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Aussie Aussie Aussie! I remember getting paid fortnightly, but I was on Newstart Allowance. Here's what I do now I have the M word (mortgage!) and am on a very tight budget. I'm on minimum wage. It's not much better than the dole! Okay, so get all your bills together. Phone, gas, electricity, water, interweb, rates... Cut the bottoms off the bills, staple them together, and put them in your handbag. Go to the bank and set yourself up a new bank account. A special bank account. This is your Emergency Savings Account, to be used as if it's a credit card, to tide you over. Make it a passbook account, so you can't just access the cash willy nilly when you're out on the town, plastered with cheap beer and looking to get a lamb kebab with garlic sauce *drool*.... This makes it harder to spend, so you're more likely to think "Do I really need Def Leppard's Greatest Hits album?" and act accordingly. Go to your payroll department, and get them to put 10% of your income into this other account. This will save you the fees you'd incur if you had to use direct debit to transfer savings into the account, but if you have to direct debit it yourself, then do that. This is 'paying yourself first' and ensures you have some savings. If you need a new radiator, or a root canal filling, or your Mr Kitty turns out to be a Miss Kitty and needs to have a special operation to stop her having another batch of kittens, use this money. Make sure the account you choose has a higher rate of interest, to encourage you to save the money. After a few months, you'll have a nice little nest egg of emergency money. If you're finding that it's REALLY hard to budget, then try this. Remember where I said get payroll to put 10% of your income into the other account? Put 60% in there. Then you have to set up a fortnightly transfer into your original account of 50% of your wage on alternating fortnights. So if you get paid on the 1st and 14th of the month, set the transfer up for the 7th and 21st. That way you are still saving that emergency money and you are giving yourself another payday. Remember that wad of bill stubs I said to put in your wallet? Take them into the post office ON PAY DAY OR IMMEDIATELY AFTER, and pay ten or twenty dollars off each of them. Do this before you buy anything else. Ever since 2005 when I got the Bill to End All Bills ($654 for electricity for the winter quarter, thank you TRU Energy. Glad I was sitting down when I opened that one!) I have done this. It means when you get the bill, half of it or more should be paid off. I still do it. My last gas bill was $27, thanks to this strategy. That's a lot easier to handle than $41, which was the current charges, but I'd paid the extra (and got the miserable 3% discount) so it wasn't so scary. My spending money for groceries, fuel, and bills is less than $145 a week. It HAS to be, because the rest of my income is going on my homeloan. I'm not over committed. I just want the loan gone in 5 years so I'm paying twice the repayments. This is an idea I got from Anita Bells "Your Mortgage and How to Pay it off in 5 Years by Someone who Did it in 3". Sanity allowance. Everyone has something they like to buy regularly to make life worth living. It might be a packet of Tim Tams, or a magazine and a coffee at a cafe, or a movie. Choose something cheap and set yourself a budget of about $20-30 (depending on your income, no more than $20 if you earn less than $500 after tax) and just blow it. Buy ciggies (not condoning smoking here, but if you're a smoker, it's a luxury item). Buy a beer at the pub. Get that lamb kebab with garlic sauce.... Give yourself permission to enjoy this money. You'll be a much happier budgeter if you budget for pleasure. If you want any more tips, email me. Best wishes, and good luck budgeting.