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Archive for June, 2010

Interesting Day

June 24th, 2010 at 05:17 am

Our Prime Minister just got ousted by his party and now we have a woman PM. It is a very interesting time for our country. We will most likely have a federal election before the year end.

This has obviously been on TV all day and I've just been glued to it.


Financially, I can't wait to finalise this month's numbers. One more week.

Been hiking

June 19th, 2010 at 04:09 pm

It is currently 12:30am (Sunday morning), I'm staying up this late because I am currently watching the world cup (Aus v Ghana). I really don't know why I'm up this late, I'm not even really into soccer that much and really Australia has got no hope at all. But Dh is making me so I thought to may as well spend some time here. I've really got nothing to report. Today we went hiking for about 3 hours by a river about 1/2 an hour away from our house. We took food with us and had a picnic. We did however spent some money on coffee and chips afterwards which will come out from our allowances. We also stopped by at a nearby winery, I actually like some of their wines and bought 1 bottle. DH also bought a bottle of their tawny, he sometimes have some of this type of drink at night, it helps him relax.

Tomorrow, I'm thinking of going to the movies. I should really be painting that ceiling but I've kind of lost interest in it. It's probably too cold at the moment for painting anyway. I will probably change my mind about it again tomorrow. Geez, I'm just rambling on now it might be time to go to bed.

Painting, knitting and trading

June 16th, 2010 at 05:02 am

We got everything done but starting on the painting the ceiling in the study. I'm hoping to get this started this weekend. One thing that I got too busy with was knitting. I decided to take up knitting, I've never done it before but I thought I could use a scarf at the moment. So far I am enjoying it. I bought the needles for $3 and $7 on the wool/material. I'm finding it relaxing to do while watching tv. Hopefully this is a new hobby that I can do that doesn't cost too much money.

Another thing that we did on the weekend was spend money on eating out, there goes the no eating out for the month challenge. Although this was already planned over a month ago.

Yesterday was DH's payday, he got few hundred dollars extra for overtime work. He doesn't normally get overtime so this was nice. It will go towards buying some shares. I did my stock reasearch and have decided that we will get two stocks. One is a mining company and the other is an employment agency company, both are mid-cap shares. So we decided to only buy ~$1000 worth so hopefully we will still have another $1000 to put into the mortgage. So the question about which one to spend the money on, we decided on both instead. With DH's extra pay it makes it easier to go this route.

Saturday Outing

June 12th, 2010 at 01:41 pm

We got up really late this morning because we stayed up until 2am watching the soccer world cup game of South Africa v Mexico. When I got up it was actually very sunny, although looking outside the ground is wet and there were some dark clouds in the distance. So, we made the decision to go out today instead of tomorrow. We took corned beef sandwich, hard boiled eggs and other snacks. It actually rained a bit on our way there but once we got there the sun was out again. This place we went to specialise more on native Australian animals. We got to watch a live show about Birds of Prey, seeing a wedgetail eagle flying just inches above our heads was really cool.

Here are a couple of photos I took - enjoy:



These birds are amazing!



Afterwards we stopped by at a couple of wineries for wine tasting, always a bonus when visiting the Yarra Valley.



Long - weekend

June 11th, 2010 at 09:16 am

Here in Australia, we got a 3-day weekend because it is the Queen's Birthday(funny thing is that her birthday is actually in April!) but any excuse to have a day off from work is fine by me.

We are thinking of going away for a day trip to one of the zoo/wild life place in our state. It won't cost us a thing this time because earlier this year we bought a year pass that allow us entry to some of the main zoos in Australia. We are thinking of bringing our own food so this shouldn't cost us a thing except for gas. The only thing that is not very good at the moment is the weather, it has been very cold and has been raining all week and there are more to come tomorrow. Hopefully, we can go on Sunday. If the weather doesn't clear up I don't think I would want to go. We will probably just go to the movies, we haven't been for so long and I also got few free tickets, some we got from christmas and my recent birthday.

Other thing that I plan to do this weekend is to prune some trees around the house and maybe go to a nursery to buy a fruit tree to plant. I also want to start cleaning the study ceiling for hopefully painting it sometime next week. It's a small area so it shouldn't take long. I guess the hard part will probably be moving the stuff out of the room so they don't get covered in paint.

