FEBRUARY NUMBERS –
Mortgage was $918.79.
Other Expenses totalled $1,338.76, I love Feb it’s normally a very low expense month. There was no utilities bill due this month.

Books – Not as many as Jan but I started another 3 books around the same time last month - don’t know why I did that. Also in the last week or so we decided to try out Foxtel (cable), so instead of reading I’ve been catching up on GOT, The Walking Dead, Wentworth and so many other shows that only on Foxtel. We only got the free trial for 2 weeks, ending this Friday so I’m trying to watch it as much as I can humanly do.
Kill Switch - Steven Lee (4 Feb)
The Whisper of Stars -Nick Jones (8 Feb)
The Devil's Secret - T.G. Stevens (10 Feb)
Someone to Love - Jude Deveraux (15 Feb)
Avoidables - Rachel Medhurst (18 Feb)


*Workout 4 times a week – did alright on this. I’ve finished the program that I was following and I’ve now again started it, another 4 months of it.

*Continue the 'no buying soft drinks' rule this year. Still haven’t bought any.

*Get back to blogging, at least once per week. Done

*Re-do landscaping in both front and back yard. Still working on it, this will be a year-long projects.

*Use floss and piksters everyday. Have not failed yet

*Wake-up before 7am. I’m failing at this miserably.

*Continue getting rid of "Stuff". Still doing well I got another big bag of stuff I need to take to goodwill. I’ve also shredded a lot of papers.

*Organise my emails. I still need to do this and worst thing is that in the last few months I’ve been getting a bit of spams.

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.

We just paid the Home and Car Insurance for the year all up it was $1325.09. I have always liked how we pay these couple of big expenses at the start of the year, good to get it out of the way.

This waking up at 5am on weekdays is hard getting used to. We did it 3 out of 5 last week and so far this week 1 out of 3. We got woken up by the doggy at 2am this morning and DH had problem getting back to sleep so we decided to sleep in until 7. I actually feel more tired today that I slept in. I tend to have more energy when I get up at 5 and I end up getting so much more work done. Work in progress, hopefully another month and it will get a lot easier.

DH got paid yesterday, he put another $2K into the mortgage and 2 weeks ago he paid $1200. We are currently now just under $3K. 3 more weeks it will be all gone!

Hello everyone it has been almost one and a half years since I wrote an entry here. I think it's time that I come back to the blogging world. On NYE it would have been my 10 year anniversary here so I think this start of the New Year is great time to get back to blogging.

Few things have happened while I have been away here. In my last post DH just started a new job, unfortunately he only lasted 3 months at that place. The company was not a very good fit for DH, so he quit back in Sept 2015. It took him 6 months to start another job. In between those jobs we went overseas for a month. We ended up buying a land there, main reason why we went overseas. And our mortgage owing went from around $12K back up to $37K (we got a redraw account).

Last year (2016) DH got a job in late March. Since then we have been paying the mortgage back as much as we can. Our biggest expense in 2016 was replacing most of our fences. All up including getting the land surveyed it cost us $5.5K. Right now our mortgage is down to less than $7K. We are hoping to be able to pay it off by maybe end of next month. DH will have a 3 pay month (instead of 2) this month. Unfortunately, the original plan of paying the mortgage off in late 2015 (DH's 40th) didn't happen but we are still very happy about finally seeing the end of the mortgage debt.

Anyway, I aim to blog at least once a week this year as one of my goal for 2017.

It has been a crazy busy last 5 weeks. Back in April DH decided to give 4 weeks notice at work, we'll actually he stayed an extra 3 days because a co-worker requested he stay until he comes back from his holiday. On his last day of that work he got a job interview and did a psychometric test the next day and got the job offer that night. He started the new job less than a week after he finished the previous job.

The new job requires a bit of travel and he is meant to be stationed overseas to be the head of the office over there but last week that has been delayed because a client here in Australia have requested that he stay here for a while. DH really wants to experience living and working overseas that's why he took this job, and it is quite a step up position for him too. Money wise it will be the same as the previous job, depending on the exchange rate it might be a bit better take home pay.

When he took this job we decided to do a list of things that we desperately need to fix/replace around our home before we can move. Unfortunately, I had to do and deal most of it. A week in the job DH was asked to travel for over a week and when he has been home he had to work extra hours and the travel and long hours have taken a toll on his health, he has been battling with this annoying cold for two weeks now.

Anyway, the jury is still out on this new job, there are some positives (in particular experiencing living and working overseas and DH are learning new things) but there are also some negatives and questionable things about the company. DH will just take it one day at the time.

