Bye, bye, our wee car

We got an offer close to our selling price. We took it but J and I had a misunderstanding somewhere when we were talking about how much we could negotiate for. We could've gotten it for the actual selling price or maybe even more, but oh well, it's sold now. We have $400 cash deposit sitting on our desktop table awaiting deposit to the bank next week. We had this hour-long disagreement about it. We had an earlier offer of $7750, they negotiated twice for less. Then this afternoon this couple just showed up to check the car out and made an offer after taking it for a spin. However, J told them about the $7750 offer instead of the selling price of $7900. It only makes sense to say that somebody offered it, if not more than the selling price at least the exact selling price, right? I don't know why J assumed he could mention the lower offer. So they made an offer of $7800, just $100 short of the actual selling price! Ugh.

In a few days our net worth would go down by a couple thousands because the car was accounted for at our purchase price in 2006, but we sold it for $2200 less. Our liability will go down and so will the asset. But that's ok! Less debt, less insurance payment, and more money towards debt snowball.

However, I'm getting a bit emotional about bidding goodbye to our wee car. I told J that I want our picture taken with it tomorrow as keepsake. I will miss that economical and cute car! I said that at this time when petrol prices are high it doesn't make sense to sell that car but it doesn't make sense to have 2 cars either. Once my bus passes are used up I'm going to buy me a snapper card as my commitment to public transportation.

I feel bad for the couple who made the first offer because they paid for an AA inspection report yesterday worth $125. Oh well, such is life.

3 hourly diet

J and I have officially been on our 3-hourly diet this week. We eat every 3 hours and introducing more healthy food into our diet.

What we eat
We eat some of the usual stuff we eat but we are now eating vegetables everyday. I must say that I look forward to preparing our meals because I'm looking at varieties of cooking food nowadays. J is a sugar addict and it's not realistic to motivate him to diet by going cold turkey on yummy chocolates so I bought a bag of bite-size chocs that I include in his lunch box.

How we eat
Every 3 hours we eat portioned food that I prepare the night before. We eat our breakfasts at work, cornflakes with trimmed milk for me and muesli with yogurt for him. Lunch is a portioned salad of something and the afternoon snack is fruit. I've not figured out the drinks yet but we're pretty good about sticking to water so that's that. Dinners are just as light as lunch but we try to have a bit of meat in them. We have not eaten red meat in a week! We're going to try having chicken and seafood only for a long while.

Monitor progress
I created a table whose data feeds into a chart. I've not weighed myself in yet. I know I should have before I started with this diet but I don't expect to have lost already, but I do feel a bit of difference in my body now. I get hungry every 3 hours now! It's working!

Budget effect
So far we've spent $40 on food that isn't finished yet. It was a surprise to us that being conscious of eating is going to save us money too. We still have 3/4 of the half-kilo chicken strips I bought yesterday. I really think this diet is going to positively affect our budget and I'm super glad about that! Hitting 2 birds with one stone! I don't even need to buy my breakfast milk because it's free at work. :)

Compared to my previous post, my mood today is good. I love everything about life, except for debt. Living this frugal lifestyle made me realize that there is so much more to discover about channeling resources to live my life. I still look twice at a nice bag, nice shoes, nice clothes and have the urge to buy, but I have different goals now. I love this frugal thing. :)

I want money, a lot of it.

Last night I was getting really annoyed at our financial situation. I really want to get rid of our plastic debt! Compared to others who struggle with a lot of it, ours isn't so bad but still!

Today is pay day and I tend to "close the books" fortnightly (every other Wednesday). I got to review how much we had spent unplanned in the last 2 weeks. My word, including our weekend trip to Ruapehu, we used the plastic for $1,000+! WTF.

Trying to be good about not incurring more debt, I paid for the unplanned spends using our savings. It didn't take more than 10 minutes before I started feeling bad about paying debt. I checked the projected savings by December and it's $2K lower than forecasted a few months ago. I was just disappointed and disheartened.

