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Archive for February, 2011

Over the Limit

February 11th, 2011 at 02:00 am

DH got a phone call from one of our credit card company telling him that we went over the limit and that he should make a payment right away. I just paid the last statement for this card at the start of the month but most of the charges in it didn't account for our recent expenses which included over $1,000 on insurances and another 1K for the new shower and base and around 2K for the skylight, ventilation and other materials that we have been charging like crazy lately. This card only got a $4,000 limit, that's why it went over. DH paid 1K last night hopefully that would be enough until we get the next statement to be paid at the start of next month. I'm just hoping they haven't slugged us a fee for going over the limit. We have never done this before, this was rare for us to be spending this much on credit card. We normally average on this card around $1,500-2,000 a month, this is the card that we use most often. The only other card that we use for purchasing is AMEX. We also have a Citibank but we tend to use this one as a debit card, we always have extra money in it.

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Did some digging around the garden this morning and found about 2kgs of potatoes and some garlic. This should help a bit with grocery this month.

Costco and Weekend Update

February 7th, 2011 at 06:27 am

Friday night we did go to Costco. In my previous post I stupidly said I was only going to spend $100 (excluding membership fee), well umm that amount ended to almost $180! Yikes. Plus $60 for the annual membership. I spent the left over money in the grocery budget last month towards the membership fee, so I still had to add another $32 out of this month's grocery budget. In the end we only got $28 left for groceries this month. I really don't know how we spent that much, we didn't get anything that we don't need. DH wanted to get some mini Reese's and I even said no to that, no junk food at all in this shopping trip, we hardly buy them really. I will work hard not to go over too much this month but I think this will be impossible. We shouldn't need much anymore, maybe milk and fresh fruits and veg. We should have enough meat for the rest of the month. Being a shorter month should help too.

Items we won't need to get in the next 3-5 months:
-Toilet paper
-Toothpaste
-Coffee
-Shampoo
-Olives
-Gherkins
-Cheese
-Stag Chilli - DH likes to take this to work for lunch when we don't have leftovers.

So I weekend start very expensive and it continued thru Saturday. Spent another $630+ more on materials for the renovation, this included sound insulation for the external walls.

Thankfully, Sunday was a NSD Smile! I'm tired from all the spending.

Costco and Weekend Update

February 7th, 2011 at 06:25 am

Friday night we did go to Costco. In my previous post I stupidly said I was only going to spend $100 (excluding membership fee), well umm that amount ended to almost $180! Yikes. Plus $60 for the annual membership. I spent the left over money in the grocery budget last month towards the membership fee, so I still had to add another $32 out of this month's grocery budget. In the end we only got $28 left for groceries this month. I really don't know how we spent that much, we didn't get anything that we don't need. DH wanted to get some mini Reese's and I even said no to that, no junk food at all in this shopping trip, we hardly buy them really. I will work hard not to go over too much this month but I think this will be impossible. We shouldn't need much anymore, maybe milk and fresh fruits and veg. We should have enough meat for the rest of the month. Being a shorter month should help too.

Items we won't need to get in the next 3-5 months:
-Toilet paper
-Toothpaste
-Coffee
-Shampoo
-Olives
-Gherkins
-Cheese
-Stag Chilli - DH likes to take this to work for lunch when we don't have leftovers.

So I weekend start very expensive and it continued thru Saturday. Spent another $630+ more on materials for the renovation, this included sound insulation for the external walls.

Thankfully, Sunday was a NSD Smile! I'm tired from all the spending.




Extra money into the mortgage

February 4th, 2011 at 04:55 am

DH gets paid today and last night he paid an extra $1,000 into the mortgage principal.

We might try to go to Costco after work tonight, which means probably we will be spending a bit of money, $60 for membership and probably around $100 in groceries. I will try to not to spend more than that. We tend to overspend at Costco.

January 2011 and $2500 spent on renovation

February 3rd, 2011 at 03:59 am

As usual January is the most expensive month for us. The annual Car and Home insurance are due in Jan. That's more than $1000 right there. But since we stuck to our spending plan we were underbudget by almost $200. Everything was under budget but the home phone.

This month's spending plan will be about 60% to that of last month. It normally less than that for this month but we need to send DH's cousin an engagement gift. We are not going because it is interstate (in Queensland where all the weather is at the moment), and we are not really expected to go so we will just send something. Also an old high school friend, who now also lives in Queensland, is coming down next weekend and we already plan to go out next Saturday. I offered to pay for her meal already because it is her birthday next month and she sent me a gift just before christmas last year so I think I owe her one. I will be taking her somewhere a bit upmarket so I anticipate to spend around $120 for our meal.

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We spent more than $2,500 yesterday for our bathroom/bedroom renovation. We got the window brick in, got the shower screen and shower base delivered, we also got the skylight and attic ventilation installed. It is a bit of money to spend but I am glad that we got these things done. We are moving along nicely.