Total for the month = $1,326.85
February is usually a low spend month for us even without trying.

Grocery = $310.61, we are over and I don’t really know why. I think it’s time to tighten our belts again with our grocery spending.

Entertainment = $125.89, under and I‘ve decided to put $10 into our challenge. Also put another $24 for 8 NSDs in Feb.

Other expenses worth nothing was for my license renewal, dog annual registration, and other personal and medical items.

Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $40K).
We did very well in Feb.

*Save $3K for Holiday money.
We did not spend any money on this in Feb. We might look at doing something for Easter.

*Save $5K for "The Challenge"
As mentioned above, I added $34 dollars in Feb. I actually did a day-trade in Feb but that was to only see if my trading account still works. I made $10 and I decided not to bother putting that into this account. Speaking of account, I found out that I can open a sub-account in one of my bank account/trading account. I have only ever used this account for my long-term trading, but it does have an account for my cash and apparently I can have a sub-account. I just need to transfer cash into it.


Other –

*Read 200 books.
12 Before the Devil Breaks You - Libba Bray (5 Feb) - Audio
13 Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer (8 Feb)
14 How we Learn - Benedict Carey (12 Feb)
15 Killing Floor - Lee Child (14 Feb) - Audio
16 The Power of your Subconscious Mind - Joseph Murphy Ph.D. (18 Feb)
17 A Mind for Numbers - Barbara Oakley Ph.D. (20 Feb)
18 Linchpin - Seth Godin (22 Feb) - Audio
19 The Organized Mind - Daniel J. Levitin (25 Feb)
20 Night - Elie Wiesel (26 Feb)
21 Die Trying - Lee Child (28 Feb) - Audio

*Continue Learning Spanish.
Yes - I have also been watching some Spanish shows on Netflix (we installed Netflix again the other week)

* Wake-up early workout and or meditate 5 times a week.
It has been so hard to work out when the weather is so hot, around 36C (almost 100 Fahrenheit), 4 days in a row in that temperature last week. Sleeping has been hard.

*Blogging once per week.
I need to do better here.

*Continue Garden/Landscaping.
Too bloody hot, I just had been trying to keep the plants that we have now alive. There hasn’t been rain for over 2 months now.

*Continue Decluttering.
We took another couple of bags to charity.

*Learn to Draw
I’ve been learning to sketch a bit; I’m bad a it.

Total for the month was $2,289.32.

Groceries = total for the month was $254.63
Entertainment = $145.99, just under my pre-determined monthly allowable spending. I decided to turn-off Netflix for Feb, and might also do the same in March. I don’t have much time to watch Netflix at the moment. I’m sure I’ll put it back on again soon.
These two items are under my monthly budget. And I was supposed to put get a reward by putting some money into the Challenge but since it is only the start of the year I want to give myself some buffer for those months that we end up overspending.

Insurance = Total was $1,106.79 for both car and home.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~OOOOOOO~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $40K).
January was a 3-pay month so even thought we had a bit of bills (in particular the insurances) we managed to put some in the Investment category.

*Save $3K for Holiday money.
N/A
*Save $5K for "The Challenge"
For this month, I’ve decided to put $100 of our tax refund into this challenge. After everything was said and done we got $494.90 return. Some of this left over will most likely go towards getting DH a new phone.
Another $30 is deposited (this reminds me I still need to open a Bank account for this), figuratively speaking, for having 10 NSDs for January.

Other –

*Read 200 books.
1. Stockholm Delete - Jens Lapidus (2 Jan) - Audio
2. Killing Kate - Alex Lake (7 Jan)
3. Kiss Me Kill Me - J.S. Carol (10 Jan) - Audio
4. I Invited her In - Adele Parks (14 Jan)
5. Nomad - James Swallow (18 Jan) - Audio
6. How to Have a Beautiful Mind - Edward De Bono (21 Jan) - Audio
7. Mindshift - Barbara Oakley, PhD (22 Jan)
8. The First 20 Hours (How to Learn Anything) - Josh Kaufman - (26 Jan)
9. Fluent Forever - Gabriel Wyner (26 Jan) - Audio
10. Tribes - Seth Godin (29 Jan) - Audio
11. Million Dollar Habits - Brian Tracy (31 Jan)

*Learn Spanish.
Yes – except yesterday Doulingo told me that I missed a day (2nd of Feb), so back to day 1 I go 

* Wake-up early workout and or meditate 5 times a week.
Too hot to be doing hard core workout but we have been doing more walks with the dog very early in the mornings and at night. And I’ve been doing few mini-workouts throughout the day.

*Blogging once per week.
I missed 1 I think???

*Continue Garden/Landscaping.
The vegetable garden is very productive at the moment despite the extreme heat. I spend a bit of time watering.

