Weekly Living expenses

[lisaandshaun]

Hi,

I am trying to work out why a friend of mine has a weekly living expense totalling $850. this includes food for three (2 adults and one 12mth old), nappies, money put aside for electricity, water and gas, phone and internet and morgage?

Ours only comes to $450 and our little girl is in cloth nappies so i guess we save a little on that.

So my question is: how much does your weekly living expense come to?

[Jaycee]

Does it include rent or mortgage? Our living expenses per month including mortgage varies from 4 to 5k

[BrightSparkles]

hmm.... maybe about $800/$1000. Thats rent, nappies, money for elec/gas/phone/net/c-card and loan payments, water.

[lisaandshaun]

yeah including rent/morgage.

[The[cookie]Doctor]

$750-$800 including rent, money on bills, food, fuel, car payment, cc payment... would hate to factor childcare into that

(and it would be close to another $200 if we had a mortgage over renting)

[AnyDream]

Well I don't know how you pay all that with $450?! Our mortgage (small house, small loan) is $250 and we budget $200 for all the bills, electricity, gas, cars rego, water, rates, insurances, etc. Food another $200 at least, petrol $65 and this doesn't include things like health insurance or child care fees, school expenses, or activities for the kids like sports etc. Medical expenses on top of all that. I would *love* to know how you get by with $450 per week!

[lisaandshaun]

Opps sorry guys typo, should read $540 not $450

[GlitterMum]

wow I wish my weekly expenses were like some of yours lol
Ours is $1100 a week with $600 going on mtg and $60 private health. We dont have any other loans
Maybe I should review it a bit closer xx

[~clover~]

Wow. I have more kids than you, but my rent & food alone come to over $400 every week!
Then with DH's job being so far away & us only having a big car, another $150 - $200 a week petrol.
Do either of them smoke? There's a huge bill right there, trust me!
We were living off about $600 a week earlier this year & we weren't surviving. Getting further & further behind every week.
Its good now we can catch up & are even getting some savings behind us.

I added up a friends weekly expendature, with car payments etc & they needed about $700 a week before they could even buy food & that was with only one child & with no phone, power, net etc included. Just rent, car payments & other loans.

[Mum2Romone]

Currently

$400 perwk RENT
$50 petrol
$120 food
$50 cigarettes
$50 PER wk 4 Bills
$50 miSC crap lol

$30 MONTh nappies
$30 clothes/ night out?

In future it will be (moving in two weeks)

$390 pwk RENT
$10 pw petrol (will be walking everywhere)
$100 food
$50 Bills
$200 Savings pw hopefully atleast ....

[The[cookie]Doctor]

We were living off about $600 a week earlier this year & we weren't surviving. Getting further & further behind every week.

Thgat's us now trying to catch up from before... plus we had a wedding and moved interstate when we couldn't really afford it. We are earning more than enough now but all the residual is paying off elsewhere!!!

[Sopdet]

Mortgage, loans, bills (insurance, gas, electricity, internet, mobile phone, rates etc) alone come to $1300 a fortnight here, that is before you factor in food, going out etc. Oh I'm looking forward to the end of the year when the situation changes.

[deletedit]

According to my spreadsheet (which is pre-baby so I'm not factoring newborn nappies in - but DD#2 is only wearing 1 nappy a day these days so probably no change anyway) we spend $502 a week lol - and that includes TWO mortages! I'm still waiting for my first set of council rates and water bill for our new block of land though, so I don't have those in there either.

Problem is Centrelink has an 'error' in their system and for me + 3 kids and very low other income I'm getting paid $125 a week. They're supposed to be paying me about $800 a week. I'm running out of reserves on my CC while I'm waiting for them to get around to actually paying me. Grrrrr. Living off rent and child support just feels wrong ...

[Nai]

Their mortgage may be higher than what you are paying - everyone's is different as it will depend on how much they had to borrow. Their utilities will be different too depending on how energy efficient their house is and what type of heating/hot water system they have. It also depend on their providers for internet and mobile and what plans they are on. Another difference could be where they shop and the sort of food they eat, the type of nappies etc they use. All of these things can make a huge difference to your spend.

FWIW our weekly spend is about = $1600 for a family of 4 which includes mortgage, childcare, health ins, food, utilities, phone, internet, savings, rates, insurance, rego, spending money, petrol, public transport, gifts, dog food, education savings plan etc.