My Simple Financial Plan

Last night DH put all his "special pay" into the mortgage and added few hundred dollar to make this month's principal mortgage payment to $5000!
Just need another ~3,700 for the year.

And since there are only 3 more days left in the month we should have enough money left to get the Car fund to 13K. Just need to minimise spending in this last 3 days.

I'm getting really excited!

Lost my original entry

They finally deposited DH's missing pay! We will transfer it straight to the mortgage either tonight or tomorrow.

Not much is happening here financially. DH bought more shares, probably the last one for the year, not much left in the trading account. There is however one of DH stock going to be liquidating soon, they are being bought out. I think that would amount to just under $1000. DH only bought $500 worth couple of years ago, so almost double his money- not bad, I wish he got more but at that time we didn't have as much money. Plus, it was considered risky stock so we didn't want to put too much into it.

I think starting next year we might be able to start putting $500 a month into our trading accounts. This should be doable without slowing down the mortgage repayment too much.

Here in Australia, there is no incentives to put the mortgage repayment on hold, especially with high interest rate right now (7.11% ours right now, probably one of the lower ones at the moment). In the past when interest rate was low we spent more of our money on buying more shares but right now its best to prepay the mortgage. There are talk about rate going down, if it does go down enough we might change strategy again.

The other day I spent the whole day reading through a prospectus I received for investing in a company Notes. In the end DH and I decided to stick with prepaying the mortgage. The payment for the Notes would have been around 8% p.a., still not enough for us because of the risks to would have. With the mortgage prepayment means a guarantee 7.11% savings for us. But it does gets me excited about the future when we will be able to invest on those type of instruments. Notes would definitely be something I would be interested in investing.

They finally deposited DH's missing pay! I hope to transfer it tonight/tomorrow straight to the mortgage.

Not much happening here financially.

Just replaced the filters in our sink water filter, both filters cost $55. DH is actually getting really good at replacing them. It used to take him hours to do it but now it only took him less than 1 hour.

DH has been really eager to buy more shares. He got 2 stocks the other day. I have to tell him to slow down a bit. We have got a bit of shares in the last few months already. We definitely need to start putting more money into the trading account. But it will have to wait until next year.

Can't wait for this month to finish to finalise everything.

I meant to do a financial update last week but got too busy.

DH pay came while we were on our holiday, and again they forgot to pay him that 1 week that they missed last month. It's starting to get really annoying. Lucky we are not living paycheck to paycheck. DH had to again chase it up, he doesn't have time to waste with these things, especially he had so much to catch up on last week. Anyway, according to DH they will "look into it" (again!)and might have to do a special payment. I hope so.

I paid an extra $2,500 into the mortgage on the weekend. Just got the AMEX bill (not due til mid next month couple days after next payday) and we actually don't owe much. Only really used the CC in the resort, most of the time we either paid cash or used the Pre-paid Visa that we got as a rebate for our airconditioner last month. We used that for DH's suit and other stuff. I think there's still around $20 left on it.

We might even be able to put more into the mortgage if I wait to pay the AMEX on the last day. And will definitely put more if the "special pay" comes. I am really getting excited to get our mortgage under 150,000 and I'm hoping to get there this year. At the moment we still got over 6,300 to get there. $500 - 600 will come from regular payments in the last two months. So I need to come up with another $5,800 to make it.

Another crazy goal that I have right now it to fully fund the car fund this year. We have almost 12K in it and our ultimate goal for this is 15K. We should be able to get 5K for our current car, so 20K for a new car is more than enough. I probably should explain here that some of this 12K is actually in our mortgage redraw account (it helps lower interest rate pay) and some I bought some shares about 4 years ago. It has made a bit of money due to increase in price and DRIP, but I'm not including that profit as part of the car fund.

First priority at the moment is the mortgage. The car fund will definitely be fully funded by early next year, if not this year.

Some photos:

The salt water pool in our resort.


with the pool bar in the background.


Kata Beach


The start of our elephant trekking.


View from our resort.


Banana pancake. DH loved it.


