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2nd - Technology gone mad
7th - Investing in the future
11th - Not gonna crawl
22nd - That was the week that was...
Investing in the future
Dec 7, 2008
Does anyone mind if I cancel Christmas this year? Could I at least postpone it, do you think? There's just too much going on at the moment! The boys are convinced there's going to be no presents for them this year as nobody's had time to go Christmas shopping and won't for quite a while yet. We're supposed to be putting the tree up today and I know they're going to be waiting excitedly for parcels to start magically appearing at the foot of it but sorry, no can do! Not this week anyway. As I write, this time next week Alex will be shivering in Lake Taupo, waiting to begin his 2km swim for our Half Iron Man. I don't mind admitting I'm absolutely flipping terrified, whose idea was this? Ah yes, mine. The local paper even ran a story on our running exploits earlier this week! We felt like a right couple of plonkers but I have to admit it's been really good in terms of encouragement as now people always beep and wave madly or offer words of support when they see us out training. Noel has appointed himself as my own personal trainer and has been really cracking the whip. I don't dare stop running as I never know when he's going to appear alongside me in the car with a water bottle!
Mind you, much as his support has been invaluable, I think he'll be glad to have his wife back. He's been holding the fort through all the training, taking care of dinner and all kinds of other things to enable me to run. And what do I do in return? Forget to pay the bills! Boy, did that land me in the doghouse. There was Noel, delighted at how healthy the bank balance was looking, all the while blissfully unaware that his dorky missus had incurred around $70 interest on the credit card by forgetting to pay it off for the last two months. Not only that, she hadn't actually got around to paying some of last month's bills at all! Unforgiveable I know - I had to fess up and tell you as he told me if I didn't write a blog about it, he would! As for the reason? Pitiful really. I've become so accustomed to paying bills online in a matter of seconds that on the odd occasion I have to actually write out a cheque and post it, it all seems dreadfully lengthy and inconvenient. That day I had several cheques to write so I paid the rest of the bills online first and stuck the rest in the 'to do' tray until I could be bothered dealing with them later. Unfortunately they soon got covered in all sorts of other stuff, I stopped reminding myself they were there and the rest is history. Or should I say, interest. I was too busy focussing on all the other things I wanted to do to take care of the most basic things, such as making sure the phone didn't get cut off. Fabulous attitude, Penny!
Just as well one of us has still been steadfastly waving the Simple Savings flag. Noel has been keeping an eye out for some time now on two very important purchases and finally found them at the right price. Top of the list for some time has been a new water tank. Aside from being a rusting, leaking eyesore it wasn't even sanitary. Hardly reassuring when you're filling up the kettle from the tap and look out the kitchen window to find a cat sticking its head through a large hole in the tank roof, sharing your drinking water. After five years I'm amazed we haven't all got toxoplasmosis! Still, just as important was the fact that since moving there we have shared a water easement agreement with the neighbouring farm. Now the property has sold, there's nothing to say that the new owners will be as generous. We've seen too many of our friends get stung the same way and have to keep forking out for the fire service to deliver water by tanker regularly. We needed to be more independent and the only way to achieve this was to get a larger tank. So Noel doggedly shopped around for months and finally found a great deal on a smart 15,000 litre tank. Not only did he save $1400 on the price we had anticipated, he also managed to secure free delivery! So although it was still a major expense, it was a necessary one and an investment in the future. With summer now here, we can be sure that not a single drop of precious tank water will go to waste - or the cats!
My savvy husband also managed to score a fantastic deal on a new fridge-freezer! Sometimes you have to spend money in order to save more long term and more fridge and freezer space has been a priority for quite some time. Our existing fridge wasn't big enough so we had an old beer fridge to cope with the excess but it leaked and didn't seal properly (understatement!) Because we are growing so much of our own food now, freezer space is essential if we are to make the best of a glut of anything, or when we have a whole cow butchered and delivered, such as been the case this week. So Noel shopped around and shopped around until he spotted a Harvey Norman sale. Well actually the sale had just finished but he rang up and asked if they had any left that they would be willing to sell at that price and they did! So we are now the proud owners of a DOUBLE fridge-freezer (you know, with a whole fridge on one side and a whole freezer on the other) for $700 LESS than the price of a SINGLE fridge-freezer. Well done my love!
