VS-from-Oz's Personal Finance Blog

DH and I did our taxes a week and a half ago, and less than a week later received our tax refunds. We take out income protection insurance so can claim this back on our taxes and normally get a refund back due to this expense. 

I went back to my old rule that I was taught from very young to save half of any extra money you receive and paid this down against our mortgage. I like this rule because honestly if you are not needing the money you won’t miss half and it can be used for long term benefits (saving money, reducing debt) rather than being spent on something that will probably be forgotten about in 1-2 years time. 

With the other half I plan on buying a set of side tables for our front lounge room, which will leave about $400 to spend. DH got a larger tax refund but he is doing up a project bike and believes that this money will allow him to finish the bike so he can use the money received for this as it will be less to come out of our pockets. 

Changing the budget timing back in July was really helpful as it simplified things a lot. Knowing that we have an extra $85 to spend each week helped us to stop overspending and we are living within our means better. We finished up August with $22 left over and did not ever really feel like we have missed out on anything. We have saved money in various places, been out occasionally and have bought groceries and takeaway food as needed but have not really watched what we spend too hard.   I do like to stock up on grocery specials each week and have found that to be very helpful. If I see certain items down to pre-pandemic prices I always make sure to buy 1 or more of these items and just put them aside. 

So all is well currently, and we are in the first week of spring and it is a beautiful spring day. Life is good!

The start of July has been important to most Australian employees because the government has given tax cuts as well as raising the minimum wage for the workers that this applies to. I and DH are earning above the minimum wage so our wages didn’t need to increase but we now receive extra income thanks to the tax cuts. 

My net wages went up by 2.5% and B’s net wages went up by 3% (he earns more so is receiving more back). 

There has been a lot of talk on the media about how you should bank this extra money to get ahead or if you pay this extra money straight into your mortgage you are going to save so much interest etc but the reality is this is cost of living relief. I don’t know anyone who is not struggling with the way everything has gone up across the board. The extra money is needed to simply live at your current standard of living.  

We had to increase our weekly spending money to cover groceries etc by 3.5% in May, so the extra income received is helpful for this. 

Also, I haven’t increased the amount we allow for bills each month since April 2021 and over the last couple of months the account we use to keep money aside for bills and pay bills out of has been very low and required a top-up of $700 to keep it from going into negative so I have increased the amount we set aside each month for bills by 2.5%. 

I used to analyse each year the amount we pay on each bill annually so we can average out monthly the amount we need to set aside and would increase the allowance by say 1%, so to increase by 2.5% over a 3 year period possibly might not even be enough, we’ll see. 

But with the extra money coming in this is a case of extra money going out, but hopefully as conservatively as possible. 

So there is that side to our budget changes but there is also another side to it as well. What with actively tracking our spending, I have kind of realised over the last few days that I need to rethink how we manage our finances due to timing differences. 

This didn’t come to me until I was speaking to a new coworker about how often we get paid. 

I get paid weekly and she was talking about when she used to get paid monthly and how hard it is to get used to.  I was telling her about how DH gets paid monthly and his wages are used to pay the bills and I get paid weekly and this pays for our spending (eg groceries, fuel, entertainment etc). 

Later I realised that this is probably how I need to track our spending because tracking our spending monthly while we are spending weekly and I am getting paid weekly is overwhelming and over complicating things. 

The wages I receive each week cover our spending, our dog’s weekly savings to his shrinking fund, 5% savings and then $86.50 is left over.  So rather than saying we only have $xxx left over for the month it should be a case of this week’s money has been spent and we get to spend again next week. 

The wages DH receives cover our bills and $900 is left over. $200 is allocated towards his project bike (his passion), and the remaining $700 goes towards larger expenses eg car repairs etc. I am saving $200 of this money towards holidays but if we can’t afford to do this we don’t (so far I have been able to set aside this money each month). 

Really hoping that rethinking the budget timing makes life easier and less stressful! 

Since we moved house two years ago and overextended ourselves with the whole trying to own two properties thing, tracking spending has always continued to happen but it became something I needed to do but because for quite a while we were living so beyond our means the numbers didn’t really mean much. 

