Paying back our debt means making some changes...

So here we are, Monday February 16th. Time for some change

We’re going to have an allowance.

First, to really understand our spending and where our money goes, I’ve put together a spreadsheet with every single cost I can think of that we incur within a twelve month period. There’s a lot of stuff there!!! Everything from weekly petrol, fortnightly house repayments, my monthly car repayments, our quarterly rates and water bills, annual school fees and car rego/insurance… all of it…

This is the list:

Annual stuff:
Car Rego
Footy annual fee
Fishing license
School Fees
Professional Association fees
Pet injections
Car Maintenance

Monthly costs:
House
Internet & phone
My Mobile
BFs Mobile
Life Insurance (BF)
Life Insurance (Me)
Car repayments
Car Insurance
Charity giving
House Insurance
Health Insurance
Caravan Insurance
Dog Food
Cat food
Pet worming

Quarterly costs:
Rates
Gas bill
Electricity bill
Water
Caravan park Fees
My Pill
Haircuts

Weekly costs:
Petrol
Groceries

The total is $66,320 a year.

WOW. We’re expensive people. This doesn’t include things like clothes, take away, eating out and movies. Everything else, the little luxuries and “wants”, would have to come out of our allowance. For example, we might buy a slab of beer, but it’s totally a “want’ and not a “need” so it’ll have to come out of our allowance. (Note: work clothes are different – but BF has subsidised uniforms. I will have to go back to my list and include work clothes costs, and maybe a quarterly allowance for other clothing.)

Last year, I tried to get more organised and gave us a rough allowance, of $150 a week EACH. I did it because I felt BF was, well, wasting money. But $150, that’s pretty huge. And we still blew it most weeks. This year I’m aiming to be more stringent. So this time, it will be $150 a week for BOTH of us. I read an entry on a PF blog that said “if you have credit card debt, you shouldn’t be eating at restaurants” and it was like a light bulb went off. Eating at restaurants was one of the biggest killers on our credit cards. And is long weekends away - $260 here on accommodation, $100 on a restaurant, $140 on a hire car, $100 on another restaurant. THIS HAS TO STOP! I know it’s not brain surgery, and I’ve always known eating out is a massive waste of money but it took reading it on someone else’s PF to realise that it doesn’t make sense to have those ultra-luxurious things when we’re drowning in debt!

Next on my list…. Cutting up credit cards!