My Simple Financial Plan

Was out all day on the 4th of Oct but I did cleaned out the fridge and all the rubbish bin for collection.

Today was spent all day at work. But tonight I will:
1. Pay couple of bills (DONE)
2. Clean the kitchen sink spotless (DONE)

I actually managed to finish all my to do list yesterday. The ironing got done late last night.

Today I want to do:
1. Clean the freezer (DONE)
2. Do about an hour gardening (DONE)
3. Grocery Shopping (DONE)
4. Go to the bank to deposit a dividend cheque (DONE)
5. Do some cooking for sunday night because we will be away all day tomorrow. (Didn't need to do it coz mum gave us some leftovers when we went to her place for lunch so - kind of DONE)
6. Make coriander pesto - to use up all the remaining coriander herbs. (DONE - turned out really good, I freeze some of it and will use it in a week or two).


Got to run to the bank now, it's going to be a busy Saturday.

I got more than 5 things to do today.

1. Menu Planning for Oct (have started)(DONE)
2. Grocery List for Oct (DONE)
3. Ironing (DONE)
4. Sewing- fixing a dress (DONE)
5. Clean closet (DONE)
6. Clean study desk (DONE)
7. Mop kitchen floor (DONE)

Things that I've done so far today:
- Check online bank account (DONE)
A load of washing (DONE - it's now drying outside)
- Finalise Sept numbers (DONE)
- Blog about Sept numbers and update sidebar(DONE)

1. Grocery bill under $200, by sticking to the Menu Plan and by only buying what is in the Grocery List.

2. Entertainment exp no more than $100

3. Living expenses under $1,100

4. Spring Cleaning

5. Blog more often to stay motivated.

As can be seen on my side bar our Sept Exp was through the roof. A lot of our expenses are due in Sept and because it is the start of the warmer season everyone wants to go out. There are a lot of birthdays and celebrations that happens in Sept too. Christmas and New year babies.

We are now in the red with our Entertainment budget for the year and there are still 3 months to go. We really got to do better this month or we will never make our $19K challenge this year. Spent a bit more on groceries but a lot of it will use in Oct. So I expect to have a very low grocery bill this month but we might be getting visitors so who knows how well we will go.

Good news was that we still managed to have 8 NSDs last month.

Spent a lot of money again on the weekend. This is becoming a habit for us, buying too much stuff on weekends, and it has to stop. I will have to make a list of things that we bought this month, it's not pretty.

Apart from shopping too much on Saturday we also did a lot of gardening on Sunday. DH planted a lemon tree and I planted a tomato. DH also bought a blueberry bush, hopefully we can plant it sometime this week. We've never had berries before (except for strawberries), so this should be interesting. It was only $8, and DH really wanted to try it.

Nothing much else happened here, there are a lot of bills this month. Our quarterly property rate is due this week, and utilities are a lot more this month because of annual fees. I can't wait for this month to finish, October should be so much better than this month.

I've decided not to waste my time with the veggie garden this summer. According to the experts this is going to be a very hot summer. We just don't have enough water to have a veggie garden. Hopefully this time next year we will have a water tank but unfortunately that is not our priority right now. I also want to spend most of my energy this summer on doing more house repairs/renovations instead. I think if I plant too much it will get neglected, and it will just be a waste of time and money.

I'm thinking of still planting a couple of tomato plants and keep up with my herb garden and other plants that is already in the ground. Also DH want to get and plant a fruit tree or lime/lemon tree this year. We will probably get one and plant it this weekend. I really miss our fruit trees (esp the fig tree), we had to get rid off it because it was in a bad spot.

Hopefully the weather will be nice this weekend for gardening, we need to get our garden and lawn prep before the really hot weather comes. This should have been done a month ago but we got too busy and on our free time the weather hasn't been as co-operative.

DH won a $30 Gift card last week from work, and it didn't cost him anything. They were celebrating some milestone at work and was just giving a lot of prizes. Many people got movie tickets, alcohol and gift cards.

The one he got was for Bunnings (a one stop shop Hardware Store). We spent it by buying new filters for our under the counter/sink water filter.

Our holiday cost was just few cents below $1,930. It was worth every cents. Our accommodation was expensive but was very nice, the view from the balconies (it had 2) was priceless. Hopefully next time we go to this side of the country I'll be game enough to snorkel at the Great Barrier Reef.