We’re not treading water anymore and I knew we would be going back to actively tracking our spending eventually, and as of this month we are back to actively tracking our spending to try to live within our means.  (It always worked before! Am glad to be back at this point finally)

I have always found that if we watch what we spend day to day using the spending app overall we are ok and able to live comfortably. (As the saying goes “look after your pennies and the dollars will look after themselves“ ).  Two months ago our bills bank account went down to $270 (not really heard of for us) and last month if I hadn’t noticed it would have gone into negative! We had to transfer $900 from our savings to get by; so it became crucial to go back to our old ways of actively tracking our spending because something isn’t working here. (Probably 50%-75% due to the cost of living crisis and also somewhat due to not limiting our spending where necessary)

It’s the 24th day of this month and we have $70.50 left which is not great because we have another 6 days to go which also includes a weekend, because Sunday is the 30th. But no fuel needs to be bought until next Monday 1st July and we have no plans to go out, so even if we go into the negative (which is possible as it is a 5 weekend month) hopefully it won’t be by much. Wish us luck in getting through the last few days! 

Hello my SA friends!  It’s been a while but I’m popping in to say hi. I actually did a blog post right before Christmas last year and went to post it and there were some website problems so didn’t, forgot about it but have been regularly reading SA blogs and articles. I just got out of the posting routine. I’m glad to see you are all doing pretty well though!

The post was about my goals for 2024 and I’m happy to say that even though I didn’t post the entry I have actually been doing some of the things planned. 

The things which have been going well are as follows:

I have a direct debit from our bank account our wages are deposited into to my brokerage account of 5% of my pay as kind of an emergency fund.  The direct debit expires at the end of this year because next year I’m planning to send the 5% to our mortgage loan as extra payments and the year after to my superannuation fund (known as a retirement account in the US). Basically I want to rotate the savings into different places each year. 

Last year I did the 365 penny challenge into an old bank account we weren’t using to turn this bank account into my credit card like bank account. (I had to cancel my credit cards to qualify for our home loan and while I don’t have any credit cards of my own now I do still need some money separate from our checking account to cover the things I would have spent on my credit card). At the end of last year $667 was saved. I was going to do the challenge again but stopped it, however still kept the regular $10 direct debit from our checking account to this account. As long as every purchase is repaid (which it is) it will grow by $520 per year. 

The other things are a work in progress. 

Life has been slowly calming down after moving house and selling our old house which is good. While there is always something going on and life is never perfect or easy it’s nice to not have the level of stress we had last year and the year before. 

Today it is King’s Birthday public holiday so we had a quiet day in where I did washing, washed my car and walked our dog Diesel, and B pottered around in the shed doing a bit of work on his project bike. It was a relaxing and productive day. 

It’s been so long since I’ve written a blog post but a lot has happened this year. 

In January we changed around our mortgage payment for our house we’re living in to monthly payments instead of weekly and were able to clearly see just how much the mortgage payments for two properties had become and realised that we could not afford to pay for a large mortgage on our house and the balance of the mortgage payment for our rental property (our old house) after rental income was received, so prepared ourselves to sell our old house. 

We put the house up for sale in March and it was sold in April for a good price, and settlement completed in July. There was a lot of trouble with the entire process, with telling our great tenants that we were selling and them having to find a new place to live only a year after they moved in (they did find a good place to live though); and the purchaser was a nightmare. 

But the house sold, and we put a very large payment down against the mortgage on our current house and have left some money aside to do some upgrades on our house to make it more comfortable to live in.  The mortgage repayments are now much more affordable and we are living more in line with how we were before. 

The mortgage is a 30 year loan so we repay extra each month so it will be repaid in 20 years when we are due to retire.  Hopefully we can pay it off earlier than that but I have made it non-negotiable that it is paid off in 20 years at the absolute latest. 

The interest rate rises are annoying but no longer extremely stressful as they were when we had two mortgages, and because we pay an extra $711 per month it doesn’t make any difference to our bottom line. 

We are back to paying loans on one property not two which I guess is where we are supposed to be. Our main focus now is working out what is our maximum to spend on various things to be able to continue to live comfortably within our means.  With the current inflation challenges this is proving to be very difficult! 

