October No Spend Challenge

After the disorganisation of last month, and having to buy stuff like sleeping bags & mats for camp, the credit card has taken a bit of a hammering.  So I'm attempting a No Spend Challenge for October - no spending on anything other than what's budgeted (emergencies excluded).

I've been grocery shopping today (on budget), so the freezer and pantry is full.  I just have to not spend on anything unnecessary.

Having declared that, I did have $18 of overdue fines at the library when I got books out today.  Billy had a DVD & some books that were overdue by a few weeks and I hadn't realised :(

How Low Can You Go Challenge: Day 21-25

Yay, we've finally been paid!  Very exciting!!  Had a bad few days on the takeaway though - I should buy a packet of frozen pies or something to keep in the freezer for the times when its too tempting to get junk fod.

Wednesday - stayed home, no spending!

Thursday - we had a scheduled trip to the chiropractor, then used some vouchers to have lunch at Hungry Jacks ($10).  Called into the fish markets while we were down there ($38), and then Aldi on the way home for butter, milk, bread & rolls ($10)

Friday - we had our homeschool excursion to the macadamia farm - the tour was free, but we spent $10 on goodies at the shop (it was only fair lol!)

Saturday - stayed home, veged out all day - but still managed to spend!  Ordered takeaway pizza for tea because I had the lazies. ($23)

Sunday - Billy & I were out in the rain for the ANZAC Day march, and bought takeaway for lunch to take home to warm us up :(  ($25)

Monday - stayed home so no spending

Running total - Food - $321.29, extras - $212.95.


The cupboard is looking very bare atm and we have a very busy week coming up.  I'm planning on doing a full shop tomorrow using next month's grocery money or we'll just end up getting more takeaway. 

How Low Can You Go Challenge: Day 15-20

A very brief summary as I've forgotten most of the details..

Friday - stayed home, no spend

Saturday - Steamfest $20 in entry fees & lunch (could have avoided buying lunch - but it smelt so good lol)

Sunday - We arrived home from Billy's cousin's b'day party about dinner time, and I did not feel like cooking. Could have been avoided but it was me or the money :) $20

Monday - $10 martial arts

Tuesday - $35.50 fruit, vege & eggs, $6 archery

Running total - Food - $215.29, extras (budgeted) - $202.95.

Still no payment from our client so have had to dip into savings... :(

How Low Can You Go Challenge: Day 11-14

It's been an expensive few days! but generally all budgeted for.

Monday - $35.55 Cubs uniform, $35.50 fruit, vege & eggs and $10 martial arts

Tuesday - the Home ice-cream van did its rounds, so we couldn't resist the lure of the bell :) $6.90

Wednesday was an expensive day! We caught the train to Newcastle ($10.40), went to a kid's play, bought a programme & magic wand ($8), ate lunch out ($9) and then caught the train back.

The play was excellent though and it was all budgeted for.

On the way home, we called into KMart and bought Billy a new pair of footy boots and some socks ($33). Then into Foodworks for butter, ham & soft drink ($31.39) - not all budgeted for, but we resisted pretty well!

Thursday wasn't much better! Billy had a science workshop in Newcastle ($70), and while he was there, I had to go shopping for b'day presents. They come out of the gift budget account so I won't count them - they came in on budget though. I bought lunch out of my spending money - I should've been good and taken lunch with me, but I didn't.... The spending challenge did stop me buying a few things that I looked at and would've bought, but didn't need.

Running total - Food - $139.79, extras (budgeted) - $186.95.

I can't really remember what we've been eating each night, but we did make a very nice upside apple cake (adapted from an upside pineapple cake recipe Billy found on taste.com.au). Oh and I pulled some sweet & sour sauce out of the freezer that I made a while ago and made sweet & sour pork one night.

Head on over and give my friends who are also attempting the challenge some encouragement too - Korina and Renelle.

How Low Can You Go Challenge: Day 8, 9 and 10

Spending over the last couple of days:

$4 bread
$10 martial arts
$5 soft drink for Pete

Running total - Food - $57, extras (budgeted) - $20.

For Friday's dinner I made the most delicious bolognaise sauce and Billy & I made fresh pasta to go along with it. Yummy! With the sauce, I used beef stock instead of the red wine, and also added a rasher of bacon and a couple of sliced mushrooms. It was really rich and tomatoey. Even better, the recipe made enough for half of it to go in the freezer for another night.

