monthly pays suck...

Its only been a couple of months since hubby swapped to being paid monthly and i was hoping to get the hang of it sooner ... but noooo. Am still scratching for money and its not even pay week this week either.
On a good note tho i did manage to get groceries for a week for 2 adults and 2 kids (incl a few extras for gabriels birthday picnic at the zoo and cake decorations) all for under $90.
Well at least i hope i got everything we are going to need/want.   

I sure hope getting paid monthly gets easier...or should i say i get better at budgeting around a month.

Yay on the grocery spend! I *wish* I could get ours that tight but I am too much of a rampant consumer!

The other b*gger with monthly pays is often payments such as rent/mortgage etc are fortnightly ... blah!

i would hate a monthly pay....cause isnt each month different too so you need to work out a daily rate and budget from there....UGH!!!

I had a friend at Uni that spent $50 a week - ate a lot of mince but she was awesome and refused to take money if we came for dinner and blew out her meal planning for the week.....and she had a bubba too! she had budget everything and had some awesome recipes...

me - ive done my uni days - ive did it WAAAYYYY tough for too many years to worry now.....but instant noodles and 99cent loaves of bread were often on the menu for half the week back then!!!!

good on you for sticking to a budget and making it work!

Yeah when I was working my apprenticeship towards the end of the month I quite often had to decide whether I would eat or put petrol in the car... not nice. Would not want to go through that again.
Normally you only get monthly paid if you are salary so each month you get the same amount.

I only spent $80 this week on groceries (usually twice that) but the cupboards are well stocked. It must be those reach packs from the Parent and Child show.

DH and I both get paid monthly. Our trick was to budget. We have everything planned out a year in advance, (possibly very anal!!) on a spreadsheet. After a while you adjust to getting paid monthly. We're out of our tough spot now but we still use our spreadsheet to plan ahead just in case. Our biggest thing was to have our income paid into one account and then pay ourselves weekly into another for weekly expenses such as petrol, groceries and spending money.
I'm sure you'll get used to it.
Groceries for $90 well done!! Out of curiosity can I ask what you bought?

We have a spreadsheet too. We have a seperate account that all our bills come out of and we budget paying enough in there to cover yearly insurances and WOFs, dog licenses etc, as well as the weekly and monthly bills. We also pay ourselves weekly a set amount to cover groceries, petrol and a bit of fun money.
Could definately not do groceries for $90, I spent $47 just on fruit and veg last week and it has all been eaten. I bought it from a produce place as well so it was cheaper. I don't buy any ready made stuff though, nothing with preservatives or colours etc so make everything from scratch which involves buying a lot of fresh produce, which isn't cheap.

Aprilfools wrote: Out of curiosity can I ask what you bought?

meat we were frugal, x2 mince, some pork pieces and bacon, some ham from the deli.
bananas, pears, potatoes.
candles and balloons and chips and lollies for gabriels birthday.
yoghurt, and snack stuff for hubbys lunch, biscuits for bribes for the kids and gabriels birthday. pastry, rice, pasta, peanut butter, milk, bread (x3) sick of paying overpriced dairy prices for it, marg, cheese, canned fruit salad, cat food (cant forget ziggy).

i think thats about it ... i guess i was lucky in that i didnt need any cleaning stuff ...

I am reluctant to pay my mortgage off monthly as you pay more doing it fortnightly but do pay my other bills off monthly and that is automatic so i dont even miss the money... Never thought of petrol vouchers before but i try and get my fuel at pak n save with their vouchers after the groceries...today i got 6 cents off per litre and i didnt even spend $100. Suppose it didnt help that i got extra money this month and frittered it on treating the kids and going to the docs and guy fawkes and then hubby had to drive over the shore cause his grandad is in hospital ... and it all adds up.
What a pity i couldnt pay in caterpillars - i have a swan plant groaning under the weight of those!!!!

we are on fortnightly pays and that's bad enough sometimes! i'd hate to be on monthly pays   we usually spend $150-160 on groceries each fortnight