As always I have been reading the blogs and look forward to being more active now that life has calmed down slightly! 

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. 

Merry Christmas everyone! I’m getting in early because I know that realistically this is the only post I’m going to do before Christmas. Especially as I only post rarely anyway - CB’s post about the blogs being quiet motivated me to write a blog post. 

I’ve been reading quite regularly but life has felt really busy lately so I never quite get to writing anything.  Financially life has been really hard.  Keeping our old house to rent it out emotionally was the right decision but financially with the eight interest rate rises we’ve received has put us in a bind, to put it mildly.

We have toyed with the idea of selling our old house because of this but the tenants have signed a 12 month lease which expires in August so do not want to make this decision until May next year. In actual fact though the tenants are amazing. They are keeping our house immaculate. We have seen the garden well kept and we got to go through the inside when their 3 month inspection was done and got to meet them. The inside is kept great too and they have stated that they are happy to stay on for years as they love the house so it is definitely motivating to try and keep the house rather than sell.  DH and I pretty much said that even if we sell we want to offer them the opportunity to buy first.  I guess we just have to see how many more interest rate increases we have next year - if we only have a couple more we might be able to keep both houses. 

When we were applying for the loans we were told that it would cost us an extra $369 per month to keep our old house as a rental property so it seemed affordable and a good long term investment. With these interest rate increases however we are actually paying around $1500 per month extra, which is all the money we have left over after bills, food and everyday expenses.  Previously we would use that money to pay for car services, medical expenses or other larger expenses that tend to crop up in every day life. So to have that money instantly vanish has been a huge worry, especially as we had to cancel all credit cards but one (although low credit card debt is helpful). We have really been feeling close to the edge in a lot of ways. 

So it’s been important to increase income where possible and reduce expenses where possible. 

I’ve been lucky enough to secure another 10 hours of work a week, so I’m now working 30 hours a week.  I couldn’t work full time driving the distance I do as it would be extremely exhausting. B has also received a $5k pay rise a few months ago, which has been lovely too. But with basically every financial organisation raising their prices due to “cost of living” increases, life is still hard. 

I downloaded my usual spending app onto my phone and worked out how much we earn per week with our new pays and how much each expense costs per week. I decided any expense over $50 per week will be looked into to see if there are cheaper options available. Highlighted was private health insurance, income protection insurance and trauma insurance. 

So far we have changed over our private health insurance from a gold standard policy to a silver standard policy which still has a couple of inclusions in the policy that we needed. We have saved $37 per week on that policy. 

In the new year we will look into the other insurances because they have gone up by $159 in a month. A lot of the financial organisations in Australia have decided that because they did not increase their costs during the pandemic that they would do it in October because the pandemic is deemed to be over and it is time to recoup.  Because of this we have decided it is time to review! Any extra funds are better in our pockets than theirs after all. We haven’t looked at those policies in a long time so it might not even be worth having them anymore. 

Finally the last thing that we have done is to change our mortgage payment to monthly. I thought it was a great idea initially to have weekly repayments to help pay off the interest quicker however the reality is that now we are dealing with high loan repayments with 5 week months occasionally, which is harsh. Right now we need as much stability as possible, so monthly payments will suit our needs better.    The monthly payments start in February, with our last weekly payment in the middle of January. 

It’s unbelievable how much pretty much most things have increased by! We’re spending roughly the same amount of money we have always spent but to do this I’m  buying as much in bulk as possible, so pretty much any item over $5 I’m checking the prices.  Sometimes it’s fun but other times it’s exhausting. 

All the bills have been paid up to the end of the month (or have been scheduled to be paid closer to the date due), so our main priorities are Christmas shopping (not a huge expense anymore really - we only have 2 actual gifts to buy); and getting through our five week month of mortgage payments and spending through the holiday season.  

This post has ballooned into a much longer post than planned!!! But this is really a rundown of what has been going on in our financial life since around August so I guess it’s kind of to be expected.  

Wishing all my SA friends a lovely Christmas and a wonderful New Year!! Let’s hope 2023 plays nice for us all. 

