into the same savings account. I also have a seperate savings account that I put $10 a week into, but it's only been able to stay there the last 2 weeks. Thats my christmas money.
Actually for christmas this year I'm doing Chrisco. Not much in the way of food etc. I got one thing each for the kids for under $2 a week, one alcohol pack, one thing for DH & $500 in vouchers for Kmart & Woolies/Big W. Everything else through them is a higher price, but the vouchers work out even. You get a $100 voucher & you only pay $100, no extra iykwim. The bigger the voucher is, you do start paying extra though.
I think that'ss make a huge difference to christmas this year.

[Amy_jellybean]

I have just sat down today and done our new budget up.....arrggghhhh!!!!!!!!!

We have $4201 worth of bills every month - this includes our Mortgage, Personal Loan (we consolidated some debt, credit cards etc and also borrowed some money to landscape/pave our backyard), Private heath cover, Home and contents and both lots of car insurance, Gas and our car loan.

We then put an extra $440 a month into envelopes for things such as Electricity, Water, Land Rates, Rego and credit card repayments. This helps when the 'one off' bills come in so we already have the money there ready to go.

I work on retainer and commission - My retainer covers all the bills each month except the Mortgage (which comes out of DH's wages) and my commission goes into savings each month (normally about $1000)

We put $2000 a month into savings from DH's wages, take the mortgage out of his wages each week and we also get $100 'play money' each once a week. The play money covers things like coffe's in the morning, if we want to buy our lunch, go out for dessert, a piece of clothing, getting my hair done etc.

We are then left with about $400 a week in our normal account for food shopping or any other bills that come in (mobile phone, Doctors bills etc).

We are both on good money (DH works on the mines) but its def true....the more you have the more you spend!!!

[~me~]

Yep we meal plan. Shop at the Victoria Market perhaps once every 6wks for our meat. I grocery and fruit n veg shop once a week and top up on fruit on a Monday.
We also give ourself what we like to call 'rations'. So that means we each get a certain amount per fortnight and cannot go to the bank or use our cards in that fortnight, we have to ask each other if we run out, that stopped me over spending
I get our money out on the day DH get's paid and that's it. No more going to the bank or using the card (petrol excluded).
We put money in account for our morgatge and another account for our bills. It works well for us.

[Oorki Galoorki]

money burns holes in my pocket! everything is budgetted and paid for weekly but then we dont save the left overs.. we spend it...
we have recently decided that what ever is left on a friday afternoon that isnt allocated to a bill(direct debit or bpay) has to go in to our savings account that we do not control.. even if it is $20 i still has to go or i will spend it.

[*Ali*]

I am another one who pays for everything fortnightly as I am bad at having money in the bank, I just spend it. I treat savings like I treat my bills, it gets put away at the start of the fortnight, the same day that the pay goes into the bank- I BPAY a set amount onto all of my bills fortnightly, put some money into savings and then some money into our christmas account. I only shop once a fortnight, and this has cut down my spending heaps, it limits the amount of times I go to the shop and stops that extra little thing here and there that add up. DH and I also get play money, this is money that we can spend on whatever we want, coffee, lunch, books, etc without having to justify it to the other.
I think in terms of savings you have to look at it like another bill, pay it first not try and make sure you have some left over at the end IYKWIM

[kass]

We don't budget as such, but we do use the 'play money' system. I put my entire salary into the mortgage (trying to clear it ASAP!), and then we split DH's pay (fn) as 3/5ths into a shared everyday a/c, and 1/5th each for personal stuff like clothes and haircuts. The ~$50 extra goes into savings. Anything left at the end of the f/n gets added to the savings a/c. We use the c/c for bigger bills, but pay this out of the shared each fortnight too, so far we haven't gone over the limit or had to go into our savings so it works pretty well.

[The[cookie]Doctor]

We are another that pays everything fortnightly so that we are always ahead.

The hardest part for me is I really want to save some money but never feel like we will get there... because then it comes to choices such as do i take out private health, do we get the car serviced, insure the car, go visit family interstate.... urgh the cycle is awful. I don't think we are in a position to save yet as both cars need servicing, one rego still needs to be transferred, and we have to go to nsw to pick up the other car. Once that is out of the way then we will probably be more committed to savings in general but until then I find it extremely difficult because the piddly amounts just get spent!

[SammyRo]

Those of you who mentioned Bpaying an amount onto your bills every week - how do you know how much they will be? Or do you just say put $20 on them and then if its extra pay that? (does that question even make sense )

[Faithful Mumma]

Sammy- My elec & gas is with AGL, and they do bill smoothing, they add up what they think you will use for a year, and average this out and set an amount for you...my gas is $11 a week, and my elec is $28 per week.

My phone bill is always the same, if there is any difference it is only small and I pay the difference.
With my water bill I pay $15 per week, and end up being about $5 in credit before the next bill is issued.