My Simple Financial Plan

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

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


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

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

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

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

*Use floss and piksters everyday. Have not failed yet

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

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

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

Ended up to be a quiet weekend. During the week we talked about going camping but we weren’t too sure about the weather. We should have gone the weather was wonderful especially on Sunday. Oh well.

Groceries –On Saturday DH did the shopping alone, since we didn’t need much and also don’t have much left in the grocery budget it was a very short shopping list. DH did really well, I told him that we only got $30 left in the budget and that all we really need are a couple dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, few bananas, a red capsicum and a 2litre milk to top up the milk we already bought on Thursday. The rest of the money, if there are any left, he can get some more fruits and vegetables. He ended up spending $21.90, on top of the items above he also got a punnet of strawberries, a punnet of blackberries, a bag of carrots, Japanese pumpkin and a massive bag of zucchini which he found on sale. DH was very proud of going way under the budget, he took it very serious.

BBQ – On Sunday we took the doggy to the park and also shop to get DH a new exercise band for $28. Seeing that the weather was so nice DH suggested we should have a bbq, I guess if we did went camping we would have had a bbq there. So on our way home we decided to get some meat to bbq. I ended up getting some chicken drumsticks it was on sale for only $3 a kilo even cheaper than the wings that were $4 a kilo, got 6 pieces for $2.80. DH also barbequed some of the vegetables (zucchini, pumpkin and carrots) to go with the chicken, we just put a bit of salt, pepper, rosemary and olive oil.

Groceries - We did our usual Saturday morning shopping for food. Spent $82.33, it would have been about $20 less but I found a Porterhouse steaks that was 50% off (normal price was $32 a kilo) and also got some pork chops that were 20% off (can’t remember the original price). Total for the month so far is $269.42 (budget $300), so just over $30 for the rest of the month. It’s tight but I think we can do it. I’ve done a rough meal plan for this week which should help. Also the pantry is still really full we still got a lot of stuff in there to get through. I think we will just need milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables next shopping trip.

Other Spending – I bought myself a new running shoes, it was on sale for $90. I’m overdue for a new one. DH will also need a new one soon too. His is actually worse than mine but we couldn’t find one that he likes at the shop that we went to and we didn’t have time to shop around.

Cooking – I did a bit of cooking on Sunday. I made spring rolls and meatballs to put in the freezer. Also made butter chicken in the slow cooker, which feed us for 4 meals. And I used up some frozen banana that I had to make a banana cake.

Decluttering – I went through our pots and pans and decided to throw out 2 old pans and 1 wok. I’ve also been going through a box full of papers/notes that I wanted to type out or scan, it will take me a while to get through the box but at least it is good to get it started since I’ve wanted to do this for years now.

Passports – We need to re-new our passports, it expired last year. We are thinking of going overseas this winter so we need to get new ones soon. I don’t know how much they are now these days it has been ten years since we got the last one.

Not much is happening here.

Grocery – Spent just under $100 ($98.26) bought some special stuff for Valentine ’s Day dinner; steaks, fancy cheeses, oysters, and some other yummy stuff that we don’t normally get. We prefer to have nice dinner at home instead of going out to restaurant for Valentine’s Day.

Takeaway – At the market where we did our grocery shopping this weekend we got a couple of dim sims and croissants to take to the nearby park where we walked the dog. There’s a café at the park where we bought a cup of coffee to share to go with the croissants.

Fuel – got some fuel, it was for $55.80.

Other - we got some fabrics to use to cover the couch, $44.00. Also spent some money for the garden just under $40.

Garden – I planted a bird-eye chilli last summer. Got a couple handfuls of chillies last summer, it wasn’t looking good during winter and I thought it was going to die. I trimmed it and hoped for the best and it is doing well again. So far it has produces more than double that we got last summer.

Decluttering – I emptied DH’s clothes drawers. I put all the clothes that I thought don’t belong in the drawers anymore in a laundry basket and then DH went through each one, some he tried on to see if still fits. Most of it got thrown away, about 5 went back into drawers and a few he wanted to keep (souvenirs items) that we put into a plastic container to store away.

Weekend – We did the grocery shopping Saturday morning and spent $75.33, right on our weekly budget. Saturday night we went out for dinner to celebrate paying off the mortgage. We went to a Croatian restaurant it was very yummy but pricey. It cost $106 for 4 entrée size dishes (we wanted to try variety of dishes) and a glass of wine for me and Croatian beer for DH. We used a $50 gift card and I received last year for my birthday (expiring in couple of months so it was good time to use it), so was out of pocket for $56, still a tad costly. Lately I’ve been rather anti going out to restaurants, I mean I still like eating out but I don’t like spending all that money and then sometimes you go out you get disappointed with either the meal or the service and end up feeling that it was such a waste of money. A $100 is more than a week worth of food for us or for that amount of money we could invite a bunch of friends and have a pretty good dinner party. We also spent $6 for 2 hour parking, we should have really parked further for free but they are hard to find. We spent most of our Sunday building a vegetable garden using old bricks from the old brick fence that we used to have. That brick fence collapsed last year when we had a really strong wind, it was already in bad shape to start with.

