Just found out about losing 6 months’ worth of blog entries, that sucks.

Anyway we have been away camping - spent $245.45, a very reasonable price we cooked all but one meal.

September total expense was $2598.63. Grocery was only $201.96.

I think I will skip most of my goal update in this entry, I’m not sure it’s worth it. But goal 1 is now pretty much done at least it will be by the end of this month.

Reading – didn’t get much reading done in September and most likely not make it to 200 books but it’s ok.
109 The Waiting Game - Sheila Bugler (2 Sep) - Audio
110 Financial Freedom - Grant Sabatier (3 Sep)
111 Retirement Planning in Eight Easy Steps - Joel Kranc (7 Sep) - Audio
112 Falling - Chris Mooney (9 Sep)
113 All Things Nice - Sheila Bugler (10 Sep) - Audio
114 The Dumb Things Smart People Do with their Money - Jill Schlesinger (12 Sep) - Audio
115 The Broken Man - Josephine Cox (17 Sep)
116 The Blind Side - Michael Lewis (21 Sep) - Audio
117 The Rosie Effect - Graeme Simsion (29 Sep) - Audio

Fixing the fridge part III – DH had another go at fixing the fridge, this time he change the heating element thingy (can’t remember what it is called), he apparently check it and it showed that it was dead. The part cost $40 this time. I think he is now 90% sure it has fixed it.

Total Spending = $951.07
UNDER 1 GRAND!!! I can’t remember if this has ever happened before.

This was a very low spend month but not very frugal because we went out a lot so Entertainment expense was high and for some reason we were craving a lot of Vietnamese food. We spent $287.29 under the Entertainment category. And then DH had few lunches out because there are a lot of people at his work that are left this month, so Allowance spending for the month was $58.95

GROCERY - $179.17 (under our $180 for the month). DH wants us to continue this challenge but I’m a bit reluctant I don’t even really know why. Although, I think this experiment has been really good for us, eating a lot less meat has been really good not just for monetary reason. Actually eating less overall has been an eye opener. It just shows that we might have been over eating. Cutting down on food spending meant we had to be selective and only buying food that is necessary and has high benefits for us. We never went hungry but sometimes I opted to skip some meals if I thought I don’t need to eat yet. I’ve discovered that it is sometimes okay not to eat until your body tells you so. I have been doing a bit of short-term (intermittent) fasting. I think it has been better for my insides too.

The rest we spent on:
Gas - $103.72
Mobile Phone - $30
Household Goods - $96.34
Fuel - $40.70
Train Fare - $100
Personal/Medical - $31.00
Misc - $23.90

No Property Rates – for this month and next month.



~~~2018 GOALS~~~

Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K). – We got to put a bit of money this month because of low spending and 1 extra income. I think another 3 months and we might have this one done.

*Save $4K for Holiday money. – This is probably should have been labelled budget or limit instead of save. N/A this month

*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel. – The same goes with this one. This is a budget and then anything extra goes under future remodelling of the house. Although, lately we have been thinking that we might just sell up and get something smaller and if that happens soon we might sell the house as is.


Other –

*Read 100 books. ---DONE! I never thought I could read more than 1 book a week but apparently I can read 3 books a week and might even be able to do better. Now that I’m used to it I think it is doable for me do read 4-5 books a week. Mindset!

87. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling (6 Jul) – Audio (I actually really enjoyed this audiobook. I was never able to read this book before. I have actually tried reading this book twice before but just could get into it, the same goes with those Twilight books. I know, I probably should be locked-up for admitting this. Lol)
88. Memory Man - David Baldacci (8 Jul)
89. The Joy of Less - Francine Jay (10 Jul)
90. You Can Do It! - Paul Hanna (12 Jul) - Audio
91. Goodbye, Things - Fumio Sasaki (13 Jul)
92. By the Book - Julia Sonneborn (14 Jul)
93. The Art of Tidying Up - Kim Carruthers (17 Jul)
94. Clutter Busting your Life - Brooks Palmer (19 Jul)
95. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak (22 Jul)
96. The Perfect Stranger - Megan Miranda (23 Jul) - Audio
97. The World of Philosophy: Stoics and Epicureans - Daryl Hale (24 Jul) - Audio
98. A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind - Shoukei Matsumoto (25 Jul) - Audio
99. The Secret - Rhonda Byrne (26 Jul)
100. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (31 Jul) – I finally finished this one. It has taken me months to read it. It’s my own copy so I kept putting it aside for the library books.



*Learn Spanish. – Still going


*Workout 3/4 times a week. – Still trying


*Try new recipes every other week. – ummm I can’t remember, I think this might been a no.
**Actually I just went through my blog and I forgot about the brussels sprouts, that was definitely new to us**

*Blogging once per week. – Yes


*Continue Garden/Landscaping. – Too cold still. Only did some weeding in the veggie garden.


*Wake-up early (before 7am) – Yes


*Continue Decluttering. – Major one in the garage for our annual rubbish collection.

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.

