We went away for 2 weeks, total spend was $708.63.

Accommodation = $105.00 for 3 nights camping
Transportation = Fuel cost $303.10
Food = $300.53


October (portion) = $439.14
November (portion) = $269.49

It was a great holiday just relaxed and watched the sunset (a lot).

On our 3rd day there, as we were driving from the market, just a block from the in-laws house at this parking area by the lake there was a sign for sale next to this camper trailer. A guy and his family were there, they had the tailer set up. We thought that looks interesting and we wondered how much it would be. We didn't bother stopping by because we wanted to get home (i.e. to the in-laws place) for lunch. Anyway, we talked about it during lunch and decided that we should go back and check it out. At this stage we didn’t think we would get it, we thought it would cost around $5k but we were interested to see what it was like. We were surprise that the price was for only $2,650 and that we would like it. We umm and ahh and slept on it. The next day they lowered the price on Gumtree (this is probably like Craig’s List in the US). We felt that they just want to get rid of it because they already got a replacement, an upgrade, they bought a caravan. So they don’t have room anymore in the garage for it.

We message them to ask to look at it again and if they are willing to accept $2300. They agreed. We made sure we could tow it in our car; it was all good so we bought it. It has a nice little kitchen, we can hook it up to power and there are a lot of space. It is a good solid trailer and can be taken off road if we want it to.

We decided to put this under holiday spending. So far this year we have spent $2,454.63 on holidays, I budgeted $4,000 for the year so we are way under, with a leftover of $1,545.37. We don’t have plans to go anywhere until next year.

Change to our Challenge?
We are going to still go ahead with our saving challenge. We will most likely keep this camper trailer for 5 years and then maybe upgrade? That's what tends to happen.

Saving for Caravan/Campervan/Camper Trailer Challenge

For the last couple of years now DH and I have been discussing that in the future we would like to get either a caravan, camper trailer or even a van that we can convert into a campervan. The reason why we hired one when we went to Tasmania back in May is because we wanted to try what it would be like sleeping in one. We want to travel around Australia (or at least part of it), this will probably happen in 5-years’ time and maybe hopefully even sooner than that. And we believed this one of the best way to see this beautiful country of ours.

AIM: $15K in 3 years (at least a starting point)

By/From:
- Gifts – any gifts we receive that’s useful to us (I will decide on individual basis)
- Savings from Grocery – we will stick to our $300 p/m budget if we spend less than this amount the leftover money will go to this saving challenge.
- Savings from Entertainment Money – same goes with this, we will have $150p/m budget (Netflix is included in this amount).
- Any Cash Rewards that we might get (eg. Credit card rewards)
- NSD’s – ($3 per NSD) – I actually still take note of our NSDs in my spreadsheets, so I would like to bring this back just like when I used to save up for my Sunny day savings few years back.
- Savings from buying something we NEED cheaper. Good incentive to make sure we are getting the best value for our money.
- Extra Income – if it happens I would like to put part of it in this saving challenge (Any of our current or future investment income, eg. Dividend money is not included in this)
- Tax refund – If any, I would like some of it to go here also.
- Trading Income – I very rarely do trading these days, the last time was over a year ago. I just haven’t been motivated enough to do all that work, I just been investing long-term, so much less work. But I think I might start doing it again but with very small amount of money and if I make some I will put a percent of the profit into this challenge. DH also pledges to contribute some money into this saving challenge if he makes some money from his trading. He does a bit more trading when he has time, he likes it, he likes following the market. I have just over $1,700 in my CFD trading account. DH probably got around that same amount in his account, whenever he gets his account above $2K he takes some out as reserves and when it goes below $1.5K he put some back in. It really is just “play” money.

I’m going to keep this money separate so I’m thinking of opening a new bank account or maybe a sub-account from our current savings account if it is available I haven’t checked yet.

Normally I would have started this challenge in the beginning of next year but I’m really eager so I’m going to start next month. I just read a book that also motivated me to start now, why wait? We will try to keep our spending plan to as close to this year for next year.
DH is about to finish the tax return for the last financial year; I’m hoping we will get some more money this time. Last time we had to pay a bit for DH.

So, here we go. I’m excited about this!

This would have been a low spend month but because we pre-paid internet for a year it total to $2,568.13. Half of this was because of the internet, holiday expenses and my birthday celebration.

Internet – was big total for the month was $845.

Holiday – ended at $285.20. Some of this included money we spent on our Easter Holiday and some for another holiday we are going very soon.

