Challenge starting balance: $5,193.18
Plus:
- weekly EF savings $35.69
- football winnings $36.00
- fortnightly balance transfer payment $151.50
- repayment to B's credit card $10.00
- mortgage topup $280.00
- plus extra paid towards mortgage $31.00
Challenge closing balance: $5,737.37

The weekly EF savings got transferred out and I transferred last week's football winnings of $36.00. So far I am at $47.00 with that challenge and then my team won again! This time by 15 points so that will be next week's transfer. The holiday fund has been reduced to $-445 now.

The fortnightly balance transfer came out and then over the weekend I got the monthly credit card statement emailed to me, the balance is now down to $523.50!! Somehow I am ahead by $110 as opposed to my credit card paydown spreadsheet. I have no idea but it means that in September instead of final payment being $311.00, it will be $220.50.

We also threw $10 over to B's credit card from our weekly spending money.

April mortgage interest was $588 and in the month of April we paid $8 extra, $580 - $300 maximum interest we want to pay is $280, which we transferred over.

Then I saw that the mortgage balance was $120,061 and got excited and figured that perhaps we can pay $62 and it can be down to $119,999 by the end of the month, so have transferred $31 over from our spending money.

Speaking of spending, on the weekend we made up for the two weeks prior where we barely spent anything. We got B's birthday present, some motorbike riding gear for $300, these two gorgeous lamps I've had my eye on for a while for $168, black printer toner ink for $71.77 and a laptop bag for B's work for $46.

I had to put the lamps and the groceries for $116 on my credit card so it will be getting paid back out of next week's spending money. We have no social plans and will just do everything on the cheap next week. The purchases were worth it.

Another thing I bought is my first herb plant- parsley. It sits on our window sill, hope to get a lot of use out of it.

Whew so much writing !!

I enjoyed last week writing small posts about different financial matters, so hope to be back doing that tomorrow .

Ps does anybody know what has happened to Imasaver? I just realised I haven't seen her blogs in a while and she's not on the "all blogs" list. Thanks.

Challenge starting balance: $4,744.82
Plus:
- Fortnightly balance transfer repayment: $151.50
- Weekly EF savings: $35.69
Challenge closing balance: $4,932.01

Hi everybody, I'm back from the UK trip! Had a really lovely time, it was amazing. Saw so many cool things, had quite a few "wow" moments. It was so lovely to meet SG in Scotland, had a really nice lunch with her and her family and my friend.

I will upload pictures when B is around - I had problems doing it last time, so pictures will come soon.

My friend and her husband were such wonderful hosts, they took me to see so many places and made a really big effort to show me the UK side of life, especially food. I am so grateful to have been able to do this big trip.

They live in the middle of England so we checked out lots of castles, historic buildings and English gardens in their area; they took me to a place near Yorkshire where we stayed in a really nice caravan; we went to London for a couple of days and to Scotland for a couple of days.

Financially I only overspent by $102. They are pretty frugal so we cooked a lot of meals at home and mainly ate out on the weekend and when we were away in London and Scotland. My main expenses were meals when out, gifts and alcohol. I am currently staying sober for the rest of July to make up for it! In Australia we have a charity thing called Dry July, so while I am not entering it officially - I had a few drinks at the start of the month so can't - I am basically doing the same things as the people who enter it (except for raise money). I am now on Day 2.

I was lucky enough to have wifi so was able to speak to B pretty much every day. All the same I was very happy to come home! B said the cat was driving him crazy because she was meowing non stop. As soon as I got home I gave her lots of cuddles and it soon stopped. I guess this is her way of telling me I was gone too long!!

The dog decided that she was a daddy's girl and ignored me for the first night and day - now after feeding her and walking her, I am back in her good books and all is normal again.

Jet lag - all I can say is oh my god!!! Yesterday (my first full day back - I got back into Oz the night before) - I experienced a new level of tiredness I have never had!!! Even my bones ached and I was too tired to sit up. Today I don't feel wonderful but have more energy. All the same, I am going in the spa soon to try and help the aches. I guess if you sit mostly still for 27 hours you can expect a touch of pain.

It was still worth it though

***

While I haven't been posting or commenting on the blogs, whenever I've had a chance I've lurked and even on holidays my mind was never truly off financial stuff.

I didn't track expenses for the entire month of June, simply set automatic transfers weekly for our spending money and B's credit card, and fortnightly transfers for my balance transfer repayment. I decided I liked having our spending money and B's credit card payment get deposited every Thursday so simply changed the weekly spending amount from $300 to $500 (being for both of us), and left B's credit card payment at $80 per week. I can simply look at the monthly budget and if something needs to be changed it is very easy.

Being halfway through the year I looked at my 2016 goals and realised that while I have saved just over $2000 into the EF, I have only realistically paid no more than $300 per month mortgage interest for the first two months of the year so need to work on that goal.

As a result I have adjusted the weekly EF savings from $71.02 down to $35.69 (being $3000 - $2072.10 / 26 weeks), and will be working more on the mortgage interest - will write more about that next week.

***

Back in March I took the dog to the vet for a checkup and they reported that she has two broken teeth and needs her teeth cleaned, with an estimated cost of $900-$1100. It never left my mind that I needed to get this done and as I have a day off work tomorrow (I don't start back until next week); I have booked her in to get the work done. As she is 13, I really really hope she will be ok. Cross your fingers for her.

I've spent time working out the June budget so that we will be ok and worked out the holiday spending. It's not that pretty but it is what it is.

Final repayment of flights (1/3): 252
+ other travel items purchased on CC: 458
+ final instalment of spending money: 721

= 1431
- 803 savings transferred in from holiday fund
------
$ 628
====

The holiday fund is now sitting at $1537 to be repaid back once I am back from holidays. It feels like a lot but I did only book this holiday three months ago, and to go to Europe from Australia is a pretty expensive thing - our UK friends who come over save for a couple of years to be able to do this, so I have kept this in perspective. It will be fine.

The Mini EF is way higher than the usual $2500 cash amount I wanted to leave available so when more of the holiday fund is repaid I could definitely buy more shares.

The Maxi EF (the shares) last night was at $2,999.16! We have a $3000 share portfolio! (ok it has dipped down a bit today). Small victories

Tomorrow I will be clearing the credit card and have just transferred the $803 over, and will be transferring some money to the travel money card. There is 518GBP there, I would like to have 750GBP by the time I go (and 300GBP cash). It will work out to 50GBP spending money per day, hopefully this is doable and I don't overspend too much.

***

In other news B and I have been watching House Rules (Australian renovation competition show) and they had a nice walk-in closet and B has decided he wants to change ours to look like it! He might do a bit of work while I'm gone on it.

It's been a very busy week and part of this has been organising a visit to see Scottish Girl when on holidays soon! Very excited.

My friend I am staying with hasn't been to Scotland in years so she was more than happy to come too, so we will get on a train to go there, meet SG, stay at a hotel and do some exploring. My friend lives in the middle of England so going to Scotland takes a while but is not a massive trek.

We have booked the train tickets and hotel so it is now locked in. It's really funny how this fits into the trip - it is basically 2-3 days before I fly back to Oz so I guess I am preparing myself for long travel. We go to Scotland, come back the next day, then go out to a garden concert which is all day Saturday and then on the Sunday evening I fly home.

I've organised my phone to get put on global roaming and paid the $100 (refundable) bond. I will then be able to text back to B in Oz with no problem, and whoever else I need to text. It's a text only plan, calls are not allowed but that does not bother me, it's fine.

***

Tracking is already starting to be hard. I can see the whole of June being wiped out because my focus will not be on finances. However, as on all holidays I take, while the focus is not on tracking finances, it is on keeping costs down.

B does not handle the money at all and was worried about it because it is new to him so I have tried to set up various automatic transfers so all he will have to do is check the bank account once a week and pay a bill if needed.

