My Simple Financial Plan

Grocery = $36.60
I was actually hoping to only spend $35 and it would have been but Aldi forgot to put the right price for the corned beef (beef silverside) that we got. It was supposed to be $7.14 because of it was on sale from $8.92 ($1.78 difference). This happened because I left DH to pay of the grocery while I went to the grocer shop few doors down. DH just didn’t look at the receipt after. Unfortunately, I only realised the wrong charge when we were already home and it was not worth going back. Oh well life happens and now I get to blog about it.

We at least got everything that was in my shopping list. So this is what we got:
- About 1 kg of Corned Beef – this was the only thing that was not on the list but because it was ‘on sale’ was the only reason we got it. It will not go to waste at least.
- 1 kg block of Cheese
- 3 litres of Milk
- 1 whole Chicken
- 500g of Frozen mixed berries
- 1 Avocado
- 250g Cherry Tomatoes
- 1 small bottle of Mustard – so last week while cleaning the fridge I accidently dropped the mustard bottle, it was still half full.
- 2 Apples
- 1 bunch of Asparagus
- 1 Pomegranate
- 200g Mushrooms

Netflix – We decided to put on Netflix again.

Total Spending for May 2018 was $2,685.64

Grocery – $281.53

Household goods/ Repairs/Garden total = $327.17. $250 was for the plumber.

Gifts – was a biggie because of mother’s day and a friend’s birthday, it was $214.06

Utilities – Only got to pay Gas for $91.51

Holiday – So most of the month’s expense was because of the holiday which was $1,154.23


= 2018 GOALS =
Financials-
*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K). - we are around half way mark.

*Save $4K for Holiday money. – So far this year we have spent $1,746 that means we got $2,254 in our holiday spending plan for the year

*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel. – We will put money under this once Goal #1 above is done.

Other –
*Read 70 100 books.
48. The Day Trader - Stephen Frey (3 May)
49. Bluebird's Egg and Other Stories - Margaret Atwood (4 May) - Audio
50. Every Single Secret - Emily Carpenter (8 May)
51. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari (11 May)
52. The Road Less Travelled - M. Scott Peck (14 May)
53. Into the Water - Paula Hawkins (15 May) - Audio
54. Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood (17 May)
55. The Happiest Refugee - Anh Do (17 May) - Audio
56. The Drunken Botanist - Amy Stewart (18 May) - it took 3 months to read this, I just like picking it up once in a while esp when I'm drinking.
57. 10 Key Steps to Wealth - Paul Clitheroe (18 May) - Audio (very short book)
58. The Break - Marian Keyes (21 May)
59. Lost Temple - Tom Harper (22 May) - Audio
60. Savings and Investment - Paul Clitheroe (23 May) - Audio (short book)
61. The Woman in the Window - A. J. Finn (24 May)
62. My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout (24 May) - Audio
63. How to be Debt-Free - Paul Clitheroe (25 May) - Audio (short book)
64. Work Smarter: Live Better - Cyril Peupion (27 May)
65. Most Dangerous Place - James Grippando (28 May) - Audio
66. Turtle All the Way Down - John Green (29 May)
67. The 10 Pillars of Wealth - Alex Becker (29 May) - Audio
68. 7 Money Rules for Life - Mary Hunt (30 May)

*Learn Spanish.
I missed one day when we went away to Tasmania, I just totally forgot. After 100+ consecutive days, I’m now back to having 20+ consecutive days again.

*Workout 3/4 times a week.
Since we got back from our holiday I have been working out 6 days a week, just having Sundays off. I’m hoping to continue doing this for 100 days in a row.

*Try new recipes every other week.
I tried one new rice dish.

*Blogging once per week.
Done

*Continue Garden/Landscaping.
Put up new clothesline

*Wake-up early (before 7am)
Still getting up early and I have been reading first thing in the morning.

*Continue Decluttering.
DH has been doing most of the decluttering this month, he has been listening to the minimalist podcast and every night has been going through more of our paperwork in the office room. He has done a lot of shredding. A week ago I went through our clothes to get rid of some summer clothes that we won’t need next summer. We are just doing a bit at a time.

There you go another month down.

In the last couple of days I have been cleaning and re-organising the fridge and the pantry. And now I got items that need to be consumed as soon as possible put to the side, I didn’t want to put them back in the pantry and just forget about them again. As of today, we have spent $1,439.21 on groceries this year (5 months), an average of $287.85 per month (under our budget of $300 per month). It is just under $9.60 per day which is $4.80 per person per day. I’ve decided and DH agreed to lower our grocery money next month to $3 per day per person, which will be $180. I think it will be fun and it will help use up some of these food that are nearing expiry.

Grocery – $97.40, we did a big shop but we are still under for the month.

