in a month we'll be new parents to a lovely boy. it's an exciting future to look forward to, indeed, but i'm starting to feel the cost of additional family member. the stress of getting government subsidy that's less than what i get with my salary tends to eat me up if i don't try to ignore it and enjoy the idea of welcoming our new baby!
we waited until boxing day to purchase baby wraps and a cot blanket to take advantage of sale. a few days later we got our 4-in-1 cot and mattress for $840. we were fine with buying the $700 cot because it can be a cot, bassinette, sofa, and bed. it will be put to its good use over the next 4+ years. not bad. it's wood too so it can still be sold then for a good amount. unfortunately we've already caused it a couple of scratches moving it from the living room (where it was assembled) into our bedroom (where the baby will be sleeping for at least 3 months).
we also bought our first newborn disposable diapers. we don't plan to use disposable nappies all the time. my parents are coming over to assist our first few months of parenthood and my doting mom bought 3 dozens of cotton nappies! not only would they be good for the environment, they would also save us $$ significantly. however, i told j that i would like to use disposable nappies at night to ensure that our baby wouldn't be wet without us knowing, in case he's not the crying type. at first we thought of getting the cheap kind but this lady who was also about to get nappies advised us to use Huggies instead. since we don't know any better yet, we just took her advice. there is not a whole lot of options for disposable nappies here in nz i think.
on the next pay day we plan to get cot sheets (flat and fitted) and mattress protector. i hope that the baby shower would follow through and that i'd get some really useful stuff. i'd request for more cot sheets and other practical things for the baby. although we are excited to be parents, we are very much cautious of overspending because of excitement.
we planned on using CC1 to pay for the cot to earn more FlyBuy points but BabyStar doesn't accept CC1's kind. i ended up using CC3 instead. i'll have to transfer this pay period's snowflake to CC3 and the rest of the cot's amount in the next pay period. we're not earning any points from CC2 and CC3, just low interest.
oh, i also got myself busy last week re-creating a budget spreadsheet. j expressed his desire to categorize our spending. i created one for 2008 including these last 2 weeks of 2007 for transition purposes. we're hoping to increase our savings to at least 20% in 2008, but we'll see.
Dec 30, 2007
Dec 21, 2007
giving, shopping, loving this holiday season
today i was relaxed about shopping. after treating myself to a professional manicure after more than a year of doing it myself, i wanted to go watch a movie. j (spouse) met me back at the salon carrying a bag from Dick Smith. he bought a new firewire cable because, he said, the one we have is no longer working properly. so on our way to the cinema, we passed by Dick Smith again and he just told me that there is a 320gb hard drive for only $170. i thought that was cheap so i let him lead me into the store.
he showed me the item and saw that there was a 500gb item sitting next to 320gb. i told him that he bought the 80gb that we have now 2 years ago and buying 320gb does not mean he'll/we'll stop wanting/needing more back up space. he didn't flinch at the possibility that he was gonna get 500gb instead of 320gb. he only wanted the smaller one because it was cheaper and he said that he was trying to be frugal. i told him cheap and frugal are 2 different things, and said i'd rather we get 500gb and not buy another hard drive for 5 years! of course i tried go be techie sounding by asking if speed were compromised with bigger space, which he said it wasn't.
it cost us $280, a hundred plus more than he initially went in for. we used CC1 but i made the online payment of the same amount to the card this evening. i want debt down and i'm committed to it! we just used the card for thr FlyBuy points. we have quite the points already!
i reminded j that he was supposed to save for that hard drive, and at some point in our conversation we agreed that he wouldn't be receiving his next allowance in full. later i felt bad about it because it's christmas. it's my favorite holiday and it tends to creep up on me. i also got him a leather ipod touch case for $40 as a present. i felt i had to get that because he's not the type who really cares whether his gadgets get scratched or not. he is very accepting of the wear and tear realities of life, which can be frustrating if you're the opposite. i'm not so extreme like that.
all in all, though we spent about $400 today, i don't feel bad. maybe it's the season but also because we paid for everything in cash. we owed no debt today. we have more than enough to last us until our next pay day. our electricity and internet/phone/cable bills are already paid for way before their due dates! i think it's all good.