*Continue Decluttering.
No decluttering in Jan, need to do some again soon.

*Learn to Draw
Haven’t had time yet, been spending time doing an online course instead.

DH had to do a back-up of my computer and then he cleared everything in my computer and then re-installed everything. I think my computer has needed doing that for months now. So I haven’t had time to do my spreadsheet for this year and to write a blog post for the last week.

Anyway, recent spending for the first 2 weeks of this year:

Groceries – Week 1 = $59.09
Week 2 = $72.99 – We went to the market on Sunday, got the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever tasted for $5 for a kilo and also got 2.5 kilo beetroot (with a freebie small pumpkin) for $6. Then we went to a nearby pier to buy a kilo mussel off someone’s boat for also $6. Then we bought fish and chips nearby and had an impromptu picnic by the water.

New Kettle – Our 10 year old kettle stopped working last week. So we bought a new one for $59.

Insurance – Today both our car and home insurance got paid. Car is $455.35 and home is $651.44. We managed to lower the car insurance by changing and upping the excess.

Garden – since Christmas we have been getting a steady harvest of vegetables (tomato, cucumber, beans, zucchini, and herbs). I’m really enjoying gardening this summer but in the last few days we have been experiencing a heatwave and we haven’t had a decent rain since about a week from Christmas.

Happy New Year everyone!

This is very late because we had guests for almost 2 weeks and it has taken me a while to get back on my routine.

Total for Dec was $4,394.98

Grocery - it was by a lot, $448.14, extra 3 adults and a toddler can cost a bit.

Household goods – we bought a portable air conditioner, bed and bed frame for a total of $1,243.97.

Christmas Expense for December - $524.84

Car Registration – We renewed our annual car registration for $816.50. We looked at paying it quarterly but it would actually cost more.

Entertainment – We went out with our guest a few times, $268.59.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~000~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

------------2018 Goals---------

Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K). -DONE

*Save $4K for Holiday money. – Didn’t spend any this month

*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel. – Spent $188.50, mainly fixing the main bathroom for our guest.


Other –

*Read 70 books. – didn’t have time to really read.
176 Breakfast with Einstein - Chad Orzel (2 Dec) - Audio
177 Saga Land - Karl Gislason & Richard Fidler (11 Dec) - Audio
178 The Spider and the Fly - Claudia Rowe (18 Dec) - Audio
179 The One Who Got Away - Caroline Overington (19 Dec) - Audio
180 The Fox - Frederick Forsyth (20 Dec) - Audio

*Learn Spanish. – still at it everyday
*Workout 3/4 times a week. – what is workout? Lol. Massive fail!!!

*Try new recipes every other week. - I’ve tried a bit of fermentation and I think a new recipe in the bbq.

*Blogging once per week. - failed

*Continue Garden/Landscaping. – yes still tiring out the front lawn, almost done. The back garden has been neglected and is not cover with pumpkin so we will have to wait until they are gone before we can finish the concreting bit.

*Wake-up early (before 7am) – yes but I finding myself slipping a bit. At one stage I was waking up around 6 am or just before but lately I’ve been getting up at 6:40am

*Continue Decluttering. – did it with the Christmas items.

I’m so busy at the moment but I want to record this.

Grocery = $76.96
Gift Card = DH won a $150 worth of gift card at his Christmas lunch at work. He was one of I think about 30 people that won a door price. We are glad that he won the gift card instead of the other prices that we don’t really need or want. The gift card is for one of the main supermarket chain here (called Coles). We decided to put $50 of it towards the “Challenge” and the rest for Christmas food.

Garden = It has been raining a lot here lately so we haven’t done anymore concreting between the rocks. But I have been so busy with something anyway. Probably won’t have another time to do it until after the holidays.

I’m currently fixated with gardening, in particular trying to grow carrots. I’ve been spending too much time watching gardening videos on Youtube.

We are still doing the cementing thing in one of the garden bed, when it is done I will post a photo. We are trying to do one bag a day but sometimes when the weather is either too hot or raining we can’t. I tried to do it by myself but it was hard to try and get it done before the mix gets dry. We are so much in a hurry now that the rocks are back on its place. For few days we had to roll them off to the lawn area and that made the lawn yellow. They are still a bit yellow now but I’m hoping with some rain coming our way in the next few days it will be green again.

Grocery - We went to another market this one was the best so far. Overall, grocery spending for the week was $74.85.

Lunch out – We had lunch out to get together with friends to celebrate Christmas ($44.50).

Was meant to post this yesterday but my internet wasn’t working properly when I had time to do it. Anyways…

Grocery = $72.46. We went to another farmer’s market on Saturday. This was better than last weekend but they had a $2 per person entrance fee, although it went to the Rotary Club so I didn’t mind too much.