One great thing of him finding a job right away is that last month's income was almost double because he received his last pay from previous job plus annual leave pay. It helped with the expenses of repair in the house, the biggest expense was for replacement of our external sliding door, that was for $2,000 including installation. I think we've spent another $800 on other little repairs we have done in couple of rooms in the house.

We also decided to put in $2,000 into the mortgage out of that extra income last month. After last week's mortgage payment we are now currently under $15k owing on our house.

Mortgage Payment went through yesterday.
Mortgage Payment = $1,218.00
Principal =$1, 126.86
Interest = $91. 14 (YES! Less than $100)

The Australian Reserved Bank lowered the interest rate today to an all time record low of 2%. At this rate we are starting to think of taking some money out of the mortgage Redraw Account to invest on shares instead. It's very tempting.

It has been a busy week. It was my birthday last week. We spent a bit of money. To say it was a spendy weekend is an understatement. But I scored some really cool presents. DH spoilt me on my birthday. We over indulged, it wasn't planed but we truly enjoyed it anyway. The best thing l got is a Samsung Note with S - pen . It's a nifty gadget. DH picked it, he did all the research and found a pretty descent deal online. He found one that was $130 cheaper than that were in the shops. I'm absolutely loving it. I've used all of my saved allowance money for it and the rest will come out of gift category of the budget, $160. My allowance money added to just under $500 and then the in-laws gave me $100, which I added in as well.

Another thing that got is a new phone, I have now officially joined the 21st century. That was for $88 unlocked, so I'm just using the same sim card as before. I don't think I will bother getting a data for it yet. I will just use our wi-fi at home. I don't think I will be using it much since I have the note and laptop to use at home. And if I'm away from home 95% of the time I'm with DH so I can just use his. My friends also spoilt me. I got Gold class tickets to the movies, a book gift card, a bottle of wine and mum got me a mattress protector.

DH also took me out to dinner on my actual birthday and then we went to a winery with some friends and also to dinner with some of them on Saturday night.

Oh I forgot to mentioned (just really busy at the moment) that DH put some money into the mortgage to get it under $20K. His mum told him that they don't need to borrow money to paint there house. The weather at there place is so crazy at the moment, their power was off for few days because of the massive storm they got. A lot of people in there area is flooded, luckily for them they are on top of a hill. Anyway, I think they will just wait until the weather is warmer again to get it done. DH used the tax refund and that extra pay this month to put $5,600 which make the mortgage balance down to $19,974.99

Time to get back to blogging, hi everyone! Life been busy lately but I still try to keep up with our finances.

The last time I blogged my brother was still living with us. He moved out late September. It doesn’t feel like anything has changed really, he was never really here that much and when he was here he was really quiet and just keeps to himself in his room talking to his gf/ friends.

Last year we budgeted to only spend $21,500 on our 'living expenses'. I decided on this amount and that start of the year before my brother moved in with us for 6 months. In the end we over spent to the total of $22,850.We were over by $1,350 but my brother actually gave us $200 a month to cover for his utilities and food, a total of $1,200. So in total we were really only $150 over.

The main focus for us last year was paying as much as we can on our mortgage. We paid off just over $40,900. The current balance is just under $28,000, this includes another couple thousand dollars that we have paid off since the start of the year. We will have to decide in July if we want to just pay it off. It will depend on DH's job. His current jobs will most likely finish end of June unless his employment gets extended again or if he kind find another job. He is now looking been applying for a new job but IT jobs is a bit slow at the moment though, it will take him awhile but we are hoping he can find one before June.

I have been very busy with our stock market trading/investing stuff. Our goal for a while now was to pay off the house and have $100k worth of investments by the time DH turns 40 (DH turns 40 in Oct this year). The house is not quite paid off yet but we have hit the $100K mark in our equity investments. I guess the step is to get it to the $200K mark. I'm hoping we could get there by my 40th, which is just over 2 years from now. This might be a bit ambitious but I think once the mortgage is gone we can throw more money on it and if the market continue to go up then anything is possible, but of course it could go the other way too.

That's it for now. I should be able to finalise Feb spending tomorrow.

I forgot to mention that we put an extra $1700 into the mortgage last week. I know, I said I was going to just save the cash and just pay anything extra to it at the end of the year. Well, I just couldn't wait to get us under $50K. Well that will be it for the next 5 months or so.

Even just paying the normal pay it should get us to $45K balance by the end of the year, which indecently about where we need to be to achieve Goal#1.

Balance at the moment is $49,976.24
This should go down further in either Friday or Monday.