Mortgage – Our very last interest payment was $14.62. They actually now owe us some money, just under $300 because they just took out the usual monthly payment. I’m sure it will get all sorted out soon. And depending on how much the closing cost is we might still owe them some.

In the last week – I was not feeling too good on Thursday and Friday so I mainly watched the cricket game and Netflix. Saturday we went to the beach an hour away, spending for the day was $54.74 for fuel (first time filling up this year) and $12.50 for lunch, fish and chips. Sunday got some grocery for $16.90.

End of the month numbers - Total expenses was $3,148.99, it was big month mainly because of the annual insurance bills for the home and car. Spent another $6,418 for mortgage repayment, interest for the month was only $32.44. Technically, we are now mortgage free. DH transferred the money to Citibank CC (ready credit), that is where our monthly mortgage payments gets taken out, it will most likely get taken on Friday. Then it will be celebration time. So this month we can start on other financial goals, I cannot wait.

Non-financial goals so far:

*Read 50 books – Books I read this month:
Inferno - Dan Brown (6 Jan) – I started this last month
Between You and Me - Lisa Hall (7 Jan)
Noble Beginnings: A Jack Noble Thriller - L.T. Ryan (11 Jan)
Malevolent - Jana De Leon (16 Jan)
Over You - Christine Kersey (20 Jan)
I Spy, I saw her die - Ian C. P. Irvine (25 Jan)
Taken by Love - Melissa Foster (31 Jan)

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*Workout 4 times a year – did well until last week, I only did two last week, I wasn’t feel to good last week the hot weather was getting to me. I’m trying to catch up this week, will try to get back on schedule.

*Continue the 'no buying soft drinks' rule this year. Still doing well on this, luckily DH doesn’t really care for them so it make it a lot easier.

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

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

*Use floss and piksters everyday. Check

*Wake-up before 7am. I have been trying to get up around 5am this week. Still working on this, again I was doing well until last week when I wasn’t feeling too good.
*Continue getting rid of "Stuff". Aim for this year is to get rid of around 10% of our stuff. I got rid of about 15-20% of my clothes in my drawers and just started on DH’s drawers today.

*Organise my emails. I need to get started on this soon

Gardening – I have not done much with the veggie garden this summer. I just did not have much time but I did make sure to plant some tomatoes and basils, I've got a bit of tomatoes already.

Dinner party – Saturday night we had few friends over for dinner, card games and a Netflix movie. It was a lot of fun. It increased our grocery bill this month but it would have been a lot cheaper than going out to a restaurant.

Long weekend – DH is taking Friday off and since Thursday is a public holiday (Australia Day) then he will have 4-day weekend. We are thinking of going for a day trip somewhere maybe fishing, we have not done that for couple of years.

Grocery – Our grocery budget for this year is $300 per month. So far this month we are at $260.45, half of it was spent on the weekend when we did a big shop and bought some extra stuff for the dinner party. Even though we only got $40 left for this weekend it should be plenty, I’m hoping we might not even have to spend all of it. Right now we got a lot of leftovers in the freezer and the pantry is full.

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

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

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

My goals this year are:

Financials-
*Pay off Mortgage
*$30K into Equities
*Save $5K for Holiday money
*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Remodel

Other -
*Read 50 books - one of my goal last year, I'm hoping to actually achieve it this year.
*Workout 4 times a year (I meant a week, lol). I have been doing this for the last 3 months now, I'm hoping to keep going.
*Continue the 'no buying soft drinks' rule this year.
*Get back to blogging, at least once per week.
*Re-do landscaping in both front and back yard.
*Use floss and piksters everyday
*Wake-up before 7am. I have been trying to get up around 5am this week. This one is going to be hard one to achieve.
*Continue getting rid of "Stuff". Aim for this year is to get rid of around 10% of our stuff.
*Organise my emails.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday we went to shopping for food, we didn't get (nor do we needed much), spent $37.41.

Went and watch my brother play footy again, it was his 50th game, they won again 202 to 26, I think it was. Only spent $1 for a cup of coffee there, we actually took some sandwiches and some fruit that we got shopping that day to have for lunch.

That night we got invited to someone's 65th birthday. Bought a card for $1 and gave $50 cash gift.

On Sunday the only thing that got charged was my mobile phone, it get automatically get topped up when my credit gets below $2. That was for $10.

Total spending for the weekend was $99.41 - it's good to see it under $100.

The weather this weekend was almost perfect, we should have picked this weekend to go camping, oh well can't predict the weather.

