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2023 Goals

January 2nd, 2023 at 09:18 pm

Happy New Year everyone! Hoping you all had a lovely break and feel refreshed in the beginning of 2023.

 

We had a wonderful week camping with our friends and got home yesterday. We are still very tired but are slowly getting back into the swing of things - I did two loads of washing today, got some groceries, caught up on the blogs and thought about the things I want to achieve for the year ahead, which are as follows:

 

  • continue reworking the budget. We have two insurance policies to review and hopefully reduce to ensure that we’re not getting overcharged 

 

  • reinstate some old spending habits and adjust them to inflation, as follows:
  • Groceries:  our grocery bill for the week has always been $170 per week and we have kept it the same consistently. With the price increases of supermarket goods this is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain and we are having to resort to not having certain things or brands. I checked on the inflation calculator what $170 worth of groceries in 2016 and it is now $185 per week so I’m going to increase our budget for groceries to $185 per week now. 
  • Wine:  one of my favourite things and I have got into the habit of buying more than usual, or more expensive wines than usual. I probably spend about $30 per week however many years ago it would only be $15 per week, and I would only buy 2 bottles per week. $15 in 2016 is now $17 per week as per the inflation calculator, so that is what I’m going to change my spending on this per week to. 

 

  • Set up a new business with the aim of getting an extra 6-8 hours work per week.  My bookkeeping business is super hard to get off the ground because it is so highly regulated (as well as competitive) and I have found that it’s not a worthwhile part time business. It is a worthwhile full time business but it is a nightmare getting the experience required signed off to become registered, and you can’t trade without being registered so it is not worth my time. The course I did enabled me to move across industries into a bookkeeping job, so I’m happy with that. The two clients I have are winding down so the business is organically closing down and I’m not moving forward with it anymore.   I’m really grateful to work 30 hours per week in my job and because of the travel won’t be increasing my hours with my work.  
    But an idea has come up where I can get an extra 6-8 hours per week. One thing about my work is pretty much everyone has a side hustle - one girl has two businesses! I noticed that the wives and partners of the owners’ sons each have very small businesses. One has candles and room diffusers, another has aromatherapy oils, and another wants to start up a drop shipping business (we do drop ship some of our products that are bulky, so it is not a new concept). The thing is though that I think they do this because they all have kids and don’t want to have businesses that are too big or time consuming. Which is the the same as me! (Not the having kids part, but wanting to create something small). I think it would be great to get another 6-8 hours work to boost my income to what it previously was, without having to look for a second job.  My thoughts are that I want to sell a small range of products to keep the business small and I have found a Chinese supplier that will sell to consumers and the cost is low enough that I can add on 30% to cover costs/ add profit, so in theory this should work. I think that doing this will also add value to my current job because I will gain more knowledge in profit margins relative to retail industries (my work is in retail). Anyway I will let you know how this goes in due course!

 

  • I have realised that I’m ready to start working out again, so a non financial goal is to work out 3 times per week and will be setting up the gym room today (it currently has a lot of stuff in it that needs to be put away to create some space).  I haven’t worked out since the start of last year because of the energy involved with looking after a new puppy, moving house and adjusting to working extra hours, but now feel rested enough to bring exercise back into my life. 

 

That’s all my goals for 2023! Maybe next year I’ll have some savings goals too, but right now this is enough for me. 

We Moved To The Country!

July 28th, 2022 at 11:36 pm

It’s been so long since I have posted but it is for good reason… because we moved house!!  (Big long detailed post warning - it has been a big few months so it is hard to write a short post)

 

DH has wanted to move to the country forever and it has taken me a long time to come around to the idea. Probably about 7 years of discussions, so it is not something we have taken lightly.  As time went by and more family and friends moved  away I found that I was ok with moving. It was still hard but we are only an hour away from home - well, our old hometown where we grew up. 

 

While DH has wanted to move to the country for a long time, I have wanted to have an investment property for a long time, for years, and in our discussions over the years we talked about renting out our home that we had for years. 

 

In April our home loan’s fixed rate ended so DH wanted to move forward with these plans, especially because we didn’t have our elderly pets anymore (previously when thinking of doing this they were around 15-16 and one of our girls was blind, so we didn’t want to put them through unnecessary stress so delayed the plans), so we started looking and found a nice place a week later. So all of a sudden, after all this time, we were moving!

 

It took me a while to get my head around, but really, people do it all the time, so just had to move forward. We did get a really beautiful house, it is in a housing estate just out of town, it is all very lovely. The town is near the mountains, so it is a very pretty drive and we have a view of the mountains from our back window, which is super cool! 

 

Financially this has not turned out to be the best decision, but it’s all to do with our age. DH is the higher wage earner and he has exactly 20 years to retirement so we must ensure that the home loans are repaid by this point. I have about 23 years but currently earning much less so everything is based on his earnings. 

 

We were able to keep our previous home as a rental, we had to enlist a broker to do the numbers and the loan applications though. Our plan if all goes well is to keep our previous home as a rental for a decade, make the loan payments in the meantime, and then hopefully sell it for a nice price and make a big repayment off the loan in our new place. 

 

Of course, when we started this process there was not any interest rate craziness. That began during the loan application so it has been beyond stressful and we have both questioned whether or not we are doing the right thing. The main thing keeping us going though is that we are thinking very very long term. We are hoping to get through this without having to sell our previous home just yet. 

 

In order to get the loan application approved we had to close down all our credit cards but one, and there was about $1700 that had to be repaid. Now DH only has a card but I am an additional card holder. I tried applying for a card after the property settled but got declined as my part time earnings are too low so transferred some money into our old EFTPOS account and I am using that in place of my own credit card. There were times when he had barely any credit on his card and I wanted to get fuel and would scramble to get the money together, so my own EFTPOS card works for this purpose. I have a transfer in place to add $10 per week, as it stands there is $186 in this account. 

 

Our previous home got so much work done on it before it rented! The heater died 3 weeks before we moved and so we put a new unit costing $2200 on it on DH’s credit card (this is why he had barely any room on his), this is being repaid over 10 months, I have set up monthly transfers back to the credit card from the rental account on the 20th of each month. 

 

Initially I thought to bring everything in the house to working order we would need new blinds in 2 rooms, and new taps in the bathroom, new toilet seats on both toilets, and the carpets steam cleaned. It ended up being new blinds in 2 rooms, new taps in both bathrooms and the laundry, 2 new toilets, a new rangehood, plasterwork fixed in two rooms, a door repair, repainting a window sill in the laundry, a new ducted heating unit, carpet cleaning and a move out clean done (we ran out of time so DH got his cleaner from work to do it with her cleaning crew). As well as this we had to get all the electrical items and smoke alarms checked, and today are getting the gas items checked. Everything we have done is claimable on tax as it is getting the property ready to rent out. 