I told J that I had started regretting getting the big car because compared to the small one, it costs more on petrol. I just got so used with the small car's petrol usage that the big car's usage is just so alarming to me. However, the small car isn't really adequate for us anymore.

I decided to move my butt to focus my mind on something else, but folding clothes isn't exactly mind-juggling so I ended with more frown on my face than when I started. I told J that it isn't acceptable that we are using savings to pay debt because we earn a good deal between us. We are in much better condition than those with more than 1 child and mortgage and more expenses, that's why I just have high standards for us to live better.

We are not living horribly beyond our means. In fact, we do slip from time to time but we're okay. I don't want to struggle for money. I don't want to ever live from paycheck to paycheck. I just don't want to be poor. I don't know how it is to be poor that's why I'm scared of it. I want a lot of money because I want to live comfortably knowing my future is set. I want a lot of money so that I can do anything on a whim without worrying about where to get the cash from. I want to get rid of our debt so that I can start channeling all that money towards buying a house.

Can I just give you my weight?

Weight giving
I'm really tired of the baby weight that I still have. Over the weekend, I was contemplating on the effort of losing the extra bulge. It's a lot. 30 pounds of stored energy everywhere. To lose that might just take a long while unless I become physically active, which I have not figured out yet. I don't have plans of buying clothes in my current size because I have TONS of clothes in my pre-pregnant size. I just never imagined to be in this weight for a long time. So, yesterday I have started with the effort. Slowly introducing a different eating habit. I bought a boring Special K Advantage cornflakes box for my breakfast at work. I started with a cup of cornflakes with a cup of trimmed milk today. I also plan not to store food in the fridge and just buy fresh food daily. This effort will obviously encompass J's journey towards having a healthy weight as well. Last night we had salad and tonight we'll have greek salad. This new eating habit will change our grocery buying. I'm getting good at buying just what I intended to buy when I'm in the supermarket so I'm not as reluctant as I used to be about this way of food shopping.

J and I agreed on our upcoming birthday presents for each other. He will "give" me 10 pounds off of his current weight, and I will give him at least 7 pounds off of mine. Our birthdays are 2 weeks apart and so I don't have much time coz his comes first at end of the month.

I plan to adopt the snowball concept in losing weight. I will begin with setting a realistic target weight loss of 5 pounds and work my way in increments of 5 once I achieve that. I only need to lose 30 pounds. I'm not sure what I'll look like less than that at 31, but definitely not like when I was a 105-pound college student at 17.

Good on me, mate
Because I did a great job in my previous project, my manager gave me at $100-on-them dinner :) I don't know when to use it yet, but that would be fairly easy to do.

Expensive friggin' bolt
Remember I said that installing that anchor bolt in the car for the car seat was around $22? Hah! I was sooo wrong! It was $56!!! J paid for it using our highest-interest-but-with-nicest-points-system credit card. I didn't really care at that time because it should not really cost us a lot, right? I'm thinking that the price of the bolt itself was significant. The guy who installed didn't even bother looking that the car seat came with the bolt. It would not be so good for the drilled hole to replace the bolt he put in so we just let it be. Now that I know how much it is, I'm going to sell our unused anchor bolt on Trademe this week.

The cost of preparation

Planning ahead, especially for travels, can be costly but I know that it could be more costly unplanned. Catch 22 eh?

On Friday we bought the 2nd stage convertible car seat. Our rented Plunket baby capsule is due on 15 July. I made computed projections of renting with them again but found out that it wasn't cost effective at all for car seats. Funny how getting an opinion can also save you money. I suggested to J that we talk to a staff at Baby Factory about car seats but he thought that they would just sell us the most expensive item. To our surprise she actually saved us $20 because what we had wanted did not have the highest safety standard. Australia and NZ have the highest child safety standard on car seats by the way. This new one will be good for until he's 18kg (4 years plus). He's now nearly 8kg. I don't know how fast he will grow but hopefully we can maximize the money spent for it. Cost was $280.

