View Full Version : Ive started my savings plan!
Hello all,
After such a tough month of trying to save money while DH doesnt like the idea of it, this month will be different.
In my previous posts, last month, we spent ALL $10 000 of his pay! If theres money in the account i would spend it. And im an impulse shopper so that doesnt help.
But this month, ive started to save. Ive put aside $4000 into a savings account and will only touch it if desperate. I shopped at woolies yesterday and bought 4 boxes of nappies for $29.97ea, and 4 cans of Karicare which were also on sale. These will last me a month so i wont need to buy any during the month like ive been doing before.
So all i need to spend is on groceries and i will budget myself to $400 a wk. Is that the average? Im not sure but thats what im budgeting myself for. And im NOT going to hit the shops and buy stupid things like clothes for the girls when they have more than enough. Im just addicted to the sales, so im NOT going anywhere near them.
DH still gets $1000/month for his spending. Lunch/train etc. Let hope this works out.
thanks for all the inspiration to help me save!
If you don't mind me asking, what does your husband do for a living? I'd be thrilled to pieces if my dp brought home a salary like that!
rynosmum
27-01-2006, 14:09
Hi Tpham,
We have a family of three and spend maybe $140 per week on groceries plus maybe going out for brekky on the weekend.
You seem to have quite a bit of disposable income so perhaps there are some other ways to save as well, unless you have mortgage or similar commitments ?
Hubby has $1000 per month to spend on himself ? :eek: My DH is a compulsive spender and I don't think he'd go anywhere near that much.
Make the most of DH's income now - you could be saving a stack of it.
Chickadee
27-01-2006, 14:10
Congrats on starting your savings!
Just to compare your grocery budget, we are a family of 2 adults and a toddler and I probably spend around $200 a week on groceries plus one night of take out so all up $230 per week. The less pre-prepared food I buy the cheaper my bill.
I dont' have to buy formula anymore and diapers only every other week, so yours would be a bit more but $400 is pretty generous especially if your partner's allowance covers his lunches.
Peaceangels
27-01-2006, 14:17
If you are able to save some money and want to curb your spending ways, then maybe have some $$ taken out as soon as the paycheck is received and put it into a fixed term account (one you can't withdraw on straight away).
Then budget your weekly groceries, bills etc on the amount that is left.
sugar n spice
27-01-2006, 14:25
Wow $400 a wk on groceries. I budget $400 a fortnight for food though it is prob more like $500 fortnight. Well your dh sure has a good income im sure i could even save with an income like that. good on ya for starting a saving plan as you have the money to make things happen. Wish we had that sort of income and i thought ours was pretty good.:(
thanks i feel like i have achieved something already by starting a spreadsheet of all my spending. Like today, i spent $16 at woolies because i had to buy batteries and panadol and some chicken.
DH is in IT and is a programmer and he also got a payrise so thats why im making the most of his income lol ( i really made the most of it last month!)
We got a mortgage as well so i have to pay $2000/month towards that. We dont have any credit cards or car loans so basically all we pay is the usual bills and our homeloan. The rest is for groceries, maybe some household items, but i want to be able to save as much as i can!
I swear the more money, the more you spend and i just proven that last month, so this time, im going to be very careful.
Shelly68
27-01-2006, 15:46
To be honest I'd be slamming any extra savings I could on your mortgage.
Work out the interest your paying, ie 6.5% (for example)
You wouldn't earn that on any everyday savings.
See if your mortgage has a re-draw facility so that you can redraw a little bit in the event of an emergency.
That's just what I'd do though if I had that amount of spare income each month.
We live on about 1/5th of that and manage okay with 2 kids.
Rainbowbrite
27-01-2006, 15:48
WOW $10,000 a month :eek: Mine is lucky to bring home $2,000.
RB
Hi tpham
Good for you (I also did that budget I was talking about last time - isn't it great that we all encourage each other to be better / more disciplined :D )
I think that we spend about $220 on groceries each week (2 adults / 2 kids - 1 in nappies), although we get take away for dinner once a week and we might buy a lunch out too. Hope this helps.
I think it is a really empowering thing to know EXACTLY what you're money is going on, then you can control it.
