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Archive for March, 2017

Last Few Days Of March

March 27th, 2017 at 12:24 pm

We're finally at the end of the big spendy month of March. Not spendy because of actual spending but because of the big outlay of cash from our accounts.

For a while because we've been building up cash to pay the car insurance policies and B's tax bill the end of the month hasn't really worried us. If we spent a touch more than the budget allowed it was no problem.

This month because the extra money is gone we have a completely accurate reflection of what is there!! There is the cash in the mortgage offset which is our emergency fund but I am pretty strict about leaving that be.

According to my spending app which I update and track religiously we have $750 left until Friday. According to the actual bank account we have $645 left. Not sure what I have missed but, never mind $645 it is.

On Thursday our weekly spending money in total of $575 will be drawn out the account leaving $70 left. B will then be paid on Friday.

We will be spending a bit on Thursday night because we are going out to a concert with friends so it will be an expensive night (which is pretty rare). Very proud of ourselves for sticking to our budget so well!

Yay For Snowflakes

March 19th, 2017 at 11:08 am

I can probably think of things to write about but all I feel like writing about really is that we got an unexpected snowflake in our bank account Smile. Late last year B went to the doctors three times within two months and used to receive the Medicare rebate refund by cheque however they advised that it is only done electronically now.

We filled out the form and sent it off before Christmas but never received anything back. We repaid the doctors visits on B's credit card except for the $90 we estimated we would receive. I checked the bank account and found three separate deposits of $37.05, so $111.15 in total.

I transferred $90 to B's card and counted the other $21.15 as a snowflake. I updated the snowflakes spreadsheet and so far for March we have $27.94 in snowflakes. According to the Christmas savings challenge we are required to save $95 this month so need about $67 so should be able to make up the balance at the end of the month.

Done; Done; And Fixed

March 16th, 2017 at 10:49 am

Well I have just now paid B's tax bill of $2780.95. That is DONE. It took 6 months for us to save up the money and I am so glad to not have that expense anymore. It is money we owed because it is a portion of his earnings from the business but it certainly was not fun saving up to pay a big bill. Oh well.


After the tax was paid, I swept the first two months of the Christmas savings challenge into the tax account because it turns out it pays slightly higher interest.

I then sorted out which bank accounts the car insurances will be getting deducted out of; turned out his car is still getting debited out of the business account. So $2090.56 car insurance sorted out now. DONE. It is due to be withdrawn somewhere between the 19th and the 21st. Part of me thinks the bank account for his should be changed but part of me thinks that we may be looking for another car insurance provider next year anyway as it went up $149.16 this year, I imagine it will go up again. My car is amazing because it is 14 years old yet is nearly $1000 a year to insure. Part of me wonders if it is even worth having comprehensive these days with a 14yo car because the market value if stolen or written off is only $3000-$5000. What a crock it all is. Anyway that task can also be ticked off the list. DONE.

Then we received the dishwasher seal on Tuesday night. We managed to get ourselves into a dishes routine so as to not be too bothered by not having a dishwasher and B spent some quality time giving the dishwasher a deep clean while we waited for the seal. Then it arrived and after a couple of nights and a bit of water all over the floor, my handyman husband fixed it so now we don't have to call out a repairman or (worst case scenario) buy a new dishwasher. I am so blessed to have a husband who is so handy with repairing things and tinkering with engines. So we can cross that off the list too! FIXED.

That's about all I have at the moment in the way of news. The $5000 outflow from our bank accounts is enough financial news! Thankfully the dishwasher is fixed so no outflow there thank goodness.

Withdrawal From The Holiday Fund

March 14th, 2017 at 11:26 am

Yesterday we made a small withdrawal from the holiday fund of $189.25. This was for an esky (large drinks cooler for camping) as our other one has been broken for a while. The holiday fund was $485 and is now down to $295.75. I like keeping a bit of money there just in case, and the football season is due to start next week so I will do the points challenge (whenever my football team wins I will put $1 per point to the holiday fund; it's a fun way to build some holiday cash when you don't actually have a holiday plan so that if some sort of holiday plan or idea happens there is a little bit set aside for it). Imasaver actually gave me that idea; wherever you are Imasaver I hope you're ok.

Other financial news is we received the gas bill ($131, up from last year) and the electricity bill ($491, down from last year); net difference for both was $3.63 saved compared to last year. More importantly as this big bills month closes over it looks like we could possibly have only $211 left over at the end of the month so any extra expenses will need to be funded from savings if they are over that amount.

