My Simple Financial Plan

Our Prime Minister just got ousted by his party and now we have a woman PM. It is a very interesting time for our country. We will most likely have a federal election before the year end.

This has obviously been on TV all day and I've just been glued to it.


Financially, I can't wait to finalise this month's numbers. One more week.

It is currently 12:30am (Sunday morning), I'm staying up this late because I am currently watching the world cup (Aus v Ghana). I really don't know why I'm up this late, I'm not even really into soccer that much and really Australia has got no hope at all. But Dh is making me so I thought to may as well spend some time here. I've really got nothing to report. Today we went hiking for about 3 hours by a river about 1/2 an hour away from our house. We took food with us and had a picnic. We did however spent some money on coffee and chips afterwards which will come out from our allowances. We also stopped by at a nearby winery, I actually like some of their wines and bought 1 bottle. DH also bought a bottle of their tawny, he sometimes have some of this type of drink at night, it helps him relax.

Tomorrow, I'm thinking of going to the movies. I should really be painting that ceiling but I've kind of lost interest in it. It's probably too cold at the moment for painting anyway. I will probably change my mind about it again tomorrow. Geez, I'm just rambling on now it might be time to go to bed.

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.

We got up really late this morning because we stayed up until 2am watching the soccer world cup game of South Africa v Mexico. When I got up it was actually very sunny, although looking outside the ground is wet and there were some dark clouds in the distance. So, we made the decision to go out today instead of tomorrow. We took corned beef sandwich, hard boiled eggs and other snacks. It actually rained a bit on our way there but once we got there the sun was out again. This place we went to specialise more on native Australian animals. We got to watch a live show about Birds of Prey, seeing a wedgetail eagle flying just inches above our heads was really cool.

Here are a couple of photos I took - enjoy:



These birds are amazing!



Afterwards we stopped by at a couple of wineries for wine tasting, always a bonus when visiting the Yarra Valley.

Here in Australia, we got a 3-day weekend because it is the Queen's Birthday(funny thing is that her birthday is actually in April!) but any excuse to have a day off from work is fine by me.

We are thinking of going away for a day trip to one of the zoo/wild life place in our state. It won't cost us a thing this time because earlier this year we bought a year pass that allow us entry to some of the main zoos in Australia. We are thinking of bringing our own food so this shouldn't cost us a thing except for gas. The only thing that is not very good at the moment is the weather, it has been very cold and has been raining all week and there are more to come tomorrow. Hopefully, we can go on Sunday. If the weather doesn't clear up I don't think I would want to go. We will probably just go to the movies, we haven't been for so long and I also got few free tickets, some we got from christmas and my recent birthday.

Other thing that I plan to do this weekend is to prune some trees around the house and maybe go to a nursery to buy a fruit tree to plant. I also want to start cleaning the study ceiling for hopefully painting it sometime next week. It's a small area so it shouldn't take long. I guess the hard part will probably be moving the stuff out of the room so they don't get covered in paint.

And of course we also need to do our usual grocery shopping, and would like to do some cooking as well. And I would also like to do some more stock research. I actually did some today, I might blog about it over the weekend.

Reading through this list it seems a lot, well we will just try to get through it.

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.

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

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.

Our weekend was spent grocery shopping. I wanted to cook something special instead of going out to eat. I decided to make seafood paella. I ended up spending a bit on seafood, we got some prawns, calamari, fish, mussels and also got a dozen oysters. The oysters were made into kilpatrick. I think we spent a bit over $30 on seafoods alone. Luckily we already got the stuff I need for the paella including the spanish rice and saffron. I also used some of that chicken stock I made few days ago.

I only used half of the mussels and fish, so I also cooked mussels by itself and made the left over fish into Thai fish cakes, yummy!

So, Saturday night we had a lovely dinner of paella and a bottle of wine.

Today I think we might have company for dinner, I'm thinking of making meatloaf.

I got the day off today so I though I would do some cooking. I had a whole chicken in the freezer which is taking too much room so I though I should use it up. I had all other ingredients at hand and also managed to picked a handfull of vegies from the garden (capsicum, beans, and parsley). I ended up cooking the butter chicken by using the chicken breasts and the rest I made into casserole. The casserole is in the slower cooker at the moment. I also made some chicken stock out of the carcass. I will probably make soup out of it on the weekend. I also cooked some rice to go with the butter chicken for dinner tonight.