Cheers
My DP is in IT too, but on the "bottom rung" of the ladder so to speak. It's taking forever to earn all the little bits of paper he needs to prove to employers that he actually knows what he is doing :rolleyes: In the meantime, we're doing what we can on our modest salaries. My eyes just get huge when I see figures like the above, and it's sometimes hard to keep reminding yourself that it's possible to save and pay off debt and buy a house etc on any salary, you just need discipline.
I say stuff the discipline and show me the money LOL!
To be honest I'd be slamming any extra savings I could on your mortgage.
Work out the interest your paying, ie 6.5% (for example)
You wouldn't earn that on any everyday savings.
See if your mortgage has a re-draw facility so that you can redraw a little bit in the event of an emergency.
That's just what I'd do though if I had that amount of spare income each month.
We live on about 1/5th of that and manage okay with 2 kids.
Im looking into changing our home loan so we can put extra money on top and take it out if we need to? im not sure how to go about it. If we can do that, it would be great because it means we can pay off our homeloan in 5 yrs! cross my fingers :)
Hi tpham
Depends on your bank (and you can always change).
Some banks will not let you pay extra into a fixed rate mortgage (but some will). More banks let you pay extra into a variable rate home loan (but not all do)
Others provide a full offset account (this is what our bank does). If you have $1000 in that account it is like you had paid that off your loan (for the purpose of calculating your interest on your loan). You can draw money back from that account, because in every way, it is a normal savings acount. If you put your pay in there, everyday that it sits there saves you money in interest. We put everything possible on a credit card, leaving the money in there as long as possible and then pay the CC in full every month. This means that there can be extra thousands of dollars sitting in that account for 30 days saving you interest over that time.
Cheers
My DP is in IT too, but on the "bottom rung" of the ladder so to speak. It's taking forever to earn all the little bits of paper he needs to prove to employers that he actually knows what he is doing :rolleyes: In the meantime, we're doing what we can on our modest salaries. My eyes just get huge when I see figures like the above, and it's sometimes hard to keep reminding yourself that it's possible to save and pay off debt and buy a house etc on any salary, you just need discipline.
I say stuff the discipline and show me the money LOL!
My DH had to work hard to get where he is and it took him awhile as well. We use to just spend everything when we had money coming in and not even worry about saving. Now we got mortgage, 2 girls (3 and 3months) so we have to know how much is coming in and out and how much we can save. Your DH will get there too, its just a matter of time, thats all. We were in such bad debt before like $12000 on our credit card, lucky we were able to pay that off and cut up our cards. Now we never buy anything on finance or credit because we never remember to pay it.
I am happy to have found this site and be able to get inspiration from others and now i know how to discipline myself! I havent gone to westfields for a wk already!!!! I used to go everyday! thats so bad hah?
DP scored a better job and a $2k payrise today :D *weee*
DP scored a better job and a $2k payrise today :D *weee*
Congrats!!! im so happy for the both of you. Just when you thought it wouldnt happen hey?
jembelina
29-01-2006, 07:39
keep reminding yourself that it's possible to save and pay off debt and buy a house etc on any salary, you just need discipline.
Hmmmm......I wish!! You can only make what you have stretch so far!!
Hmmmm......I wish!! You can only make what you have stretch so far!!
Honesty, there is a book called Your Money: Starting Out and Starting Over by Anita Bell. I got it from Kmart for about $10. It is FANTASTIC and it details how you can achieve so much through clever budgeting. I highly recommend it, she has several case studies of different families with low incomes and shows how with the right budget, they can save for a house etc.
there is a book called Your Money: Starting Out and Starting Over by Anita Bell.
She also wrote a book How to pay off your mortgage in five years it had some good ideas in it but basically suggested you have no life and live like a hermit.
onabreak
29-01-2006, 12:48
I am always at my husband about saving money. I have been taught from a very young age to save money. I have an ING account where I have money come out of my savings account every week and go into this account, you get interest monthly and you can only gain access to it via the internet. If you do this you don't even realise that the money has come out and you won't miss it.
Hubby and I run our own business and are looking at opening new bank accounts because the bank we are with now are not very good. I am going to make him open a special savings account and hopefully be able to put atleast $2000 in there every week. So when it comes to the off season with his job we will have plenty of money to live on. We earn quite alot aweek but that does go into paying 5 employes, insurance, rego's etc.