Dog Food – Bought a 10 kilo bag of dog food and that was $64.

New Clothesline – DH calls it wind and solar powered clothes dryer, what a nerd! So we bought one and spent few hours installing it, that was $56.90

Allowance Money – We went to the Salvation Army and bought some books and CDs. All up we spent a whopping $38.70. I found 2 John Grisham newer books (2016 and 2017 copyrights) I have not read these yet. I think DH end up getting about a dozen CDs. And on top of those Grisham books I also bought another 3. I used up cash I got from last year’s birthday present and then the rest we took off from our allowance money. We hardly been spending our allocated ‘allowance money’ in the last couple of years. This year I allocated $800 for both of us for it and so far we’ve only spent under $150. DH has been really good at saying no to most of the eating out and drinking out invites with co-workers. The thing is that his company actually provide them with snacks and beer every Friday night so he does not feel left out. There are also the occasional lunches and dinners that the company organises and sometimes he gets taken out by suppliers for ‘meeting’.
So he is very selective to when he say yes to these invites and there are plenty at least one to two times a week. Last week for example he said yes to beer after work on Thursday because it was with his old boss that he doesn’t get to converse much anymore, due to restructuring in the company. That 1 beer by the way cost him $10, so yeah it get pretty pricey very quickly if he goes to every single one of them and most of the time they involve getting food. Sometimes he feels bad that he says no but then he also doesn’t want to drink too much during workdays, he wants to come home on time and get an early night sleep for the next day. So it is not just about the money.

Grocery – $44.10
Plumber – Was less than anticipated, paid $250.
Friend’s Birthday – Gift was $100
Fuel - $32.80

Not much else to report really.

Back to our normal life.

Grocery – we did a big shop which end up totalling to $112.74

Mother’s Day – Spent $114 on gifts

Plumbing Issues – We got a blocked sewage pipe, the plumber should be coming to unblock it tomorrow. I’m anticipating it will cost around $300.

We went on a holiday for 6 days/5 nights, just got home yesterday. When we got home we went and got some food that should last us until the end of the week when we can then do a big shop.

Grocery - $27.29

HOLIDAY – We flew to Hobart Tasmania. We decided to rent a tiny campervan; it was an interesting experience – a lot of fun. The first two nights we stayed in Hobart at a campsite near my brother’s place that was right next to a river. We ate at their place on our first night and breakfast as well. On the second night we went out to a restaurant DH paid for it, it was pricey almost $200 worth. We visited a famous museum called MONA and an old brewery. On the 3rd day we drove to Launceston, about 2 hours north from Hobart, we stayed their overnight and then drove up to the mountain, another 2 hours away, called Cradle Mountain. We did a nice 2-hour walk around Dove Lake it was beautiful even when it was raining on and off throughout our walk. We had a massive feast after our walk I used a voucher that my brother gave me for my birthday last year. We ate so much we didn’t need to eat dinner that night. That night we stayed just at the bottom of the mountains, about an hour away. We got a great view of the (rocky) mountains and when it got dark so many pademelons came out to feed at the campsite. The next day we went back to Launceston and explore the place a little bit, we end up going to a gorge, then we drove back to Hobart for our last night. Again stayed at the same campsite and had out last dinner at my brother’s place.

The cost (we used up money we got from a CC promotion last year for the airfares so that is not included here):
Accommodations - $100 ($20 per night)
Transportations - $500.82
Food - $428.51
Other - $124.9
TOTAL = $1,154.23

This would have been a low spend month but because we pre-paid internet for a year it total to $2,568.13. Half of this was because of the internet, holiday expenses and my birthday celebration.

Internet – was big total for the month was $845.

Holiday – ended at $285.20. Some of this included money we spent on our Easter Holiday and some for another holiday we are going very soon.

Groceries – We only got few things this weekend because we didn’t need much and it only cost us $9.95. The total for the month was $296.20

Birthday Celebration – I had another birthday get together, with friends this time. We had lunch and then we went to an Escape Room and then had coffee afterwards. It was fun and it cost us $127.00. Overall, my birthday cost me $242.50, this includes that dinner I went with DH.

Eating Out – We did not cook at all the whole weekend. We went a bit crazy. On top of the lunch above we went out to another restaurant for Sunday lunch as well and we got takeaway food Saturday night, thankfully we had leftover and we ate that Sunday night. All the eating out, not including above amount was $61.90.

Fuel – got some $37.20


Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K).
More savings in April than in March - *happy dance*

*Save $4K for Holiday money.
Have spent some of this money at the start of the month and will continues to spend more money in May for our next holiday.

*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel.
We should be able to start saving more for this in the second half of the year.


