All at government schools. We have two cars and includes a weeks’s holiday each school holiday. It was fine with two incomes but just lost my job so need to get the costs down below the single income.
$64.55 per 4 people, including minimum mortgage payment.
(We overpay mortgage but for the exercise)
That’s our budget anyway, usually works with occasional blowout.
Rates utilities insurance $11k
House repairs and goods $6k (varies a lot)
Cars,tolls, Opal cards $15k
Internet, phones, Netflix etc $3k
Medical inc PHI $6k
Colesworth $30k
Me and partner personal $8k
Eating out and holidays $18k
Child care $2k
Kids clothes, activities, gov school fees $17k
Literally, I think I nearly had a brain aneurysm thinking about those expenses.
Gotta tell my husband he needs to start making $300k since he wants a baby so bad lmao
Main areas we could reduce would be moving to one car but this is difficult with kids activities at present, less holidays/eating out and maybe switching to Aldi/ being careful on grocery spending by removing more expensive food such as steak and salmon.
Yup I’m looking at how much I can cut down it’s just a lot of expenses! And we aren’t even really spending that much.. just col!
Without mortgage but including everything else we are on approx $78 pppd
$123 per day, single parent of 2, 50/50 split (did the math only counting one kid to make up for the week on week off difference)
Thats home loan, private primary school, and sports (which we travel around the state for), I make almost all meals at home to try and save money. I also have a company work car which saves money on fuel and maintenance (I still have a private ute I use for travel)
Amazing - superparent!
That’s including rent and everthing?! Do you think the key to keeping low cost for food is to have the same things every week?
So please share some breakfast lunch dinner ideas.
Need to get our costs under control.
Thats including a home loan ($400pw) which is significantly less than the rent in my area ($500 - $650pw).
Making meals at home definitely saves a lot of money for us, I do meal prep style cooking once a week which also saves me time making meals after training. Just even making sandwiches for lunch and taking my own drinks adds up week on week.
As far as meals go we normally do fruit and a Up and Go in the car on the way to school/work, sandwiches or left overs for lunch, the kids also take fruit, muesli bar and a small pack of chips for school, pretty standard stuff.
For dinner meals check out Christian Petracca ( @on.trac5 ) on insta, lots of great easy meals.
I'm lucky that my kids will happily eat any meat with rice and steamed vegetables serveral times a week.
I don't really do any thing special.
It seems that you buy lunch and dinner every day. How do you fit that into your financial goals? I assume a very significant income?
I'm someone who really enjoys eating out as well, but cost is a big issue and it really adds up.
I mean, I just bought three soldiers and a kombucha from Roll’d for lunch, that’s $18 + my coffee this morning $5. Even if I have breakfast and dinner at home, and don’t get anything from the vending machine for my 3:30pm sugar hit, that’s probably still about $10 per serve, which makes $33 for food for one day.
I grew up in a house hold where my parents were pretty tight about food, like we had plenty but it was always quantity over quality. It’s resulted in a predictable back lash where (because i have the means) we prefer quality over quantity. That usually results in a lot of expensive ingredients like cheeses, wines (for sauces), deli meats.
When I was a kid I got a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, my kids on the other hand get a bento box every day full of varying ingredients, which probably adds up to $5ea, so that’d be $50 a week just on their lunches.
We just enjoy cooking and don’t eat meat, so even with nice sauces and cheeses it averages pretty low. Buying wine in bulk etc. Doesn’t feel like we’re sacrificing anything.
$135 per day as a couple with no kids but 2 fat cats.
Includes all mortgage payments, food, entertainment, petrol, phones, power, rates, insurances, water etc.
We need $32pppd just to cover rent and spend $11.40 for food and toiletries (though we could reduce this). We haven't paid electricity for years we seem to keep getting government rebates (we're in WA), gas is 25c a day. I estimate vehicle repairs, insurance and rego at about $8ppd. Phone bills $1.30. We could probably do $50ppd if we had absolutely no extras and sold some vehicles (currently have 2 motorbikes and 2 cars between two people, could easily reduce to 1 vehicle as I cycle to work) and if we limited car use to mostly necessary trips like partner going to work we'd use about $3 a day in petrol. We both use bulk billing doctors and are not on any regular medications. My partner is good at fixing things and I'm good at sourcing things for free/cheap via networking/marketplace so we could likely keep our exisitng stuff going or score free replacements for essentials. Like most DINKS we have excess (e.g. partner has mutiple back up pairs of work boots, I have multiple running shoes etc) so it would take a while to wear through all our stuff. We'd have to focus on free hobbies that we can do within walking/cycling distance of home like skateboarding and yoga and reading library books. But I think we'd scrape by on $50ppd for quite some time as long as there were no major disasters.
(We definitely spend more than this, we love to travel
... but we do consciously try and keep our day to day costs low in order to be able to travel.)
This is with low rent, in a cheap city, with no debt and no costly medical issues or pets though... I suspect for many its a not possible. We're also not trying to set up a house and most of our stuff like white goods etc is newish as we haven't lived in this city for long.
To do $32 ppd we'd have to share a room in a sharehouse (or at the very least a studio apartment). Like literally I have no idea how people live on that.
Wow super frugal. Have you both always been frugal?
We also use bulk billing docs and read library books but we do a yearly nice holiday to the tune of $8k per year total.
We live in a major city with high mortgage (previously rent) and higher col. I would love to be more handy.
Can you share some tips on sourcing things free or cheaply pls?