I have set up $300 to get transferred from our account to the checking account so he will have cash for groceries and whatever else, $80 onto his CC for his work expenses, $151.50 fortnightly onto my balance transfer CC, and $936 once a month to go into the account his car lease gets paid out of (cannot wait to refinance that in August! the loan we are looking at is around $300 cheaper).

Tomorrow I will do the June monthly budget just to ensure everything will be ok and tweak whatever is needed. And also transfer my final batch of holiday savings to the travel money card and a portion cash; and clear my CC down to $0 before the trip.

So many things to remember, hope I get everything! B is very helpful though, he is always thinking of stuff too.

***

Work is still quiet, but they dropped hints that they were cranky and I dropped hints that I only have two small jobs left but don't want to whinge or bother anyone. They have let me be and I have tried to string my work out as long as possible until more regular work starts flowing back in.

I finished my last job today and my boss gave me another one so at this stage have not had to take extra leave.

On my last day we are going out with work associates (the auditors who audit our accounting work) to a very swanky restaurant. I got a brand new top I can wear but my black jacket is looking pretty old and the fabric is on it's way out, so I am in the market for a new jacket.

My black work jacket I wear three days a work so no matter what the cost is after six months it's time for a replacement. The range I see at the moment goes from Target at $35 to $70 Tokito at Myer to $100 Basque from Myer... As I am going on a huge holiday I'm inclined to buy the Target jacket, but I'll try on all three and see how I go.

Whew! Hope you're all well.

52 Week Challenge Opening Balance: $3,148.28
Plus:
- Snowflake- Safeway Everyday Reward $10
- Mortgage principal repayment $8
52 Week Challenge Closing Balance: $3,166.28

To start with the additions to the challenge: when paying for something at Safeway they gave me my $10 reward off the groceries purchase price, so I transferred that to the EF today. I also saw the $8 bank fee got charged to the mortgage which put it back over $122k, so I paid the $8 back.

****

We've operated our budget on a monthly basis for the last 11 years since working at my job but after doing a completely joint budget as of 1 April, I'm already realising that perhaps we need to do things differently. (Not perhaps but we *must* do things differently).

I think it's a combination that we can see more income than we usually see and this month has already started to be expensive and looks like it will get out of control in a big way.

B gets paid on the 30th and received just under $3k for 2 weeks work (next month working a full month will be just under $4.5k as the tax is a bit higher). As he closed the business he advised me that his friend who has work for him occasionally (and he would work for the friend occasionally- instead of paying each other they would simply trade their time) is owed 5 days work and because the business is no longer open, they can't trade time anymore and he needs to pay him. 5 x $350 per day... We paid him one day and now owe him four. We'll pay another 1 or 2 days from his next pay, his friend is fine with this.

We now have to pay the car lease from our personal funds, which is $926 per month because even though it is no longer used for the business. It is high because the car was bought brand new. It's a good car and we're going to keep it. The lease expires in August and has a balloon of $15000 due. We are going to get a personal loan to refinance; looking quickly the best rate I can see is 11.83%, so that on a 3yr loan of $17000 maximum is $573 per month. Will be a much better result and as the car won't be driven as much we'll keep it a long time.

So first we had these two expenses, plus my UK trip savings, plus it's my birthday this month so we had to repay the $330 bike plus we had to get B glasses which were $400 and new work boots worth $126 and for a month we didn't have very much income left to live off.

I spent time juggling things around and just thought B gets paid on the 30th, I get paid on the 15th, why are we bothering with a monthly budget? It will be so much easier to manage on a fortnightly basis, especially as the bill repayments are now spread out evenly throughout the month.

So first in my budgeting app I deleted the amount of any transactions after the 15th, but wrote the amounts in the detail line, so after the 15th I will put them in.

I then analysed the percentages of the various categories to try and work out what is a reasonable spend and adjusted accordingly. I had to juggle some things around, some things will need to have part of the cost repaid from his next pay at the start of next month. Eg the glasses and the work boots. I made sure that our EF savings and my balance transfer repayments continue at the same amount.

So now after much juggling we're sitting at $504 for this week to live off (which was better than $983 for two people for 26 days). Live off means food, fuel,we have to go out for a birthday lunch and other miscellaneous exps like alcohol.

I'm really hoping this new method will work. Many years ago we got paid fortnightly and it all worked out ok, it just takes getting used to.

52 Week challenge opening balance: $2,648.40
Plus Weekly Deposit to EF: $71.02
52 Week challenge closing balance: $2,719.42

Today was B's first day at his new job (aka first job for 9 years!). He came home with a massive headache - will probably take time to get used to, I think. New jobs are like that anyway - with mine it took a full three months before I was no longer stressed from learning/remembering all the little things about my work.

Last week I put the flight on my credit card and hopefully get the 55 days interest free. That was $1773. Then on Sunday we were looking at my bike wheel and B couldn't fix it so we went to the bike shop. It turns out I would need a whole new wheel plus cogs (?) plus chain, which would work out to $150-160. A new bike was $330. So we ended up going with the new bike (aka my early birthday present). The cost of that went on the credit card too, so it's sitting at around $1585 (I put $518 from the holiday fund onto it). The bike cost will be repaid back when B gets paid next. The airfares I transferred $500 over to tonight, so $1773-518-500 = $755 remaining to be repaid.

I am so used to having that card super low it's stressing me out owing that even though I know it won't be charged interest yet. It's just been low for so long, I'm used to it. But seeing that it is getting knocked down a bit makes me feel better.

***

I worked out a rough holiday budget. I know I can rustle up $2200 spending money, or $105 per day that I'm there. I'll also have the card down to $0 by the time I step onto that plane, so if I need to rely on it, I can. $2200 spending money may be too low, but we'll see how we go.

***

We're going to have a completely different budget next month, as the business officially shut down on Saturday. I gave B the banking details for his pay to be put into our bills account, the same as mine.

I would normally separate our pay due to the his having a business and needing to pay business expenses, but that's all gone now.

It will just be a much more streamlined budget. The budget we use now is an excel spreadsheet I created which goes B's business income less business expenses = net business income + my pay less house/personal expenses less spending money = pay left over.

Now it will simply be B's pay + my pay less house/personal expenses less spending money. House/personal expenses have all house bills there, savings are in this category also and all personal loans.

I don't know what we will allocate to savings or anything like that, but I did say to B that we will pay all the interest charged on the mortgage so it is purely a principal payment. I'm happy to spend a bit more disposable income now that he is earning extra but we must do something worthwhile also with the extra money.

Anyway must go to bed, hope you're all well!

52 Week Challenge Opening Balance: $2,496.36
Plus:
- EF savings $71.02
52 Week Challenge Closing Balance: $2,567.38

The EF savings hit the account over the weekend so have added it to my challenge - really the only addition I expect over the next few weeks as I made all the savings payments in one hit.

For February I was able to save 21.17% of my pay and will also add $135.00 to the Holiday Fund. It was a quiet month, and my highest variable expenses were reupholstering the car ceiling for $250 and I spent $159 on clothes. I will be spending a bit on clothes over the next few months as from November-January I pretty much bought the bare minimum and things need to be replaced.

As it is the end of the month I have updated the EF breakdown. Our mini EF balance is still larger than our maxi EF, maybe in the next month I might buy some more shares to even out the balance. I don't want the cash portion to dip below $2000-$2500 though.

I have renamed the Thailand savings as the Holiday Fund as we are now going to Thailand next year. I am itching to book a holiday but at the moment there are a few factors that are making me hold off. I did say to B that no matter what I want something booked by the middle of March.

Work will be really busy up to middle of May and will well and truly die off by June-July. I barely took any leave last year because we were saving for B's party so I have lots of leave accrued now and within a couple of months will really need a break of some sort. Will be looking at doing something between June and August, depending on various factors.

The shares haven't really dropped too much in value since I bought them, so that's good - only about $60. I think the account (all balances combined) is possibly the biggest it's ever been! Ok, that's kinda sad. I'm going to have to get used to the balances increasing. Did anybody else have this problem when their savings were increasing?