Other –

*Read 70 books.
28. Beyond Good and Evil - Frederick Nietzsche (3 Apr) - Read w/ Audio**
29. Money to Burn - James Grippando (5 Apr) - Audio
30. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (7 Apr)
31. On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (8 Apr)
32. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (10 Apr)
34. A is for Alibi - Sue Grafton (11 Apr) - Audio
35. Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner (12 Apr)
36. The Checklist Manifesto: How to get things right - Atul Gawande (13 Apr)
37. Siddhartha -Hermann Hesse (15 Apr)
38. Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan (17 Apr)
39. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (18 Apr) - Audio
40. You Need a Budget - Jesse Mecham (19 Apr)
41. Philosophy for Beginners - Max Charlesworth (20 Apr)
42. B is for Burglar - Sue Grafton (22 Apr) - Audio
43. The Pardon - James Grippando (23 Apr) - Audio
44. War and Gold - Kwasi Kwarteng (24 Apr)
45. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (26 Apr)
46. The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy (27 Apr) – Audio
47. C is for Corpse - Sue Grafton (30 Apr) – Audio

I’m more than half way to my goal! It’s amazing how cutting about 4 hours of television a day adds up. These days there’s not much worth watching unless you are into reality shows. I used to watch those cooking and renovation contest but they are not about cooking or renovations anymore, it’s always just about people fighting which I’m so over it.

As you can see I listened to a bit of audiobooks this month, they are all crime and mystery books except for the first one which I read along while listening to the audio. I already got a copy of ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ in my kindle and I borrowed the audio version from the library online. I do a lot of my listening to the audiobooks while I'm walking the dog, while cleaning and in the last several days while I was doing some painting.

Since I’m more than halfway to my goal already and I’ve increased my reading time while not really reading because of audiobooks I decided to increase the amounts of books I aim to read to 100 books this year.


*Learn Spanish.
Still going and I’m at 104 days streak at the moment.

*Workout 3/4 times a week.
Doing very poorly here, I’m still doing some but mainly just stretching and walking the dog, I need to do harder exercises when we get back from our holiday. This is becoming a bad pattern, me constantly waiting for something to happen before I get my act together. I need to break it.

*Try new recipes every other week.
I tried few and one of them was the Aloo Gobi that I got inspired by toilet-paper-tracker.

*Blogging once per week.
Check

*Continue Garden/Landscaping.
As I mentioned in my previous blog entry DH built a screen wall outside to screen off the clothes line and I painted it.

*Wake-up early (before 7am)
Check

*Continue Decluttering.
DH has been putting our music from CDs to digital so we can listen to them whenever and wherever on our phones and the CDs themselves have been stored away into a plastic tub in the garage. It took him over a month copying them.

This was an expensive week, there were few things we had to spend money on and last week was my birthday so we went out for dinner, it was low key celebration.

Groceries – spent a total of $76.70

Birthday Dinner – We went to a nice Italian restaurant that we haven’t been to for over 2 years, one of our favourite. We spent $115.50, I ate way too much that I skipped breakfast and lunch the next day. They were big servings we are not used with those these days normally, most restaurants hardly have anything on the plate. I received few more gift cards.

Clothes & Bed Sheets – We had to throw away most of our thermal under garment so bought new ones because winter is coming. That was $48.95. While there we found a nice Flannelette Bed Sheets sets for $29.99. I love those for winter.

New Convection Oven – We had to get a new one because the other one died half-way to using it - that was only $45.

Paint – DH built a screen wall outside, it will help to hide the clothes line. Most of the materials he used were reclaimed wood except for a couple posts. It will need painting, bought some for $53.70. It will have a lot of left overs that I can used in the future.

Internet – Just like our health insurance we have an option of free paying. We can pay a year in advance and get 2 months for free, a saving of $130. DH paid $780 for the year.

Car rental Deposit – We are visiting my brother and family again. We decided we will need transportation so we can visit other towns. Last night DH paid the deposit of $107.08.

I think that’s it for now.

The weather was terrible on the weekend so we didn’t do much.

Groceries – spent a total of $79.71

Lunch out – On Sat we caught up with a friend for lunch we had Paella and beers, spent $37.50.

Garden Supplies – Got some supplies, $40.70.

Groceries – We bought some groceries when we got home ($76.86) and the on the weekend we got some more stuff and spent $52.98, in total $129.84

Zoo – We went to the zoo again on the weekend, we are trying to take advantage of still warm weather and our annual pass is expiring in less than 2 weeks. We spent $8 at the bakery for some snacks and $2 for parking.

Dog tablets – Bought some fleas and heartworm, etc. tablets online for $68.90.

Transportation expenses – we got gas for the car $32.82. I’m glad the gas prices are getting cheaper again, and I’m glad gas prices are cheaper in our state than in NSW (Sydney). When we were there they were selling around 10-20 cents per litre more than here at home. DH again put $50 to his train pass.

