My Simple Financial Plan

Got the handyman here right now doing some repairs that should have been done years ago. We finally have some money to do the necessary repairs around here. We just refuse to put any of these stuff on credit, it will take a while but it will be so much better. Right now we got just a bit over $1500 left in the household fund and this job will cost about that much. I'm hoping to put more money in it at the end of the month. And this will be the first item to fund next year. My goal is to put at least $5K next year, that would probably cover some electrical work and insulation replacement. I think it will take us 5 years to do/save for all the items that we want done around the house. This is the first year of doing some repairs. We are just prioritising our to do list. I do wish sometimes to just click my fingers and everything be all done, ohh don't I wish!

Cleaned the cupboard under the sink and wiped the cupboard doors. I also got down on my knees and brush the floor really good. My kitchen is now sparkling.

Now I just got to keep it like this for the next week or so.

I'm in the middle of doing that right now, and I'm so over it! I've done about 7-8 items and still got about 5 to go. And one of the item is so big that I'm not really sure how to tackle it. It is taking me so long to do it. I'm so tired of always losing the end of the tape. Oh well that's enough ranting and better get back to it.

It has been raining heavily and really windy here in the last few days. It seemed to have stopped today. All this water is really good for the plants except the tomatoes. I picked the first tomato for the season and it has a split due to too much water. Apart from that it looks tasty.

This is great time in the garden, everyday there is always new & exciting things to be found. I can now see little capsicum and okra growing. Even that once dying zucchini has now got a baby zucchini growing. And some of the eggplants are almost ready for eating.

Just paid our car registration today worth $593.80

Amex was also paid today worth more than 2 grand

Sigh....

Since the start of the month I have been on a crusade of cleaning/de-cluttering the kitchen. Although somewhat by accident, I didn’t really intend to clean the whole kitchen (I only wanted to clean the pantry), but kind of on a roll now. So in my spare time I have just been taking one area of the kitchen to concentrate on to clean, I think I might have found a way of cleaning that suits my personality. In the past tackling the whole kitchen would have driven me crazy half way through it and would have probably given up.

Anyway, I managed to clean the fridge the other day and then last night I scrubbed the oven spotless, man that took a lot of effort. I think I might tackle the scary cupboard under the sink next.

This month the interest we paid on the mortgage was just over $1,012, that means next month it should be less than the $1K mark. The interest should be going down further for next mortgage payment because the Reserve Bank lowered our rate by full 1% earlier this month, I'm not sure yet whether our bank will honour the full cut amount. Also there is talk that they might even lower it again next month or so. This is of course good news for us.

Our main goal next year is to put as much into to the mortgage. I'm hoping that by the end of next year the interest payment will hit less than $900 per month. Won't that be really great. Maybe the crazy plan of paying off our mortgage in our 30s would be feasible then (about 8 years to go). Man that would be a dream come true for sure! I'm so happy with just the possibility of it actually coming to reality. Even if it takes an extra 2 years or so to pay off it would still be a good achievement for us.

Spent most of my weekend buying christmas presents and I think I'm all done. Just food shopping to go and we don't do most of it until a day before because we tend to get seafood for christmas. That's what people tend to have around here, I mean we still have ham and even occasionally turkey but because it get so hot that slaving in the kitchen with the hot oven on is just not fun. So seafood (in particular prawn/shrimp and lobster) tend to be more the tradition here. You know the "throw a shimp on the barbie" thing. Yeah that's just not a saying for us, Christmas day is normally spent outside BBQing, and it last to the wee hour of night because daylight don't end until about 9-9:30 at night.

I would love to have a white christmas one day.

Got just over $160 left in the Xmas Fund.

Dinner was great tonight. I've been craving for salmon for few days now, so earlier today we went to the market to get some produce and decided to get some salmon. I cooked it for dinner tonight on a bed of steamed silverbeet and a side of mash potato and greek salad. Great tasty and healty dinner. And it was quite cheap too since some vegies and herbs were taken from the garden.

Did some more gardening this afternoon. I planted some more tomatoes and capsicum. Also did some cleaning up. I can now see a couple of baby zucchinis growing. There are a few baby eggplants now too (these were from last year's plant). I tried to take some photos but my camera is not working, I need to charge the batteries.

Oh, I finished cleaning the pantry yesterday. Now I'm thinking of re-organising the rest of the kitchen cupboards.

