Month: June 2009

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Big Wednesday Blues

Sometimes when you see someone win a lot of money like $39 million (!) it can be a little depressing. It can be hard looking at your bills and thinking how much easier it would be with a windfall. This week I’ve reminded myself of the 10 basic principles of financial independence (Noel Whittaker and Roger Moses – Making Money Made Simple, 1992, p 282-285) to motivate myself to keep going, that the changes hubby and I have been making over the last 6 months will make a difference eventually.

q       You have far more control over your life than you think and far more abilities than you know about. Resolve to start to ‘make it happen’ rather than ‘let it happen’.

q       Much of the glamour of wealth and fame is an illusion.

q       Discipline is the key to success in everything. Most people complain about problems and never try to solve them.

q       Life is about a lot of little things that add up. If you start to use all those tiny chunks of time and money you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.

q       You must live within your means. This is a habit you must acquire, it is not optional.

q       Everything worthwhile takes time. Success in every field comes from hard work over a long time, financial independence is no different.

q       Never compare yourself to others. It is pointless.

q       Find yourself a competent financial adviser.

q       Never stop learning. Lack of knowledge holds us back; keep learning about financial planning, goal setting, money management and personal investment.  

q       Start today – but slowly. A successful life is merely a succession of a lot of little things done properly. Don’t try to make massive changes all at once – you probably won’t stick to it and will get disillusioned.  

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Unit pricing

I popped into Woolworths yesterday for 5 mins to pick up a few items on special – Earth care toilet paper at 39c a roll and 2 x 6 burritos for $6 (cost me $4.74 the week before at Pak n Save for 6). It was so lovely to have unit pricing to check the best deals. At Pak n Save it’s the comparison that takes us the longest when shopping, even with a calculator. The Consumer Institute has been asking Foodstuffs to introduce unit pricing and they have agreed to introduce it in mid 2010 Foodstuffs introduce unit pricing – consumer.org.nz so am looking forward to that – might be able to get our weekly shop down to 20 mins!

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Slow cookers

I was given a slow cooker last year as a present but hadn’t got around to using it. I decided last weekend that it was about time it got trialled. I’m not into recipes that take a lot of ingredients so found this one for beer beef stew on the internet. The house smelt amazing all afternoon…..mmm. Hubby doesn’t like any meat stewed, reckons it’s a waste of meat but he kindly donated one of his beers. I used about 650g of stewing steak for about $6 and adjusted the recipe slightly. Tasted yum, then went into the freezer for dinners later on.

Beer Beef Stew

1 tsp salt
2 cups beer
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup butter
1 onion sliced
1/8 tsp pepper
2 lb Stewing Steak cut in 1 inch cubes

Coat beef cubes with the 1/2 cup flour then brown in melted butter and drain off excess fat. In crock pot combine browned meat with onion, salt, pepper and beer. Cover and cook on low 5 to 7 hours until meat is tender. Turn control to high. Dissolve remaining 1/4 cup flour in small amount of water and stir into meat mixture then cook on high 30 to 40 minutes. Serve with rice.

A good info site for making sure you are using your slow cooker safely in terms of food hygiene Cooking safely with slow cookers and crock pots

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The Tax man

Sorting out my paperwork recently I came across some donation receipts from three and four years ago. I only started claiming my donation rebate two years ago. So for a few minutes of downloading forms and filling them in I got $180 from Inland Revenue last week – much better than having to give them money. The form is very basic, takes 30 seconds – can be found at Tax credit (formerly rebate) claim form IR526

While you’re doing that you can check if you have left money in any old bank accounts – Unclaimed money

You can now also check your IRD account on line – follow this link for the registration process. It’s easy with our online services

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Sign On

Sign On The world needs us | Sign On is a Green Peace campaign encouraging people to sign up to send John Keys a message. The message is that in December when he goes to Copenhagen to decide on a new global treaty to reduce emissions we want him to support a reduction target of 40% by 2020. Green Peace wants to get the message out there to sign on and get your friends to sign on.

