Grocery - $32.45, we only needed some stuff.


Second-hand Store – We checked out this store near this Aldi we went to on the week (not our normal Aldi), they were selling CD’s for $1 and I found a little Spanish/English dictionary for $2 and another book. We end up spending $14 there.

It was a quiet weekend.

On the weekend we were starting to have the same problem with our sewage pipes as couple of months ago. The plumber did warn me when he unblocked the pipes that the problem might be bigger than blockage. He wouldn’t know though unless he put a camera in there (he didn’t have one with him and it would cost more) but when he was unblocking it he said it didn’t feel right. He thinks it might be a problem at the intersection where our pipes meet the main pipes. DH was going to try to call either the council and/or the water company to find out where that intersection might be located in our property. The plumber tried to look for it but he couldn’t find one, and when he asked me about it I had no I idea there is such a thing. Apparently, there should have been a pipe or a vent that sticks out from the ground, and that sometimes they can collapse and cause blockage. We have lived here for almost 20 years I’ve never seen one, neither has DH. So both DH and I were anticipating that if this is cracked/collapsed pipes then it will cost thousands. Few days later it was getting worst.

Yesterday DH called the water company instead of the plumber, he was fully expecting for them to say ‘to call the plumber’ but they were actually very helpful and came over an hour after the call, he actually got here before DH (DH left work early so he could be home for it). I explained to him what happened and what the plumber has said to me. He mentioned that some houses especially houses built at certain time, which ours falls under, might not have the vent pipe. And he also said that plumbers are only allowed to go a certain distance, so maybe he couldn’t go too far with his machine. This guy got so much better machines, it only took him less than 10 minutes and he had a camera, we got to see what was inside our pipes, it looked really squeaky clean and he also pointed out the intersection, according to him it looks good. Hopefully that is the end of it and we won’t have to deal with it for another 10 years.

He was really helpful and just before he left he suggested that next time it happens to call them first instead of the plumber; it won’t cost us for them to come to assess the problem instead of the other way around. Next time we will for sure. I’m just thankful it only cost us $250 for the plumber and we didn’t need to do any digging up and replacing pipes. We were so relieved.

Grocery – $97.40, we did a big shop but we are still under for the month.

Dog Food – Bought a 10 kilo bag of dog food and that was $64.

New Clothesline – DH calls it wind and solar powered clothes dryer, what a nerd! So we bought one and spent few hours installing it, that was $56.90

Allowance Money – We went to the Salvation Army and bought some books and CDs. All up we spent a whopping $38.70. I found 2 John Grisham newer books (2016 and 2017 copyrights) I have not read these yet. I think DH end up getting about a dozen CDs. And on top of those Grisham books I also bought another 3. I used up cash I got from last year’s birthday present and then the rest we took off from our allowance money. We hardly been spending our allocated ‘allowance money’ in the last couple of years. This year I allocated $800 for both of us for it and so far we’ve only spent under $150. DH has been really good at saying no to most of the eating out and drinking out invites with co-workers. The thing is that his company actually provide them with snacks and beer every Friday night so he does not feel left out. There are also the occasional lunches and dinners that the company organises and sometimes he gets taken out by suppliers for ‘meeting’.
So he is very selective to when he say yes to these invites and there are plenty at least one to two times a week. Last week for example he said yes to beer after work on Thursday because it was with his old boss that he doesn’t get to converse much anymore, due to restructuring in the company. That 1 beer by the way cost him $10, so yeah it get pretty pricey very quickly if he goes to every single one of them and most of the time they involve getting food. Sometimes he feels bad that he says no but then he also doesn’t want to drink too much during workdays, he wants to come home on time and get an early night sleep for the next day. So it is not just about the money.

Christmas Spending – We had a very low key Christmas, I used the $30 gift card and $100 EFTPOS card to buy groceries for Christmas celebration. It was more than enough I think in the end there was still few dollars left. So it was perfect. For few days after Christmas day we’ve been eating the leftovers, and we finally finish the last bit of the glazed ham for lunch today. As for gifts we mainly sent gift cards (online) and cash to our relatives. All up $820.05 spent on Christmas this year.