I guess in perspective, there is a bit over 1.5 months of my pay there now, so even though the dollar value is increasing, in actual fact there's not "heaps" there. And if you combined both our pays, then there is 1 month's there. Really not heaps.

Another thing too, when you think of how many months salary you want to have in an EF, do you use your current salary as a guide or bare minimum monthly amount required? I would rather use bare minimum monthly amount required because if you were in a financial bind you should cut all expenses to the bare minimum, I believe. (I worked out my bare minimum to be between $2200 and $2500 per month)

Ps. credit card debt is now below $2000 - it is $1826, so that is progressing well.

52 Week Challenge Opening Balance: $1,809.96
Plus:
- Priceline rewards snowflake $4.38
- Safeway grocery rewards snowflakes $20.00
- Mortgage additional repayment $288.00
- EF savings $71.02
- Credit card repayment $303.00
52 Week Challenge Closing Balance: $2,496.36

Money here is slowly getting back to what we know as normal, B is starting to get paid weekly instead of us having to stretch his payments to 2-3 weeks (yet the payments are worth 1-2 weeks).

So I've just kind of sat on transferring various payments (due to not being sure if we would have enough to do all the payments). It's probably more time effective to just do it all in one hit anyhow.

We received the Priceline and Safeway snowflakes at the start of the month (by reduced prices at the checkout) so when I got paid, I just transferred the amount over.

The mortgage additional payment and the credit card repayment are both monthly payments - the credit card is actually for the month of March but as the payment is due by the 7th, I just paid it at the same time as the other payments.

All that is left in the Bills account now is enough to cover all direct debits and $250 for the car being upholstered next week. Last year we noticed that the ceiling of my 13 year old car is starting to drop at the front but as we had so many other repairs, we put it in the not urgent category. Now the back is falling down as well as the front and you can see the ceiling drop in the rearview mirror, so we thought we'd better get it sorted out fairly soon - it will possibly get done next Thursday.

Spending this month is still low, so we're doing well in that area.

***

As I've decided not to study for the degree any further I spent the money set aside for the study unit by buying 100 QBE shares. I bought 50 in December for $12.15 and they dropped down, so I got 100 for $10.10. At the end of the month I will update the EF breakdown on the sidebar properly.

Work is also going well with the job change - I spent some time today doing some bookkeeping work for our clients and have been spending a bit of time each day training our part-timer in various aspects of my job. Possibly about a third of my job involves so many administrative duties it would take days to train someone in! So I figure 2-3 new things each day is enough to teach her while not overloading her. The idea is that she will be doing a lot of administrative overflow and be able to work more than 3 days per week.

I have plenty of things to write about but it's right before bed and I've gotten really tired all of a sudden! Hope you're all doing great

52 Week Challenge starting balance: $1,667.92
Plus:
Weekly savings into EF: $71.02
52 Week Challenge closing balance: $1,738.94

The weekly savings into the EF hit the bank account, so I thought I would update.

Grocery shopping was at $122 yesterday and I was very proud of myself - until this morning when I found that there were four items I had to buy that were needs and couldn't wait until next week. Add another $20 roughly! I tried to keep the total down as low as possible, so I guess it's the best I could do.

Valentine's Day is coming up so I thought this year we would just get little gifts, nothing too flashy. B wanted some motorbike things, so that was $31.45 and I wanted a nice daytime perfume (I have going out perfume and I have perfume I wear to work which is muted, but I wanted a fresh daytime one to wear when we go out for lunch or something). I got Hippie Princess by Vera Wang for $29.

The thing I need to keep track of is another snowflake. I got the perfume, and hair serum from Priceline where I got a $4.38 gift voucher. So now we have to transfer $24.38 to the EF when we get paid.

I'm still trying to work out what to do about the money we used from savings to cover B not getting paid last week. We used $446 plus I spent $47 on my credit card and had to transfer $50 onto his credit card. I haven't paid the $47 on my card yet but have already used $496 from our mortgage offset savings.

I think I'll see how he goes with the next couple of weeks with receiving money. If it looks like we only have enough for low spending and his business payments at the end of the month, I may just put it into his Christmas period costs from shutdown. (It is a shutdown cost because of the delays caused from Christmas shutdown). We used $800 at Christmas time and this $496 will bring it to $1296, so we would allow next Christmas for a slightly higher amount.

It's about a week until we see some money other than our savings and there's a few balls in the air I need to keep track of...

*Last week I received a $20 snowflake from the shopping rewards, so when we have some cash I need to transfer it to the EF. Today I spent the $80 needed for the second week to get another $15 snowflake on my next shop, so the snowflakes balance to be transferred could increase by the time we receive money next (I don't think it will though).

*The coffee pods purchase. I consider coffee pods to be part of our grocery shopping so every time we opened a packet (we bought 10) I would include that in our weekly shop and transfer the money to my card. However the amount per packet is $8.32, which is much higher than the usual $3.70-$5. I decided that when we receive money I would transfer half the full amount over ($41.60) and then every time we use a packet pay $4.16. So we need to pay the $41.60.

*Meat: I got my hair done today ($110) and decided to stop in at the butcher on the way home (both are a suburb over). I was only going to get enough for our weekly shop but the bulk prices were so good, I got two-three weeks worth. Here's what we got:
- 2 pork steaks $6
- 2 x 2 chicken schnitzels $5.40 each
- chicken sausages $6
- beef mince $6
- 2 x 2 chicken marylands $3.80 each
- 2 x 2 chicken breast fillets $5.80 each
- 3 x beef rump steaks $8.85 each

The cost of the whole lot was $75.38, which I put on my credit card and will transfer over each weekly portion as we buy groceries (because we only have minimal cash). This week's meal plan:

- tomorrow chicken Maryland and roast vegetables
- Monday - we don't cook, it is get your own food night (because B has poker with his friends it is easier for me to make soup & toast or something)
- Tuesday - pork steaks & veggies
- Wednesday - steak & veggies
- Thursday - chicken alfredo with pasta
- Friday - we don't cook, it is get something from the oven or takeaway.

So the cost of this week's meat will be $3.80 + $6 + $8.85 + $5.80 = $24.45.

The price paid for the various meats is roughly the same as discount at the supermarket. The only thing is you don't always get discount at the supermarket, so it's good to have a couple of weeks on hand where we know it's for a low price.

*Grocery shopping: Budget this week $120. Spent so far $33.10 + $24.45 + $22.90 (some more purchases today) = $80.45, leaving just under $40 left. We need to buy fruit & veggies, lunch food, cheap meat for the dog (butcher didn't have this), bread and up-n-goes (cereal drink) for B, and cream for the chicken alfredo (and possibly pasta). May need to be creative, or may be ok.


So glad to get these figures out in the open and in front of me, I was worried I'd forget something.

A day after transferring all that was left over from last month's pay, I found out that B is not getting paid until next week. (I thought he was getting paid today)

So I ended up transferring $446 from savings to cover the weekly automatic savings payment (I don't want to get into the habit of putting that on hold or cancelling it), groceries, alcohol, my hair getting done, money to put in towards my friend's birthday present and money for B's social stuff ($20 this week). This week we will have to make sure we don't go over $120 on the grocery spend! I am determined.

Thankfully he is now billing his usual amounts so in a couple of weeks we should be back to normal.

***

Last year I got some really nice biodegradable coffee pods which were pricey but really nice. They emailed me a deal of 25% off 100 pods, which was quite good. I was going to buy four months worth (this would tip it into the free freight category) but when I tried to apply the deal it didn't work.

They may have sold out already. I ended up getting a 10 pack of pods (100 in total, it is 10 per sleeve) of different flavours to try out.

The last time I bought was October, I think. This is a company I don't mind supporting occasionally so we will call this my splurge. The 10 pack plus freight costed $83.20, so at $8.32 per packet of pods compared to my usual $4.76 it is a splurge! (Will not happen again until later this year). I'm looking forward to trying all of the different flavours.

