$181 a week. How far can you stretch it?

Is $181 a week enough for 2 people for food, general dry goods, medical, dental, and optometrist's gap fees, shoes, toiletries, clothing, repairs, broken appliance replacements, uni fees and textbooks, stationery & computer consumables, soft furnishing wear and tear, or even such sinful luxuries as the occasional book, magazine, CD, membership, movie, latte, paper, birthday presents, a cheap dinner out,  an occasional taxi, forget about a car, forget about holidays, forget about Xmas presents.

 

Well, that's what DH and child are now living on, once DH has paid rent, privatised health costs and a few other recurring costs as listed below....

 

 

DH welcomes your budgetary advice, commiserations, abuse for her profligate ways, donations (remembering that 70 cents in your dollar go straight back to the government)

 

Or do you think she should compare herself to, say,  the citizens of most of Africa, South America, East Timor, Iraq, other Middle Eastern despotisms, PNG, North Korea, or the non-citizens of Guantanamo, and Christmas Island, or Chinese pieceworkers, or even Western Suburbs pieceworkers,  or Aboriginal women near Uluru, and just stop having such high expectations of life as a middle income earner in one of the richest countries on earth?