The only thing I remember from my four week taster of Yr 10 economics twenty–six years ago was the difference between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’. It seemed such an easy concept to a 14 yr old – little did I realise then that it would be one of the hardest lessons in life to master. Looking at our monthly financial analysis for November there are still ‘wants’ that could be removed from our spending list even though again this month we have reached our goal of spending less than we earn. One of my reductions that I’ve decided on for December onwards is no magazine purchases. There is very little in magazines that can’t be found some other way for free. My local library is bursting with books and magazines and a visit for half an hour is now part of our weekend activities. It won’t save a huge amount – about $144 a year but every bit adds up in the long run. Hubby on the other hand has a list of ‘wants’ that are presently non-negotiable in terms of removing them from our spending list – amongst them is buying his lunch and smoking. There are times it can drive me crazy thinking how much money is wasted on these things (not to mention the health implications) but I know there is no point letting these feelings get in the way of ruining our financial goal. When it comes to money we all have different value systems and allowing room in the budget for the other person’s ‘needs’, even when you don’t really understand their needs, is an important part of creating a budget that will actually work. I don’t think they teach you that part in Year 10 economics!
Setting Goals in Public
One of the values of setting out goals in ‘public’ on-line is that you are more likely to stick to them. Our financial literacy month goal would probably have come to nothing if I hadn’t committed to writing it down. Getting to the end of November we have made a decision and started our second superannuation scheme. Our paperwork has all been organized and gone to the accountant for our yearly tax return. For November every weekend I have taken out books on financial literacy from the library as my weekly reading. Even if you only learn one thing from every book you read that can make a difference in the long run. A couple of times a week I now get up early so that I can watch NZI business review from 6:00am to 6:30am before heading out to work at 6:40 a little more educated . It was interesting this morning to hear the discussion about extended warranties on products that shops offer for an extra price when you buy purchases such as TVs, fridges etc. Seemingly there is no point buying them as under the Consumers Guarantee Act you are entitled to take the product back if it does not last for a reasonable amount of time which for something like a fridge would definitely be more than two years. I have never bothered to buy an extended warranty as I figure probability wise I will risk it. I know some even shops send you out letters when your normal guarantee expires encouraging you to purchase an extended warranty. For more info on extended warranties here is the Ministry of Consumer Affair’s take on it Extended Guarantees – Ministry of Consumer Affairs – Media Centre.
On-line Shopping
With Christmas coming it’s a good time to remember online shopping. It can allow you to compare prices and make more considered choices away from the hustle of the stores. In NZ at the moment only 1% of retail shopping is done on line but as time goes on more retailers will probably provide on-line retail stores as consumers indicate they want it. I buy Elevit from an online pharmacy as it is cheaper than any of our local pharmacies even when it is on special. For Christmas this year I shopped at IQ Toys http://www.iqtoys.co.nz/ for the first time. It is a user friendly NZ site in that you can easily set up a search for gender, type of toy, price category etc. The price category is useful because it allows you to only look at the presents in your budget which stops you from getting tempted by more expensive gifts as is often the case in a store. The goods arrived extremely quickly and the postage has very reasonable rates. Worth looking at the site if you have children to buy for.
Lettuce Love
Shopping yesterday there was no lettuce on the shopping list for the first time ever – my lettuces have been happily growing away the last few weeks and are getting to the point that we can now start to eat them. We adore salad in our household so we will need to keep planting lettuce in order to have a constant supply so that is one of the weekend tasks. I am also raising lettuce from seed to see how difficult the process is and whether I have the patience for it. The lettuce seedlings are so fragile when they are young in comparison to the hardy pea and bean seedlings – I’m not sure how successful I will be in raising them. I weathered off my first lot of seedlings (peas, beans, sweet peas) last week out on the porch – they had a tough first week – frost and howling gale force winds. It was hard to believe it was actually getting to the end of spring. Living in the North Island I don’t expect to be removing ice from the car windscreen in November!
Beef Olives
Hubby and I have been together for over ten years and not once in that time has he ever allowed me to ‘ruin’ his meat by using it in a casserole! A fortnight ago he finally relented and I made up a version of beef olives for him (never cooked it before but my mother used to cook it for me when I was little). Hubby adored it so much he now requests if I can make it. I like to make it because I get to use my lovely flat leaf parsley that has grown inside our bifold windows in an ice-cream container for the last 6 months.
Ingredients
Home made bread crumbs, finely chopped onion, finely chopped parsley, finely chopped mushrooms, butter, olive oil, schnitzel
Fry onion gently in a little olive oil until softened. Add butter and fry mushrooms and then add breadcrumbs and continue to fry. Add parsley, salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cool.
Beat schnitzel so it is a little more flattened. Place a spoonful or two of stuffing on the schnitzel and roll up. Fix with toothpicks (can also tie up with string). It doesn’t matter what size pieces of schnitzel you have – you can make rolls out of tiny pieces of schnitzel to medium pieces.
Fry the schnitzel rolls quickly just to brown. Place in a casserole and make a gravy in the same pan as you fried the schnitzel rolls. A drop of good red wine will help the flavour of your gravy. Pour gravy over the schnitzel and place in the covered casserole at 180 degrees for about half an hour. Serve with mashed potatoes and vegetables.