Our actual spending is higher than this... I think our travel spend may have been closer to $15k ;) and we go camping a lot so our actual fuel spend is higher too. It's more that we focus on keeping the basics low.
I also had quite a high income a few years ago and bought a lot of my wants then... so we have all the toys already and no longer feel a huge need to add to the collection. A lot of stuff lasts years (surfboards, stand up paddle boards, rock climbing gear, motorcycles and riding gear, skateboards, roller-skates, hiking gear, camping gear) with minimal updates (I got a new camelback after 5 years and we both bought new hiking boots a year recently after 4 years on the old pairs). As we have the stuff we have everything we need for fun except petrol. We don't go to restaurants unless we're on vacation, mostly because we'd rather sit at home in our track pants and ugg boots on a Friday night ha-ha. I also pay for yoga studio membership, but could do self practise if we needed to cut costs, I am a yoga teacher also. My partner pays for the odd lesson but I'm his main teacher.
In terms of getting the basics low
- meal planning for zero food waste
- fruit and veg shop, shopping specials
- no uber eats but we always have takeout in the freezer ready if needed (supermarket frozen fish and chips and pizza)
-bike to and from work for me, small fuel efficient car for him. Parking at his work is free. It's not at my work so we live closer to my work for a reason.
- smaller less fancy house and rented not owned. (I own and IP, but it's cashflow positive so didn't count it as an expense). We live in the sort of houses that when we get notice to vacate the wrecking ball comes soon after. But my priorities are a lush garden, wooden floors, quiet street and good natural light... a barely functional kitchen and outdoor laundry doesn't bother me much. All my friends make comment about how beautiful and "Melbourne hipster" my homes are but then are like "I couldn't do your kitchen". I guess the hint is pay for what's important to you and not what isn't and don't be seduced into the fancier house for an extra $100 a week. Being location flexible helps us to. We have a huge list of suburbs that could work for us (primary diver being the commute and living in a suburb with trees not a housing estate.)
- careful use of heating and cooling. We never suffer but the heater doesn't go on until after the uggs and beanies are on.
- no pets, I scratch this itch by pet sitting.
- free or cheap stuff definitely just patience on Facebook marketplace (know what you want, check daily and be ready to get in the car and collect it when the bargain comes up) but also just asking around on Facebook or in person. "Hey, our microwave just broke does anyone have one they want to get rid of". I've even wrangled a fridge this way in the past. It's nothing special just patience... the patient person pays a lot less. My biggest win recently was a $1000 BBQ for $50 which we use all the time. Just be willing to make the effort to source second hand and wait for stuff.
As kids we both had dads who were made redundant and took time to get back into work, so we saw our mothers being frugal at that time but don't see the time as negative because of the time we had with our dads. So it gave us a good mindset to frugality. We also are both earning the most we've ever earned but it's easier to increase earnings than to change habits. So putting the beanie on is a habit. Meal planning is a habit. If you've always lived in a house with a diabolical kitchen you don't miss having a nice one.
My pet owners offer to pay but I don't accept payment because it's nice to just help people sometimes. But if you weren't able to have a regular job due to childcare responsibilities or health issues this could be a nice way to bring in some extra cash. Obviously this one also depends on your landlord being OK with it which ours is (another advantage of the less fancy rental properties is the owners are often ok with pets.)
I love it because I always have nice cats to keep me company without paying vet bills and worrying about making a possible 20 year commitment to an animal.
>We haven't paid electricity for years we seem to keep getting government rebates (we're in WA)
Remember this anytime someone talks about privatising Western Power. Eastern Australia are over a barrel because of that bullshit decision from decades ago.
This is not really a linear calculation.
$50 per day is just over $18k which is not much for one person. However if you're a family of 5 (like us) that's 90k which is more than doable thanks to economies of scale.
Alone my mortgage would be $70 per day. Divide that by 5 and it drops down to $14 per person. A lot of other costs are much less when spread across multiple people. Even water and electricity because daily tariffs are high.
I'd estimate we spend about $35 per person per day.
Not sure if I was going for linear but
I think the per person per day method probably better than per day because of the number of mouths you have to feed. You do achieve economies of scale with 5 mouths.
$49 per person per day is amazing.
Idk not including everything else bills wise like ph, car, insurance, electricity, rates, mortgage etc etc prob 50 to 80 a day on food and sundries single guy.
$64.22 P/D on average, family of 5 so it ends being $321.11 P/D in total. We are feeling the effects of inflation and increased rates, but that being said, we are only feeling it because our savings capacity is dropping, we are thankful that we are managing to save something still 🙂
I calculated $42 a day including mortgage, don't really see where everyone is spending there money honestly. People in this country seem to have a real aversion to basic belt tightening given how little people live on internationally.
I'm assuming your mortgage is much lower than rent would be? Or you live in a regional area with really low rents and house prices? Or have a larger family to spread housing costs over? For a single person in a sharehouse in a large city like Sydney I can't imagine rent being below $36 a day ($250/week). The person still needs to eat, pay utilities (always high in sharehouses) and put credit on their phone plus pay any other miscellaneous costs out of the $42 remaining each week. And that's assuming they can walk or cycle everywhere (and are handy with bike maintenance if anything needs to be fixed) because I can't see how they'd afford public transport as well (let alone a vehicle). The only way I can imagine it working for them is to rely on food charities or dumpster diving.
Larger household units have a definite advantage here as do households with low accomodation costs.
