Monthly pay tips

When DH was getting paid monthly we still did budgets for the week but left monthly bills as monthly and just factored that in to the money left over for the weekly budget. In our week we had groceries, sanity, petrol, and takeaways.

We set our monthly food budget, then aim to do monthly grocery shops, but still set aside some of the money for top ups.

EG if our food budget for the month was $400. We'd do the monthly shop at a budget of $300. Then could do a top up 2 weeks later for fresh fruit/vege/milk of $100.

I actually dont know how people do weekly pay. We have always been paid monthly (or should I say hubby is).

All our bills have been made to go off two days after salary is in. (that way if a mess up occurs with it going in we can forwarn people and have time to sort it out. Never happened so far but you never know.)

Then as money goes in the mortgage put aside and transferred back when it needs to be paid. Extra bills go in another account (WOF DR KIDS etc)

Then groceries goes into my account.

I do one huge shop a month and then every 10 days I go back and top up with groceries. Fruit we buy as we need it with fresh veg. (can be almost every 3 days sometimes) But we dont go over our total limit. Easy to control as it is part of a different account.

I just make a list of at least 10 meals. Look in cupboards see what staples are needed. (like I buy tamato in a can when it is on sale and stock up, rice, flour, bakingpowder all your normal staples)

See what you need for your meals, stock up on the cleaning stuff and toiletries and then go from there.

Every 10 days I do that but then I dont really have to buy cleaning stuff and toiletries. The third and last time for the month is usually a small shop of about 50 to 100 and it is like milk, perhaps bread if none in the freezer and meat on special.

First I pay off all of our bills. Make a list of everything we need and plan some meals for the next two weeks (we dont have room in freezer to store more). Then I shop again in a couple of weeks. I have a credit card that the limit is what we budget on monthly expenditure. I then pay this off out of our monthly pay so I dont over spend and I dont pay interest, but I earn hotpoints which I then redeem for petrol vouchers,

Most of our bills go out within a day or 2 of Dh getting paid, then I move the rest of the money into other accounts and pay ourselves a 'weekly allowance' from there. I have an excel spread sheet so I can see exactly what goes out when and anything additional I need to budget for in that month i.e. car rego etc.

We have a wages account (savings transaction) where the wages goes into and the bills come out of.

A savings account where I hold the rest of the money and then pay our 'weekly allowance' from each week like a bill payment or AP.

A chq/transaction account where our 'weekly allowance' goes for normal weekly spending i.e. groceries, petrol, clothes etc etc.

A normal savings account for regular savings.

I do our shopping weekly (from the 'weekly allowance' with a $100 max spend) so I only spend money on what we actually need rather than assuming and to avoid wastage. Unless things are on special I dont buy in bulk, excluding meat cos I freeze it, (haven't quite made the $21 challenge yet though).

Feeding your family for a week for $21.

its basically trying to use up all the stuff in your pantry once a month Moocow -so the 20 tins or tomatoes you bought just cause they were on special or the 10 packs of maggi meals so that your supermarket shop is under $21 or as low as poss anyway - but that dosent include what you may usually buy from the greengrocers or butcher

Im going to try and do it every week til Portia is born so I can do a big shop online and not have to go out for ages!!!

My mum would pay the bills first so they were out of the way. Then what was left over she did 1 big shop a month and then would do top ups of bread, milk fruit etc. She would also fill the car up the day dad got the money into the account so then they had a full tank of gas that back in those days was sweet f all to full but at least it was done.

One bunus we had was mum was working part time so "her" pay would be play money for the family with stuff we wanted to do.