Nai Harn Beach. Where I got my foot massages.

We had a fantastic holiday. It rained on the first day (we got the tail end of the storm from up north – Bangkok area) but for the rest of our holiday the weather was perfect. Apparently, the week before it was raining non-stop, so we were lucky. On the first day when it was raining so hard we spent most of it shopping at a big shopping mall. I got a bit of Christmas shopping done, stuff are a lot cheaper than here in Australia but then again anywhere else is cheaper than here.

We did a lot of swimming, the pool in the our resort is salt water instead of chlorine, which I found so much better. We decided not to go swimming in the ocean though, because of terrible weather it was not very clear and it was very rough. We just walked on the beach and bought some fruits in the near by street vendors. DH got addicted to banana pancakes and coconut juice, they were everywhere and so cheap.

We ended up spending ~$1,400 (although I still need to confirm this when our Amex bill comes, there might be a slight difference due to exchange rate). Around $325 however are christmas/gift spending. So in the end we spend just a bit over $78, $1000 was our budget for spending. Coincidently, we spent $77.21 on duty-free alcohol in Singapore airport, this was a last minute decision to get some. For it we got 2 – 1 litre bottles of Baileys and 1 litre bottle of Chivas Regal, this would have cost over $100 here.

Overall this is what we spent = $3,456.88:

Accommodation - $199.00
Airfares - $1,735.82
Shots - $260.00
Airport Transfers - $75.00
Travel Insurance - $108.63
Holiday Expenses - $1,078.43

Was hoping to only spend $3,000 but because of the shots and insurance it didn't leave us much for spending. Still $1,000 on spending is still very good.

The $325 on top of this expenses was mainly spent on DH suit, that was for $170, it would have cost here for at least $250+. The material feels really good and it fits him perfectly, we've always had problem getting him the perfect pants because his legs are shorter proportion to the rest of his body. Also got couple of Adidas shirts for $6 each, one for DH and one for my brother's birthday present. I also found a bag I been looking for, I got one for only $25, the cheapest I could find them here in Australia was for $60. Also got some stuff for my mum and DH's mum.

Unfortunately/fortunately, our resort was not near the shops so we didn't have as much opportunity to go shopping or to spend too much money! We had to get a taxi or tuk tuk to get to the markets and shopping malls. The resort did have a complimentary tuk tuk every hour that would take you to one of the nearest beach Nai Harn and they had some shops there but not that much. We took advantage of that couple of times, I went there to get my Thai foot massages, 1 hour massage for only 300 Baht (~$10 Aus) compare to the one in the resort which cost over $1,800 Baht (~$60) and then they probably then put an extra 10% for service fee and 7%VAT. The food were 2 to 3 times more expensive in the resort but because the taxi cost around 400-600 Baht one way it was not worthy going somewhere else to eat, unless you are already there for something else. We however found the buffet breakfast to be cheap, we managed to get it for $12 each per day instead of $17 by buying it all in one go. It was really nice that we probably eat too much of it. We found that we didn't really need much for lunch because of having too much for breakfast. We also found it to be cheaper to organise things ourself rather than going through reception, we went on an elephant trekking it cost us half than if we organise it through reception, and it includes free pick-up and drop off. We asked them to dropped us off to the town where we organise our tickets, which is only a block away from where we had to pick up DH's suit, which saved us 400Baht.

Wow this is a long entry. I will try to post photos later, if I don't get too lazy.

Thank goodness.

Had to spend all day yesterday running various virus etc scanner. It took a while but my little baby is back

I have not spent much money in the last 2 days. Today was a NSD.

- Got in the mail today another electric bill, apparently the last bill was only an estimate. I knew the guy that read the meter last month had some problem, he mentioned to me as I was helping him with our gate that he couldn't get a reading, he also mentioned that he did dropped his machine.lol. And another guy had to come and read it again the week after. Anyway, we paid that bill already it was due yesterday. The initial bill was $87+ now the revised bill is for only $66.01. So now we will be credited that $21 in the next bill. The good news is that we did even better, and I'm hoping that we won't have an electric bill in the summer months.