We got back couple of days ago but was too busy to blog. I haven't even uploaded any of our photos from the holiday yet. We had a great time, and the bonus was that we went way below our budget. I budget $2,500 but only spent less than 2 grand. We saved a lot by cooking all our meals, we didn't eat out at all, only spent some on some snacks. We could have saved more, but the food in the island on average costs about 2 to 3 times more than want it is normally at home. The costs for activities were pretty reasonable. We did a lot of swimming, kayaking, hiking, cruising around the island with a golf buggy and just relaxing while watching the sunset. We also went on a boat cruise to "find Nemo" at the coral reefs.

Hopefully, in the next few days I can finalise everything and might even put up some photos.

I tried this out last month and it worked out so well that I decided to keep doing it for this month too. I've never really done a whole month menu planning before, I think the most I've done in the past was for 2 weeks. I like that I only spent about 1/2 hour writting it out and I even got some input from DH. For some reason he is craving for maccaroni and cheese, weird man!

I really like how I just get up in the morning, look at the menu list and just take out the meat (if required) from the freezer. It really helps me from agonizing on what to cook for dinner that night. This way I make the menu list and then from that I spend about 15 mins writting out the shopping list. A lot less work doing it this way than weekly or even every other week. Well so far so good anyway. The biggest reward for doing a menu plan and then having a grocery list based on that menu plan is the savings we make from reduce grocery bill. Last month we only spend $196.10, our lowest grocery bill since Jan. I don't know why I don't make menu plan all the time when it saves me so much time and money. Pure laziness I guess, which is stupid cause by having one I actually spend less time thinking about what to cook every night.

Interesting topic BA.

I guess it depends on how you define frugality, if it means always buying the cheaps item then that's not us; or if it means always watching our money then that's not us; or if it means always thinking only about the future then that is not us either. Mmmm...maybe we are not frugal at all.

This is what we normally do:

We don't always buy the cheapest thing in the market. No matter how cheap an item is, if it doesn't taste good or it doesn't work then it just become a waste, and that is just not frugal to us.

We are not a "brand name" snobs either. Sometimes this saying can be true: "Only the rich can buy cheap". For us it mostly about quality rather than quantity, don't really care about its brand name. Most of the time it can cost less in the long run. A RayBan sunglasses that DH bought back in 2000 for almost $200 is still in very good condition despite how many times he has dropped it and wears it practically everyday.

For us it's all about having a balance life style. Eventhough we put money away for our future we also have no qualms about spending our hard earn money today either. If it's within our budget then why not spend it, especially on something that we value, like date nights or holidays. Our relationship is more important to us than money.

So I think overall we are not uber-frugal but mindful about where our money goes.

I personally do love doing up the budget, I just love working with the numbers. I just love thinking about what we can do/buy with the money. It is not necessarily about things that we want to buy really. Most of the time I dream about which stocks I can buy for the money I save from spending less on groceries or from lowering utility bills. I just love buying shares

Saving = $1,000 which was put into the mortgage account.

Also, $1,190 into the Household Fund.

All left over money from Aug to Nov will be allocated this way - $1000 into saving and the rest into the household fund. In Dec it will be put into Xmas/Anniversay Fund for 2010.

I've been thinking a lot lately about our 2010 goals, I have even spoken to DH about it already. He seems to be all for it, he is easily persuaded though. Initially, we were just going to have similar goals as what we have this year but now we are really eager to finish all our major renovations by mid-next year because we are getting sick and tired of living in a place that is always "under construction".

So next year we will postpone putting money into the EF. We currently have $8K in it, which cover about 6 mnths worth of living expenses. It should be enough for now and we will continue funding it again in 2011. Car fund will have to stop for a year also. We are not planning to get a new car for another 4-5 years. Right now we have about $5,000 in it so anything untowards were to happen with our current car we got that to fall back on. Well, that's what we are thinking at the moment, I guess we got another 4 months to finalize our goals for 2010.

Better go and update my side bar.

Oh by the way we had 11 NSDs in August.

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.

Got a phone call from our internet provider, they are calling again to get us to sign up for a 12-month contract with a 10% off. Last time they called I think they wanted 24 months, which DH said No to. This time DH agreed for the 12-month deal. They will also give us $10 credit per month for 6 months on our home phone, it is with the same provider. It is about $120 worth of saving for us.

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I've been enjoying reading everyone's $1K lists.

I think the only thing worth over 1K before I meet DH was my second hand car that was worth $2K. And I guess my education, which I haven't fully paid off yet anyway. DH and I spend a lot on our education almost every year on both formal and informal studies.