I don't know why I stopped doing this, I used to do pre-cooking a lot in the past. I've been really lazy about it this year. I've got no doubt this will help us cut down on spending a bit this month. And you know what it saves me time too. Most things were done in just over an hour and that was including the cleaning up. The rest is just waiting for things to actually cook.

Last night, DH and I talked about trying to have a no eating out this month, except for couple of time when we are invited to something already. One of it will be this Saturday, I don't think we need to spend money on food though. Pre-cooking meals should really help with this, I think we will get 5-6 meals out of today's cooking. Some will be put in the freezer.

Told DH that we both need to do better with our budget this month.



Hopefully this month we won't need to spend money on medical bills.

TO DO (MAY):
- Fully fund Household Fund for the year - another $1,935 to go. (DONE)
- Read 2 books (Only 1 - was too busy swimming instead)
- Do 10Km on the exercise bike (I'm pretty sure I manage to do 10Km including the ones I did when we were on our holiday)
- Clean closet, put away summer clothes. (Half done)

TO DO (JUNE):
- 15km on the exercise bike.
- Other types of exercise for 2 hours a week.
- Read 3 books!...hmmm lol
- Clearing/cleaning the whole garden such as trimming branches, weeding, spraying, fertilizing and some planting for winter.

We are over budget again but at least it is not as bad as last month. Again the main culprit is the medical expense and entertainment of course. Luckily winter is here and this normally means less going out for us and hopefully the entertainment budget can recover.




Accomplishment this month:
- Goal #3 is now DONE.
- Have started Goal #4 early with $960 deposit.

Things need improvement next month:
- Need more NSD, only got 3 this month.
- Need to stay under budget.

Saturday morning, DH and I went to my bank to deposit couple of check both were stock dividends. The line was as always in that bank. After we went to another bank to open a new joint account, finally there is a bank is Australia that offer no monthly fees for a classic saving account. Never in my life have I encounter one. The process of opening one didn’t take that long at all, but the waiting to see the lady took over half an hour. The guy before us took FOREVER! He won’t stop talking to her about goodness what, and she obviously didn’t want to be rude to him. Hopefully, by July I won’t have to pay anymore bank fee.

Saturday afternoon, we went to Aldi to get milk, eggs and bread then we went to another shop to get fruits and vegetables. We got something for DH’s new hobby, it cost couple hundred dollars and it will be his early b-day, xmas gift, etc for this year. We also went window shopping...

Sunday, we decided to get a new TV, I know crazy right? I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned here that we been wanting to get a decent tv for more than 5 years now. The last tv set we got was worth $150, it was a no name brand, 20inch CRT tv (no fancy thing like widescreen or digital). Because it's not widescreen we cannot see some of the stuff that's on tv. Also in Australia everything is going to be in digital soon, so the old tv will not work unless you have set top box to convert it. And the one we got before that was a 2nd hand one worth $100, I think it was probably made in the 80’s. So, in the last 5years or so we’ve thought about getting a good 21st century TV. We both didn’t like the LCDs and Plasma because of how much electricity it uses. Few years ago I read about LED which is more energy efficient. So we waited and waited and waited because we also were not going to buy it until the price is right for us. Well, anyway on Sunday I guess everything aligned for us. We managed to negotiate the price down by quite a bit and we also got some extra free stuff with it. We are both very happy with our purchase.

DH went to his last physio today, thank goodness coz it cost $55 a pop and that's after our private health insurance pay for some of it. DH is still trying to get reimburse for all this medical expense from work. I have a feeling it will take a while for it to happen and that assume that it will actually get some money back from his work.

Paid some bills yesterday, the big one was for our property rate, it was $297 for the quarter. DH also filled up the car. It this point I pretty much can finalise our May spending, except we might need to buy milk and bread tomorrow. I'm kind of eager to finalise May now but there is actually still 3 days to go.

A lot has happened to us this month that I don’t even know where to start telling you about it. 3 weeks ago we had to go interstate for an emergency because of DH’s grandmother, she was critical in the hospital, luckily she is now recovering. Without hesitation we flew out few hours after hearing the news. We stayed with my in-laws for few days, our accommodation and most of our foods were covered. We still however, spent all up $770+ on airfares, car rental, taxis, and a bit on food. I’ve decided that this money will come out of our Emergency Fund. I will probably repay the EF at the end of the year. I just want to achieve all my financial goals this year first before I do anything else.

