Money is something that I (as well as many, many, others) have and continue to struggle with. My pay was reduced when I went onto income protection and instead of getting paid fortnightly, I now get paid monthly. Recently I decided to redo my budget and work my shit out and I came up with something I havent seen elsewhere. Wondering peoples thoughts.
This is not financial advise, this is what I am trialling at the moment, I dont know if it is good, bad or indifferent. I am not in any way qualified to provide financial advise and am not someone you should take financial advise from.
Sorry, given where I work (for a bank) I think I need to make that really clear.
What Im doing at the moment is when I get paid I distribute it between 8 different accounts, each account is an account for a budget catagory, Food and Drinks, Medication, Car Expenses, Bills, App Subscriptions, Personal Care, Medical Appointments, Medical Procedures and my main account I call Transfer Account. I have an amount I work out each month for each budget, most stay the same. From each account I pay for the things within that accounts budget. Things not covered under those budgets are paid for out of the money in the Transfer Account, I try and keep a couple hundred a month unaccounted for in that account for things like take away, drinks while Im out, junk food and the like. Bills are direct debited, I know how much my groceries are because I buy the same things each month. My car expenses budget stays the same, though I increased it by $10 a week this month. If anything is left in there then that rolls over to the following month, eventually I want to have a $100 float there incase I have a month where I have to drive more than normal. App subscriptions are easy to work out because I just look at the play store. If I add an app, I just update the next months budget. I know my specialist appointments that I have upcoming and I allow for 2 GP visits a month. The money I have left in the Transfer Account I use for things I am wanting to buy, at the moment they are things for self care that I am slowly building up my products for. Ill use this money to save up for stuff, Ill use another account for that, like Ill put money into a seperate account to save up for bigger purchases, like a car.
The accounts are all free from fees etc. Most banks (Bar the big 4) have accounts that are fee free with no minimum monthly deposit, some allow you to have multiple accounts, in which case I have as many accounts as they have different card styles to chose from. Suncorp allow you to have an account with I think its 9 sub-accounts attached. I think I have 3 different banks for the 8 seperate accounts. I would probably have 2 different banks but my salary has to go into the same bank as I work for, its a condition of employment there.
This way, I have kinda spent the money that I have assigned to things, like bills and food and cant accidentally overspend elsewhere and not have enough money to pay my phone bill or something.
Its all backed by a spreadsheet that manages my budgets and I have a finance management app to monitor transactions and provide reports. It connects to the banks and automatically downloads the transactions from each.
What do people think, this make sense? Anything Ive over looked? It all pans out if I dont smoke, so Im trying to quit but that is much easier than said.
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