Updates from the last month or so

Finally, motivation and time played into my favor today, so here I am blogging once again. Good news are aplenty and I can only say that life is very good, and it has always been though at times I complain and sulk.

New tenants have signed the rest of our lease. This weekend we'll be signing the end of our tenancy and bond refund form. Such a relief! We promised ourselves that we'd be celebrating this "freedom" by eating at a good seafood restaurant anywhere in the Wellington region. So far we have not found one that we like to try yet based on online reviews. The only thing we need to finalise at the flat is sweeping the debris of dry leaves around the property. It sucks to clean that external area because there are trees everywhere! It was a never-ending gardening task.

During my blogging absence, I also had to look for house and pet sitters during our holiday. We preferred to have 2 sitters instead of 1, and not because we have a high-maintenance property and pet, but because we would like to have double chances at contacting a sitter to check what's going on. A couple of the sitters I offered the assignment to declined because they preferred to be alone. The one who accepted is an English woman moving from the UK and she was fine with co-house sitter. The other one is an American guy who moved here and in the process of looking (and buying) a house for him and his family. Well, the guy has yet to confirm with us this week so we'll see, but he seems pretty interested.

Work is kinda slower this spring compared to last year's. I'm disappointed but at the same time I used the opportunity to hone my skills by studying and doing practical work. I spent hours adjusting my brain to think the way I want it to think.

Money is not so bad. J had another 3% increase on top of his 3.51% a couple months ago. Our financial situation is looking more positive each day although, like mentioned many times before, we are only paying debt minimums until end of January. Upon moving to our own home, we got rid of our landline and the only pleasures we enjoy are the internet and Sky TV (not HDI). A few weeks ago I was surprised that we were to pay $140 on Sky but when we called to question them all, we apparently only had to pay $78! Geesh, it does help to review bills and ask questions when not sure.

We already paid rates (property tax)! I'm still trying to decide whether to continue with the 5 installment payments or do the fortnightly like the rest of our payees.

Speaking of payees, having your own home just adds up some more expenses. Apart from our health, home contents and car insurance, we now have house and life insurance too. They all add up to some $100/fortnightly. And there's the mortgage payments of $1,115/fortnightly. Woohoo!

Oh, we changed all 4 tyres of our car and did some alignment. It cost us $810 at Tony's Tyre Service and so far we noticed a very minimal change in petrol consumption... but we'll give it another month or so to prove itself. A month ago, we had to do the oil change but since J waited for the car to beep constantly (to tell driver that it badly needs oil change) to make a point that we HAD to shell out money for the oil change, the damage to that car part cost us $600. Apparently when your car beeps you MUST stop. Ha. We drove it for the entire weekend before turning it in. I was upset at J during that time because I'm not dumb about car maintenance and I'm not such a tightwad. But we learned our lesson from that experience.

Have a top week!