Managed to clean another shelf on the food pantry. While cleaning I'm also taking note of what we have and what we need. I think we could get by not buying anymore stuff for the pantry until next month. We sure have enough Oats and Muesli, so breakfast is taken care of, except of course for milk. Oil, rice, all kind of flour, sauces, herbs and spices are all well stocked. I just need to get some more salt and nuts.

I don't need to do much grocery shopping except for christmas food shopping this month at all. We will only really need fresh produce and meat. I also think (although I haven't really looked yet) we won't need to buy things for the bathrooms either, we sure have enough toilet paper to last the next 2 months.

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A comment on my previous entry(2 entry ago)by Joan of the Arch has really made me think about frugal cooking. I'm not really sure if I am that frugal when it comes to cooking. I do know how to make some really frugal food that is beyond PBJ sandwiches or ramen noddles. And I guess the influences come from my background and other people that have influenced me in my life.

Anyway, tonight we had homemade pasties. The filling I made yesterday. It is really only some ground meat with diced vegies. I made a double batch. I halved the filling and last night I put in a whole can of baked beans as the sauce base and we just had it on rice. And that was what we had for lunch too (it actually taste nicer the next day). So tonight the rest was made into pasties. And while that was cooking in the oven DH also made some potato chips. Oh and he also cooked the leftover puff pastry (the scraps) with some jam. It turned out really nice, kind of like a crispy croissant that already has jam inside.

Here's the numbers for November $20K Challenge. I can't believe there's only 1 month left of this challenge. I can't wait to finalise everything at the end of this month.




Well today was the first NSD for the month. Last month we had 9 NSDs, so it was pretty good.

We had our first serving of the silverbeet, it was nice. I picked and washed it. We then just steamed it and just finished off with a little bit of butter. Really fresh and healthy.

I also picked some basil for some tomato and basil salad. Unfortunately the tomatoes were bought. Hopefully soon we will be getting some tomatoes from the garden.

I just cleaned another shelf of the pantry, 2 down 3 to go.

Dh and I just came home from watching Wicked (the musical show), it was fantastic! The best thing was it was for free, although we still spent some money on some food, drinks and parking.

Other than going to the show our weekend was spent just doing some housework and gardening. The zucchini that almost died a few weeks ago is still surviving well, even though it was the biggest seedling to start with it has caught up with the other plants. 2 of the other zucchini plants are already flowering. Also started organising the pantry again, I've managed to clean 1 whole shelf! I'm doing it one at the time because I can actually get it done that way. I've been meaning to clean this pantry for 2-3 months now and everytime I think about doing it I get so overwhelmed that I just never start it. So I think by cleaning/organising it one shelf at the time I might actually get it done.

Well that was my weekend and tomorrow is back to work again...sigh.

Yesterday was the last day for calculation how much our home made meals costs us for a week (as my previous post was all about). Well it was ruined yesterday because DH forgot to bring his lunch yesterday and had to buy subway. The money came out of his allowance (not from the grocery). I also wasn't an angel yesterday. I been getting hives lately so after work DH and I stopped by at the doctors to see whether I should be tested, he doesn't believe it is necessary for me to do since it is mild allergy I just have to take anithestimane when it flares up. Anyway back to the challenge - because we got stuck in traffic for over an hour and spent another half an hour or so at the doctors I thought it was best I buy my dinner and DH can have his lunch that he left in the fridge. So yeah I also spent money on food yesterday, which will also came out of my allowance money.

So this was the rest of the challenge (the first 4 days is on my previous post):


19 Nov – $7.60
Breakfast – Oats & Coffee - $0.60
Lunch – Sandwiches (Tuna with Mayo) and Egg Sandwich - $1.00
Dinner – Chicken and Mushroom with Pasta (& we also open a bottled of red wine) - $3.50 & $6.00

20 Nov – $5.60
Breakfast – Muesli (for DH), Scramble Egg, Mushroom & Tomato with Toast and Coffee – $1.40
Lunch – Leftover Chicken & Mushroom Pasta - $0
Dinner - Fried Rice & Beef with Potato, Carrots and Peas with Soysauce (and leftover wine from yesterday) – $4.20

21 Nov – $15.50 (including takeout)
Breakfast- Oats & Coffee - $0.60
Lunch – DH forgot his lunch and bought Subway $7.90 & I had leftovers from last night - $0
Dinner – DH had his lunch he forgot to bring to work - $0 and I had Chicken Kebab - $7.00


So overall for the week we spent just under $53 (including the $14.90 food that was brought). If we didn't get takeout then it would probably be around $45-$48 for the week, which would have been an average of about $6.50 (rounded up) per day. At this average our main meals cost us about $200p/m. This make sense to me because right now we are averaging less than $250p/m on groceries which includes toilettres, cleaning products for the bathroom and kitchen, snacks such as coffee and tea, etc.. You get the point...

