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Archive for September, 2017

Football Grand final

September 27th, 2017 at 11:42 am

Grocery – Total for the week was $99.10, spent a total of $45.56 on meat. We would have enough food for the rest of the month except we have people coming over on Saturday for the grand final Australian Football game at our house. We decided to have a barbeque and we will be having sausages, hotdogs, hamburgers and maybe some lamb and chicken. We only got less than $20 in the grocery budget left for the month so that will not be enough. I think I will need around $50 for the party. We got plenty of alcohol and I’ve asked people to BYO softdrinks if they want any since I’m still on my ‘no buying softdrink’ this year goal. Anyway, lets hope I can keep thinks around $50. I do have two $30 gift cards that I got given last Christmas maybe I’ll use one of those and I’m thinking of keeping the other for Christmas.


Movie Voucher – Speaking of Christmas gift, DH just found a $100 movie voucher that his parents gave us last Christmas. It was emailed to DH and he found it on the weekend when he finally decided to clean his email. I really need to remember this stuff because DH is hopeless at remembering this sort of stuff. He printed it out and I got it up on the fridge. The movie voucher is expiring this December so we really need to use it soon. We can probably go twice maybe even 3 times to use it up. This Sunday is our 11th year anniversary so we might go to the movies and dinner to celebrate.


Internet Disconnection – As mentioned in my last post we changed Internet provider. DH tried out the old connection and found out that they haven’t disconnected it yet, when they were meant to on the day DH called them. DH called them again on Monday to remind them to disconnect it. DH was again told that he will need to pay $45 disconnection fee (don’t even know why the disconnection fee is now $45 when last week it was $165 – lol- bunch of comedians, they are). Luckily, last week when DH finally got to talked to someone at the end they talked on those instant chat thing and DH actually took screen shoots of their conversations. So they tried again to make DH pay for disconnection fee and it still didn’t work.

Changes in our Internet Provider

September 20th, 2017 at 09:46 am

Grocery (the Good) – Spent $31.92 this week.

Eating Out (the Bad) – We spent a bit on eating out and getting some soup. We went to a restaurant that is near our place it has been there for years but it is only now that we finally decided to try it out. We had lunch there on Saturday. It’s a nice place and food was really good and prices were very reasonable as well, will definitely be going there again. We also decided to go to the park on Sunday for a picnic lunch; we didn’t bring any food from home we got take away instead. And to top it off DH has not been feeling well so we got some soup. All up the eating out and buying food we spent $73.20.

Free Dinner – Not only did DH got few free lunches last week and the other week, he also got free dinner and drinks on Friday night. His whole team got invited out for dinner to celebrate a job they did two months ago. He and others did had to spend few hours for that weekend two months ago to do some work for it, DH only had to do his part at home, so yeah well deserved for them.

Internet – Few months ago and then another last month we got mails from our (now previous) internet provider letting us know that by early November they will be disconnecting our internet and home phone services unless we switch into their NBN service. NBN is the National Broadband Network, which is essentially fibre optic cable rolled out across the country. Originally it was proposed to roll out fibre right up into each home, but this was later changed to just use whatever connection already exists at the home for the final part. In our case since we had Telstra cable installed in our house by the previous owner, that is what we are getting. This is similar to what is used for cable TV in the US, and in fact can also be used for cable TV here. The NBN is a government owned company which provides the infrastructure, and then you go to a retailer to buy the actual services. That way all retailers use the same infrastructure and have to compete on price, customer service, and quality of service provided (some retailers don’t provide sufficient bandwidth so get major slowdowns during peak periods). The company we signed up for seems to be quite cheap and also doesn’t seem to have the slowdown problems.

When DH signed up, he found a promotional code that got him the first month free, and they double our data allowance for the first 6 months! Also there is no lock-in contract, whereas some of the bigger providers lock you into a 2 year contract. The price will be $65 per month the same as our previous internet cost but since we don’t have to have the home phone anymore it will be saving us $15 per month. It will be less than the unlimited data we have been using for the last year but a lot more than what we used to have prior to that which was 120GB, now it will be 500GB but for the next 6 months it will be 1000GB.

When DH called the previous provider, Optus which we have been with since 2001, they tried to make him pay a $160 early termination fee as they told him he was on a 2 year contract. This was rubbish for 2 reasons: 1. they told him last year when he changed plans that he wouldn’t be put on a contract; 2. they’re the ones telling us we need to change service or we’ll be disconnected. DH spoke to a different person and they have now agreed to not charge the disconnection fee.

New Baby in the family

September 13th, 2017 at 06:06 am

My brother’s girlfriend had a little girl yesterday, I’m an aunty again. We will be visiting them in Tasmania in November.

Onto financial matters –

Groceries – All up it amounted to $72.45 just a tad under budget for the week. $18 of it were on cleaning and laundry products, I tend to only get these once or twice a year.

Free Lunch (Is there such a thing?) – DH has been attending workshop at work and they have been providing lunch. Last week he had 4 of them and he got another 3 and a half days of it this week.

Property Rates – We got a new bill statement for the 2017-18 and it is increasing to $1913.89 – last year it was $1873.70 – we will be paying it monthly ($191.34) for the next 10 months.

Been sick and not been in the mood for cooking this week.

Bills and Changing Health Insurance

September 5th, 2017 at 11:33 pm

The weather here have been wet, so not much to do but read and watch the Australian stock market go up and down. Here are some of our personal finance highlight for the week.


Groceries – Total spend for the week was $83.91, a little bit over than our weekly budget for this month but will pull it back next weekend.


Water Bill – Great news we got $100 government rebate off our current water bill. I’m not sure what this rebate is about (most likely to do with the desalination plant), anyway whatever it is for I will gladly take it! Normally, this 3rd quarter bill is a lot more than usual because of some annual fees that we have to pay but the government decided to give us a break. So the bill amount was going to be $292.31 but now it is reduced down to $192.31. Unfortunately though this bill came with new rate prices that we will have to pay next bill. It doesn’t look too bad, in line with inflation rate I guess.


Gas Bill – Also got the gas bill due this month and that is for $101.72. I think this might be the first time ever since we stopped using gas for heating that we have a bill that is over $100. I don’t think our actual usage have change it is most likely increases in rate prices.


Health Insurance – We decided to change health insurance to one that is known as “Member’s Own”. On the 1st of April our health insurance went up again and DH and I have been thinking that it is time to evaluate our current health cover. DH have been looking into it for few months now and have finally decided to drop the EXTRAS (i.e. dental, optical and some hospital covers), so for now we will just have the Basic Cover and we will just cash flow the usual dental and optical visits. We weren’t even in the comprehensive cover we were under intermediate. The optical is just mainly for me anyway, last time DH got his eyes check which was earlier this year he still got 20/20 visions apparently plus normal eye checks are covered by Medicare anyway. The only thing we seems to get out of it is free cheap prescription glasses, and the fancier ones we have to pay extra even though we spend so much extra already for the so called “EXTRAS”. Anyway, after some calculations we might be able to save around $500-$700 per year. Our monthly payments will go down to $163.23 from $280.78. Before 1st of April it was $262.75, there was $18 per month increase, which is about $216 for a year enough for one dental check-up and clean visit. So we believe it is worth trying it out at least for the next year or so.