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Home > Archive: July, 2014

Archive for July, 2014

Low grocery spending

July 29th, 2014 at 02:27 am

We only spent $8.90 on mainly vegetables and $3 for milk. I don't think we will need anything else for the rest of the month. So, all up this month grocery bill came to $211.33. A lot better than what it was in the last quarter. Now we just need to keep it up.

This week's menu:

Saturday night we had a get together with friends. Spent $66 including parking.

Sunday, we spent most of the day cleaning up the garage and afterwards I decided that I really wanted burgers so we got Hungry Jack's (Burger King). I paid for it out of my allowance, $23.

Monday: Yesterday I made Thai fried rice with pork.

Tues: Today we are going to have tuna and salad.

Wed: Ribs - DH wants more ribs.

Thu: Leftover and chickpea/beans salad.

Fri: Either we will get pizza (Domino's pizza are now selling for $5) or we might be going out.

This week.

July 25th, 2014 at 04:49 am

This week's grocery spending wasn't too bad, ended up spending $66.96.

Hardly did any cooking this week. We went to a party on the weekend and got to take home some food. and also DH got free lunch and snacks from work yesterday. I'm going to try have even less grocery spending this weekend. We got a lot of stuff that we can use next week.

DH got the car repaired the other day, they installed a brand new exhaust and did a lot of other services to it. All up it cost $462. Less than what I expected.

Pay and weekend expenses

July 16th, 2014 at 04:34 am

I know it's halfway through the week already, I'm a bit late.

Yesterday DH got his pay for last month (last one from his old agency), 3 weeks worth. A lot more than expected, which is good since last week's pay was less than I expected.

Did do much on the weekend but grocery shopping and got a cast iron French pan from Aldi, it was only for $25 and it's great. The grocery only came to $55.52, probably the lowest amount for the year.

The menu for this week was:
Sat - Pizza, we made it and got some leftover dough in the freezer. Probably cost around $8 to make.
Sun - Meatloaf and roasted vegetables (est. cost $6)
Mon - Butter chicken with Rice (around $10)
Tue - Spaghetti Bolognese (pretty cheap probably less than $5)
Wed - Today I'm planning to have grilled salmons with salad (probably est. cost of around $9)
Thu - Leftover - planning to have leftovers we still have some of those chilli con carne in the freezer.
Fri - Ratatouille with Tuna and Egg Salad and Quinoa (maybe $6-7 worth).

Our car is due for service, it will most likely need a new exhaust pipe or something. A bit of it feel off last month. Hopefully it won't cost to much.

New Payslip

July 10th, 2014 at 03:34 am

DH received his new pay yesterday. He will be getting paid fortnightly from now on, which is good. It was for just below $3,000, it is not for a full two weeks only for 9 days but still a bit disappointing compare to what he used to get. We will just have to get used to it I guess. At least he will get paid for holidays now though. I did a bit of calculations last week on what this next year will be like for us financially unfortunately it will actually be $140 less than what I thought he would get net per month. So $1,680 less per year. I will need to re-do my calculations.

On to the good news, DH is still owed about 2 weeks worth of pay for last month. His old agency will be paying that next week.

things we did and weekly menu

July 9th, 2014 at 05:26 am

Paid the normal monthly mortgage repayment on Friday. The usual $1218, $219.89 went to the interest and $998.11 to the principal (so close to $1K)

Saturday we went to an antique market (1hr away), a short day trip. We bought some stuff, one of the random stuff I got was Life magazines from the 1947 and 1948, interesting read. I love the old advertisements in it too. DH got an old shaving razor, he collects them.

On the way home we stopped by this small town where they had a small farmer's market. Got $13.30 dollars worth of vegetables, fresh from the market near by.

In the late afternoon we went to Aldi and other stores to do more grocery shopping. All up we spent a total of $63.30.

I'm working hard on trying to get our grocery budget back to a reasonable state. So back to doing a weekly menu. Most of the time I just have a rough idea of what I'm going to make for the week, and we normally do alright to stay close to the budget until this few months. Making a weekly menu and just grocery shopping based on that should help cut down on grocery expenses. And I'm even going further by estimating the cost of each meal (I think I need a hobby lol). This was the menu for this week:

Sat: Paella - this costs roughly $6.40
Sun (lunch): Pumpkin and Lentil Stew - costs roughly $1.10
Sun (dinner): Chicken Drumettes marinated in homemade Nando's style sauce - costs around $4.00
Mon: Chilli Con Carne - costs roughly $11.20 (made a lot, put some in the freezer). The red wine cost a bit but we got to enjoy the rest of it with the meal.
Tue: Pasta carbonara sauce - ~$2.00
Wed: Beef ribs (currently cooking in the slow cooker) - cost roughly $6.00
Thu: We will have leftovers tomorrow. My brother won't be eating with us. We will most likely have ribs leftover.
Fri: Spanish Omelette - around $2.00? Potatoes are in season right now, very cheap.

Okay, I'm gonna have to work on next week's menu.

Update on the Mortgage

July 2nd, 2014 at 07:04 am

I forgot to mention that we put an extra $1700 into the mortgage last week. I know, I said I was going to just save the cash and just pay anything extra to it at the end of the year. Well, I just couldn't wait to get us under $50K. Well that will be it for the next 5 months or so.

Even just paying the normal pay it should get us to $45K balance by the end of the year, which indecently about where we need to be to achieve Goal#1.

Balance at the moment is $49,976.24
This should go down further in either Friday or Monday.

Apr to June Spending and some Update

July 1st, 2014 at 07:51 am

How did we go in the 2nd quarter of 2014?



DH went to his interview Friday, it went fine. He had to change in the car though. Also on Friday, everyone in his team at work got to sign their new employment contract. As of today, they are now fixed full-time employees for the next 12 months.

On the weekend we hit the half-way mark of our workout program. We went crazy and rewarded ourselves by buying a PVR and 3D Blu-ray combo. For years now the in-laws have been telling us that we should get one. Every time we went out to see how much they were we always thought they were too pricey. But with technologies these days if you just wait long enough you should be able to afford it. Plus because it June 30 is our end of the financial year, every stores have their massive sales. We got one for $318.40 (down from $466). The first time the in-laws suggested that we should get one they were around $800+. Even at the price we bought it at we were still not too sure about it. We went to 4 stores until we decided to go for it.