Credit Card Rewards – Last month DH signed up for a credit card to get a cashback reward of $300 (spending $1000). DH used it to pay our annual car registration ($800.80) and the recent water bill ($247.62). The other day they already credited the $300 into the account. They have also taken out $59 for the annual card fee. And I think paying off those bills with the credit card accrued less than 2% fee. So really we are getting around $220 cash reward.

Tassie Holiday – We already spent some of that cash reward. The other night we bought 2 returned airfares to Tasmania. The airline was having a nice Boxing Day sale. All up it only cost us $156, the last time it cost us $436, so it was a very nice saving. We won’t be going until early May; they weren’t any sales fare before that. I was thinking of making this as my birthday celebration since it will only be two weeks after my actual birthday. We are finally going to Cradle Mountain this time and then I can use that gift card I got from my brother from my last birthday.

New Mobile Phone – I got a new mobile phone, it won’t actually get here for another month but DH ordered one for me the other night. Before buying that phone we hardly spent money on our phones this year. We budgeted $360 for the year but we’ve only spent $120 so we decide to get me a new phone because my current phone is old and I can’t upgrade anything or put on any apps any it, there is just no room. The new phone cost $210 it is probably the only excessive spending this year really, well maybe apart from my 40th birthday celebration. No regrets though.

DH got notice that he will be getting a pay raise, it is only for 2.5% so just in line with CPI. He has given up getting a pay raise this year so I guess this was unexpected. Not much really but every bit helps.


Grocery - This week we spent $74.02. One more week left for the month and we’ve only spent $185, which left us $115. I have plan to stock up some things this coming weekend.


Fitness Tracker – Someone at DH work gave him 2 brand new fitness trackers. The guy bought that it for himself and his wife but it never showed up so he decided to cancel it and bought it somewhere else and now long after he got his money refunded they showed up in the mail. It seems like everyone at his team already have them except for DH so he offered it to him for a beer or something small of value just to cover the credit card fee that he incured for international purchased. DH was happy to do it. He bought him some chocolates since he loves them, not even $5 worth. And next time they go out for drinks DH will shout him a beer or two.

Grocery – We bought mainly staples, fruits and vegetables this weekend. All up it totaled $61.45. We actually end up buying a couple of whole chickens because they were really cheap at Aldi, it was only $3 a kilo, for two chickens we paid $9.76. We also got a big block of cheese (1kg) for $6.


Weekend – We occupied the rest of the weekend mostly reading, listening to music (mainly myself) and podcasts. DH is currently obsessed with podcasts, personal finance in particular. Since we paid off the house and most of our money is now put into investments/savings he has really taken interests. It is more fun than paying off debt. It has now become a new hobby for him, he is reading a lot of personal finance books too. He even went to the library on Sunday afternoon to borrow PF books, it really is amazing.


New Headphone – DH bought a new headphone on ebay for $25.30. His current one is broken from listening to too much podcasts, he is currently using an old crappy one in the main time.

Groceries – We will definitely be over our monthly budget this month it will be mainly because this month has 5 Saturdays. I’m trying to see if we can get away with just buying the most minimum items that we need. The basic staples like milk and eggs. We got a couple of dishes in the freezer; bolonese sauce and pulled pork.


Annual rubbish collection – Currently we have our local council annual rubbish collection, this when we can throw out big items like and old fridge or old TVs. We throw out a really old computer monitor, an old trolley and some old broken items that we could fit in the usual weekly rubbish bin that we got.



Batch cooking – We are trying to do more batch cooking in the last couple of months, so far so good. That’s way we got the beef bolonese sauce and the pulled pork.


Netflix – We decided to turn it off for the month of August. I haven’t really been watching as much been busy with reading and listening podcast these days. I’m sure we will put it on again for Sept and Oct and then probably have a break again in Nov when we will most likely be away.

Not much else is really going on here.