- Laptop is still not fix, Dh will work on it tonight. He thinks it will take a while to fix it.

- Just spent $18 today to get our mail on hold while we are away.

- Dh just converted $50 worth of Thai Baht, unfortunately he picked today when our dollar is at its lowest in the last 12 months. I've asked him to get some last month when it was $1.06 US, now it is around 95cents US dollar. I think it also cost an additional $8 for fee. This is for just in case cash, especially since we will get to Thailand very late that night (almost midnight).

- Daylight saving time started the other here and it has been very hard to get used to so far. I've been getting headaches lately, I don't know it its to do with my wacky sleeping pattern lately. My eyes been really sore and I think this is where the headache is coming from. I might just need to replace my glasses. Probably time to get a new one, it is 5years old. It has a lot of scratches now. I was hoping to wait til next year for a new one but I think it might be best to get one now just before the end of the year when the our health insurance benefits re-adjust (is that the term they used?). May as well use it I guess. I will deal with this when we come back from our holiday.

- Last night dinner was good. We used a voucher, $39 for 2 mains and a bottle of wine. It would have cost us $70, if you discount the left over wine that we couldn't finish. There was probably 1 to 2 glasses left. DH was driving so he could't have too much and I had a headache. Afterwards we went somewhere else for dessert. Spent $5.80 for a flourless cake and hot chocolate, we just shared we were too full by then.

My computer got some nasty virus late last night so I'm using my old computer that switches off when it gets too hot and it doesn't take much for it to get too hot either so I have to keep giving it a break every 10 mins.

Dh tried to figure it out last night. He did managed to save my spreadsheets into a usb stick by using linux (I don't really know how he did it). At least I don't have to worry about trying to figure out all our financial stuff, no way I would remember months worth of info. This is a great reminder that I should be backing up my stuff more often. This was a really bad virus for some reason it hid all my work. And some crazy stuff kept popping up. I was stressing out but luckily DH deal with these kind of stuff at work all the time. He said he has some plan of action but unfortunately it was getting too late for him to fix it last night. He might not get around to it until Tuesday night, we have to go out tonight for DH's birthday. I'm sure he doesn't want to deal with it tonight on his birthday.

In the mail today, I got 2 dividend cheques worth $87 and another dividend worth over $113, this was reinvested (4 extra shares!).

Our football team didn't quiet make it this year. The injuries really killed us. Oh well, there's always next year. And right now I am currently in front of the tv watching the rugby league grand final, I am not as into this game specially since our state team got knocked out last week. Now that footy season is over our attention is starting to switching to cricket. We love to watch sports .

Yesterday morning we got up early and went to the city to have our buffet break. We went to the same hotel that we stayed at on our wedding night. We did contemplate of doing the whole staying in hotel thing but we wanted to save the money instead since we are going on our holiday very soon.

The breakfast was amazing, they have everything you can think of. They make the eggs and pancake right there. Every kind of juice, the rasberry smoothie was so yummy. The fruit platters was great, they even have the chocolate fountain going. Strawberries with chocolate was definitely an unusual thing to have for breakfast. The typical stuff was there too from bacon, toast (with so many different condiments) to bakedbeans, but it also had smoked salmon and pastries and mini muffins. I couldn't try them all or I would have burst!

We spent a bit of money this weekend. We decided to get some new summer pajamas. And DH finally found a new sunglasses. It was for $157, he decided to used his $100 birthday gift he got from his parents and the rest I covered as part of his birthday present from me. I also got him a levis jean for $35, he desperately need another one.

Yesterday's NSD didn't happen. I decided to make chicken satay and needed some coconut cream. So I had to get DH to go to the shop to get me some. Unfortunately he came home with $5.20 worth of snacks (although these are snacks we will probably want to have for tomorrow's grand final game) with the 85 cents can of coconut cream!

Anyway we still ended up with 12 NSDs in the month, not a bad month.