Probably the biggest financial thing this week has been receiving all of our rent money, which happened last Wednesday. 

I’d been checking the banking and the real estate agency owner’s portal and hadn’t seen anything, so I called the property manager on Tuesday who looked into it and could see that we have received the rent from the tenant but it hadn’t been released. Turns out they didn’t have our bank details so I gave them. I know I sent them via email but I couldn’t be bothered making a big deal on it so I simply quoted them the details again, and the property manager entered them on the system, and we received the money the next day, so we’re very happy about that. 

The tenants paid six months rent in advance so to know that we have six months rent sitting there on the outset is a massive load off our minds. Am so so happy about that! You can’t put a price on peace of mind!!!

I entered in all the expenses made to get our property rental ready (around $4200, but $2200 was for the ducted heating unit that died in the month of moving house.. that was so awful but anyway, moving onwards and upwards), our rental income, all upcoming expenses and then paid the last remaining bills for the electricity and carbon monoxide tests. We also had a move out clean done and owe $350 but the cleaner hasn’t sent the bill so we will pay it when we get the bill.. it was done over a month ago so hopefully they don’t forget to do it. Anyway we will pay when required. 

So our tenants are paid up to the 31st January next year.. they pay $410 per week and according to the bank calculations given when we applied for finance, they technically allow for 80% of the rent received to pay against the mortgage because the other 20% is generally required for expenses such as council (property) rates, water rates etc.  This sounds about right but we had to pay $1715 in fees to the agent for advertising ($350), a fee for leasing the property ($615) and then commission on the rent received (the balance), so technically we have exactly 26 weeks of $328 (the  80%) to pay towards the mortgage payment. 

This likely means that for the next 6 months we need to pay from our own pocket any extra expenses.. we won’t have to pay for advertising or leasing fees early next year though so it should get a little bit easier, from January next year we should be able to save away the 20% to cover the rent expenses and pay the 80% towards the mortgage. 

Please disregard this post, I accidentally hit post while writing the header.. content is in my later blog post

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!

Rather than plan a blog entry I thought I would just spend 10 mins blogging of whatever comes to mind (sometimes it's just easier to get things done that way).

I usually log everything into a spreadsheet once a month and pay the bills all at the same time, around the 15th of the month.  Life just got busy last week as we went away camping on the weekend and had a few things to do beforehand.  Anyway, as soon as I had free time I sat down and checked the balances, listed the bills to be paid and any extra out of the ordinary spending.

I have been noticing a slight bill creep each month, some things we can probably change, others I am not completely sure of yet.  One thing for example is our caravan insurance is due for renewal next month and when we got it last year they stipulated it be paid by direct debit - looking at the renewal notice I can see an $84 administration charge for monthly direct debits, so I will contact them and see if we can pay it in one payment instead.  I hate paying administration charges on direct debits, and if possible would rather pay things in one payment only.

My wages went up slightly due to changing my work hours around - instead of working 3 days, I am working 5 mornings; so am working 20 per hours per week and no unpaid lunch break is required now (it was 3 days of 20 hours with 30 mins lunchbreak, but because my shift is under 5 hours by law I don't need to take a lunchbreak).  I'm actually really enjoying working the mornings and feel like I want to keep this routine, and set my business up to work in the afternoon.  Anyway as a result of this, I was able to withdraw less from my payout of my old job and withdrew $448 to bring my wages up to my $3000 monthly requirement.

Hope everyone's well!

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.

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!

As we near the end of October it seems that every spare minute of my time has been taken up with reorganising our bank accounts.  It has been such a long, tedious process.  We received an advice from our bank that they are restructuring our bank accounts to only allow one transaction account (the checking account) and our other bank account that we used as a transaction account to get our salaries deposited and all direct debits would change from a transaction account to an internet only savings account that does not allow direct debits or periodic payments.  Ugh.