 

By the time the works were done our old house looked lovely and the investment paid off well because they only had to two inspections. 30 groups came through, 17 applied. We purposely did not ask for a super high rental amount even though we could get it so this made our property quite competitive in the market! We got a great application from a family who offered $20 more per week and six months rent upfront. The agent said they have great references so we accepted them as tenants, and they move in Monday! 

 

Having the property rent so quickly has taken a big load off our minds as it has eased the money stress. However the loans are going up rapidly so now that we have moved and settled in we have to focus on our finances and work out what we need to do to get by. Cost of living is sky high so we need to work out what needs to be cut/reduced and I will likely need to earn a bit more money. 

 

I did say I would find a full time job if needed but first I want to try really pushing my bookkeeping business.  I now work every morning at my job and my job is secure, the people are lovely. I did try to gauge whether I could get full time work there but they are not super keen as the job doesn’t really need to be full time and not only that, I’m not super keen to be full time there as it would be really long days with an hour drive each way. It would be great to work from home in the afternoons so I will be focusing on that option. 

 

If you have all stayed with me so far, thank you for reading! Wish me luck in navigating through this next phase of my life!

We Got A New Puppy!

February 21st, 2022 at 10:53 am

Hi everybody!  It's been a while since I've posted an entry (in fact this is my first for 2022) but I have been reading everybody's entries, life has just been a little busy lately.  A pleasant kind of busy though, because in the middle of last month we got a new puppy!

I had been doing a 52 week challenge to save for new pets (which I wasn't completely regular with), we saved about $200 intermittently.  We were originally intending to wait a few years for a couple of new pets but I guess we just missed having the company of pets in our home and started to fall in love with the idea again.

We got given some cash from our FIL which is how we funded the purchase of the puppy.  He is a Jack Russell Terrier (like our beautiful dog who passed) and is so adorable! As we haven't had puppies for around 19 years now it has taken a little while to remember what life with a puppy is like!  It's so full on - nothing is off limits!  He is probably 75% well behaved 25% not.

Life has certainly become more fun though, and he is very much a member of our family!  It's so much fun going through all of the first milestones and watching him learn and grow.  He is such a confident sweet little puppy!

One thing I have done with the pets this time around is called one of our bank accounts "Holidays & Pets", set up a weekly deposit of $20 to be deposited there and have created his own spreadsheet. We could have opted for pet insurance but I think we have so many insurances as it is that it is simply another thing to deal with, another person to contact etc and decided that I would simply rather we set up a sinking fund as such instead.  For the first year that account will mostly be to pay vet bills and we are paying for any other purchases from our monthly spending money (there is always a big outlay when you first get a new pet setting things up and getting them bits and pieces).  He will getting desexed/neutered at 6 months old and the vet has quoted $350 for the procedure so there should be enough in the bank account for that when it happens.

New Investments, 52 Wk Challenge, New Couch

November 23rd, 2021 at 04:26 am

It's been nearly a month since I have blogged but all is fine here.  I am now working 3 days per week at my job, which is really great.  The job is going well and I can now plan to get some clients to fill up the remaining two days; now that I know exactly how much time I have available I can work more strongly towards that.

We got all of our banking stuff sorted and tax returns lodged, so it has been great to have that done and to spend less time on that area.

Financial stuff done today is:

Share Investing

I've kind of always had a little bit of money in shares and started spreadsheeting that properly in 2015.  I realised over the last month that I've had roughly $5500 invested for a couple of years now and the cash in the brokerage account has been steadily growing.  I admit, once money gets deposited there it generally stays there except for in a dire emergency, but thought it might be a good idea to re-balance and invest a bit more.  I worked out if I invested $1000 per year from 2015 and reinvested all of the investment earnings technically I should have $7682 invested.  To re-balance I bought 20 shares in an ETF for the amount of $1928 and 1000 shares in a small healthcare company for the amount of $562.  That now brings me to a balance of $7681 invested (current market value on everything $7972).  This should cover me to December next year before I have to think about adding any additional capital.

52 Week Challenge

I have not been keeping track of this but we had a bit of a surplus in our spending account so I paid 2 weeks of the challenge, that brings us to have now $212 saved towards some new pets.

New Couch

I decided to use part of my tax refund on a new couch for the back room/dining area, costing $1100 for a three seater recliner couch in leather lookalike material which is apparently very easy to clean.  It looks lovely and is very comfortable!

Unemployment Week 5, Landed Work Trial

August 24th, 2021 at 04:08 am

I'm a bit behind on entries, it's actually the start of week 6, but I will report week 6 at the end of the week.  After my last entry where I was getting annoyed with the job hunting process all of a sudden everything sped up into action.  In our state we have generally had short snap lockdowns this year so I think a lot of potential employers were just waiting out the lockdown (I have found that a lot of potential employers prefer to interview in person rather than Zoom; maybe everybody is completely sick of Zoom!).  This outbreak is spreading out of control though and nearly four weeks later it does not show any signs of slowing down, so I think potential employers have realised that the need to have their positions filled outweighs their interview preference and they just have to use Zoom.

On Friday I got a call asking for an interview first thing Monday morning, then on Sunday I got an email from someone else asking me to come to this business's home office (I declined due to lockdown and offered a Zoom interview instead). I ended up having two different interviews on Monday, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, which was definitely good practice in getting used to interviewing.  On Tuesday I got a call from another company and got an interview Thursday, and had to speak to them again on Wednesday so by the time I interviewed on Thursday I had a pretty good rapport with them.

The Thursday interview is for an accounts/admin job 2-3 days per week at a hair and beauty wholesaler and is a 10 minute drive from home.  The people seemed lovely, the interview went well and I was really happy to hear from them two hours later asking me to come back next week for a day to see if I like them, if they like me, and if I can do the work.  I've never had a work trial for an office job but read later on that it is common in retail and hospitality (they are retail).  Also is common with people who don't want to go through second interview processes and want the spot filled quickly.  Wish me luck on this one!

(I'm aware that right now it is a trial, not a secured job as yet, but am hopeful to get the job)

Pretty much as soon as I got the call asking for me to attend the work trial I got an email from the Monday afternoon interview asking for my references.  In the interview they stipulated that I would have to work at their home office and they are happy to obtain a work permit because it is an essential service however I know for a fact they are not an essential service so just didn't have a good feeling about them (if I get caught with a dodgy work permit it is a penalty of around $10,000!), so was happy to tell them that I have accepted another position.  I did research which businesses are essential services and there is no way that they are.

