Budgeting Tips From You

A few weeks ago I asked you all for some tips on how you handle your household finances and what you do to cheap your expenses down.

This is what you had to say:

Michelle- We budget for food and spending money and then withdraw the cash for it. Then we know exactly how much we have spent. It has worked so far. 

Melissa @ Precious Little Poppets - We have a budget that I update quarterly. When I am doing the budget, I work out how much we need for variable bills (gas, electricity etc) and add 10% to it.  But the best tip I have is to review your insurance annually. I have just done this and changed to a new company because we can save ourselves $1000 this year, on insurance alone. 

Lauren- I keep an 'Ebay box' in my wardrobe and whenever I see something that has not been played with for a long period of time, it goes in. Same for clothing DVD's etc.  I don't tell the girls though, I quickly learnt that if I mentioned it might go because it's not being played with they became possessive...for all of 3 days before forgetting about it again.

Claire- We love to budget at our place - it's just the 'sticking' to it that is the problem!
We have found that for incidental cash spending - fuel, groceries, takeaway etc - each fortnight we put our budgeted amount of cash for that item into an envelope - and when it's gone, that's it.
It just gives a visual reminder of how much there is to spend, and how long it has to last... 

Thank you to everyone who helped out. Our budget is coming along nicely and we have a menu plan back on track, not if only there was so many pesky bills to pay every bloody month!

If you have any other tips to add please don't hesitate to share and I will update the list.