2 weeks ago we went to Fiji for our holiday this year... it was fantastic! We stayed for a week, and spent a bit too much. We went over our budget by over $600! Oops! I have decided to take this money from our Sunny day savings. Our Sunny Day saving is for anything that we really feel like spending it on. In the past I’ve mainly used it to buy some shares. This is where my $5 per NSD normally goes into and in the past I used to also put $200 a month into it but I have currently stopped this regular monthly deposit. Despite the overspending we really enjoyed our holiday and wished we stayed longer (I will try to post some photos on the weekend).

It feels like we haven’t been home at all this month. Financially, it is going to be a so-so month, there are some big bills due like our quarterly property rates/tax and a lot of medical bills for DH’s injury. Also, in the last few days DH and I haven’t been feeling too good. I think it is probably from too much travelling and the change in the weather, luckily we haven’t really spent any money for it and we are now recovering well.

Hopefully, I will be able to catch up on everyone’s blog in the next few days. I missed you all.

Our May budget, there are too many things going on at the moment so I don't know how we are going to go this month.




Oh I forgot to update my sidebar, I will do it now.

April was again a really bad month. It was mainly due to DH’s injury. He needed to get an ultrasound (although that was free) and a MRI (that cost about $260), and few doctor visits and several Physio visit (and still going). All up we’ve now spent over $500 on it but hopefully DH’s work will reimburse for some of them, since he qualifies for worker’s compensation. DH didn’t really ask for reimbursement but they are actually offering it, which is very nice of them. For now though I am including this expenses in the April actual (and some was also spent in March) until we actually get the reimburse money, just in case. Plus, I don’t think DH would worry too much to get back every cent. Hopefully we will get the money back in this month’s pay check and when we do I will just deduct that amount to this month’s total.



I actually achieve most of my goal in April except for some of the non-financial ones.

Financially, I put in:
- $300 was put into the Anniversary/Xmas Fund, so Goal #1 for this year is DONE
- $1100 into the Holiday Fund - $500 came from DH's bonus money and the rest came from saving this month. So now Goal #2 has now been ticked off.
- $1000 to the Car Fund – Most of DH’s bonus was put in here. This was really unexpected money so we both decided to put most of it here because we will most likely need a new car soon..
- The rest was then added into the Household Fund.

I think I will update my side bar later I got to go.

We just found out that DH will be getting a bonus from work sometime this month. It's not much, after super/retirement money and tax gets taken out we are hoping to get around $1,500 net. We will be using some of it as our spending money for our holiday. Oh yeah, we will be going overseas for our holiday this year. Both the airfare and accommodation has been paid for, we just need some spending money. We shouldn't need much, DH and I have been saving some of our spending money for it too. So far I've saved up about $100 and I think DH has been stashing away almost $200. I don't think we really need much, we will just be staying at the resort and our breakfast is already paid for.

The rest of the bonus money will go in the car fund. At this stage we will take $500 out of the bonus money as our spending money but anything left over will be put in my trading account maybe.

I've really got nothing else much to update about, our smart meter is now in action. So far the electricity has gone off twice.

We've had a bit of health issues in the last month or so, it has cost a lot of money, sent a bit going to the doctors, physio, acupuncture, and of course meds. So again we are over our budget this month.

This is a bit late, been so busy here with easter holiday. We have people over, which ruined our March budget. It's ugly, I don't know how we are going to get back on track , we are about 5% over the budget (the 19K challenge)at the moment. We were over by $439 last month, luckily we earned a lot more income. Although this doesn't really help with our 19K challenge, I guess this is the beauty of this challenge, no matter how much we earn we will try to keep our expenses at this level. We will try anyway...

March actual



April budget



TO DO (Mar):
- Put $300 into Xmas Fund (DONE)
- Put $300 into Holiday Fund (DONE)
- $1,500 into Household Fund (DONE - $2700 for the month yippeee)
- Read 2 books (done 1 1/2)
- Go for a swim and jogging or hiking (not much got done here maybe only 50% of what I really wanted to do).
- Clean outside area (DONE)


I will change/post my April to do list on my sidebar.

Man, I didn't recognised my blog at all. It looks so different.

It's nice but I think it will take me a bit of time to get used to this new set up.

We are about to get our electric meter change to smart meter. I think we are one of the first area that will be getting it in our state.

They say that this will be more accurate and that we won't have a guy coming in to our property every three months.

I don't know how this will affect our electric bill. According to the power company we will get a more accurate reading and therefore it will be cheaper. Of course they would say that. But obviously, this change will cost money and I have no doubt that it will be us consumers that will have to pay for it in the end.

