The Basics

I guess even though they are generally common sense, it's always good to be reminded of the basics of budgeting.

1. know what you earn and what you spend
2. spend LESS than you earn

Pretty simple right?

It might take 5 minutes or it might take hours, but it's really important to know where you stand and where you want to go.
IN:       Write down any money coming in: wages, allowances, gifts EVERYTHING
OUT:   Write down what you must spend every week/fortnight: rent/mortgage, bills, car payments/maintenance, groceries, school fees, EVERYTHING
subtract OUT from IN and find out how much you have left.  If you're not happy with the answer you get, look back at your list and figure out where you can minimise the OUT list or maximise the IN list.
That's where things get tricky.  This might be where we need to do some more research.  Once you've cut the smoked salmon and caviar out of the groceries and you're still not left with much at the end of the week where do we go?
This is why we are here.  This is what we are going to figure out.
My aim is to collect ideas big and small for those of us wanting to save a little from our spending to those of us wanting to cut right back to the basics of an era similar to that of the Great Depression!

I've worked out my INs and OUTs and I'm pretty happy, however, the more I can save, the sooner we can afford to buy our house.  So... tightening the belt AGAIN!

My new blog

Hello out there! 

A big welcome to anyone who has stumbled onto my blog by accident!

No wait.... please don't leave, you might find this to be exactly what you're after...

If you struggle to understand why you're holding your breath at the checkout waiting to see the EFTPOS machine approve your card even though you've only put sale items and generic brands in your trolley, and why you feel that pang of guilt when you pick up your favourite glossy mag and put it back in favour of one of the floppy little mags promising revelations to save you money or to win your way out of the bargain bin, then welcome home my friend we are kin!

This blog is mostly a way for me to figure out in my own head what I'm doing right and where I can improve it keeping our household budget as small as possible.

I've spent a lot of time surfing around this great wide world we know as the internet (or even just the bloggosphere for that matter) and have found so much in relation to cutting your budgets but most of them seem really obvious to me! 

It can't be just me that has heard enough of the great tip that 'taking your own lunch to work can save you hundreds over a week, month and thousands over a year!'... well dah.  it doesn't take Einstein to work that out ($10/day, 5 days/week, say 48 weeks/year ..... um $50 a week, $2400 a year).

Anyway, I thought that here I could lay out what I like to do (or more over, what I try to do/want to do) to keep myself in check and then use this as a place to collaborate any good ideas I find in my research.

I'd love to get some feed back from those of you who have some good ideas or who might have found a gem either here on somewhere else.

Just one last point, if you're reading something on this blog and I've made a mistake, please let me know.  I am not an uneducated dunce with nothing better to do than force my 2 cent opinion on the world.

I am in fact a young stay-at-home mum of an18month old boy who is studying part-time from home for my Bachelor of Economics Degree while running a pretty good household, with a full fridge and a healthy happy family all on a single graduate income.  I'm quite proud of myself, when I put it like that!  However, with all of this on my plate I'm sure you can forgive me the odd error or total ramble (like now) with the excuse of motherly exhaustion! 

Anyway, enough blabbering, its time to BITE THE BUDGET!