Saturday we decided to go and watched my brother play footy, his team had a fantastic game they won by over 200 points (248 - 13), that rarely happens. while there we shared a sausage roll (haven't had one of those for years) and a cup of coffee each, was for only $5. Their game was held near a trash and treasure market place so decided to stopped by to see if I could get a case for my new mobile phone, found one for $10. We got there late in the afternoon so we didn't have to pay to enter which would have been $1 each. Also got a wheel that we can use to fix our gate, $2. And spent another $2 for a dog leash for my mum's dog. Afterwards we went grocery shopping, all up spent $65.39 on grocery this weekend. Went home, made Paella and opened a bottle of wine with it, read a book while doing a bit of crocheting.

Sunday we went out to get a new washer for a tap outside. Then we went back to the shoes store that we got DH's new shoes last weekend to get it replaced because there was something wrong with it that I didn't see until we got home. When we got there we found out that they are now on sale, it was almost 65% off, from $49.95 down to $18. So instead of exchanging it we got a refund and just purchased two pair of shoes (different style) for $36. Then we stopped by at another store nearby and got a jumper for DH, underwear, bra, toothpastes, hand towels and DH's favourite bar soap. All up we spent $27 there. Then lastly, we went to Big W to get leg bands they were also on sale from $15 down to $10. Total spending for the weekend = $163.55.

When we got home DH fixed the tap while I made roast pork and then we watched our footy team play on TV, we lost. Had dinner. Relaxed watching more TV and finished reading my book. End of weekend.

On Wednesday DH took the car to the shop to get repaired, that cost us $264 but DH will need to take it to get the ABS looked at. The mechanic can't fix the ABS, it will need an electrician of some sort.

Thursday afternoon we decided to cancelled our camping booking because the weather was going to be terrible, we were heading to the Highlands and the weather was going to be snowing, wet and windy. Just unfortunate because the weekend before that the weather would have been perfect. This trip was planned about 2 months ago, when we got a voucher for it. I think we will go in October instead now.

Luckily, we cancelled it because on Friday when DH and I decided to go out shopping (DH was home because he took a holiday on Friday for the camping trip), we noticed a lot of liquid/oil pouring out of the car as we were driving out of the driveway . So instead of going to the shops we just drove it straight to the car repairer. The repair shop is closed to an Asian store so we went there instead and got some stuff (spent $14.15 for a bit of stuff good value for money) and just walked home (less than 30 mins away).

Apparently, when they were replacing something in the car on Wednesday they accidentally bumped something off. It was an easy fix but the car was there for 3 hours. Lucky we found this out while we were near home and not while were camping. DH didn't noticed anything when he drove the car back home Wednesday night so it didn't get trigger until we drove it out that Friday. Now we have a trail of fluid all the way from the garage to the road and maybe even all the way to the repairer place, by the time we got there it ws empty.
Saturday we did our proper grocery shopping, we went to Aldi and got Milo at Woolworths, all up we spent $64.45 on food this week. And then we got something for Mother's day and also got myself a couple of jumpers and a pair of socks. The jumpers and socks only cost me $21. Also got DH new work shoes but we will need to go back and get it replaced.

On Mother's day we went to my mum's place and had a bbq my brother was there as well and we all got a lot of left over to take home.

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

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

We had a relatively quiet weekend. Our car was making some weird noises so we didn't wantto drive it too much. We just went grocery shopping and dropped off some stuff to the Salvo, which was just a crossed the street of the Aldi that we went to. Spending for the weekend was less than $100.

DH already booked the car for service on Wednesday. Its next service is not until next month but since it is making that noise and we are going camping this weekend we need to get it check before driving it 3-4 hours drive to the country.

DH spent some of his weekend applying for jobs. The rest of the weekend I spent tinkering in the garden, DH helped a bit too. He loves being outside, it was great to see him a lot more relaxed on the weekend. He was a bit stressed out again on Wed and Thurs night, he keep wondering whether he has done the right thing quitting. I assured him that he did and that we will be alright. From what he has been telling me about his work I am 100% sure that he is doing the right thing. So far this year DH counted 15 people that has left (that's about 1 a week). He has seen 3 people this year that cried because of work issues.

The other developer is now also considering of leaving earlier than end of June, she doesn't want to take on DH's job. She knows how much ha was to do and deal with, not only dealing with the customer that they support but also dealing with the boss (DB). She's also thinking of travelling in mid-June. Not sure if she will actually do it but she has told few people about already.

DH got a couple of lead today about some work so hopefully something will pan out soon.

Living Expenses- $1,932.34
Mortgage Repayments = $6,818.00
(Interest = $112.17)
(Principal = $1105.83)
(Extra Repayment =$5,600.00)
Other Expenses = $1,220.48 - big chunk of this was for my Samsung Note. Also spent a bit on house repairs, gardening, new BBQ and Rubber mats.