The more we make our meals at home the cheaper it is for us obviously but I never realise how cheap it can be. This sure has given me a lot to think about. Even though the meals that we bought yesterday were cheap meals they were still a lot more expensive compare to if we had just cooked it at home.

Last week I heard someone say that they think that cooking at home is more expensive than getting takeaway (takeout). These people normally get takeaways. And when they cook at home, they thinks its more expensive. They made something at home last week and thought it costs them more (it costs them over $20 for the meal for 2 of them).

Are you serious! Probably because they shop at the wrong places and probably only buy brand name expensive stuff.

This really got me thinking on how much our food actually cost per meal. So for the last few days I have been calculating our meals. These are our meals and costs for 2 adults. I'm thinking of doing this for a week, so I'm half way there.

15 Nov - $10.20
Breakfast - Oats & Coffee - $0.70
Lunch - Hotdogs and Salad - $4.25
Dinner - Roast Chicken with Gravy & Vegies - $5.25

16 Nov - $5.00
Breakfast - Toast with Eggs $ Bacon & Coffee - $1.20
Lunch - Leftover Roast Chicken with Gravy & Salad - $0.50
Dinner - Stirfry with Rice - $3.30

17 Nov - $6.50
Breakfast - Oats & Coffee - $0.70
Lunch - Leftover - No cost
Dinner - Homemade Tacos with loads of vegies - $5.80

18 Nov - $2.50
Breakfast – Muesli, Toast & Coffee - $0.80
Lunch – Leftover Taco with boiled Potato with sour cream- $0.70
Dinner - More Tacos (DH just loves it so much) and I also had some Tuna and mayo sandwich - $1.00


Let's just round it up to $25 shall we. So our main meals for 4 days only cost us $25, thats $6.25 per day for two people!
Okay we do eat a lot of leftovers because we normally cook in large batches, main reasons is we like to take leftovers for lunches to work. This might be boring for some but it doesn't bother us. And we also make things from scratch which really helps to cut the cost down. In above menus even the taco seasoning and gravy are made home made. And we also like to have a lot of either salad &/or vegies with each meal, apart from breakfast of course. Speaking of breakfast, I can't believe that for most morning it actually cost us less than $1 to make.

Okay, so I will have to concede that you can't just buy 50cents worth of sour cream for example, you actually have to buy the whole bottle. Sometimes you will end up having waste but if you are resourceful you should be able make something else with it.

Update on the zucchini - it is surviving.

It finally rained the other day and since then the days has been a lot cooler, although it is starting to heat up again.

We got up early today and did a lot of planting - lettuces, silver beets, rockets, more zucchinis, tomatoes, cucumbers and sunflowers. Now we just need to get the birds, snails and other nasties. It's a constant stuggle with those things.


These are the strawberries that I managed to pick from the garden today too. The strawberries were actually planted last year. We are actually getting more fruit from them this year, although the birds got some of them. I have now resorted to putting a net to keep them out.

Today's weather was a lot hotter than expected and it might have killed the zucchini I transplanted yesterday. Even though I watered it this morning before leaving for work it still got burnt. I don't know if it is going to survive, tomorrow is going to be really hot again but it is going to cool down in the late afternoon. I'm hoping the watering it got this afternoon will help it survive. Lucky I didn't plant all the zucchini seedlings yesterday.

I did some gardening late this afternoon, planted some zucchini and pumpkin in the ground. There are still more seedlings that needs planting but I think I'm going to wait until the weekend when hopefully the weather will be a bit cooler. It's a bit hot here in the next few days, the seedlings might not survive it. I did some weeding to get the area ready for it.

A tomato that I planted last month has now got couple of fruits. Can't wait to have fresh tomatoes from the garden again. The basils are also going along just in time for the tomatoes. Tomato and basil salad is my favourite.

Can you believe it, this year has gone by so fast! This is the time of the year when I start analysing our year's performance and also start doing next year's spending plan/budget.

This year has been very good for saving. All our goals this year has already all been achieved beyond expectation. Unfortunately next year won't be as good but because of what we have achieved this year it means we won't need to be as agressive in trying to save for everything next year. This year's achievement has really given as a lot of breathing room. The main thing that we want to concentrate on next year is to put more money into the car fund and house repair fund. There's still $2.5K left in the holiday funds, not sure if we will have time to go overseas next year, if we do then I can add some more but for now I'm happy with how much is in there for now.