~~~~~OOO000OOO~~~~~

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.

ARghh! Lost my post!

Yesterday we got an entitlement and acceptance form for one of DH’s stock. He is entitled to acquire 4 new shares for every 5 existing shares, at an offer price of 20cents per shares. All up it amounted to $110.20. I’ve decided to use the Sunny Day Savings for this.

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I’ve added another goal for this year – to read at least 5 books per month. Right now I am re-reading “The Magic of Thinking Big”. I have not read this for about 15 years. This was the first ‘self-help’ book that I read. Someone gave this book to my mum in the early 90’s and just sat in the bookshelf for years until one day (I must have been bored) I picked it up. I’ve probably read 100 self-help books since then.

Yesterday we got an entitlement and acceptance form for one of DH's stock. He is entitled to acquire 4 new shares for every 5 existing shares, at an offer price of 20cents per new shares. All up it amounted to $110.20. I've decided to take this out of the Sunny Day savings.

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I've decided to add another goal this year. To read at least 5 books a month. At the moment I am re-reading "The Magic of Thinking Big". I can't remember that last time I read this book, maybe 15 years ago. It is probably the first 'self-help' book that I read. I remember someone gave this to my mum in the early 90's and it just sat in the bookshelf for years, until one day I guess I was bored and picked it up.

A week ago a friend of mine lend me "The Twilight" books. I didn't like the movies (I couldn't finish watching the second one) so I'm going to give the books a try.

This only comes twice a year. I love getting either the cheques or the statements in the mail it’s like getting Christmas cards. Got the first statement yesterday for over $300 dollar, it was re-invested and got 54 more shares for it. I expect to get more of these statements in the next month or so.

Nothing else is happening here financially. I am just waiting for tomorrow, it will be PAYDAY! I’m looking forward to putting some money into the mortgage.

It should have been NSD again today until I got too lazy to cook dinner. We had a bit of left over and there are even some stuff in the freezer but I got a craving for Thai curry. I called DH to get some on his way home, $12.90. I will take this out of my allowance money to be fair.

I spent some time this afternoon trying to log on to my retirement fund but for some reason it wouldn't let me. I will have to give them a call tomorrow.

I also checked my managed funds, it is slowly going up. I only put $200 per month so I don't really expect much from it but it is good to know that it is going in the right direction.

Costco - $108
Aldi - $16.45
Fruit Shop - $3
Dinner Out for a friend's birthday - $110

After that spending we decided not to go anywhere on Sunday.

Today should be a NSD too.

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I decided to buy some shares today.

Bought some shares, not much, only got less than $600 worth. I'm honest enough to know that I am bottom picking here. It's a geothermal company, it has been as high as $2.20 but it has been recently as low as 15cents. I got 2000 shares at 0.28 as it bouncing back up. I honestly don't know where this stock will go from here but I think the upcoming carbon tax (if it goes ahead or not) will have an impact on it. Either way, I think I like to support this type of company.