Saturday night Pete had a mate over to watch the football, so for dinner we made a couple of homemade pizzas (ham & pineapple, and a meatlovers style with ham, bacon, frankfurt, mushroom & tomato, plus a small garlic pizza). For dessert we made golden syrup dumplings and homemade ice-cream. The ice-cream didn't set properly, but it was nice with the dumplings anyway. There were not a lot of leftovers from the meal!!

Tonight was pork chops, mashed potatoes, squash, zucchini and carrots.

Lunches have been toasted sandwiches or leftovers.

Oh and someone asked about Mountain Bread - it's a flatbread that can be used for wraps etc. Quite versatile!

Camera Fund

Yesterday, to my utter dismay, I dropped my camera on the wooden floor.. Fortunately it still works - as in it still takes photos. Unfortunately, the clips that hold the battery flap closed broke off, so the flap needs to be held shut with packing tape. Not ideal... Especially when you need to change batteries while out.. "Hang on while I just tape my camera back together..." :)

I don't want to depress myself too much, so I've only had a cursory search to find out how much I'll be up for. I very much doubt it would be able to be fixed as the clips are part of the main camera case. It looks like I can probably get a similar quality one for about $600 - $700.

One the plus side, I have been wanting a new camera for a while (esp since I tried my mum's with the 20x zoom - and mine still has a 10x zoom). This will just focus my savings intent!

So I'm starting the 'Camera Fund' to save up - and hopefully my old one will keep working with tape until then!!

I have some ebay auctions up atm that are doing quite well (for books), so that'll be the first deposit when they finish.

How Low Can You Go Challenge: Day 5, 6 and 7

We had to go out to the library on Tuesday so while we were out I ducked into Aldi for 5kg flour and 4L milk. Oh, and then I put some sausages & buns in the trolley as well because I was feeling lazy and wanted something quick & easy to cook for tea before I went to yoga. And the apple juice that DH asked for - he's cutting down on diet cola so I was happy to help with that! All up $18 - not too bad - the flour should last the rest of the month and the milk will last a couple of weeks (I put one 2L carton in the freezer).

My box of fruit & vege arrived yesterday - I'd already paid for it online but I'll count it in here. The produce looks quite good quality and will force me to be a bit creative as there's a few things I rarely buy (button squash, zucchini, mushrooms). It was light on our staple of potatoes, but that's not a bad thing - it'll break me out of my comfort zone! $30

Lunch for me was chicken noodle soup using the chicken stock I made the other day and toasted sandwiches for the boys. Dinner was chicken schnitzel made using our home-made breadcrumbs with chips.

Today we went to visit friends for morning tea and made some gingerbread men to take to share. The kids then decorated them while we were there which was fun :) Lunch was the leftover sausages from Tue night, and dinner tonight was beef stirfry using the last of the hoisin sauce and the last of a packet of stirfry frozen veges. I'm slowly but surely using up odds and ends.

The only spending today was $10 for Billy's martial arts.

Running total - Food - $48, extras - $10.

Oh and I figured out how to set the timer on the washing machine so that it starts about 6am and finishes before the off-peak price period ends. Now to figure out if I can turn off the little tune that it plays as well!!

How Low Can You Go Challenge: Day 3 & 4

It's certainly a lot easier to not spend when you're staying at home :)

No spending again for the last 2 days - we've been busy decluttering our spare room, so I've listed a heap of books on ebay. Hopefully I can even make some money today! I've given away a lot of books on Freecycle as well.

We ran out of milk but I've survived with powdered milk in my tea. I've been fairly busy in the kitchen:

• making crackers out of Mountain Bread (cut mountain bread into smaller bits, put on an oven tray, spray with oil and sprinkle with salt - stick in the oven for a few minutes until the desired crispness),
  
  
• starting to make breadcrumbs out of the crusts of bread in the freezer - I put the bread in the oven tonight to dry out while tea was cooking; will stick it in the blender tomorrow,
  
  
• I made my own BBQ sauce to go on the pork ribs we had for tea tonight. I had to substitute a few ingredients, but all in all it was quite yummy!
  
  
• I made chicken stock out of the leftover chicken carcass from lunch the other day.
  

Speaking of food - does anyone have any ideas for what I can do with a can of chickpeas in the cupboard? We're legume novices, so something innocuous looking that we'll eat!