The new fridge-freezer has definitely been a good move. Noel has been taking care of most of the grocery shopping lately and has been horrified at the price of things so this has made him even more determined for us to be as self-sufficient as possible. We had our first feed of runner beans yesterday and we never know what's going to pop up in the garden. Even though we've been doing this for several years now, going out to the garden to pick things for dinner never stops being a novelty. Noel happily brings me in a head of broccoli, lettuce or whatever we need in two minutes flat. Sure beats having to drive to Mr Patel's or the supermarket when we need fresh food! In fact the last couple of times we have bought things that weren't homegrown have been a huge disappointment. We used up all the lemons on our tree and had to go and buy some more the other day - what a letdown! Instead of the sunshine coloured lemons so full of juice you could squeeze them with your hand, we had to make do with these pale, rock-hard offerings with barely any juice at all. I'm not sure which was worse, those or the eggs. The chickens were being a bit slack for some reason so we had no choice but to go and buy half a dozen. Instead of our delectable, golden eggs, so perfectly formed and delicious, Noel was horrified at the sloppy, splatty things he cracked into the pan. I would never have believed homegrown eggs could taste so different but there was no comparison. In the end we were all arguing who got the homegrown eggs and who didn't. First in, first served!
Fortunately the chooks have gone into overdrive and we have lovely fresh eggs coming out of our ears again. I was also delighted to see that for the first time ever, our cherry tree has proper fruit growing on it! I can't wait for those to be ready, I love cherries but have always been far too stingy to pay the $19.99 a kilo they usually charge in supermarkets. Now I can scoff them as much as I like for free! As I mentioned, we also had a beef animal delivered this week. We now have precisely 196kg of prime beef in the freezer. You name it; we've got it - sausages, mince, corned silverside, pot roasts, rib roasts, seasoned roasts, topside, schnitzel, steak of all descriptions as well as stewing steak, shin, oxtail - even bags of bones for the dogs! We were almost completely out of meat and Noel had his eye on one of our two-year-old steers but there was no way I was letting anyone put Sloppy Joe in the freezer! So Noel went to the livestock sale and purchased a beef animal in prime condition - it was even classified P2, which is the best you can get. It cost us a total of $800 for the animal, the butcher and delivery. Sound like a lot? Think of it this way - we have almost 200kg of meat, which works out to just $4 a kilo. You can't even buy average quality mince in the supermarket for that price, let alone entire roasts! Plus of course there's the huge benefit of not having to buy meat from the supermarket for a VERY long time. Admittedly as Noel pointed out, if he had been given his way and dispatched with Joe, the deal would have been even sweeter, costing us the grand total of $100. Fortunately my conscience wouldn't let me and funny old Joe gets to graze for another day. Yah!
Before I go, thank you to everyone who has emailed or posted suggestions regarding kids and mobile phones! We always knew we had made the right decision in not allowing Ali to have one and this was well and truly cemented a few nights ago. Ali has recently joined Scouts and absolutely loves it. They were going indoor rock climbing and a classmate's mum kindly offered to take Ali and bring him home. Noel was sick and I was out for the evening and we were both feeling bad about not being able to take him ourselves so we gave him Liam's cellphone so he could call or text us if he wanted and let us know how he was doing. If there's one thing Ali has never been backwards at it's communicating and boy did he take advantage of this techno-opportunity! Throughout the evening I was given a constant running text commentary of everything from the car trip to the rock climbing to the hot chips he and his mate were enjoying on the way home. He even managed to text 'you suck' to one of Liam's friends (which of course would have flashed up as being from 'Liam' at the receiving end) and texted hello to one of Noel's colleagues at some unearthly hour of the morning before the accursed phone was wrested back from him into Liam's far more sensible hands. On the positive side, Ali has realised he dug himself into a rather large hole and has not pestered us for a cellphone since!
It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it...
Dec 28, 2008
If there's one thing that really makes me chuckle it's the number of emails I receive from members who say 'how do you keep finding SS things to write about now you're perfect?' The answer is simple - I'm not! Not yet, anyway. In fact, after the Christmas that's just been, if anyone suggested to Noel I was 100% flawless with money, he would probably spill his coffee and collapse in hysterics. I've been a Simple Saver now for almost four years and the way I see myself is this - I'm a lot more frugal than most people I know - especially when it comes to the big things. But there are still plenty of other members out there who totally put me to shame, particularly on the Forum. Some of you guys blow me away! But that's the great thing - Simple Savings brings us all together, we learn from each other and when we go off track, there's always someone right there who can put us back on it.
All things considered, I should be perfect though! I mean, what excuse do I have not to be? I have all the knowledge I could possibly need right here - it's just remembering to use it. Fiona and Matt never forget to use theirs; I learned so much from spending a week with them in July (and am still extremely envious of their bulk pantry!) Some things are automatic - like at the moment I have a huge pot of chicken soup on the stove because we had roast chicken last night so I have to make the most of the leftovers. Other things I am still downright rubbish at - buying snacks and drinks when out is the big one. I don't know if it's so much about falling off the wagon; it's more about not letting yourself get complacent - or should I say perhaps lazy?