I don't know how I feel about that big extra repayment to the mortgage that we paid last month now, maybe we shouldn't have done since DH quit his job (but we didn't that was going to happen - not so soon) it would have been good to have more liquid cash in hand, but at the same time because of that repayment we will most likely be paying less than $100 of interest every month from now on.

Changes in our Goals this year:

The biggest one is that we will most likely NOT be able to pay off the mortgage this year, unless of course DH find another job fairly quickly. We could however cash in some investments to pay it off but really we want to keep cash or assets we can easily cash in if we need to. Also all extra repayments we have made to the mortgage is in what they call "Redraw Account" that technically we can redraw if we want to. But we will not be doing that unless something catastrophic were to happen. The other reason that I'm not as bothered by it is that our interest rate here (which I guess is similar in the US) is at it's all time low. So putting off pre-paying it for now is not so bad and even if we don't ever make any extra payment the whole thing will be paid off in less than 20 months. Unfortunately here in Australia we done get any tax incentives in delaying paying our mortgage off that's why all this time I have been very determined to pay it off as soon as possible. Anyway, at this time our plan is just being delayed, definitely not abandoned.

It goes without saying that another change we will have to do while DH is not working is to stay within our budget as much as possible and even try to tighten it. We can definitely save some money in some categories, especially under transportation cost - DH won't need to buy train pass.

ARggh I lost my post earlier today I pressed Save as Draft and it disappeared.

DH just gave his 4 weeks notice, after May he will not be working anymore. DH just had enough and I don't blame him and I fully support his decision. I'm actually surprise it took him this long. He almost quit back in Dec and again in Jan.

2 years ago there were new bunch of upper management that got hired and I guess they were told to get rid of people. 2 years ago their team used to have 12 people in it and now there are only 3 left and 1 of them has been taken to do something else (he is complaining about it but there is not much he can do). Being the team leader a lot of the stuff falls on DH. 2 years ago they used to have a Business Analyst, a couple of Data Managers, few testers and few developers (including DH). They used to have a boss that looked after them but he left in October and still haven't been replaced, he didn't get along with his new boss DB (which now DH has to deal with, he is horrible to say the least). The BA and data managers and some of the developers and testers had been let go over a year ago. The 2 testers that were left quit this year (actually 1 got another job and the other decided to retired early instead).

The other developer has already told DH that she will not renew her employment if they get extended after June. That's if they actually get extended, they say they will but 2 months to go and there hasn't been any actions to show it yet. DH had been lied to few times now and he just can't trust them. DH had to step up a lot especially since his old boss left but they wouldn't acknowledge it.

Couple months ago they finally got approval to hire DH old boss position, the one that left in October. DH wasn't really interested in applying for it but at the same time thought may as well since he has been doing this job for months now and also the lady that said she will be living in June said that she would stay if DH gets the job. But ultimately DH just want them to hire someone so he can just concentrate in doing his role that he was hired to do. Anyway, he got interviewed for it and at the end DB said that this the last interview and that he will find out in the next 48 hours. 2 weeks later still nothing and in the meantime DH found out that they actually interviewed 2 more people after that. So on Friday DH asked him if he could talk to him but he said he is busy and would like to discuss it later on that day he will call DH then. Anyway 4:45 that afternoon DH still haven't heard from him. He tends to do this he just ignored things that he doesn't want to deal with, like not answer emails for weeks. DH contacted him to ask if he could talk to him, he said can we do it on Monday but DH really wanted to deal with it then he didn't want another weekend to pass. Lucky he did because DB was actually away on Monday and Tuesday. DH thinks he likes to delay stuff in a hope that people will just forget about it he has done it few times before to DH. In Dec last year DH emailed him something and he didn't respond to it a month later and actually told DH off for not ringing him about it instead. WTF. Apparently, a lot have got caught out with it were they email him stuff that he wanted but never get a respond and down the line they get told off for not ringing him about it. Things that are important to him cannot just be emailed to him they must contact him via phone but the problem is people don't always know what he consider important. He is in a major power trip. Anyway, he told DH that he didn't get the job which is fair enough apparently other applicants had a lot more managerial experience. DH understands and wanted to know when the new person will be starting? Well apparently he will not be hiring anyone he wants to post the job again through a job agency this time. Another WTF. That means it would take at least another 2 months in the meantime DH still has to deal with everything. No thank you! He has been so stress out about work lately and hasn't been sleeping well from constantly thinking about work, he just can't deal with it anymore. So we decided that he should just resign now even without another job to go to. He can have a rest while looking for another job. A quick calculation we should have enough cash in hand to last for the rest of the year. I will look into it more this weekend.

Our goals will have to change this year but hopefully only for short time.

Crap the roof is still leaking. Luckily we decided to not to fix the hole in the ceiling yet because when it rained on Saturday we found that it is still leaking. So we decided to just make a bigger hole in the ceiling to see where the water is coming from, we should have done that in the first place. So we found another tile that is broken, we can clearly see where the hole is now. DH thinks that he might be able to change the tile from inside the house rather than having to go up on to the roof. We will have to wait when the weather is good, too wet at the moment. The drip of water is just going straight to a bucket it is not hitting any timber so there will be no further damage to the ceiling.

