Perth Now’s Cash Confessions asks ordinary West Australians what their income is and what they spend their money on in a week.
This week, a Perth couple with two children earning $180,000 a year (combined salaries) reveal what they spend their money on in a week.
Age: I’m 48 and so is my wife
Lives: In the Willeton/Rossmoyne/Shelley area of Perth
Salaries: We both work full-time. I earn $100,000 a year. My wife earns $80,000 per year.
Jobs: I work for an energy utility company as a document controller and my wife works in a lab for Wesfarmers. Both are very normal, boring jobs!
Assets/savings/investments/shares:
We supplement our salaries with rental income earned from our investment properties.
We have managed to accumulate six properties in Australia and three overseas. The last one we purchased was last year in 2023 and the first was 18 years ago.
We have combined superannuation of $330,000, shares worth $130,000 and cash savings of $130,000.
Equity for each Australian investment property is currently valued at:
1. $785,884.60
2. $167,031.60
3. $154,108.68
4. $71,738
5. $151,738
6. $71,738.
I am participating in Perth Now’s Cash Confessions because I want to show that it is possible to get ahead even as a normal couple working two normal jobs. Neither of us are university educated and we both started out as labourers in blue collar roles and worked our way up to where we are now, working in semi-professional jobs.
MONTHLY EXPENSES:
Our regular monthly expenses amount to approximately $4,050 per month for our family of four.
Mortgage: $2,000 per month
Groceries: $480 per month
Investments Properties: These are all positively geared. After all the expenses for all the properties have been paid, it gives me about $412.40 per month extra cash.
Clothing: $100
Recreation/Entertainment: $450
Phone/Internet/Streaming services: $100 per month
School: $100 (public school contributions and excursions, etc)
Health insurance:$230 per month
Petrol/public transport: $120 per month
Land tax/ rates/ home insurances/ utilities: $475 per month
ABOUT US:
My wife and I both work full time and have two kids, aged nine and 11.
We started working just over 20 years ago and back then we both earned $16,000 per year each.
Two years after we both started working on those low incomes, we bought our first house in 2006. It was a 3 x 1 house in a very good southern suburbs area and it cost $218,000.
Part of why we bought it was to ensure our (future!) children would be granted access to their choice out of two of WA’s top public schools (we purchased in a dual catchment zone). We didn’t have children then but we like to plan ahead for the next phases of life.
We got married in 2000 at age 30. Soon after, we started purchasing shares, properties – you name it.
We made mistakes and money was lost (around $100,00 was lost altogether) but eventually, we figured out the most stable method of investing for us. It was all self-learnt. We had no mentor and we had absolutely no connections with Perth’s upper echelons to get free advice from. It all came out of pure luck, lots of reading and lots of trial and error.
If we had started investing in our 20s, the results would had been at least double what the current amount is. When we were that age, we were all about self-gratification and having all the “stuff” that we never had in our childhoods.
I migrated to Australia when I was eight years old and did not speak English so I had to learn it when we arrived. We started in Australia from nothing. My family was the only one of our kind in the Australian town we lived in back then, which was 40 years ago now.
My father was a table tennis coach and my mother was a stay-at-home mum and all we had was AU$500 to our names when we arrived here.
My parents rented us a little brick house with two bedrooms. We had to move around a lot depending on where dad found work.
I really feel that you need to be poor first to know the pain of being poor.
Australia is the lucky country so many people are not born poor here compared to in other countries, like where I came from.
Those who are poor know the pain and I worry it will get worse for people here — it is a tough economic climate.
After my wife and I got married, we tried to start a family but it took four rounds of IVF until we had success. It took four years to have our first child and two years to have our second. Money was tight once the dual income became single but we had planned for it so we managed.
In this time, I switched from working on a mine site to a city job. My wife was made redundant but thankfully found a position with Wesfarmers when she was ready to re-enter the workforce after three years on and off at home caring for our children.
Starting out with a one to three-year plan has really helped us achieve what we hoped to. Every year we would take a look at it and review what we had achieved and what was in progress and we’d adjust it yearly to stay on target, or change targets.
We planned all of our purchases and always leveraged as much as we could from free events, Flybuys, Frequent Flyer Points, credit cards, loyalty points and reward systems and we were very careful to stick to a realistic budget.
I think the good thing about PerthNow’s Cash Confessions is seeing what other people are doing to get to where they want to be.
I want to show WA people that it is possible to be born poor and then self-educate and be financially literate. I think everyone in today’s economy should at least know how to read a balance sheet, and know how to put things into the income, expense, assets, and liability column and I don’t think that job has to be outsourced to an accountant.
I hear about people in the top income brackets of society saying they are struggling right now but I know there are other people out there who really are struggling and I want to show that even the average family doesn’t have to struggle if they plan and budget.
Day 1 – Wednesday
Packed lunches for kids: Banana and grapes, rice crackers, a roast chicken wrap, and a backup biscuit pack just in case they feel extra hungry today. (This was leftover from the previous Sunday’s shop so 2x $0.40 + $0.75 +$0.75 + $3.50 + $0.30 = $11.40 worth altogether)
Her lunch: Weight Watcher’s frozen dinner (previous month’s special buy $3.55)
His lunch: Banana (Previous Sunday’s Shop $5.50/13 = $0.40)
Dinner: Homemade fried rice from leftovers. Four cups of steamed rice, frozen peas & corn and a pack of 200g frozen clearance ham ($6)
Total daily spend: $21.30
Day 2 – Thursday
I packed the kids the same lunch as yesterday except exchanged rice crackers for cheese & salted crackers ($11.40).