The best way to save money is to be disiplined and stick to it. We have been able to save enough money and buy 5 cars, we owe nothing on them. The way my husband looks at it is an investment/superannuation for us, if anything happens we can sell them and be able to live.
ThomasMum
30-01-2006, 14:26
We dont have any credit cards or car loans so basically all we pay is the usual bills and our homeloan. The rest is for groceries, maybe some household items, but i want to be able to save as much as i can!
I swear the more money, the more you spend and i just proven that last month, so this time, im going to be very careful.
Hiya tpham, congrats and good luck for doing the right things!
I still hold my belief that its not entirely true about the more money the more you spent. Based on my experience, its all about dicipline :)
I still think that you should have at least one credit card, esp. with that amount money you spent. I know they are evil sometimes, but if you are good and make sure you pay them in full each month (and this shouldn’t be any problem because your DH earns alright there). Think of how many points you can get from them!
We have managed to upgrade our international flights from economy to business class many times thanks to our credit cards points.
As far as the budgeting concerns, I don’t ever budget my spending, I know my limit though so that’s what make it easier. With mortgages, insurance et al we spent around $ 7500/monthly which left us with enough saving, and that’s just come from my DH's salary btw. (I earn about 35K/part time which is 1/7th of my DH’s salary, pathetic innit? But hey at least I don’t have to ask money from my DH! :))
And if you are with the NAB like us, you should open an iSaver account for your $4000 that way its not only sits around doing nothing! It’s like ING but the difference is you can transfer the money almost immediately unlike ING.
Hire a financial planner thats a MUST (well for us anyway)
Good luck once again, feel free to PM me if you need to ask me any qs.
TM
She also wrote a book How to pay off your mortgage in five years it had some good ideas in it but basically suggested you have no life and live like a hermit.
Yes we got this book and its sitting on our shelf collecting dust because if you follow her plan to pay it off in 5yrs.....you basically have NO life! seriously how could you do that? You need to enjoy life as well, sometimes it could just be cut short and you never know what would happen.
Ive got friends who are obsessed with saving money to the point that when they invited us over for a BBQ, DH came home that night and threw up everything because he had food poisoining. Found out that they had bought food from woolies that were on special, you know the ones they are about to get rid of so they can sell it quicker and its more cheaper? And we also found out that the meat has expired and the potato salad as well. You CANNOT do that and try and save money at the same time. Thats just ridiculous. Everytime we invite them over for dinner, its always something fancy!
I think you just need to be wise about it. Save money but also know how to enjoy it! thats what i think and it works for us.
Oh yes we are with NAB and i already have a savings account with them. Not sure what kind but i will check tomorrow!
thanks for the advice!
Ive got friends who are obsessed with saving money to the point that when they invited us over for a BBQ, DH came home that night and threw up everything because he had food poisoining. Found out that they had bought food from woolies that were on special, you know the ones they are about to get rid of so they can sell it quicker and its more cheaper? And we also found out that the meat has expired and the potato salad as well. You CANNOT do that and try and save money at the same time. Thats just ridiculous. Everytime we invite them over for dinner, its always something fancy!
I think you just need to be wise about it. Save money but also know how to enjoy it! thats what i think and it works for us.
Hey, I buy meat on special! You just need to store it in the freezer or cook it that day. There's no harm in it. Unless it's past expiry, in which case it's actually illegal to sell it. I don't know about fresh salads though...
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with being thrifty. Not all rich people earned a high salary, they were careful with what little money they had and saved and invested wisely... I'm not advocating total misership, but affluenza is something that afflicts a large chunk of society and I think it's making people more miserable than being a tightwad ever could.
Hey, I buy meat on special! You just need to store it in the freezer or cook it that day. There's no harm in it. Unless it's past expiry, in which case it's actually illegal to sell it. I don't know about fresh salads though...
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with being thrifty. Not all rich people earned a high salary, they were careful with what little money they had and saved and invested wisely... I'm not advocating total misership, but affluenza is something that afflicts a large chunk of society and I think it's making people more miserable than being a tightwad ever could.
Yeh i buy meat on special too, but i eat it that day, not past expiry. My friend bought it before it expired but decided to eat it after it expired......
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