GROCERY – an even $42. It's more in line with we are aiming for.

I haven’t done much else but painting the grout. I finally finish it today. I was hoping to do it for a week but it has taken a week and a half.

The weather is warming up so I will be putting away the thick winter quilt for the lighter one. I will go to the laundry mat this weekend to get it wash. Our washing machine is too small for it. And then I can put it away for the next 6-7 months. I will also put away the electric blanket until next year.

Finally had low spend weekend. Apart from spending $100 for a gift card we sent to DH's cousin for his wedding we only spent just over $80 on weekend shopping (mainly groceries). Sunday was actually a NSD. We actually went for a run on Sunday (almost a month since last time we went for a ran) and came straight home for lunch.

Actually spent more on groceries than usual, it was because a new grocer just open up a shop in our local shopping centre. They had some pretty good opening sales so I bought a lot more produces than I usually get in a week.

I finally copied my photos into my computer. This was what the ceiling looked like after I sanded and patched it.



This is what the wall looked liked. That left side needed serious sanding. And I also took out an old telephone socket, that what the holes were about.



The old door, really need replacing



New door and the new walls.






I am slowly putting things back but a lot of our books will be put away in the big plastic container with lid in the garage.

I still want to replace the light fixture, maybe this summer when I get the electrician to put the new ceiling fan in the lounge room.

The most expensive thing that I bought for the work was the blind and I also bought a hand sander that was I think $30 (but this will be used for future projects). Also bought a new door knob and hinges about $15.

By the way, the tulips have now blossomed and they are yellow. I didn't know what it will be so that was a nice surprise. The tulip was $12 and pot was only $3.60 on sale.

Oh this is the ceiling now.

Last night we went to the rehearsal for the Christmas carol that is on tv right now. We took our picnic rag and had a little picnic while listening to them sing some great christmas songs. It is summer here at the moment and it is around our summer solstice so our day is so much longer. Right now the sun doesn't go down until after 9:30pm, so it was nice to sit at the park, listening to music while watching the city skyline with the sunset in the back ground.

Normally, it cost $50 to get in for the lawn area and the the reserve area can go as high as $140 but for the rehearsal it only cost $7.50 each. The main show gets so full early in the year that is why they have made the rehearsal show available and even that they now get thousand or so people come. And all proceeds from both goes to a charity for kids.

DH really liked it, it was his first time going to a carol. There were a lot of families with little children, they just love it. They had a lot of room to run around.

This is what it looked like when we got there around 5:30pm.

It was quite hot 30deg, everyone was in their shorts and t-shirts. It did cool down a bit once the sun went.

Then when it got darker around 9pm, they put the lights on.





MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Some photos:

The salt water pool in our resort.


with the pool bar in the background.


Kata Beach


The start of our elephant trekking.


View from our resort.


Banana pancake. DH loved it.


Nai Harn Beach. Where I got my foot massages.

Due to extra income this month we got both the Xmas Fund and EF fully funded. It's a great feeling. We also managed to put $630 extra towards the Car fund this month.

I've updated the "Funds Snowball" page in My Pages (sidebar). I've put in another table which I will update every month.

Goal #3 and #4 is done.

We should be able to fund the Car Fund next month. Although I anticipate a bit more expenses next month. I think our property rate is due again. Also I just got my rebate check from Medicare and all up I will have to cover $200 towards the payment for my anesthesists, I'm happy with that, it's like getting 50% off.

I will update our $20K challenge later. Overall, it looks very good but as usual there where overbudget on some categories.

I was listening to an Audio Book called "The Money Motivator" last week. The only new thing that I got from it was the idea of Saving for Sunny Day. People usually save for rainy day, which is what Emergency Fund is all about. I think we have come to a point in our personal finance journey to start saving for sunny days. This will be a fund for when a great opportunies will come along. So saving for it now, should help give us an opportunity to take advatage of what ever will come along in the future. I don't know what it is yet but would like to save up for it. I will take $100 out of the $500 per month saving just for this.

WooHoo!! We haven't done that for a while.
We are up to 6 NSD for the month, still not very good. Hopefully we can manage another 2 before the end of the month.

Done more yard work and still tackling the garage.

...is happening around here. We did a lot of yard work on the weekend, and I am still trying to clean the garage. It's a lot more work that I anticipated.

