Hi ladies, how does everyone organise their finances? Do you have a spreadsheet for income and expenses or just in a diary? Both my partner and I get paid fortnightly from our employers and unfortunately they land on the same fortnight! We are really struggling to keep on top of bills etc as well as buying enough food/leaving enough money for food for the fortnight! Would love some ideas of how to refresh the organisation of our finances and try and get in too of things again! Thanks :)
6 Replies
I've used annual spread sheets in the past auto fill and copy and paste make them dead easy to place all the periodic payments for the year.....and any week in the red can then be rebalanced by paying them the week before etc......works really well...and you can see where and how you can handle catastrophes and edit it for things which come up or you want to plan for.
I've also always arranged the ftb on off weeks which helps balance things out and deliberately not budgeted it for anything.
I also try to automate the payment of as much as possible....spread the power bill over the period into weekly or fortnightly payments so that it doesn't hit me...I keep two accounts...one for periodic automatic payments and the other for day to day stuff. So that I know the money is there for them and I dnt accidently overspend. Iv actually been doing this since long before companies started offering it not long after bpay and electronic bank transfers were first made available and prior to that once a fortnight I stood in que at the post office with my stack of bills and my fortnightly amount written on each in black marker.
Diaries are useful but when you are trying to handle everything with lump sums the spreadsheet method is so much more effective....
The diary really is only a pay day reminder for how much of which you have to pay each pay period according to the plan devised from the spreadsheet.
Helps you track where it is all going too....
Being separated I manage my money he manages his and we use splitwise to track who owes who what....for which...he has a bad habit of asking me to pick something up and not transferring money for it while he wont pick it up unless I have transferred...and there are appliances and hardware purchased for the house itself which needs to be split.
Budgeting apps have become quite developed they are well worth looking into now....they wont necessarily help you plan but they can help you see where it is all being whittled away too between pays 5 or 6 $20 lunches seriously add up over the course of a couple of weeks...it helps you see the true impact of our habits.
Oh a tip don't forget your monthly and annual subscriptions and memberships they are easy to forget....racv insurance and plan school camps even if you haven't got the notice yet the school can usually let you know how much roughly it costs to the nearest hundred and which term it will be in.
I use a spreadsheet. I first plugged in the fixed (or reasonably easy to predict) bills, which is rent, power, water and gas (using the average over 12 months), internet, pay tv, insurances, rego, car maintenance, debt repayments, child care costs, clothing. Then divided that lump sum by 26 and added 10% (to build an emergency buffer). That amount goes into the bills account every fortnight and the bills are paid from that by direct debit. Then fuel, food etc are paid from the main account and hubby and I each get an amount to buy incidentals. We're slowly getting on top of it.
I find a book easier, but none of that works if I don't have some idea when to expect bills. So I write on a calendar at the start of year what date approximately to expect each bill. I divide each bill down so I can put aside a weekly amount in a separate account. I am not allowed to spend that money.
I know each payday(s) we have 3 paydays in a fortnight how much money needs to be put aside. We can not spend that money and it is direct transferred each payday so there is no time for someone to accidentally touch it.
We have an budgeted spending amount for clothes, haircuts, shoes etc and spending so we know what we can spend each week on ourselves but if we aren't both accountable and spend more than our set amount of course we wont be able to pay our bills. Which is why bill money is in a separate account. I know some people get rid of there cards and take out the set spending money in cash so there is no accidents.
Thanks for all the ideas :)
I have a weekly list of bills & amounts that need to be paid kept on my phone in the notes section. I delete once paid and basically copy and paste once I've deleted almost all of it (I hope that makes sense) So for eg,
Ergon $35
Optus $25
Etc
Etc
It might sound a little silly, but that's what works for me :)