Ants and husbands
I went to clean the kitchen bench last night and found to my horror that my bottle of orange fragrant vinegar spray and wipe was empty! I was pretty sure hubby hadn’t been madly cleaning while I was at work but I still thought I’d ask. “It’s OK” he calmly replied “I used it on the ants”. Seemingly we had a trail of ants on the garden wall coming over from the neighbours and seeing as we have stopped buying fly spray hubby thought there was no harm in using my spray and wipe. I have to say he is sort of getting the hang of the ‘vinegar stuff’ as he calls it but when it is getting close to the end of the vinegar I would rather have a clean house than worry about ants in the garden. Seemingly ants aren’t supposed to be too keen on citrus or vinegar – I have yet to prove or disprove this theory – but in the meantime we have a beautifully orange fragrant garden wall and probably some lovely smelling ants wandering around the garden.
Kiwi Saver
Our financial literacy goal this month is to research and make a decision about joining hubby up for kiwi saver. Being self- employed he doesn’t have to make the 2% contributions and some providers don’t require the self-employed to make an initial deposit or any regular contributions. This means we can join up and get the $1000 kick start as well as once a year deposit a lump sum to qualify for the tax credit but in the meantime we can have the money in our bank account keeping the interest down on our revolving mortgage. We already have a super that we started about six years ago which we can access once we are 55 and that we have to regularly contribute to, along with getting employer contributions. It has taken a beating at times over the last two years but the question now for us to work on is what type of portfolio do we want to go with/stay with for us to make the most of any economic recovery that may result over the coming years? There are lots of sources of information in the newspaper and the internet – some of them that we have been using are KiwiSaver Performance Survey – Returns to 30 September 2009 – Good Returns and http://www.sorted.org.nz/home/sorted-sections/kiwisaver.
White vinegar cleaner update
We have been using white vinegar and baking soda as our main household cleaner for the last eleven months. I don’t mind the vinegar smell that much but hubby often comes in and asks what I’ve been cooking when I’ve been cleaning! I’ve read comments on line from women whose husbands won’t let them use vinegar to clean as they can’t stand the smell. Well last week I found the solution. A friend bought me a voucher for my birthday so I was able to purchase things that would normally be luxuries. At the Body Shop I came across their home fragrance oil range – their Satsuma fragrance ($11 for 10 mL) is exactly the same smell that orange citrus shop bought cleaners have. So today I did my cleaning along with a few drops of fragrance in my homemade spray and wipe bottle – it was gorgeous. It is still in the testing stages for me as you have to be careful as to what substances do to surfaces but so far it is looking positive.
Weekend trip to the Library
Hubby was looking for some info last weekend so I suggested we pop up to the local library. It’s at least eight years since I have been there – I had to re-enrol it has been so long! I had forgotten what a great place a library can be – you get to browse leisurely through books and magazines and can come away with lots of great books without having to spend any money. Hubby was also happy to hire weekend DVDs from there at $2 each saving us spending money at the local video store. One of the books I’ve been reading over the week is “Winning the Money War” by Lisa Dudson, the book based on the TV show Money Man. It’s a user friendly book and a good place to start if you want to start on the road to becoming financially literate. I enjoyed the book mostly because it reinforced how far hubby and I have come since I started writing this blog. It hasn’t been easy – hubby loves spending money and still finds our budget very hard sometimes, but little by little all the small steps are starting to pay off and we are no longer living from pay check to pay check which in turn spurs us on to save more. One of the money saving tips in the book that we used a lot last week was trading tasks or doing tasks for family. We babysat one evening for family, they fed us dinner before they went out. We did a family member’s gardening tasks, they gave us the $25 they normally give a company to do their gardening. Hubby helped do a building task, we got fed lunch in return. The money we earned went into our holiday savings for a holiday next year. The meals we were fed meant we have more food left in the cupboard/freezer this week and so don’t have to put as much this week on the grocery list. Small things but it truly is the little savings that make the difference over time.
Renting vs Buying
Renting instead of buying is not a new idea. However the British Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) believe that renting could be the secret weapon in fighting climate change and is calling for a fifth of all household spending to be converted to renting by 2020. In Britain it is predicted this change would result in a reduction of 13 million tonnes of CO2 a year. (Source Dom Post: 6/11/2009). In our household we tend to keep items for a long time and buy a lot of items second hand so we wouldn’t be great candidates for renting but I think lending is also a good way of reducing waste and saving money. Often family members live close together and each own the same item – it would be easy to lend items and just one household purchase the item. For instance we were given lots of glasses for our wedding years ago. When family members need extra glasses for special events they borrow ours rather than purchase glasses. We own a slow cooker which my mother borrows rather than buy her own as we both don’t use it full time. Items such as big cake tins for cooking the Xmas cake are often used only once a year, very easy to share around families. Two families in our family unit share a cat cage – it is an item used very few times in a year. It doesn’t work for everything as some items wear down with frequent use and other items require people to use them very carefully but it may be worth looking at for your family. Of course some families have people who don’t look after items or forget to give items back!