***

A friend found a cruise she really wanted to go on next year for Australia Day, which goes for three days and would cost us $1598. As Thailand for us has been pushed back to next year also it would mean two expensive holidays in a year - really did not want to commit to that. With me it was more the money - our Thailand offer was for 7 nights accommodation plus flights was $1600; and this is a three day cruise not stopping anywhere and we still would have to get flights etc. Not thrilling.

B just wasn't keen on going. Unfortunately pretty much everyone else she has invited has also declined because of the expense - most people she has invited are families, so their cost was around $4000. So she's a bit upset at the moment because she thought it would be fun. Hopefully in time she will realise that it's not everyone's cup of tea, and it's very expensive, and be ok with it. At the moment she's pretty disappointed so I think I want to leave her be for a little while, and talk to her when it's all died off a bit.

52 Week Challenge starting balance: $939.62
Plus:
Interest received $0.30
Credit card payment made $303.00
Left over money from January saved into EF: $425.00
52 Week Challenge closing balance: $1,667.92

January was a very low income month for my husband, so we cut our spending right down. The only bill we had to pay other than our mortgage and other set bills was a gas bill of $113, so we were lucky there also.

I left my pay sitting in the bank account our bills get deducted out of and was ready to use some of that if needed. (B & I agreed a long time ago that because my pay is always paid on the same day of the month, I pay the house bills. Because his income varies so much he pays the business bills and our spending money. I admit it's not as romantic as the couple who puts all their savings in one bank account but it means that because things are slightly separated, it is easier to handle. At my last job I was getting paid fortnightly and he weekly, and we used to have the money in the same account and it was a nightmare because it was so easy to spend on that one thing that would cause a debit to bounce. Now the accounts are separate, everything gets paid as needed).

Anyway, we only needed $110 from there. There was actually $925 left over but because I wanted to pay a water bill of $315 and my monthly balance transfer payment of $303, I simply put $425 into the EF - will put the other $500 in on around payday.

I actually can't believe there is that much left over from my pay! Having not much in the way of bills to pay was helpful. Probably the other thing that was helpful that we simply used what B had for spending money, even though it was low. So we were shopping at Aldi to bring groceries down, we went away camping which is super cheap because I tend to be of the belief that when we camp we don't shop so I get everything beforehand and then we have no spend days because we're enjoying ourselves camping and making the best of being in the outdoors. I spent $80 on clothes that were needed. We went out for three meals - the most expensive being on Sunday morning for brunch would you believe! $50 for two people having pancakes, bacon and eggs, coffee and orange juice. (It was really nice though)

So, I've checked the EF and have updated the sidebar accordingly. The mini EF has $2562.02 along with $1318 of funds set aside for the Thailand holiday payment and my study unit. The maxi EF (the shares) unfortunately is down $100 (exactly, would you believe!) from when we purchased the shares.

I had to pay some money onto my balance transfer credit card by the 7th and thought I may as well pay the whole lot for this month ($303) to save having to make two transfers. There will now be $2129 owing on this card, so that along with the $104 owing on CC1 brings my credit card debt to $2233 - now $3167 paid off from when I started this last year.

February may not be as low spend as there are more bills, so far the water bill of $315 plus council rates of $390, so we will see what happens.

I apologise for the super long post, must make a habit of posting more often to avoid this!

My thing I am grateful today is:



The Zumba class I attended this morning! It was a fun way to spend an hour. Today is my second day of my four day gym streak. As somebody who generally goes to the gym once a week (if I'm lucky), I am starting to feel sore.

Yesterday I did a 2km jog on the treadmill, today a 1hr Zumba class. I am hoping to do a Body Pump (weights) class and a Sh'bam (dance) class over the remaining two days.

I may actually get complete use of my gym membership this month. Admission to the gym or cost of a class is $10.00 each visit. My gym membership of $20 per week is deducted each Monday, and this month it will work out to be five Mondays, so $100.00. My four day gym streak will use up $40.00, leaving $60.00 for the month, so I can then go a minimum of 6 times for the remaining three weeks. Totally doable. (Ps going to the gym may be expensive but I enjoy it, and I like going to this gym as it is close to home. There are cheaper options however they are further from home. I do acknowledge that a gym membership is a luxury and more of a want than a need, as the truth is you don't need to go to the gym to get fit; there are always alternatives)

Financial doings for the day were:
- noticing that I had forgotten to buy ice cream and peanut butter but deciding to add it to next week's shopping list (we spent $100 this week which is all I want us to spend)
- creating a new spreadsheet for our budget. We have had our budget spreadsheet from September 2012 so it was starting to get a bit full. I have kept the same format however, as it works perfectly for us
- not much else other than trying to budget for the next two weeks. I had to transfer $150 from B's business account to his credit card for a work expense and he has $375 left there for our spending next week. If he has to transfer $175 for petrol (a possibility), we will be left with $200 to use for food and alcohol and other spending money. Still doable, we just need to watch what we do.

It is different compared to a year ago because we do have money we can fall back on and withdraw if needed. This is a nice feeling. However, I would so much rather not withdraw until needed.

Like many others on this site, I am happy to say that we have carried no debt for our Christmas presents etc. We don't normally carry much of a debt for Christmas presents, perhaps $100-$200 usually. This time, nothing (which was a great feeling).

I stopped tracking spending on December 22. I don't know what it is with me, in normal everyday life I track constantly, but when I hit holiday mode I just cannot do it (except for the last time we were away when I was really motivated). Part of it was also because we saved $800, which is the spending money that B normally covers; so rather than eating into our everyday money we are simply spending money which was allocated for this purpose. It has been so helpful having the spending money aside.

I won't say that the money situation has been stress-free because with him being self-employed it is never stress-free at Christmas time. Funny things always happen with his payments he is owed at Christmas time. This time he got paid for the larger invoice but not the smaller, even though they were invoiced on the same day. So instead of being worried about that, I was simply mildly annoyed. I know we'll get it in a few weeks.

On the financial side of things, I got paid my Christmas bonus from work. I knew that if I got it, I would buy some bar stools for the kitchen area, and bank the rest, so that it can be put towards a study unit. The bar stools came to $207. They only had one in stock, so we are waiting for the other two to be shipped in. We took the other one home though, it looks very nice! The balance of the bonus was $800, which is also the allocated spending money from the EF to cover B's wages, so instead of withdrawing from the EF, I just used the balance of the bonus. The $800 in the EF will be left there until needed.

I have simply been charging things to my credit card, so have just paid over all that has been spent. Such a lovely feeling to have that all squared out and back to what it was before.

****

Christmas was a busy blur; it always is! Christmas Eve was my work do - we went to a Moroccan restaurant and had a six course meal, which was really nice. Christmas day we had the inlaws over for lunch for the first time ever - that was busy as we pretty had to spring-clean the house beforehand! Everything worked out wonderfully though. Christmas night was at my sister's house, which was also wonderful. It was a hot day, just under 97F. We got home and the power was out, probably because so many people were using their airconditioners. So we sat outside on that really balmy night, listening to music and having a couple of drinks. WAs a really lovely end to a great day. Then on Boxing Day we had to go to B's extended family, aunties and uncles etc, which is always a nice day.

Yesterday I was so tired from it all though that I spent hours watching catch-up tv and music videos, and basically hibernating, to bring myself back to my normal self, rebalancing etc.

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Now thinking about goals, I can't seem to find a concrete plan. I'm probably too tired still with too much going on. I know that this year, from this month onwards, I don't want us to pay more than $300 per month interest on the mortgage. At the moment on average, interest is about $560-$570, so we would be paying $260-$270 out of pocket against the loan. By doing this, as our monthly mortgage payment is $995, roughly 70% of each payment will then work out to be principal.

I also want to try to live off much less than what I am paid; for two reasons: 1. pretty much whatever savings/debt repayment goals there are will be easily met, 2. I want to feel like I don't need to rely on my full pay to make ends meet, because I think that so many people tell themselves they must earn $xxx when they could live off far less.