Electricity bill – We got the last one for the year and it was a credit for $49.46. so I’m happy about that.

Cements = We had to buy 6 bags of 20kg of cements to put between big rocks that border the back garden. It has been a lot of work, we have been at it since the weekend. We took the rocks off, they are heavy - some of them are about 40-50 kilos in weight. Then we had to make sure to get rid of weeds and grass roots that have gone under the concrete that is between these rocks and the lawns. And now we are putting it back together again and also making sure to put cements between the gaps. We are only half way and I think we will need another 6 bags of cements.

Total for the month of November is $2,490.82.

We mainly spent it on:

Grocery = we were under budget, spent $236.29. I’ve decided to put $20 in the challenge because we are under this month.

Household Expenses = $500.87, it was mainly for the Skip Hire.

Transport Related = $290.96, DH hasn't been taking the early train and this also includes fuel and the registration for the camper trailer.

Entertainment total = $184.93

Gifts = was high this month because of my cousin’s wedding, that was $300 for the month.

Holiday (November portion) = $269.49

Christmas = $253.51, started getting stuff for Christmas. This year and for the past few years I budgeted $1,200 for our birthdays, anniversary and Christmas, we didn’t spend much for our birthdays and anniversary this year so we got a bit of money still in this category. We still got over $800 in it available for the rest of the year. I don’t intent to spend this much for Christmas though, hoping to only spend half.

**CHALLENGE** we had 10 NSDs in November so $30 to the Challenge Fund plus the $20 from the being under in grocery, so $50 for the month. I still need to set up an actual bank account for this. For now it is just written down in my spreadsheet.



Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K). === DONE!!!===

*Save $4K for Holiday money. = We have now spent $4,754.63 under this category because of the camper trailer.

*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel. = We will most likely end up spending around $1K under this category this year, not too bad.


Other –

*Read 70 books.
160. The Scandal - Fredrik Backman (3 Nov)
161. The Travelling Cat Chronicles - Hiro Arikawa (9 Nov)
162. Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty (10 Nov) - Audio
163. Zealot - Reza Aslan (13 Nov)
164. Started Early, Took my Dog - Kate Atkinson (14 Nov) - Audio
165. Smiling Mind - James Tutton & Jane Martino (15 Nov) - Audio
166. The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion (17Nov) - Audio
167. #NOW: The Suprising Truth About the Power of Now - Dr. Max McKeown (17 Nov) - Audio
168. The Brain that Changes Itself - Norman Doidge, MD (18 Nov) - Audio
169. The Hidden Life of Trees - Peter Wohlleben (20 Nov) - Audio
170. Aristotle's Way - Edith Hall (21 Nov)
171. Revenge - Andrew Holmes & James Patterson (22 Nov) - Audio
172. The Lion Tamer who Lost - Louise Beech (25 Nov)
173. The Brain's Way of Healing - Norman Doidge (27 Nov) - Audio
174. The Science of Getting Rich - Wallace D. Wattles (28 Nov) - Audio
175. Dark Emu - Bruce Pascoe (30 Nov) - Audio

In the last couple of weeks I’ve spent a lot of time in the garden, didn’t have as much time actually reading but I been loving listening to audiobooks while gardening.



*Learn Spanish. = Still going everyday

*Workout 3/4 times a week. = failed but I been doing so much physical work in the garden that I been going to bed dog tired.

*Try new recipes every other week.
Made lemon tart and tomato chutney for the first time.

*Blogging once per week. = I missed one when we were away

*Continue Garden/Landscaping. = We did a lot and still going.

*Wake-up early (before 7am) = yes

*Continue Decluttering. = YES!

Grocery = $91.25, bought a bit of fish for the freezer, $23 worth. Also we went to some sort of a market on Sunday, it was supposed to be a farmer’s market but there weren’t many farmer’s there at all.
Wedding = Last week a relative of mine got married we gave a $200 cash gift.

Garage sales = high chair for $1, this will be for my little niece when they comes for Christmas. It is still very good the guy just wants to get rid of it because they are selling up. There was also another garage sale on the same street and I got a set of lamps for $15. I want to build a headboard and I think I can used these lamps for it.

Garden = On the way home from the market we saw a sign for horse poo for sale, we end up getting a $7.50 worth. It better value than getting from the store. The best thing I got from the market were seedlings, they were only $1 each. I end up spending $12.

Christmas stuff = Got some more random stuff for Christmas to put under the tree (that’s if we are getting a tree this year???)

Making Sauerkraut = I made sauerkraut, for the first time ever.

Lunch out with friend and her family = On Saturday DH and I had lunch with a friend and her family. For some reason they end up paying for lunch so we picked up the bill for coffees and cakes afterwards, $18.50.

