The last post showed the purge and splurge cycle that can often be the result of trying to reduce your expenses with budgeting. The troughs are the months when you’re determined to beat your budget; the peaks are the “I’ve given up, this is too hard” months.
Tracking your expenses is the first step to getting a handle on your spending habits. The second step is to reduce your spending foibles so that there is more money in the kitty for things that really matter to you. To do this you need a plan of attack.
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When it comes to budgeting and spending less, there are good months and there are bad. Some months you nail your budget or even exceed expectations, and others you will fall off the wagon. But if your aim is to reduce your expenses (or in the case below, a particular expense), what is the overall trend once the good months and bad are averaged out? When looking a a bunch of figures, it’s easy to get lost in the detail. This is where a graph can really help you understand your spending habits and whether you are achieving your goal of spending less.
We don’t have too many spending foibles, but our biggest one is takeaway food. We eat it as an “I couldn’t be bothered to cook” option, but really it is overprice, unsatisfying crap that is taking money away from things that we truly value or actually need. So it is our takeaway food expenditure that I’ve been looking at lately and I thought I would share the results to show how graphing your data can be quite revealing.
There is only one way to really get a hold of your finances, and that is to track your expenditure by writing down every cent spent and organising it into specific categories. Once you have written down all expenses for a month, you can then plot the total on a graph and get an immediate visual impression of your spending patterns and overall trend over time.
I’ve been keeping a budget for quite some time, so I have a fair bit of data to graph. I’ve kept a budget since 2005, but it was only since 2007 that I actually starting categorising our expenses more specifically. Below is a graph of our actual takeaway expenditure since the beginning of 2007 to the present day.
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I admit that the photo doesn’t look all that appetising, but this recipe is actually quite tasty. And as a bonus it is healthy and quick to make. I would say it is also quite inexpensive, but as someone has poisoned the winter crops up north, tomatoes and eggplants are going to get a little pricey for a while.
Use this as a dip with some toasted Turkish bread or as a sandwich spread. In the photo above, I have spread it on toast with some cream cheese, a nice combo. The recipe makes about 2 cups.
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Life in the 21st Century. Full of the blessings of modern conveniences. Cars, dishwashers, remote controls, SMS, microwave meals. Live life with more time, more energy. Get things done with less effort. Or at least that’s the promise. And yet all these conveniences represent the paradox of modern times.
Modern conveniences are meant to save time. Yet we have less leisure time than ever before.
Modern conveniences are meant to save us energy, yet result in us consuming more energy from the environment. And we are more tired than ever.
The standard of living in the western world has never been higher. Yet we have never been less happy that we are today.
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We all want to pay less tax, so having a long list of work related tax deductions to claim is good right? Maybe.
When it comes to work related costs that are potentially tax deductible, the best scenario is one where your employer pays all or most of your work related costs. Why? Because even though these costs may be 100% tax deductible, that doesn’t equate to you getting 100% of the cost back. And after all, these expenses are incurred in employment, so the employer should be covering them (that’s the unionist in me talking).
Let’s work through an example to demonstrate.
Joe earned $45,000 this year. This puts him in the 30% income tax bracket. The following shows how much tax he will have to pay.
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This is one of our favourite dishes. Mushrooms, paprika, mustard, wine and sour cream – these are a few of my favourite things. This dish is so quick, easy and tasty and most of the ingredients are pantry staples, I don’t know why anyone would want to make this with a packet mix.
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Looking for frugal tips? “Frugal tips” is a search term that brings many people to this site. While tips are good (and I hope you find many here) frugality is more than just tidbits of advice and gestures towards saving money.
I’ve been thinking about what aspect of frugality I could write about today.
I could write about 101 ways to reuse dryer sheets, how to save money by feeding your family beans and lentils, I could calculate the savings of squeezing that extra morsel of toothpaste out of the tube.
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Winter time was always heralded in with a family ritual when I was a kid. Every year, when the first southerly blew, we would close the windows for the season. We had those windows that wind in and out, and after years of shifting, swelling and warping, the windows no longer closed with ease, so one person stood outside, rugged up against the chill and pushed on the window, while the other wound it in. Around the house, each window in turn closed for the winter.
What are your fond memories of childhood?
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Why make bolognaise from scratch when you can get it pretty cheap and easy from a bottle? That’s what I thought anyway until I didn’t have any in the cupboard and decided to make it myself. I have never gone back to the store bought bottled pasta sauce.
This makes a very rich, tasty bolognaise. And it’s not that much harder or more time consuming than the bottled variety. It is a foundation recipe, though. You can add anything you like: olives, sun dried tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, corn, kidney beans, extra garlic, fresh herbs, spices… endless possibilities. Or you could remove ingredients that you don’t like or don’t have on hand like the capsicum or mushrooms. A tasty variation is adding a couple of crushed cloves to the sauce. It adds a subtle but lovely aroma to your bolognaise.
Of course, instead of serving this over spaghetti, you could make a simple white sauce, layer with a few sheets of pasta, grate some cheese over the top and have lasagne instead.
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It is not unusual in a marriage or relationship for one person to take on the responsibility of the household finances. The job of ensuring that the bills are paid on time, that the savings account grows and debt is paid off more often than not falls on the shoulders of one person, while the other is blissfully unaware. While this can be convenient it can also be problematic as I have recently discovered.
Despite the fact that I take care of all aspects of our household budget, I assumed that DH also knew about the important aspects of our finances. I was wrong.
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The last post showed the purge and splurge cycle that can often be the result of trying to reduce your expenses with budgeting. The troughs are the months when you’re determined to beat your budget; the peaks are the “I’ve given up, this is too hard” months.