Apart from that we had a quiet weekend. We stayed home on Saturday, the weather was terrible anyway. We watch our footy team played, we won! Yeee...

Today (Sunday) we went and watch The Avengers, before the movie started someone got sick, I think they he an epileptic fit and they had to call the ambulance to take him to the hospital. After the movies we went grocery shopping to Aldi, spent less than $45.

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

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

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

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

House Alarm Battery
The battery for our house alarm needed replacing. I think the last time we replaced it was over 5 years ago. DH bought one after work and was easy install for him to do. The battery cost $50.

Broken Roof Tile
We had to get someone to replace a broken roof tile. Luckily we already got some spare tiles around. We paid $50 and it only took him 10 minutes to do it. It was worth it. Another two quotes we got were for $150 and $250. Normally we do a lot of repairs ourselves but DH is not too keen on heights. He can get up a ladder but he won't actually get on to the roof. The broken tile was just out of reach for him to do. And he absolutely would not let me get up there either. $50 was a lot of money for 10 minutes work but it was necessary. Now we will have to fix the ceiling in the guest room where there is a little water damage because of it.

STOCK
The shares that we purchase last month through Share Purchase Plan (SPP) was settled the end of last month. The plan that DH and I decided was to sell half of it right away so we can get part of our capital out. We got the maximum amount we could get but didn’t want to keep too much of it long-term. Since then it has just been going up so we decided to wait and see where it might go until on Wednesday last week we decided to sell some but since it has gone up a bit more than expected we decided to only got 1/3 out. The 1/3 got us almost 40% of our capital back, so we are happy with that.

WEEKEND
It was a costly weekend. On Saturday we did the usual grocery shopping for the week and then went to Bunnings (hardware/garden store) to get some netting for the garden. We got those white cabbage butterflies/moths around and they just love laying their eggs on my vegetable leaves. I thought putting netting around them especially the cabbages and cauliflowers would be the best way, don't like to use sprays. We end up getting a really big size because it was half price and best value for money, only couple dollars more than the smallest size. While there we saw that they have a greenhouse on sale for half price as well, from $50 down to $25.

Saturday night we were invited to a 50th birthday celebration. It was held in one of those reception places normally more for weddings. Actually, been to this place back in 2001 for a friend’s wedding, unfortunately it is not what it used to be. The food were terrible, DH thought he had the worst steak ever. Everything was over cooked, I think they reheat things and that's why they end up so over cooked. It was a big party around 150 guests, it would have cost a lot. We just gave $100 cash as a gift, I had no idea what to get. They hired a photo booth and we all had fun with that.

Sunday we decided to go to a Trash and Treasure market, spent $34 which includes $2 entry fee for both of us. Got $10 of 4 tubs of seedlings, they were about half the price instead of getting from a nursery. I remember to back here next time. Also got 4 pot holders for $2, couple of plastic tubs, few metal brackets and a plaster saw for $1. The best thing we found a glass lid for our fish tank for only $4. Back in December we got a bigger fish tank from a friend but it didn't have a lid so we have been looking for one since then. The lid is millimetre perfect for our tank. One of the biggest things we got on the weekend and were a bit pricey was 6 rubber mats for the gym area in the garage that we are creating. It totalled just under $180 but it has been the cheapest thing we have seen out there.

On Sunday we also both got a haircut. I really needed one. All up the weekend expenses were just over $550. This coming weekend is not going to be cheap either.

Back in Mar 2011 I blogged about our solar panels. We got it installed that month and at that time DH calculated that it would take us about 4 years to breakeven. Well, it is now 4 years later. Oh by the way our first electricity bill for the year came last month it was for $23.13 CREDIT. The previous bill in Dec was for only $8.89 (debit) so we were not required to pay so they just carried it forward to this new bill. So the current balance is $14.24 credit. We will not get this in cash because we have opted for any credit to just carry if forward to the next bill.

I did some calculation of our electric bills:

In 2010 (the year before the Solar panel) we spent $763.49 on our electricity.
*Dec 2010 there was an increase in rates.

2011 it was $653.77.
*Dec 2011 there was an increase in rates. Mar 2011 we got the Solar Panels installed.

2012 it was our best year and we actually got $249.44 CREDIT.

2013 electricity only cost us $87.56 debit.

2014 was $452.71.
This was a lot higher than previous years mainly because we had my brother with us for 6 months that year. *Dec 2014 there was another increase in rates.

So assuming that without the solar panels we would have paid around $800 per year (accounting for the rate increases and my brother staying with us) it would have amounted to $3,200 in 4 years. Instead we only paid $944.60, so a saving of $2,255.40.