How Low Can You Go Challenge: Day 2

Another no-spend day today.

Pete's parents came out to visit us for lunch and brought along a BBQ chook and some buns, so we had chicken & salad rolls. I also made hot cross buns for afternoon tea which were pretty yummy! (based on this recipe on taste.com.au)

We'd had a large lunch so we didn't feel like much dinner - we made do with leftovers.

So a very frugal day. Unfortunately I've used up the last of the plain flour now so will have to buy some in the near future - I do have enough bread mixture made up for another 3 loaves though, so will put it off as long as I can. We're also running short on milk.

How did everyone else go?

How Low Can You Go Challenge: Day 1

Today was a good day for spending - we didn't go anywhere :)

I made some vege soup for lunch with a can of tomatoes, some stock & celery from the freezer, a couple of carrots and some herbs & spices. It proved quite adequate with a freshly baked baguette - I started back making bread a couple of weeks ago from the Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day book. I don't try to make all the bread we eat, but its nice every few days when I have the time to make a loaf fresh for lunch.

Dinner was crumbed fish from the freezer with home-made chips.

Thanks for everyone's good luck wishes!

April Challenge: How Low can you go?

Cindy's Porch are having a How Low can you go? challenge during April. I'm going to join in as things are rather tight financially at the moment. That's one of the joys of working for yourself I guess :) We do have money set aside in our Emergency Fund but I don't want to dip into that unless I have to.

My main money leak currently seems to be food - both takeaway and ducking to the shops to buy a couple of things... which turns into $50 worth of stuff you didn't really need..

I just did an inventory on the freezer - I have 19 meals worth of meat in there. There are 29 dinners left to make in April - we should be able to get a night of leftovers each week, and another night of meatless / low meat each week, so that brings it to 27. Close enough!

So my challenge is to not buy food other than eggs, fruit & vege, bread & milk. I can get bread & milk quite cheaply at the local servo, and I've just signed up to get a box of fruit & vege delivered weekly (they sell local free-range eggs as well). My incentive with that is to try and be forced to cook and eat more veges. All going well, I shouldn't need to step foot in the supermarket all month.

The other part of the challenge will be to not spend anything unless its already budgeted for.

Wish me luck :)

Emergency funds & savings

When I wrote last night that I was stressed about money, it's nowhere near as stressed as I would've been feeling if I didn't have an Emergency Fund.

There's so much peace-of-mind in making sure you have money set aside - mine are set up ala the financial "guru" Dave Ramsey. I have a "baby emergency" fund of $1000 - part of it is in readily accessible cash and the rest is in a high-interest account that I can get to easily (but not too easily!). I've also got a partly-funded "Big Emergency Fund" in that same account - I'm aiming for 3 months expenses in there as the first goal. It's about 7% full - a long way to go!

So the pump breaking is classed as an emergency and will wipe out much of my "baby emergency" fund. That'll now be my first priority (above saving for the holiday *boohoo*) to get that filled back up.

The washing machine money came out of another pool of money (also in the high-interest account). I call it the long-term savings fund - I use it to save up for stuff that I know will need replacing over time (longer than 12 months). Things like the washing machine, fridge, tyres for the car, glasses for me. I've just added the sewage pump to that list as it obviously seems like it's going to be a regular expense!! It was so nice to know that the money was there to just go out and buy one.

I use a budgeting program called Simply Budgets - there are a few quirks and things that I wish that it did have, but on the whole I love it. It really helps to work out where you need your money to go (rather than working out in hindsight where it went which is what a lot of programs do). With the long term expenses, you allocate a life span for whatever it is you're saving for (eg the new washing machine I've put down as 10 years) with a replacement cost, and then it graphs to show you when you need the money and helps you work out how much you need to put aside each month to have the money at the time you need it for all of the long term expenses. The hardest thing to wrap your head around if you're used to a traditional program is that you can't track expenses in it. It's simply a forecasting tool. I've been using it for just under a year now and financially I think we're in better shape than we have been for a long time.

So while I said I was stressing about money - it was more because now I have to take away from my holiday savings to replace the emergency fund, and I don't like "living on the edge" without one! I don't have the stress of having to put it on the Credit card and wondering how on earth we'd pay for it. That's the position I would've been in this time last year..

It's the little leaks that are the problem..

I'm getting pretty good at saving up for the more expensive (say $100+) purchases, but boy the little amounts add up quickly..