Master 9 has soccer and Miss 11 has netball training and both had a large frozen drink from MacDonalds on the way ($2).
Her Lunch: Fried Rice from the previous night + takeout Laksa ($15)
His Lunch: Banana ($0.4) plus a muesli bar (Pack of five for $0.99 at Spudshed)
For dinner we had Japanese Chicken Katsu takeaway. This was three containers for $20 plus pan-fried cabbage and cauliflower (an extra $0.90c + $2.00)
Total daily spend: $51.90
Day 3 – Friday
The kids lunchboxes contained a banana and apples, rice crackers, a roast chicken & cheese sandwich and a few mentos sweets as a surprise (this included ingredients from our previous Sunday’s shop amounting to two x $0.40 + $0.75 + $0.75 + $3.5 + $0.2 = $11)
Her lunch: Last pack of the Japanese takeaway and last of the fried vegetables.
His Lunch: Banana ($0.40) + Muslie Bar ($0.20)
Dinner: Costco pizza + bottle of Pepsi ($16.00 + $1.80 = $17.80)
Total daily spend: $29.40
Day 4 – Saturday
Miss 11 had netball in the morning. Afterwards, the whole family went to Jurassic Kingdom because there was 50 per cent off tickets ($60 for our family). We took snacks of fruits, potato chips, frozen bottles of water and biscuits. ($3.00 + $2.00 + $1.00 = $6)
We then grabbed a late lunch/early dinner at Nandos using a birthday voucher. We ordered a whole chicken with three sides ($47.50)
Saturday night usually consists of movies at home with popcorn ($1) and desserts (a Cyclone icy pole or ice cream for $0.60c x 2, bulk buy from the week before at $5.4 for eight of them).
Total daily spend: $115.70
Day 5 -Sunday
Master 9 has a soccer game. After that our whole family went to McDonald’s to get the big breakfast deal ($12.95 for 1 x hot drink, 2x hash brown, and 2 x bacon and egg Mcmuffins) plus we redeemed one birthday large fries and one x large fries via McDonald Points plus 3 x frozen drink for $3.00)
Then it is food shopping for next week’s meals. We went to Coles, Woolworth and Aldi for their individual specials and clearances, Costco for fuel and chicken, and Spudshed for remainders (amounting to $20.97+$6.95+$2.49+17.75+$82).
I purchased new netball shoes for Miss 11 for $60.
For dinner, we ate pasta (which we buy in bulk), garlic bread and leftover Nandos (the pasta is good for three meals). $12.
Total daily spend: $190.00
Day 6 – Monday
This was a busy day for everyone. The kids had the same packed lunch as usual. This was two x fruit, rice crackers or cheese and crackers and a fairy bread sandwich. ($11.00)
Miss 11 had dancing followed by netball. Master 9 had piano followed by Karate.
Her lunch: leftover pasta
His lunch: leftover pizza
Dinner – frozen crumbed chicken turned into lemon chicken plus salted cauliflower and cabbage plus rice (previous week’s clearance and shopping $3.00+ $3.00+ $1.00)
Total daily spend: $18.00
Day 7 – Tuesday
The same type of lunch for the kids two x fruits, rice crackers or cheese & crackers, chicken wrap, and a surprise sweet ($11).
Her lunch: leftovers from Monday’s dinner
His lunch: banana ($0.40c) + muesli bar ($0.20c)
For dinner, we made fried rice from the remainder of that week plus old chicken and last night’s rice, oven-cooked small pack of ribs, and two corn cobs and some potatoes (all accounted for from Sunday’s shopping)
Total daily spend: $11.60
Reflection:
I am reasonably OK with the way things are tracking financially for our family.
There are other opportunities I would like to pursue and sometimes I am not in a position to do that due to timing or other external circumstances.
I can honestly tell you not much, besides a bit of personal time and a lot of delayed gratification, has been sacrificed to get to where we are today.
Our last overseas trip was to Hong Kong at the start of 2024 with the kids and we even stayed at the Disney Hotel. Our last local trip was down south for three days during the Easter break.
We still buy 80 per cent of branded products such as Superdry, Nike, Underarmor, Adidas, Champions, Reebok and Bonds for out clothing and shoes but we only buy based on the product’s sale cycles.
Everything has a sales cycle, some are based on seasons (clothing and fruit/vegetable), some are based on the months (detergent, personal care, vitamins), some are based on the financial year/quarters (services, pre-paid, cars), some are based on manufactured dates (cars), and some are based on long-term projections and demand (holidays). This has worked really well for us in terms of making cost savings and generally, we get up to 70 per cent off by timing purchases really well.
I can also see that for a family of four, we have a low grocery bill. This is because of the way I shop. I plan in advance and buy when opportunities present (whether it is new shoes for the kids (buying six months in advance), new clothes (three to six months), replacement car (12 months) , laundry detergents (1 year), even an overseas holiday (nine – 18 months) or our first house (four years before our first child, and six years before the second child).
We have made mistakes but we kept going and practising and now 90% of what we want is within reach within a reasonable amount of time.
- Next Friday’s Cash Confessions features a police officer and a primary school teacher who reveal their salaries and what they spend in a week.
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