Our new air conditioner was installed this morning. I had to pay an extra $150 to have the outdoor unit on a brace up rather than just having it on the ground. It is right by the drive way and it sticks out a bit so just in case, since there is not much room for our big car. Better safe than sorry I guess. Last night DH sent out the form to get a $200 pre-paid visa, it was a deal that came with the Fujitsu brand of air conditioner. I was really happy with the price we got the air conditioner for, with this $200 rebate, it end up less than half price than its normal retail price. Unfortunately, the installation cost end up more than the unit itself. Weird. We could have got a cheaper installer but since the store gurantee this installer for 5years we went with him. He was really good and very helpful. We still need to get the hole from the old unit fix.

2 more days until pay day. I'm counting.

I went to the city today to finally get that haircut that I'm in desperate need of. Then afterwards I meet up with Dh for lunch. The weather today is terrible but it was good to get out of the house.

Today we received a cheque in the mail worth $300, this was unexpected money. I don't remember getting info about this, neither has DH. This was for a "special" dividend for one of DH's stock. Normally he has a DRP for this stock but for this special dividend it does not qualify for DRP. Either way we will take, it is 100% franked already too.

I will have to wait tonight to talk to DH on what we should do with this money. Right now I'm thinking mortgage. DH will probably want to re-invest it, it will be his decision since it is his stock.

On another news, our interest only mortgage has ended, so we are now variable which is roughly $1800 a month. We do intend to keep paying more than this.

Just received another check from one of our stock, we normally have a DRP with this stock but they have postponed it at the moment. Cash is good too, we could used some more for christmas.

Today should hopefully be another NSD, this would make this 3 in the row this week.

Nothing really much happened here in the last few days. The weekend was a bit spendy with christmas lunch with dear friends and a lot of christmas shopping. I have not been as prepared for christmas this year, but luckily we have decided to keep it low key this year. So it has not been stressfull at all. Well, not yet anyway.

We got everything done but starting on the painting the ceiling in the study. I'm hoping to get this started this weekend. One thing that I got too busy with was knitting. I decided to take up knitting, I've never done it before but I thought I could use a scarf at the moment. So far I am enjoying it. I bought the needles for $3 and $7 on the wool/material. I'm finding it relaxing to do while watching tv. Hopefully this is a new hobby that I can do that doesn't cost too much money.

Another thing that we did on the weekend was spend money on eating out, there goes the no eating out for the month challenge. Although this was already planned over a month ago.

Yesterday was DH's payday, he got few hundred dollars extra for overtime work. He doesn't normally get overtime so this was nice. It will go towards buying some shares. I did my stock reasearch and have decided that we will get two stocks. One is a mining company and the other is an employment agency company, both are mid-cap shares. So we decided to only buy ~$1000 worth so hopefully we will still have another $1000 to put into the mortgage. So the question about which one to spend the money on, we decided on both instead. With DH's extra pay it makes it easier to go this route.

At this stage we will probably have about $1,800 - $2000 extra this month. Which we call as money into "savings". Starting this month we were going to put this money into our mortgage as extra payments. However, at the moment the stock market is looking good for an entry. So at this stage, I'm thinking of buying more shares instead of paying the mortgage. DH doesn't mind either way.

I guess it doesn't really matter. Our big 5 year goals at the moment is to hopefully pay off the mortage in the next 5 years or at least have enough cash in the savings to pay it off (this goal is really ambitious but doable we really work hard at it) and to also have $100K worth of stocks not including what's in our retirement/superannuation funds. So, either way we are still working towards our goal.

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Right now I got corned beef cooking in the slow cooker. I will roast some vegies later to go with it for dinner. It's over a kilo so we will probably have it for few days. I am looking forward to having it in a sandwich for lunch tomorrow. yumm.

Friday I did absolutely nothing but went to work. I went to bed really early, I've been really tired lately.

Yesterday we did the grocery shopping and we also went to check out some new fridges, we are looking at getting a new one soonish. We were just trying to get an idea on what is out there, we probably won't get one for another year but it's good to start looking into it.

These are the things I've done so far this weekend apart from shopping:

1. 2 loads of laundry.
2. A lot of cooking - I think half of my cooking for the coming week is already done.
3. Cleaned the kitchen benches.
4. Watered the garden.