Apart from the House and Car which is really DH's purchases. Here's ours list, the ones that I can remember:

Wedding/Rings/Honeymoon ~$20K

Bed Set (Mattress, Bed frame, 2 bedside tables, and Tallboy) - $2.7K great sale price

Gift to Parent - $2K (2002)

Overseas Holiday - $3K

Laptop - $1.2K but it included wireless router and powerboard w/ surcharge and also got some tax refund for it, so this probably ended up to be less than $1K

Interstate Holiday - $1.3K

LPG Convertion for the Car - $2.4K but got 2K rebate back from the gov't and we have also saved so much more from reducing our fuel cost.

Gift to Parent - $4K (2008)

Dental Surgery ~$2K it included Hospital excess pay, but I did get some rebate so all up it would have been around that.

New Gutter - $2.9K

Roof Restoration - $1.3K

Gift to relative for hospital cost for major medical surgery - $3K (2008)

Electrical work - $1.9K (2009) There is more work that needs to be done here but hoping it won't be as much as this.

Repairs and renovation -$2.9K (so far this year). This incl plumbing work and materials, we did most of the labour ourselves.

*I call them "gift" because it is better to think of them that way, no resentment. I really don't believe in lending money to family and friends, it ruins relationships. We gave away quite a bit of money last year, but we were lucky too last year because we earnt so much more than expected. I've never talked about this before, not even here. I believe in helping out because we have been there before too and we were lucky to have someone help us out just for the seek of helping out without expecting anything back.

A lot of our big purchases is for house improvement and holidays. I'm amaze that a lot of our holidays didn't make the list. We do have our upcoming holiday that will most likely cost around $2.5K.

That's all I can think of for now, I don't think there's any left really.

We decided to start putting our monthly savings into our mortgage redraw again, starting this month. It is most likely that our interest rate will go up before the end of the year. So we want to put some extra money in it to keep within our current payments.

I've mentioned before how for a year now we been putting our monthly savings into the stock market. Lately, I haven't been able to find another stock to buy, not that I'm looking that hard though. I'm really waiting for the market to retrace a bit before getting in again. In the mean time there are few grand in the trading account waiting for the next buy. But we won't be putting any more money in it for the next few months, maybe not until next year again.

Sunday (which was yesterday here) was spent working around the house. DH and I got up late and had a very late breakfast. DH decided then to clean the gutter and resealed a couple of the joints where it has been leaking a bit. I on the other hand did some weeding in the herb garden and tidying up the front garden, raking leaves and pulling some more weeds. DH was also planning to do some spraying at the back but it's very windy around here at the moment so hoping he will get that done next weekend. I'm hoping we can get rid of the weeds in the next month coz I want to aerate the lawn soil and then spread more grass seeds before it gets too hot again.

The herbs are doing really well at the moment, I got some coriander (cilantro), flat parsley and rosemary. I just planted some basil last week, I don't know if they will survive, probably a bit early for them. The capsicums (bell peppers) are also doing well considering I haven't really been looking after it. There are about a dozen of them in just 2 small plants. I was going to pick 2 of them yesterday but the bee buzzing around kept me out.

All up we spent almost 3 hours outside working, it was nice weather except for the wind. Afterwards we had our afternoon tea in front of the tv watching Australian football. It was just a very nice Sunday at home and it was a NSD.

It was a very tiring day, DH and I spent the whole day shopping. Spending (and making) money can be tiring. Got some really nice bargain today though. We bought:
An engagement gift for next week for $29 (down from $70)
Slazenger sunglasses for DH, good for when he plays tennis or go running - only $15 down from $100, 85% off!
I also got 2 sunglasses, I only really was planning to get 1 but it was such a good price that I decided to get 2 coz I couldn't decided which one to get and plus it was within my budget. I budgeted $200 for a new sunglasses. I ended up paying just over $203 for a Gucci and an Oroton brand. I'm normally not that into brand names but these were good and most importantly actually fit my face. Besides the only other ones that I liked and fitted my face was already around $170-$199. Also the Oroton one is prescriptibles, it will be nice to wear sunglasses without having to have contact lenses on, which I hate wearing.
We also stopped by at Aldi, the tomatoes and mushrooms were really cheap today. Only spent $21.22 on groceries today. We should have enough food for the rest of the month.

Well that was our Saturday, now I'm beat and all I want now is to eat dinner and watch tv all night.

Costco just opened its first ever store here in Australia yesterday. Its first store is in Melbourne so it is not that far from where we are. Apparently there were some people that drove for hours just to go to Costco. I'm not sure if I want to pay $60 (Aust dollar) just to have a look. I don't think we buy enough to make it worthy of becoming a member. I think I will wait and see what it is like in few months time. I still think this is good for increasing competion around here. We need it.