Not much really to report for Week 12 – spent $6.80 on grocery. Week 13 we were away for 10 days visiting DH’s parents interstate (12-hour drive away).

March 2018 highlights:

Total expense for March was $4,239.86

Groceries - $248.82 in total for the month, under because we weren’t home for over a week.

Water & Gas – Both add up to $322.02

Transportation Exp – Fuel, train fare and car repairs was a bit because of getting to re-gas the car air-conditioner, all up it was $452.74

Alcohol – Went out to stock up on alcohol and end up spending $153.15

Health Insurance – Half of March’s expense went to pre-paying the health insurance. $2,121.99, this included paying for the month of March’s health insurance.

HOLIDAY SPENDING – Overall, it was a fairly frugal holiday $479.09 in total. Fuel cost us $204.28 and the food and other expenses were $249.81. We bought groceries few times and cooked for everyone a couple of times. We also went out for dinner once to celebrate our nephew’s 22nd birthday. On the way home we opted to stop over night at about half-way point and camp for the night, the campsite cost us $25. The March portion for this holiday expense was $306.57 (I decided to divide the expenses to 2 months when the actual spending was done).

2018 Goal review:
Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K). – Still motoring along

*Save $4K for Holiday money. – We spent some this month obviously

*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel.


Other –

*Read 70 books. – I did a lot of reading this month.

10. Y is for Yesterday - Sue Grafton (4 Mar)
11. The Mark of a Millionaire - Dexter Yager & Ron Ball (5 Mar)
12. The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah (8 Mar)
13. The Confession - John Grisham (9 Mar)
14. Making Time, Making Money - Rita Davenport (11 Mar)
15. The Laws of Lifetime Growth - Dan Sullivan & Catherine Nomura (12 Mar)
16. China Rich Girlfriend - Kevin Kwan (15 Mar)
17. The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (17 Mar)
18. Sigmund Freud's Mission - Erich Fromm (18 Mar)
19. Unf*ck Your Finances - Melissa Browne (20 Mar)
20. Stock Market Strategies that Works in Australia - Matthew Brooks & Paul Nojin (21 Mar)
21. Red Sparrow - Jason Matthews (23 Mar)
22. The Day She Can't Forget - Meg Carter (24 Mar) – Audio**
23. The Travelling Companion - Ian Rankin (24 Mar)
24. 1984 - George Orwell (26 Mar)
25. On the Happy Life - Seneca (27 Mar)
26. Finance: Budgeting: Save Money, Invest for Retirement and get Debt Free - Andrew W. Welch (28 Mar)
27. Deal Breaker - Harlan Coben (29 Mar)

** I borrowed an audiobook from the library. This was good to listen to while doing some cleaning and packing. I eventually finished it while we travelled interstate. In the past I’ve tried audiobooks and found that I couldn’t follow it unless I’m also looking at the words, but this book was really good, the story was easy to follow.



*Learn Spanish. – Still doing about 15 to 20 minutes a day.

*Workout 3/4 times a week. – I didn’t do any while away but did a lot of walking and playing with the dog outdoors, like at the park and at the beach.

*Try new recipes every other week. – Only did one in March

*Blogging once per week. – I missed last week, I didn’t bring my laptop and so I left my personal finance spreadsheet at home.

*Continue Garden/Landscaping.¬ – We did a little bit of stuff before we went away.

*Wake-up early (before 7am) – I have been very good even on our holidays when I didn’t have my alarm clock on I was still waking up around 6am.

*Continue Decluttering. – We done a lot of shredding of old papers. DH has been downloading online statements and scanning the ones that he couldn’t get online. So the paper statements that we don’t need any more we shredded, I would say almost couple thousand pages. Our filing cabinet that was full to the brim is now less than half full.

Had to spend a bit of money this week…

Groceries – we don’t need much this week, spent $36.35

Car – DH took the car to get the air conditioning re-gassed, unfortunately the filter need to also be replaced because it was blocked. All up it cost $200.20

Private Health Insurance – This one is a biggie. We got an email asking us if we wanted to prepay our health insurance for a year. Prepaying would mean we can pay using the current price instead of the new rate that will increase starting next month. It will increase by around 7-8%, I believe, which is $11.80 increase per month. It cost $1,958.76 with a total saving of $141.84. It doesn’t seem much but it still a saving. This is another example of where having savings helps you save money by taking advantage (opportunity costs) of these types of opportunities.

