Thursday 4 July 2013

Budgeting

  To save enough money to be able to buy a few acres debt free will of course require a lot of determination, and self control -  Self control not to spend on wants and determination to try and reduce our needs. A budget helps. We usually have a fortnightly budget because Andrew gets paid fortnightly.


Andrews scrapbooking

  I make a list of all our weekly, fortnightly and monthly expenses, and break it down into fortnightly payments. I always pay bills first and put money away for quarterly and annual bills. What is left over after putting savings away is our 'slush fund' so to speak. Money we can use for luxuries, in our case usually craft supplies. By having a few dollars left over, and it doesn't have to be a lot,  it helps with the saving process.

Kate and Emily



 Instead of feeling like every single spare dollar needs to get put away, we know that we can still do our hobbies, still create beautiful things which is very important to us. We have always been a creative family, and to lose that over a block of land would not be right.
Benji

  We live fairly simply already, so our expenditures are not too huge, but having a large family means that bills like water and electricity are high and seem to be getting higher! and of course feeding a large family also takes a lot of money.

 As hard as I try, I don't seem to be able to reduce our water or electricity consumption. We don't have  tank water, nor do we have solar power, so we are totally reliant on town supplies of both.  But groceries I can manipulate. By shopping differently, cooking more simple meals, buying in bulk and directly from farmers I can save money and often the quality of our food is better.

Jake and Nick

  But all this takes more time on my part, and that is something I have noticed over the last little while, trying to live a more simple lifestyle, trying to save money all requires a lot more work. It is so easy to buy what we need, making it is more time consuming and difficult.



Beth and Jess
But isn't that part of the adventure of life,  working hard and making life beautiful.

  Jenny

No comments:

Post a Comment