The Solar Panels cost were:
Cost Including Installation $7,857.00
(minus) Government Rebate $5,360.00
Out of Pocket $2,497.00
Payment to the Electric Company (for connection) $215.78
TOTAL = $2,712.78

So, that is still $457.38 in the negative. But I also had to calculate our gas bill because we now only use electricity for heating in winter instead of gas.

Gas Expenses:

2010 was $757.57 - the year before solar panels

2011 was $675.01
*Jan 2011 there was an increase in rates

2012 was $579.55
*There were 2 rates increases in Feb and Jul

2013 was $408.89
*Again another rate increase in Jan 2013

2014 was $463.34
*Another rate increase in Jan but it decrease in Jul 2014 because of the removal of the carbon tax.
Note also that my brother stayed with us for 6 months.

Again an average of $800 per year would have been a reasonable gas bill for us. So that would have been $3,200 for the 4 years but instead we only paid $2,126.79 (we normally use gas for cooking and hot water), a saving of $1,073.21. Overall this takes us to $615.83 in the positive. So yeah we are now break-even, it probably really happened mid last year. Obviously, the government rebate helped a lot in breaking even a lot sooner.

Easter Weekend

Our long-weekend was pretty quiet, we did more work outside as clean the garage (half-way through it now). We did go out and did some shopping, we got a new little bbq and a small foldable table that we can use outside and should be able to take camping as well. They were both on sale. While shopping we ate out for lunch to a fairly inexpensive Chinese/Dumpling place. Apart from that we mainly stayed home and watched more Breaking Bad – it was BB marathon weekend for us and now we have finished it. We will probably now move on to watching "Better call Saul".


Financial

Normal monthly mortgage payment went through and the interest paid for this month was $112.17, so principal paid was $1,105.80. Balance right now is $25,574.99.

I did a calculation of our net worth for the end of the first quarter and we just hit $700K. That was a nice increase from the last time I looked at our net worth.


Garden

The cabbages are now about double in size and the cauliflowers are doing well. And the beetroots and beans and also starting to shots up. There are more kales and snow peas seedlings that have come up but the coriander are dead except for 1 and even that is not looking to good. And those seeds that DH planted are not happening.

Day light saving time finished on Sunday and now it feels like winter. I don't like it.

Mortgage = $1218

Living Expenses = $1527.82 (Not too bad)

Other = $802.41 (A bit too much here)

About $220 of this was for Mitre Saw compound ($148), sledge hammer and some MDF material. About $180 for gardening materials – soil, manure, seedlings, plants (both indoor and outdoor), a big bottle of weed killer, weed mat cover and small gardening tools. The other $170 was for quilt, quilt cover and comforter. We also spent about $35 on office supplies, mainly on a box of suspension files. The rest was for batteries for smoke alarms, brushes, etc. (too many rubbish to mention) and DH got a new fishing rod.

Total = $3,548.23


Veggie Garden

The red cabbage and cauliflower are doing well so far. Some goes with the lemongrass and Vietnamese mint. But the coriander is not looking too good. DH scattered some coriander seeds in the garden the other day maybe that will be better than the seedlings we planted. Today I saw 4 of the snow peas already poking through and I'm pretty sure there are a couple of the kales as well. Just been spraying the seeds we planted in the egg cartons on the weekend, I don't know how well they will go, time will tell.

I did not go anywhere on the weekend. The only time we spent money was Saturday night when DH went out to get pizza, Pepsi and milk. All up it cost $21.75.
We spend all weekend working outside again. We are trying to get things done outside while the weather is still warm. We planted some more vegetables. We planted some cauliflowers and also decided to plant some seedlings; I do not know how well they will go some of them might be a bit old.

Most of our weekend was spent paving a little area in the backyard for the big rubbish bin that we have. We have some paver just laying around so it was good to make use of them and it tidy up the backyard. It took a while to level the area but we got there.

Saturday night we spent watching more Breaking Bad and that's when we decided to get Pizza for dinner and open a bottle of wine. Sunday A.M. we spent finishing the paving and in the afternoon to until 10pm we spent watching the final of world cup cricket. Australia won against the Kiwis. Yay!

Potential Loan

Friday night DH called his parents. His mum asked if they could borrow $3K if they need it. Long story short, they got money it's just it might be hard for them to get it out in short notice. They are getting their house painted (outside) but it could happen next week or it could happen in 3-4 months. If it happens in 3 months they won't need to borrow but if it happens sooner they will be short in cash because their money in term-deposit at the moment. Normally they have more cash than they need but because they just bought a new car this month they have dried up the savings account. We are more than happy to help them out, they have helped us a lot in the past when DH was unemployed. So the money that I was thinking of putting into the mortgage (extra) we will just keep for this. This is the extra pay that DH will receive this month. I will still put the tax refund money into the mortgage. If they do end up needing the money we will encourage them not to pay it back. We both just want to give it to them. We have offered to give them some money in the past to pay back some of the money that they have given us but they always refused. So this will be good time to pay them back.