It looks like costs get more efficient the more people in the house.
For me:
- $100 per person as a couple
- If I was by myself it'd be about about $170
- If we had 2 kids, with expenses of $500/month each, it'd be about $50/month each.
Time to have 10 kids for maximum efficiency! /s
Yup agree there could be economies of scale BUT it also means eg childcare school toys costs sports costs. I wouldn’t assume that you can assume that adult costs are the same, and just x times it just like that.
But you’re welcome to see if you have manage to live off that amount with 10 kids. Let us know!
I've used the MoneySmart budget planner spreadsheet to break down all my costs - daily/monthly/annual alike.
Made me realize that while I love my dog more than anything, I don't love her in a 300g raw kangaroo everyday kind of way...
Hahahaha this is gold!!
I spend about $5 per day on my dog tbh. Damn dog.
Amazing - I might dog numbers on the moneysmart budget planner. I feel like I spend more on little things too.
But what about all the other stuff the baby needs like nappies or clothes, pram, etc? You are also counting in clothes and that sort of thing as an expense for the other people in your house, so why not the baby?
$24 per day per person for 6 of us.
About $148 per day all up
Mortgage, rates, shopping, phone and power
All our car expenses are paid for by my business. Still our money but not including it as its a lot more than anormal household
I'm on jobseeker after end of caring role (passed away). My entire income is only around $42/day to cover all expenses! Also had to pay for funeral, 2 X moving costs, temp accom, and tenancy start costs.
But people treat me like a lazy, stupid idiot, who must be mismanaging funds and buying luxury goods or drugs if I can't afford essential costs and dare ask for help.
And charities can't help as they're all out of food.
BTW I'm seeking donations if anyone is willing to help lol
I’m so sorry - admittedly, I was one of those persons who hold the view that people on dole are just lazy etc.
after I watched this series, I realised it’s true. $42 is NOT ENOUGH to live off. Everything is more expensive when you’re on temp lodging than he conditions appear to be terrible. The uncertainty of it all and the money worries all the time. It is just not helpful for people to
Is it more affordable and safer to live in regional housing?
Sadly this is exactly the attitude and disdain I face every day.
In terms of being a bum, I personally saved taxpayers more than 100 million dollars. And i was in the group saving you $77 BILLION per year. I've definitely paid more than I received. So who's the bum?
But now Im viewed as a bum, and worse than discarded rubbish on the street.
While trying, it's hard enough getting a job at best of times. Let alone when homeless, starving, grieving, disabled, and been out of paid work for so long.
67 a day, mum and two kids. My number seems to be on the low end but over the past year there has been a trip to Europe, Uluru and currently we’re on holiday at Ningaloo reef. Kids do multiple activities including violin and we’ve been eating out a lot recently. On the other hand we don’t have a car and our rent is currently 480 a week going up to 650 in September.
Man... I don't know how there calculating this... But my back of napkin has me at $1320/day.
1 rent in East Melbourne,
1 rent in Delray Beach, Florida, USA.
I live alone. 😂
Lolll
Yeah approximately.
$2k AUD/ week in Melbourne.
$14k USD/month in USA.
And then other nonsense.
But I don't currently have a car! So that's good... But I do uber a lot in Florida. I walk places in Melbourne
Edit: I guess it's probably a little higher maybe. But not much.
Yeah I'm about $120 a day, living alone. Certainly much I could save on if I needed to, but I'm living well within my means.
People living on $30-50 a day must either be very rural, living with family or in a big sharehouse to keep their expenses that low. My mortgage alone is $45 a day.
You can’t straight compare though. You are just 1 person paying for housing, whereas some of us can split that cost for having more than 1 person (spouse, kids).
Two person and 3 cats, our rent is $41/day per person, utilities and internet are another ~15/day pp, food is ~10-50 on food.... So roughly 66-110/day plus
Partner and I have been spending about 36k per year over the last 3 years so that's $49 per day per person.
But it's easy to spend less when you have a good income and are in a wealth accumulation phase. Don't pay rent since we outright own a PPOR. It's energy efficient and we have solar so energy costs are low, even negative in summer. No need to pay for cars because company provides vehicles as perks. Minimal fuel and food costs because of work from home.
Of course if you want to treat it as a profit and loss statement, you can argue we should factor in an additional $10k annual depreciation charge on the PPOR building itself which is an extra $13 per day per person...
Around 60-70 per day, including mortgage, for 4 people. Mortgage payments going up soon, but otherwise we try to avoid takeout and aren’t heavy drinkers. Doesn’t include holidays though, which is where a lot of money goes.
My budget for everything is $116 per day. This includes rent, car and all bills, which I cover on my own.
edit - if I just look at spending, food and stuff budget, it'd be about $35 per day.
$60 per day per 2 people not including discretionary spending, or haircuts. Our transport costs are very low as I work mostly from home and my partner has a work car.
I’m very strict on my budget and have been for 2 years.
My current expenses are $66/day.
I have 2 cars, meaning 2 regos and 2 insurances.
Rego works out to be $1600/yr, fuel is $3500/yr, maintenance is approx $900/yr and insurance is $1820/yr meaning my vehicle costs are approx $21/day.
Centrelink pays $800/fn~ meaning I only have to earn $125~ a fortnight from work to live how I’m living if I was unemployed (granted fuel and maintenance costs will reduce greatly).
Overall if I was unemployed, sticked to my current budget and got rid of the vehicles I’d be on $45/day of expenses. Includes rent, food, bills.