I am so glad that DH suggested changing banks altogether because of the time it has cost us (mainly me).  I had to trawl through the bank account to list all debits and then contact everybody, which has been such a time consuming process.  It has been time consuming because there were so many financial institutions (ok, quite a few, it feels like so many) and each financial institution has a different process.  Some were fine with updating the bank details over the phone, others expected you to fill out the form and scan it back, some you had to log in online and go to this section of the website.  It has been such an annoying process.  The only positive out of it all has been getting reacquainted with the various institutions that we use and listing all of our debits down in an organised manner.

Thankfully I can already see the payments coming out of the new account and we have now moved most of the money over to the new bank.  It is looking like this weekend we will start using the eftpos card for the new bank and the process should be pretty much complete.

Another tedious life administration thing I had to do this month was change my name with my super fund (retirement account) for my new employer to deposit into.  I have pretty much changed my name everywhere, now just have two things to go.  But again, this was a matter of complete a form, get the marriage certificate photocopy certified, send it all off.

It is actually our wedding anniversary today, we have now been married for 11 years!  (I guess it is pretty bad that I am still changing my name on things, but I had a lot of things to change).  It is a lovely sunny day just like when we got married which is nice.

I have to do my last bit of life administration for a while hopefully, which is do our taxes - they are due on Sunday.  The process does not take too long though, hopefully we will get nice refunds back.  Then after that we will go out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary, and it will be the first time we have eaten out since possibly June or July?  (We only got out of lockdown last week).  We are going out to dinner at a lovely inner city suburb by the water, so am looking forward to it.  Hope you are all well!

I think my last blog entry was in the start of September?  I know it's been a little while.  I've been working now for just over a month so have completed my work's trial period.  In Australia employers can choose from 3 months to 6 months for an employee's probationary period but my boss just wanted 1 month.  If an employer doesn't want to hold on to an employee during the probationary period here they can simply let them know that they have not passed the probationary period and give them the date the employment ends; and if an employee finds that they do not want to work there long term they are also free to leave without notice during the probationary period.  So as of last week I have passed my probationary period, which is great!  

I'm a big believer in if you receive an amount of money unexpectedly (or just money that is not your average pay) you should save half and spend half.  So I got to thinking about my payout from my previous job and decided that I would save half of whatever is left now that I have a part-time job.  Half is around $7000 so DH and I decided that probably the best thing to do with this money is make a large payment on the mortgage, so I paid $6060 down against the mortgage, bringing it down to $79,999!

There's just under 10 years left on the loan so this is motivating to bring the balance down even further.

Now there is just under 6 months pay of my package, being a lesser amount required from it due to employment earnings too.  That will give me time to build up the business, or if that doesn't work out, get a job for the remaining days of the week.  We'll just see how the next couple of months pan out with all of this.

The other big thing that is currently happening is we are currently in the process of changing banks.  After 20 years of being with the same bank we received a letter at the start of September advising us that they are restructuring our bank accounts and we are now entitled to one checking account and all the rest will become savings accounts which do not allow direct debits or a lot of other transaction types.  As one of the bank accounts that they have decided to turn into a basic internet only savings account is where our pays are deposited and all of our direct debits and bill payments come out of this is extremely annoying!

They have given us until the 22nd of October to change the bank account where all of our deposits and debits are withdrawn, and advised that we can open another bank account but we still have to change everything out of that bank account, so after speaking with DH we decided to change banks entirely.  DH is currently on forced shutdown until tomorrow as his industry got closed down for 2 weeks due to the pandemic so today we met with the new bank and opened four bank accounts and a credit card in DH's name doing a balance transfer for the amount owing on his card (around $2500).

It was a very quick process meeting with the bank and getting them to set up everything, which is great!  Now I will need to spend tomorrow and the day after notifying all of our direct debits of the new bank account to withdraw from.  The only upside of this whole process is we will no longer have to pay account fees anymore and years ago DH got talked into putting credit card protection on his credit card so we will not have to pay that anymore as the card will be closed soon.

With DH's balance transfer there is 30 months interest free so I am thinking of setting up automatic repayments each month until it is cleared, and doing the same thing for my credit card also.  We generally repay every purchase within the week, or the month at worst, so this is just old debt hanging around.  All we will need to do is keep our current habit of repaying everything purchased quickly and the problem of the old debt will be eventually sorted.