I will also update the sidebar to show mini-EF (available cash) and maxi-EF (invested cash). This currently stands at $2135 available cash and $1138 invested cash. Maybe if I aim to increase invested cash by $3000, then the total EF will be roughly around $5k.

So my rough plans for 2016 are;
- pay no more than $300 interest on the mortgage (average of $270 per month x 12 months = $3240)
- save a further $3000 to the EF
- continue debt repayment to credit cards as previously. When the $303 monthly balance transfer payment is finished after September, that $303 will instead become savings for my next car. (Hopefully I don't need to buy for a while though)($303 x 12 months = $3636)

Estimate of total savings cost for 2016 = $9876. Based on 2015 savings made, this should be possible.

Apologies for the super long post, I really needed to do some thinking out loud! Now, must fall into bed as it after midnight and I am exhausted. Goodnight all!

Last week among financial things I made my final balance transfer payment of $303 per month for 2015. The balance transfer card should be at $2734 owed after the payment hits. It's good knowing that I will close the year out at under $3k credit card debt compared to $5400 at the start of the year.

I was thinking about adjusting the totals down to reflect what the balances actually are but have decided against it. The reason being we did actually save that money at some point during the year. It was simply used for certain purposes. Some of it was used on holiday purposes. Some of it was used to cover B not being paid in the first week of December. Unfortunately what was used on B's card I cannot exactly say what it was for; a lot of it would have been work stuff, fast food, motorbike stuff.

Eventually we will need to look at that card and work out some sort of solution. He doesn't need a card with $3700 credit because his spending habits are to spend whatever is available. Probably a card with $1000-$1500 credit is better for him. Big enough to make decent sized purchases (eg car stuff) but not big enough to cause too much drama. So eventually, probably after my balance transfer has been done, we will organise a balance transfer for him and a new card with a much lower balance.

Anyway back to end of year stuff. I am doing end of year totals now before christmas and new years in the event that we are a bit too busy for me to sit down and work this out, and I know that no more savings will be made for the year. My end of year total will be as follows:

50 Week Challenge $5300 + Banking the Difference $4379.54 + $90 Caravan Park accommodation spent + $210.00 Phuket Holiday Deposit spent + $35.00 Cash Savings =

$10,014.54!!!

Thank you all for sharing my first year of savings challenges, your advice and your journeys with me. You have all helped me to become a bit more financially responsible and you have all inspired me in your own different ways!

(Most likely by the time you read this I will have updated the Banking the Difference category to read $4679.54, with $818.00 holiday fund)

What does next year hold??? I'm not sure yet. I don't feel I need to do two separate challenges anymore. I think I will work out a couple of goals and plans, maybe possibly do one challenge like Imasaver but with a different name to $20 challenge. I have roughly 11 days to decide, so the thinking cap is on!

For the last couple of years we've tried to tell B's parents that as much as they love having Christmas at their house it's now too much for them (it is).

We told them we would hold it this year, and next year B's sister would hold it, and they should buy the meat (they are ultra picky so I don't want *that* responsibility).

Christmas night is reserved for my family as always.

I have downloaded a wonderful Christmas list app and it's looking like everything (presents, food, new dinner sets and cutlery) will come to $1040. Some things have already been bought and we saved $100 throughout the year, so it looks like currently there is $792 left but I'm hoping to whittle that down with discounts. (Ps I love productivity apps that can help you with organising an event, why use boring old paper!).

Looking forward to having Christmas! We do have to spring clean our place so it will be nice when it is sparkling too!

It's been a little while since I've written! I finished my study unit and have been slowly adjusting back to 40 hour weeks instead of the 50-60 hour weeks I've been dealing with when I had to study as well as work. It's nice to have a bit of free time.

And now Christmas is just around the corner! We put the tree up a couple of days ago which is really nice. And my family decided that the adults would partake in a Kris Kringle for the first time ever! The presents must be worth between $40 and $60 per person, but this is a reduction in presents as we would normally have to buy 5 presents and now it is one per person. Happy about that.

B's family we will need to buy 4 adult presents for, not completely sure what yet. Then there are four nephews and one niece. I have $100 in gift cards saved up from previous months which I will use to pay for two nephews and the niece (or three nephews? will work out the same anyway). So we are looking at two presents for my family; four for B's; plus two kids; so I'm guessing around $250-$300 in presents. We'll see what it ends up as.

My Christmas present is half the anniversary present; it is an eternity ring. A gorgeous ring marked down from $600 to $420, with the stones set in a V, which sits perfectly in front of my engagement ring. We have been paying it off on layby since the middle of last month, so no problems there. Speaking of anniversary presents; my gift to my husband was changing my name but my marriage certificate request was denied as I had the wrong person certify my ID, so now have to redo that by getting the police to certify and sending it back. I have 60 days, and was notified on November 2, so will have to get moving on that one! I want it done by early next week.

B wants a solar panel for our camping stuff, which has been priced at $180 on eBay. His parents said they will give cash towards it, so I said they can give cash towards my present too. That means we will be out of pocket there about $100.

I have still been living quietly to try and get back to normal after my trip to see Nana; hoping to finish the year out with that dealt with. Then B had problems at work and didn't get paid last week, so we were really out of pocket.

I ended up having to transfer $880 from savings and use up his tax savings money of $634. It's so amazing that it can take so long to build and can be gone so quickly! At least it was there though.

As a result this week when he got paid, most of it pretty much went. He is supposed to be getting a good pay next week, but it will need to last us. I think he gets one more pay before Christmas, and then we will need to wait until around the 20th January.

I am still planning to allocate two weeks spending money for him from our EF though, so that will help us. I was thinking a maximum of $1000 but really I think I will just see what we need, we could possibly be comfortable with less. I think this is a good idea for him as he is self-employed though - everyone deserves to have a holiday free of trying to work out how you will pay for your time off! At least this way he can relax the same way I, as an employee, does.

Finally, I am steeling myself for a profit downgrade when it comes to the challenges.. The EF and CC1 have had the correct amount saved/repaid, however CC2 (which we use for B's work) is generally lucky to have around $250 free! So according to the challenges $1068.63 will be repaid by year end - so that will likely need to be reduced by $750. The mortgage savings - hopefully the $880 used last week will be repaid by year end. $293 was repaid tonight. I am hopeful that we will repay it.

So instead of $5300 + $4076.54 = $9376.54, it could be $5300 + $4076.54 - $750 + $303 (balance transfer CC1 payment not made yet but will be made)

= $8929.54.

Who knows, maybe I can find $72 to push it over $9k?
Anyway even with a profit downgrade, it's still a billion times better than what we had 1 year ago!! I'm still happy with that.

Hi everyone. I've been lurking on the blogs here & there, but have had too much going on to be able to post.

Last week B & I went on our camping holiday as planned. We cooked breakfast and dinner camping style and ate out every day. We went bike riding, to a winery, also to a brewery, to a national park, we did so much stuff. Because I really wanted to be able to put some money towards Phuket payment of balance of trip, I actually tracked all expenses while on holiday. I never do this normally but it was important know how we were going. By the end of October there was $260.00 left over, so have put it towards the holiday (as part of the banking the difference challenge).

We also spent the weekend visiting friends too. Then I got home on Sunday and mum called me up to let me know that nana had gone into renal failure, and if we wanted to say goodbye it needs to be done asap. All our family other than immediate family is in New Zealand. Nana was 86 and has had diabetes for many years. Last year she got sick with giant cell arteritis and never really recovered.

I love my nana very much so decided I had to go see her. Unfortunately my mother has just become so unfamily oriented. I saw nana last year when she was sick and had to beg her to go and see her. It was like pulling teeth. Then they had a great time and it was really happy. When she called me she said there's no point going as she won't know what was going on and she wasn't going because she already had happy memories.

I thought about and decided to go anyway. I wasn't really hearing back from anyone and didn't want to impose, so booked a hotel room instead of staying with relatives. My aunt told me off because she made up the bed as she thought I was coming, I wish I did stay there. The hotel room was nice though. I was in New Zealand from Wednesday through to last night, the entire cost (flights, accommodation, food) was $1400. Ouch. I only have $140 left for the month after accounting for bills and some savings, so it will be a quiet month.