In financial news, things are going well - we have spent 41% of our variables budget and it is the 24th so that is great; we should finish the month off in a good position.  We had to replace our bedside table lamps today and spent $143, really this is the biggest expense we have had in a while.

Also I made our first deposit to the 52 week challenge, for the amount of $6.

Musings Unemployment Week 3

August 4th, 2021 at 09:11 am

I'm now in my third week of unemployment, so far I am not in too bad a place.  I have not hit the very stressed point yet.  I read somewhere that at the moment there are a lot of jobs but potential employers are being slower than usual to interview potential employees and make final decisions.  I definitely think there is a bit of truth in this.

I have applied for 16 jobs so far in this three weeks of unemployment.  I did also apply for one right before I resigned and got a phone call an hour after resigning requesting an interview and had to do three interviews for that job; I decided that I was not in such a need of a job straight away that I needed to interview while working as I didn't like the idea of sneaking around and it was exhausting fitting interviews into my lunchbreak.  So back to my three weeks unemployed, I have applied for 16 jobs since I finished up from my old work and have two interviews lined up for next week.

One interview is for a job I applied for on the 20th of July and the interview is next Thursday, so the interview will be 3 weeks and 2 days after I applied for it... The other interview I have is for a job I applied for yesterday and got an email from the director at 9.30 last night, so this job is much quicker to act to fill their vacancy.  Unfortunately I couldn't schedule it before the camping trip, so hopefully it won't make too bad of an impression (it is at the start of next week).

I went to the gym twice this week, which is a good healthy habit I am rebuilding and hopefully will be able to keep.  I have also slowly been building up the time I spend on my bookkeeping business.  Today I listened to part of a business podcast and then spent 2.5 hours working on the overdue work for the one client I have.  I'm starting to really focus on getting up to date with his work, because my next focus is creating the website for the business.

When I had to work 5 days per week from November last year to my date of termination last month I saved the money earned into my brokerage account (a great place to save because generally once money goes there it doesn't leave that account since it is held at another bank which I don't really check that much!), and found that it amounted to $4500.  So last week I transferred that money into the business account and then repaid all of the business bills for the year that were sitting on my credit card (this amounted to $1067).  I don't know how much the website will cost but the money transferred over is to pay for it.   I have a friend who used to be a website designer so she has offered to help me set it up which is great.

B and I have been good with spending, however spent a little bit on the weekend for extra camping items ($155) and B's birthday present ($210).  He loves camping so will be very happy to be away for his birthday!

A New Chapter Has Begun

July 29th, 2021 at 09:35 am

It's been a very long since I posted and has been a very big few months.  Last year my work (now my old work) asked me to work full-time and I agreed to work full-time until May, which they agreed to... however the job I was doing graduated into really needing full-time work, which was no longer my plan, as I want to run my own business!

So last month I took the leap and resigned!  It was time.  I worked there for just over 16.5 years, which is a wonderful effort.  They were lovely people and we got along well, so I valued that and it made it easy to stay working at the same place for so long.  But ultimately I wanted better work life/balance and the job was working in the city travelling a minimum of 1hr15mins each way.  I was sick of the travel before the pandemic and working from home made me realise that travelling that long each day is too long to commute.

So I was working as an assistant accountant/bookkeeper with an annual wage of $59,148 and an hourly rate of $32.50.  But I guess if you look at the travel time included the daily amount earned for the day of 7 hours was $227.50 (before tax), but add in 2.5 hours it took to get to the job and get home and the hourly rate dropped down to $23.95.  It just did not seem worth it anymore.... but we'll see what financial position I am this time next year, and whether I got it right or got it wrong!

My work was fine about it.  They dropped a few hints that perhaps they thought I was crazy to leave secure employment, but I am looking forward to some personal growth (along with a shorter commute) and a different way of life, but they gave me a lovely send off of lunch one day and a lovely morning tea the next - it was all very sweet and emotional because it was the end of an era.  Because I was there for so long I walked away with long service leave of 15 weeks pay and holiday pay of 8 weeks pay, so this is a nice financial cushion to tide me over until I get my next role.

I worked out that I need to transfer $3k per month to contribute towards our bills and spending money, so we now have 5 months left.  So far we haven't been spending too much and have been living pretty comfortably, which makes me happy that we should be ok for a little while.

Because I had not had holidays since 2019 and was pretty run-down DH ordered me to take a rest of 2 weeks, just apply for a couple of jobs each day and mainly relax, which I've been doing.  I have been applying for jobs, and have been catching up on emails and bills with the bookkeeping business which got left to the wayside when I got really rundown, but have also been watching movies and going for little drives, and we are going away camping next weekend which is exciting.

I am hoping to commute up to about 45 minutes each way but have agreed with DH that if I get to 3 months without a job I will apply for city jobs again.  Last week I got a call about a city job and got an email interested in me working for them however it was also inner city, so we will see if I have to bite the bullet and go back to long commutes!

But next week will mark my third week out of a job so my new schedule will start... I have created a schedule to give myself structure and avoid falling into the trap of laziness, working towards getting a job for half of the day (currently am thinking of allocating the morning but if I get interviews in the afternoon then I will swap it around), and building up my bookkeeping business for the other half of the day.  I now have 2 clients - one who I have had for a long time (and have a lot of catching up to do to bring him up to date - both of our faults!) and one from my previous boss, as he doesn't want to do the bookkeeping work (he is a high-ranking accountant so this is not a good use of his time and I am grateful though; this work is up-to-date and will take about half an hour a day).

I have been following your blogs (and commenting occasionally), and now that I have more time available look forward to blogging more regularly and speaking with you all more regularly!

Wednesday 24 February

February 24th, 2021 at 06:48 am

Hi everyone,

I read your blog entries all the time but it seems that whenever I am busy blogging goes out the window.  So rather than talking about the last nearly two months, it might be easier to just share a daily snapshot from today of the things I have been doing (in the same fashion as MonkeyMama has been doing).

Today I worked from home as I only go into the office 2 days a week and work from home the other 3 days.  (My boss has said that he is happy for us to continue in this fashion indefinitely rather than constantly have to adjust whenever there is a lockdown).  Because I worked from home it has been a NSD.

While it has been a NSD, I did pay a couple of bills - council rates (probably the same thing as property taxes in the US) for the amount of $489 (this is quarterly) and registration for one of DH's motorbike for the amount of $134.20.  While paying the bills I realised that there wouldn't be a loan payment for DH's bike anymore as we paid it out last week so transferred $500 over to savings for our caravan.

