How To Reduce Everyday Household Expenses
Tips and Hints for Australian Home Budgets
Some recurring bills, like the mortgage and utilities, are unavoidable. Other luxury expenses can be sacrificed in the short or long term to help balance a budget. The costs that remain are necessary, but can be reduced by careful planning or by changing everyday spending habits. Often these expenses are items and services that are used on a regular basis.
There is a range of websites, books and resources that offer budgeting solutions for reducing expenses and living more frugally. Many of these are based in America or the UK and don’t always offer useful or practical advice for Australian households.
Australian Budgeting Resources
SimpleSavings is an Australian site with a ‘vault’ of tips provided by members and visitors. Access to the vault is for members only (annual ‘satisfaction guaranteed’ fee). There is also a range of savings information available for free. There is a regular email newsletter, advice on setting up a bill payment system, a downloadable bill payment and savings calendar and many other helpful money saving ideas. Membership to the site is a worthwhile investment for anyone seeking practical tips to reduce spending.
Cashed Up, Debt Free and Laughing: A Cheapskates Way to Living the Good Life by Cath and Lee Ann Armstrong (ABC, 2007) is a great book offering useful advice for Australian consumers on ways to reduce grocery, general household and everyday living expenses.
The Destitute Gourmet cookbooks originate in New Zealand and are suitable for Australian tastes and lifestyles. They provide tasty and cost effective meals and a variety of tips on how to reduce grocery expenses. A very useful range of practical cookbooks for family meals and entertaining.
Compile a Grocery Price Book
Both SimpleSavings and the Armstrongs suggest compiling a grocery price book, although with slightly different methods and purposes. Get a small notebook and start listing the price paid for items. Use one page for each item and list the date, brand & size, price paid, store location, and price per unit. Eg. A milk purchase might read: 13/1/08 - Homebrand 3L – $3.19 - Woolworths MH - $1.06/L. Use abbreviations for store names and locations. Recent receipts and specials catalogues should provide some information that can be transferred to the book. If the item was on special, this can be noted next to the price with an ‘S’ if desired.
After compiling prices for a few weeks, it should be easy to see which stores offer the cheapest deals on a particular item. Two to three months' of prices will also start to show the store sales cycle (which often rotates on a 6 – 8 week basis), allowing purchases such as washing detergent and cereals to be factored in to weekly budgeting.
Reduce Consumption
It is an obvious truth that using less of something, be it goods or services, will cost less. Review regular purchases and services and consider whether the frequency can be reduced.
For example:
Haircuts – If appointments are extended from every 6 weeks to every 7 weeks, there will be one less trip to the hairdresser each year. Home hair colours can also reduce costs or by applying a base colour at home, additional highlights can be added by a hairdresser at a lower cost than a full colour.
Petrol - Plan ahead with outings to ensure that minimal trips are needed. Group jobs that need to be done in a particular area and complete them one the same day. Less driving means a tank of petrol lasts longer.
Consider ways you can reduce consumption by changing habits in the home. Many of these also have the added benefit of being friendlier to the environment.
