I am officially an adult!

OK I turned 39 next week but I finally feel like a responsible adult now.

This post is only going to Debbie, mum and Julie (so say hi to each other) because its about money and finances and I really really hate having to admit to myself that I haven't been paying this as close attention as I should have been.

So feel free to ignore, otherwise I wouldn't mind any constructive advice or criticism - I'm open to suggestions. I'm also happy to send my spreadsheets if you want to see what I've done more closely.

Finally Wednesday night this week, I came to within a hair's whisker of coming a cropper financially speaking.  My pay comes through every second Wednesday night. Only this week it didn't.

Wednesday night found me with no food in the house, no petrol, no money apart from a few coins and a car registration that had to be paid *right now* or I couldn't legally drive it on the road.

So I sat and I got depressed and I wondered how I got to this place yet again .... it seems every few months I fall into a hole, then it seems to go alright for a while and then wham! out of nowhere I'm in a hole again.

So over the past few days instead of stitching or playing Warcraft I've set myself up a set of financial spreadsheets in Excel.  Its nothing fancy but it does the job.  I have all the raw data on the first worksheet, all the big money owing on the second sheet, and then all the regular and irregular bills on successive sheets thereafter one per month for the next 18 months.

Now I usually have a fairly good handle on my living expenses. I put aside money each pay for the regular and irregular bills so how come I'm getting in a hole?

By listing absolutely everything I pay regularly (loan repayments, phone, internet, electricity, cat food, vet trips, hairdressers, foxtel (cable TV) migraine medication) I've discovered the problem.

I'm used to receiving a much larger disposable income than I currently am.  When putting money aside for bills I have not been putting aside money for medications, hairdressers, cat food etc because that's just been paid as needed out of the disposable portion of my income.  I don;t have that disposable portion anymore.

So now I've included everything I can think of in that series of spreadsheets, no matter how big or how little, if its money I spend regularly, its gone in there.  And based on my current figures I will be $3300 short by August 2011.  I spent $3300 more on regular items per year than I budget for. 

So what to do to bring that figure into the positive side of the equation ...

1. I have not renewed my cross stitch magazines subscriptions. I have three UK mags I've been subscribing to and these are all due now. I'm not renewing any of them.
2. I've rearranged some payments, so I'm putting $50 more per pay into the ongoing bills and $50 less per pay into the big three.
3. I'll be cancelling the Foxtel. I have a big enough DVD library and my work gets in a large range of movie and TV series on DVD that I can cope.  I can also torrent any new stuff I can't wait for ....
4. Cancelling the hairdresser and going back to dying my own hair.

These changes mean that I will (with a little topping up on a couple of months) make it through to October 2011 with all bills covered and paid for and the big three paid off. Using the snowball method, working from highest interest rate to lowest, I should achieve:

• Personal loan paid off mid-March 2011
• Credit Card paid off late May 2011
• Debbie paid back in full in mid-October 2011.

Now all of this is worked on my current 54 hours per fortnight base wage.  It also includes allowance for:

• $50 or one tank of fuel per fortnight
• $28 for parking per fortnight ($4.00 per days for 7 days)
  
• $100 food for me and canned food for the cats per fortnight
• $40 for everything else

Everything else includes, buying lunch at work occasionally, going out with friends from work, buying cross stitch supplies, birthday presents, christmas cards, plane trip home to visit mum and Alison in October etc etc.

All this is worked on my base pay.  I am often asked to work additional hours and some weekend overtime shifts but they are additional so I can;t rely on them.  Any that come through will certainly be put towards plane trips, presents, framing costs and helping pay off the Big Three faster.

So now I have a proper plan.  Barring anything wayward like spending hundreds of dollars per fortnight on car repairs or medical specialists, I should be a ble to manage this.

Given that my fortnightly income should be around $1500 (subject to change - as they are in the process of reclassifying all of our positions!) my simple set up is:

Money goes in to a BankWest account.
Money goes out to:

• Bendigo bank loan account (personal loan)
• Bendigo Bank credit card (credit card bill)
• ING Savings Maximiser Account (paying of Debbie)
• Bendigo Bank standard account (where all regular and irregular bills come out)

Given the very small amounts I'm working with I haven;t set up any investment accounts or short term money markets or anything weird.  Just simple, money in and then money back out to where it needs to go.

Any suggestions or thoughts?