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Archive for January, 2012

Jan Update

January 31st, 2012 at 10:27 am

I haven't done much blogging because there hasn't been much happening here financially.


Grocery - $150.00 (under $4.35)
Utilities - $90.00 (under $12.67)
Home Phone - $25.00 (under 0.61)
Mobiles - $30.00 (under $15)
Internet - $45.00 (under 0.10)
Fuel & Fare - $170.00 (over $3.54)
Car Insurance - $477.95 (-)
Home & Content - $566.55 (-)
Health Insurance - $230.00 (over 0.69)
Entertainment - $80.00 (under $65.10)
Gifts - $40.00 (under $1.00)
Per/Med - $30.00 (over $18.90)
DH Allowance - $100.00 (-)
My Allowance - $75.00 (-)
Misc Items - $20.00 (over $7.80)

TOTAL = $2,129.50 (budget)
TOTAL = $2,061.60 (actual) (under $67.90)


We did really well with our living expenses budget this month. Hoping next month will be the same. But our overall expenses this month is $646.10 over than the income received. This Friday is payday so we should be able to pay it back from that.

Annual Bills

January 15th, 2012 at 03:43 am

Just paid both the car insurance and home and content insurance for the year. One is due today and the other is due tomorrow.

I'm glad these are out of the way for another year but because of it we are already way behind in our budget in terms of time versus spending for the year. Will try to reel it back in the next few months.

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I only managed to deposit $1 into the exercise challenge, I didn't get to do the exercise bike. I got too busy with helping DH to make tacos for dinner. I don't know why but after dinner I had a shower, totally forgot that I was meant to get on the bike. I didn't wanted to get all sweaty after that. DH haven't done any exercises in the last few days, so the contribution to the challenge have slowed down a bit.

Grocery Shopping

January 14th, 2012 at 05:13 am

Just did some grocery shopping. We decided to go to the market, they are a lot cheaper specially just before closing (around 12-1pm), a lot of the fruit and vegetables were just $1 a kilo, we got bananas and capsicum for $1 a kilo. The lettuce and lebanese cucumber were 2 for $1. Also got a bit of meat. We should have enough meat in the freezer to last us until the end of the month. The only problem I find going to this market is the car park, there are not enough and it gets crazy. This market is only open 3 days a week and on Saturday they just want to get rid of everything because they don't open again until Thursday. I think we will try to go to the market more often again, we used to go every week but just got tried with the craziness.

Near by the market is a Safeway, were we went and got milk and taco shells, DH wants to make tacos for dinner tonight.

We ended up spending $5.90 at Safeway and $31.05 at the market. All up we spent $36.95 and now have $75.85 left in our grocery budget for the month. So far so good.


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Exercise Update:
I didn't do any yesterday.
Thurs I put in $1 for sit ups and push ups.
Today I've done some sit ups and push ups already and I will get on the bike soon. Hoping for another $2 contribution today.

Update

January 12th, 2012 at 12:01 am

Nothing much going on here.
The only spending this week so far was for gas, $77.33 and the voip phone for $4.45

I have been keeping up with the exercise challange so far.
Tuesday I added $2 for 100 sit-ups and 30min bike.
Yesterday I added $1 for 50 sit-ups, 50 push ups and some lunges and squat exercises. I also did a bit of stretching, which what I really need to do more of. Also DH put in $1 yesterday for a session on the exersice bike.

That add up to $7 so far this week.

Exercise Challenge

January 9th, 2012 at 11:51 pm

I've decided to do the exercise challenge too. I know there are few people that are doing it, I think this was started by Mary Ann.

I also got DH to go along with it. When he got home last night I told him that we have to exercise for christmas. He agreed that it could be a fun way to exercise, good motivator.

So last night:

$1 = for 50 sit ups
$1 = for half an hour on the exercise bike.
$1 = DH did 40mins on the exercise bike.

We don't have pennies here, our smallest coin is 5cent. I don't have much of those so I think I will keep note here how much we have every payday and start over again.

Weekend Spending

January 9th, 2012 at 01:20 am

We did pretty good on the weekend. Apart from buying the 2 tyres we spent less than $100. The tyre cost only $238 thanks to a good sale. While out DH got some fuel for $30.

Saturday night we went to watch a cricket game, ticket was already paid for, it was my christmas present to DH. Parking was a bit expensive, always is in the city, that was $12 and then we did ended up buying coke and snacks but they will come out of our allowances. $4 for me for the snacks I got it at the shop before going to the game and $4.40 for Dh for the coke at the game. We normally would spend a lot more for food but we had dinner early at home and then brought extra snacks that we already had at home and water from home. We didn't have softdrinks at home that's why DH bought a bottle at the game. We should have bought at the shop it would have cost half the price.

The only spending that happened on Sunday was for grocery in Aldi. DH did will, I stayed home to do some cleaning instead but I give DH a list and a strict budget of $40. He only spent $37.20. That leave us $112.80 for the rest of the month. It is a good start but still going to be a tight budget.

Annoyed

January 6th, 2012 at 02:30 am

at DH's pay or should I say the agency that deals with DH's pay.