We bought a caravan a month ago, which is currently getting made but finance does not start until we collect it so I decided to use the money we would normally spend on a motorbike loan repayment to put it towards the deposit.  The larger our deposit when we get it, the smaller the loan because while we have been approved for the full amount we can borrow less if we can contribute a cash portion.  We were going to get a caravan in our 50s but fast tracked it a few years because DH is struggling to set it up.  We are planning on keeping the caravan for a very long time and know that we will get a lot of use out of it.

The other thing that happened today is that DH resigned from his current job as he has landed a job with a company he was previously working for.  He took a $10k paycut last year after being made redundant so this job is paying $5k more, bringing it to $5k less than what he was making pre-pandemic.  He knows what this company he is going to is like and was comfortable there before, so he is looking forward to settling in there and being there for a long time.  Luckily his current job took the resignation well and were happy that he gave them a full month's notice when he has only been there 9 months.

Glad to see you're all well and it has been so interesting reading about people getting the Covid vaccines because ours have only started this week.  As I am an adult under 50 without underlying health conditions, I am in the fourth group of our population listed to receive it, so probably won't get it until July to September this year (that's what the government website advises).

I Got A New Car!

July 23rd, 2020 at 08:24 am

In these uncertain times, buying a new car is probably not advised, however we have been saving for a long time and planning for a long time. It just so happened to take place during a recession.

I have had my old car for 15 years and while it was running fine, I knew a little while ago that I would want something smaller and had my eye on a Volkswagen Golf, and a specific model at that, with certain requirements.

It turned out that the things I wanted were going to only be put into cars at the very top of the range from 2018 onwards and we did not see the need to spend that much money. Therefore we decided to get the model we wanted at the price we wanted.

The car I got is a 2016 model and it is a little hatch with a slightly larger engine size and is very zippy! It drives like a dream and has all of the mod cons which I am finding exciting to have. (Of course as I keep my cars for around 15 years they won't be mod cons for long!!)

We paid $7000 cash and had to get a loan for the remaining $20000. Because I got the renovations loan last year I could not get the loan in my name so we had to get it in B's name. Oh, the headaches involved in getting that loan!!

It took 3 weeks to get the loan, because we decided to get a secured loan. The secured loan interest rate was much lower however if we knew of all of the requirements for information and the fact that the bank dictates what you can buy with the money, we never would have opted for a secured loan. It was an absolute nightmare. I thought getting a secured loan was like years ago when I got one and you basically got the loan, and provided the car registration certificate and they listed it against the contract, but no this was not the case at all.

We were very lucky that the seller of the car was not in a hurry to sell and could see that I really wanted it so was happy to wait.

The loan is for 5 years and repayments are $428 per month. We were already saving $270 each month so this is a bit higher but not too bad for us.

We also sold my old car straight away because B simply mentioned we were selling it to someone he works with and they instantly said they will buy it because they want a safe car for their daughter and they know how well we treat cars. In fact, we dropped the car off the day before our second lockdown.

I am so so so happy with the car though!!! Now that the dust has settled, and I have got over the very busy few weeks this process has involved, I am enjoying it so much and am so happy!!!

We tinted the windows and I am hoping to get some nice wheels for it if there is enough received from my tax return. It looks gorgeous.

Hello, It’s Been A While!

April 11th, 2020 at 09:23 am

Well where have the months gone? It’s been forever since I’ve blogged and now I can see that my blog is now retired - it says the last entry is December 2018 however I know I did do a couple of entries last year but I think they got wiped when the site got hacked. Anyway I miss you guys and I have been lurking, just haven’t got around to actually doing a blog entry. Who could’ve ever pictured what is going on with the world right now? It’s insane.

I’m currently working from home and now it is going okay, I have some sort of a routine where I’m pretty much just trying to stick to the exact hours I work when I’m at work.

So what’s been going on in the last nine months? I went down to working four days a week and I’m still doing it - I have been doing a course which I’m still in the middle of doing, am halfway through it however only have a few months to go so might possibly need to extend it or really put a lot of energy into getting as much done as I can. This was all for the aim of starting my own business doing bookkeeping which I still want to do and have been putting a bit of energy into it. So far I have a laptop, one client but I’m not really trading yet because I’m still learning - I will wait until I finish my course before I decide to start a website.

So that’s what’s been going on with work - at home we have had a lot of problems with our dog and our cat in the last few months. They are both little old ladies however our dog who was going blind had to have an eye removed just before Christmas which was all pretty horrible and then we decided to have our cat fully checked out and it turned out that her kidney disease became really advanced and she had blood in her urine which means that over 70% of her kidneys have been lost. Unfortunately we had to make the decision to put her down, at the start of March. It was so hard saying goodbye to her but we were able to have the vet come to the house and she was able to be euthanised in her favourite spot in the garden surrounded by us. We miss her so much but it was the best thing to do so that she would not pass away in pain. Last week we found out that our dog has an ulcer in her good eye and it was very touch and go but by Thursday the vet said that she was over the worst stage but it will still take a month to heal and we are not sure if she can keep the eye. The ulcer is very serious and she requires medicine every four hours so I am lucky to be able to work from home to be able to do this. All the same though we decided that if they say that she has to have the eye removed as she is now 17 we won’t put her through that and so we may possibly put her down instead... it’s so hard being without the cat and think that we may not have the dog either is heartbreaking but she shouldn’t be in pain so like the cat we have to do the best thing for her.. hopefully it doesn’t come to that though as she seems to be recovering well.

Financially we are ok. The credit card debt is higher than before (mainly due to lots of vet bills and travel expenses due to our upcoming trip) but we are trying to control it. I always find though that when I am blogging and talking to you all I am much better with managing debt and savings as you all keep me accountable 😊.

In terms of savings we have $5750 towards my next car plus around $3000 in shares. Due to market volatility we have lost around $1000-$1500 but as we won’t be selling anytime soon hopefully it will all come back up. Anyway it’s good to have a bit of money available in the event it’s needed.

In December last year we booked flights to go to the UK to visit a family friend for a few weeks in July this year. As Coronavirus was starting to turn bad I had it in the back of my mind that it might not be safe to go this year and now it’s clear we can’t go so tonight I bit the bullet and filled an online flight cancellation form with my travel provider. We have decided that we will go at pretty much the same time next year if everything is ok.

Glad to be back blogging and looking forward to trying to stay accountable with you guys!

Spending, Holiday Plans & No More Physio!

December 13th, 2018 at 09:30 pm

I tried replying to Amber's comment last week but my internet was playing up so much the comments wouldn't post. Anyway, we have no problem with managing our bills, it's more when we were overspending we were dipping into the bills money. Now that we've put the spending money and the bills money into separate bank accounts it's been much easier and we've had less problems.