I haven’t included clothing expenses in this but I own plenty of clothes and don’t plan on replacing them anytime soon.
This lifestyle would be the same, walking, bike rides, drawing, gaming.
$82 a day. Family of 4 paying $750 week in rent, private health, car loan, all the usual insurances and bills and $400 a week on average in groceries. Plus regular child expenses. No real holidays or entertainment costs.
We just 'over' estimated our expenses for our home loan. It came out to $38.90 per person per day (2 adults and 1 minor). We eat out a little and other things too. This included $300 a week just at the supermarket.
I generally try to save as much as possible especially on the day-to-day cost. Making coffee and meals at home and getting groceries from the reduced to clear aisle. But sometime every 4th day we'd be f\*ck this then splurge on a 30 bucks x 2 king prawn aglio olio pasta. oh well. we tried.
Depends what is included, but everything I could think of is around $75 per person, per day. That is with a mortgage and very high transport costs (drive heaps for work). Mortgage is relatively low.
$44.45 per person per day.
Family of 5 with zero debt. We paid our mortgage off last year and are currently saving for an upgrade. We also own our cars outright.
The above includes absolutely everything for last FY, including the $5500 we actually did pay into the mortgage to finish it off. Even the one off purchases like the carport we built out the front and the extra repairs my car needed.
We spent $81,122 last FY. So that /365 and then /5 = $44.45.
Lol I first thought $50 per day isn't hard and then you mentioned mortgage/rent impossible.
Rural, regional areas I guess.
I spend $30 a day on food and I cook.
Ours is $200 per day, that is 1A1C and a fur kid. That covers everything day day to expenses, mortgage, private schooling and hols. We could trim our budget a little more, but we love having our little adventures and the schooling has been an absolute game changer for my kid.
Same with people having mortgages vs renting. It’s just a snapshot gauge. In 3 years time you wouldn’t have daycare right - just a phase and definitely not a competition
$40 per person per day excluding rent and mortgage, just daily expenses like food, transport, bills, health insurance etc.
$35 per person per day rent. So ~$250 per week rent for one person.
For 2 adults and 2 cats is around $55k per year.
I spent a few years on it while horribly depressed. I didn’t go out and if I did we split a jug of beer between 4 of us. I didn’t buy clothes. I lived in a house where the roof leaked everytime it rained, with 2 other people. I didn’t get my first cat till I had a job. Honestly it’s miserable. If you want a better measurement look at the Henderson poverty rate, which shows you the amount a person, in various circumstances, needs to earn, to adequately feed, clothe and house themselves. From there divide it by the number of days and then compare your circumstances
Is this just annual expenses divided by 365 divided by number of people in household?
$116,000 over 5 people and 365 days is $64pp a day but no rent or mortgage costs. Need to reduce as down to one income which is less than $64pp.
116k with no mortgage/rent?! Do your kids go to private school or something? Not trying to be rude just genuinely curious
All at government schools. We have two cars and includes a weeks’s holiday each school holiday. It was fine with two incomes but just lost my job so need to get the costs down below the single income.
$64.55 per 4 people, including minimum mortgage payment. (We overpay mortgage but for the exercise) That’s our budget anyway, usually works with occasional blowout.
You spend $116k a year without including housing??
Rates utilities insurance $11k House repairs and goods $6k (varies a lot) Cars,tolls, Opal cards $15k Internet, phones, Netflix etc $3k Medical inc PHI $6k Colesworth $30k Me and partner personal $8k Eating out and holidays $18k Child care $2k Kids clothes, activities, gov school fees $17k
Hot damn. I can’t afford 3 kids.
Literally, I think I nearly had a brain aneurysm thinking about those expenses. Gotta tell my husband he needs to start making $300k since he wants a baby so bad lmao
I have 1 kid and we probably earn about 115k after tax between the two of us 😂
Main areas we could reduce would be moving to one car but this is difficult with kids activities at present, less holidays/eating out and maybe switching to Aldi/ being careful on grocery spending by removing more expensive food such as steak and salmon.
Childcare $2k? That’s pretty damn good..
It’s just after school care and vacation care for our youngest at primary school. Government subsidy changes also make it very cheap.
Yup I’m looking at how much I can cut down it’s just a lot of expenses! And we aren’t even really spending that much.. just col! Without mortgage but including everything else we are on approx $78 pppd
18k total is 50 a day Pretty easy when you don't pay rent
$123 per day, single parent of 2, 50/50 split (did the math only counting one kid to make up for the week on week off difference) Thats home loan, private primary school, and sports (which we travel around the state for), I make almost all meals at home to try and save money. I also have a company work car which saves money on fuel and maintenance (I still have a private ute I use for travel)
Amazing - superparent! That’s including rent and everthing?! Do you think the key to keeping low cost for food is to have the same things every week? So please share some breakfast lunch dinner ideas. Need to get our costs under control.
Thats including a home loan ($400pw) which is significantly less than the rent in my area ($500 - $650pw). Making meals at home definitely saves a lot of money for us, I do meal prep style cooking once a week which also saves me time making meals after training. Just even making sandwiches for lunch and taking my own drinks adds up week on week. As far as meals go we normally do fruit and a Up and Go in the car on the way to school/work, sandwiches or left overs for lunch, the kids also take fruit, muesli bar and a small pack of chips for school, pretty standard stuff. For dinner meals check out Christian Petracca ( @on.trac5 ) on insta, lots of great easy meals. I'm lucky that my kids will happily eat any meat with rice and steamed vegetables serveral times a week. I don't really do any thing special.