Groceries – We only got few things this weekend because we didn’t need much and it only cost us $9.95. The total for the month was $296.20

Birthday Celebration – I had another birthday get together, with friends this time. We had lunch and then we went to an Escape Room and then had coffee afterwards. It was fun and it cost us $127.00. Overall, my birthday cost me $242.50, this includes that dinner I went with DH.

Eating Out – We did not cook at all the whole weekend. We went a bit crazy. On top of the lunch above we went out to another restaurant for Sunday lunch as well and we got takeaway food Saturday night, thankfully we had leftover and we ate that Sunday night. All the eating out, not including above amount was $61.90.

Fuel – got some $37.20


Financials-

*Put as much money we possibly can into Investments (at least $45K).
More savings in April than in March - *happy dance*

*Save $4K for Holiday money.
Have spent some of this money at the start of the month and will continues to spend more money in May for our next holiday.

*Save $5K for future House Repairs/Future Remodel.
We should be able to start saving more for this in the second half of the year.


Other –

*Read 70 books.
28. Beyond Good and Evil - Frederick Nietzsche (3 Apr) - Read w/ Audio**
29. Money to Burn - James Grippando (5 Apr) - Audio
30. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (7 Apr)
31. On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (8 Apr)
32. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (10 Apr)
34. A is for Alibi - Sue Grafton (11 Apr) - Audio
35. Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner (12 Apr)
36. The Checklist Manifesto: How to get things right - Atul Gawande (13 Apr)
37. Siddhartha -Hermann Hesse (15 Apr)
38. Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan (17 Apr)
39. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (18 Apr) - Audio
40. You Need a Budget - Jesse Mecham (19 Apr)
41. Philosophy for Beginners - Max Charlesworth (20 Apr)
42. B is for Burglar - Sue Grafton (22 Apr) - Audio
43. The Pardon - James Grippando (23 Apr) - Audio
44. War and Gold - Kwasi Kwarteng (24 Apr)
45. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (26 Apr)
46. The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy (27 Apr) – Audio
47. C is for Corpse - Sue Grafton (30 Apr) – Audio

I’m more than half way to my goal! It’s amazing how cutting about 4 hours of television a day adds up. These days there’s not much worth watching unless you are into reality shows. I used to watch those cooking and renovation contest but they are not about cooking or renovations anymore, it’s always just about people fighting which I’m so over it.

As you can see I listened to a bit of audiobooks this month, they are all crime and mystery books except for the first one which I read along while listening to the audio. I already got a copy of ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ in my kindle and I borrowed the audio version from the library online. I do a lot of my listening to the audiobooks while I'm walking the dog, while cleaning and in the last several days while I was doing some painting.

Since I’m more than halfway to my goal already and I’ve increased my reading time while not really reading because of audiobooks I decided to increase the amounts of books I aim to read to 100 books this year.


*Learn Spanish.
Still going and I’m at 104 days streak at the moment.

*Workout 3/4 times a week.
Doing very poorly here, I’m still doing some but mainly just stretching and walking the dog, I need to do harder exercises when we get back from our holiday. This is becoming a bad pattern, me constantly waiting for something to happen before I get my act together. I need to break it.

*Try new recipes every other week.
I tried few and one of them was the Aloo Gobi that I got inspired by toilet-paper-tracker.

*Blogging once per week.
Check

*Continue Garden/Landscaping.
As I mentioned in my previous blog entry DH built a screen wall outside to screen off the clothes line and I painted it.

*Wake-up early (before 7am)
Check

*Continue Decluttering.
DH has been putting our music from CDs to digital so we can listen to them whenever and wherever on our phones and the CDs themselves have been stored away into a plastic tub in the garage. It took him over a month copying them.

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.

We have been getting a lot of tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchinis from the garden this summer. There has also some strawberries and a handful of blueberries. We have been having salads everyday.

All this week DH has to catch the bus part way to work instead of the train all the way because they are doing some work on the train tracks. Not all buses has the ticketing facilities, I think most of them are school buses they have no need for it (it is our school holiday that's why they are using them). So DH hasn't been paying for some of his trip. I think it will be at least $20 savings for the week. And because of the inconvenience they have been providing breakfast, DH got free banana yesterday. They've also been giving away bbq breakfast sausages, he has opted not to have any of those.

I'm bored right now, just waiting for this month to end so I can finalise August numbers. Had NSDs on Monday and Tuesday.

I'm starting to plan for our annivesary, which is in October. We will probably stay overnight somewhere. I think we could do it for $300 for everything. We both don't want to do anything big this year, we just want to go somewhere in our state that we haven't been to and just relax for the weekend. I will be saving $200 for it this month and another $100 next month.

I don't think we really need $2000 for christmas/anniversary (Goal #3) this year I think we can get away with $1000-$1200. We would rather save it for our overseas holiday next year.