The next thing to try and manage is our weekly spending money. While we've been having heaps of fun by going out lots, we keep on overspending and as a result spend less on groceries (because there's not that much left) and/or add to the credit cards.

Example: this weekend just gone we added $56.34 to my credit card for some of the groceries (after I repaid $68 on this card so I really wasn't thrilled). Then we were left with $70 cash for the rest of the groceries. So far $20 of that has been spent and we are left with $50. It should be ok. I've certainly had to be creative with what I buy for us, which has been fun! The downside of it though is that we end up lacking in the non-essentials for a while, so we are constantly missing stuff. Each week I try to be more aware though, and hopefully we can do better next weekend.

On the upside though we got dressed up for B's work do, went out for breakfast once and dinner twice and got takeaway once. It's fun, but that's where our money is going!

So I'm planning this weekend to be a bit more mindful of what is being spent, hopefully that will make a big difference.

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In other big news we booked the travel for our next holiday. We are traveling by boat to Tasmania with another couple who are very good friends and taking the motorbikes and will do a 7 day ride around Tasmania. We are so excited, it will be great.
The boat fares up and back are $1000 so the plan is to buy Christmas presents with December's pay and to give the money for the fares from January's pay.

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Another exciting development is I had my last physio session during the week!! No more paying $105 per visit, no more tiny lunch breaks on those appointment days and I slowly get to wean myself off the early morning rehab exercises. As of this week I do four mornings with a day off during the middle of the week. (On this day instead I attend to little financial things that need doing eg paying bills, updating spreadsheets etc - I've really missed having this time because it's so hard to do after work).
I was ecstatic and absolutely over the moon on Tuesday when I got told no more appointments are needed!!

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That is all for now, hoping you all have a lovely weekend!!

Payday Tweaking Done

December 2nd, 2018 at 09:01 am

I have so many financial things to write about I could blog daily for a month but free time is minimal (especially leading up to Christmas) so I'll just stick to one of our larger financial matters.

Probably one of the biggest things we've been dealing with lately is adjusting to both being paid monthly on the same day and re-tweaking the budget. In DH's last job he got paid monthly at the end of the month while I get paid monthly in the middle of the month. It kind of meant that we could set aside an amount for bills and withdraw weekly our spending money without worrying if we had overspent really because there was always another pay coming in in the next fortnight.

Then when he changed jobs in May the payday changed to the middle of the month. It was fine in the beginning because we had a little bit of extra money to fall back on, and then I had the broken collarbone so we weren't really overspending because we weren't going out much and we knew what we had was going to doctors and hospitals etc.

By August and September though the extra money had been spent and we were starting to go out more so we actually started running out of money because the buffer we had got used up. In the month of September we actually ran out of money within the first two weeks so the remaining two weeks were not fun at all! It was then that I decided that our current budgeting system had to be tweaked especially as it looked like we were going to run short in our bills account which is a big no-no for me.

We have two bank accounts that barely get used so I decided that we would have the set monthly amount for mortgage and bills left in the bills account and whatever money is left over to be spent on things we both agree on, repaid on credit cards if needed and the remaining money to be divided by four or five weeks (whichever is relevant for that month) and transferred into one of the bank accounts we don't use. The other bank account we don't use is now used as a holding account for short term purchases we want to make (example: the month of October we put $1000 in for our Perth spending money and $400 for the back tyre we were replacing on the Harley).

This updated method has definitely reduced my stress levels as I know what we can spend weekly and there's less likelihood of running out of money. Because we overspent for a few months the credit cards also have balances which we are repaying but I am saving that for another post.

Holiday At Start Of November

November 21st, 2018 at 06:47 am

Wow it's been a while since I've blogged! I don't completely remember what happened in September but we celebrated our 8 year wedding anniversary last month by going out on a motorbike ride to a nice lunch and then visiting wineries, which was definitely a treat!

At the start of this month we went on a short holiday to Perth, which is two states away, to visit one of DH's old friends who only just moved back to Australia, to spend time with him and meet his family. We had a great time socialising, eating out, visiting wineries in their Swan Valley region and sightseeing in Perth and along their coastal region. It was great to see his friend and his family were lovely, his partner was great to get along with and 2yo son was super cute.

Flights were $1000 for the two of us and we spent $1460 for the period 6-11 Nov (5 days) - as well as eating out and drinks, we hired a car which was $467 in total. We saved $1000 spending money last month and the flights are all repaid, everything is now repaid in full. It was a great trip.

That was the first week of November done pretty well Smile. Perth is three hours ahead of us and amazingly we had worse jet lag than coming back from Thailand, which is an eight hour flight away! Thailand is four hours behind us so maybe that has something to do with it.. all I know is I wasn't getting sleepy until 1.30am because that was 10.30pm Perth time! It took until the middle of last week until we were back to normal. Well worth it though Smile.

New Car Savings, Murphy Strikes Again

August 3rd, 2018 at 08:46 am

I was listing the events that happened each week and keep getting my weeks mixed up, so that's all getting a bit hard! The point is I'm now back in the groove of writing weekly so I'll keep that up without listing each week's number.

Since I wrote last I've been to my post-operation appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon and he believes everything is healing in the way it should, which is great. I've been cleared to drive and resume normal activities within reason but must wear a sling in crowded places. Every day I'm healing a bit more. I'm now going to weekly physio appointments up until the final post-operation appointment at the start of September.

The good money things which have happened is we have found out that B's final car loan payment is next month! As previously agreed, I am going to take part of what we would pay each month and put it towards savings towards my new car. His payment is $742 per month - I would like to get a car for around $25000 in four years time, so worked out to do this would need $520 per month. Hopefully my car will last that long - the engine is pretty good but it is now 15 years old. Need to pick out and organise an internet account with a high interest rate soon 😊.

Now for the bad money things.. as well as having surgery which we had out of pocket costs for to the tune of roughly $3000, we last week decided to make two large purchases (the security doors for $3000 and the exhaust for the Harley for $1200). This would have been fine over a few months. But on Monday night the hot water service blew up. Grrr. That is $1500. Then a night or two later the dishwasher jammed up and it looks like it is a problem to do with the computer board in it... our savings are pretty much cleared out from the hot water service and exhaust so we are washing dishes by hand at the moment. A dishwasher is not a necessity and there has been so much money spent lately the thought of spending more is making me ill. This situation is looking kind of like the spa purchase last year where we repaid the credit card back over four months. Once I have final costs I will work out how much we need to repay per month.

All the same, even with the above expenses I am still determined to set up an account for the car and set up a monthly savings direct debit into it. The thing is, if you have a car loan you will always have to pay it monthly no matter what the situation is so I want us to be disciplined to save in the same way.

