At the start of the year (in one of our many money saving moves), we switched B's credit card from the high rate of 20% to the lowest possible rate with the same bank of 13.49%.

Then I noticed (and mentioned it in some of my blog entries) that no interest was getting charged. I wasn't complaining trust me

Well last week we got a letter in the mail from the bank- we realised we made an error and did not charge any interest, as of this date you will be charged interest as per that particular credit card rate.

Thankfully they made no mention of back charging the interest, so I'm glad about that. And we got five months of no interest! I was able to include a couple of months in my challenge- I think around $120. So that's the end of that snowflake, I'm guessing monthly interest now will be around $35.

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.

I checked our combined credit card debt just now after the 52 week challenge payments got paid as I knew it was hovering around $8K (when we started the challenges in mid-January it was $9.1K) and as of now it is $8,001.56.

So close to being under $8K! At least next time we have to make a deposit it will be under $8K then. Progress is a beautiful thing.

In other news we received 2 possibly 3 snowflakes today. A cheque from our old car insurance for the overpaid portion on my car for the amount of $84.48 (or thereabouts- it's $84 something anyway). I received a Priceline cheque for $3.87. And Priceline have given me an offer of $10 off my normal foundation (this is a possible snowflake as they had this offer last quarter too but were sold out so I couldn't get it before the offer expired). Will update the snowflakes properly when they are actually banked/used.

Today it is exactly 3 months since I started the challenges, so it's time to note down the progress for a quarter of the year!

For month 3 of the 52 week challenge, approximately $1,381.00 has been saved/repaid against the various places.

For month 3 of the Banking The Difference challenge approximately $1,563.75 has been saved/repaid against the various places.

For both a total of $2,944.75 has been saved/repaid. Total current goal $5512 + $1,563.75 = $7,075.75. This makes progress of having saved 41.62% of the total goal (if there was no more banking the difference for the rest of the year and we just stuck to the 52 week challenge).

The result so far for each account / card is:
EF = $1,545.23 saved
CC 1 = $462.96 repaid
CC 2 = $489.56 repaid
Mortgage = $447 saved

It's great to see some results, now it's just a matter of not getting too complacent. It still looks like we kind of have a mini-EF now which is good. Credit card debt at the start of the challenge was $9.1k and is now just under $8.2k, so is moving further away from the $10k mark (which to me is scary). Mortgage $127k (we'll tackle the savings and credit card debt first).

I wanted to see my credit card owing $4999, out of the $5+ region, by March 31, to see a bit of progress. I made the $29 deposit required to do so (this has been added to the Banking the Difference challenge) but because we had a really expensive week it was a struggle to pay it.

With buying things for Easter plus a birthday plus big night out, we overspent. I'm not going to feel guilty about overspending because we've been good otherwise. We have a savings account with about 2 weeks bare necessities money in case B doesn't get paid, so we paid the overspent amount plus the $29 from there. (There's now $290 there so will need to go back to topping it up).

But- it was really nice to see $4999! I feel like that's a big accomplishment and that this debt will be going downhill from there.

On another note, work is crazy busy. I did something rare and took work home. (Really needed to). Had a problem and realised I'd need to spend some time reconciling, which I don't really have at work. I need to do some iPad updates etc so will spend some time on this job while it's happening. (And if I find the problem, it's one less stress in a stressful day).

Onward and upwards

Once again, typed up an entry, clicked "Save and Publish" and the damn thing disappeared into thin air! Ugh.

Take 2: the 52 week challenge amounts have been paid into various places (yay). Banking the Difference was not found in bill payments as such, but the difference in the mortgage repayment ($149 as per previous month), so that got sent to mortgage offset account. A bit under $500 sitting there now.

The other Banking the Diff saving turned out to be our credit card interest expense. I treat the interest expense as a bill and prepay the interest I think will be charged ($60 per card). My interest came in at around $55, so $5 saving there. B's card was the big saving with $0 interest charged! Not sure why. We swapped over the card to a low rate in Dec/Jan, and it says on the banking website 3 months interest free for cards opened between Feb & May. Who knows, maybe we got the deal too? I'm counting it as a snowflake and adding to the challenge.

As a result, B's card is doing great. I wanted it to be $3299 by March 31, it is that now (actually a bit under) so no extra repayment required there. My card will still need $29 transferred on Monday to meet my wish of seeing $4999 owing on March 31.

Hoping you all have a lovely weekend!!!

I wrote an entry yesterday and when I pressed "save & publish" it promptly disappeared. Maybe it's a good thing! I wasn't my usual self and was a bit cranky, so maybe I simply got to vent, let it all out and feel better without putting you all through my rant. (I feel better than yesterday).

We're now at week 10 and there's enough in the EF to consider it to be a mini-EF. I was thinking a mini-EF should be $1K per family member and readily accessible in a cash form, which means we're a bit over halfway there in that case. And then I was thinking the balance should be a maxi-EF which is saved/invested somewhere which earns a good return.

Checked the credit cards and my credit card stands at $5049 owing. Would love to bring that down to $4999 by 31 March. One more challenge payment will be made by then which will leave $29 to be made to reach that goal. If there are no more banking the difference payments I will pay the money. B's card stands at $3328 so we could also get that down to $3299. We'll see what happens within a week

The fifth week of the 52 week challenge came out on Friday but rather than update on the weekend I really wanted to wait until exactly 1 month from the challenges start date, which was January 16th.

For month 1 of the 52 week challenge, approximately $533.00 has been saved/repaid against the various places.

For month 1 of the Banking The Difference challenge approximately $331.32 has been saved/repaid against the various places.

For both a total of $864.32 has been saved/repaid. Total current goal $5512 + $331.32 = $5843.32. This makes progress of having saved 14.79% of the total goal.

The result so far for each account / card is:
EF = $478 saved
CC 1 = $145.46 repaid
CC 2 = $92.60 repaid
Mortgage = $149 saved

This has been a good month and we are in the better times of the year. (October-December is never good for example) I'm pretty happy with the result, it's nice to have a little bit saved away.

Our phone plans expired on 27th December, and our handsets got completely paid for on that date. As there are no problems with our mobile phones (aka cellphones) we decided to keep them and look for better plans.
So today we visited the phone shop which they are all with to see what they could offer us. Sometimes it is better to go in person because the consultant can tailor plans to meet your needs. (Of course we did our own research first though). My mobile phone did not get much of a reduction so I have taken it elsewhere. The plan is currently $60 per month and the best they could do is $45 per month, while elsewhere I have been able to get a $30 plan, so a 50% reduction and also have been able to increase my data by 50% from 1GB to 1.5GB.
Our home phone & internet bundle got increased from 25GB to a whopping 100GB for an extra $2 per month.
B's phone plan got reduced from $130 per month to $80 per month which is really good.
Then I changed over B's credit card rate from 20% to 13.49% (mine is already a low rate with my bank, 13.99%).
Very happy with these outcomes and looking forward to banking the difference!