Dec 20, 2007
our first investment
as i said in my previous posts a few days ago, i will be investing in mutual funds. i just did! half hour ago!
Bank4 required at least $250 minimum investment and that's what i put in. i bought the fund - a cash advantage fund (unit trust category) - at $1.0052. this means i bought about 248.7 units. it was priced at $1.0035 a week ago. i know it's not much but it's something!
a few more good stuff:
- no fees (entry, exit, or management)
- tax breaks (it is capped at 33% and will be down to 30% starting 1 april 2008)
- a low risk fund that invests in a deposit with Bank4 (at this time it's at 2/7 risk level)
Dec 19, 2007
paying little by little
we are paid every fortnight. that in itself is a good thing when paying debts little by little. i don't wait for the credit cards' due dates. every fortnight i pay some amount that is way bigger than the minimum. like for our sofa, i could pay it $60/month but i pay $60/fortnight which brings our hire purchase down faster.
allocating tax refund
i just remembered that my spouse still has his tax refund cheque at home! that's about $600 and we agreed to use all of it to pay CC1. that would bring our CC1 credit to almost half! woohoo! whatever leftover amount we had prior to today (pay day) was used to pay for CC3, although it's not due for another 2 weeks.
pay ourselves first
in the morning of our pay day, i immediately distribute at least 15% of our combined salaries to our 5 savings accounts. next i pay is our rent, and then i transfer my spouse's salary to my account to lessen transaction fees from his end. my checking account has (thank God) no transaction fees! that's why i chose Bank1 mainly for that reason.
investing in mutual fund
once the amount i transferred to SA5 gets credited, it will have enough funds to allow us to start investing in mutual funds. don't ask me about my knowledge of investing. my experience is as young as this blog. i plan to learn as i go on with tons of help from reading and research. now that i sort of mastered the habit of regularly saving and not dipping into our savings, it's starting to bore me. plus, it doesn't hurt to establish another income stream.
gift giving
my spouse asked me what i'd want for Christmas. i said that it's fine if he decides not to give me anything so long as he does not use any of our credit card for the next 3 months apart from paying his student loan. to that he just smiled. i know he can do it. he probably just feels controlled or limited or something to that effect. this year our Christmas gift to our coworkers are brownies, which i baked myself. it's much cheaper and less stressful. no need to think of specifics. food is always a good thing to give or receive, better when made by yourself.
insurance
we pay our insurance fortnightly too. our health insurance is already deducted from my spouse's salary so we don't feel it really. i'm not sure how much it is, but i think it's about $20+ a fortnight. our content and car insurance are about $42 altogether a fortnight, which is on auto-debit. paying them little by little is also really good because we don't get hurt that way unlike if we have to pay them, say, quarterly or semi-annually or (worse) annually. public health here in new zealand is quite good, but we still think we need the cushion a health insurance can bring. we just had a short discussion today about letting the insurance provider know of our baby who's coming out soon!
i hope that in no time i'd be able to blog about paying our car loan more than it's minimum once again. as you can see from the sidebar, we still owe 60% of the loan. oh my god, how sweet it is to think that our debts are going down little by little.
allocating tax refund
i just remembered that my spouse still has his tax refund cheque at home! that's about $600 and we agreed to use all of it to pay CC1. that would bring our CC1 credit to almost half! woohoo! whatever leftover amount we had prior to today (pay day) was used to pay for CC3, although it's not due for another 2 weeks.
pay ourselves first
in the morning of our pay day, i immediately distribute at least 15% of our combined salaries to our 5 savings accounts. next i pay is our rent, and then i transfer my spouse's salary to my account to lessen transaction fees from his end. my checking account has (thank God) no transaction fees! that's why i chose Bank1 mainly for that reason.
investing in mutual fund
once the amount i transferred to SA5 gets credited, it will have enough funds to allow us to start investing in mutual funds. don't ask me about my knowledge of investing. my experience is as young as this blog. i plan to learn as i go on with tons of help from reading and research. now that i sort of mastered the habit of regularly saving and not dipping into our savings, it's starting to bore me. plus, it doesn't hurt to establish another income stream.