Mortgage payment went through earlier last week. It was $1218, $232.58 for interest and $985.42 for the principal. I still can't put any extra into it this month.

DH's job is still really iffy at the moment. Everyone that is in his team is waiting to see if they will still have a job. They already know that their contracts will not be renewed. They are getting rid of contract workers, so they are proposing to offer people a fixed 1 year full time job. Some people's contract is finishing the end of this month but they still haven't found out what the new rate for this fixed full time deal will be. It will be for sure lower than what they get now. And the worse thing about this deal is they will not get a redundancy pay out at the end of the term, so it will be worst than a full time job rate. The money has to be slightly higher than full time rate for it to be worth considering. It is doubtful that it will be. DH's boss, who is in the same boat as DH and who's contract is finishing the end of the month, has been going back and forth negotiating with the his new boss (who is implementing all these changes) for 3 months now. He doesn't really care if people are going to stay or go.

They are looking at replacing the current system that everyone is working on, so the new management doesn't care too much for the contract workers, they have been treated like they are not part of the company now. Their problem though is they haven't really found a new system (that will be off the shelf) to replace the current system, this system by the way deals with 2 billion dollar payments so it's not child play but these new bosses doesn't seems to get it. Fair dinkum, one thinks that there should be no different if you were dealing with 2 million. lol
So, basically they still need all the people that is left (which is now less than half to what it used to be 2 years ago). DH who is the team leader has been covering a lot of the work that those people that have left used to do. Not only he has to do his job but he now has to do the Business Analyst job, data management and even do a bit of testing work and also if there are any questions/problems from the customer he has to deal with it.

DH's contract doesn't end until end of Sept but he will get the same deal as the people that end this month. Although there could be a chance that the company will just push forward everyone else's contract to end this month and offer this new rate to everyone at the same date. Either way DH will be moving on sooner or later. There is obviously no future for him or the other employees in this company, they are not offering anyone at all to work on the eventual new system. At the moment, DH will consider staying if the rate is at least reasonable until he will get a new job, if it is too low, he will most likely just quit and spend more of his time looking for a new job instead.

We have been through this before so we are not panicking. DH quit his previous job without any lined up but was hired right away in this current job. And he has been through long term unemployment before, we survived that we will survive this too. At least this time we are prepared. This is why I'm always putting paying the mortgage off and savings first in our goals every year. All that hard work is for this time. Don't get me wrong, it would have been great if this were to happen next year when the mortgage is paid off. So for now that extra payment to the mortgage is at halt but I'm very determine to still pay it off by October next year (DH's 40th).

Oh, this weekend was a long-weekend for us (Queen's birthday), DH spent most of Saturday applying for jobs. And he is also studying to get some certificate that he believes he needs to apply for more jobs.

DH's pay came 2 days ago, normally I would put some of it to the mortgage but this time around DH used more than $3500 of it to buy more shares. He received an entitlement offer earlier in the month for this share and it is due on Friday. Now that our mortgage is only around $50K we are not as worried of the interest we pay per month. I'm actually thinking of hoarding cash instead of pre-paying the mortgage every month, I think I might just save it and then pay a big amount at the end of the year.

Anyway, this share offer is for $6.75 per share but right now it is at $7.38 so not a bad offer.

Another reason that I want to hoard cash right now is because DH is a bit iffy about his job. Hopefully things will improve at his work but just in case.

Now that is cold outside DH and I are not doing as much running, so we decided to look for a workout we can do inside. DH already do weights at least 2 times a week I sometimes do it with him but I'm not great at it. I also get on the exercise bike but I get a bit sore on the bottom if stay on it for too long, I like to use it for warm up and warm down. Anyway on the weekend we tried out an exercise that is similar to Tapout on youtube. We quite liked it so last night DH bought the first version of tapout on ebay for $46.

Apart from doing a bit of working out on the weekend we also went shopping grocery and shopping for Mother's day gift. We also spent couple of hours watching my brother play footy (Australian Rules Football), he plays competitively in the amateur league. Unfortunately they lost to the top of the ladder team and he got injured in the first quarter, he got kicked in the shin and it bruised the bone according to their trainer guy. He kept playing though but he was very sore after.

Yesterday the mortgage payment for this month went through.
Paid= $1218
Principal = $981.25 (getting closer to $1K)
Interest = $236.75
Balance = $52,661.66

Normal monthly payment - $1218
Interest - $268.53
Principal - $949.47
Current Balance - $56,142.91

On Monday we got our electric bill, so much better than the water bill drama http://shiela.savingadvice.com/2014/03/05/plumbing-drama_107579/ this one was at least $54.07 in credit because of our solar panels. I'm enjoying it for now it will not be the same next time because the days are getting shorter as we are heading towards winter plus my brother moving with us will sure adds a little towards the electric usage.