Change Registration Plate for Camper Trailer = DH had to get the registration for the camper trailer transferred to our state. He ended up spending $96. This included some once off fee, it will eventually be $59 per year.

Grocery = $55.91, a fairly regular shop. Got a good deal on broccoli, 4 heads for a dollar, it was great baked with cream and cheeses.

Clothing = bought a dress for a wedding that we are going to be attending this month, that was for $46.

Cleaned the Garage & Hired a Skip = we spent most of our weekend cleaning the garage and throwing out stuff we couldn’t get rid of during our annual hard rubbish collection. Mainly broken bricks, building materials and we also dug up rotten wood borders that held our front lawn. We have also started digging up our front lawn (or should I say front weeds). Since we cut down the massive palm tree in the front yard we can finally do more work there. The roots are still there and it would probably few years for it to compost so we will just work the design around it. So far I am happy how it is going. We put some soil that was under the lawn on top of it and I put in some seeds to see if it is any good at all. So far a couple sunflowers are growing and some radishes. I’m hoping radishes will help break up the soils a bit. I also put is some flowers (seeds), not much luck yet though.

Dinner Out = after all that hard work we had dinner our on Sunday. We had Vietnamese food for $36.50.

This is very late but I’ve been away and got sick since the last day of our holiday. We got back Tuesday afternoon and I have just been trying to recover from it.

So Week 43 and 44 was spent away on our holiday, we went and visited relatives interstate. And then somehow end up getting a camper trailer – that was not planned at all. I will do a separate blog about this purchase and about our holiday later.

October Total = $4,706.26

CAMPER TRAILER = this includes the cost of camper trailer for $2,300.

GROCERY = $188.19

UTILITIES = only for electricity bill this month, $126.93. This was our first payable bill for the year.

PROPERTY RATES = $202.90 – for some reason they are now taking the money out of our account on the first of the month instead to the end of the month, so in September we actually didn’t had to pay this.