I'm aiming to still do the following today:
1. Ironing (Half-way through)
2. Clean the bathrooms (DONE)
3. Do some cleaning in the garage.
4. Vaccuming
5. Mopping the kitchen floor (DONE)

--------------------------------

Stock Talk:

It's company reporting season at the moment here, which means dividends are being paid. I think all up I got about $300 worth of dividends, and DH got more than $500. A lot of it has been reinvested via DRP or will soon be used to buy more shares.

Our stock market is still going up. Our economy have now recovered, they even increased our interest rate by 25 basis points few days ago, which means our mortgage payments will start to go up again (I've always known that the low rate will not last that long, it was nice though but I've always made sure that we didn't get used to it). The recent employment numbers were a lot better than expected too. People here are seeing a lot of positives in our economy which is being reflected in the stock market. DH and I already got our plans set up for when this opportunity were to come up.

DH just received $194.60 dividend for one of his stock, it will all be reinvested.

Most of our dividends are being paid this time of the year & I love it.

Stock market talk - could be boring for some.

I'm just thinking out loud here, just sorting out information in my head.

Few entries back I talked about my share portfolio. It is still doing well and it is now up 31%. The Australian stock market has been going up for 3 weeks up without a decent retracement. SO you know sooner or later this thing will need to go down. Right now there is this urge of selling all or some of my shares, but really I don't want to do this because:
1) I still think they could still go up in the long-run and I don't mind keeping these investments for few years yet.
2) Capital Gains Tax is also an issue - most of them are less than 12 months old therefore here in Australia I will have to pay full tax on them (here if it is more than 12 months you only need to pay CGT on 50% of them).
3) They are all about to pay dividends in the next month or so. That should be another 3-5% increase in the portfolio.

The option that I am leaning at the moment, instead of selling up, is to maybe cover some of it by going short on the Aust index (futures contract). And at the same time just keep moving up those stop loss order.

I got to do more research.

A year ago, when the share market was sliding down and our mortgage interest rate was being reduce month after month, DH and I decide to stop putting extra money into the mortgage and start buying individual shares instead. So, 12 months ago I opened a trading account with a low cost online brokerage fee. It's under my name for tax purposes.

Well it has been a year and I thought I should analyse the result so far. Our mortgage interest rate at the moment is at around 5.5% (for some reason I can't find the latest statement, I don't know where DH put it - found it and its actually 5.04%). Overall, I end up buying 5 different stocks, some of which I average in and some was bought because the company did capital raising scheme and some was also increase because of DRP. The last shares I bought was back in early May. I just check the account and it is currently up 27%, not including about ~$100 cash (some of our stocks don't do DRP) received in dividends.

So overall, it was a pretty good decision in our part to divert cash to equity instead of paying extra to the mortgage. The year or so before that when our mortgage was almost 9% (and when the share market was too expensive for us), we put as much money into it. And we will probably start doing that again when the interest rate start going up again, there's been some talk of interest rate going up in the media already.

NB: We are very aware that this "decision" could have gone the opposite way too. And who knows what the market will do tomorrow or next month.

*Here in Australia the situation is a bit different to that in the US.*

I bought some yesterday, well actually the order was put in over two weeks ago. In the last week the Australian market has been going down and the stock I bought finally hit my price yesterday. It was for only ~$500 worth. I normally get around $2K parcels but this stock is a small cap (high risk), but it got great potential so I was only willing to commit 1/4 of normal investment capital. I'm planning to keep it for at least 5 years. Historically they pay pretty good dividend.

Now I just hope the market will start going back up. Although I think this recent run down could keep going until next week. Our market went up quite a bit from it's March low and now need to retrace.

Well the $500 will come out from my Sunny Day Savings.

We didn't need a new tyre after all, they just had to plug the hole. It only cost $25 in total. So now it's as good as new, according to the repairer guy. It should be our tyre are pretty new, not even two years old.

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DH just got his tax return form, he should be getting $2,000. This is great news, we didn't expect anything. The most maybe couple hundred dollars. Our tax system is a lot diffent to the US, we don't do the witholding thing. Most of these money will go towards funding the household fund. Just in time really because we need a lot of work done around the house. Our dishwasher will definitely need replacing soon, I'm hoping not until next year. We also need some electrical work done. The front garden could also do some work. Oh man the list could go on. Really 2 grand is not enough for what we need done to the house. We are just prioritizing at the moment. Important things will have to come first.