DH came home yesterday and said that he got his payslip and that he also got another email from them with a list of dates of his pay period for the rest of the year. Well it seems like he will be back to the 4 week schedule again. I just don't understand why they did that pay 2 weeks ago. It is really stuffing up my budget for this month. His next schedule pay won't be until early next month. So now we are short this month in terms of income versus expenses. This is the worst month to do it to since it is the most expensive month because of annual bills being due.

The worst thing is because of the holidays, which Dh doesn't gets paid means he only got paid 8 days worth instead of 10 days. We have to try to live off 8 days worth of pay for a month, impossible! Specially with the extra high bill month we will be short about $1100, if we try our hardest to be extra tight this month.

Cash wise we will be okay. Thank goodness we don't live paycheck to paycheck. Knowing that DH pay differ almost every month I've always made sure that we have enough cash in various accounts to cover the next months CC bills and mortgage. Also, and I cannot believe I am even saying this, I'm kind of glad that we got that hole in our tyre 2 weeks ago because it made us stay home during the boxing day sales. I had planned to go out that day to buy DH new business shirts and beddings and would no doubt some other unnecessary stuff. All those things can wait for few months.

Because we mainly paid cash for christmas spending our CC bills this month has been ultra low. I just paid one the other day for just over $1,100 and the Amex is not due until next week and that is just a little over $500, and that is for the this month. The only other bill that needs cash right not is the mortgage and that is due aroun 3-5th of the month. DH next pay should be on the 3rd but just in case I will make sure we have enough cash for from this pay. All other bill we should be able to use CC for it and maybe just a bit of cash for groceries and allowance money.

My plan of paying extra on mortgage this month is now impossible. Everytime I mention here that I plan to pay extra on the mortgage something always happen that prevents it. lol





Mortgage Jan 2012

January 5th, 2012 at 05:44 am

Our normal monthly mortgage payment was paid today.

Overall payment = $1218

Interest = $859.53 (I was hoping this to be $850 this month, most likely next month)

Principal = $358.47

I should be able to put another $1000 this weekend after DH get paid again this Friday, that is if he gets paid this Friday. We think he will now get paid every 2 weeks but there has not been any communications about it. I'm hoping to put $1000 to the mortgage every 2 weeks (again if he will be getting it every 2 weeks). I will try anyway, his pay is not always the same amount but $1K is a good aim.

January 2012

January 5th, 2012 at 05:11 am

I used to post my monthly budget here couple of years or so ago and I think it helped me a lot staying on course.

I will have a very tight budget this month. i find that if I start the year tight it does a lot for achieving the budget for the rest of the year. I find it very hard to pull back once we have already over spend. Some thing always comes up.

This month the key to achieving our $21K challenge/ spending plan for the year. This is the month our car and home and content insurance is due, so if we can keep this month (and maybe the next couple of months)as low as possible then we can breath a bit easier for the rest of the year. A little bit of sacrifice now for a better year.

This is what our budget for this month:

Grocery - $150.00
Utilities - $90.00
Home Phone - $25.00
Mobiles - $30.00
Internet - $45.00
Fuel & Fare - $170.00
Car Insurance - $477.95*
Home & Content - $566.55*
Health Insurance - $230.00
Entertainment - $80.00
Gifts - $40.00
Per/Med - $30.00
DH Allowance - $100.00
My Allowance - $75.00
Misc Items - $20.00

TOTAL = $2,129.50

(* Actual Amount Due - Annual bill)

Grocery and Entertainment are extra tight this month. So does income so it needs to be done.

In saying that we do have some fun things that we have already organise this month. We will be going to a cricket match this weekend. It will not cost us much, the tickets was what I gave DH for christmas. Will take some snacks with us so we won't be tempted to spend on those. Also we might use another 1 of our restaurant voucher to go out for dinner before the game or we might just eat at home first before going and use the restaurant voucher some other time. We still got 3 vouchers left and they are due in March, so we will need to use them up soon. One a month I reckon.





Update

January 5th, 2012 at 04:38 am

I'm a bit late to the New Year party. I've just been so lazy. We've had a bit of heatwave here at the start of the year and I just couldn't bothered doing anything. All we managed to do on those few days was stay in side the airconditioned room and watch a lot of movies. I'm just thankful that we decided to get the air conditioner during winter.

It has cooled down a bit in the last two days. I created my 2012 spreadsheet yesterday, it is now all set up and ready to go. I had to do a bit of fiddling because I change from using Open office last year to the new Microsoft Office. I'm now happy with it and it will not take much effort to update it every now and then.

We've decide to up our living expenses this year to $21K from $20K last year. We were over $1,715 last year which is the worse we have done since I've started blogging and keeping records. The main problem was medical and entertainment. I think we should be able to keep it at $21K this year. I think I need to get back to making small monthly goals again. I think it will help a lot.

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Our tyre is now fix, free of charge. I gave my brother 1 of our restaurant voucher as a thank you gift. He also organised for us to get 2 of our worn out tyres to get replace this Saturday. He thinks we should really get it replace soon and that right now this place he sent us to go is having a sale. It will cost $238 for 2 new tyres. This will come out of the Car Fund, I'm glad I decided to put a bit extra in there last month.