I also paid four weeks towards the 52 weeks saving challenge for some new fur babies, the balance is now $106.

Happy to say that my work trial was only really for the morning and that by lunchtime I was offered the job!  I'm really happy that searching for a job is now over and done with, the people are lovely and I feel like I could be there for a while.

I was going to post earlier but got sick after my second Pfizer dose - nothing requiring hospital visits, simply a short cold then a bad sinus infection for around 6 days, so was certainly not up to doing a blog entry.

This is my third week of working there; I am working 2 days per week as an accounts/administration officer at a hair and beauty wholesaler/retailer.  It's a completely different industry so is quite interesting to learn all about.  It's only a 10 minute drive from home which is awesome.  We are currently in lockdown so I am working shorter hours as they only have skeleton staff on, but my hours on one day will be increasing once lockdown is over and they are already talking about work to give me for my third day (which I said I am totally fine with as I was looking for up to 3 days).

It is all very exciting though - it is a newly created position so Iast week I got to order new stationery for my desk and was given a new computer.  My hourly rate is only $0.50 less than my previous job but I don't have to pay for a train ticket anymore (which would cost $1.00 per hour worked), so I have a tiny increase per hour.  I'm just glad to be pretty getting the same pay as I did not want to drop too much.

In other news, I have just transferred $30.00 to the 52 week challenge (covering two weeks) for our new pets savings. 

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.

I have now hit four weeks unemployed, and on the 15th am due to withdraw the second month of my payout from the last job.  The amount I will be withdrawing is $3000.  Last month on the 31st we had $620 leftover from our pays, so I could possibly withdraw a bit less but I am thinking I will wait until we have a bit more leftover at the end of this month (ie if we have $1000 left over I might withdraw $2500 instead of $3000).

I have been applying for jobs, so far I have applied for 24.  Last week I applied for a job and had a response back from the employer at 9.30 at night asking for an interview, which I had on Tuesday.  It felt like it went ok but I am not sure about the vibe, it didn't feel great.  The job was working 10 hours per week, with the opportunity for extra hours as the company grows so in the interview I told the interviewer I'd be happy to go up to 20 hours per week and she replied back with that they are happy to accommodate school hours and I got a funny look when I replied that I don't have kids... as in if you don't have kids why do you only want to work 20 hours a week?  My husband said to just tell them that your husband has a well-paying job which is enough to cover the shortfall (he is very proud that he earns enough to be able to say that, and I am proud of him for doing so well; not that I am expecting him to pay for everything)

It just seems like I am expected to explain what I am doing in my free time because it's not standard to only want to work half a week, when in actual fact it's nobody's business.  Yes, in the other half of the week I do want to get my own business going, but I am careful not to apply for any jobs that say part-time with opportunity for full-time.  If a mother wants to work part-time to be with her kids more it is viewed favourably but it feels like if a woman just wants to have a bit of time-out to live a slower pace of life it is frowned upon.  I'm happy to tell people at the moment how many hours I'm willing to work and that if I decided to go to full-time I would come to them first, and there is no second part-time job that people have to work around. 

So I was so annoyed about it all that I saw an ad for temp professionals and have decided that maybe that's what I will focus on instead.  So today I applied for a temp professional role and maybe that is how I will focus for the time being, because then I will be free to work around my business.  In regards to my business, I am planning to launch my website in September - I had to give myself a deadline to work towards.  Yesterday I got my second client through my old work, which was great.

In other news, DH and I started looking at pets properly last night.  Last year both our cat and dog passed away, with our cat Gemma being just over 18 and our dog Jessie being just under 18.  While I am not too fussed about the breed of cat, DH (and I) really love Jack Russell terriers.  I haven't seen any Jack Russell terriers at rescue places unfortunately so it looks like we may need to buy a bred puppy, which starts at about $2000.  I gave the idea of perhaps saving a bit each year until we have enough and DH was fine with that.  I'm guessing a kitten will be up to $400 - I want to get the kitten from a rescue home.  We love watching this show called the The DogHouse where they match rescue dogs up with prospective owners, I want to do something like that with kittens.  Right now I'm drawn to ginger/champagne coloured kittens but we will see what we end up with!  Generally we would spend $1000 per year on our pets and we have not spent anything yet this year on pets so I'm thinking that's what our savings goal will be, and we should comfortably be able to open our home to a couple of fur babies in about 2-3 years.  Nobody could replace our Jessie and Gemma but it will be nice to give a good home and share lots of cuddles with a couple of new fur babies.