By Thursday I will pay the $2780 for B's tax and make sure that the $2100 (roughly) is there for the insurance to debit from the account.

Ps I can see many of you have wild, crazy weather - please stay safe and best wishes for no damage or long outages!

Kind Of Lazy Sunday

March 12th, 2017 at 04:56 am

Two entries in two days doesn't happen to me very often but I am feeling like I have lots of time available so can spare a bit.

We're currently in the middle of a long weekend, tomorrow is a public holiday (Labour Day) so I don't have quite as much of the Sunday rush as I usually do. For me Sunday is generally a rest day - where I do the rest of the things I didn't get done during the week! So suffice to say I am usually rather busy.

We went away camping three weeks ago and will be going away next month at Easter so didn't want to have to put the cat in a boarding kennel again, and decided to stay home.

On Thursday my friend had a major meltdown and went missing. She is a single mother of 3 kids and her ex does not have the kids for very long and she is generally left with the bulk of parenting. The two sons play cricket and football so the ex is at every game and has the kids sometimes but it is generally a 2-3 hour period and doesn't generally have the daughter as she is 5 and he feels she is a bit hard to look after. Nobody knew she was this stressed. She put something up on FB on Wednesday night that she is so sick of her oldest kid who is constantly making life difficult and all she felt like doing was packing up and leaving. I did see the post and said "wow, she's never ever written that, he must have done something bad".

The next day her dad came over to mind the kids while she did a short work shift in the daytime (she works about 4hours and it is close to home), however she never came home. My other friend called me up about 8 to tell me she had run off and to see if I knew where she would be. The missing friend then accessed FB and told everybody not to worry, she is fine just very stressed out but not to try and find her as she doesn't want to talk to anyone. Her boyfriend didn't know where she was. Nobody did. The next few hours were spent speaking to various people to find out who knew anything. Just before bed I was speaking to one of our other friends who lives 2 states away (but we all speak regularly) and she said she was talking to missing friend's brother who said he thought she may have gone to the beach, which to me was a real worry in her state of mind.

The next morning I was speaking to my interstate friend and decided to contact missing friend's boyfriend for an update. He said that she came to his house very late at night and they talked for a while and in the morning talked some more but when he went to the toilet she left again. He said she wasn't acting right, she was very out of it and couldn't understand much of what he was saying. He wasn't as concerned as we were though which was so weird. He said she's done it before and will be ok. As he doesn't work and I was at work I asked him to go for a drive to the beach and see if she was there again. Sure enough she was. I then contacted interstate friend who contacted missing friend's family who were worried sick and her mother went down there and had a long chat with her.

I have never used my phone so much at work as I did on Friday! When I got home it was down to 4%. My friend is now staying with her boyfriend and her parents are minding the children while she gets some much-needed rest. I am still so worried about her though. We have looked up resources that she can use to help cope with parenting, eg psychiatrists and community services. To me it is such a massive thing to leave your children and basically spend hours sitting in your car - I didn't know if she was suicidal and that was my biggest fear. Please pray for my friend that she will get the help she needs and her children will be relatively unscathed from all of this. (We can only suggest services to her and cannot force her to use what is available)

Yesterday, after all of what happened on Thursday and Friday I really felt like I needed downtime to recharge. B went to the motorbike club he is a member of and helped them out today. I did some study and relaxed and then rented out a movie last night which I fell asleep to unfortunately.

Today I went for a swim in the morning at my gym, then bought some lasagna for dinner and bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and orange juice for a bacon and egg breakfast tomorrow (because this is not normally something we can do on a Monday morning!). $24.71 was spent.

Then I bought some wine ($15.94 was spent)

Then I bought an iTunes card. This is a $30 card and there was 15% off, so amount payable was $25.50. All items today were put on my credit card, food and wine have been repaid already. When I repay the iTunes card I am going to also transfer the saved amount of $4.50 to the Christmas savings challenge because I am counting it as a snowflake.

Speaking of snowflakes, I spent 7hrs and 57minutes studying for my biggest snowflake (a subject in a degree which will be completed eventually and which would result in a significant payrise).

I now am going to sweep and mop the kitchen floor, fold some laundry and then B and I are planning on using the hot tub, which will be the perfect end to a lazy sunday Smile.