Electric Bill – (yet another example of taking advantage of an opportunity cost), by having a solar panels we now have so much lower electric bill. Although it cost us some money (over $2K) to get it installed it has now paid dividend. Last bill was $17.10 CREDIT and this current bill was $77.62 CREDIT, I love summer! Anyway we now have a total credit of $94.72 that will hopefully offset some, if not most of next bill. It is a paradox whereby only the “rich” can afford to buy cheap (not that I’m saying I’m rich or anything like that!) but every bit helps.

Portable Speaker – Using a gift card (another one we got as a gift for Christmas) DH bought one of those portable speaker. DH wanted to get one to mainly use in the car for when he wants to listen to podcasts and music. It sounds so much better than just using the phone speaker or our 18 year old car’s speaker and no need for cable with Bluetooth connection. We went to the store looking to buy one he looked at online but he saw another one, the same brand, which was just a little bit better in terms of hours play. He looked it up online store for this store to see how much they were selling it for; online it was $20 less so he asked the lady at the counter if could get it for the price online, it was no problem. It saved him the hassled of buying it online. So he paid $59, which leaves us with $41 left in the gift card.

We had a 3-day week-end here. We mainly just relaxed, did a couple of hours of tinkering outside in the garden and we went to the zoo for few hours on Sunday. We were going to do a good clean out of the garage but I think we are going to try and do that next month instead, after Easter holidays. We were going to hire a skip bin, they are around $250-$300 (the one we normally hire, they drop off the empty bin, we fill it up and they pick it up) but I think we are going to try and take the rubbish to the tip ourselves and hire a trailer instead, they are around $30-50 to hire for 4 hours (depending on size) and the tip pay is around $60-80 per trailer load. We probably got about 2 to 3 trailer load. Most of the rubbish is broken bricks, soils and building materials which would require extra pay if we hire that skip bin.

We did a little bit of spending this weekend.

Groceries – was $113.47. We stocked up on some dental products; toothpaste, mouthwash, toothbrushes and floss. Also got some snack for a trip we are going on later this month.

Clothes – There was a sale and I kind of did some new underwear so spent $33.92

Gifts – Got a gift for $25.97

Zoo – Zoo spending was minimal since we already got the annual passes which are expiring next month. Only spent on $2 parking and $5 on a pricey latte, DH and I shared even though the large was very small.

Netflix – Cancelled Netflix again since I probably won’t be watching it much for the next month or so. I will probably put it on again in June; a lot of new shows/seasons will be release then.

The spending have slowed down – could only be a good thing.

Grocery – was a tad high went to the butcher place where I been going to once a month for the last 4 months. Total for the week was $92.20

Train Pass – DH topped up his train pass, he put in $50. DH has been doing so well this year I think he has saved around $100 already by getting to work early. He has been taking advantage of Early Bird Train Travel. Here your journey is free if you get to your destination before 7.15am. He has done this except on 2 occasions.

Garden – Bought some bags sands for paving worth $31.16

Salvo – we took some stuff to the Salvation Army, while there I bought 3 books worth $6.75 (funny I got rid of 4 books but gain 3 back). This money came out from my birthday money from last year I still got over $50 left I haven’t spent. I barely spent my allocated allowance money these days, I’ll probably buy a new laptop next year.

Total spending for February was $1,750.36

I have been busy in the last 2 weeks, my brother and his family came and stayed with us and the next day after they left, I got sick, the baby gave me a parting gift. We ended up spending a bit more on food this month. Also took them to eat out for my brother’s partner’s birthday. Some notable expenses for the month:

Grocery - $346.68, we are really over for the month.

Household Goods etc – We went to Ikea and got a bunch of stuff so for the month we spent $233.44

Entertainment – all up it was very high $262.70

*******/////////*******/////////********

Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K). –still out top priority and working on it.
*Save $4K for Holiday money. – didn’t spend any
*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel. – not needed yet


Other –

*Read 70 books.

I’ve been busy so I didn’t have much time to read.
6 The Racketeer - John Grisham (1 Feb)
7 Mindset - Dr Carol S. Dweck (6 Feb)
8 Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party - Alexander McCall Smith (7 Feb)
9 The Simple Path to Wealth - JL Collins (12 Feb)


*Learn Spanish. – everyday


*Workout 3/4 times a week. – still trying to do better


*Try new recipes every other week. –yes and it was not too bad


*Blogging once per week. – missed it last week


*Continue Garden/Landscaping. – we did a bit.


*Wake-up early (before 7am) – I have been great at this so far this year.


*Continue Decluttering. – we did a lot when we were cleaning before our guests came.

Spending for the weekend was just over $300, whenever it is above $300 I tend to consider it to be high. We went a bit crazy on buying some stuff for the garden.

Grocery - $90.36, this could have been lower but Valentine’s Day this weekend so I got some fancy cut of meat.

