Living Expenses

For 2015, my wife and I spent $1700 per month on essential living expenses (transport, amenities, rates, house maintenance, car/house insurance, medical/dental, no mortgage). We spent $750 per month on discretionary spending, $1K a month on holidays, $500 a month upgrading the house and $250 a month helping others. The grand total monthly spend was $4200,or just over $50K for the year, to live (IMO) very comfortably.

 

I am still an India based employee. A permanent resident has to take a mandatory insurance for which i opted a basic corporate plan at 170 aud per month.

Then i have a travel insurance which costs me 30 aud per person per month. Comes to 90 aud per month. The advantage is everything except cosmetic treatment is covered. Dental, physiotherapy, podiatry, eye checkup, glasses etc. Etc.

Then my mom stays with us for nearly 8 months in a year and i had to take a permanent insurance for her as well which is 90 aud.

 

Nowhere near that amount for us, we could literally go on a cruise a month and still pay everything from that amount.

Food would be the most.

 

I'm a budget nerd. This is my budget which is ~ $3300/mth - it's just me and 2 fur kids (cats). Does not allow for general spending money/gifts etc. I've got a very detailed spreadsheet I use so I know when my big expenses are and I allocate all my expenses over the year - hence knowing my expenses down to the cent. If only I spent as much time sticking to my budget as I do designing it

Interest: $1400.50/mth
Principal: $552.11/mth
Groceries: $303/mth
Private Health: $166.08/mth
Petrol: $130/mth
Mobile: $94.99/mth
Rates: $94.25/mth
Home Insurance: $92.08/mth
Internet: $90/mth
Water: $86.67/mth
Gas: $56.33/mth
Car Service: $55.92/mth
Car Rego: $55.84/mth
Gym: $42.14/mth
Car insurance: $34.67/mth
Electricity: $34.67/mth
RACQ: $7.17/mth

 

I'd be around $7-8k a month as I sure I have left stuff out of my list. I have never budgeted personal expenses in my life. Never be able to stick to it. With 2 kids (another on the way) a dog a pregnant wife etc always something unexpected to pay.

A lot of these expenses are wholly it in part run through my Pty Ltd.

$2700 rent
$220 health ins
$200 car ins's
$1100 two car reps
$1500 groceries
$600 take away /dining
$500 child care
$100 primary school
$50 donations
$200 fuel
$200 utilities
$200 mobile phone bills

 

Absolutely no idea, never worked it out.
For a couple with one child in primary school, I'd guess we'd be close to 20k all up.
That includes monthly PPOR loan payments.

 

20k a month??

 

Electrcity $34 a month !!!! Very cheap ?
Grocery 303 a month ?
Do you write a " actual" column and a " budget" column ?

 

Living expenses for me and partner excluding IPs repayments.

Food $400 per month
Alcohol $200 per month
Holidays $5k-$10k per annum

Work covers the rest.
Live and work in Aboriginal Communities.

 

What work do you? Are you based in each community or travel around?
Looking at doing similar later this year

 

Supermarket Manager, was on the relief team last 4 yrs flying around relieving Managers whilst they take their holidays (7weeks a yr) Have just decided to settle down in our own store close to a Mining town for luxuries.
What line of work you considering?

 

I honestly never think about it. I know guys at work who do budget vs actual analysis of their weekly cash flow which I respect, but I couldn't be arsed tracking how much I spend on coffee etc a week.

It's not that we have that much disposable income, its just that my primary focus is on business/investment income and expenditure, because I know that is what will cause me issues if I can't control cash flow to meet outgoings. Compared to that, our own living expenses are rats and mice.

If the business/investment cash flow falls into place, then I don't have to worry about the other stuff. I have an entry on my monthly cash flow for 5k for personal expenses, which probably contains a 15-20% buffer over actual.

I'm gonna have a look now and see if my cash flow needs updating

 

Damn, I feel really bad reading this thread as I am hitting close to $12k to 13k a month.
We have a family of 4 ( 2 adults + 2 kids + a dog).

Mortgages $2,900.00 (home only exclude IPs)
Travel $2,587.25
Child/Dependent Expenses $1,735.00
Home Maintenance $1,710.10
Utilities $1,080.71
ATM/Cash Withdrawals $880.00
Healthcare/Medical $690.88
Groceries $525.37
Restaurants/Dining $372.95
Home Improvement $121.63
Clothing/Shoes $92.82
Other Categories $232.43
Total $12,929.14

I use Anzmoneymanager and its fantastic as it auto-connects to your bank acc and categories every single transaction and keeps a record of it for as long as you want. Most banks only hold 3 months of data these days.

This is terrible...

 

Some of your items are extremely low and the other are very high?

 

PPOR loan repayments is over 10k.
Counting all other costs like occasional holidays, training fees for us and child, buying something once in a while, money is easy to spend.

 

Hehe, I remember doing that before.
Or magazines, just for the one article.
I even get a magazine delivered now, fancy!

 

ok....I feel much better now!

 

Why is it terrible?
Unless you are spending more than you can afford and can't control it.
I think Bran's spending budget is awesome, something to work up to.

 

Hi @dboy_tomato

I'm really interested to hear more about some of your items, if you are interested in sharing?

Seems like a lot for just public transport... does this figure include the cost of running a car, or flights or other ?

I'm interested to know whether you are fire-fighting maintenance issues, or actually renovating? $1700 a month is a lot of fire-fighting. Maybe you have a cleaner and a gardener that is contributing to this expense?

This is quite a bit... is it just Electricity+Water+Gas or does it include Phone+Internet?

Could be double-counting? If this money was spent on say dining out, it could already have been counted under another category?

 

4K a month 2 adults excluding mortgage repayments and we live very comfortably. To put it in perspective an aged couple on the pension receive 2.4k a month. We could easily tighten our expenses though because a lot of it is just disposable income spending. E.g. We usually eat out at a restaurant at least once a week. We also go out drinking on the weekends with friends. That is easily 1k a month we could easily save. Even if we reduced it to once a fortnight that’s still a $500 saving per month.