This week's review: 19-23 May 08

Time flies so fast when you're super busy. I can't believe that it has been 3 weeks since I returned to work from maternity leave because it feels like a long time. I've just been really busy with work and parenthood. Being a mom surely changed my lifestyle, such a turn around from childless life. My folks already left and so that's minus 2 full time caregivers. That's a giant change and we're taking it well I think.

Child Care
Financially, we're doing better. Our major spending this week was feeding bottles. You know what? Something annoys me with these bottles. They are made in such a way that consumers will end up using one and only one brand. So I started with Avent just because that's what I saw a lot in most stores. When I checked out other brands to possibly try them out, hey now, I can't get them because the teats don't match the Avent bottles and vice versa. Urk. Avent's definitely not cheap. Imagine a 330ml bottle for $15.99. I'm not breastfeeding anymore. I tried expressing everyday but the last time just didn't make it to 30ml. The baby now finishes a 900 gram formula in less than a week. That's $23 per can on average. Last time I did grocery shopping at Pak'nSave, the brand and type that I buy was gone! It was selling for $22 and somebody must have hoarded all of them.

KiwiSaver
So yes, that's mostly our shell out this week. Oh, my Kiwisaver also kicked in! Yay! That was quicker than I thought! J took almost 3 months, and mine was just less than a month! I'm impressed with ING and my workplace!

Fuel
Fuel prices in NZ are up to $2/litre! Aacckk! Check out fuel$aver to show you an overview of how much you could be spending for fuel.

Tax Cuts
Have you read about the tax cuts the government will start in October? John Campbell said that the weekly money a worker will get can just buy him/her 2 blocks of cheese! Man. Life is getting tougher, eh? I really feel for those households who aren't earning over $90k. It's really tough living below that especially if they have kids. It's just unimaginable to me.

Windfall
Apparently AA had been debiting us more than they should so they sent us a check for $51. Windfall! I checked our latest payment and it was still the same amount. Uhm.

This week's review : 12-16 May 08

Well, I spent 3 days on training and I loved it! Not only are trainings increasing my knowledge but it also means free food! Who wouldn't love free variety of buffet hotel food? I saved $30 from those 3 training days that immediately snowballed into debts.

 

I also got surprised when I saw my last maternity benefit got deposited. I miscalculated and thought that my last pay out was 2 weeks ago. Don't you love it when unexpected windfall happens? I just feel blessed and lucky! That will feed into the bond we need to pay for childcare. It's not due until mid June but I'll pay it next week while we still have money.

 

We also finally sold our DVD recorder. Unfortunately though I didn't know that the Buy Now feature of TradeMe has a fee of $14!!! I am disappointed about that! So not only we sold a perfectly not-so-used item for so cheap, we have a loss of $14 in the process. Blech. So the sale money, $300, goes to debt payment.

 

Debt, debt, debt. I wish it would end soon. I'm trying to achieve paying $500/fortnight to debt. That's a lot of money to part with especially having a little infant now. It makes me disappointed in the way we handled our income last year. Sigh.

 

Before I cry, I'm gonna end this post now. Til next!

I wish I followed my mother

There are moments when I have a smirk on my face when I remember the endless days in the past when mom kept telling me to save, save, save.

She started with her nagging (that's how my siblings and I called it) about saving money when we were already started working professionally. I remember also that I was a saver when I was studying, but consumerism hit me when an income started streaming in. Suddenly I had "needs". My "basic necessities" had more in the list - mobile phones, Starbucks coffee, etc. When I got salary increases, it found more ways to add to my "needs" list.

Life had its way of trying to teach me the value of money. I once lost $1000+ one night that I was having fun with friends. It wasn't my practice to bring big amounts of cash, so it was like "Of all nights!!!" reaction for me. I realized then how precious the buying power a person has with money. The idea of not having to worry about the financial future is something money can really buy. Losing $1000 had me nail-biting and staring into space for days. I cringe thinking about that time and I don't want it to ever happen to me again.

Anyway, I really struggled with saving money because I didn't have a purpose. Mom didn't tell me why I should, except for, well ensuring the future, which at that time was a complicated concept for me. I thought that I needed a purpose to save. I was single, starting my career in the right path, having fun dating, trying new stuff because I had income already...But you know I learned that if you can't think of a purpose, that is fine. Start with saving just for the heck of it. I don't know why didn't just start with that, but if I did I probably would have been a pro blogger about saving money for early 20s by now. :)

Mom just kept at it - save, save, save - but she didn't feel compelled to tell us why. It's like one of those life essentials to her. It's just like death and taxes. I regret having thoughts about being young and enjoying life without financially restricting myself. I guess I needed to satisfy myself in order to learn from it.