On Friday I got to check my retirement fund, DH also decided to check his on the weekend. Our retirement funds is now over $101K. Finally!!!. The last $20,ooo has taken so long because of the GFC. Hopefully it will stay above $100K from now on.

I also did a quick look at our networth estimate, I think it has increased over $20K since end of last year. Slow but steady we go

We just received this quarter's electric bill and its fantastic! This is what it looked like:

Solar bonus and rebate = $93.63CR (this is the amount the electric company paid us for the energy that we put back into the grid)

Peak usage charge = $53.86
Off-peak usage charge = $37.01
Off-peak Service charge = $15.30
Supply Charge = $66.19
GST = $17.24
Other rebate = $8.04 CR (we get this discount because we have our gas in the same company)

TOTAL AMOUNT DUE = $87.93

I had a looked at the last 2 years bills and we average at $197 per quarter.

So we've saved over $100 in this quarter and this is in the middle of our winter bill and we have slowly been using more of the electric appliances than the gas ones. DH and I are hoping that the summer bill will be even better.

The last bill was $147, that was when we got the solar panels installed half way through it.

At this stage, we still got about 5 years to break-even.

I've decided to pay myself $10 instead of $5 for every NSD we have this year. This of course would again go into my "Sunny Day Savings" (see under my Pages on the sidebar). I started this saving since 2007, I got the idea after reading a personal finance book. I can't remember what the book is called now, but the idea is somewhat opposite to an emergency fund. I used it when I see a good bargain. Back in 2008-2009 I used to put $200 a month into it but have now cut it out and have only put NSD savings into it. In previous years, I've bought shares with this money and so far they have been a pretty good buy. Last year we spend some of the money on our holiday to Fiji and to buy my Kindle.

Basically this money I use for things that I consider as an "opportunity", not necessary to make us extra money, although all those shares that I've bought with this money so far has, but also for things that I consider a bargain. The fijian holiday for example the flights were half price. And the kindle I bought because the Australian dollar went above the US (which hasn't happened for about 30 years?), which made it a lot cheaper than back when it first came out and I have been wanting to get one since.

Anyway, it is really just a saving with no name for it. It is just some sort of a game that I play with myself. It make saving more fun for me, getting a reward for having a NSD.

Was going to post this yesterday but I got distracted with emails.

We managed to save $2000 for the month of November, $500 of it was put into prepaying the mortgage. Overall, it wasn't that bad, again entertainment was over (what else is new). I think we will try to get it out of our system until the end of the year. Next year it will have to stop. The dental work I got done and the property rate also made up a lot of our expenses in November.

So we only got $1000 to go to achieve Goal #6 for the year. We should be able to do it but I don't think we will be able to save $2000 though. Our car registration is due.

Our 19K challege is way out of hand now (I will update my sidebar after this). Really I got no excuses anymore.


By the way, yesterday was NSD, first one for the month of December. Oh and we had 11 NSD in November, I will try to achieve this again this month. I think today could be another NSD, but I'm not really sure yet, DH might get his monthly train ticket today.

On another news, we received our $250 wish card from claiming our AMEX points, and it did came with 2 movie tickets. I will probably give those tickets to my brother and his gf for christmas as part of their xmas presents.

At this stage we will probably have about $1,800 - $2000 extra this month. Which we call as money into "savings". Starting this month we were going to put this money into our mortgage as extra payments. However, at the moment the stock market is looking good for an entry. So at this stage, I'm thinking of buying more shares instead of paying the mortgage. DH doesn't mind either way.

I guess it doesn't really matter. Our big 5 year goals at the moment is to hopefully pay off the mortage in the next 5 years or at least have enough cash in the savings to pay it off (this goal is really ambitious but doable we really work hard at it) and to also have $100K worth of stocks not including what's in our retirement/superannuation funds. So, either way we are still working towards our goal.

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Right now I got corned beef cooking in the slow cooker. I will roast some vegies later to go with it for dinner. It's over a kilo so we will probably have it for few days. I am looking forward to having it in a sandwich for lunch tomorrow. yumm.

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

Also, $1,190 into the Household Fund.

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

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

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

Better go and update my side bar.

Oh by the way we had 11 NSDs in August.

Today is DH's payday, yea! Unfortunately, a lot of bills come out today too. Just paid the internet and the annual home & content insurance. Also $1000 is put a side for saving this month.

Used up the zucchinis last night for dinner. Made zucchini and pasta with cream sauce. Had some salad to go with it. I think we could go for another week without going to the shop. So far we are on track with our goal of only spending $100 on groceries this month.




15 Jan - 11am