I am starting to get really excited and nervous about tomorrow's game. We are a bit of a die hard. Our opponents are really good but we did finish the year on top of the ladder. So it is going to be very close. This time tomorrow I'm either going to be very happy or sad. I really hope it is the happy part.

Just recieved a $200 pre-paid Visa in the mail. I forgotten about this. This was a manufacture's rebate/promotion when we bought our new air conditioner two months ago. It is something I didn't rely on and so have never taken it off the purchase price (just in case it never eventuate). Anyway it is here and I think it will be perfect to use when we are overseas. We definitely have more than enough for our holiday spending now.

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Today should be another 3 NSD in the row, tomorrow the quartely property tax is due. We have been very good with our entertainment spending this month. It has been the lowest this year. And it just really happen, we haven't force it on anything like that. I think because of the upcoming holiday and a couple of big celebration coming up that we are not craving for it.

This weekend we will be celebrating our anniversary, we've decided to go out for breakfast (a buffet breakfast in one of the big hotel in the city). We decided to go out in the morning instead of for dinner because we want to be home by 2 o'clock in the afternoon to watch our team play in the Australian football grand final. We will be drinking during the game so we most likely won't be able to drive anywhere for dinner that night. Also it will be too crowded around in the city after the game and I don't want to be there.

We made it to 5 NSD in a row, the best thing about it is we weren't even trying, it just happened.

Tonight we are getting pizza for dinner while watching our football team play in the semi-final. I hope they can make it to the final again this year. They are the defending champion, so 2 in a row would be nice.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we have been invited to have dinner at my friend's place, it should be a fun night.

I'm hoping for the 5th one today - half way there

Tomorrow the water bill is due for the quarter so the streak will have to end.

Not spending money means nothing much to blog about. I know boring...

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Update about DH's injuries: his leg is a lot better, he didn't need to see the physio. Thank goodness.
His arm still bothering him especially at the end of the day, after using the mouse all day at work.

We just received this quarter's electric bill and its fantastic! This is what it looked like:

Solar bonus and rebate = $93.63CR (this is the amount the electric company paid us for the energy that we put back into the grid)

Peak usage charge = $53.86
Off-peak usage charge = $37.01
Off-peak Service charge = $15.30
Supply Charge = $66.19
GST = $17.24
Other rebate = $8.04 CR (we get this discount because we have our gas in the same company)

TOTAL AMOUNT DUE = $87.93

I had a looked at the last 2 years bills and we average at $197 per quarter.

So we've saved over $100 in this quarter and this is in the middle of our winter bill and we have slowly been using more of the electric appliances than the gas ones. DH and I are hoping that the summer bill will be even better.

The last bill was $147, that was when we got the solar panels installed half way through it.

At this stage, we still got about 5 years to break-even.

DH's pay yesterday was missing another one week worth so now I can't put in $3000 this month into the mortgage. Everytime I say I'll put big amount of money into the mortgage something always happens that prevents it. Next time I will blog about it afterwards. It sucks getting excited about something and then failing. Because DH is a contract employee he doesn't get paid by the company's HR directly, he has to fax his timesheet to his agency. Anyway, I don't quite understand it but it seems very complicated to me and sometimes DH gets too busy at work that he doesn't fax it right on time. Oh well, at least we are not short, the tax refund helped. The funny thing is that the tax refund is almost exactly the same as the amount missing.

I decided to not put that $500 into my trading account, I'll wait until next month.

Last night I did put in $1000 into the mortgage, that's all we can do for now. We have to pay bills that are due while we are away next month. Since DH next payday won't be until we are away we have to pay those bills out of this pay.

Had a busy day today. Went to the city and while there I deposited my cheque near DH's work. Afterward I meet up with DH. We went to our favourite greek restaurant and then had coffee. It was a beautiful day to be out and about. I got back home at 3pm and decided to clean the house, I even clean the tile grout in the kitchen floor with an old toothbrush. I needed to do a bit of cleaning today because I won't have as much time to do it tomorrow and we got a visitor coming tomorrow afternoon.