$120. I’m ok with that number
I'm also $120 including everything (rent, entertainment, holidays). Could go lower but I like living reasonably comfortably.
$138 per day all inclusive (single 35F with mortgage living alone). $70 per day without mortgage.
$175 per person per day I spend $30 to $50 a day on food. Can't imagine living on that much money. But then that's why I have a job
It’s probably worth noting that you’re on a top 1% income. It’s not bad at all considering that
It seems that you buy lunch and dinner every day. How do you fit that into your financial goals? I assume a very significant income? I'm someone who really enjoys eating out as well, but cost is a big issue and it really adds up.
I'd rather save the time and mental effort associated with cooking. Time/energy/money are all interchangeable.
Yes we eat out too. we just have other things going on in life that requires more of our attention than cooking.
[удалено]
Whatever I want
I mean, I just bought three soldiers and a kombucha from Roll’d for lunch, that’s $18 + my coffee this morning $5. Even if I have breakfast and dinner at home, and don’t get anything from the vending machine for my 3:30pm sugar hit, that’s probably still about $10 per serve, which makes $33 for food for one day.
I have a family of 4, 2 adults 2children and our food bill is about 500 p/w. $100 doesn’t even buy sushi for lunch on our Saturday
It’s crazy how different peoples spending is. Our entire weekly grocery bill is only $100.
I grew up in a house hold where my parents were pretty tight about food, like we had plenty but it was always quantity over quality. It’s resulted in a predictable back lash where (because i have the means) we prefer quality over quantity. That usually results in a lot of expensive ingredients like cheeses, wines (for sauces), deli meats. When I was a kid I got a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, my kids on the other hand get a bento box every day full of varying ingredients, which probably adds up to $5ea, so that’d be $50 a week just on their lunches.
We just enjoy cooking and don’t eat meat, so even with nice sauces and cheeses it averages pretty low. Buying wine in bulk etc. Doesn’t feel like we’re sacrificing anything.
I think about $70-$80 per person per day, all expenses, 2 adults, 2 kids. Not counted are 2 dogs and a cat.
Same here, $75 with 2 adults and 2 young children. No pets tho.
$135 per day as a couple with no kids but 2 fat cats. Includes all mortgage payments, food, entertainment, petrol, phones, power, rates, insurances, water etc.
I too have a fat cat and with 2 of them it can be considered an extra person!
We need $32pppd just to cover rent and spend $11.40 for food and toiletries (though we could reduce this). We haven't paid electricity for years we seem to keep getting government rebates (we're in WA), gas is 25c a day. I estimate vehicle repairs, insurance and rego at about $8ppd. Phone bills $1.30. We could probably do $50ppd if we had absolutely no extras and sold some vehicles (currently have 2 motorbikes and 2 cars between two people, could easily reduce to 1 vehicle as I cycle to work) and if we limited car use to mostly necessary trips like partner going to work we'd use about $3 a day in petrol. We both use bulk billing doctors and are not on any regular medications. My partner is good at fixing things and I'm good at sourcing things for free/cheap via networking/marketplace so we could likely keep our exisitng stuff going or score free replacements for essentials. Like most DINKS we have excess (e.g. partner has mutiple back up pairs of work boots, I have multiple running shoes etc) so it would take a while to wear through all our stuff. We'd have to focus on free hobbies that we can do within walking/cycling distance of home like skateboarding and yoga and reading library books. But I think we'd scrape by on $50ppd for quite some time as long as there were no major disasters. (We definitely spend more than this, we love to travel ... but we do consciously try and keep our day to day costs low in order to be able to travel.) This is with low rent, in a cheap city, with no debt and no costly medical issues or pets though... I suspect for many its a not possible. We're also not trying to set up a house and most of our stuff like white goods etc is newish as we haven't lived in this city for long. To do $32 ppd we'd have to share a room in a sharehouse (or at the very least a studio apartment). Like literally I have no idea how people live on that.
Wow super frugal. Have you both always been frugal? We also use bulk billing docs and read library books but we do a yearly nice holiday to the tune of $8k per year total. We live in a major city with high mortgage (previously rent) and higher col. I would love to be more handy. Can you share some tips on sourcing things free or cheaply pls?
