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Archive for May, 2018

Challenge Time

May 30th, 2018 at 02:52 am



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.

WEEK 21

May 29th, 2018 at 09:31 am


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.

WEEK 20

May 22nd, 2018 at 07:02 am



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.

WEEK 19

May 16th, 2018 at 05:17 am


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.

WEEK 18

May 9th, 2018 at 06:28 am


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

APRIL 2018 (WEEK 17)

May 2nd, 2018 at 01:15 pm

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.