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.

We haven’t bought many stocks this year until now. The stock market here is starting to look a bit better again. DH had bought some the other day in his superannuation (retirement fund) and we have also agreed to put in some buy orders in our margin loan account. We are looking at buying up to $20,000 worth but we will probably only get $10,000 this time around. I’m hoping this trend will continue and if does we will probably get some more again at the end of the year.

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Steptember Challenge:

I just made it to 10K yesterday.

5 Sept: 10,051 steps

It was a bit of a struggle. I had to keep reminding myself to get up and move around. I had no idea how long it take to do 10,000 steps. I’ve realise now that on normal days I probably only do 5000-6000 steps in one day and on lazy days probably only get up to 4000 steps. It will need a bit of effort to get to 10K. Last night we went to Aldi, normally I would just get DH to stop by after work but last night I got him to pick me up at home first so I could come and walk around the shopping centre.

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Salad lastnight was just simple baby rockets (i like the peppery taste of it), mushrooms, tomatoes (got some lastnight)and olives with just balsamic vinegar and olive oil for dressing. Still loving salads right now.

6 months ago I decided to have a go at trading full time. Since I quit my work mid last year, it was a good opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted. I’m starting very small; my main aim is to just work on my trading strategies and plan.

My goal in this first year of trading is to survive and if possible do the following:
1.Keep my capital
2.Outperform the XAO (Australian Index) = 3-5% during trade period
3.Outperform the Online Savings interest rate = ~ 6%
4.Outperform our Mortgage interest rate = ~ 7%

I’ve decided to analyse my trade every 20 trades, I think it is just enough number to have a comprehensive statistics.

Trade Period = 6 months
Total Number of Trades = 20
Total Number of Winning Trades = 8 (40%)
Total Number of Losing Trades = 12 (60%)
Average Win to Loss Ratio = 2.7
Average Trade Hold Time = 31.7 days
Average Winning Trade Hold Time = 51 days
Average Losing Trade Hold Time = 18.6 days
Percentage Return on Capital Outlay = 53%
Percentage Return on Total Capital = 15%

Trading is hard work but it can be very satisfying. I like the lifestyle, I love working from home and I can do it anytime I want.

15% is not that bad considering the Australian market has pretty much gone sideways in the last 6 months. There is definitely room for improvement (hopefully).

Yesterday was a NSD, maybe today would be too if DH don't need to fill up the car. I'm pretty sure it is due for a fill up, I don't drive so I never really know when it needs it but it seems like it has been a while since he went to the petrol station. He might also need to top up his train pass.

Just been looking at the stock market last night and there are a couple stocks that I want to get. DH got some cash in his retirement fund to get some or he could get some in his margin loan account. I think his retirement account might be better, he said he got $10K cash just seating in it ready to buy. We won't need to pay interest if we use that instead of the margin loan.

Speaking of the stock market, my trading is doing alright but not as well as I hoped it to be. The market is pretty much just been going side ways. I think since I started trading in Nov 2011 it has only been up 3-4%, but at least my trade has gone up around 10%. It was up around 20% at the start but I have given some of it back a bit lately. I will do a final analysis of my trades once I've closed off 20 trades.

DH went to Aldi after work yesterday, we needed milk and he also got a bag of muesli for him to take to work. He keeps it in his desk because he has breakfast at work. He also went to the pharmacy to get more allergy tablets.

Around 3 o'clock this morning, I woke up with a really bad heartburn. I can't remember ever having heartburn before so I thought I was having a heart attack. I don't really know why that happened I didn't eat anything I haven't eaten before. Maybe I'm having some internal anxiety about getting old. haha. I don't think I am really, I don't mind getting old at all. ANd really mid 30s is no that old.

Today is my birthday and DH is taking me to my favourite resturant tonight, I'm so looking forward to it. The start of the day hasn't been that great with not getting much rest because of the heartburn, I couldn't get back to sleep until around 4:30 and then got woken up couple of hours later when DH got up. ANd just when I was falling asleep again my aunty from Canada called to say happy birthday. Then a constant stream of sms followed and more phone calls from the in-laws, nephews and niece. It was nice and all I just wished it was a little bit later.

Just got the mail, got a birthday card with $100 in it from DH's parents. Also got a dividend statement for $21.60 to be deposited in our bank account.

I do have a bit to update but I will keep it short.

March was an okay month could have been better but we still spending a bit on the renovation. We have also been helping my Aunty on her chemotherapy expenses, and it will continue this month also. She needs all the help she could get. We managed to put $3500 into various saving funds. A lot of it went to the household fund which is quickly deflating. I had to (well I guess it was more like I WANTed it) buy a new laptop. My old one broke last month. The household fund is really been hit. The 10 thousand budget to renovate two bathrooms and main bedroom was too low. Anyway, it's all done now. I will just have to wait a bit longer to do the other bathroom.

We are going away for Easter to visit relatives interstate. I put away $300 into the holiday fund, it should be plenty since our flight is already paid for and we won't need to pay for accomodation. We will probably mainly spend money on the little kiddies, since we deliberately didn't send them christmas presents.

This month will be very good in terms of income, it's double pay month! But we will also need to pay the solar panels this month, which will really put an end to the household fund.

Speaking of solar panels, we have had them up for 2 weeks now and we have put a bit of power back into the grid. I think we will get 60-68 cents per kilowatt.

Stock market:
I love this time of the year because it's dividend time. One of my stock got taken over and all the shares have been bought out. I really liked that share but I had to say goodbye to it. I received my pay out last week. I didn't include it as an income eventhough I doubled my money because I want to just put it back into the investment fund money. I will probably get 2 different stocks in the near future.

Our weekend was really relaxing, we didn't do much but some shopping. We went grocery shopping, all up we spent just under $100. $20 was spent on a turkey for christmas. The freezer is now full. We also went and got a new basin for our ensuite. This is our first purchase for our bathrooms renovation. This place that we found is a lot cheaper than the other once so far. We got a perfect size for our ensuite so we bought it and it fit in the car. We also found a couple different sizes for the main bathroom. We will go back next month after christmas. This place is so much better than the other places that we been to, a lot cheaper for the same product. The only problem is the shop is in the other side of town. They also got nice toilets that we want to get and the taps are more reasonably price. We asked how much the delivery will be to our place and it would be $120, which is quiet a bit. But the guy that serviced us said that he could do it for half that if we come on the weekend. Luckily he lives near our place and he normally does the delivery during the week and hence own a truck. If we go there on the weekend then he can drop off the stuff at our place on his way home. Perfect!

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Got $60 cash as dividend payment for one of our stock. Nice!

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.