I just added up the unbudgeted expenses I know we have coming up next month. It's mainly $10 here, $20 there (mostly for homeschooling activities), but all up there's $100 that's just not budgeted for.

No wonder I'm having trouble balancing the budget!

I've made a list of the amounts I know about, worked out where I can cut to get the money and stuck the list to the fridge to remind me to not spend anything other than that!

Finances and pocket money

I bought myself a copy of the Simply Budgets program after hearing some good reviews of it, so I spent last week entering budget details and trying to get my head around the program. I've been a fan of Microsoft Money for years for tracking expenses, but it's budgetting side was quite atrocious (in my opinion!!)

Simply Budgets doesn't track expenses - it simply forecasts your cash flow. They use the analogy that tracking is like driving while looking out of the rear window - which I had heard before but is quite apt! With Simply Budgets, you enter in your regular expenses, starting dates, cycles etc and it forecasts your cash flow. You can select that you'll be paying things via credit card if you want.

One of the good things about it is the long term savings forecasts for things like fridge replacement, car tyres, car batteries etc. You enter the life of the item (it suggests a length for many things), the cost and the current age, and it tells you how much you need to save to have the money when you need it.

I really like the way you can set your own cycle for things - I have a 6 weekly chiro appointment and it really used to peeve me in Money that it could only be monthly or 2 monthly. This one you can set a 'number of days' cycle.

One of the hardest things for me to get my head around is that it doesn't track expenses. There is nowhere to enter an 'actual' figure - you simply roll the budget over and change the opening balance of your account. I'm still trying to decide if this is good or bad! The only times I tend to look back at expenses is to work out a) did I pay something and / or when, and b) how much was something. I'm not sure if bank records will be good enough for this, but time will tell.

It has made me realise that we have a $1000 hole coming up in April that needs to be plugged before then! It's also made me think about the way my accounts were structured, so I've done some reorganising in that area.

It's only been a week, but so far I think it will be a very useful investment.

**********

Bel reminded me that I hadn't updated on my grand pocket money scheme for Billy that started in December. Well, its so far so good! His room has never been clean for this long before - I suspect some of it may be surface clean - I haven't gone delving under cushions and things, but I'll accept that for now!!




His chart consists of 2 things he has to do each day to get the full amount of pocket money each week - keep his room clean, and be good. 'Be good' is of course a relative term - as long as he doesn't have a complete melt-down and isn't consistently bad then he's ok! I have just added an extra line this week - 'clean teeth'. I added that one after realising his hygiene habits have slipped somewhat lately - he was 'sprung' when I found his toothbrush still packed away 4 days after we'd gotten back from holidays!!! (Yes, no 'mum of the year' awards here for not checking lol!)

So most weeks he's gotten the full amount of pocket money ($2) - he loses 10c for each square not stamped. While we were away it got spent a fair amount on lollies since we were at the corner shop every day or so buying bread. I consider it a learning exercise though - he still got to work out what he could afford and he started to see that some things were better value than others. Plus the pride on his face as he was offering around lollies that he'd bought 'with his own money' was priceless!

This morning he had $11 in his wallet when we went shopping - and boy was it burning a hole in his pocket!! I talked him out of buying half of the toy shop (we went in there to buy a nephew's present), but he finally ended up buying a Disney magazine with a WALL-E pencil case while we were in the supermarket. He's still coming to grips with the idea that once he spends it, it's gone - he was still talking about going back next week and buying a toy that he *had* almost had enough money for! Oh well, better to learn that at 6 than 26!!

It's also cut way down on the stuff I would usually buy for him - now when he starts harping for something I just say "do you have enough money for that?" and it usually stops him in his tracks!

So all in all, it's successful so far!

What price is your limit?

Image from abc.net.au

An article in the West Australian newspaper has claimed that up to 30% of motorists will stop driving if petrol prices stay over $1.50/l.

Extract:
"Up to 30 per cent of motorists will leave their car in the garage if petrol stays over $1.50, a survey has found.

With prices in Perth to average a record 151.3¢ a litre today, the RAC survey found $1.50 a litre is the last straw for most of the State’s drivers, with many saying they would switch to public transport or use another form of getting about."

