What are you personal expenses? Do you spend more than your income?

For comparison, here's a chart I already had of last year's major living expenses:



Discretionary major categories are at the top and essentials are at the bottom. The category groupings comprise the following, with the more expensive sub categories being listed first:

Shared living expenses (son contributes to these) - Groceries, Amenities, House (rates, insurance, maintenance)
Our living expenses -Transport, Medical, Dogs
Discretionary Spending - Holidays, Spending, Electrical & Electronic, Presents
Improvements - House Projects, Self Education
Helping Others - Family Assistance, Donations

If I had to draw the line where essential changes to discretionary, it's around the $20K mark. Fortunately, I have the means to spend much more than I really need to be sheltered, fed, hydrated and safe, but I do so in the knowledge that the extra is just gravy. Where you draw that line can either free or imprison you.

 

Have never really been spending beyond my means - the main trick I use is put aside a set amount to savings (now offset) automatically and spend the rest (I worked out how much approx. I need to survive plus a bit of luxury). No card access to the savings/ offset.

Whenever I have a salary increase, I increase the % of money put aside. If my offset balance have not gone lower from last month then I'm on the ok side

$17K on clothes is shocking! What are you buying exactly?

 

Wondering wouldn't that be too risky leaving no contingency funds in the long run in case of any mishaps or emergencies? ....... Specially with the next increase in interest rates for IPs might be somehwere just around the corner?

 

Very interesting ... Well done Y Man at that crunch time!

PS: If your story thread on Somersoft is still there in the archive, would like to read it.

 

I'll second the recommendation to check out Mr Money Mustache.

I tracked every single cent I spent for well over a year.

It was a very valuable exercise.

 

I earn and spend a fair bit more than this. My credit card alone is 8-10k a month. Thanks for the kick in the ass - I must delve into it and see where it is all going. I am certainly NOT living the high life. I drive a 13 year old car, wear 7 year old clothes, and spend near nothing on entertainment. A lot goes on insurance.. but I really can't account for it all except for international travel for a family of 4.

Would you care to share the tracker calculator? Happy to share my results...

 

Learning to cook well and enjoy good food can save you money and seriously turn you off fancy restaurants. I do a lot of fine dining as part of my job, but now if I have to eat out I like to find cheap ethnic restaurants and work out how to create the recipe at home.

Oh boy it's hard to be frugal. The only way is to write down everything you spend in a year. Sobering.

 

Sorry guys but i have been in a conference all day so not much of a chance to respond but want to say thanks for the wake to reality that i needed to change.

Anyways i wasn't too keen on sharing the financial details but will upload for a little while to give the guys a chance to review the actual numbers.

I think there is pretty broad consensus that it is a big WTF!

Anyway take a look at the numbers and interested in some additional grilling!

Note: We don't pay any credit card interest as we methodically pay down our balance every month. But i think the credit card is the problem, as we pay for everything on it and it loses reality. So will likely reduce that down to a couple thousand limit to make it painful when we hit the limit (currently 20k limit)

 

Our idea of fine dining is the the yum cha, the local sports club and the Thai/Vietnamese restaurants in Canley Heights, Cabramatte.

Our weekly eating out roughly equates to $60/week including lunches etc.

The big one is Grocery which comprises Costco, Aldi, Coles. It doesn't help that we live right next to Aldi so a quick trip to get Pizza can cost 50$+ if we wander the aisles searching for what we don't need. We also do lots of BBQs , dinners for friends.

But yes writing it all down will be the thing that we need to do.. listening to "Millionaire next door" really woke me up about Hyper consumption.. and i think we fall into that category.

Even though not on luxury goods we make up for it on every day things that we justify as 'essentials' when in fact they are not.

 

IPs are currently valued at $1.22M, outstanding balance is $1.02M, gross full year rent ~$52k (IP2 purchased in Dec-2014)
PPOR valued at $780k, outstanding balance $360k

 

%s made it difficult for folks to get real context it is actually $7k which i still consider high.

We are considering doing the trick you mention about putting money aside as well. How often do you monitor / control? Or has this fixed it for you

 

Working off the %s are a little screwy. The clothing cost is actually 7k annual, which is still large.

Wasn't really keen on sharing the detail line item $$ but have caved and replied with it in a separate post if you want to take a look.

 

Something is not right.......as others have point out....some of that discretionary income is way over the top...you have $44k leaving your hands...did you know that is equivalent to a deposit for a house in Brissie or could be used to service over $1m in debt?

Happy to discuss when we catch up...

 

Yes, that is a lot of money.
I guess it seems normal when you're doing it, but hopefully you get to a point where you are conscious of all of the money going out.

 

Is it just me or does this look like a big database/tracking system for someone.
I certainly dont want some 3rd party knowing my spending habits, locations and which bank the funds come from and what the balances are.
Plus the push notifications , tracking etc will cost on your mobile plan yes?



"Highlights of Pocketbook - Budget Planner, Money & Expense Manager

1. Discover your spending across all your bank accounts - See where your money is going. Sync all your bank transactions with the app into a single view in seconds. Bank feeds available for Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ, NAB, St George, Bankwest and more!

2. Know exactly where & how you spent – Use mobile photos & geo-location to input cash transactions like coffee and beer, or add additional details like photo receipts, bills & invoices to your transactions.

3. No more missing bills & late-fees - All your bills automatically detected and in the one place. Get notified when they are coming up and if you have enough money to cover.

4. Organise your personal finance & budget for future – Auto-categorisation and tagging putting you back in control of finances. Safely Spend helps you limit your weekly or monthly spend, so you can budget without even thinking. (Just what the world needs, more non-thinkers)

5. Simplify your life - Alerts via push notifications through the app, and exactly when you need them to stay in control. Get peace of mind that things are on track, whether it's your money saving goals or just making sure bills are paid on time."


At least when the machines rise up they will know where you'll be.

 

Not just you, I would stay well clear of these 3rd party apps that access your financial data from multiple institutions via "feeds" (/screen scraping or other methods of dubious security).