And of course we also need to do our usual grocery shopping, and would like to do some cooking as well. And I would also like to do some more stock research. I actually did some today, I might blog about it over the weekend.

Reading through this list it seems a lot, well we will just try to get through it.

What to do with excess money this month?

June 10th, 2010 at 04:35 am

At this stage we will probably have about $1,800 - $2000 extra this month. Which we call as money into "savings". Starting this month we were going to put this money into our mortgage as extra payments. However, at the moment the stock market is looking good for an entry. So at this stage, I'm thinking of buying more shares instead of paying the mortgage. DH doesn't mind either way.

I guess it doesn't really matter. Our big 5 year goals at the moment is to hopefully pay off the mortage in the next 5 years or at least have enough cash in the savings to pay it off (this goal is really ambitious but doable we really work hard at it) and to also have $100K worth of stocks not including what's in our retirement/superannuation funds. So, either way we are still working towards our goal.

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Right now I got corned beef cooking in the slow cooker. I will roast some vegies later to go with it for dinner. It's over a kilo so we will probably have it for few days. I am looking forward to having it in a sandwich for lunch tomorrow. yumm.

Weekend Shopping & Cooking

June 7th, 2010 at 03:24 am

Our weekend was spent grocery shopping. I wanted to cook something special instead of going out to eat. I decided to make seafood paella. I ended up spending a bit on seafood, we got some prawns, calamari, fish, mussels and also got a dozen oysters. The oysters were made into kilpatrick. I think we spent a bit over $30 on seafoods alone. Luckily we already got the stuff I need for the paella including the spanish rice and saffron. I also used some of that chicken stock I made few days ago.

I only used half of the mussels and fish, so I also cooked mussels by itself and made the left over fish into Thai fish cakes, yummy!

So, Saturday night we had a lovely dinner of paella and a bottle of wine.

Today I think we might have company for dinner, I'm thinking of making meatloaf.

Pre-cooking and Aiming for No Eating Out month

June 3rd, 2010 at 07:30 am

I got the day off today so I though I would do some cooking. I had a whole chicken in the freezer which is taking too much room so I though I should use it up. I had all other ingredients at hand and also managed to picked a handfull of vegies from the garden (capsicum, beans, and parsley). I ended up cooking the butter chicken by using the chicken breasts and the rest I made into casserole. The casserole is in the slower cooker at the moment. I also made some chicken stock out of the carcass. I will probably make soup out of it on the weekend. I also cooked some rice to go with the butter chicken for dinner tonight.

I don't know why I stopped doing this, I used to do pre-cooking a lot in the past. I've been really lazy about it this year. I've got no doubt this will help us cut down on spending a bit this month. And you know what it saves me time too. Most things were done in just over an hour and that was including the cleaning up. The rest is just waiting for things to actually cook.

Last night, DH and I talked about trying to have a no eating out this month, except for couple of time when we are invited to something already. One of it will be this Saturday, I don't think we need to spend money on food though. Pre-cooking meals should really help with this, I think we will get 5-6 meals out of today's cooking. Some will be put in the freezer.

June Budget

June 3rd, 2010 at 01:33 am

Told DH that we both need to do better with our budget this month.



Hopefully this month we won't need to spend money on medical bills.

TO DO (MAY):
- Fully fund Household Fund for the year - another $1,935 to go. (DONE)
- Read 2 books (Only 1 - was too busy swimming instead)
- Do 10Km on the exercise bike (I'm pretty sure I manage to do 10Km including the ones I did when we were on our holiday)
- Clean closet, put away summer clothes. (Half done)

TO DO (JUNE):
- 15km on the exercise bike.
- Other types of exercise for 2 hours a week.
- Read 3 books!...hmmm lol
- Clearing/cleaning the whole garden such as trimming branches, weeding, spraying, fertilizing and some planting for winter.

May Actual

June 2nd, 2010 at 05:55 am

We are over budget again but at least it is not as bad as last month. Again the main culprit is the medical expense and entertainment of course. Luckily winter is here and this normally means less going out for us and hopefully the entertainment budget can recover.




Accomplishment this month:
- Goal #3 is now DONE.
- Have started Goal #4 early with $960 deposit.

Things need improvement next month:
- Need more NSD, only got 3 this month.
- Need to stay under budget.