gift giving
my spouse asked me what i'd want for Christmas. i said that it's fine if he decides not to give me anything so long as he does not use any of our credit card for the next 3 months apart from paying his student loan. to that he just smiled. i know he can do it. he probably just feels controlled or limited or something to that effect. this year our Christmas gift to our coworkers are brownies, which i baked myself. it's much cheaper and less stressful. no need to think of specifics. food is always a good thing to give or receive, better when made by yourself.
insurance
we pay our insurance fortnightly too. our health insurance is already deducted from my spouse's salary so we don't feel it really. i'm not sure how much it is, but i think it's about $20+ a fortnight. our content and car insurance are about $42 altogether a fortnight, which is on auto-debit. paying them little by little is also really good because we don't get hurt that way unlike if we have to pay them, say, quarterly or semi-annually or (worse) annually. public health here in new zealand is quite good, but we still think we need the cushion a health insurance can bring. we just had a short discussion today about letting the insurance provider know of our baby who's coming out soon!
i hope that in no time i'd be able to blog about paying our car loan more than it's minimum once again. as you can see from the sidebar, we still owe 60% of the loan. oh my god, how sweet it is to think that our debts are going down little by little.
Dec 18, 2007
earning money from adsense
i started blogging in 2002 and that was a long time ago! i actually started in 2001 but forgot all about it because i was too busy with my career at that time. i learnt of blogger/blogspot in 2002 when i was choosing my first real blog but chose another product that ended up not being improved by its owners. i think i will abandon it fully as i focus on this blog more.
thinking about that length of time, i can't help but feel regret that i didn't start considering earning money from my blogging then. however, that blog was personal more than anything and i was glad it remained anonymous over those years. i'm not so keen about sharing emotional problems in details.
now i'm putting a couple of ads in this blog in hopes that it rakes in some income. after all, i'm supposed to "get money smart", which means trying to create as many income streams as possible right? i can't believe when i read stories of bloggers earning hundreds or thousands from adsense! i'm trying my luck in that arena and hope that i'm not too late.
thinking about that length of time, i can't help but feel regret that i didn't start considering earning money from my blogging then. however, that blog was personal more than anything and i was glad it remained anonymous over those years. i'm not so keen about sharing emotional problems in details.
now i'm putting a couple of ads in this blog in hopes that it rakes in some income. after all, i'm supposed to "get money smart", which means trying to create as many income streams as possible right? i can't believe when i read stories of bloggers earning hundreds or thousands from adsense! i'm trying my luck in that arena and hope that i'm not too late.
Dec 16, 2007
show you the money
or show you the lack of... the sidebar now shows you our current financial status (debts vs. savings). i've yet to include the hire purchases when i get the latest digits on them this month.
it's liberating in a way to have the guts to show the world what we have and what we owe. my partner has no idea that i'm doing this blog! i'm sure he'll find the blog cool, but i'm not sure what he'd think about the entries i posted about his financial personality.
looking at the sidebar i can't help but compute the totals of every category. just by looking, i can tell that our debt is more than our savings. i don't even have my partner's student loan included in there. i have this thinking that it's HIS debt, not mine. although we pay (roughly) $600/month for it, i'd feel better if he'd monitor its progress instead of me. although, again, i monitor almost every financial aspect of our relationship. ok maybe at some point in the near future i would include it in the sidebar. we'll see.
i'm sure somebody out there would think that i should use part, if not all, of our savings to pay for credit card debts. i sure would like to be credit card debt free but i'm going on maternity leave soon for 14 weeks. i'll only get government subsidy of about $390/week instead of my salary of, well, much more than that. we'll need the "emergency fund" when the baby pops out of me.
it's liberating in a way to have the guts to show the world what we have and what we owe. my partner has no idea that i'm doing this blog! i'm sure he'll find the blog cool, but i'm not sure what he'd think about the entries i posted about his financial personality.
looking at the sidebar i can't help but compute the totals of every category. just by looking, i can tell that our debt is more than our savings. i don't even have my partner's student loan included in there. i have this thinking that it's HIS debt, not mine. although we pay (roughly) $600/month for it, i'd feel better if he'd monitor its progress instead of me. although, again, i monitor almost every financial aspect of our relationship. ok maybe at some point in the near future i would include it in the sidebar. we'll see.