Household and Garden Items = $177.91

DH Birthday and Anniversary = 311.92

~~~~~~~~ 2018 GOALS~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K). Buying the camper trailer made us missed out on achieving this goal in October but it should really happen in November.

*Save $4K for Holiday money. In the month of October we spent $439.14.

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


Other –

*Read 70 books. I didn’t get to do as much reading while on holiday.

148. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (2 Oct)
149. Unforgivable - Mike Thomas (4 Oct) - Audio
150. The Examined Life - Stephen Grosz (8 Oct)
151. The Other Half of Happiness - Ayisha Malik (9 Oct) - Audio
152. The Couple Next Door - Shari Lapena (11 Oct)
153. Unwritten - Jack Delosa (12 Oct) - Audio
154. The $1000 Project - Canna Campbell (15 Oct)
155. The Love that I Have - James Maloney (16 Oct) - Audio
156. 10% Happier - Dan Harris (17 Oct)
157. Anthem - Ayn Rand (18 Oct)
158. The Unquiet Dead - Ausma Zehanat Khan (25 Oct) – Audio
159. The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle (30 Oct)

*Learn Spanish. – yes, daily.

*Workout 3/4 times a week. – did really good before going away but we only did walking the dog while on holiday

*Try new recipes every other week. – Yes, I tried cooking beef brisket for the first time and I fermented some swiss chard before we left. The fermentation turned out well and we been having some for the last few days. I also tried baking bread in the bbq.

*Blogging once per week. - Failed

*Continue Garden/Landscaping. - Yes

*Wake-up early (before 7am) - Yes

*Continue Decluttering. - Yes

Car Service = Yesterday’s car service was $321.20 - it included the normal service and a change in fan belt.

Increase in Income = DH got an increase but only CPI rate, not surprising really, income here have mainly stagnated in the last few years.

Salary Sacrifice = We’ve decided to increase DH’s Super contribution to hopefully decrease his tax. He is salary sacrificing few hundred dollars per month. Now that the house is paid off this makes a lot of sense for us.

Garden = I’m still getting a lot of swiss chard, I even gave some away to a couple of friends. I’ve been trying out different dishes with it. The other night I made crust less quiche with it. It was very good. A lot of seedlings I planted couple of weekends ago are now coming through. I’m just hoping we get a bit more rain this summer.

GROCERY – $43.07 – it could have been less but we bought some snacks to have for the football grand final game, our team was in the grand final but unfortunately we lost (maybe next year). But we had fun eating chips, dips and cheese and drinking beer while watching it.

GARDENING/LANDSCAPING – Spent $109.21 on stuff for the garden, it is best time to start working in the garden again. I also bought some more seedlings and seeds.

FABRIC – Also got some fabric to cover the couch, $60 (9 meters long).

Eating Out – Still been loving the Vietnamese food too much and being out an about we have been getting some food on the run - $49.30. We can’t seem to stop.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Garden – I planted a bird-eye chilli last summer. Got a couple handfuls of chillies last summer, it wasn’t looking good during winter and I thought it was going to die. I trimmed it and hoped for the best and it is doing well again. So far it has produces more than double that we got last summer.

Decluttering – I emptied DH’s clothes drawers. I put all the clothes that I thought don’t belong in the drawers anymore in a laundry basket and then DH went through each one, some he tried on to see if still fits. Most of it got thrown away, about 5 went back into drawers and a few he wanted to keep (souvenirs items) that we put into a plastic container to store away.

Weekend – We did the grocery shopping Saturday morning and spent $75.33, right on our weekly budget. Saturday night we went out for dinner to celebrate paying off the mortgage. We went to a Croatian restaurant it was very yummy but pricey. It cost $106 for 4 entrée size dishes (we wanted to try variety of dishes) and a glass of wine for me and Croatian beer for DH. We used a $50 gift card and I received last year for my birthday (expiring in couple of months so it was good time to use it), so was out of pocket for $56, still a tad costly. Lately I’ve been rather anti going out to restaurants, I mean I still like eating out but I don’t like spending all that money and then sometimes you go out you get disappointed with either the meal or the service and end up feeling that it was such a waste of money. A $100 is more than a week worth of food for us or for that amount of money we could invite a bunch of friends and have a pretty good dinner party. We also spent $6 for 2 hour parking, we should have really parked further for free but they are hard to find. We spent most of our Sunday building a vegetable garden using old bricks from the old brick fence that we used to have. That brick fence collapsed last year when we had a really strong wind, it was already in bad shape to start with.

Mortgage – Our very last interest payment was $14.62. They actually now owe us some money, just under $300 because they just took out the usual monthly payment. I’m sure it will get all sorted out soon. And depending on how much the closing cost is we might still owe them some.

Gardening – I have not done much with the veggie garden this summer. I just did not have much time but I did make sure to plant some tomatoes and basils, I've got a bit of tomatoes already.

Dinner party – Saturday night we had few friends over for dinner, card games and a Netflix movie. It was a lot of fun. It increased our grocery bill this month but it would have been a lot cheaper than going out to a restaurant.

Long weekend – DH is taking Friday off and since Thursday is a public holiday (Australia Day) then he will have 4-day weekend. We are thinking of going for a day trip somewhere maybe fishing, we have not done that for couple of years.

Grocery – Our grocery budget for this year is $300 per month. So far this month we are at $260.45, half of it was spent on the weekend when we did a big shop and bought some extra stuff for the dinner party. Even though we only got $40 left for this weekend it should be plenty, I’m hoping we might not even have to spend all of it. Right now we got a lot of leftovers in the freezer and the pantry is full.

House Alarm Battery
The battery for our house alarm needed replacing. I think the last time we replaced it was over 5 years ago. DH bought one after work and was easy install for him to do. The battery cost $50.