Speaking of my brother, he already gave me $200 for the months expenses. He wanted to give me more but I think $200 should be enough. I don't know what to do with this money at the money. I think with a bit of work and a bit of sacrifice we might be able to stay within our yearly budget without being too much over because of my brother. So for now I'm not adding this money to my excel spreadsheet. I will probably change my mine later, will see.

Our private health insurance is going up by a massive amount next month (as they do this time every year), it will be going up from around $273 to almost $350. Yikes! yikes! I hate it!!! So I got DH to go into their office on Tuesday during his lunch break to see what other options we got. If we drop some items that we don't really need at the moment we could get it down to $240 (this is around middle the road option) We have not sign up on it yet, DH wants to look at other health insurance company that might be even more reasonable.

On the mortgage news, DH got paid yesterday so we paid another $5K into the mortgage. A bit more this time because of the tax refund that we got, as I mentioned in my previous post. We are now under $60K

I actually wanted to put a little bit more but DH bought some shares (Entitlement Offer of one of his shares), not a bad deal so it was hard to passed up. He spent $837.50 on it.

We still got just over $500 left-over for the month (we use zero-based budgeting) whatever is left I will put under goal#2 household fund, there is only $1,000 left to achieve that goal for the year.

Arggh. I forgot to copy my post and it got eaten. I hate when that happen!

Was taking about our mortgage which got paid earlier this week.

$1218 normal monthly payment
$257.79 was interest
$960.21 to principal

Can't wait to see the principal hit $1K. This month (or should I say last month) was shorter so more went to the principal. According to my excel spreadsheet we should hit that $1K mark in June, if not definitely July. I prefer this principal to interest ratio a lot better than when it was reversed.


Note: Forgot to mention that I've updated my side bar with my goals for this year.

Overall we were under budget



Had 11 NSDs for the month and put in $560 into Goal #4. Also paid some extra into the mortgage.

Yesterday and the day before were both NSDs.

Today I decided to pay an extra $2000 int the mortgage.

Nothing much is happening here, I'm just trying to recover from a cold.

Mortgage got paid few days ago.

Paid = $1218
Interest = $548.39
Principal = $669.61
Current Balance = $111,130.37

DH actually got paid on Friday, it is for only 2 days worth. This is because of the christmas break he only worked 2 days for that week. And because they paid him for 3 weeks worth before the christmas (which I'm accounting for in this month's income).

====================

Yesterday should have been a NSD but I was silly and decided to stop at KFC for burger and chips after our run, I been wanting some for days. I wish I didn't it wasn't that good, DH didn't even have any, not even 1 chip. We came home and he made himself quinoa and tuna salad.

The run was really good until my shin started getting really tight, I thought I was going to get cramp. I thought I was going to run it in 35 minutes but ended up finishing it in 40mins . I've always have problem with my shin, I need to stretch it better.

The weather is going to hot here again today (38 celcius), not as bad compare to NSW where it is going to be 46 in some area of the state. There are still some fire burning around our state. Tasmania however was devastated by the bush fire, there is a whole town that has been wiped out.

Payday was on Friday, it was a day less worth of pay because of a public holiday.

Paid the car registration for another year. It just keep going up every year. Almost $700 now, I remember paying only half of that when I first started driving.

Last night I decided to put another $1000 into the mortgage. I really want to put more but maybe by the end of the year just incase something else comes up.

Nothing else much happening here, just waiting for christmas to come. We will have 5 day weekend because DH won't need to go to work on the 24th and 26this boxing day here, which is a public holiday.

Regular monthly mortgage payment:
Paid = $1218.00
Interest =$558.20
Principal = $659.80
Current Balance = $113,299.98 (I haven't posted this here for a while).

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.

Put in another $1,500 into the mortgage last night.
Current balance is now just under $114K.

Good news for the first time ever this month more than half of the pay of our normal monthly mortgage payment went to principal.

October payment = $1218
Interest = $609.45
Principal = $608.55 (it was so close to it last month)


November payment = $1218
Interest = $595.48
Principal = $622.52 (YEAH!!!)