i'm sure somebody out there would think that i should use part, if not all, of our savings to pay for credit card debts. i sure would like to be credit card debt free but i'm going on maternity leave soon for 14 weeks. i'll only get government subsidy of about $390/week instead of my salary of, well, much more than that. we'll need the "emergency fund" when the baby pops out of me.
debts and personality
like i promised last time, i am going to blog about our debts! i am not glad to blog about it just so i have something to blog about. i wish we didn't have any at all. in fact, i stress myself out thinking of paying them completely sooner rather than later.
car loan:
we have a $10K car loan that we started paying in Dec 2006. our fortnightly payment is about $108 but for a number of months this year we paid $400 fortnightly, which brought our debt significantly down. we are now down to $6k. we had to stop increasing our payments to $400, and stick to $108 in the meantime, because i wanted to pay off our credit cards ASAP.
hire purchases:
we have 2 - for a 42" LCD tv and for a sofa set. we pay the tv $145/month and sofa is due $60/month. i pay the sofa $120/month because it doesn't hurt to pay that extra $60 in the overall budget. as for the tv, i can't add more because it's on auto-debit. both are on interest-free for (i think) 2 years.
this holiday season is not as expensive as the previous ones. we decided to give chocolate brownies this year, which i will bake. i'm not gonna be disappointed if my partner chooses not to buy me a present this year, just because i know we're better off paying our debts. in all honesty, i think our debts are controlled. the fact that we can afford to pay more than the minimum and still stash away 15% to savings and not really tighten our belts mean that we're doing well. it's just i would rather we don't have debt at all!
i had planned to pay the leftover amount of our budget before the next pay day to credit card debt. the circumstances in the previous week have changed and left me with less than $100 for 2 more days. we bought a second-hand sterilizer and breast pump set (cash, $73 but goodbye to additional $20 that my partner "stole" when he withdraw from the atm), paid for air fare (cash, $261) for joining my spouse's conference last month, grocery ($130 roughly), our Christmas brownies ingredients and packaging ($126 roughly), and some other needed bits.
lately i can't help but get annoyed (and a bit stressed) about my partner's financial mindset. he has in his mind of purchasing a bigger external hard drive. we now have an 80GB one but it's all full now and he wants to expand to maybe 250GB. it's not a need and he knows that, that's why he said he will save his allowance to get himself a bigger drive. i appreciate that, but at the same time i can't help but wonder why he talks to me more about the cash flowing out instead of finding ways to keep them from flowing out. last year he bought himself an iPod Nano. when the iPod Touch came out, he immediately got himself one without plans of re-selling his old unit. i am pushing for the selling and will get it on an auction site this week. i was frustrated that i am the one doing the selling instead of him being the owner.
i can't help but think of his childhood and how his financial life had been before living with me. he grew up poor and hardly had money in the bank. when he got his tax refunds, he straightaway thought of buying himself a dvd recorder and ipod touch. now he doesn't like and want the dvd recorder anymore, after nearly 6 months, and wants to sell it. his mindset is about giving himself what he deserves because he didn't really have much growing up. why doesn't he think saving for the future is a good thing that he deserves in life? i don't know. if somebody could shed light on this, please tell me. i am not saying he constantly spends. he actually lets me control our money and gladly lives off on fortnightly allowance of $150. i just wish that for now he stops thinking of gadgets and whatever to get. the other day he suggested that we buy a sandpaper machine because we're going to sand a second-hand drawer for the baby. we have sandpaper at home and i didn't think we need to get a machine since we have enough time to do it anyway. i thought we didn't need to buy one for a small drawer job. his thought was that machines do it faster, therefore would save us time. living in this part of the world has significantly slowed our lifestyle pace. we always have time.
saving 15% to me is not enough because i know, for certain, that if we are out of debt we could save more. i just wish my partner could really see things from an asset-vs-liability perspective.
car loan:
we have a $10K car loan that we started paying in Dec 2006. our fortnightly payment is about $108 but for a number of months this year we paid $400 fortnightly, which brought our debt significantly down. we are now down to $6k. we had to stop increasing our payments to $400, and stick to $108 in the meantime, because i wanted to pay off our credit cards ASAP.
