Budgets and Bills

Today was an admin day spent getting the budget up to date and paying some bills. Not the most fun but necessary.

Ever since we were hard-up students 30 years ago I have kept a budget to give us some direction towards our goals and track our spending. We left uni with a student loan of $38,000 between us and a desire to save for a house so we have to be disciplined and a budget helped with that. We haven't always religiously stuck to it but it has kept us on top of bills and debt and we managed to get a deposit for a house saved within 6 months of starting work - in the days when only a 10% deposit was needed) and we worked hard to pay our student loans off quickly.

Interest rates on our mortgage were at 9.25% when we took it out so we took it over 25 years to start with and tried to maximise our payments. I got a money programme on our computer and it helped show us predictions of how our debt repayment would go and that helped keep us motivated too. With hard work and increasing our payments a couple of times when we got a couple of tax cuts we managed to pay that first mortgage off in 9 1/2 years!

I have continued to keep a budget going to give us a guideline for spending and this has helped us step up the property ladder and nearly pay of another mortgage which should be done in the next 3 years which will be satisfying. When I sit down and update the budget each month it always makes me feel a bit back in control of our finances.

Can you see in the photo that I do have some goals to try to cut spending and save some money now that I am on a reduced income? I'm managing to stick to some but not others so it is an ongoing challenge but I know we can go okay. We have been hard up before and survived and we are not completely hard-up now but know how to tighten the purse strings when we have to!