DH came home limping tonight, it's the same hamstring as last year (and this is now the 3rd time he has hurt it - the same spot, the first time when he was younger competiting in running). He has done it while running to get the train. He is hoping it is not as bad and icing it like crazy right now. I hope it is not another tear and just a twinge. Just when he is finally getting over his tennis elbow now this. Poor thing, he was very upset when he got home.

Tomorrow is payday!!!

Also tax refund has arrived, DH already cashed in his cheque the other day. I will go to the city tomorrow to do the same. And while I'm in the city DH and I will have our monthly lunch date.

After paying off the accountant fee we got $1841.70. I already decided last month that $1000 will go straight to the mortgage. I'm hoping to put another $1500-2000 on top of that. $500 from the tax refund will go into my trading account. I've decided to do some trading after we get back from our holiday, now that I don't have much to do I should get back to doing that for the rest of the year. The other $340 I'm thinking of put it in the car fund.

We managed to have a NSD yesterday. DH probably was meant to get a hair cut but didn't have time. He will try to go next week.

Didn't do much today but some light cleaning. DH did spend some money for light grocery shopping - he got some milk, bread and snacks. We just been spending the whole afternoon watching our Australian football team's game and now we are just waiting for another game tonight. Tomorrow will also be stuck on the couch watching Australia v Italy in the rugby union world cup. But we will need to go and do a proper grocery shopping tomorrow morning, we really need some fruits and vegs.

I ended up with 3 shots, 2 in my right arm and 1 in the left. They were for hepatitis A, tetanus and pandemic influenza. We ended up paying $260, so $130 each. I've already taken this out of the holiday fund. Now we just need to get travel insurance.

Before going to the doctors last night DH had to also go to his physio for his arm (tennis elbow injury). Thank godness that was fot the last time he has to see him. He has been going for over 2 months now (once a week). He had to pay full price yesterday because we have now used up all the deductables for physiotherapy for the year. It ended up costing him $65, instead of the $22.50 in the previous weeks. i just hope he doesn't get another injury for a long while, then maybe we can finish our renovation.

After yesterday, I really need a NSD today.

Last month I saw the doctor twice. It seems like DH and I have been going to the doctors a lot lately. DH got his ultrasound result for his hip the other day and it is some kind of blood clot (not the scary type) that will just go away by itself. But unfortunately his eye will need surgery, the antiboiotics didn't work. He has to go see an eye specialist. It will just be very minor procedure.

Tonight we got another doctor's appointment, we are going to see the doctor about getting shots for our trip. I'm not looking forward to it. I don't how much it will cost, I won't be suprise if it cost aroung $100 each. This will come out of the holiday fund.

Last night we went crazy and got some KFC. DH also paid for gas bill last night.

I was totally expecting to spend a bit of money on the weekend. As I mentioned in my last post we had a lot planned for the weekend. One of it was to go for lunch next to the casino for my mum's birthday, it cost $150.80 (80 cents more than I thought it would be haha). We had lots of seafoods, steak, chips etc. Afterwards we went gambling and DH and I won just a bit over $400 together. I decided to take the $150 to pay back for the lunch. We decided to stay and go to Nobu for sushi dinner. The rest of the money I was just going to split with DH to add to our allowances but DH opted to put it towards the camera we just bought on Saturday for $150, which I thought was a better idea. Now we only got $5 left of our winnings!

We decided to get a new camera on Saturday because we wanted to upgrade our small camera before going on our holiday. We found a Lumix for $150 (it had a really good discount). I was going to take this money out of the holiday fund but now I don't have to.

Although this weekend will be spendy it should be good.

Tonight I am looking forward to having pizza and beer and just seating in front of the tv watching my favourite Australian football game. We already got a lot of alcohol so will just need the pizza.

Tomorrow night we are going to 50th suprise birthday party. Still need to get the present, will just get $50 gift voucher.