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I finally bought some shares today, I've been waiting to get in for 2 weeks now. Today it finally hit my price. There's another stock that I want to get, just waiting for my right price.



That's all folks!

Well today I got up early and straight away clean the bedroom and put a load of washing in the washing machine, before I had my breakfast.

Yesterday was our end of financial year, so today I wanted to tidy up our finances. I called to get an online account for my managed fund, that took 5mins of waiting. I should get my access info in few days time. Also called my Super (retirement) fund to get access to my online account. I got log out because I forgot my password. That took about another 10mins of waiting. My account went down a bit. Can't wait for this market to turn around.

I'm in the process of calculationg our net worth for the end of the quarter. Had to get the end of yesterday's prices for our shares. I doesn't look good. So far it is not looking good at all. It is not finalise yet, I got to wait for my managed fund and also DH's retirement account. I have to wait for him to check it out.

Even though the numbers are not looking very good, I'm very satisfied at the work I've done today. I really got to keep on top of all these financial accounts we got. Calculating our Net worth every quarter sure keeps me motivated to check our accounts. I just got to get DH to keep up with his accounts too.

On another topic, last week's expenses was not too bad. We had 3 NSD which made it 11 NSD for the month (that's $55.00 towards the Laptop Fund - see My Pages).
The biggest expense was for textbooks, $200 worth. Home phone was also paid and I got train ticket.

I will put up my $20K Challenge later today.

We had a NSD yesterday, and today should also be a NSD (fingers crossed DH doesn't spend any money today). He shouldn't need to fill up the car, he did that the other day. There is no bill due until next week. But we have a birthday lunch to go to on Sat, so I will have to get a gift and lunch will cost a bit. We also need to get some more milk and maybe some bread.

I'm looking at getting some shares next week or so. I took some money from saving to put into my trading account. Some of it is the money from the car fund. Since we are not looking at getting another car for at least another 5 years, I rather use some of the money to get some shares. I put $5,000 in the account; $1,700 is from the car fund. I left $300 in the fund for the upcoming car service cost. I guess I will find out in the future whether this was a good idea or not. I don't think I will loss all $1,700, if for some reason it is not going the right way then I can always pull it out. Also I should also be able to getting some dividends.

Enrolment was done the other day. Payment is not due until late next month so we should have enough money for it if I put extra money in it this month and next month. Will be doing 2 subjects and it will cost over $2,000.
Have a great day everyone!

Finally opened 2 managed funds (1 domestic and the other international). I used the $2,000 that we got from selling some of DH's company shares. I've opted to put in $200 per month, so $100 for each fund.

Hope to keep these funds for many years to come.

Well, we managed to stay under budget. We still got just over $21 left in the Xmas fund.
I think I will use the left over for NY eve celebration. Our christmas was good, ate too much as per usual. Spent most of it buying great gifts. Just love giving gifts. It's great to have money set a side for this kind of occassions, no stress at all. We will be doing it again next year. I'm thinking of putting $70 p/month for it.

I'm still tinkering with my spending plan for next year, pretty much done. I'm getting really excited about next year, we will be focusing more on investing and saving. There will be quiet a bit of money coming in around early next year.

We are about to open 2 managed funds (maybe be 2?), domestic and international. Pretty much decided which once ones we want to get, we already got the money set aside for it (from the company shares that we sold few months ago). We will then be putting $100 p/m for each funds. Hoping to keep these for at least 10years or more, maybe until retirement. We'll see.

Overall, our spending this year has been very good, way better than the previous years. But I would like to do even better next year. I've already told DH of an idea I got on lowering our expenses (it will be our personal challenge for 2008), he seems to be with me in this one. I am in the process of putting together a plan to achieve this goal/challenge. And will blog about it once it's done. In my head it's achievable!

He will be getting some company shares, worth around $700+. That pushes us over the $5,000 mark, which means Goal #9 is now done.