hire purchases:
we have 2 - for a 42" LCD tv and for a sofa set. we pay the tv $145/month and sofa is due $60/month. i pay the sofa $120/month because it doesn't hurt to pay that extra $60 in the overall budget. as for the tv, i can't add more because it's on auto-debit. both are on interest-free for (i think) 2 years.
this holiday season is not as expensive as the previous ones. we decided to give chocolate brownies this year, which i will bake. i'm not gonna be disappointed if my partner chooses not to buy me a present this year, just because i know we're better off paying our debts. in all honesty, i think our debts are controlled. the fact that we can afford to pay more than the minimum and still stash away 15% to savings and not really tighten our belts mean that we're doing well. it's just i would rather we don't have debt at all!
i had planned to pay the leftover amount of our budget before the next pay day to credit card debt. the circumstances in the previous week have changed and left me with less than $100 for 2 more days. we bought a second-hand sterilizer and breast pump set (cash, $73 but goodbye to additional $20 that my partner "stole" when he withdraw from the atm), paid for air fare (cash, $261) for joining my spouse's conference last month, grocery ($130 roughly), our Christmas brownies ingredients and packaging ($126 roughly), and some other needed bits.
lately i can't help but get annoyed (and a bit stressed) about my partner's financial mindset. he has in his mind of purchasing a bigger external hard drive. we now have an 80GB one but it's all full now and he wants to expand to maybe 250GB. it's not a need and he knows that, that's why he said he will save his allowance to get himself a bigger drive. i appreciate that, but at the same time i can't help but wonder why he talks to me more about the cash flowing out instead of finding ways to keep them from flowing out. last year he bought himself an iPod Nano. when the iPod Touch came out, he immediately got himself one without plans of re-selling his old unit. i am pushing for the selling and will get it on an auction site this week. i was frustrated that i am the one doing the selling instead of him being the owner.
i can't help but think of his childhood and how his financial life had been before living with me. he grew up poor and hardly had money in the bank. when he got his tax refunds, he straightaway thought of buying himself a dvd recorder and ipod touch. now he doesn't like and want the dvd recorder anymore, after nearly 6 months, and wants to sell it. his mindset is about giving himself what he deserves because he didn't really have much growing up. why doesn't he think saving for the future is a good thing that he deserves in life? i don't know. if somebody could shed light on this, please tell me. i am not saying he constantly spends. he actually lets me control our money and gladly lives off on fortnightly allowance of $150. i just wish that for now he stops thinking of gadgets and whatever to get. the other day he suggested that we buy a sandpaper machine because we're going to sand a second-hand drawer for the baby. we have sandpaper at home and i didn't think we need to get a machine since we have enough time to do it anyway. i thought we didn't need to buy one for a small drawer job. his thought was that machines do it faster, therefore would save us time. living in this part of the world has significantly slowed our lifestyle pace. we always have time.
saving 15% to me is not enough because i know, for certain, that if we are out of debt we could save more. i just wish my partner could really see things from an asset-vs-liability perspective.
Dec 12, 2007
clearer profile
i realized that my previous post was not easily structured to show my financial profile. so here i am to list them down in simpler (and more readable) format.
Credit Cards:
Credit Cards:
- CC1 - 44 days interest free and i can't find what the interest rate is! this one i know for sure has the highest rate among the cards we use - balance: $1500
- CC2 - 55 days interest free, 12.95% - balance $4000
- CC3 - 55 days interest free, 12.95% - balance $1000
Savings Accounts:
- SA1 - 8.2% interest per annum (includes 2.2% bonus interest if no withdrawal is made), gets $700/month
- SA2 - 6% max per annum (includes 4% bonus interest if no withdrawal is made), gets %100/month
- SA3 - 5.5% per annum, gets $100/month
- SA4 - 5% per annum (includes 2.5% bonus interest if no withdrawal is made), gets $100/month. this is our baby fund, aiming to make this an educational fund, particularly college fund.
- SA5 - 8.2% per annum. this one i recently opened and plan to use as an intro account with the bank to start investing in managed funds. this currently has $50 only as my initial deposit. i need at least $300 before i could invest in a managed fund, so for the next 2 or 3 pay days i will put more in this account than in SA1.
