Well I am officially back in employment starting December so I can now stop my resignation diary as I get ready to move on to my next job. This means that I will be unemployed for five days (after my holiday pay is used up). It is only a two month contract as I am still undecided what I really want to do career wise and didn’t want to jump straight back into the rat race. I haven’t had any amazing life revelations yet regarding my career path – watch this space! On the household front we are continuing to try to trim our finances – our goal is to keep under what we spent in the corresponding month the previous year and so far we are managing to meet that challenge. It will be a little more difficult of course in the following months until I get back into a permanent career. Yesterday and today was a day of Xmas and birthday shopping with a list after a session of budgeting and planning – I even have some of the birthday gifts for next year sorted out. We had a great Xmas last year sticking to our budget and planning ahead and it was the Xmas that people most talked about and used our gifts in the months following. Hopefully we can pull it of again this year.
September Finances
Checking our September spreadsheet it was great to see we have managed to make this the lowest spending month since we started recording all of our spending over sixteen months ago. I thoroughly recommend recording your finances as a way of becoming aware of what you really spend and earn. At the end of each month we know whether we have lived within our means for the month and can see where we have saved or blown out our finances. Using September as an example I have worked out that our extra increase in spending would be $14 a week with 15% GST instead of 12.5%. As I am going to be unemployed for a while that will be $14 a week that we will have to chop off the budget along with a lot of our other spending. As I’m writing this last sentence one of my cats is sitting on my paper staring intensely at me as if she knows what just flashed through my mind – cut the cat budget! One of my friends has promised me some possum meat in the future – a nice cheap way to feed the cats. It’s OK puss, you know you are so gorgeous that you will always be spoilt.
Retail Therapy
According to the retail figures December shoppers went for feel-good spending with growth in the sectors of cafes/restaurants, jewellery and hairdressing/beauty (Dominion Post – 7/01/2010). I have to say I wasn’t responsible for any of this particular increase in spending! It’s strange reading each month’s analysis of consumer spending with analysts eagerly waiting for that growth in spending that will indicate we are returning to ‘better times’. In contrast my own monthly analysis of our household spending is driven the other way, it is a good month when we spend less than we earn and spend less than the month before. December was our household’s lowest spending month in the last six months – this is the first time in years that come January I’m not afraid of my December credit card bill. I’m not sure that I want to help the economy recover short term by returning to my old over consumption habits. Long term I feel I can do more for our economy by reducing my personal debt while also planning for my retirement.
The cat who lost his meow
We noticed last week that our male cat had stopped talking. We have a black moggy who is incredibly vocal – when he comes in the cat door every one has to know he is there. In the middle of the night if he catches a mouse and we don’t get up to acknowledge his gift he is quite capable of yelling loud enough to wake the whole neighbourhood. After five days with no voice we decided we had no choice but to take him to the vet. Sixty eight dollars later we returned home not really much wiser as to the cause but with some drugs that we are going to give a try. Seemingly cats can also get allergies with increased pollen and it can lead to asthma so we will need to keep an eye on him. It is almost cheaper these days to go to the doctor than the vet – I don’t think my doctor knows much about cats though! So the cats have blown their cat budget this month – hubby and I have been working our way through the remnants of the freezer the last few days to make up for it a little. If you are thinking about getting pets this Christmas don’t forget to sit down and seriously budget the cost – separating our cats out with their own category in our finances has shown us that over the last 3 months our two cats are costing us $92 a month. For us that’s more than made up for by their affection but it is still a considerable enough cost that needs to be accounted for when you are working out your budget.
October accounts analysis
Well another month has gone by and we have once again managed to spend less than we have earned. We have got quite a way ahead this month thanks to the building industry recovering a bit more in terms of hubby finding work. Over the last few months we have created 14 categories that our spending tracking is divided into – even the cats now have their own category so we can see how much they are really costing! Although it takes a little time to record spending every couple of days on the spreadsheet it’s a great reward at the end of the week or month to see the areas you have saved in or not saved in as the case may be. Not meeting goals can be a very good motivator to keep trying harder the next week. Although in the last 10 months we have changed our lifestyle considerably I know there are still lots of ways to further reduce our spending. We haven’t yet experienced a Christmas with our new spending goals – traditionally Christmas has always been a blow out time for us so it will require a lot of control over the next two months to stay on track
They ripped me off again!
I was full of cold last week and didn’t check my grocery receipt that carefully. Looking at it this morning I realized that they had charged me twice for an item. At twice in three weeks that’s a 66% error rate – hopefully this is just a blip as I like shopping at our local Pak n Save. I’ll have to see next week if they believe me as I don’t really have any proof – how do you prove that they scanned something twice weeks later?
Electricity Bill panic
Wow that’s a lot of money! I just got the electricity bill for the first two months of the cold season. This is the first ‘winter’ in our bigger house so we were not quite sure what to expect. I’ve realised that I’ve been stupid though by not keeping a closer eye on the meter. You don’t need to go out and buy a fancy electricity meter to read appliance electricity use etc. You can easily keep an eye on your electricity use just by recording what you are using each day from the meter reading and what this translates into in terms of money. That way I can start working out what we can do over the winter season to keep the power bill down a bit as we thought we were being fairly good!
Sunday morning routines
Well it’s 9am and time to go wake a sleeping husband. So far this morning………
- A full load of towels is out on the line blowing in the wind. Another load is on the way. We deliberately haven’t put a drier in this house so we don’t get tempted although there is room for it if we were to sell the house.
- The dishwasher is humming away on eco setting after an hour of baking has helped fill it up to full load. The dishwasher goes on during the day/evening now so that I can stop the dishwasher when it gets to dry mode and just open the door to let the dishes air dry – saves about 15 minutes of power with my machine cycle.
- Chocolate slice is setting in the fridge and a batch of pikelets has been made and packaged away in the freezer. I’ve been really impressed with how pikelets freeze, they come out exactly the same as they go in. Today was the first time I managed to put a whole batch in the freezer without being tempted!
- Crumble has been made (5 minute job) and put in the freezer ready to use for desserts the next few weeks. Crumble doesn’t really freeze – it just stays in the same state and can be put straight onto the top of canned/stewed fruit. Definitely worth making. Really easy for kids to make.
- The fridge has been checked out for things about to reach their expiry date so they can be used up. The cream is almost there so pasta has been put on the food planner for tonight and steak taken out to thaw. I’ll have to hunt out my jelly/cream mousse recipe to use up the rest of the cream. I read the other day that you can freeze milk which I have to admit I never thought of in terms of using up milk but I’m looking forward to trying when I need to. At the same I’ve filled up the extra spaces in the fridge with water bottles to make the fridge operate more efficiently and it means that we always have water for emergency situations.
- The spending for the week has been entered in our finance spreadsheet on the computer. I use this so we can keep an eye on where spending is going in order to make better informed decisions. The food bill items get entered also so we can keep track of when food prices are good value.
- The bills for the next week have all been sorted and paid electronically so I don’t lose out on prompt payment discounts.
- The cats have been fed and their can washed for recycling. Steel can recycling from the last few weeks has been packaged up ready to go out on rubbish day. Aluminium cans have gone in the garage to be taken to the recycler for cash when the amount has built up enough.
Not that hubby will probably notice any of this! But it all makes for an easier week for me as my job is pretty full on and it all helps keep costs down in various areas so I don’t mind getting up a little early to get it all done.