The most important thing though is I got to see my nana and say goodbye to her. As soon as I got there l told her thank you for holding on for me and she started to move to hug me (I then had to hug her as she was far too weak). I got to tell her I love her, and chatted to her about many things, and we all reminisced of happy memories of her life. It was a lovely day and I now feel like I got closure. I will miss her.

She stayed alive until my cousin arrived from Australia yesterday morning and then died about 20 minutes later, she had declined rapidly by then. The funeral is next Tuesday. I wish I could be there but can't, I got to say goodbye that's the most important thing. RIP nana, love her so much.

So glad I thought of the holiday fund earlier this year, it has become so useful! Was not even thinking about overseas holidays at the moment but then yesterday a good friend of mine (whose wedding we went to in March) invited us to go with them and a bunch of friends to Phuket, Thailand next year! She found a deal of $800pp for 7 nights accommodation, airfares and breakfasts. We have not planned dates to go as yet but once we buy the package they are valid for two years - we imagine we will be going next year sometime. So excited - did not consider going to Thailand but many people have said how beautiful it is, and it looks gorgeous. Luckily B agreed to go! So there was $207.00 in the mini-holiday and deposits to lock in the deal were $150.00pp, so I transferred out the $207.00 from mini-holiday fund and $93.00 from our bank account.

Must do the tax return and get the EF back to what it should be.... So bad with procrastinating on this one...

I worked out to get 15% savings I would need to save an extra $188.

$58 of that had to go towards the Balance Transfer payment of $303.00. I transferred over the payment tonight and the balance in a couple of days on that card should read $3,644.00 - which is awesome. The balance on the actual CC1 is around $68 now, eventually it will be down to $0. No rush there, I just keep on transferring $10 per week.

The remaining $130 saved was part of the mortgage snowflake of $183.00 reduction in our mortgage compared to what the repayment used to be (B covered the rest).

I also transferred our insurance savings towards the two cars tonight as well of $180, there is now $580 saved up.

As it is the end of the month (well close enough) spending will be minimal from now on. I had a long day at work and craved a bottle of wine and gave in - there was $10 spent (had two glasses though, the rest is still there). But there is no weekend plans, so should be very quiet. Will need to be because most of the money is now spent! I am not bothered though because I feel like it is going to useful places.

It's the 22nd today and I've survived September so far. It doesn't even feel like I've really struggled despite having to pay a whole lot of bills this month. Still have around $900 or so to shell out tomorrow but it's accounted for.

Am now through 90% of my pay. We allocate our spending weekly every Wednesday which this month would be 5 weeks in a month. Because the expenses have been high the next two Wednesday's would be living pretty scantily.

So I'm thinking why don't I transfer next week's spending money on the first, as the bills are lower next month. Then I can definitely save 15% and live kind of comfortably? I'm liking the idea of saving 15% this month as the last few months we've only been averaging about 7-8%, and that post in Donald's investment blog inspired me! And as only 8 days are left in the month it should be manageable.

I will start off with the financial transactions for the week. The 50 week challenge payments for the week have been updated and I have added $110 to the Banking the Difference challenge, which was savings for my credit card for the $303 monthly balance transfer payment.

Like Mrs Frugalista, yesterday I was reflecting on my goals and the progress so far and how likely it is that by 31 December they will be met. I have dipped into the EF a couple of months ago and still owe $130 for that. Have also withdrawn $1283 for my study subject. So while the totals on the sidebar look wonderful, in actual the EF is a bit leaner than that! I need to do my tax asap to get the $1283 back. I'm actually due a bit over $1500 so the $130 will be repaid also. For our situation, it's so important to do this now while we're in high season before we get to low season and the tax refund then has to get used to live off, not repaying the EF. *So* don't want that.

B's card is shocking because he's been getting underpaid again. The sidebar says he has repaid $472.30 and $379.63 for the two challenges, yesterday I checked and he only had $155 available. I have since repaid $225.00 from his earnings tonight, so that he now has $380.00 available (as per Banking the Difference challenge).

So we have a bit of work to do to get back up to speed. *If* things go well, we get back to normal and all our money gets repaid back into the right places, and I continue to pay at least $100 on my credit card on top of the 50 week challenge, and we bank the difference for the mortgage savings of $183.00 per month, we should meet a pretty awesome goal of having saved/repaid $10,000. But as I'm seeing at the moment it will require some careful watching and ensuring the balances are repaid and not used (eg not dipping into the EF or using the credit cards).

But it is so important to not just plan and carry out the plan, but to also occasionally sit back, reflect on where your progress is and decide if any action needs to be taken, as I have just seen.

Finally - have had *the*worst*week* with computers, both at home and work!!! Monday night our computer would start but the monitor would then say "no signal" and go blank, nothing would happen. Then B came home a couple of hours later and tinkered around and 10 minutes later it was working. So glad about that, even if I lost 2 hours before that. Tuesday at work just after 5pm we were winding our day down and all of a sudden the network was lost, the server lost power. My boss got on the phone to IT and reset the server and it was ok. I got home Tuesday night and our toner ran out, and B put new toner in. But something went wrong with it and black wouldn't print. Have left it for now, we will look at it soon. Yesterday our part-timer couldn't get her computer on, they ended up finding out it was a problem with a graphics card and she got a new monitor, everything was working.

But today I got to work and when I turned my computer on, it had the graphics of the brand on the screen, and then it went black. Nothing. IT came and got my computer, worked on it for a couple of hours and brought it back. This time it loaded up to desktop stage but none of the programs would open. Then after we tried opening them an error message came up, and then the whole thing closed down. Our manager then spoke to IT, who said it sounds like the hard drive had died and it needs to be replaced. My boss looked at when it was purchased and would you believe it, it was only 3 months out of warranty!!! Talk about not good value for money!

I spent the day summarising things manually, just like accountants did in the old days, with a notepad and a calculator with a printer ribbon. Luckily I have the day off tomorrow so hopefully something is sorted out while I'm off work.

After all these dramas I am currently backing up our hard drive to an external hard drive we have. It's taking a long time though, so might turn it off and do it tomorrow while I know I'll be on the computer for a couple of hours, have to get some sleep.

Hopefully you all back up your computers! If not, please take the opportunity and do it!

This weekend while grocery shopping I received a $15.00 discount from the supermarket as a reward for shopping there for 4 weeks and spending over $100 each time (the $30 gift card for the first weeks is still due to arrive). Shopping was then reduced down to $100.40. Last week I paid a couple of phone bills and there was a $10 discount on one of them, so sent over $25 back to the EF (the $15 reward, the $10 bill saving). Now the amount owed back to the EF from what we borrowed is $130.00.

It is the 13th and I am now currently at 77% spent. Watching carefully.

I promised Debtfree-by-thirty that when I got around to it I would post up the cost of our destination wedding. I opened up the spreadsheet and it came in at $8615.88. I still think it ended up being around $10000 though, because I was carefully monitoring costs up to departing for the wedding, once we were at our destination there was way too much going on to track finances. Here is the breakdown as follows:

Flight to & from Queensland $651.88
Celebrant $640.00
Photographer $840.00
Wedding rings $734.00
Invitations $115.00 (we bought the material from a scrapbooking store and made them ourselves)
Catering $1200.00
Honeymoon accommodation $848.00
Hire car $452.00
Alcohol $500.00 (I have a feeling we allowed $500.00 but when we got there we may have spent $1000.00 as we bought beer, wines and many premixed spirit drinks)
Spending money $1000.00
Bride's Dress $890.00
Groom's Suit $200.00
Marquee & jukebox $545.00

I haven't included makeup etc, but when we arrived in Queensland I got acrylic nails (French manicure), spray tan, makeup done, hair done - it all could have come to about $500. While we there we put together thank you for attending bags with cards & sugar almonds, that was about $100 (maximum).