Banks:
- Bank1 - has SA1
- Bank2 - has SA2 and SA3
- Bank3 - has SA4
- Bank4 - has SA5
i learned from my mother that it can be beneficial to have more than 1 bank to trust money with. i'm sure a lot of people practice this too. i plan to make SA1 and SA5 my priority savings accounts just because of the high interest. my mind is already "configured" to think of SA2, SA3 and SA4 as additional egg baskets. i need my mind to think "at least i have something stashed somewhere" to get that feeling of security in money terms.
at some point later, i will post our other debts - car loan and 2 hire purchases - and how we are paying for them.
what do you think about this profile? do i need to re-allocate my savings?
Dec 11, 2007
tasha's financial profile
though we (still) have credit card debts, i don't stop paying ourselves first. every pay day, i allocate about 15% of our take home pays to our savings account. it is called Online Call Account here in NZ and earns 8.2% per annum. if i'm not mistaken, it only earns 7.2% but customers get the extra 1% if there is no withdrawal and at least 1 deposit on a monthly basis.
we have 3 credit cards. the highest interest-earning card, CC1, has been "parked" for almost 2 months now. it is under my husband's name and initially i had let him control it, but 2 months ago i realized that we couldn't even identify its transactions as a dinner conversation without looking at it online. i asked him to give the card to me to park it until we get it paid off. it still has about $1500 balance. so, every pay day, i allocate more payment to that than the other 2. the other 2, CC2 and CC3 respectively, are of the same type and have low interests. unfortunately CC2 has about $4k (still). recently i paid more to that than CC1 because we use it to pay my husband's monthly student loan payments. i'm very glad that i don't have student loans. i would probably be so stressed doing the budgeting! and because CC2's low-interest, we are drawn to using it when we need to use a credit card. CC3 just recently got used and has $1k. CC3 is under my name while CC2 is shared by me and my husband.
i am hoping that by end of january 2008, CC1 is paid off. if paid off before then, the better. that way we could start putting more payments to CC2. i'm not really concerned about CC3 because i don't really use it often so i'm not afraid that it would get bigger. CC2 is a very active card and the only reason CC1 is my top priority at the moment is its interest rate!
my husband and i are a new couple. we didn't really have any financial assets before living together. we didn't have the credit cards when we started living together, and our only debt was our car loan. i used to pay twice our monthly due for that until we started having credit card bills. the use of our credit cards was for getting our place set up. not only did we not have financial assets, but we barely had furniture when we started living together. because of that, i started focusing on saving. our savings account has no withdrawal ever since! we have been good about not touching it. i'm so glad that we have not needed to (yet). the online call account is really fun to have. it motivates us not to withdraw whenever we see the interest earned from it.
this might seem funny, but we have 5 savings accounts. SA1 is the one in discussion here and it's with Bank1. it also gets the bulk of that 15% pay-ourselves-first scheme. SA2 and SA3 each get only $100 per month, and they're with Bank2. SA4 is our baby fund that gets $100/month and it's with Bank3. we don't have our baby yet, not for another couple of months more! SA5 is a new one with Bank4. i created SA5 to try investing because that's what Bank4 is focused on doing its business. it has an online call account too, which i think is what i have. i really just got this account recently opened and don't have complete access to know everything yet. when we need to pull out funds for whatever immediate reason, we pull it from SA2 and/or SA3 because they have the smallest interest rate of all our savings.
anyway, because investing has been intriguing me and has been getting me interested, i created SA5 to try that path of earning money. like i said, i'm very new to investing and i only know simple things. however i end up doing, this blog will surely tell.
fresh blog, fresh start
what timing to start a new blog. the end of 2007 is a couple of weeks away. one thing i plan to focus on this blog is my goal to becoming money smart.
yes indeed. for the past month or so, i have been busy reading blogs and blogs of personal finance, savings, investments, budget, and everything that can get me "learned". just like you, i know simple things about financial management. i started this blog with very simple ideas of what i can do to become financially smart. as i go forward with this new blog of mine, i will blog about my own finances, of course, and the steps i would/will take to enriching me and my family in $$$ terms.
feel free to make comments and to share your experiences. i'm excited to learn from you!
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