It started on Monday. I can't wait to check it out.

These streaming services has just really come to Australia this year. There are 2 that has been advertising a lot in the last couple of months, Presto and Stan. Last week we signed up for a 30-day free trial with Stan and have been watching Breaking Bad, we are half-way through Season 2. Once this expires we will try Netflix, they also have the 30 day free trail.

Tree Stump
We finally got the tree stump and roots out. It has taken us over 2 weeks working on it a bit every day. It is a very heavy bugger so we just left it in the front yard. We are not sure what to do with it, we talked about making a feature out of it or just put it in the rubbish. I think we might have our annual green rubbish collection in May, I'm pretty sure it was in May that they collected it last year. I won’t be surprise if we get the notification for in next month. If we throw it out DH will have to cut it smaller they will not accept it at this size, too heavy. DH should be able to use the chain saw on it now.

Garden Bed
Most of soil that we dug out we used to build a couple of raised garden beds. We just added some chicken manure and mushroom compost. So far I have planted snow peas and kale from seeds in our usual veggie garden patch. In the new garden beds I got some seedling for it, so far I planted lemon grass, coriander and cabbage.

We will be building couple more garden beds, just need to clean more of the bricks. It takes a bit of effort to do I'm not in a hurry so just doing a bit every day.

Grocery Shopping
We did some food shopping this weekend. We went to the market to stock up the freezer. Then we went to Aldi to get the usual food items we need for the week. And then lastly, we went to another store to mainly get toilet rolls and other things that we couldn't get at Aldi.

At the shopping centre car park, we ended up waiting for this lady to get out so we could get her car park space. When she finished putting her shopping in the car I offered to put her trolley away, just to hurry things along it was easier for both of us (and I gave her a dollar to swap for the dollar she had in the trolley). She could get out quicker while DH could get in to the space while I put the trolley away. Anyway, she left her receipt in the trolley and there was a discount of $10 off for the store we were about to go and there were other discounts for their liquor store as well. I didn’t even knew that they do those discounts in this store but I think you have to spend over $200 to get those, which obviously she did. I knew about the liquor store discount but hose normally involves buying 1 and you get another 1 free type of discount. So the $15 plus shopping only cost us $5 or so. It paid for the toilet rolls. I find that a lot of people tend to just leave their shopping receipts in the trolley and I tend to just pick them up and put them in the bin. I will be checking them a closer from now on.

There is a reason why I don't like talking/writing about things until they actually happens. I don't like jinxing myself. Last post, I wrote about getting our tax refund soon, well good news is that it is coming very soon; we just got the papers to sign. The bad news is it is a lot less than I anticipated. I based my estimated amount from the past which has been very consistent until now. It looks like we will only get around $1,200 after accountant fee. It seems that we had to pay a bit on Capital Gains Tax. It is good that we are making a bit on our trading to now have to pay CGT but it sucks that we are not getting much back.


So we will mostly like be about 1 grand short to getting $20K mortgage by my birthday next month. I was really looking forward to get to that amount. It would have been a good time to celebrate it. In the scheme of things it is really not that big deal but I have become very obsess about it. It has been few months now since we put any extra payment into the mortgage and I just want my fix. It can be addictive paying down debt, or maybe it is just me being weird. And I get very excited (high) when it reaches a significant amount. Right now I feel like just taking some money out of that savings to get there. I don't think DH would be too keen though. Patience is never my best quality.


Health Insurance-
Just got notice for an increase in our health insurance, it happens every year and it always starts 1st of April. It is an April fool's joke that the insurance company plays on everyone. This time it is going up $12.20 per month (about 5%). It will now be $236.84 per month. I'm just glad it is not as bad as last year, that one was a stinker of a joke.


Special K-
One of the positive things about DH catching the train to/from work is he gets a lot of free samples at the train stations. One of the best one he got last year was Chapsticks, he ended up getting 5. I am still using them until now. Yesterday he came home with a box of Special K Biscuit Moments – blueberry flavour. It is very nice but my goodness it is so sweet, it is like eating sugar cubes. So not for me, not that we ever buy those stuff anyway.

Yard Work -
We spent most of our weekend doing yard work. I was hoping to do some planting but instead we spent most of it digging out a tree stump that is in the front yard that is pushing the brick wall fence. We end up destroying a row of a brick edging in front of it, we had to it is the only way to get to it. I'm not too worry about destroying it because we need to re-do the yard anyway. It has needed it for years. We had drought here for a long time that destroyed a lot of our plants. Because we were in water restriction for a long time we didn't bother doing too much with it. Our water restriction these days is a bit more relax and we can actually water our plants now. And I have been buying more drought tolerant plants from garage sales in the last 2 years. It will take us months to do it but I'm hoping we can get it done by next summer. First thing is to get this massive tree stump out. It's been over a year since we cut it and have been poisoning it few times but it is taking forever to die and now the next door neighbour is complaining about it so that's first priority at the moment.