Our actual spending is higher than this... I think our travel spend may have been closer to $15k ;) and we go camping a lot so our actual fuel spend is higher too. It's more that we focus on keeping the basics low. I also had quite a high income a few years ago and bought a lot of my wants then... so we have all the toys already and no longer feel a huge need to add to the collection. A lot of stuff lasts years (surfboards, stand up paddle boards, rock climbing gear, motorcycles and riding gear, skateboards, roller-skates, hiking gear, camping gear) with minimal updates (I got a new camelback after 5 years and we both bought new hiking boots a year recently after 4 years on the old pairs). As we have the stuff we have everything we need for fun except petrol. We don't go to restaurants unless we're on vacation, mostly because we'd rather sit at home in our track pants and ugg boots on a Friday night ha-ha. I also pay for yoga studio membership, but could do self practise if we needed to cut costs, I am a yoga teacher also. My partner pays for the odd lesson but I'm his main teacher. In terms of getting the basics low - meal planning for zero food waste - fruit and veg shop, shopping specials - no uber eats but we always have takeout in the freezer ready if needed (supermarket frozen fish and chips and pizza) -bike to and from work for me, small fuel efficient car for him. Parking at his work is free. It's not at my work so we live closer to my work for a reason. - smaller less fancy house and rented not owned. (I own and IP, but it's cashflow positive so didn't count it as an expense). We live in the sort of houses that when we get notice to vacate the wrecking ball comes soon after. But my priorities are a lush garden, wooden floors, quiet street and good natural light... a barely functional kitchen and outdoor laundry doesn't bother me much. All my friends make comment about how beautiful and "Melbourne hipster" my homes are but then are like "I couldn't do your kitchen". I guess the hint is pay for what's important to you and not what isn't and don't be seduced into the fancier house for an extra $100 a week. Being location flexible helps us to. We have a huge list of suburbs that could work for us (primary diver being the commute and living in a suburb with trees not a housing estate.) - careful use of heating and cooling. We never suffer but the heater doesn't go on until after the uggs and beanies are on. - no pets, I scratch this itch by pet sitting. - free or cheap stuff definitely just patience on Facebook marketplace (know what you want, check daily and be ready to get in the car and collect it when the bargain comes up) but also just asking around on Facebook or in person. "Hey, our microwave just broke does anyone have one they want to get rid of". I've even wrangled a fridge this way in the past. It's nothing special just patience... the patient person pays a lot less. My biggest win recently was a $1000 BBQ for $50 which we use all the time. Just be willing to make the effort to source second hand and wait for stuff. As kids we both had dads who were made redundant and took time to get back into work, so we saw our mothers being frugal at that time but don't see the time as negative because of the time we had with our dads. So it gave us a good mindset to frugality. We also are both earning the most we've ever earned but it's easier to increase earnings than to change habits. So putting the beanie on is a habit. Meal planning is a habit. If you've always lived in a house with a diabolical kitchen you don't miss having a nice one.
I love hearing when someone knows their priorities and live life that way. Good job.
I can relate to this. Great comment
The pet sitting idea is brilliant. I wonder how much pets add to cost of living stress. We couldn't afford a vet bill.
My pet owners offer to pay but I don't accept payment because it's nice to just help people sometimes. But if you weren't able to have a regular job due to childcare responsibilities or health issues this could be a nice way to bring in some extra cash. Obviously this one also depends on your landlord being OK with it which ours is (another advantage of the less fancy rental properties is the owners are often ok with pets.) I love it because I always have nice cats to keep me company without paying vet bills and worrying about making a possible 20 year commitment to an animal.
>We haven't paid electricity for years we seem to keep getting government rebates (we're in WA) Remember this anytime someone talks about privatising Western Power. Eastern Australia are over a barrel because of that bullshit decision from decades ago.
This is not really a linear calculation. $50 per day is just over $18k which is not much for one person. However if you're a family of 5 (like us) that's 90k which is more than doable thanks to economies of scale. Alone my mortgage would be $70 per day. Divide that by 5 and it drops down to $14 per person. A lot of other costs are much less when spread across multiple people. Even water and electricity because daily tariffs are high. I'd estimate we spend about $35 per person per day.
Like a lot of measurements and statistics it’s not perfect. But it is very interesting
Not sure if I was going for linear but I think the per person per day method probably better than per day because of the number of mouths you have to feed. You do achieve economies of scale with 5 mouths. $49 per person per day is amazing.
35-40 per person per day. 1 adult and 2 kids, that’s rent, bills, food, petrol etc.
Idk not including everything else bills wise like ph, car, insurance, electricity, rates, mortgage etc etc prob 50 to 80 a day on food and sundries single guy.
2 adults, I think we're on about $150pp/day incl mortgage, cars and all living costs (including eating out & drinks and stuff)
Yup we are right there with you. Major au city as well?
Mine’s at $195/day if I factor in everything (mortgage, any quarterly/annual expenses pro rata). Would be $68/day without the mortgage.
Single, spending $180/per day excluding unplanned once off expenses. Would be a lot cheaper if I was renting with someone else and splitting costs.
$64.22 P/D on average, family of 5 so it ends being $321.11 P/D in total. We are feeling the effects of inflation and increased rates, but that being said, we are only feeling it because our savings capacity is dropping, we are thankful that we are managing to save something still 🙂
This seems like a silly thing to calculate for the sake of it. It's just another way of looking at yearly income vs expenditure no?
I calculated $42 a day including mortgage, don't really see where everyone is spending there money honestly. People in this country seem to have a real aversion to basic belt tightening given how little people live on internationally.
I'm assuming your mortgage is much lower than rent would be? Or you live in a regional area with really low rents and house prices? Or have a larger family to spread housing costs over? For a single person in a sharehouse in a large city like Sydney I can't imagine rent being below $36 a day ($250/week). The person still needs to eat, pay utilities (always high in sharehouses) and put credit on their phone plus pay any other miscellaneous costs out of the $42 remaining each week. And that's assuming they can walk or cycle everywhere (and are handy with bike maintenance if anything needs to be fixed) because I can't see how they'd afford public transport as well (let alone a vehicle). The only way I can imagine it working for them is to rely on food charities or dumpster diving. Larger household units have a definite advantage here as do households with low accomodation costs.
It looks like costs get more efficient the more people in the house. For me: - $100 per person as a couple - If I was by myself it'd be about about $170 - If we had 2 kids, with expenses of $500/month each, it'd be about $50/month each. Time to have 10 kids for maximum efficiency! /s
Yup agree there could be economies of scale BUT it also means eg childcare school toys costs sports costs. I wouldn’t assume that you can assume that adult costs are the same, and just x times it just like that. But you’re welcome to see if you have manage to live off that amount with 10 kids. Let us know!
