leesha's savings story:
in the middle of the whole GFC thing, my boss did a runner with all of the company's money. we were at work when they turned the lights out, the computers off, and called us all into the boardroom to announce we were all being made redundant, but with no money, they couldn't pay out our leave, our long service, or any kind of package. we were let go at 10am in the morning. my colleagues and i all went to the local pub to drown our sorrows. at that point, i had no real savings to speak off, i had previously been on a very, very generous wage and we were living the high life.
carlo and i assumed with my experience and qualifications (cause i have mad leet skillz) i'd be reemployed in no time. but the GFC hit my industry (finance) hard, and i was unemployed for a year. during that time, we had to live on one wage, and that wage was really, really ordinary. that was a dark time for us. we lived on cheapo brand instant coffee, uht milk and cheap bread. aldi became our favourite shopping location. i had no haircuts or treatments of any kind for a year. we bought bargain basement groceries and no new clothes or shoes or anything in order to pay the rent and our loan etc. we discovered our bare minimum standard of living. we didn't go anywhere. we didn't go to movies or restaurants or even buy birthday presents for ourselves. we bought others gifts and still celebrated xmas but had a very, very strict budget. this basically was our baseline for the 12 months.
then i got a job. very ordinary wage. almost 1/2 of what i was previously earning, but that regular income was like manna from heaven. we upgraded our standard of living, and reinstated a few social outings, but when we decided to do our trip to disneyland/nyc/wwohp/vegas for 2011, i calculated our entire budget - insurance/esta/airfare/transfers/accom/tipping/food budget/souvenir budget etc. we then broke that down by the number of weeks in the 10 months we had to save up, and every single week without fail, we put that money aside and didn't touch it. tax return money we considered gravy... and that also went into our trip account.
that's now what we're doing for our 2012 trip, which includes a cruise and 3 nights in chicago, 7 nights at disneyland. we've already passed up on the xmas presents. no birthday presents, no date nights or restaurants. we don't drink or smoke. no extraneous expenses, and every single week, that budgeted amount goes into our bank account without fail. makes for a very, very boring year but a great trip as we can afford to indulge ourselves... up to a limit
this is also how i plan on travelling to europe next year as a solo trip.
having said that, our recent trip to the usa, from bne-lax-nyc-mco-las-lax-bne cost us, all up, about $12.5k, between the 2 of us which includes every single dollar spent between the time our plane took off to the time our plane landed back in brisbane... we thought that was pretty decent, so we've budgeted the same for this 3 week trip in 2012...
anyway... that's my little savings story
if anyone has any
We had a 3 1/2 year old daughter at the time and a nine month old son. My mum had my son for us while we travelled.
good for a months effort...that will pay for one nights accom in LA 
alicia1506 thats an awesome saving story it is amazing what you can live without when you have to or when your saving for a trip to see 
. It is the best savings plan I have ever introduced into our lives 
