Weekly budget / spending money?

Just wondering how much people live off week to week? I don't mean for bills, mortgages etc, I'm just talking about general spending money.

So things such as

• Petrol
• entertainment
• food
• groceries

Items, which for me, are discretionary spending part of a weekly budget.

This should be individual, so split the amount if you're a couple.

How frugal or otherwise is this community?

 

Sorry but I see petrol to get to work and food as essentials, not discretionary.

 

Yeh, very true. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that these costs aren't fixed and can change from week to week depending on how much food you eat, how far you drive etc.

So I don't know how others do it but I basically provide myself a fixed amount of $300 to cover the above expenses. I was wondering if anyone does the same, and if they do how much they spend a week.

 

Lots of people do a budget for themselves. End of story.

I found it very confronting when I started to do a monthly budget vs actual..
I then was able to see where I was failing in my assumptions.

Recommend doing this.

 

I live by my budget. Not to say that I'm not flexible occasionally - life's too short, right - but I've followed a household budget for years. It helps me sleep better at night.

 

I need about tre fiddy

 

I'm not going to give you three fiddy you Loch Ness monster!

 

I don't do a budget but guess around $400pw. But that doesn't cover one-off discretionary spending. eg a couple of holidays a year may add $400 pw to this figure.

 

Is it easy to use?

Every couple months I manually go through downloaded statements (excel)and track where every expense goes

 

About $180 on groceries - more if it a stupid busy week at work for us both then sometimes quickness wins over. Try and keep the freezer stocked to avoid this. At the moment, most of that budget seems to go on Kale and avocado

$80 a week on petrol, once again, depending on amount of work travel done. Some weeks it's $5.

$40 for Saturday breakfast.

$100 or so for money that apparently just evaporates through becoming silver and gold coins which go down back of sofa/get stuck in aldi trolleys etc

Rest on rent, bills, savings, loan repayments etc.

 

The one we use is YNAB (you need a budget) - picked it up on a steam sale. Monthly budget set on the PC and then clud syncs to as many devices as we like. Then you track spending as you do it using the app.
Pretty easy and quick.
Then I just spend an hour a fortnight/month doing any reconciliation.
As for discretionary spend - we get $20 a month... (everything else is already allocated e.g clothing, food, investments, etc )

 

Xero is another great option for this, can set up a live bank feed linked to your accounts and then you just allocate everything (can set rules for recurring transactions to save a lot of time). You can even set budgets and actuals for comparison through it. Very powerful cloud based software.

On the discretionary... I've included my savings figure in the total because technically it's a discretionary amount even if it goes out of my main account before I have a chance to spend it! It goes into a progress saver so I have a genuine disincentive to touch it (I find this works very well myself for those struggling to save) and I cut up the card just to make sure so I have to login to internet banking to touch it giving extra time to cool the impulse jets thoroughly.

Other than that I overspend on food and my car is excessive compared to what I could get and those are by far and away my biggest discretionary expenditures alongside golf, which given how bad I am is by far my biggest waste of money

 

For me it depends.

I have a total annual expense of about $60k.
When I am at work I take about $300 with me, and usually come back with around $200 (depending on if I win or lose at my weekly poker games ). So somewhere around $25/week.

When Im off work I average about $10,000/month.

I use Pocketbook. It is a simplified and free version of xero for personal expenses. It ok to look at your expenses, but the budgeting tool and tracking against budget sucks (well, at least I havent been able to set it up to work well).

Blacky

 

I

I've just been doing it manually and is tedious, I never really looked into software. Sounds you like solved one of my many problems!
So it imports as a CSV data and then auto some of the regular payments, then you just click to sort the rest into categories?

 

Personally, I really don't see a need for a budget. Earning and spending is bound to change over a period of time. I don't see the need to track it - other than to look back at expense categories and have a giggle. I have been on earning and saving mode since I was 14. So may be I am just wired this way. If you spend on only what is necessary, what is the need of budgeting ? If you need $50 worth of fuel, and the comforts of driving - you will spend it. If there is a need to eat out, you will. I never understood the need for saying - I can only spend 40 bucks on fuel this week - so the rest of the days, I will walk to work. Just not worth it. Or I am hungry tonight but too tired to cook food - but since I haven't budgeted to buy take-away I will not eat outside and go to bed hungry. I simply don't see the point.

Growing up, I had a cousin who would enter into his pocket book every coin he spent. I always found him whinging and complaining every month end. I can understand if one of the partners is a compulsive spender buying shoes or wallets every day - may be then strict budgets should be in place

 

Hello All,

My wife and I are pretty good savers as we do not have a mortgage as PPOR has been paid off. Our investments are covered by the rent so no issue there.. For us its just generally bills and maybe once every couple of months will splurge on some new clothes etc.

 

No budget here, never had one.
I'd like to spend more, but years and years of delayed gratification makes it hard to buy stuff I don't need....
Although if I find something I really like, the price tag won't stop me buying it.

 

If any of your are CBA customers and want to track your expenses, their "My Spend" section in internet banking is excellent. It takes a guess at the cost category but you can create custom categories, best part is it learns so if you update a merchant to a new category every time you spend with them it auto assigns. It also works across credit cards and savings accounts .

Best part is it is free!

Re budget personally I've always struggled with setting budgets, I find the "pay my self first" method much easier, all my commitments go out when I get paid including forced savings of 15% of my monthly income, whatever is left each month I can spend if I want to.