Holiday Destination – I was asked about our holiday in my previous blog entry. Our holiday plans have changed a lot since we planned about it last year. We initially thought about going to Mauritius and South Africa and we thought this year might be a good time to do it. Mauritius was our (really mainly mine) honeymoon destination but we couldn’t afford it 10 years or so ago so we kind of made this promise to do it when the house is paid off. Well I guess things you plan to do 10 years ago can change, it kind of doesn’t have that much appeal to me anymore, I mean I would still love to go one day but just not as eager. The problem is twofold; if we go we want to do for at least 3 weeks or more to make it worthwhile but right now DH can only really take off work for a week or so and the other reason is we don’t want to leave our for that long. The last time we went overseas we went for about a month and we really missed her and she really missed us (according to my mom). So anyway we are forgoing Mauritius and South Africa for the moment, maybe in another 10 years.

But we still really wanted to get away this winter, somewhere warm. So we thought about going to maybe New Caledonia or Vanuatu, a lot closer from home so we will not need to spend 18+ hours just travelling to get there. We came up with this idea just before Easter, this destination would have been a lot cheaper than Mauritius and SA and gave us time and money to do the NSW/Sydney holiday during Easter break. But for some reason it has taken us a lot longer to get new passports that we decided to just forgo the idea of going overseas at all this year.

Side note: I don’t know why I’m learning basic Spanish? I just realised I should probably learn basic French since both Mauritius and New Caledonia are French speaking countries. Maybe one day. It will be an incentive to learn French and then visits these countries.

The idea of going somewhere warm was still really appealing to us since we are in the middle of our winter so last month DH actually mentioned that maybe we should just head up north to Cairns for a week in late July to early Aug. We started looking into it until my brother came for a visit two weeks ago.

Back story about my brother since I have not mentioned it here before, he moved to Tasmania last year to be with his girlfriend. They were doing long distant thing for over a year and since it is easier for him to move and she owns a house there and she can’t move because of her work he made the move last years. Not long after, just few months after he moved there they got pregnant and the baby is due mid-September. We planned to visit them and see the new baby early Nov when we have a public holiday in the first Tues of Nov (Melbourne cup day), just for 3 to 4 days. But when my brother came he give me a gift voucher as my belated birthday present, it is for this place called Cradle Mountain about 4 hours away from Hobart where they live. I’ve never been to Tasmania and this place is a must see destination in Tassie. So, now our plans have changed yet again. So now DH is going to take the rest of that week off and it should give us 8-9 days to visit Tassie. I think instead of flying we are going to take our car and take the Spirit of Tasmania boat instead. We are just starting to look into planning it. I’m really looking forward to it but it just means we can’t really get away this winter, oh well another 7 weeks and it will be the start of our spring season.

Security Deposit Box – This was another question I got in my previous blog. We got this box about 2 years ago now. We decided to get one when DH got that job overseas so we didn’t have to take some important stuff with us. Anyway, even though DH had to eventually quit that job we decided to keep the box for now. It’s a small box don’t really remember the exact size of it. The box is kept in a private company instead of in the bank, we could get one from the bank they have a really long waiting list apparently. The ones at the bank would have been cheaper probably 40% less but anyway we got one for now and I don’t know we will always keep it but it’s not really too bad price wise (got to remember this is in Australian dollar, we tend to always pay for more here). Maybe we will try to sign up with the bank again, something we will look into next year.

Gas Bill – got the recent gas bill for $89.03 this is for two months’ worth.

Netflix – Just got noticed from them that the prices will be going up starting early August. The one we get will increase from $11.99 to $13.99 per month.

We are away at the moment and I got limited internet connection. I will finalise holiday spending when we get home.

Last weekend we didn't really do much, grocery shopping was under $50 (can't remember exact amount).

Found really cheap work shoes for DH so we could pass up on that, one is for suit and the other boat shoes that he can wear with jeans for Friday casual days. Total $30.

After shopping we splurged and got some Vietnamese, $26.50. I used my allowance money, I hardly use my allowance money these days the only thing I use it for is on books and I haven't spend much.

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.

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.

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.