In addition to the car seat, we got him a pair of gloves ($3), a long-sleeved shirt ($5), and a teether-con-toy ($9) because I stupidly sterilized his old one.

After buying that we proceeded to get the anchor bolt installed for tethering the car seat. Yes, apart from the sash-lap seat belt, the car seat is tethered to a bolt on the back panel. I don't remember how much that cost us to get that done, but I think around $22.

Because I did not have a pair of shoes that could be worn in the snow, I got me a pair of gumboots at the Warehouse that was on sale for 50%! I didn't know that until we paid for it. Cost: $15.

The next trip is in December. While we don't need to plan for clothing and accommodation, just the idea of Christmas is costly and to top that with baby's christening and a 3-day layover in HK will be crazy! Need to plan ahead!

Winter wonderland

I mentioned last post that we were thinking of going up north to have some snow fun and that I changed my mind. I changed my mind again! Ok, it wasn't only my decision but if I didn't want to go it would not have happened. But it's ok because my family had fun and it was not an expensive trip. We went to Ruapehu.

Petrol
Spent $50+ to fill it up Friday night. Spent $105 on the way back Sunday morning.

Accomodation
Paid $160 for an overnight stay.

Food
$35 for Saturday lunch
$33 for Saturday dinner; J bought us really yummy dessert that he paid for using his allowance. Very sweet.
$41.5 for Sunday breakfast; well worth it because we didn't need to have lunch after that.

Overall the weekend getaway was nice and fun. Total spend was $424.50. I wonder how much it would have cost us if we rented out snow gears and stayed in chalets. Holidays with children are not cheap! I of course understand my mother now, why she was a tight-wad back in the days. My baby is not even walking yet so imagine if he were already older and wanted more play fun.

Anyway, I had a webcam chat with my mom and she told me that the city is starting to be less congested with cars. Petrol prices have changed the way people commute now. That's good to know! By the way, you should check out powersavers. NZ is strongly advocating saving power!

Running errands to clear my mind

Getting rid of stuff

Various PF blogs have advocated the value of getting rid of unnecessary stuff by selling them. I'm doing just that for 2 things - our small car and my breast pump with various accessories. They are not sold yet! I'm getting antsy!

The plan was to sell the small car, use the sale money to pay off its loan balance and pay (almost half of) the big car loan. That would leave us with more or less $3K of car loan left to pay, which I'm confident that we can achieve in less than 8 months given our current financial status. We are currently paying both loans ($180 fortnightly) and higher insurance (now at $66 fortnightly) and it's just annoying. We have been getting interests but we aren't willing to sell the small car short. It's in very good condition with very low mileage and only 4 years old. If we were in a hurry to get rid of it, we'd probably have sold it for $6500 but we just can't! I still have love for that car and I'm not entirely happy to let it go but it's the wisest thing to do. Sigh.

Hopefully somebody out there who needs to express her overflowing milk finds her way to my breast pump auction. I only used it for a few times (read: less than 10 times) and wish I didn't get it. Hmpf.

Trying to save

I ran errands today and passed by a few stores. I'm thinking of getting new boots as my current pair is starting to disintegrate. I don't know yet whether it's wiser to wait til it struggles or to buy a new one now. Maybe it's better to wait until next year (I only wear boots in winter), I don't know. While I don't know, I'm not buying.

I went inside Jay Jay's to look for a nice postie bag but I kept looking at jackets instead. I was close to getting either a wool hooded vest or a cardi, but I didn't. It wasn't hard to do that, I just want to sometimes get myself something.

The joy of public library

My baby's still young but he seems to listen to story telling and likes looking at colorful picture books. After running all errands, I borrowed 3 picture books today. I'm excited to read him those short stories and, at the same time, glad that I don't have to buy all those books for him!

Snow holiday

I suggested to J today that we take a weekend getaway to Ruapehu and catch some snow, but during my errands I started to back off from that idea. It just means unplanned cash outflow and we're working on being smart about not doing any of that anymore. So, like my new pair of boots, maybe next winter?