We had about 30 people at our wedding (in October 2010) and did not have to pay for a venue as we held the wedding on my sister-in-law's tropical rainforest property.

Hopefully this has been helpful, it was certainly interesting to reflect back over!

Here September is wonderful because it is the start of spring and winter is on it's way out (happy dance!!). In our house September is scary because all our expensive bills fall due.

I did the monthly budget just to work out if we could afford to save the $183 mortgage saving to add to the mortgage principal - from August. Turns out we can, and so I did. That was important to me.

We have council rates ($400), an electricity bill of $612 and our telephone company had an outage a while ago and the wifi on my ipad stopped working. Unfortunately I didn't realise until possibly a week or more later. Then opened up the phone bill to find an extra $200 in data usage added on! I was so not happy!

Add to that a more than likely high gas bill which is expected to come in at the end of the month, and I am nervous.

I worked out that we can just afford the bills, necessities and our usual savings, and probably some small luxuries here and there. But as it's scary September, conservative and frugal is the name of the game. The aim is no super high grocery bills this month (I really will try!) and not overly high spending in the other areas.

In terms of the $303 credit card payment to come out in the middle of the month, I now have $72.40.

Week 27 has brought along lots of financial happenings. Firstly, I got approved for the 0% credit card! I applied Thursday night and told my boss he might get a phone call to verify my employment. On my lunchbreak I got a phone call from Virgin to verify my details and ask where I lived previously, which I gave to them. Fifteen minutes later I faxed all the proof of identity documents. A bit later on in the day when I had a chance I checked my email and found that pretty much as soon as I hung up they sent me an email confirming my application was approved! (And this was before I faxed the identity documents). So that's all very exciting.

I was looking at my accounts on Saturday morning and realised that I was supposed to ask for a balance transfer of $4350, not $4250! Oh well, this is one of those mistakes that is a good mistake because a little bit extra will need to be repaid. (Instead of $47 to repay, it is $147, but it is better in the long run)

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The party is now under two weeks away which is very exciting. Looking forward to it. B's credit card has taken quite a hit lately though because his work is so unreliable at the moment - the sidebar says a total of $751.69 has been repaid but currently there is only $236.00 available, so when he is lucky enough to get paid more than the bare minimum $515.69 will have to go back on there (mainly petrol he's bought).

We have allocated $2000 for a tab for the bar and now he is saying he's worried it will not be enough. My answer to that was if we both pretty much don't spend anything next week, maybe we can add some more to the tab. I am not volunteering our savings that it has taken months to accumulate to spend on alcohol, no way. Maybe if I see that he is willing to not buy anything at all, no beer, takeaway, for a weekend then I may volunteer some. But this is on the condition that we both live off the absolute minimum beforehand. I was thinking we usually spend about $550 after challenge savings, so we'll just spend $100 on food and put $450 on the tab.

I hope everything goes well and it is truly is an event to remember and look back on years later with fond memories, but I am so looking forward to getting back into my usual routine of saving and not being so stretched.

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Grocery shopping went well- my goal was to spend $80 and I have got most of the items for $49.33. Still need to buy a little bit more meat (cheap cut), lunch meat, bread, cat food and dinner vegetables. I think it can easily be done within the $30 left over. I was very happy about that!

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And my football team won, yay! They won by 37 points, so to add that to my mini-holiday fund will be $307.00 (when I get to be able to)

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Last thing, yesterday I went to the movies for the first time in a while. Didn't care about their popcorn or icecreams, so stopped in at the supermarket on the way there and bought some chocolate and savoury crackers for $4.45, brought the water from home. Glad I did, as the tickets went up to $20 each! Definitely an occasional treat now. I saw Trainwreck which was a really good movie - a bad girl turned good who finds love - very cool, sweet and funny.

Lots of goings on today!

Firstly I received a snowflake. For my online study unit I bought a book and then found that I had an older version from a couple of years ago and am allowed to use it, so returned it and received the refund today of $109.76. Postage to send it was $23.15, so net snowflake is $86.61. As I am not collecting snowflakes and the EF is owed $407.76, I transferred $86.60 to the EF, and now $321.16 remains owing.

The $86.60 is on my credit card so I transferred cash from our weekly spending money and need to use the $86.60 for weekly expenses. Had to pay back $17 for alcohol bought and $20.52 for petrol (they were bought ahead for this weekend), and bought coffee pods online (more below) for $22.50 and grocery items tonight for $7.04, so $19.54 remains to be spent. This may simply be next week's petrol expense I think.

I have coffee pod machine (which I love dearly) and have been reading backlash about the fact that once the coffee pods are used they cannot be recycled (Nespresso) and simply sit in landfill, which is a huge problem. The cheaper pods I often buy (Piazza L'Or) are not much better. However I have read about a better more environmentally friendly coffee pod made by a NZ company called Eco Caffe, where their pods are biodegradable. Today I ordered two sleeves a trial. They are the same price as Nespresso so are not cheap but when I think of the environmental benefit, I think it is an expense worth paying. The two sleeves are $14.80 with a postage charge of $7.70 (ugh). If you order more than $100 worth of pods, postage is free. So if they taste ok and I can buy that amount (depending on the useby date on the box - will have to look when I receive the two sleeves), it's about as cost economical as I can get it. (And I would have, say, four-five months worth of coffee pods- kind of like Toilet-Paper-Tracker with her tissues!). We'll see how this idea pans out.

Finally, we received the remaining two invoices, so have the party money saved away, which is a big relief. We are not out of the woods yet with him though, because they are still behind with their invoice payments (just not as behind). He also only will have worked for 2.5 days of this week so will not be invoicing out, so I am currently looking at the invoices he has owing and I can see already that in between slow payments and one week of nothing billed out, it's only the 8th but we will need to watch our money carefully to be able to make the car payment, his motorbike payment and superannuation (in total $1405) which is due at the end of the month. So I'm happy we have the party money but still a bit worried, not quite in comfort zone yet! A quiet week this week it will be!

As discussed last week, I've decided to change the 52 week challenge to the 50 week challenge so it finishes on New Year's Eve. I've now updated the sidebar and so far it's looking like we'll have saved/repaid $7477.84- who knows what it will actually be? Conservatively I'm guessing it will be over $10K, but time will tell.

Grocery shopping this week was really low for us- $87 (and if you add 1/2 of the fortnightly meat purchase being $23, total spend was $100), which is what we were spending when we had no money. No idea why other than I have been taking advantage of lower price bulk buys which I'm sure has been helpful.

Other spending this weekend- dinner and cocktails with friends Friday night $160 for drinks, dinner and cabs. We have to live it up occasionally. We added some lighting to our spa area $43 and replaced two light switches $20. The spa area only had lights at the front so when you were in it, it looked really dark. Looks much better now.

Also some clothes shopping. We had a birthday function on Sunday and our smart casual clothes are getting a bit old. I got a really nice vest, woollen with a fake fur collar, and a long sleeve tshirt for $95. Expensive but good quality and looks good, so would be happy to wear it many times. I got two tshirts for B for $55 but one didn't fit & he didn't like the other one, but can refund them and we looked up other clothes on the Internet that we can buy instead.

B had two days off this week and so he took my car in for a wheel rebalance and tyre check. $55. They then pointed out that it looks like we need a new muffler and gave us details of a guy who would do it, he quoted $150-$170. B takes the car there and it turns out we will need to replace the muffler and whole exhaust system. $600 quote. Grrrr. And the ceiling lining has completely dropped and they say you can't glue it, you need to completely reupholster. $220 quote. Grrrr.

So I thought how much is a reasonable repair allowance annually for a 12yo car? I thought $1000, and forums I have read say that too. So $180 new door lock last month, $55 wheel balance, $600 exhaust system and $220 reupholstering will bring me to $1055. B will do the car service so all we will need to buy is oil & oil filter.

I'm a bit annoyed but we're lucky to have had many years of virtually no repairs.