Been spending a bit of money this month, we've only had 4 NSD this month so far. I think this is the lowest NSD month ever. We are already over our entertainment budget for the month. We went to Nobu, really expensive but soooo good. Sashimi...yum! So, no more going out for the rest of the month for us.

DH just got back from getting the car (the LPG gas) tuned, he reckon it's still not running efficiently enough. He thought it would cost around $100, but the guy only took couple minutes tuning it and didn't charge DH for it. Hopefully it will be working better now, which should save us a bit more fuel exp.

That’s about it folks.

As the title suggest, nothing much happening in my world lately. I haven't done anything in cleaning the garage. It's a bit cold out there. Right now I'm just thinking of cleaning the study while the weather is not very good outside. So, I think I'm going to give myself two weeks to clean the garage and the study. I also got normal housing cleaning to do. Hmmm...it's never ending.

I finished putting away our summer clothes. The closet is a lot more organised. The summer clothes are in a container and have just put it the spare bedroom.

Next item in the list is to organise the garage. I'll give myself till next Saturday to do it.



12/4/08

It's been 3-4 months now since we got our car converted from petrol to LPG. Well I thought I should share with you guys the results so far. From Jan to Mar we spent $221.51, which is an average of $73.83 per month. To compare it to last year we average $96.79 per month, which means we are currently saving almost $23 per month. It’s probably more, since we had been driving a bit more this summer and the petrol prices are now about 10-20 cents more expensive than this time last year. LPG were also more expensive here during summer (about 10 cents) due to higher demand for it in the US and Europe winter.

Overall we are very happy with our decision to convert our car, we haven’t covered the cost of the conversion yet, but now we can go away on the weekends a bit more. It is also cleaner to the environment.

I had to buy another bus ticket today. I got the 5 x daily ticket because it's cheaper than just getting the daily tickets separately. I also spent some of my allowance money on coffee and some snacks today. Other than that not much else happened today. I still haven't started cleaning out our wardrobe

A lot of our expenses are slightly increasing, the lastest one is our health insurance. Starting this month we willl be paying almost $4 extra per month. When I get rid of my bank fees, the $4 per month bank fees will perfectly cover it.

Today was my day off and it was a NSD. Spent the whole afternoon cooking, I cooked stir fried noodles and shepherd’s pie (be freezing the pie). After cooking I clean the kitchen from top to bottom. I wash the walls, scrubbed the cabinet doors, wiped the top of the fridge (it was filthy) and finally I moped the floors. Now the kitchen is spotless.

I think I might start writing down things I need to do around the house. Hopefully it will motivate me. I will aim to do at least one mini project a week. This week I aim to get our wardrobe organize, I want to put away our summer clothes into one of those big plastic containers which I can put away in the spare room. There are so many things we need to do around the house but I get so lazy and there are things that always gets in the way. Maybe putting it down here will help me get my act together.

How come I can’t add anymore categories?

Our net worth has increase by $40K in the last 3 months. This was mainly due to DH's bonus and the gov't co-contribution to my retirement fund. It could even be more if I actually increase the value of our house, but I like to value it very conservatively. I think it is probably about $30-50K more than what I value it right now, this is base on the value a house across us that got sold couple of months ago. There is a great demand for houses in Australia right now, which is pushing the prices up. Experts have predicted that value of housings could increase another 40% in the next 5-10 years. By that time, our house should double the value of our house from when we bought it.

Today was a NSD, didn't go anywhere today and that normally means not spending any money. We stayed home and just did some house work. It was nice sunny day today, perfect weather for gardening. We planted most of our seedlings and after that I did some cooking (beef casserole). I cooked it for about two hours, the meat was really tender. And tonight I just did some ironing while watching CSI. I just hate ironing, so I tend to do it while watching TV.

Will be paying the electricity bill tomorrow, hopefully won't be spending anymore than that.

good night.

Eventhough we already went shopping yesterday, we didn't get any meat and only got some fruits/vegies at Aldi. Today we went to the market to get some meat, more fruits and vegies (meat are so much cheaper at the market). We also got some 9volt batteries for our smoke alarms. Today is our last of day light saving and when we normally change our smoke alarm batteries.

The weather is getting colder, and the day is getting shorter. i don't think our summer vegies will last that much longer. There are still a lot of tomatoes, some are still green. I don't think those will ever ripen. I will give them to mum, she can pickle it. There are still some egplants and capsicums to harvest. We got 2 pumpkin the other day, I gave some to mum, and baked some of it...it was very yummy. There are still some in the fridge, i might make some pumpkin soup tomorrow (DH's favourite).