Take Christmas shopping for example. Sometimes you have to learn from your mistakes and this year I learned from mine. I had all the tips and knowledge I needed from the Vault and newsletters to make this Christmas an organised frugal fest, from the Boxing Day sales to buying gifts on special all year round. The fact we weren't even having Christmas at home should have made it even more of a breeze, with no hordes to cater for. But no, Penny the Perfect thought she was too busy all year and never quite got around to it. I soon realised my online shopping wasn't enough to fill two stockings and the Christmas list. Noel kept popping out to grab bits and pieces and in the end there I was on December 23rd with heaps of shopping still to do. I have two words which sum up the whole experience - NEVER AGAIN. Talk about hell on earth. The actual shopping part didn't take that long - I had a list and knew exactly what I wanted and where to get it. It was the things like having to drive around for 40 minutes to get a car park and the endless queues in every shop we went that really took the shine off. I have never had to queue to get OUT of The Warehouse before and it's an experience I never want to repeat. I couldn't believe so many other people were as behind with their shopping as me. Everyone looked as though they wanted to kill each other and I bet they were thinking the same as me - 'what the heck are YOU lot all doing here? Shouldn't you have been more organised?' It really was consumerism gone mad; which I found really quite ironic considering nobody is supposed to have any money these days and the sales hadn't even started. We were all there spending money for the same reason - because we felt like we had to.
By the time I had braved The Warehouse yet again on Christmas Eve to get Noel a bike helmet (that's another story!), any thoughts I had been entertaining about going to the Boxing Day sales had gone completely out the window. As far as I was concerned, I had stuffed up Christmas. I had no idea what Noel had spent, he had no idea what I had spent and to be honest I had no idea what I had spent either! It just became a mad dash to get the Christmas list filled, to the detriment of our sanity and no doubt the bank balance, which I've been too scared to look at yet. I was feeling really down on myself until I stumbled upon a thread called 'I blew it this Christmas' and realised I wasn't alone. I wasn't the only one who had blown it but we all had something else in common too - we all knew how to get ourselves out of it, with the help of Simple Savings. It made me feel so much better and I'm looking forward to seeing how much I can NOT spend in the New Year!
Christmas was a quiet but enjoyable day at the in-laws. Ali was extremely relieved to find his stocking from Santa as he was utterly convinced he had been a naughty boy all year and would receive nothing but coal. In an attempt to appease the big man in red, he left notes and snacks not once but all around his room! He didn't get any coal but was given a penguin-shaped waffle maker in which waffles have been created in all manners and flavours for breakfasts and lunches since. He's wanted one for ages and I always thought they would be a bit of a waste of money but now we're actually making the waffles I can see how easy it is to make a yummy filling meal out of next to nothing. A Simple Savings gadget after all! One money saving gadget with a difference our family received was a Swear Box. Embarrassed as I am to admit it, the air does turn rather blue occasionally at our house and when Alex spotted it out shopping he insisted that we got it to help curb our family's language. I thought it was going to be a bit of a flash in the pan but have been amazed to find that it's really made a difference. For the first three days money was going into the box on a regular basis but every day it's been getting quieter and it's next to nothing now!
So the festive season is just about over for another year and so far I have three New Year resolutions:
1: Not to make any more impulse purchases on 1-day. This has fast become one of my favourite websites and has developed into a very bad habit. Yes, the discounts are massive and the service is excellent but have we actually NEEDED most of it? Remember Penny, it's only a bargain if you were always going to buy it! I am going to unsubscribe myself from their daily email so I can't get tempted any more.
2: Not to buy any more food and drink when out. We have been really bad at this lately but the kids are leading a great example with their new drink bottles from Santa. They have both been keeping them full of water and take them absolutely everywhere. I can't believe the difference it's made in just a few days!
3: To use our War on Debt calendar diligently. If you haven't had a look at the 2009 calendar yet, go and check it out, right now. It's flipping brilliant! I've been telling Noel all about January's 'Better Deal Month' and he thinks it's a great idea, particularly as our mortgage is about to come off floating rate. I'm printing it off as we speak and we're all going to sit down as a family this afternoon and get in the mood for a super frugal 2009. If we can achieve as much as we have already with a simple water bottle and swear jar, think how much we can achieve when we put our minds to everything else! I'm really looking forward to it. Have a great New Year everyone!