Saturday, April 22, 2017

Back on the horse

Well, it certainly has been a long time between posts. Nearly 6 months in fact! I've been very slack, not only with blogging, but with my budget.
In December I went back to work (3 days a week) and life got a bit crazy.

Out went meal planning, monthly shops and tracking our money. In came expensive childcare, bought work lunches, excessive numbers of bought coffees, and even the odd take-away meal.

I also found just being part of a workplace to be expensive. My workmates have a penchant for Uber Eats (expensive delivered lunches) and fancy lunches out, after work drinks, as well as lots of contributions to gifts (engagement/baby/leaving).

For a completely different reason I've just given notice at said workplace and might be unemployed for a bit. This has given me the much needed motivation to get our finances sorted again!

Step one was reviewing our spending and preparing a budget, which I did the other night. A big shock was how much childcare really costs. I knew we were paying around $200-$400 a week, but I hadn't really computed that this is a LOT of money each month and across the year. It makes me wonder why we weren't saving that much beforehand...

Anyway, it seems the reason we kept running out of money in our joint account is that we were budgeting around $1500 a month less than what we were actually spending. Whoops!

Life changes. The kids have gotten older and have started doing pricey activities. They also eat more and our eating habits have also changed (isn't it annoying how being super healthy is more expensive?!). And the expense of working again and childcare have massively increased compared with last year.

This is a good reminder that budgets are not stagnant or set in stone. They need to be regularly reviewed and they need to be realistic. A review of your actual expenses can be a nice/scary reminder to reign in poor spending habit and to help you get back on that horse!

2 comments:

  1. Good on you for realising, and working on a solution. It is hard when you are working with people who can spend more on things, and when you get too tired to make things from scratch.

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  2. Thanks GC. I was particularly shocked by the amount spent on Uber lunches and various celebrations!

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