I wish I followed my mother. I really do. Though I don't tell her about this regret, I try to tell her in other ways like shopping smartly, budgeting, engaging her on financial talk, but not blogging though. :) Imagine the many opportunities early 20s offers, ugh, I wish I became financially smart then. Who knows where I would be now if I were. I'm not saying that "now" I am. It's still work in progress and you're there reading all about it!

I'm a new PayPerPost postie!

I sure did wait to get approved. I think it was back in December 2007 when I applied but I needed 3 months because it was that month when I launched this blog. It needed to mature (to 90 days!) first.

So what I did was to install a PPP tool as you can see in the smaller column. I like the idea of getting paid for posting what I like to talk about, which obviously is personal finance. I don't remember where and when I saw PayPerPost, but it definitely was from another PF blog. I thought back in the day that I could maintain a blog and make it earn. It wasn't too long when I learned it wasn't that easy! Not many people seem to want to follow my blog so that it could earn money. :) I think if I focused too much on blogging for money, I would not have been able to enjoy the true essence of blogging.

Now, uhm, this is my first post for PayPerPost. See the link down there? Yep. Hopefully this will only mean good money for really good content. That means I have to be creative! That's the big challenge. Haha! I also hope to meet friends through PPP to learn from their experience as PPP posties. I know that this is spreading the word but there is such a thing as word of mouth ethics that everyone should respect.

Due to the nature of this blog, all the PPP money earned will get snowballed to debt payments, maybe a treat here and there. Maybe!

Snowballing my allowance towards debt

Yes, you read the subject right. I think sometimes I'm just fooling myself that I have an allowance. :-P

I give myself an allowance of $100/pay period, which is a fortnight (or 2 weeks). That equates to 10 working days, or simply put, $10 a day.

At the end of each day, whatever's left of my $10 gets snowballed into one of our credit card debts. No matter how small it is I still put it away. Fortunately, we have been very good about packing lunches to work so my $10 does not get spent. To me snowballing like this works because I consider allowance as money foregone once it is budgeted. It is also easy to part with my $10 instead of $100. It's probably just like buying coffee at Starbucks. It's been 5 years since my regular cafe-made fix that I don't know what the prices are anymore. It was then when I realized my latte factors.

Anyway, you might want to try this technique. I want to also mention that I don't snowball the money until after I get home from work. This gives me the feeling that I have an allowance the entire day but also challenges me not to spend it.

I read many snowball techniques from many PF bloggers. If you have one that's not out there yet, please share!

Free Credit Report

I found a website that offers free credit reports here in NZ. Yup!

If you want your report immediately, you'll have to pay but if you can wait for 10 working days it's free. Click here.

I got fickle again

The Assets section in my sidebar is now only composed of the savings and investments. There was no use breaking them down at this point when every account I have is really an emergency fund. Until I achieve something like $14,000, I should really not claim such and such are this and that. By the way, that figure is our current 4 pay periods net salaries (combined).

The last 5 days

I returned to work this week after maternity leave. Let me tell you what happened to us, financially, in the last 5 days.

New Spectacles

Going back to work meant long hours staring at the computer. Before I went on leave, I had already been planning to get my vision tested. Staring for too long made me exhausted by midday. My organization is affiliated with 2 eye clinics in town with very nice discounts for staff. Including 15% off, free consultation, and $110 off, I still paid a whopping $379! Furk. Nothing is cheap nowadays and since my previous pair is now 11 years old, I decided to get a new frame. There went our emergency fund, which I still have to add $113 to. Sigh.

J's clothes

He regularly receives discount coupons from Barker's. Last time he did we didn't go but this time went and got him a very nice purple-ish long-sleeve button down and stylish green sweater. I also decided to get my brother a very nice tie for $56 (after 20% off). Total: $224.91. Charged.

Lunch

All packed from home! $0.