Have you thought about what your limit is in your own household? I haven't really put a dollar figure on it but I do know that it's affecting how often we drive. I've been pretty good about combining trips and not making unnecessary long ones, but now even the short trips are getting examined to see if they're necessary. We used to go to a few libraries in various suburbs - now we stick to the one closest to home. We have 2 days that we "have" to go out - Tuesday is drama day and Thursday is Billy's swimming lesson. I try to fit all trips into those days when we're out anyway. Extra days out are carefully thought out now.

Pete drives to the train station and catches the train to work most days. I've looked into Billy & I catching the train when we go to Newcastle for his drama lesson, but two things are stopping me at the moment - it would cost about the same as the petrol cost (esp since we'd need to drive to the nearest train station first - about 8kms away) and secondly, during winter we'd be catching the train home at night which from a safety perspective I'm not thrilled with. I'm going to re-examine this one when summer comes though.

Bus travel isn't really an option either without driving to a bus station - there are none within a reasonable walking distance (nearest is about 3km away) - well reasonable to me with a 5yo anyway!

At the moment I'm just cutting down driving where I can and absorbing the increases in the budget. As much as I'm reluctant to do it, I may need to re-examine which activities Billy does in the future, and transfer him to ones closer to home.

Because as much as it hurts, cheap petrol prices won't be back..

Our Debt Journey

Congratulations to Emma who has recently become debt-free! WTG girl! You've worked hard and should be proud of yourself :)

I decided to add our debt ticker to my blog - I don't normally blog about it because to be honest I'm quite ashamed of having so much debt. The ticker has been in my signature over at No More Debt but I'm not posting as much over there atm, so I'm adding it here to give myself a visual kick-up-the-pants!

I grew up in a family where debt was bad - if you wanted something, you saved for it. My parents still don't have a credit card (they do have a debit card though). I didn't have a credit card until after we were married - we used it 'responsibly' though (as much as you can!) - paying it off each month. We had two fairly high incomes and for about 7 years lived well - overseas holidays, far too much take-away food, buying any 'toy' we wanted - books, computers, books, cds/dvds, did I mention books? :) etc etc.

Our initial debt (apart from mortgage) came when we were in the process of building this house. We were with a so-called 'financial advisor' (never again!) who had told us we needed x% deposit and then just before we signed, we found out we needed substantially more. So we borrowed $30,000 from a family member. This debt became our 'family pet' - it was always there but we never really made much of an attempt to pay it off. It makes me sick when I think of it now - we could have paid it many times over when we were both working. In fact we started to save the money a few times to pay it off, and always 'needed' that money for something else before we finished..

When I finished work to have Billy we cut down our spending - but not enough. We were still spending more than we earnt. Completely obliviously too. We went through any savings we had, the CC gradually crept up until we couldn't pay it off each month. It was *finally* sinking in that we needed to do something but I still wasn't ready to do too much about it. In Feb/March 2005, we had a bit of car trouble, and "needed" to buy a new ride-on mower (the old one blew an engine), so we had nearly $7000 in credit card debt :(

That was my rock-bottom, and my turning point. I think it was then that I found Dave Ramsey's site - he's an American, christian financial "guru" with a step-by-step plan for getting out of debt. We (I say we, but really me because I'm in charge of the finances) saved a $1000 emergency fund, and started getting "gazelle intense" on the CC debt. I stopped using the CC, used only cash or the debit card and gave Pete an "allowance" - nicely called "sanity money" so it doesn't sound as demeaning lol.

The CC debt was finally killed in August 2005! Which leaves only the 'family pet'! We've paid off $12,259 of it to date, $17,741 to go. We now have $1000 in an emergency fund, money in a separate 'sinking fund' account so we can always pay bills as they come in, and are living within our means.

Currently we're not quite as "gazelle intense" about paying off the debt - there is a small amount going in every month, but most of our "excess" money is going towards setting up Pete's microbrewery. Once that's done, we'll be able to start paying into the debt again. However, going right down to 1 income with me giving up work to homeschool will make it very slow. I'll start selling on Oztion again for a bit extra (not sure what I'll sell this time, books weren't really that successful), but it will be mainly reducing expenses even more to find the money. Hopefully the brewery will start paying for itself after a while too!

So that's our journey - we've paid off nearly $20,000 in 2.5 years and still have almost that to pay off before we are debt-free apart from the mortgage. I won't think about the fact that our car is 8 years old, as are all our major appliances lol. Mostly though I have learnt a lot about myself over the last couple of years and I've found I really enjoy being frugal!