Write about your approach to budgeting.

My approach to budgeting?

Honestly, I don’t even know where to start! I mean don’t we all want to unlock the secret to the perfect budget? I have had different approaches over the years. And while all have yielded some sort of success, I never seem to be able to stick to one approach. It is always evolving.

But I guess it needs to be? The world is forever evolving right!

I’m an optimistic budgeter.

I love spread sheets, I mean who doesnt?

I can spend hours making spreadsheets. Inputting money in and money out and then just playing around with the what ifs.

At the start of the pay week, I input the amount paid in at the top of the column. Then I add in all of the expenditures for the week and ensure I add in what I will save for the week. At the very bottom of this table is an amount left box.

I am always optimistic that the amount left it what I will actually have left at the end of the week. (FACT – This is yet to be the case)

But I am optimistic that one day I will crack the code!

Have you come here for some tips??

We are all looking for ideas on how to budget and save right. I live in Australia and in the last few months the cost of living is skyrocketing! I wish I had all of the answers, the best I can do though is tell you what I am working on now.

No way at all am I a financial advisor. I’m just a country girl trying my best to save and provide for my family.

• Concentrate on paying off one debt at a time. We currently have car repayments, house repayments and credit cards. We are currently paying minimum repayments on all. Except for one. We are paying off extra when we can on one of the credit cards. Once that one is paid off, it will be closed and we start paying a little extra on the next. The idea is to minimise debt, so that in the long run we are not paying our wage to repayments.
• Ensure we are always paying ourselves. Every week I ensure I add something into a savings account. When I work out our weekly budget, I work out a reasonable amount to add into a savings account, and I pay that first! That is key – pay yourself first!
• Save for what you want. We fell into a really bad habit of buying want items on those buy now pay later schemes. It always seemed like a great idea at the time until you realise that those repayments really screw your weekly budget up. This is one area I am forever working on because I always fall back into bad habits.
• Check in with your budget throughout the week/fortnight. I set my budget up as a working budget for the week. Each night I change the amount at the top column to what is currently in the bank account and then ensure the amounts which have been paid already have been made $0. I can then see how we are tracking. Is the amount at the remainder of the week going up or down? Do we need to make some savings for the week?
• Do a main food shop. I would always set a daily food budget and I thought this was working really weel! But I found that we would always buy extra things we didn’t actually need each shopping trip. Hello sneaky chocolate bars! We now do one big shop and only go back if we forget something. This is only new so I will let you know how it goes.

Like I said before I am not and do not pretend to be a financial advisor, but this is my current approach on budgeting. I am sure it will change again but for now this is it.

I would love to know your approach. Any hints or tips you might have? Maybe you have the elusive key to code of budgeting? anyways let me know in the comments below.

Thanks for taking the time out to read.

Maggie xx