The start of July has been important to most Australian employees because the government has given tax cuts as well as raising the minimum wage for the workers that this applies to. I and DH are earning above the minimum wage so our wages didn’t need to increase but we now receive extra income thanks to the tax cuts. 

My net wages went up by 2.5% and B’s net wages went up by 3% (he earns more so is receiving more back). 

There has been a lot of talk on the media about how you should bank this extra money to get ahead or if you pay this extra money straight into your mortgage you are going to save so much interest etc but the reality is this is cost of living relief. I don’t know anyone who is not struggling with the way everything has gone up across the board. The extra money is needed to simply live at your current standard of living.  

We had to increase our weekly spending money to cover groceries etc by 3.5% in May, so the extra income received is helpful for this. 

Also, I haven’t increased the amount we allow for bills each month since April 2021 and over the last couple of months the account we use to keep money aside for bills and pay bills out of has been very low and required a top-up of $700 to keep it from going into negative so I have increased the amount we set aside each month for bills by 2.5%. 

I used to analyse each year the amount we pay on each bill annually so we can average out monthly the amount we need to set aside and would increase the allowance by say 1%, so to increase by 2.5% over a 3 year period possibly might not even be enough, we’ll see. 

But with the extra money coming in this is a case of extra money going out, but hopefully as conservatively as possible. 

So there is that side to our budget changes but there is also another side to it as well. What with actively tracking our spending, I have kind of realised over the last few days that I need to rethink how we manage our finances due to timing differences. 

This didn’t come to me until I was speaking to a new coworker about how often we get paid. 

I get paid weekly and she was talking about when she used to get paid monthly and how hard it is to get used to.  I was telling her about how DH gets paid monthly and his wages are used to pay the bills and I get paid weekly and this pays for our spending (eg groceries, fuel, entertainment etc). 

Later I realised that this is probably how I need to track our spending because tracking our spending monthly while we are spending weekly and I am getting paid weekly is overwhelming and over complicating things. 

The wages I receive each week cover our spending, our dog’s weekly savings to his shrinking fund, 5% savings and then $86.50 is left over.  So rather than saying we only have $xxx left over for the month it should be a case of this week’s money has been spent and we get to spend again next week. 

The wages DH receives cover our bills and $900 is left over. $200 is allocated towards his project bike (his passion), and the remaining $700 goes towards larger expenses eg car repairs etc. I am saving $200 of this money towards holidays but if we can’t afford to do this we don’t (so far I have been able to set aside this money each month). 

Really hoping that rethinking the budget timing makes life easier and less stressful!