Of course, the disclaimer is that we will save the $1000 as long as we can afford it while I am not working....  or maybe this is motivation for a new 52 week challenge?  Maybe it is...

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!

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!

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).

Hello fellow SA'ers,

I haven't blogged in a while because unfortunately our beautiful dog started to get sick with a paw infection around August-Sept, and we got her to the vet a couple of days after the last blog entry.  The vet gave her lots of meds for the paw infection however gave a disclaimer that it was possibly a tumour but only time and a proper diagnosis would tell.  After a month of giving her the meds, going backwards and forwards to the vet we got the cat scan done and a needle inserted to withdraw cells from the infected area and the diagnosis came back with a malignant melanoma... as she was just under 18 we opted to forgo surgery and instead had a vet come to our home a couple of weeks later to put our beautiful baby to sleep.  While we miss her so much we are so blessed that I could work from home in order to care for her.

The September-October period was swallowed up with caring for her and of course emotions involved so financially we were on autopilot for a while; actually until the end of November.  Luckily though in that period we only spent the usual weekly allowance and there were no major bills, so around December when I went back and looked at everything we were still pretty much on track.

Also, in September-October I completed my bookkeeping course, which is super exciting and was something nice amongst a very hard time.  My boss asked me to work five days a week and I agreed to work it for 6 months as long as he signs off on all bookkeeping time done for the company which will go towards my experience required to become a Registered BAS Agent (the final requirement I have to complete is 1000 hours of time spent providing BAS services).

So, I guess to go over 2020, while the main part of it was that it was the year of goodbyes of both of our pets and the rainbow bridge, these were the main points:

- we had to say goodbye to both of our pets (emotionally hard but also financially hard - pet expenses for 2020 were $5400)

- I got the car I had been wanting for a long time (paid 1/3rd cash upfront with a five year loan for the remaining balance)

- DH got retrenched from his job, received a good redundancy package and another job quickly after.  We still have some of the money left, which we have agreed he can spend on a project bike, as this is one of his interests.

- I passed my bookkeeping course which will greatly help in my aim to be a Registered BAS Agent and have my own business

- we were supposed to go to the UK in July however due to the pandemic our tickets were cancelled and 3 months later we received a full refund which got applied straight to my credit card (which is how payment was made).  We still have the remainder of the holiday savings in the holiday account however due to uncertainty with when we can travel, saving for this is not a priority right now.

- my credit card debt has gone down dramatically due to the refund being applied against it.  I have become better with using the card and pretty much only have everyday expenses going on there which get repaid in 1-3 months, business expenses and interest expenses.  Progress is better but still needs to be made in this area

- our mortgage continues to drop rapidly now which is exciting, it is just over $90k with 11 years left so we will be working to speed this up

- cash is higher now as I am saving away the fifth day I work currently in preparation for taking the next step in my business etc, and we have not spent the redundancy package remainder nor the holiday money

So it was definitely a year of extremes!  We are still getting used to not having any pets anymore and plan on giving ourselves a rest as caring duties over the last four years increased and we want a bit more freedom to go away here and there without having lots to organise.  We're thinking of possibly having a 4-5 year break so if we actually do get to go away to the UK we are not leaving a cat or dog behind for a few weeks.  We will see how that goes though because we definitely miss the adorable quirks and love pets give.

I have updated my sidebar (however the EF breakdown is not accurate right now), and for once have used the financial tracking software throughout the whole year without fail, so will go over the expenses (have exported the spreadsheet) and will possibly blog about that too.  Definitely have to work out 2021 goals, there will definitely be a blog post about that as it is a big focus on my mind right now.

I have been lurking on the site but I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas break, New Year's and looks forward to planning their 2021!