Broken Roof Tile
We had to get someone to replace a broken roof tile. Luckily we already got some spare tiles around. We paid $50 and it only took him 10 minutes to do it. It was worth it. Another two quotes we got were for $150 and $250. Normally we do a lot of repairs ourselves but DH is not too keen on heights. He can get up a ladder but he won't actually get on to the roof. The broken tile was just out of reach for him to do. And he absolutely would not let me get up there either. $50 was a lot of money for 10 minutes work but it was necessary. Now we will have to fix the ceiling in the guest room where there is a little water damage because of it.

STOCK
The shares that we purchase last month through Share Purchase Plan (SPP) was settled the end of last month. The plan that DH and I decided was to sell half of it right away so we can get part of our capital out. We got the maximum amount we could get but didn’t want to keep too much of it long-term. Since then it has just been going up so we decided to wait and see where it might go until on Wednesday last week we decided to sell some but since it has gone up a bit more than expected we decided to only got 1/3 out. The 1/3 got us almost 40% of our capital back, so we are happy with that.

WEEKEND
It was a costly weekend. On Saturday we did the usual grocery shopping for the week and then went to Bunnings (hardware/garden store) to get some netting for the garden. We got those white cabbage butterflies/moths around and they just love laying their eggs on my vegetable leaves. I thought putting netting around them especially the cabbages and cauliflowers would be the best way, don't like to use sprays. We end up getting a really big size because it was half price and best value for money, only couple dollars more than the smallest size. While there we saw that they have a greenhouse on sale for half price as well, from $50 down to $25.

Saturday night we were invited to a 50th birthday celebration. It was held in one of those reception places normally more for weddings. Actually, been to this place back in 2001 for a friend’s wedding, unfortunately it is not what it used to be. The food were terrible, DH thought he had the worst steak ever. Everything was over cooked, I think they reheat things and that's why they end up so over cooked. It was a big party around 150 guests, it would have cost a lot. We just gave $100 cash as a gift, I had no idea what to get. They hired a photo booth and we all had fun with that.

Sunday we decided to go to a Trash and Treasure market, spent $34 which includes $2 entry fee for both of us. Got $10 of 4 tubs of seedlings, they were about half the price instead of getting from a nursery. I remember to back here next time. Also got 4 pot holders for $2, couple of plastic tubs, few metal brackets and a plaster saw for $1. The best thing we found a glass lid for our fish tank for only $4. Back in December we got a bigger fish tank from a friend but it didn't have a lid so we have been looking for one since then. The lid is millimetre perfect for our tank. One of the biggest things we got on the weekend and were a bit pricey was 6 rubber mats for the gym area in the garage that we are creating. It totalled just under $180 but it has been the cheapest thing we have seen out there.

On Sunday we also both got a haircut. I really needed one. All up the weekend expenses were just over $550. This coming weekend is not going to be cheap either.

Easter Weekend

Our long-weekend was pretty quiet, we did more work outside as clean the garage (half-way through it now). We did go out and did some shopping, we got a new little bbq and a small foldable table that we can use outside and should be able to take camping as well. They were both on sale. While shopping we ate out for lunch to a fairly inexpensive Chinese/Dumpling place. Apart from that we mainly stayed home and watched more Breaking Bad – it was BB marathon weekend for us and now we have finished it. We will probably now move on to watching "Better call Saul".


Financial

Normal monthly mortgage payment went through and the interest paid for this month was $112.17, so principal paid was $1,105.80. Balance right now is $25,574.99.

I did a calculation of our net worth for the end of the first quarter and we just hit $700K. That was a nice increase from the last time I looked at our net worth.


Garden

The cabbages are now about double in size and the cauliflowers are doing well. And the beetroots and beans and also starting to shots up. There are more kales and snow peas seedlings that have come up but the coriander are dead except for 1 and even that is not looking to good. And those seeds that DH planted are not happening.

Day light saving time finished on Sunday and now it feels like winter. I don't like it.

Mortgage = $1218

Living Expenses = $1527.82 (Not too bad)

Other = $802.41 (A bit too much here)

About $220 of this was for Mitre Saw compound ($148), sledge hammer and some MDF material. About $180 for gardening materials – soil, manure, seedlings, plants (both indoor and outdoor), a big bottle of weed killer, weed mat cover and small gardening tools. The other $170 was for quilt, quilt cover and comforter. We also spent about $35 on office supplies, mainly on a box of suspension files. The rest was for batteries for smoke alarms, brushes, etc. (too many rubbish to mention) and DH got a new fishing rod.

Total = $3,548.23


Veggie Garden

The red cabbage and cauliflower are doing well so far. Some goes with the lemongrass and Vietnamese mint. But the coriander is not looking too good. DH scattered some coriander seeds in the garden the other day maybe that will be better than the seedlings we planted. Today I saw 4 of the snow peas already poking through and I'm pretty sure there are a couple of the kales as well. Just been spraying the seeds we planted in the egg cartons on the weekend, I don't know how well they will go, time will tell.

I did not go anywhere on the weekend. The only time we spent money was Saturday night when DH went out to get pizza, Pepsi and milk. All up it cost $21.75.
We spend all weekend working outside again. We are trying to get things done outside while the weather is still warm. We planted some more vegetables. We planted some cauliflowers and also decided to plant some seedlings; I do not know how well they will go some of them might be a bit old.

Most of our weekend was spent paving a little area in the backyard for the big rubbish bin that we have. We have some paver just laying around so it was good to make use of them and it tidy up the backyard. It took a while to level the area but we got there.