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Foreign Frozen Veges

Having just read this article Pot luck on frozen veges – Consumer information – NZ Herald News I have to admit I don’t think I’ve ever looked at where my frozen veges come from. I suppose I naively thought that exporting frozen veges from thousands of miles away made no sense! Just checked my freezer – McCain Corn is grown and produced in NZ as are my Pam’s peas. My Watties chopped frozen spinach is a different story. Packaged for Watties NZ, distributed by Auric Pacifc Marketing in Singapore, Lucky Frozen in Kuala Lumpur, product of USA. Not quite sure how that works? Grown in USA, shipped to Kuala Lumpur and frozen, transported to Singapore (or just distributed by a Singapore owned company), sent to NZ? It was sort of a one off purchase, I bought it because I felt like Spanakopita My Greek Kitchen – Spanakopita. Feeling a bit guilty now over so many carbon miles for one meal!!

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$21 Challenge Competition – June 2009

When I first read this site last year Simple Savings – $21 Challenge I thought there was no way a city person could meet this challenge of spending only $21 for food for the week as we don’t have as much access to free food. I’ve realized over the last few months though that it’s more about slowly building your cupboards/freezer up until one week you find that you actually don’t need to shop that much. We got it down to $30 a few weeks ago (not counting cat food!) and cleared almost the whole freezer out which was great as it needed a good clean out. Hubby moaned a little but I pointed out to him that we ate pretty much the same as we did most weeks – it was mostly in his brain that we needed to go out and BUY.

You can pay to access this site, they are having a sale at the moment! I just read Penny’s blog for the weeks where there is free access or the monthly newsletters. I can’t say I have got my spending down to $21 yet!  

 

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Do you go up to a stranger and tell them?

Shopping this morning at the supermarket we faithfully had our shopping list – we were a very distinct minority. To cut down our shopping time even more we now have a shopping list that I’ve sectioned off into the areas of the supermarket as we meet them. Yeah I know, starting to border on the insane! However I think there are so many things at the moment that we can’t control that it helps life go a bit easier if you control the things you can such as time. So anyway there I was at the butter noting that Rolling Meadows was $2.88 per 500g this week when a man bent down beside me and picked up the Anchor butter which was $4.74. I wanted to blurt out “Do you know the other one is almost $2 cheaper?!!” but I stopped myself. Should I have? – do you go up to a stranger and tell them? I thought there might be a difference in the two types of butter so I went home and checked. I have Anchor in the fridge from the last shop when it was on special for $2.64.  The only difference in the nutritional information seems to be that Anchor has 0.4g less saturated fat per serving, but both have the same amount of fat and sodium overall. So I’m still no wiser why the guy bought a butter so much more expensive? What I have learnt this morning though from looking at the butter so closely is that my butter has a shelf life of about a year so next time butter is on special buy it!

 

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Is your cat too fat?

We’ve been trying continually to see how we can shave our spending, seeing as we are on one income many weeks. I decided to work out if our cats are fat and could do with cutting down on the eating a bit. After all everyone in the family should make sacrifices during hard times. Some studies have estimated that from 25-40% of cats worldwide are overweight so it was highly possible my lovelies fell into that category Biscuit snacks can lead to fat cats – Obesity – NZ Herald News . Seemingly male cats should weigh between 4.53 -4.98kg and females 2.49-3.49kg. So I grabbed the first cat that turned up to dinner (usually a good sign of the best candidate for obesity) and dragged a rather bemused male off to the bathroom scales – 4.6kg – damn, more of a flat cat than a fat cat. Oh well it was worth a try, perhaps we could train our hunter cat to become a cat burglar so he can bring in items a little more valuable than mice……?

    

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You’re not going to rip me off!

I read this article a while back regarding a research project being done in NZ to determine the % of customers who are overcharged by supermarket scanners http://www.nzherald.co.nz/consumer-information/news/article.cfm?c_id=164&objectid=10560545.

The preliminary study showed that less than half of customers check their bills. Translated into monetary terms the overcharging could run to millions of dollars.  

 

I decided last week to see if my supermarket was ripping me off. I took a graphics calculator shopping – it allows me to enter the prices easily into a stats menu and all the information is held in the memory. The only draw back was hubby and I couldn’t split up to shop because we had to enter the prices so shopping took a little longer. ‘Disappointingly’ it all added up perfectly.

 

However tonight my day was made at The Warehouse when I checked my receipt and realized I had been overcharged by $2! It has inspired me to keep taking the calculator to the supermarket for a few more weeks to see how accurate the bar coding really is at my local supermarket. How does your local supermarket stack up regarding ripping you off?