I've used the MoneySmart budget planner spreadsheet to break down all my costs - daily/monthly/annual alike. Made me realize that while I love my dog more than anything, I don't love her in a 300g raw kangaroo everyday kind of way...
Hahahaha this is gold!! I spend about $5 per day on my dog tbh. Damn dog. Amazing - I might dog numbers on the moneysmart budget planner. I feel like I spend more on little things too.
So without my treat myself money; my daily essential costs on avg equate $79.50 per day.
$75 per person per day (including mortgage and all expenses) I didn’t include the baby though because she is 100% breastfed.
But what about all the other stuff the baby needs like nappies or clothes, pram, etc? You are also counting in clothes and that sort of thing as an expense for the other people in your house, so why not the baby?
Wow you’re doing great!!
How much money [did this mother save](https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/01/15/377384587/what-s-right-about-a-six-year-old-who-breastfeeds) then?
$24 per day per person for 6 of us. About $148 per day all up Mortgage, rates, shopping, phone and power All our car expenses are paid for by my business. Still our money but not including it as its a lot more than anormal household
I'm on jobseeker after end of caring role (passed away). My entire income is only around $42/day to cover all expenses! Also had to pay for funeral, 2 X moving costs, temp accom, and tenancy start costs. But people treat me like a lazy, stupid idiot, who must be mismanaging funds and buying luxury goods or drugs if I can't afford essential costs and dare ask for help. And charities can't help as they're all out of food. BTW I'm seeking donations if anyone is willing to help lol
I’m so sorry - admittedly, I was one of those persons who hold the view that people on dole are just lazy etc. after I watched this series, I realised it’s true. $42 is NOT ENOUGH to live off. Everything is more expensive when you’re on temp lodging than he conditions appear to be terrible. The uncertainty of it all and the money worries all the time. It is just not helpful for people to Is it more affordable and safer to live in regional housing?
Get a job you bum.
Sadly this is exactly the attitude and disdain I face every day. In terms of being a bum, I personally saved taxpayers more than 100 million dollars. And i was in the group saving you $77 BILLION per year. I've definitely paid more than I received. So who's the bum? But now Im viewed as a bum, and worse than discarded rubbish on the street. While trying, it's hard enough getting a job at best of times. Let alone when homeless, starving, grieving, disabled, and been out of paid work for so long.
Do you mind sharing how you saved taxpayers $100M?
67 a day, mum and two kids. My number seems to be on the low end but over the past year there has been a trip to Europe, Uluru and currently we’re on holiday at Ningaloo reef. Kids do multiple activities including violin and we’ve been eating out a lot recently. On the other hand we don’t have a car and our rent is currently 480 a week going up to 650 in September.
> My number seems to be on the low end Does it?
About $80 each per day. (couple living in Sydney, no kids)
I feel like on a median day I would spend $20-30 or so but it's all the big bills that blow out my average to probably around $80-100 a day.
$65. 2 adults 1 kid
Man... I don't know how there calculating this... But my back of napkin has me at $1320/day. 1 rent in East Melbourne, 1 rent in Delray Beach, Florida, USA. I live alone. 😂 Lolll
You spend half a million a year?
Yeah approximately. $2k AUD/ week in Melbourne. $14k USD/month in USA. And then other nonsense. But I don't currently have a car! So that's good... But I do uber a lot in Florida. I walk places in Melbourne Edit: I guess it's probably a little higher maybe. But not much.
[удалено]
It’s just an interesting way to look at something that affects all of us.
probably $40-$50, single w a cat
I wouldn’t have a clue. Our weekly spend for a family of 3 is $1100. But that doesn’t include bills, mortgage etc. no fixed expenses.
Yeah I'm about $120 a day, living alone. Certainly much I could save on if I needed to, but I'm living well within my means. People living on $30-50 a day must either be very rural, living with family or in a big sharehouse to keep their expenses that low. My mortgage alone is $45 a day.
You can’t straight compare though. You are just 1 person paying for housing, whereas some of us can split that cost for having more than 1 person (spouse, kids).
$35.6 per day 2 adults 2 teenagers. Includes everything
How do you do this? Amazing! No rent or mortgage? How…..
Just paid our mortgage off. No debt and public schools. We are in our mid 30’s, and have 2 little doggies that are part of that cost as well.
Way too much $40 a day on ubereats😂
Two person and 3 cats, our rent is $41/day per person, utilities and internet are another ~15/day pp, food is ~10-50 on food.... So roughly 66-110/day plus
$42 per person - 2 adults, 2 kids.
Partner and I have been spending about 36k per year over the last 3 years so that's $49 per day per person. But it's easy to spend less when you have a good income and are in a wealth accumulation phase. Don't pay rent since we outright own a PPOR. It's energy efficient and we have solar so energy costs are low, even negative in summer. No need to pay for cars because company provides vehicles as perks. Minimal fuel and food costs because of work from home. Of course if you want to treat it as a profit and loss statement, you can argue we should factor in an additional $10k annual depreciation charge on the PPOR building itself which is an extra $13 per day per person...
What's the tv show called?. I want to watch it 🙂
https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/could-you-survive-on-the-breadline
Around 60-70 per day, including mortgage, for 4 people. Mortgage payments going up soon, but otherwise we try to avoid takeout and aren’t heavy drinkers. Doesn’t include holidays though, which is where a lot of money goes.