Three weeks ago, we planted some seedlings for our winter crop. Unfortunately, two days ago, it was really windy here due to the cyclone activities in Western Australia and it destroyed about half of our seedlings. Lucky I planted lots. We will need to plant the seedlings permanently this weekend. Then hopefully in two months time we will be eating a lot of beans and snow peas.

Went grocery shopping after work tonight. Prices are getting really bad, the milk we get are now worth $3.19. It used to be only $2.99 few months ago.

I just got back from spending most of the morning in the city. I had a dentist appointment at 9:30am so I went with DH (he was on his way to work). The city center is about 30mins train ride from our place. The dentist was another 10mins tram ride from the train station where I got off.

After the Dentist, I went to my health insurance office and got my rebate back from my surgery last month. I got $340 back. They gave me $200 in cash (the max they could give over the counter) and the rest will be deposited into my bank account. The dentist visit today was free, already paid for it last time (which I got full rebate back from my health insurance). It was only 5mins check up, just to make sure it is healing up nicely.

Then after that I went to the Medicare office to lodge the payments for the Anaesthetist. I should get two cheques (1 from Medicare and 1 from my health insurance), I don't don't how much it will be. I will have to cover the rest. The anaesthetist will cost $400, hopefully I won't have to pay too much out of pocket.

And then after that I went to the bank that I have been looking into to open a joint account with DH. I was able to get all the info that I need to open the account. There is no monthly fees (so I should be able to save $4p/month) but there are a lot of limits. Can only use ATM 5 times a month and then after that it will cost $2 each time. There is an unlimited online transactions - so that's good. EFTPOS are also unlimited. but going in the bank's branch will cost an arm and a leg - $5 each time. Although I don't think I will be going into a branch that often since the closest one is in the city. I just don't get there that often. DH won't be using the account that much at all. Hopefully we can open it sometime this month, DH and I will have to make time for it. To open it we have to deposit $2,000 but once that account is establish there is no minimum amount requirement, so we will have take it out right away. I will use the EF money to open it.

After at the bank, I also went to a jewellry store where we got my engagement ring to get my ring cleaned. I can get my ring clean there for free anytime I want. Unfortunately, they were still close . They open really late for some reason.

By 12:00pm, I went to meet up with DH for lunch. He works about 5mins from the city, so I caught another train to get there. We just had subway.

I didn't get home until 2pm, I'm really tired now. Too much excitement for me .

Someone in my previous post asked why i pay $4 a month for bank fees. Unfortunately that is probably one of the best deal last year for the stuff it allows me to do. DH used to pay $10 per month and that is why he doesn't have a bank account at all anymore. His bank use to have our mortgage and he used to use it for free until we change our mortgage over to a lesser interest rate (different institution). All of DH's pay just goes straight to the mortgage account (a redraw account, which helps lowers the interest rate paid for the month). This account is connected to one of his creditcard, which what he uses as his bank to redraw money from the redrwa account. We have only really come across a problem once, it was when he had to cash in cheques. he didn't have a bank to cash it in. So he had to sign it at the back and had to put it in my bank.

For the last year now I have been keeping my eye on the bank that don't charge fees, most of them requires having minimum balance (not very beneficial to us, I could get more than $4 p/m by putting the money in the mortgage or online account). However, last month we did came across one that might be really good for us to open a joint account with. Hopefully we will have some free time soon to go in the city to open a new account.

hmmm...

Finally taking the plunge to start a financial blog. I thought now will be the best time to start, being a new year and all. I hope to use this blog to keep track of my financial journey.

My 2007 goals:

1. Pay off CC#1 and CC#2 by July 2007 (~ $10,000).

2. Pay off $1,500 of CC#3 by end of July 2007.

3. Pay off personal loan by the end of 2007 (~$3,000).

4. Contribute $1,000 to my retirement fund by the end of 2007.

5. Build up an emergency fund (I've got $500 so far) to $3,000.

6. Have a $5,000 saving by the end of the year.

7. Save $1,000 to put towards a new (second hand) car.

8. Save up for a holiday overseas (~$3,000, I've got about $700 so far).

9. Save $1,000 for next Xmas expenses.

10. Put $5,000 towards long-term investments (shares).

Wish me luck!