Week 28: Back to Work, Big Spending Items

July 26th, 2018 at 08:59 am

Week 28 saw me back at work except for Thursday morning when I had the appointment with the cardiologist. He didn't think my heart problem was too major and thought that my friend's suggestion that it could be linked to thyroid issues (in my case the adrenal glands) was valid so ordered a thyroid test as well as getting me to wear a heart monitor for 24hrs next month. There was no charge for that appointment as it was bulk billed.

The collarbone got better as the week went on and not much was needed in the way of painkillers by the end.

Tuesday was our 19 year anniversary so went out for dinner to celebrate, which was nice. We also went out to lunch on Saturday and to dinner on Sunday night with friends who were visiting.

On Saturday we had two really big spending items (as well as my operation lol) in the way of the security doors I wanted ($1500) and the exhaust B wanted for his Harley ($600). The security doors were a quote which was about to expire and the exhaust was only one of 7 held in Australia (after that they would have to be ordered from overseas which takes a couple of months for this shop); so both were things that we wanted to order asap. Note also that these amounts are 50% deposits with the balance due in about 3 weeks for the doors, the end of the week for the Harley. With these purchases we can expect to live pretty quietly in the next few weeks as they are taking up the bulk of our money until payday in the middle of next month. We both believe they're worth it though.

Ps I see Shiela posting her blog as Week 29, I'm probably a week out? I'm not too bothered though because I'm trying to report what happens weekly and stay accountable, to me that's the most important thing.

Week 27: Surgery Successful, Other Health Problems Now

July 19th, 2018 at 11:13 pm

Well I got through my first ever operation ok. I was so nervous but the hospital was really great and looked after me so well. I would highly recommend private hospitals from this experience. It didn't come off completely without a hitch though.

When I met with the anaesthetist right before the surgery he got the stethoscope out, listened and told me my heart is beating too fast, and hooked me up to a heart monitor. This told us it was beating at a rate of 8-10 extra beats per minute. He said we can still go ahead with the surgery but we will look into it afterwards.

After the surgery I was told that my heart kept on beating at the 8-10 extra beats through the entire surgery and that they would monitor how it is overnight, so I got moved to a high dependency ward and hooked up to a heart monitor. The next day they saw that it had mostly stabilised except for an episode in the morning so they gave me a referral to a local cardiologist (the same one B went to last year) and discharged me.

Recovery from surgery was pretty much a one week process. The first four days I had a lot of muscle soreness so movement was very limited. DH looked after me well and found out how much a nurse really has to do!!! There were a lot of pills to be taken and half of them required food to be eaten first so there was no sleeping in for him as quite a lot had to be done for me. He was so good though and had no problem doing any of it. On the Thursday he took me to the hairdresser to get my hair washed and blow waved which was really lovely ($70, so is definitely a treat!)

There were no extra charges for being put in the high dependency ward, we simply had to pay the $500 excess upon admission. I paid the $2158 to the orthopaedic surgeon a few days before, so now need to get the refund of $743 from Medicare and private health insurance. Probably the other big expenses (kind of) is the parking at $30.75 per day for the Monday and Tuesday - B spent as much time as he was allowed to be there for me. We also went out to dinner on Thursday night ($59.30) and went out to lunch and to a nice chocolate shop on the coast on the Sunday.

The only other financial thing I did was save $100 each for us. Our savings are now about $2600 each in my shares account and in the home loan offset account, so want to gradually add a little bit each month. Eventually when things calm down a bit I'll look at our credit cards as they're creeping up a bit.

All in all, I'm alive and well so all is good 😊.

Three Year Blogoversary

December 6th, 2017 at 07:36 pm

It's been forever since I've posted up a blog entry but as yesterday was my three year blogoversary (I think due to American time differences it could possibly be showing as today???) I thought it would be nice to put up an entry.

The last three months since my last post have flown by. This year we've had some personal stuff going on which has taken up most of my brain space (so I have kept up financially and have been lurking but haven't had the energy to do much more), but we have entered into the world of marriage counselling and I think it's been really helpful. I won't divulge what is going on but I will say that marriage counselling for certain situations is money well spent (and where we are going is not very expensive either which is good).

I haven't felt like I've wanted to discuss with family and friends what is going on but needed to speak to someone, and having a trained professional speak to both myself and my husband to tell us what we are both doing wrong and how to fix these things is really helpful. It's helped our communication skills and hopefully will bring us closer together, and strengthen our bond (which over the years has slowly weakened and we probably grew apart slowly until something happened which brought it all to a head).

Creditcardfree yesterday talking about her anxiety made me want to share a little also.

Financially, the spa has been repaid in full - we received our tax refunds in November so paid the outstanding amount on my credit card.

The Thailand holiday is now happening (we go away in March) and I now have booking confirmations and details of where to pay (it's my friend's travel agent). Payment is due in full 10 January 2018 so we have been paying instalments towards that.

We just bought my husband a Harley Davidson... A bit of midlife crisis here perhaps! Actually his current bike loan will be repaid next year and this has been his dream for a while, and the type he wanted is not common so we snapped it up. He said he wouldn't buy unless I could go riding with him too, and as I didn't mind, he bought it. We've been doing things like going for rides out to dinner and coffee and stuff, so it's been good. (Financially not so much but it's nice that we can afford it!)

So where we are compared to three years ago is very different. Three years ago my husband was injured and not working and money was very dire. 2015 was then spent rebuilding.

This year financial matters have not been at the forefront of our thoughts, other things have been going on. Another day I will look at progress at the goals on the sidebar.

I am hoping to slowly return back to normal, which for me is sharing my financial thoughts with my lovely SA family!

September Bills Month Compared to Same Time Last Year

September 11th, 2017 at 09:36 pm

Last year I wrote about how we have a large amount of bills in the month of September and how high they are, and resolved to average out the annual expenditure and pay a set monthly amount from then on.

Well, it's a year on and we have been putting aside the averaged amount each month for mortgage and bills, which has definitely eased financial worries.

September 2017 is no different for bills though and exceeds our monthly amount we set aside by $878.53. We have no bills in October really though, so can easily make it up next month.

Last year in September bills exceeded the monthly amount by $1043, this year September bills exceed the month amount by $878.53. Our gas and electricity bills are lower than last year by $150 in total, so that represents the majority of the change.

I'm not sure that I need to recalculate the totals after all - as in work out all the bills for the period October 2016 to September 2017 and work out a new averaged amount as it is roughly the same as last year.

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In other financial news, my car got serviced yesterday for the first time in a couple of years and cost $290 in total - $140 for the service, and $150 for new back brakes.