Last thing, my coworker just quit her job yesterday, she's a mother of a 10yo boy and works 1-2 days per week. Why? Because her partner wanted her to work more to pay down his massive credit card debt. So now she'll be working full time (and she always looks tired now) but yet he still can't get around to switching his cards to a low rate/zero rate! I found out it is a $30k debt on 20%, split over 3 cards!! I did a quick calculation for her - $6k interest per year and this has been going on for 6 years!! I feel sorry for her and annoyed with him, his laziness is costing their family a fortune and she will now be exhausted. Grrrr. I just hope there will be a good outcome.

Our finances have been travelling pretty well, so lately I've been feeling that maybe I don't need to have blog label "trying to survive the rollercoaster ride of my finances"... and then I'm reminded why I have that label up there.

1) to remind me that my husband's work is seasonal, so when savings get to a certain point not to get too complacent, because there are three months of the year where work is hard to come by and savings are needed.
2) because he's self-employed there can be big ups and downs.

Right now we're dealing with a sucky small business problem. Hopefully it will be short-lived, and expenses will not balloon out in this time.

He's been lucky enough to work for about 12-18 months (somewhere in that area) for pretty much one guy at a new homes company. The company pays weekly-fortnightly (some of B's jobs take longer than a week, which is the reason why I say weekly-fortnightly) and we've never had a problem with them.

But.... the guy changed jobs. (as these things happen)He told B that he wants B to do his jobs for him because he loves the quality of B's work (he's a great carpenter), and there will be so much work he should have 1, maybe 2 apprentices. We were talking about getting an apprentice but we're still slowly getting back on our feet after him being out of work so long. So we said we'd think about getting 1, but as we are being conservative, nothing has come of this. (We don't want to hire staff until we know for sure that there is enough work for them, otherwise we wouldn't be able to afford it).

So he changed about a week ago, and B just started working for him at his new job this week. B finds out that they pay fortnightly too, but there is a waiting period first of a week, so you are looking at receiving money in 3 weeks (not great). Day 2 of working there (today) and the other carpenter for this company, who happens to be related- it's a family owned company, finds out the supervisor has got somebody outside of the company doing carpentry work and completely cracked it. As he is family and has six employees, the new supervisor had to apologise and state that B will only be doing one job for him, he will use the family-owned carpenter now.

Lucky we didn't hire someone!

So he is looking at one week of work, which will be paid in 3 weeks, and the previous company he was working for do have work for him (luckily) but not for a couple of weeks. UGH.

The four months of no work taught me what rock bottom is for us financially, so I know what we can function on. We should be ok. But we are both on the same page (discussions have been had), that we don't have a lot of money to spend. That way if we really need something we can dip into the EF, but it's a last resort.

We have three weeks of $567 per week to live off including business expenses (where it gets dicey- B's car can cost $100 a week to fill if he gets a full week of work).

I saved $149 to the mortgage, as the difference between old and new mortgage, and the monthly insurance savings. I updated Banking the Difference, but I'm guessing that's my last snowflake for 3 weeks or so.

Wish us luck to make it through the next few weeks with little out of the ordinary expenses guys!

As always, the 52 week challenge debits got paid. I was a bit busy during the week so didn't get around to paying bills until just now (I usually do this Wed/Thursday).

This week's bill savings were $133.27, from the following places:
- business insurance $9.68
- my phone $55.45 (thank you $30 plan!)
- animal registrations $7.50 (our cat has a reduced fee to due to her age now- lower price for animals over 10 years old)
- train ticket savings $60.64

Other stuff that went on:

I went to the dentist for the first time in 4 years, due to a chip on one of my fillings. Amazingly, that was my only problem (I'm strict with brushing, flossing & mouthwash). So a clean, polish & filling patch up was $270. I'm pretty happy that there was only 10 minutes of physical pain and, while $270 sounds a lot, over 4 years it works out to $67.50 per year. Not bad.

We are starting to plan B's 40th, which is 4 months away, and saved our first $100 towards it. While we're not sure how many people will be there, we do want to pay for food and alcohol. (We're not sure what type as yet though, that is negotiable)

We had some friends over from dinner last night that we hadn't seen since January, so was a lovely catch-up. We decided to do a last BBQ of the season. All up $60, however we put leftover meat in the freezer and are eating salads again tonight.

Today I went for a swim first thing, then went to the shops and spent some of my birthday vouchers- I got a pair of winter pajamas for $20, and my friends got me a Rebel sport voucher worth $150, so I got a nice tracksuit worth $130. Was great spending money that wasn't my own for once! (or our own I should say)

Then we went "camping shopping" eg getting things for our camper trailer. Today we ended up replacing my broken chair. We got a good chair worth $140 for $70, which I was very happy with.... If you are sitting around a campfire all night, a good chair is something that is money well spent. This chair is fairly straight with padding, I think it's a bit better for your back.

Food shopping wasn't too too bad at $120, however I pretty much got the bare minimum. Tonight we are having steak & salad, tomorrow ham, cheese & mushroom omelette, Tuesday pork & vegies, Wednesday & Thursday meatballs with tomato risoni (new meal, however looks like I can stretch to 2 nights).

Time to cook tea & then catch on blogs. Hope y'all had a lovely weekend!

Well we got B's car serviced and looked at after the electrics failed for the second time. They couldn't give an explanation why it happened but it was time to adjust the V-drive belt (like a timing belt I guess). $450 it all came to, so we knew it would be more this time so we're ok with that.

My car insurance bill came in last week- payable April 7. My car's now 12yrs old so when the insurance was higher than last year (only by $20 but it is the principle- the car is ageing and dropping in value, so really should insurance be going up?) B decided to shop around. While I deal with the financial side of things, B deals with anything to do with the cars.

So he called up another company and looked into prices for both of our policies. Because it is our first time with this company they offered a 15% discount for both cars. The net result works out to be $333 less than what we normally pay, so we agreed to move over to them. The only thing is they are all due and payable in full so we are getting $2142 withdrawn from our accounts today.....

I looked at our finances the night before and realised we can do afford to do it. Need to slow down the outpouring of money after this though!

While it is a lot of money (thank goodness for high season!) it solves a continuing problem we have. My car is generally $700-$800 which we usually pay outright. B's car being newer however (4yrs old this yr) is generally around $1300-$1500 which is too much for us to pay outright so then we have to resort to direct debit monthly which incurs an $145 administration fee (highway robbery).

Even though we have saved money I'm not going to count this in Banking the Difference (I think we have outlaid enough at the moment), but instead starting next month I will save a monthly instalment (what we just paid divided by 12) into our mortgage offset account. So one year later we will have the full insurance amount and goodbye sky high direct debit fees, hello mortgage interest reduction!

The payments came out on Friday as scheduled (so handy having it automated!).

As it stands this week the balances are creeping up but no real digit change. Next week the EF category will be a couple of dollars shy of $500 which will be nice.

I could have had a Banking the Difference snowflake but we overspent this week and this helped to offset the amount we overspent. (Overspend of $110, snowflake of $48). Sometimes you have to allow a little leeway.

But not next week! We had a huge expensive week last week but this week we over-indulged in our favourite comforts so it was just an expensive week (fish & chips for Friday night tea, KFC for Saturday lunch for B, I went out with my mother & sister today, we borrowed DVDs, I bought a book) and bought a few new items- shoes for me $50, wine cooler from op shop (me) $2, camping plate set & kettle (B) $32. It all adds up. Did we enjoy ourselves? You bet. B had a day out with his friends ($29), I went out with my family ($20), we had our favourite takeaways and bought new things. Life is to be enjoyed sometimes. (All the time is unrealistic)

So now I am planning on having a low-spend week this week. If it involves too much energy or money it's not happening, it can wait! This week will be the week of no. It has to be said now and then.

Meal Plan:
Tonight: chicken drumsticks, roast potatoes & veggies
Tomorrow: fried rice with chicken as the meat portion
Tuesday: steak with mashed potatoes & veggies
Wednesday: schnitzel with mashed potatoes & veggies
Thursday: spaghetti bolognaise

Hoping you all have a lovely frugal week!