With all this bricks and soil around I decided that I will make garden beds out of them, I just want to experiment with it. If it turns out good then maybe I'll make a permanent feature of it in the backyard.

Saturday Night –
We went out with some friends for a 9 course meal with wine at a Thai restaurant. A friend that organise the get together bought a voucher so it was only $39 per couple. But parking in the area was highway robbery and it didn't help that our meal went on for 3 hours. It took 1 hour for the first dish to come out, so DH had to go out in the rain to put more money in the meter, ended up spending $12. It is a terrible area there is not many options for parking so the council just take advantage of it. We are not going to that part of town anytime soon. We all joked about maybe the restaurant has a deal with the council to get people to spend more on parking. Oh well, it was still great catch up. One friend I haven't seen since last year.

Sunday -
We went grocery shopping, didn't really get much (don't need much); grapes, onions, milk, eggs, potato, chicken and 10 kil0 bag of rice. We still got plenty of rice but they were selling for half price, thinking about it now I probably should have got 2 bags.

Coffee & "Business Meeting"-
While at the shops we stopped by at one of our favourite café, it is in the same shopping centre. Lately, we have been coming to this café once or twice a month. We like to come here and have a "business meeting". Business meeting for us is talking about our finances especially our stocks/stock market/investments. When it comes to our trading/investing we are both very involve with it. We both like to see what each other thinks about a certain stock, should we be buying, selling or just holding, etc.. We have also been discussing a lot about our mortgage and other financial stuff. This time we talked about getting our mortgage down to $20K next month. It is kind of the thing that I want to get /celebrate for my birthday next month. And we think we should be able to do it if we can get our 2013-14 tax refund (I'm 90% sure we will get it by then), that would probably be around $2000-$2500 after accountant fee. We calculated that we will need $5,500 to get to $20K. So the rest we can get from the 'extra pay' next month. It's not really an extra pay, it just happens that DH will get paid 3 times next month instead of only twice (forth-nightly pay deal thing). So if we use that 'extra' pay next month we should be able to do it without derailing out other goal too much. The other goal is to hoard cash in the bank (around $20,000) just in case DH's job contract might not get renewed in June. We got around $13 at the moment.

Stock-
We mainly talked about one of our stock that is doing a Share Purchase Plan (SPP) at the moment (due 24th of March). We talked about whether we should participate in it and where are we going to get the money from? Luckily, we have sold some stocks this year and we actually have enough to fully participate in the SPP. The SPP price is about $2 at the current price. The plan is to get the maximum amount and then sell half of it as soon as possible to luck some profit and then keep the other half long-term. This is one of our best performing stock so I am happy to add more of it in our portfolio.

We both really enjoy our meeting in this café, great atmosphere for it. The coffee is great and they have nice assortment of cakes to go with it. The servings are large so we normally just share a large coffee and slice of cake (DH decided to get NY cheesecake this time). All up it was $13.90. DH offered to pay for all of it out of his allowance since he was the one that really wanted the cake because I was still full from lunch but when it got to our table I still ate a bit of it so I said that we will split it. I actually have a lot of allowance saved up than him. Apart from weekends I really don't have chance to spend it before when I was working part-time it use to get spend a lot on coffee and snacks. I've actually now accumulated $500 but I have big plan to spend a big chunk of it for my birthday next month.

Oh my, this is a long post.

Monday was public holiday here. We spent most it doing some needed work around the house. It was good to tick off some of the items on the 'to do' list.

Saturday we talked about going to the movies to watch The Hobbit and then going out for dinner, I have been wanting to watch it since it came out here on Boxing Day but something else keeps coming up. Since then we have seen a couple of movies with other people none of them was into watching The Hobbit. Unfortunately, when we checked the session time it wasn't on anymore. I actually checked it the week before and it was still scheduled that weekend so they might have just taken it off. So we had to go with Plan B instead. We decided to borrow Season 4 of Game of Thrones and got some Chinese and opened a bottle of wine instead. It was a lot cheaper than going to the movies and eating out at a restaurant. So in between doing work around the house we watch Game of Thrones, 10 episodes for only $10 rental.

We also went out to do some shopping. We decided to get a new quilt and cover. The new queen size bed is a lot thicker than the old one so we decided to get a king size quilt and cover. I've always wanted to get a bigger size bedding to solve the problem of us fighting over it in the colder months. One of us always end up hogging the whole thing, I don't think we would have that problem this winter. Got a pretty good prize for it, just over $150 for an Australian wool & made quilt, quilt cover and 2 pillow cases.

I just harvested the last tomatoes and the basil is now starting to flower so it is also nearing the end. We got so much basil don't normally get these much but this year has been great. I made some pesto last night and had it with some pasta. I'm trying to use it so we can start planting some winter crops.