11 Things For 11 Days

March 11th, 2017 at 06:10 am

It's been a little while since I've posted so rather than write about whatever the latest thing is, I'm going to write about 11 things (hopefully mostly financial) that have been going on in the last 11 days:

1. On Tuesday our dishwasher seal broke Frown. Luckily I was standing near it and it had only run for 3 minutes so there was no water damage. B had a look at it and found the manufacturers website so we bought a double pack of seals (just in case the other seal goes, so that we don't have to re-order) for $52.73 which they say will be delivered to us next Wednesday. We are both so sick of washing dishes by hand but thankfully have got ourselves into a more regular routine so it's a bit less painful.

2. I finally got around to checking my superannuation account (retirement account) and the balance is $92,008. Going by ceejay's years x income, by the time I turn 40 next year I need to have 2 x times my income so $108,000. I realized that combined with the taxable investments I hold outside of superannuation and earnings that hopefully the account will receive it should be a possibility. The earnings last year were a paltry 2.44% however over 5 years in total they were 38.75% which equates to 7.75% per year which beats the standard 5%. I am happy with 7.75%.

3. B got a letter from a superannuation account which was an employer one from a job he had 9-10 years ago stating that if he didn't give his instructions on what to do with the account they would be turning it over to the Australian Taxation Office so they could hold it in the unclaimed moneys department. We had a financial planner roll all of our employer superannuation accounts into one years ago however he missed this one, the current account balance is $4,187.50. The letter was dated 1st February and gave us until 22nd February however I don't think they sent it for a while because we saw the letter on the 28th so the money has now gone to the Tax Office. There will now be a lengthy process to get it and roll it over as B will need to apply in writing and we will need to wait a while most likely to receive it. How annoying.

4. We have decided not to go on the Phuket holiday. This is due to our friends not being interested in going anymore and also B not really being interested. I wouldn't mind going but I'm not too bothered that we aren't doing it anymore as I had a big trip overseas last year and generally like to go overseas every 2-3 years, otherwise it can be a bit expensive going on annual overseas trips. We are now looking at doing a camping holiday in the next state at a beachy sort of area instead, which I am looking forward to. I'm not sure of when we will go though, it would be sometime between July and September and would be dependent on B's work (my work is a bit more flexible at that time of year).

5. This month we pay B's tax of $2,780. All funds have now been saved and the money will be transferred over soon.

6. Our car insurances also get debited out of our account around the 19th of March; mine is $969.40 for a 14 year old car; B's is $1,121.16 for a 6 year old car. We have enough money in the account and because I averaged out the bills amount back in October we did not have to pay for any of it out of pocket which is great! Last year we had to find $461.40 to cover the remaining portion. All I need to do is work out which bank account B's car insurance comes out of, don't remember.

7. We made month number 2 of the Christmas savings challenge, so we now have $135 saved up. This month we are supposed to save up $95. We currently have $2 saved up so need to start working towards it.

8. I bought a replacement suit for work a couple of weeks ago for $132, which was an $87 reduction in price. This suit should last a long time so was happy to pay it.

9. B is on a health kick and has rejoined boxing classes. He went regularly just before we got married but then it died off after the wedding so it's been a few years since he's been. To test the waters instead of signing up for a membership we bought a 10 class pack for $130. So far he has done 2 classes this week and has lost 2 kilos so is pretty happy. If he decides after using up the class pack that he wants to rejoin, it is $19.95 per week (same as my membership).

10. Last week we had my family over for lunch and it was a warm day so we cooked up chicken with roast potatoes and salad, then my sister and I both did a dessert each. It was a lovely meal and for 7 people we spent a whole $37.86 Smile. You could spend that on 2 people going out for lunch so I was pretty happy.

11. It is week 2 of my study unit and I am coping ok with the workload. They say you need to allocate 10hours per week however this subject's tutor has said we should allocate 15(!?!) which I really hope is not the truth because I don't know how on earth I would fit that amount of time in. I really want to be diligent with doing 10hours from the very start to avoid having to do 20hours around exam and assignment time, but this week I am finding that I have put in 7.5hours and don't really have 2.5 more hours of work to do.... I will probably finish the online quiz I have to do and do some revision.

I struggled to think of the 11th thing but I'm glad to have jotted down some bits and pieces. Off to check the blogs!