Sunday lunch we are taking my mum for her belated birthday celebration. Eventhough we already went to her place the other night for dinner where she cooked a lot of food, we always like to take her out for her birthday and mother's day. She doesn't go out to fancy places enough so it is always a nice treat for her. DH and I will be paying for it. I'm anticipating it to cost around $150, she invited a couple of her friends and my brother will be there too and will pay for them too. It is a bit pricey but my mum deserve it. She cooks enough for us throughout the year. She loves cooking and sometimes will just come over to drop off some food for us.

I guess our weekend will be a bit busy and pricey.

It's our last day of winter today. And I'm exicted about the warmer weather.

Last night I bought some coupon from groupon and ourdeal. Deals are around 50-60% off. I'm trying to used these site to cut down on our spending on restaurants. We go out at least once a month and spend on average $60-$70. Cost of food is a lot more expensive here than that in Europe or in the US. These daily deal sites are big in the US but it is only just starting to become very popular here in Australia. I love them and will have to tell myself to not get too crazy.

End of the month numbers:
-Only put in an extra $1500 into the mortgage, I was aiming for $2000.
-I did however put in $500 into holiday fund, just in case we will need it on our trip.
-Overall spending this month was fairly good.

We should be able to put more money into the mortgage next month (but then again that's what I said last month!). The tax money should get into our account by then.

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.

It is such a quiet boring day today. Not much to do but at least the weather is fantastic. Just been outside actually, doing some cleaning.

Last night DH had to go see the doctor about his eyelid and a lump around his hip/groin area. He has got an eye infection and will have to take antibiotics in the next 5 days. ANd he will have to get an ultrasound for the lump. Only cost was for antibiotics ($13.40), also the ultrasound should be free. But if the antibiotics doesn't work they might have to get his eyelid cut open. He is not looking forward to this at all.

Today should be a NSD.

Tomorrow we really need to go grocery shopping, need vegs and fruits. Then we go to a restaurant for a birthday dinner tomorrow night. I already got the present but dinner will cost a bit.

We have been spending a lot in the last 2 days!
I feel bad so I decided to put another $500 into the mortgage this month. Best to put it in there before we end up spending it.

So now that we got a new airconditioner we need to get rid of the old one. It will require a bit of work, bricking in the hole outside and patching the wall, which will need plastering and painting.

I think this might be something we can do ourselves when DH's arm feel better. I did get someone in today to get a quote and it will cost $760 (excluding painting). The only thing that I'm not confidient with is the brickwork, but this might be a little project to start learning. If we did do this ourself, I think we could do it for less than $100. The only thing we really need is mortar. We got everything else, we got plenty of spare bricks, plasterboard, tools, etc. But of course, it will take us probably a whole weekend to do it.

Another option we got is to just put a small window in the hole and let some light into the dark side of the room. But I'm not sure how it will look and affect the tv since we do like watching the tv in that dark part of the room.

Has any one ever had to get deal with those old airconditioner? What did you do?

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Finally received the papers for our tax refund to sign and send to the tax office. This is a refund for 2009-10 financial year. Believe it or not we are actually getting better at this. We are normally always 3 years behind on filling out our tax. And even better we are almost finish with the 2010-11, just waiting on a couple more items.

We will get $1800 after accountant fees. I don't think we will actually get the cash until next month. I'm already thinking of putting $1000 into the mortgage. For the rest I will decide later.

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I'm hoping for today to be a NSD

Last night's dinner was great, great value for money. I kind of over-indulge and now paying for it. DH and I went with a couple of friends, so we ended up getting 2 free bottles of wine with our meal vouchers. Since all 3 of them had to drive they couldn't drink too much. It was really nice wine and I didn't want to waste much of it, so I kind of had more than usual.

Only spent $7 for coffee afterwards.

Good food, good company, good time!

Yesterday was DH's payday. Decided to put $1000 into the mortgage last night.

We are going out tonight but it has been paid for already, couple months ago we bought a voucher for 2 for the price of 1 dinner. It will include 4 courses with a bottle of wine included.

Last night we spent a bit of money, $6.95 to rent 6 weekly bluray/DVDs. I think we will do something like this on payday.