Saturday night we spent watching more Breaking Bad and that's when we decided to get Pizza for dinner and open a bottle of wine. Sunday A.M. we spent finishing the paving and in the afternoon to until 10pm we spent watching the final of world cup cricket. Australia won against the Kiwis. Yay!

Potential Loan

Friday night DH called his parents. His mum asked if they could borrow $3K if they need it. Long story short, they got money it's just it might be hard for them to get it out in short notice. They are getting their house painted (outside) but it could happen next week or it could happen in 3-4 months. If it happens in 3 months they won't need to borrow but if it happens sooner they will be short in cash because their money in term-deposit at the moment. Normally they have more cash than they need but because they just bought a new car this month they have dried up the savings account. We are more than happy to help them out, they have helped us a lot in the past when DH was unemployed. So the money that I was thinking of putting into the mortgage (extra) we will just keep for this. This is the extra pay that DH will receive this month. I will still put the tax refund money into the mortgage. If they do end up needing the money we will encourage them not to pay it back. We both just want to give it to them. We have offered to give them some money in the past to pay back some of the money that they have given us but they always refused. So this will be good time to pay them back.

Tree Stump
We finally got the tree stump and roots out. It has taken us over 2 weeks working on it a bit every day. It is a very heavy bugger so we just left it in the front yard. We are not sure what to do with it, we talked about making a feature out of it or just put it in the rubbish. I think we might have our annual green rubbish collection in May, I'm pretty sure it was in May that they collected it last year. I won’t be surprise if we get the notification for in next month. If we throw it out DH will have to cut it smaller they will not accept it at this size, too heavy. DH should be able to use the chain saw on it now.

Garden Bed
Most of soil that we dug out we used to build a couple of raised garden beds. We just added some chicken manure and mushroom compost. So far I have planted snow peas and kale from seeds in our usual veggie garden patch. In the new garden beds I got some seedling for it, so far I planted lemon grass, coriander and cabbage.

We will be building couple more garden beds, just need to clean more of the bricks. It takes a bit of effort to do I'm not in a hurry so just doing a bit every day.

Grocery Shopping
We did some food shopping this weekend. We went to the market to stock up the freezer. Then we went to Aldi to get the usual food items we need for the week. And then lastly, we went to another store to mainly get toilet rolls and other things that we couldn't get at Aldi.

At the shopping centre car park, we ended up waiting for this lady to get out so we could get her car park space. When she finished putting her shopping in the car I offered to put her trolley away, just to hurry things along it was easier for both of us (and I gave her a dollar to swap for the dollar she had in the trolley). She could get out quicker while DH could get in to the space while I put the trolley away. Anyway, she left her receipt in the trolley and there was a discount of $10 off for the store we were about to go and there were other discounts for their liquor store as well. I didn’t even knew that they do those discounts in this store but I think you have to spend over $200 to get those, which obviously she did. I knew about the liquor store discount but hose normally involves buying 1 and you get another 1 free type of discount. So the $15 plus shopping only cost us $5 or so. It paid for the toilet rolls. I find that a lot of people tend to just leave their shopping receipts in the trolley and I tend to just pick them up and put them in the bin. I will be checking them a closer from now on.

Yard Work -
We spent most of our weekend doing yard work. I was hoping to do some planting but instead we spent most of it digging out a tree stump that is in the front yard that is pushing the brick wall fence. We end up destroying a row of a brick edging in front of it, we had to it is the only way to get to it. I'm not too worry about destroying it because we need to re-do the yard anyway. It has needed it for years. We had drought here for a long time that destroyed a lot of our plants. Because we were in water restriction for a long time we didn't bother doing too much with it. Our water restriction these days is a bit more relax and we can actually water our plants now. And I have been buying more drought tolerant plants from garage sales in the last 2 years. It will take us months to do it but I'm hoping we can get it done by next summer. First thing is to get this massive tree stump out. It's been over a year since we cut it and have been poisoning it few times but it is taking forever to die and now the next door neighbour is complaining about it so that's first priority at the moment.

With all this bricks and soil around I decided that I will make garden beds out of them, I just want to experiment with it. If it turns out good then maybe I'll make a permanent feature of it in the backyard.

Saturday Night –
We went out with some friends for a 9 course meal with wine at a Thai restaurant. A friend that organise the get together bought a voucher so it was only $39 per couple. But parking in the area was highway robbery and it didn't help that our meal went on for 3 hours. It took 1 hour for the first dish to come out, so DH had to go out in the rain to put more money in the meter, ended up spending $12. It is a terrible area there is not many options for parking so the council just take advantage of it. We are not going to that part of town anytime soon. We all joked about maybe the restaurant has a deal with the council to get people to spend more on parking. Oh well, it was still great catch up. One friend I haven't seen since last year.

Sunday -
We went grocery shopping, didn't really get much (don't need much); grapes, onions, milk, eggs, potato, chicken and 10 kil0 bag of rice. We still got plenty of rice but they were selling for half price, thinking about it now I probably should have got 2 bags.

Coffee & "Business Meeting"-
