Subscriptions

Our utilities spending category had been rising strongly over time and so I decided to split out the "subscriptions" component:

The graph is in Australian Dollars per year. Data for 2022-23 is for calendar year 2022 and previous years are 1 July to 30 June to match the Australian tax year. Back in 2017-18, subscriptions were less than AUD 1k and so I included them together with phone and internet access bills in a "phone and internet" subcategory that got then bundled into "utilities". But they underwent a step change in 2020-21. Now I am only including "infrastructure" costs - phone bills, internet access, data storage etc. in the phone and internet subcategory. All the subscriptions and payments for electronic services are now in "subscriptions". I moved web-hosting to the "professional" category.

At least "subscriptions" aren't increasing much since the pandemic step change took place. Utilities have increased 36% since 2017-18, which is less than our overall 58% increase in spending. So, there isn't really a problem there. Childcare and education has increased most, by 483%. It was AUD 55k in the 2022 calendar year compared to only AUD 9k in the 2017-18 financial year. Calendar year 2022 spending was AUD 170k (USD 115k).