Balance Transfer

I decided to transfer the standard MC balance to my low-interest MC card. Now I have to make sure I zero that out as quickly as possible. The balance should not have incurred that much. It should not have incurred at all! The original plan was to pay it off in full every budget period (fortnightly) but there was a mistake on my part sometime in February that ended with something like $1700 in balance. It was a slow progression to that amount, plus the fact that I was only receiving benefit that was way less than my salary. Sigh. The balance transfer will not only allow me to start anew but that will also mean less interest charges. The standard MC is what we use to pay J's student loan. That's the only way we can pay from overseas cheaply. We don't have enough moolah to afford a big payment to the low-interest card for now so we'll just keep paying more than the minimum and snowball whatever we can afford every 2 weeks. I also brought up specifying a date that we really stop using the cards. We'll see.

Childcare

We finally signed a contract with Barnardos for our baby's child care. We decided to have 3 days of the week before we start full time to have him with his caregiver for 4 hours each. We have to pay all that plus 2 weeks advance before he starts. It's a total of $405. We have not paid for it yet but pretty soon we will. I partially decided on using the baby fund for that because our emergency fund was used up for my specs.

Property market

I might have mentioned before that we have been closely monitoring the property market. Last weekend, we checked out this section for sale that's around the corner. It's about 300sqm (part of a 714sqm section) and the owner said that they didn't expect getting as much as $200,000 for it. They didn't think it was realistic either. I found out that their entire section is currently valued at $165,000. We have also talked to Kiwibank for pre-approval. It's looking positive but things are not solid yet. The section for sale isn't subdivided yet.

As usual, I'm feeling disappointed a bit that we are not getting out of debt as quickly as I hoped we would be. I would prefer to pay off all of our non-mortgage debts before we get mortgage.

Jewellry and big ticket items

Question to my readership:

Do you include the value of big ticket items (e.g. big plasma TV) and jewelry as part of your net worth?

I know I want be wealthy but do I want to retire early?

I just thought of this question while I was brushing my teeth one morning. There are so many rich people in the world who don't stop earning more wealth, hence not retiring early.

The only reason I could come up with as to why they don't retire is because they love what they are doing and not necessarily wanting more wealth. For example, Oprah. She's bleeding wealth but she is still working and helping people. At the same time she's earning more and more wealth.

I once read or heard a quote of something like "Do what you love doing and the money will follow."

Now, what about those who are not blessed to work a job that they love doing? Does this mean they can't be wealthy?

The good news is - No, they can be.

How? Join the PF awareness movement. Read blogs/articles about personal finance. Practice what you learn. It might take a while for you to get that level of wealth you're aiming for, but no genuine PF blogger or adviser will talk to you about get-rich-quickly schemes. It's a slow process.

I just got back to work after a 3-month maternity leave. I really love what I do and "when" I reach that level where I can say we're rich, I would still do something that I love. I'm not sure if I would retire early if I suddenly won lotto, but I'd definitely go on vacation around the world. :)

Peer/family pressure on finances

It isn't just about the pressure to do something to be cool or to be part of a click. There are times when peer pressure is also about doing something that results positively.

Don't you get that "Geesh, you bought that for $50???", instead of a "That's just $50, c'mon!"?

In my case the pressure from my parents to save is just enormous. They pressure me indirectly by telling stories of poverty and richness. So it is family pressure with me.

If you look at it, of course they always mean well but they just do it through negative reinforcement. I won't go into details of that but you know what I mean. I do save and I do invest. I do plan for the future of my family. When I get such pressure I tend to forget for a moment that what I'm doing with my finances is for myself and for my family and not to please anyone outside of it.

But. They are family. Of course I want to please them.

However, family is not the only group of people that can put enormous pressure on me. There is society that has measurements for wealth. What are my wealths? My family, my health, my happiness, whatever it is that I love about my life right now. Even those that I don't like, I embrace as wealth.

Even you bloggers are part of the pressure because we have to walk our talk. Everytime I update my net worth, I cringe to think that some blogger out there has got hundreds (even millions) of thousands of dollars to boast and I don't. Pressure! Aarrggh!

May's grocery challenge

Back at Give Me Back My Five Bucks, there is a grocery challenge initiated. Funny reading it because I discussed with J (maybe a couple of weeks ago) about cutting down our grocery spending to $100/week, which is roughly $400 for the entire month.

This is a good time to begin the challenge because my folks are leaving this month. It's not so easy to stick to a challenge when there are guests around. Although they are leaving in the middle of the month I still feel that we can begin with the challenge and make progress as we go along.

I thought that we were gonna make it this pay period but we have gone over by some $60 now, so let's bring it next period! It will include our pack lunches, our dinners, baby formula and diapers, and throw in some pet food as well. Good luck to the challengers!