What are your household costs each month?

What are your fixed costs?
What are your variables?
Are you making enough to sustain your lifestyle?
Can you make some positive changes from the results you see?

I was shocked to see the results…
How much?! I remember saying

It’s an exercise I first did that was long overdue. I had a feeling that household costs were on the rise and it was getting to the point where I thought we were spending more in the month than what was coming in.
In my professional world, my business life, I knew almost down to the penny what was coming in and what was going out – in fact, I enjoyed knowing these figures. Business can be built on well managed data like this so it makes perfect sense doesn’t it to look after our household finances in such a way.

My results shocked me! I remember running the numbers and seeing a figure way above what I thought it would be. This was the cost of having a ‘normal’ life; kids swimming, football practice, hair chops, date night, weekly food shop. It set the bar for me to have an eye on, a north star if you like to work towards, knowing that until that magical number is reached then we aren’t able to save or invest anything.
So things had to change and I made it my mission, and that of the household, to try and trim variable spends by 5% this month, and 5% the next, and so on.

This doesn’t mean my ambition wasn’t to increase the income too, but by firstly understanding the finances and then reducing our household exposure, it dramatically helped me manage stress, pressure and anxiety associated to money.

How much does it cost you to just stand still?
I hope like me, you find this exercise quite revealing.