Beauty products – don’t buy these often but I spent $21.95

Eat-out – We were out and about for most of the weekend so we eat out couple of times, all up $27.10

Garden Items – Got bunch of stuff including those pebbles that I wanted to get for the rock garden, the 15kg bags were actually $11.95 so I got 2 bags which was more than enough. I think I mentioned in my previous blog that I was going to get 1.5kg, well there are hardly any rocks in 1.5kg bag. The 15 kg was way cheaper. Then since we were at the nursery we end up getting bunch of other stuff that was not necessary but I wanted and I actually had in my list of things to get there. After all of that we end up spending $128.63. That place is a dangerous place for me.

Clothing – Was not planning to go clothes shopping but we were near this store that we got gift cards for. The gift cards we got from Christmas. They were having 40% off on some items that was already discounted so we had a look and end up getting 3 things. One was an ultra-light puffer jacket for DH, they are great for when we go travelling and I got 2 things, 1 The North Face a long sleeved shirt and another thick zipped up shirt. I’ve recently got rid of 2 hoodie shirts so these are replacements. We used up one of the $100 gift card and we still got another left but we didn’t know what else to get.

Spending for the week:

Grocery – We spent a bit this weekend, got a 20 kg bag of rice at the Asian grocer that was for $31. Also bought some fish $10 worth and the rest was for normal weekly shopping. All up it was $112 even.

Fuel – DH got some fuel for the car and mower, $20.70.

Other – Got a pack of 3 lightbulbs for $11.90 and Domino’s pizza on Friday night for $5.

Gardening – The weather on the weekend was beautiful so we spent some of our time outside tinkering in the garden. On Sunday afternoon, I created a little rock garden with different variety of succulents and some small cactus plants, it turnout really well. This little area in the garden is about 1.5 by 1.5 meters in size, it get full sun so nothing much grows there or you have to water it a lot. We already have some garden rocks and white pebbles lying around (I actually thought we might to spend some money to get rid of them) so I didn’t have to spend any money to make the garden. Although, I think I will need to add more pebbles maybe 2 to 3 bags. For the last 2 years or so I have been collecting succulents, I picked some during our walks and some I’ve bought at garage sales for couple dollars. So this was a fairly inexpensive little project. I think the pebbles are around $8 for 1.5kg bag, I’m hoping 2 to 3 bags will be enough.

Total spending for January $ 2,687.99, more than $1,400 of this was for the 2 insurance bills. The lowest we’ve had for a long time in January. Under 3 grand spending in January needs to be celebrated.

Entertainment Spending - To celebrate a low spend month in January we went out for dinner last night. We went to a local Vietnamese restaurant and spent $21 for dinner. It was a really cheap celebration and it was generous serving too we both couldn’t even finish both our meals so we didn’t bother getting entrée or deserts and the tea is free so no need to get drinks either. This was our first restaurant dinner for the year but we got some takeaway meals throughout the month. Overall entertainment spending for the month was $99, which includes the movie tickets.

Grocery for the month – only $265.98, our lowest for a long time, over a year at least

New Mobile Phone – received my new mobile phone that DH ordered for me over Christmas. I’m put on the Doulingo App on it and have been able to learn some Spanish words even when I’ve been out an about. The actual phone got paid last month (Dec 2017) but I did have to get a case for it and also had top up this month so under mobile phone spending was $52.

Other – apart from usual, normally fixed amount items, we haven’t spent crazy amount in January. We only spent just over $130 for the garden and miscellaneous household items such as replacement for our water filter.

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Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K). – Doing very well so far and it helped that DH got paid 3 times this month.
*Save $4K for Holiday money. – not needed yet
*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel. – I’m thinking of maybe opening a new bank account for this.


Other –

*Read 70 books.
1 Outwitting the Devil - Napoleon Hill (6 Jan)
2 The One Thing - Gary Keller with Jay Papasan (13 Jan)
3 Rich Habits - Thomas C. Corley (15 Jan)
4 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (25 Jan)
5 Irrational Exuberance - Robert J. Shiller (28 Jan)


*Learn Spanish. – I have been doing this every day for about 15 minutes

*Workout 3/4 times a week. – I was doing well but I didn’t do much last week when the weather was ridiculously hot.

*Try new recipes every other week. – I did one (it was okay, DH liked it but I didn’t) and I’ll try another one maybe on the weekend

*Blogging once per week. – Yes so far

*Continue Garden/Landscaping. – We have been doing some on the weekend when the weather is nice.

*Wake-up early (before 7am) – I have been really good, it helps that DH has been getting up really early so by the time he leaves home at 6:30 I already been having my coffee.

*Continue Decluttering. – Still happening, slowly but surely.