While at the shops we stopped by at one of our favourite café, it is in the same shopping centre. Lately, we have been coming to this café once or twice a month. We like to come here and have a "business meeting". Business meeting for us is talking about our finances especially our stocks/stock market/investments. When it comes to our trading/investing we are both very involve with it. We both like to see what each other thinks about a certain stock, should we be buying, selling or just holding, etc.. We have also been discussing a lot about our mortgage and other financial stuff. This time we talked about getting our mortgage down to $20K next month. It is kind of the thing that I want to get /celebrate for my birthday next month. And we think we should be able to do it if we can get our 2013-14 tax refund (I'm 90% sure we will get it by then), that would probably be around $2000-$2500 after accountant fee. We calculated that we will need $5,500 to get to $20K. So the rest we can get from the 'extra pay' next month. It's not really an extra pay, it just happens that DH will get paid 3 times next month instead of only twice (forth-nightly pay deal thing). So if we use that 'extra' pay next month we should be able to do it without derailing out other goal too much. The other goal is to hoard cash in the bank (around $20,000) just in case DH's job contract might not get renewed in June. We got around $13 at the moment.

Stock-
We mainly talked about one of our stock that is doing a Share Purchase Plan (SPP) at the moment (due 24th of March). We talked about whether we should participate in it and where are we going to get the money from? Luckily, we have sold some stocks this year and we actually have enough to fully participate in the SPP. The SPP price is about $2 at the current price. The plan is to get the maximum amount and then sell half of it as soon as possible to luck some profit and then keep the other half long-term. This is one of our best performing stock so I am happy to add more of it in our portfolio.

We both really enjoy our meeting in this café, great atmosphere for it. The coffee is great and they have nice assortment of cakes to go with it. The servings are large so we normally just share a large coffee and slice of cake (DH decided to get NY cheesecake this time). All up it was $13.90. DH offered to pay for all of it out of his allowance since he was the one that really wanted the cake because I was still full from lunch but when it got to our table I still ate a bit of it so I said that we will split it. I actually have a lot of allowance saved up than him. Apart from weekends I really don't have chance to spend it before when I was working part-time it use to get spend a lot on coffee and snacks. I've actually now accumulated $500 but I have big plan to spend a big chunk of it for my birthday next month.

Oh my, this is a long post.

Monday was public holiday here. We spent most it doing some needed work around the house. It was good to tick off some of the items on the 'to do' list.

Saturday we talked about going to the movies to watch The Hobbit and then going out for dinner, I have been wanting to watch it since it came out here on Boxing Day but something else keeps coming up. Since then we have seen a couple of movies with other people none of them was into watching The Hobbit. Unfortunately, when we checked the session time it wasn't on anymore. I actually checked it the week before and it was still scheduled that weekend so they might have just taken it off. So we had to go with Plan B instead. We decided to borrow Season 4 of Game of Thrones and got some Chinese and opened a bottle of wine instead. It was a lot cheaper than going to the movies and eating out at a restaurant. So in between doing work around the house we watch Game of Thrones, 10 episodes for only $10 rental.

We also went out to do some shopping. We decided to get a new quilt and cover. The new queen size bed is a lot thicker than the old one so we decided to get a king size quilt and cover. I've always wanted to get a bigger size bedding to solve the problem of us fighting over it in the colder months. One of us always end up hogging the whole thing, I don't think we would have that problem this winter. Got a pretty good prize for it, just over $150 for an Australian wool & made quilt, quilt cover and 2 pillow cases.

I just harvested the last tomatoes and the basil is now starting to flower so it is also nearing the end. We got so much basil don't normally get these much but this year has been great. I made some pesto last night and had it with some pasta. I'm trying to use it so we can start planting some winter crops.

We have been getting a lot of tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchinis from the garden this summer. There has also some strawberries and a handful of blueberries. We have been having salads everyday.

All this week DH has to catch the bus part way to work instead of the train all the way because they are doing some work on the train tracks. Not all buses has the ticketing facilities, I think most of them are school buses they have no need for it (it is our school holiday that's why they are using them). So DH hasn't been paying for some of his trip. I think it will be at least $20 savings for the week. And because of the inconvenience they have been providing breakfast, DH got free banana yesterday. They've also been giving away bbq breakfast sausages, he has opted not to have any of those.

Waking up to the nice fresh smell of pine tree is amazing. This is the first time ever that I am 100% happy with our christmas tree. Not the most frugal way to get a tree but I was happy to pay for it because the proceed went to the scouts.

Today I found out that the reserve bank have decreased the interest rate again late yesterday afternoon. Good news for us mortgage holders.

Also today in the garden, I just picked a handful of cherry tomatoes, first time this summer. I think in two weeks time I will have more to come. Also there are more strawberries to pick soon.

Today I pulled out 1 red radish from the garden, the first one for this season. This is the first time I've ever grown radish, they are actually really easy to grow here it has only been 6/7 weeks since I planted the seeds. I will definitely be growing these again.

The strawberries I planted about 3/4 months ago (in winter) have now got lots of fruits, probably another month before I can harvest, although there is one big one already that will probably be ready in 2 weeks time.

The tomatoes seedlings that I planted 2 months ago have now got lots of green tomatoes, not long now for those.

The zucchini, cucumber and beans are slowly growing.