July -$911.17, August +$816.45

September 5th, 2017 at 09:37 pm

In July we went away and it was quite a spendy month, so we ended up in the red by -$911.17. In August we had a much quieter month and so were able to have $816.45 left over, so pretty much the majority of July's overspending has now been negated, which I'm very happy about.

The start of September has been pretty spendy though, so will be trying not to spend too much. First I needed a new pair of work shoes because the heels had worn off the ones I wearing, making them unsafe. I managed to find a pair for $70, which was a reasonable price. I was hoping for $50, so close enough.

Then on Saturday, I had bicarb soda all over the mattress (to get rid of dust mites) and was vacuuming it off when the power suddenly died. We tried using a different powerpoint, but nothing. This vacuum cleaner we've had for 8 years so we've got quite a lot of use out of it.

Due to still having bicarb soda all over the mattress we needed to get another one asap. We ended up with a Hoover pet bag powerhead vacuum cleaner for $410. I don't normally like bag vacuum cleaners but the salesman did say that the filters last longer and require less cleaning, which is a plus for me.

The vacuum cleaner does work really well I must admit! I haven't taken this money out of the EF because I think it's now running a bit low and we'll be able to cover it in this month's budget.

Yesterday I was thinking of just how glad I am that I stumbled on Savings Advice that three years ago! There are so many interesting stories and points of view to share, I feel like this site and everyone I talk to here is part of me and wouldn't want to lose it - so hopefully it's around for a while!

Snowflake & Electrician

August 27th, 2017 at 09:40 pm

It's been so long since I've blogged, possibly about three weeks, that I'm not going to write about every little thing that has happened, it would take far too long. I was sick for a week and then my energy levels were a bit low but am feeling a bit better now, so will simply write about the most recent financial things going on.

On the weekend, I received a $10 snowflake in the form of a Safeway everyday reward (grocery shopping). I added this to our Christmas present fund. I was hoping to have $1000 by Christmas but have been a bit lax with the $1000 challenge and monitoring it. Anyhow, we now have $375 for Christmas presents so it will certainly be helpful!

The other thing that happened on the weekend was we had an electrician around to wire up our new spa! It arrived the weekend before, so now we can happily use it - we had an outside powerpoint installed so that if anything happens to it, it doesn't affect power to the house. (This is all I can tell you because I am not particularly savvy with anything mechanical/electrical). We thought it would be around $400 but as B used an electrician through his work, he was only charged $200, which was really great.

Ps. the spa is wonderful, worth every cent!

Hope everyone is well!

Back From Merimbula Holiday

August 7th, 2017 at 09:33 pm

DH and I went away a couple of weeks ago to a place called Merimbula, New South Wales, Australia. It was a week long camping trip - while the camping part was relatively inexpensive, we certainly didn't hold back from sightseeing and enjoying the local fresh seafood.

We are now back to normal. Spending was high in July, so like a lot of you, August is to be a quiet month. We are trying to use up food in our cupboards and avoid spending too much.

Here are some pics of Merimbula:











This is a picture of a rainbow lorikeet, which there were quite a few of at the caravan park where we stayed - they are so friendly!



Looking forward to speaking with you all about various financial matters now that we are back at work and back to normal!

First EF Withdrawal For The Year

July 19th, 2017 at 01:33 pm

This year we haven't needed to make a withdrawal from the EF until today. B was on his way out and mentioned that his car was really slow to start and may need a new battery, so he was going to see how the car went today and decide on whether or not to replace the battery.

Well he made it out of the driveway and halfway across the road and then it promptly died! We pushed the car out to a safer spot and called roadside assistance. After all, this is what we pay for Smile.

They came out to our house with a new battery for which we paid $319. Because this month has been crazy with spending and this is technically an emergency, we withdrew it from the EF. Glad that we have the funds available to cover true emergencies like this. I think we have about $2200 cash now so will look at boosting this back up again next year.

Two Low-Cost Outings

July 16th, 2017 at 02:54 am

B went away over the weekend to a dirtbike race he participated in, so while he was away I had a family do for my sister's birthday in the daytime and dinner and drinks with friends in the nighttime.

My sister wanted a bottle of liqueur and some shower gel from a shop called Lush from me and my brother. We got her a bottle of Bailey's for $25 plus spent $35 at Lush on shower gel and shower scrub; so $60 there plus $5 for a card and $5 spent on biscuits and snacks for lunch. Normally I make something but was a bit time and energy poor so I simply bought some small things instead. Total spend $70 and then my brother gave me $40 for his share.

I had to fill up on fuel (spent $45) before driving me and my brother to their house, which is an hour away.

They made us a lovely lunch of bbq chicken (bought) with roast potatoes and roast carrots, with a coconut cake afterwards. My nephew is now 2 1/2 and is sooo cute! My sister loved the presents also; we had a great day.

Then last night I went out for dinner and drinks with friends. I paid $11.93 for the Uber to get us there; and then only paid $28 for a round of drinks. We had light dinners and a round of drinks with dinner, but for some reason my friends paid the bill and by the time I went to put some money in the bill was already covered. My share there would have been $30, but I think as I paid for the Uber and one other round it all evened out so didn't feel too bad in the end.

We weren't out very long, only 3 hours and only had 3 or 4 drinks so it was a very inexpensive night while being loads of fun Smile.

B is on his way home now so should be due in a couple of hours, so will be great to see him after a couple of days!

New Spa (Hot Tub)

July 10th, 2017 at 01:04 pm

This purchase is not a need but definitely a want. Last month we tried to fix our spa (I believe you call them hot tubs in the US) jets and found out that because our spa is so old (it's around 20 years old) that we cannot get the jets anymore and in order for it to run again we would need to put a new jet system in and re-plumb it, which is more work than my DH would be able to do (and I certainly could not do it).

We loved using our spa so decided to bite the bullet and buy a new spa. We shopped around for a few weeks and did research into the best spa we could get with our budget that also had the lowest running costs and two weeks ago put a deposit down. The company we bought the spa off have given us a trade-in of our old one for $500, which is good, especially as we now do not have to worry about trying to sell it on Ebay (it may have sat in the yard a while).

The spa cost is definitely expensive but we will call this our big purchase for the year. The price is.... $9790. We considered getting a loan for this, but ended up deciding to pay half cash half credit.

The actual end result is we paid $5950 on my credit card (but we have already repaid $750 and will be repaying $1000 tomorrow) and $3840 cash.

Last month we had a quiet month so were able to save $1150 towards it and this month $850, so have cash-flowed $2000; will have $4200 on my credit card to repay and the end result will be $3590 withdrawn from savings.

My credit card rate is 14% however we want to have it repaid fairly quickly - I would definitely like us to repay $1000 next month to bring the balance down to $3200.