We had a 3-day weekend here for Australia day public holiday. We didn’t do anything because the weather was very hot again. We just had staycation and relax and watch some more cricket games. It was great to just stay home, we actually got invited to go to the beach near my friends place to celebrate Australia day but it is over an hour drive and would just been too tiring. DH has been getting up early and working long hours so he really needed the weekend to catch up on sleep. The heat doesn’t help though; the other night the temperature didn’t get below 27degree Celsius thankfully it rained last night and the temperature has cold down considerably today.

Staying home was not only good for DH to get rest but was also good for the wallet. We only went out to get groceries and got a takeout for end of the week thing that we have been doing for a while now.

Grocery – Spent $61.12

Takeout – was $14

We are doing well this month compare to 12 months ago. I will look into end of the month numbers tomorrow.

Grocery - $94.55 got some meat.

Annual Insurance Bills – Paid the both the car insurance ($770.77) and house and content insurance ($656.75) for the year. Total of $1,427.52 together it’s an increase of $102.43 to that of last year’s amounts.

Takeaway – ($23.00) we got some take out when the weather was 40 degrees Celsius, way too hot to cook.

Doggie Shampoo and Treats - $20.39

This week we did some work around the house and I did some reading and watched a lot of cricket games. We live a very simple life, and that’s just the way I like it.

Grocery - for the week $74.21

Household - we did some work around the house. Changed our water filters that cost $56.98.
Bought few bags of topping soil for the back lawn, it was just under $25.

Train fare – DH topped up his pass $50 worth.

Gas – Gas for the house was $84.60 for the last 2 months.

Quiet week we are having.

Not much spending yet which is good.

So far:

Grocery - $36.10

Internet - $65

Gas for the Car - $36.26

Movies - We went out and watch a movie for $26. DH bought the tickets on-line for only $13, that was $9 savings per ticket.

Health Insurance - $163.23

Here are my goals for this year. I’m finding it hard to have many financial goals these days. When I first started blogging 11 years ago I think 95% of my goals were financials. Everything is just automatic for us now. We don’t really need to do much just keep an eye on our spending to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.

Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K).
*Save $4K for Holiday money.
*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel.


Other –

*Read 70 books.
*Learn Spanish.
*Workout 3/4 times a week.
*Try new recipes every other week.
*Blogging once per week.
*Continue Garden/Landscaping.
*Wake-up early (before 7am)
*Continue Decluttering.

Overall spending for 2017 was $36,679.59, the $7,336.79 of it was to pay off the mortgage. So $29,342.80 of it was for everything else. As long as we can keep it $30K or less per year is ideal for us. $35K per year will be the target if we go overseas for a holiday.

There were only really a few of things that we went over budget. The worse one was Car Repairs and Services that was over by $1,304.90, the budget was for only $700 for the year and that have been fine most years. Unfortunately, there were few things that we had to get fix and replaced in 2017. DH’s train fare was another item that went over budget by $262.84 but the good news though is that fuel cost for the year for our car was under by $394.15, so they kind of cancelled each other out. Another biggie that I’m not particularly happy about is we way over in the Takeaway by $349.35 but this was then again offset by under spending in Restaurant category by $487.98. But still getting too much takeaway was bad.

The rest of our spending’s were fairly spot on to what we budgeted for. I will still need to tweak few things around for 2018 though. I probably should increase Car repairs and services since our car is really old now. Also need to decrease Private Health Insurance but increase Medical since we are now paying for dental and optical with cash without rebates.

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My goals for 2018 were:

Financials-

*Pay off Mortgage – DONE!

*$30K into Equities/Investments – We did really well this year in putting money into our investments, more than we thought we would be able to.

*Save $5K for Holiday money – We only spent $1,822.66 this year so we will be rolling the balance ($3,177.34) over to 2018. In 2018 I aim to save $4000.

*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Remodel – Spent $1,366.50 in 2017 so we will roll over $3,633.50 into 2018. Our goal for 2018 is to save $5,000 again for 2018.


Other -

*Read 50 books – DONE, read 64 books.

*Workout 4 times a week - I did really good at the start of the year but faded in the last couple of months.

*No buying soft drinks – I did excellent here.

*Blogging once per week – I think I did fairly well, only missed few times and that was because I had nothing to write about.

*Garden/Landscaping – We have done some work and will continue in 2018.

*Flossing everyday – Done very well at this and will hopefully continue doing it from here on.

*Wake-up early (before 7am) – Very BAD, probably only done it 30% maybe even less. I need to better in 2018.

*Decluttering – We have done well at this and hopefully will continue to do more in 2018.

*Organise my emails – DONE.


I’m now looking forward to achieve more of my goals in 2018.

This is just a quick rundown on what happened in Dec 2017. I will be posting the overall 2017 numbers next anyway.

Total expense for the month was $3,453.49.