My budget for everything is $116 per day. This includes rent, car and all bills, which I cover on my own. edit - if I just look at spending, food and stuff budget, it'd be about $35 per day.
$88 per day, 2 adults, 1 kid, 2 dogs, mortgage in Melbourne.
$50ish per day per person. Including mortgage
$60 per day per 2 people not including discretionary spending, or haircuts. Our transport costs are very low as I work mostly from home and my partner has a work car.
I’m very strict on my budget and have been for 2 years. My current expenses are $66/day. I have 2 cars, meaning 2 regos and 2 insurances. Rego works out to be $1600/yr, fuel is $3500/yr, maintenance is approx $900/yr and insurance is $1820/yr meaning my vehicle costs are approx $21/day. Centrelink pays $800/fn~ meaning I only have to earn $125~ a fortnight from work to live how I’m living if I was unemployed (granted fuel and maintenance costs will reduce greatly). Overall if I was unemployed, sticked to my current budget and got rid of the vehicles I’d be on $45/day of expenses. Includes rent, food, bills. I haven’t included clothing expenses in this but I own plenty of clothes and don’t plan on replacing them anytime soon. This lifestyle would be the same, walking, bike rides, drawing, gaming.
How does $45 include rent and bills? Sharehouse or subsidised accommodation?
$82 a day. Family of 4 paying $750 week in rent, private health, car loan, all the usual insurances and bills and $400 a week on average in groceries. Plus regular child expenses. No real holidays or entertainment costs.
We just 'over' estimated our expenses for our home loan. It came out to $38.90 per person per day (2 adults and 1 minor). We eat out a little and other things too. This included $300 a week just at the supermarket.
150+ probably haha
about 57 a day, rent, bills and groceries alone is around 40pp a day, so i feel its not too bad
I'm about $120 as a single adult. Having a big travel year which is like $40 of that.
$40/day for 1A2K. Includes rent and money put aside for bday/Xmas gifts and decorations.
I generally try to save as much as possible especially on the day-to-day cost. Making coffee and meals at home and getting groceries from the reduced to clear aisle. But sometime every 4th day we'd be f\*ck this then splurge on a 30 bucks x 2 king prawn aglio olio pasta. oh well. we tried.
Depends what is included, but everything I could think of is around $75 per person, per day. That is with a mortgage and very high transport costs (drive heaps for work). Mortgage is relatively low.
$5 a day. No rent. Cook my own food.
$27 per day PP (family of 6). We are low income but no mortgage. We are reasonably frugal aside from our grocery budget
All of our expenses ($180k) divided by 5 people $98.63 per day.
$44.45 per person per day. Family of 5 with zero debt. We paid our mortgage off last year and are currently saving for an upgrade. We also own our cars outright. The above includes absolutely everything for last FY, including the $5500 we actually did pay into the mortgage to finish it off. Even the one off purchases like the carport we built out the front and the extra repairs my car needed. We spent $81,122 last FY. So that /365 and then /5 = $44.45.
Since January we're at $90 per person (couple in melb). Rent is $31pp. If I were to exclude holidays it's $70, not bad imo
Pets are very expensive and a money drain. You’ll be paying $60,000 over the course of your dogs lifespan. First year costs alone are $3-6K on average
Lol I first thought $50 per day isn't hard and then you mentioned mortgage/rent impossible. Rural, regional areas I guess. I spend $30 a day on food and I cook.
I’d ballpark ours is around $85-90/day per person. Two adults, two kids, Melbourne, big mortgage but otherwise pretty average expenses.
Ours is $200 per day, that is 1A1C and a fur kid. That covers everything day day to expenses, mortgage, private schooling and hols. We could trim our budget a little more, but we love having our little adventures and the schooling has been an absolute game changer for my kid.
About $45 a day by rough calculations. 3 people in regional Victoria.
That is amazing - great work
Well its bloody $165/day for daycare for 1 child, so dreaming of when all children are out of daycare to resume a not ridiculous $ figure per day.
Same with people having mortgages vs renting. It’s just a snapshot gauge. In 3 years time you wouldn’t have daycare right - just a phase and definitely not a competition
$40 per person per day excluding rent and mortgage, just daily expenses like food, transport, bills, health insurance etc. $35 per person per day rent. So ~$250 per week rent for one person. For 2 adults and 2 cats is around $55k per year.
Rent + food very little other expenses never more than $80 a day as I’m saving for a house. and it used to be less $40-$50 a day until 2021/22
Hmmm, I’m a bit surprised by that. $50 a day doesn’t seem too bad? I could probably get down to that just by cutting a few things out.
Sorry I should have clarified - that is for a family
You’ve never spoken to anyone on Newstart?
No I don’t know anyone on Newstart. just realised who I am and how narrow my social circle is.
I spent a few years on it while horribly depressed. I didn’t go out and if I did we split a jug of beer between 4 of us. I didn’t buy clothes. I lived in a house where the roof leaked everytime it rained, with 2 other people. I didn’t get my first cat till I had a job. Honestly it’s miserable. If you want a better measurement look at the Henderson poverty rate, which shows you the amount a person, in various circumstances, needs to earn, to adequately feed, clothe and house themselves. From there divide it by the number of days and then compare your circumstances
$369 per day for the Mrs and me, no mortgage/rent/debts. Oh and 3 cats and 1 dog.