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Archive for January, 2018

JANUARY 2018

January 31st, 2018 at 11:11 am

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.

WEEK 4

January 30th, 2018 at 12:07 am

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.

WEEK 3

January 22nd, 2018 at 06:17 am


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.

WEEK 2

January 16th, 2018 at 02:12 am


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.

Week 1

January 10th, 2018 at 09:48 am

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

2018

January 3rd, 2018 at 07:06 am


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.

Reviewing 2017 Personal Finance and other Goals

January 2nd, 2018 at 10:59 am


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.

Dec 2017

January 1st, 2018 at 09:00 am

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.