Mamamia’s What My Salary Gets Me asks Australians to record a week in their financial lives. Kind of like a sex diary but with money. So not like a sex diary at all. We still find out the best kept secrets though. We discover what women are really spending their hard-earned cash on. Nothing is too outrageous or too sacred. This week a 29-year-old public servant shares her weekly budget.
Age: 29
Industry: Communications – government middle management
Salary: $103,391 a year / $1,452.29 a week after tax.
Housing: Seven years into paying off a mortgage on a three bedroom, one bathroom house, 11km from the CBD with husband and two puppies
Regular expenses (my share, per week): $531
- Public transport – $40
- Mortgage repayments – $255
- Gym membership – $14
- Food – $60
- Insurances, utilities etc – $214
- Savings (Fire Extinguisher): $290
- Splurge and Smile: $145 per week respectively
Savings: We have $3,300 in savings at the moment. We also have Everyday Round Up set up on our Daily Expenses account so any purchases are rounded up to the nearest dollar and the savings are deposited into our Fire Extinguisher account. My husband is a senior retail manager and we recently got married. We went on an incredible honeymoon so that obliterated our savings and are this year saving toward starting a family and would like to have a good amount of money behind us before we start trying.
Assets: House, Car, Two Dogs
Simple Budgeting with a Banana. Post continues after video.
Top Comments
2 people and no kids spending $300/week on groceries is obscene. What are they eating? Caviar, lobster and black truffles?
And $79 for a men's haircut and beard trim?
If they're earning that much and still living paycheck to paycheck there's something seriously wrong with their budgeting.
The cost for the haircut will recede over time.
But they aren't living pay check to pay check. She added money to her savings at the beginning of the week :)
This felt so realistic to me! The argh is a direct debit going to overdraw our accounts, thank god its pay day, stuff it I'll buy the gnocchi. That is us all over.
I really need to buy the barefoot investor. Im sick of having no savings.
Same, we’re trying to save at the moment. I’m getting paranoid that something is going to happen (fridge breaks, big dental bill etc) and we won’t be able to pay for it.
The Barefoot Investor truly changed our financial life! My husband and I are low income earners and recently had two kids. Usually any stress would be a cause to spend money. But because we were following the book so closely, all our paid parental leave, my husband's redundancy payout and tax went into savings instead of wasted!
ummm - we're not talking about the beard trimming thing here right?