Just received a reminder notice for gas bill. Apparently we are 1 month over due. What the? Where the heck is the actual bill? Plus gas bill is normally due every other month, so it should have been due this month not last month.

This month sux - car problems, health issues and now this. I can't wait for this month to be over.

On the positive, we should be getting extra income this month because of dividends and should also be receiving some money owing to us.

We are having car problem at the moment. This is the bad news. Although my March car challenge is looking pretty good right now since the car haven't been used at all this month, it's not working. There's not much I can do about it but laugh really.

The repair cost a lot and our car fund has deflated. We are now seriously looking at getting another slightly newer car. We got a lot to think about at the moment. I really don't want to get another car yet but it might be the best course of action for us.

I feel like we are spending/ wasting a lot of money this year, we really need to get our act together. Here's hoping the rest of the year will be better.

Our budget for this month:




To do list (the same as last month:

- Put $300 into Xmas Fund
- Put $300 into Holiday Fund
- $1,500 into Household Fund
- Read 2 books
- Go on a day trip (maybe twice)
- Cont. cleaning outside area.

Budget vs Actual: we just made it!




Feb to do list:
- Put $300 into Xmas Fund (DONE)
- Put $300 into Holiday Fund (DONE)
- $1,500 into Household Fund (DONE - even managed to put in extra $65)
- Read 2 books (Failed - Still reading the first book)
- Go for a swim and jogging or hiking (DONE - I was really good, have done some physical activities in Feb, I hope to continue it again in March. I've been recording my activities on the Wii Fit)
- Clean outside area (Done a lot but still got a lot to do - to be continue...)

So far so good, 2 down 10 months to go...


Ohh I almost forgot about the eat at home challenge - we did okay 24 out of 28.

Yesterday was our valentine's day and chinese new year here. We went out to check out the chinese new year celebration in the city. Couldn't help ourselves but we had to try out some of the yummy food they had for sale, I think we spent less than $20 inc parking. So, yesterday was another points off for me in the Feb challenge. We also spent a bit more than what I budgeted for valentine's day gift, but in a long run it will actually save us some money since it is something that we both really wanted to get this year.

So far 3 points off the challenge for me.

We ate out 4 times during our weekend away so that's minus 2 points for me in the Feb challenge. The actual money spent was not that much at all though, less than $70 dollars all up.

Today I am openning a new trading account my old one now doesn't exists. I don't really know what happen to it. Nothing else much happening around here, it is hot so I am just trying to keep cool.

So far so good, but this weekend will ruin it But I will try my best to come out with minimum damage as possible.

Also we've had 2 NSDs so far this month.

I'm looking forward to this month, it will be a lot better than last month.



Feb To Do List:
(very similar to last month)

- Put $300 into Xmas Fund
- Put $300 into Holiday Fund
- $1,500 into Household Fund
- Read 2 books
- Go for swim and jogging or hiking.
- Clean/Clear the outside area.

We actually went under our overall budget in January mainly due to lowering our annual car insurance. If it wasn't for that we would have been over.



Edit: I'm just adding this here too:
TO DO (Jan):
- Put $300 into Xmas Fund (DONE)
- Put $300 into Holiday Fund (DONE)
- $1,000 into Household Fund (DONE)
- Read 1 book - currently reading "Start Over Finish Rich" - Thanks BA for the link. (DONE - A bit too basic for me but it is good to see that we are doing the right things. A lot of the info just don't concern us, but I am used to reading US books and I tend to just skip through those part).
- Go for a swim and jogging (DONE except for the jogging part but we went for a lot of long walks).

Just looked at our networth (finalise) as at 31 of Dec 2009. I know it is a bit late but we just got our statements for our retirement accounts. Anyway to my suprise we actually now above $250K networth. This is such a milestone for us.

---------

Nothing much is happening here. Been doing a lot outdoor activities, we are taking advantage of the good weather. Health wise it is really good for us but it also means spending a bit. Nothing too extravagant though.

---------

We are also trying to organise our holiday for this year, haven't decide yet, just looking at our options. Our options will depend on how much money we got to spend for it.

We got our annual car insurance bill earlier this month and it went up again to $707. It is due very soon. I really wasn't happy about paying that much for it, so I got DH to look at a better deal online last night. He found one for $565, there are some differences in the contract but nothing too extreme, overall really it is very similar. I think the excess is a bit higher but nothing that we can't handle especially now that we got a reasonable car fund. So couple hours work saved us almost $150.