My favourite way to handle money is to set up 3 bank accounts as follows:-

A. General Spending Account

This account is for all your weekly spending. This account is for the purpose of buying your weekly items such as groceries, petrol, going out, meals, clothes, drinks and any type of general weekly spending. This account has a card for accessing your funds through an ATM or through EFTPOS.

Important Tip – never give your account number or PIN number to anyone.

B. Bills Account

This account is for all your bills such as water, electricity, rent or mortgage payments, phone bills etc. When we do your budget we work out how much you will need to cover all your bills each year and then divide this up so that each time you are paid a transfer goes into this account to cover a weekly amount of all bills. Each time you get a bill in you take the payment from this account. You don’t have card access for this account as it is not designed for weekly general spending.

 Important Tip – you can pay some bills via bpay or direct debit weekly – this can be a great way of managing your bills

C.  Holiday, Special Occasions & Savings Account

This account is for things like Christmas, holidays, and birthdays and for special savings.  This account is separate from the other two and only accessed for a special occasion or when you have reached a savings goal. You don’t have a card for this account so that it isn’t easily accessible for moments of temptation.

Important Tip – make sure this is an interest earning account as the money can add up in this account and the interest will be a nice bonus for you

The next thing we recommend is that you work out a budget…

A budget is basically a tally of all of your income and expenses. You can get a paper budget (we have free copies here) or you can download an electronic version from our website – www.advancedfinance.com.au/services then click on “Budget Planner”

By working out what you are spending your money on you will realize where you are wasting money (if you are) then save that money,  or you might work out that you need to do something about increasing your income or cutting back on your spending if there are no places you can cut back.

Once you have worked out your budget go back through the list and put an A, B or C next to each item on the budget.
That amount then needs to go into the relevant bank account each week, fortnight or month (as soon as you are paid).

This will then mean that whatever is in your account A is what you can spend each week on general items – if you run out then you can’t spend any more. Whatever is in B is used only when a bill arrives and C is used for your special occasions only when they arise.

It makes money management so much easier.

Remember – taking charge of your money and help you reach your goals so much faster