We had a big weekend spent way too much at Nobu, but it was so good. We really didn't do much because the weather was horrible, raining and really windy.

Not much to update these days. We've been pretty good with NSDs so far this month.

We will be going out to Nubo Japanese restaurant this weekend for some celebration so that will be quite pricey.

The Aust market is still going up like crazy, I've closed out my short trade. Loss some from it but the up side of my individual shares more than covered by almost 3 times. The portfolio just hit 40% profit today, I really doubt that this will stay up this high though.

Nothing much happening here. Just paid off our accommodation for our next vacation.

We haven't been grocery shopping for over 2 weeks, apart from getting milk, bread and that, I just been using up whatever we got in the pantry and freezer. But I think we really need to go this weekend. I might make a menu plan and shopping list later today.

Just heard from the news that our employment numbers are a lot better than expected. Our economy is looking a lot better that before and this could mean an increase to our interest rate by the end of the year. We have definitely avoided the recession here in Australia.

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.

The actual trip it self wasn't as much as I expected it to be, it was about $100 less than I anticipated (all up we spent just under $310. What cost a bit that wasn't in my budget was when I broke my favourite sunnies . While trying to put my gear on I dropped it and simultaneously took a step forward, with my ski boot on I stepped on it breaking it into several pieces. There was no rescuing it. I bought that thing less than 3 years ago for $180, so that was the unexpected cost. I will need a new one before we go away for our vacation to the Whitsundays (to the beach) in few weeks time . I was actually thinking already of getting a new one (with prescription) this christmas. I guess I will be getting it earlier than planned but I will just get an ordinary sunnies and keep wearing contact lenses. I was also already planning to get my new prescription glass this month but I think I might get them around Christmas time and I think I will get one with transition lenses instead. I seem to have a lot to think about .

Fortunately and unfortunately it wasn't sunny, so I didn't really need my sunglasses but it wasn't the best condition for skiing. There wasn't much fresh snow so it was more ice. This is not the best snow field in Victoria, and we would definitely will go somewhere else next time. The place took almost 4 hours to get to, next time I would rather we go to the ones that take 6 hours or so but nicer resorts. I would also prefer to go for few days rather than just a day trip to get more time on the snow.



Not the best weather. Loved watching the kids and some adults getting ski and snow board lessons.

I decided to put everything extra into the Holiday Fund, which was $1260. There should be enough money in it now for our upcoming holiday.

Anything extra in the next 3 months will all go towards the Household Fund, that is quite deflated at the moment and there are a lot of work we need done this summer.

July recap:
* Had 10 NSD.
* Spent a bit too much on junk/miscellanous stuff.
* Utilities (Gas & Electricity) were through the roof.
* Everything else were not too bad - just a typical month.

- Just updated my sidebar -

We needed it. This weekend day trip will be pricey. But we really need to get away and try to enjoy ourselves. DH has been working so hard lately and really need to enjoy life a bit.

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.*

We spent a bit of money this weekend. We bought some clothes and eat out a lot. The eating out was bad, we really didn't need to do that much eating out... regrets, regrets.

Early Saturday morning I got woken up by the beeping of our security alarm. It needed a new battery, that cost us $40. While out getting the new battery we also got some noodles for dinner. We didn't feel like cooking at all this weekend. The only thing I cooked this weekend was the carrot cake. It was such a naughty weekend. I'm sure having regrets right now. Oh well live and learn.

The only good news was I managed to only spend $32 on grocery this week.

We've had 3 NSD in the row, I didn't even realised it until today. Today should be a spend day though. I asked DH to get some stuff for me today and I'm pretty sure he will need to fill up the car again today. Tomorrow we will need to go to the market to get some meat and fresh produce. I also want to go shopping for some stuff for our get away.

It is almost the end of July and it is time to start thinking about Christmas. Yes...that's right! I said Christmas. It is only just around the corner, so I am starting to think about it now. Luckily we have the funds set a side for it and all have to do now is make a list of what to get people and what to make. And also whether we will be spending it at home or somewhere else.

DH earned some extra money this month (couple hundred dollars on overtime) and we are thinking of spending it on a day trip.

The trip will probably cost a bit more than couple hundred dollars so we might have to take some out from our allowances or holiday fund.

There is nothing really to update here. I'm still trying to save as much from our grocery budget. It is slowly getting better but I think we might to have a challenge next month to only spend $150-$180 on grocery. It will require a lot of planning but I think it can be done. It would mean doing menu planning again.