Grocery - $95.48 (under $114.52)
Utilities - $189.36 (over $9.36)
Rates - $142.00 (under $0.46)
Home Phone - $14.95 (under $10.05)
Mobile - $15.00 (under $15.00)
Internet - $49.95 (under $0.05)
Fuel & Fare - $222.61 (over $22.61)
Health Insurance -$249.21 (under $0.79)
Entertainment -$249.21 (over $59.45)
Gifts -$32.00 (under $68.00)
Personal/Medical - $29.95 (under $70.05)
DH Allowance -$100.00 (even)
DW Allowance - $75.00 (even)
Miscellaneous - $3.69 (under $26.31)

TOTAL = $1,448.19 (under $213.81)

Had 8 NSDs.
Put in more money into the mortgage.
Holiday Fund goal is now done.
Have also put a bit into the Household Fund.
We went away twice last month, at the start of the month and at the end.

DH got paid on Friday and he put in another $3,000 into the mortgage. So happy because we are not under the $120K mark in our mortgage and that means Goal #1 is DONE! It’s good to get that out of the way, so much earlier than I expected. When I came up with this goal at the start of the year I thought it was going to be really hard to get it knowing that income will be few thousands lower than last year. The interest rate cuts this year helped a bit in achieving this goal easier, unlike last year where interest rate went up few times throughout the year.

Mortgage Current Balance = $119,690.85

I deposited my cheque on Friday as well it probably won’t get through to the account until Tuesday. So I went to the city to do it and had a late lunch with DH (just a quick sushi near his work) and then afterwards just did a bit of window shopping in a hope to get ideas for Christmas gifts and was also looking to get a birthday gift for DH but I could find it. I think can only get it online these days. I did get a free vegetable peeler just for watching this guy in one of the department store demonstrating a set of knives for about 5 mins. I needed to take a break from all the walking that I’ve done by that stage anyway (I did really well this day with my walking challenge). I then meet up with DH and few of his workmate for drinks. We went to a nice German pub for happy hour they had a really nice refreshing beer. And then after that DH and I went to have dumplings for dinner (less than $15 for dinner and a can of coke, great value). I think the whole day only ended of spending about $50, not bad (DH covered the drinks and I picked up the bill for the dumplings). We both got a bit saved up of our allowance at this stage so we don’t mind spending a bit of it, although I still want to save up as much of my allowance for when we go on holiday sometime next year.

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12 Sept: 10,414 steps (getting to 10K is getting easier now )

13 Sept: 11,251 steps

14 Sept: 18,087 (the window shopping did it, although my legs that night was so sore I had to get a massage)

15 Sept: 10,256 (took it easy yesterday, my legs needed to recover a bit)

Regular monthly mortgage payment:
Paid = $1218.00
Interest =$653.60
Principal = $564.40
Current Balance = $124,690.85 (Yes we are now below $125K)

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I did pretty well yesterday with my 10,000 steps challenge (Steptember).
4 Sept: 11,257 steps
I did a bit of walking around the city yesterday so it was not hard to get to 10K. However, I think it will be hard to do when I’m just at home I have to make sure I keep moving around. I woke up an hour earlier today, so hopefully that will help a bit.

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Lastnight I made couscous and chickpea salad. I put in some kalamata olives, mint, parsley and lemon juice. It went well with the beef casserole. DH is not big on couscous but he still eat it. We have a lot of mint, parsley and coriander in the garden at the moment, so I've been putting those in everything at the moment.

Yes!

Paid $2000 into the mortgage.
Current Balance = $125,255.25

Close to being under $125K

Our monthly mortgage payment went through today.
Paid = $1218.00
Interest =$666.00 (yikes!)
Principal = $552.00
Current Balance = $127,255.25

DH got me up around 4:30am this morning to watch the 100m semis. This is his favourite event because he used to compete nationally in it when he was younger. Afterwards we went back to bed for an hour and got up again around 6:40 to watch the final, thank goodness the event only takes 10 seconds. The showboating however took so much longer. After that DH just went straight to work, I on the other hand went back to sleep and didn’t get up until after 10am, oh my

Yesterday was payday.

DH paid $1500 into the mortgage. A lot less than the $2500 that I hope to pay extra a month but we should be able to achieve Goal#1 even if we only put this much per month. Hopefully we can catch up a bit towards the end of the year. I will probably put about the same amount of money towards the holiday and household fund. We are not going on a big holiday this year so if we need to get cash for emergency we will raid the holiday fund first before touching the actual EF.

Current Mortgage Balance = $127,807.25

I'm not feeling too great at the moment so not much plan for spending this weekend. DH and I both agree to just take it easy he is trying to make sure he doesn't get it.

Mortgage got paid yesterday.

$669.10 = Interest
$548.90 = Principal

Current Balance = $129,307.25