EF savings have now dropped a bit - cash is now $2506.96, while shares are actually around $6500 roughly. We will rebuild it a bit more next year.

I feel like this has been the best possible way to fund a large purchase, and am very happy that we won't have the burden of loan repayments for a set period of time and didn't have the burden of applying for finance. We hope to have this repaid by the end of the year.

I will need to adjust our goals on the sidebar because they have now changed dramatically!

We are so looking forward to the new spa though, and are very excited about it - it is a lovely silver pearl colour with dark wood on the outside Smile.

Blind Dog :(

July 3rd, 2017 at 11:30 pm

So it's been around 3 weeks since my last blog post.

There are a few things of note but due to time constraints I'll limit it to one of our biggest things and will write about the other things later.

We took our dog Jessie to the vet three weeks ago as she had a claw that was grown over and needed her nails clipped. We hadn't gotten her vaccinations done yet so also organised to have those done. Unfortunately while they were doing her medical checkup they found that she is blind in one eye and going blind in the other, which is really upsetting. The vet said that once a week they have an opthmalogist come out to the clinic who could check her eyes properly and ensure that the vet had prescribed the correct eye drops.

As my work is quiet I took an annual leave day the week after and took her to see the opthmalogist. The opthmalogist found that she actually has the same amount of sight in both eyes however it is only 10% or less - he said to consider her blind as all she would be able to see is light or dark and possibly some shapes but that is all, and eventually this will all fade out.

The blindness is caused by cataracts and the surgery to fix it will cost $5500. As she is 15 there are no guarantees that she will make it through the surgery or how long she will live for so we have decided to make life as comfortable as possible for her. She moves around well and we simply need to make sure that we keep the pathways around the house clear (she knows them well). She will need to be given voltaren eye drops daily to ensure that the cataracts don't cause inflammation, which is what they say happens.

Financially the vet visit, the opthmalogist visit and the eye drops came to $475, but when things like this happen you do the best you can. Emotionally it's been very sad and upsetting to watch her deteriorate, it's been so hard. The literature I've read and the opthmalogist have said that she will already have adjusted to having only minimal sight which is a silver lining I guess... our poor baby Frown.

Credit Card & Bill Management; Another Snowflake

April 19th, 2017 at 01:25 pm

I am conscious that certain things have been let slide for a little while so I am trying to make amends before it is too painful.

Today and tomorrow my main priority is to get the credit cards to their correct balances. I have just fixed up B's credit card so that tomorrow when the automatic weekly transfer of $75 to that card hits, the balance will be $2,470.

We put $75 there per week to cover the compulsory car wash he must do for the company car each week plus his various coffees, lunches and miscellaneous expenses (eg going to the barber).

Unfortunately the card was sitting at $2,990... ! This was due to our easter trip, where he put fuel, alcohol and the new LED lighting kit we bought for the camper trailer on it amongst other small things. (We had to buy the kit while we were away because the batteries went flat on our main light source, luckily it was 25% off - the new lights make such a difference).

Anyway, I digress. I just transferred from our bank account $445.23, being $348.23 to cover the outstanding balance plus this month's payment of $97 against the mountain bike purchased. Ouch. These things add up - imagine if I had left this another two weeks?

So his card is now sorted. Tomorrow I will be paying down my Virgin credit card back to $0. I'm guessing that about $345 will need to be paid. (These charges consist of among other things: train ticket $137, balance of textbooks $55, balance of fuel $15, groceries $45, caravan park accommodation $90). My Virgin credit card hasn't been down to $0 since February, so it is pretty important to get that in order. (Around February I put school textbooks plus a new suit on it so have been paying these items down). All in all, I'm not terribly fussed about transferring over the money for either cards because all expenses have been entered into my spending app so there is nothing that is a nasty surprise.

In regards to bill management, I was so frantically busy last week that I simply paid the home phone and B's mobile bill and neglected to pay the animal's registration fees, must do that tomorrow night.

I received another $10 from Safeway Rewards so have transferred that to the Christmas Savings challenge. $56 towards this month is now sitting there so will only have to put in $44 at the end of the month. Must also update the snowflakes spreadsheet to include the dividends received the other but will get to that. Slowly getting everything back in order!

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!

Fell Off The Wagon

February 23rd, 2017 at 10:27 am

I think I see a pattern here. When I came back from the UK I decided to go on an alcohol fast and it ended up being a period of low alcohol instead and unfortunately it has happened again - some things I have next to no willpower with. Why do I need to impose a restriction on myself anyway? I just bought one bottle of wine for the weekend so I can have a glass here and there. I had one tonight and that is all. This bottle was $15 which is my usual allowance I give myself for two bottles. Oh well.

Other spending today was petrol of $60, which should hopefully last a month. I also want to wash the car on the weekend too.

Tomorrow I am going to hunt for a new suit after work - I got a stain on one of my black suits which won't come out. I've had it for 2 1/2 years so got plenty of wear out of it. Unfortunately the material in my my favourite suit (1 1/2 years old) is also starting to wear dangerously thin; I can see the pants ripping one day so I actually am up for two new suits. I will put these one or two suits on my low rate credit card to repay back at around $40 per week until it's done.

Speaking of credit cards, small amounts of spending here and there meant I owed at the end of the credit card period $46.95 on one and $82.06 on the other - so have paid $64.51 this week and will pay the remaining $64.50 next week. It's amazing how these little things creep up, I barely remember what I bought - the scariest thing is when the credit card debt is larger can you even remember what you spent it on? I'm not going back to that place so will have to be more diligent with noting down what was spent on there.

Quick Hello

February 15th, 2017 at 11:17 am

Hi everybody, just wanting to say a super quick hello. Here's some financial goings-on in the last couple of days:

- yesterday we took our 15yo cat to the vet to get an old-cat profile done. This is various blood tests to see if she can tolerate a stronger dose of pain meds and a check on her organs. The check on her organs found that she has very early stage kidney disease so now the stronger dose has been ruled out. Hopefully with some dietary changes she will have an improved quality and length of life. $652 all up, so we have spent $712 on her this month. I am glad we got the medical done but really am now hoping to rein the spending in.

- on Monday I had to buy a birthday present for SIL so decided to get a gift card. Turns out the supermarket was having a $10 reward if you bought gift cards for certain shops. As this is a good shop, I bought the gift card for there, and received the $10 off a purchase tonight; have now added this to my snowflakes tally (SIL was happy too!)

- tonight I did my fourth weekly shop in a row and completed the required spending - now have $60 rewards waiting to be deducted off our next shop! This will mean that we will easily make month 2 of the Christmas savings challenge Smile.

I now have to go to bed but just thought I would check in and jot a few things down.


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