And of course around this time of the year is when I start thinking about christmas. I've bought enough presents for the little ones (nephews and nieces) and some for adults, we don't really buy much for adults so I'm almost done with buying presents. Right now we just got over $400 left in the Xmas fund.

Can't wait for christmas!

I've been MIA from blogging. Just been so lazy lately. On the good side the laziness probably help keep our spending down in Oct and made it to be the best month this year.







I think I will make my goal this month to blog at least 3 times a week. It probably be about boring stuff...so you've been warned.

Yeah, it was the worst month for our $20K challenge. Here’s the quick synopsis of Sept spending:
Good: Home Phone was a bit lower than usual. Allowances were not too bad. Even Entertainment spending wasn’t even that bad.
Bad: Utility bills all come at once (but at least we won’t have to worry about them in Oct). Grocery bill was a bit over but most of the grocery I did at the end of Sept is being used for this month. Also spent some money on clothing, most of it was necessary.
Our challenge is not looking very good at the moment but I guess, even though we spent over $2,200 for the month it wasn’t really for things that were not necessary.



The problem now for us is that the weather is getting warmer and everyone is celebrating something, which means more spending on restaurants and gifts. At least these are things we value so I don’t mind spending money on this stuff. But as always it’s a constant balance not to go overboard. There are a lot of long-term goals that we want to achieve, and they can only be done if we start saving as much as we can now. But yeah we still also want to live a good life now while we are young.

So even though Sept was the worst month so far this year we still managed to put away some saving and also managed to fully fund the tuition fund and put an extra $600 to the car fund.

I also have looked at our 3rd quarter net worth, amazingly, it actually went up by about 9% most of it from cash and increase in house value. Also our stocks actually have gone up too. I bought 2 stocks about 2 months ago, 1 is up and the other is down. Both of them paid dividend late last month. So all up despite how the market is, it’s not too bad. Most of the decrease is the money in our retirement funds. Oh well it has 30 years or so to recover.

Well today is pay day but it wouldn't clear until tomorrow. DH also got paid earlier this week. We now fully funded the tuition fund. And have now achieved all our goals for all our funds this year.

At the end of this month we should have $500-$600 extra money this month. That is even after already putting away savings and paying off a lot of bills. So now we got to decided what to do with the extra money. There are a lot of options of coure. Should we just put the extra money towards savings or should we keep putting more money towards our various funds? Right now I am not all that happy with our EF especially now with all this economic disasters. Also the the car fund is not as much as I want it to be, particulary now that we will probably need to get the brakes replace. And we could always use more in the house fund for all the projects/repairs we need done around here. So I guess starting on next year's goals wouldn't be so bad. And maybe also putting more towards savings.

So I guess that kind of answered my question. It always help to think things out loud. I will of course need to discuss all of these with DH, he might have some other ideas. We will see at the end of the month what we will end up doing.

It's really quiet at work at the moment, so I got time to do some blogging .

Financial wise it has been pretty quiet as well. Since I paid a bunch of bills on the weekend we havent really done much except for getting takeaway on Monday. We spent $12.85 for fish and chips. It was of course bad, it broke our no takeaway streak. We lasted 20 days. I was hoping to last for a month. Oh well, there's something to aim for next time.

Yesterday was a NSD, and I'm also hoping today would be one too (would make it 5 for this month so far). Oh and yesterday I got a free train pass. A nice stranger gave me her pass (she didn't need it anymore), So she saved me almost $5. Thank you, nice lady.

So far this week it has been really cheap. We do have an expensive weekend coming up. We are going out on Saturday night and I'm also going to get some stuff for our vegie garden. It's staring to warm up around here so now is the great time to start getting the garden for spring and summer crops. You just cant bet home grown tomatoes, yummo!

Paid a lot of bills yesterday. Water was really high this month because it included the Annual Parks Charge. That was worth more than $55. The gas was also quite high because of higher winter usage. Can't wait for the weather to start getting warmer, which should cut down our gas usage. So utilities this month is more than $350, I guess they are coming due all at once since we didn't have any last month.

Also paid credit card bills, they weren't too bad.

Later this month our quartely property rate(tax) is due, it has gone up by about $10 for the year. Good news is that the value of our property has also gone up by about $20K.

