Spontaneity is unattainable on Cliff Fraser's budget as he accounts for every cent of his fortnightly JobSeeker payment.
This month, routine indexation will increase the payment by $1.77 a day.
But the 63-year-old says the increase will have no impact.
Mr Fraser and his wife Anne, who receives the pension, live north of Bridgewater in central Victoria.
He has worked across a number of sectors as a computer technician, road pilot, cleaner, and hospital orderly, but he was predominantly a truck driver before a heart attack in 2011.
He has been receiving a fortnightly JobSeeker payment of about $560 since losing a part-time job a few weeks ago.
"It is survival rates and that is all," Mr Fraser said.
He said living about 40 kilometres out of Bendigo meant he had to make sure he was "getting value" for the fuel he used driving into town.
"We can't afford to run into town just because we're short of milk," Mr Fraser said.
While a rental in Bendigo would cut down on fuel expenses, Mr Fraser said with rental conditions the way they were it was "completely out of any possibility".
'Woefully inadequate'
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) is calling for a "real" increase to income support payments, which it said were inadequate before cost-of-living expenses recently accelerated.
Acting CEO Edwina MacDonald said routine indexation in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) does not address the needs of people living on income support.
ACOSS is calling for the JobSeeker payment to be raised from around $50 a day to $73, which would bring it in line with the pension.
Ms MacDonald said ACOSS is hearing from people who are regularly skipping meals to survive and people who are going without prescription medicine just to pay the rent.
Income support payments were "woefully inadequate long before we've seen the skyrocketing prices of food, rent, medicines, and energy", she said.
Ms MacDonald said in the past year the cost of rent had risen by at least 10 per cent, food by more than 9 per cent, and electricity by almost 9 per cent.
"It's just not acceptable for us in a country like Australia to have a system that's really forcing people further into poverty," she said.
Increased demand for help
Catherine Byrne is the emergency relief coordinator of Uniting Vic.Tas in Wodonga, providing food, material aid, and services such as financial counselling.
Demand for Uniting's services has "increased dreadfully" with a 72 per cent spike in new clients this February.
Ms Byrne said the people she spoke with were "upset and anxious" with interest rates being raised this week for the 10th consecutive time.
Ms Byrne said it was clear that interest rate rises were being passed on from landlords to their tenants, pushing people into housing stress and "at risk of losing their housing".
She said income support payments such as JobSeeker should be increased — "what is $2 going to buy you?" she said.
"We try to stream them into financial counselling and those services to find any savings they may have," Ms Byrne said.
People could be very good at budgeting, she said, but that would not matter if there just was not enough money.