Groceries - $310.88 (this does not include Christmas food spending)

New mobile phone - $210

Garden – spend a little bit of money for the garden $43.13

Car Registration – the biggest cost for the month - $800.80

Eating out - $162.30 was on the high side.

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Reading – I took time off from reading this month. I think I’m going to increase my goal next year to 70 books for the year.
63 The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye - David Lagercrantz (2 Dec)
64 The Paradox of Choice Why Less is More - Barry Schwartz (4 Dec)

Decluttering – I’ve been doing a bit more decluttering again. I throw away a lot of old magazines and bunch of books I will never read again.

Christmas Spending – We had a very low key Christmas, I used the $30 gift card and $100 EFTPOS card to buy groceries for Christmas celebration. It was more than enough I think in the end there was still few dollars left. So it was perfect. For few days after Christmas day we’ve been eating the leftovers, and we finally finish the last bit of the glazed ham for lunch today. As for gifts we mainly sent gift cards (online) and cash to our relatives. All up $820.05 spent on Christmas this year.

Credit Card Rewards – Last month DH signed up for a credit card to get a cashback reward of $300 (spending $1000). DH used it to pay our annual car registration ($800.80) and the recent water bill ($247.62). The other day they already credited the $300 into the account. They have also taken out $59 for the annual card fee. And I think paying off those bills with the credit card accrued less than 2% fee. So really we are getting around $220 cash reward.

Tassie Holiday – We already spent some of that cash reward. The other night we bought 2 returned airfares to Tasmania. The airline was having a nice Boxing Day sale. All up it only cost us $156, the last time it cost us $436, so it was a very nice saving. We won’t be going until early May; they weren’t any sales fare before that. I was thinking of making this as my birthday celebration since it will only be two weeks after my actual birthday. We are finally going to Cradle Mountain this time and then I can use that gift card I got from my brother from my last birthday.

New Mobile Phone – I got a new mobile phone, it won’t actually get here for another month but DH ordered one for me the other night. Before buying that phone we hardly spent money on our phones this year. We budgeted $360 for the year but we’ve only spent $120 so we decide to get me a new phone because my current phone is old and I can’t upgrade anything or put on any apps any it, there is just no room. The new phone cost $210 it is probably the only excessive spending this year really, well maybe apart from my 40th birthday celebration. No regrets though.

Grocery – Week 1 – $30.70; Week 2 - $41.51; Week 3 - $105.94 – TOTAL=$178.15 so far this month

Utilities – Water bill for the quarter is $247.62, and the electric bill for the quarter is $17.10 in credit.

Car Registration – We paid the annual car registration and that was for $800.80

Netflix – We decided to put on Netflix again, it was a surprise that we actually got the first month for free.

I didn’t bother posting a blog last week much happened, the only thing exciting we did was go to the musical Aladdin. I got the tickets as a belated birthday present from a couple of friends. The tickets were $130 each so it was very nice of them. The only spending we did was $1 for a coffee in the nearby 7eleven before we went in.

Total spending for the month of November 2017 was $2,112.01

Grocery – We were spot on budget in our grocery spending this month, $301.82.

The only significant spending this month was for our trip to Tasmania, the weekend camping and the $400 donation. If it weren’t for these things we would have been way under 2 grand this month. A very good month for us I say, now onto December, the holiday season. We aren’t planning anything big just simple quiet Christmas.

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Books:
57 Origin - Dan Brown (3 Nov)
58 4 3 2 1 - Paul Auster (14 Nov)
59 Antifragile - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (19 Nov)
60 Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow (26 Nov)
61 A Guide to the Good Life - William B. Irvine (27 Nov)
62 Introducing the Ancient Greeks - Edith Hall (29 Nov)

We went camping on the weekend, the weather was just absolutely beautiful on the weekend (right now it raining but still pleasant temperature wise). We took our little doggie and she was so much better this time around, she is getting used to sleeping in the tent. She just love being outside but the only downside is she had to be in her leash all the time but I think she got used to that as well.

Camping Spending – Campsite fee was $25, we got gas for the car $29.23, and got some food for $26.65. Total was $80.88

Grocery – Was all up $137.09. Stocked up on some meat, in particular chicken breast and pork belly, they were cheap at the moment. Also $28 of that was for 3kg honey we got near the campsite. We got a kilo of honey from there last time and we really liked it.

Gardening/Landscaping – We are again doing some work outside in the garden. We got few bags of pre-mixed concrete/cement to put between the rocks that border some of our garden beds. I’m hoping by doing this it will stop the weeds growing between the rocks which are pain to pull out and because of our dog we can’t just weed killer to get rid of them, I never really liked using them to start with anyway. The cement mixed are $6.50 a bag I think we will need get some more before get it done.