Oh another good news is that our interest rate has finally gone down (first time for 7 years). Which means about $30 less a month interest on our mortgage.

Well that's all the update I've got for now.

Yesterday's NSD was expected, however today NSD was not planned at all. We were meant to go to Aldi after work today but we got stuck in traffic. We were over an hour late than usual, it would have been already closed if we went. Oh well, we are not that desperate yet and will go Friday night when they are open a little bit later. Because we were running late we also almost got some takeaway (takeout) after work but somehow talked ourselves out of it. You should've have heard our conversation in the car, it was so funny. We we’re both very hungry already. One minute we agreed to get bbq chicken but then we took turned convincing ourselves why we shouldn’t. So in the end we agreed to have some of the leftover minestrone soup I made yesterday with toast. That helped got rid of the hunger pains, and I then cooked something else for main. BTW it has been 16 days since we got takeaway! I like to see how long we can go without buying it. Maybe we can hold out for the whole month. That would be a first for us.

I forgot to mentioned that we had 8 NSD in Aug, so I put in $40 into the New Laptop Fund. I really don't like the name of this fund. So I have decided to put this money into the "Sunny Day Savings" instead. Right now we got $500 in that savings. That will make that a pretty reasonable savings now. There are few options for this money, maybe a new LCD TV (the naughty option but has been a want for a long long time for us), could be added to my trading account (which would be the reasonable option), or I could even add it to the Emergency fund (the boring but grown up option). I think an opportunity will come and I will know then what to do with this money.

Overall, it was a pretty good month:



THE GOOD:
Grocery - the lowest we spent in a month this year.
Utilities - No bills due for this month (unfortunately Sept is going to be a lot more than normal).
Clothing - didn't spend a cent.


THE BAD:
Transportation - not really too bad considering we just filled up the car. Extra usage due to a day trip we took for this month.
Allowances - mine in particular was a bit over.

THE UGLY:
Entertainment - way over!! And it is not going to get any better for Sept either. Oh well. I think I really under estimated this category by a lot.
Medical - an injury that need medical attention. Could not be avoided. It could have been more (almost twice as much) if we didn't have private insurance. I think the rebates we received this year from our health insurance pretty much paid for our premiums for the year.

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FUNDS SNOWBALL (see My Pages):

I've fully funded the Holiday Fund (woohoo!), also managed to put some money in the Tuition fund. The tuition should be funded by the end of this month. We will only need to put in another $800, anymore than that will be too much. So by the end of Sept I will achieved my funds snowball goal, couple of months earlier. I'm gonna need to think of new goals.

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I really need to blog more (even about boring stuff), it tends to help my budget. I might make this as one of my goal for this month.

Everyone seems to have their birthday around this time of the year. This month alone we have been to few of them already and there's one more to go this Saturday. To say that I'm over the entertainment budget is an understatement. Luckily we didn't spend too much last month. Unfortunately, the trend will continue next month, there are couple of birthdays and of course Father's day.

With all these celebrations and just my plain laziness this month, I haven't been blogging (I've been reading though). I've been so lazy that I haven't been doing much grocery shopping either. Good news is that it is already the 26th and we still have over $70 in the grocery budget. It's the middle of our winter and it's too cold to go shopping. Right now we are on our last drop of fresh milk and I still don't want to go out. Luckily we do have some long life milk in the cupboard for when we run out. I think I could last until the weekend without going.

Last month was an expensive month due to some minor medical expense, which required some on going treatment for a bit over a month. Overall it will cost few hundred dollars. We are now over our personal/medical budget for the year. I guess I should have allocated more fund into this category. Some of the money in the miscellanous should be enough to cover the excess.

Here's what we spent our money on in July. Overall we are still on target.





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Eventhough we had extra expenses in July that was not expected we also had extra income that we weren't expecting. We were able to put a bit of money into our savings and have fully funded the House Repair/Maintenance Fund. Paid off the tuition fee with a bit extra put away for next time. Also put $1,000 away in the holiday fund.

was another very expensive week. Both DH and I went to see the dentist last week. I will have to go back next month for some fillings. DH had to also see the doctor twice. Not to mention the car service was very expensive. The rest was spent on groceries, take-away and gas, and also some snacks. Apparently, the accommodation that we booked last week will not actually be paid until we go on our holiday so I will take that amount out. I guess if we decide not to go we won't have to pay, that's good.

We only got 1 NSD last week. Hopefully we will have a bit more than that this week and to start the week today was a NSD

I got a massive headache right now so I'm off to bed early.