Cyclone Clutter

Here we are again... Last night we were waiting on a cyclone. The sky was heavy with rain, our laundry piled high, our home damp.

I look at the clutter around me and wish it would diminish faster. Each time a cyclone comes, the clutter blinds me of the items that need special care and attention. I have worked at eliminating clutter with small weekly bags leaving our home. I have also followed our rule of anything new in means the same amount or more out. Happily very little new has come in lately.

Now that I have photoshop up and running again I will declutter more. My aim is to find something in our home to list for selling each day. A book here, a doll there, baby dress, old camera gear, old toys, kitchen stuff and so forth.

The money will go in the appropriate place. If it's a family item in common it will go in our home loan or Borneo fund. If it's Dolly's, she will carefully divide it into three, and place it in her various savings. If it's my mums it will go to her. If it's mine I think I will place it in my online savings account.

Today school was cancelled, the cyclone bypassed us and my laundry keeps piling. So time to focus on some clutter to make room, breathing space and extra cash. And I'm starting with this much enjoyed John Waters DVD of Cry Baby with Johnny Depp. I've watched it many times over the years and it can go now.

John Waters - Cry Baby - With Johnny Depp.

How about you? Got some junk to turn to cash laying around?

Gardening to Keep Your Produce Costs Down

I spent some time in my garden plot over the weekend to check on 2 chokos I planted earlier in the week. Unfortunately they did not look too good. But there might be a little hope. I'm crossing my fingers as I love chokos with a dab of butter and sprinkle of salt. No one else has chokos in our community garden so I'm learning from books on how to grow them.

Here is my glorious harvest from the weekend which will be incorporated in this weeks meals to help keep within the weekly meals budget. I love organic, grown by me produce. It makes me proud to know I can achieve fresh produce from my own sweat and labour.

Pumpkin, 2 Varieties of Eggplants and Winged Beans.

Two years ago I would have never imagined that I could grow food for my own meals. But it's possible. And if it's possible for me - (a lazy, procrastinator - that likes things done quickly because I'm always getting bored and ready for the next thing) - then it's possible for anyone. If you haven't tried your hand at a bit of gardening, I say "Give it a go". Start with a few herbs in small pot plants to get your meals tastier, healthier and greener. And go from there. Get bolder, bigger and greener.

As always I am interested in your comments. Do you grown anything yourself? What do you have growing? What are your harvesting? Or even, what is preventing you from planting a few items to add to your meals?

Lisa Oliver Talks Wealth Creation With Gill Fielding

Simple steps. Saving and putting aside small amounts to create your wealth.

Enjoy.

Catch Up

Changes:

I've been busy still trying to tweak my new work hours around my life, getting myself better organised, creating a vision board for myself, reading about wealth creation, looking at real estate for a house, decluttering, tidying up and developing myself. It's been busy, productive and positive. I can feel a shift happening in myself and it feels motivating.

Health:

The biking to and from work has began to give me a sense of wellbeing. Breathing in fresh air and looking at the amazing array of birds in the morning as I pedal is relaxing compared to the radio and traffic management I used to deal with in the car. My ride is now 20 minutes each way. I have reduced the time it takes as my fitness has increased. My increase in wellbeing has also given me a bit more consciences about my body. I'm looking at eating healthier options however I am still heavily lured by junk food and chocolate.

Money:

We are still the frugal family. Now that we are aiming towards goals on how to spend our savings it will all have a fuller meaning of why we choose to not eat out at restaurants whenever we want like we did in the past. We do eat inexpensive takeout once in a while but we don't buy drinks, desserts and so forth as we used to. Last night for dinner we had roast vegetables of potato, carrot, onion, garlic from the shop and pumpkin from our garden. I also shallow fried 5 portions of barramundi that The Rambling Expat had caught last weekend. I told Dolly we were eating our own version of Fish and Chips. She asked where the chips were and I pointed to the roast potatoes :-) Delicious and frugal.

Our Borneo trip tin is slowly filling up as we collect a few cans and bottles here and there. This week is our smallest pile yet as our neighbours haven't given us many. But I might squeeze in a beach walk and clean up the litter bugs rubbish and gather bottles and cans on the way. As for Dolly her school banking savings account is looking healthy as is her spending money box.

Clothes, Accessories and Make Up:

I am doing well on my challenge on the clothing front. However I must mention my mum gave me 3 pairs of leggings and ex boss lady gave me a pair of sneakers. Both are serving me well on my biking. I purchased 2 purses at the op shop for $15 each. I love them and they have price tags of $69.95 and $79.95. I'm really happy with this find as my 6 year old leather wallet has stretched too much and all my cards were falling out in public places. So I resorted everything in my new wallet and feeling very organised there. (Sorry no photos yet as we don't have out photo shop up yet on this computer).

How is your frugality, non frugality, decluttering, wealth building, motivation or anything else you want to chat about?

I Killed Our Mac

Last night I semi closed our MacBook to move from one room to another. However I did so with one of my ear pieces from my headphones on the keyboard. I totally destroyed the screen :-(

We don't have many shops repairing or selling Macs in my town. First I went to the shop that repairs and sells Macs. I was quoted $900 for a new screen ordered and replaced - ouch! Our computer was 3 years old and I needed a new one pronto so $900 and days of waiting was not a solution I was after. So instead I looked at new MacBook Pros, got my quotes and headed to the next shop.

The next shop had the same MacBook Pro for $3 cheaper. It was 10:00 am and the shop was already full of bumping shoppers loading up their arms and pulling out credit cards. I was there with my little note book full of scribbles and prices. I told them I had already been shopping around. I showed them my broken MacBook. They oohed and ahhed over my lovely white Mac that's already old skool and chatted amicably about my broken screen as customers jostled for their attention. They asked when did I need it. I said "Before my partner gets home from fishing"... They laughed, talked a little about the fishing comp and bundled up my gear ( I bought some extra software I'd been meaning to purchase for ummmmm 3 years) they threw in a FREE $69 MacBook Pro sleeve for my witty efforts.

At the checkout as I waited I saw no cash in sight. As my turn came up I pulled out my camera to take a quick shot of my cash on the counter "For my blog" I said. They laughed and chatted excitedly as they counted my cash, making jokes about the amount and about being lucky to not be mugged. I had handed over $2005 in cash! Seeing the cash in the flesh makes it real. Gives real value to the item. Makes it painful and makes me aware of the hours of work I've put in to buy this Mac. Even to the staff who are used big sales this amount in $50 notes was eye popping.

So my friends that was my Incredibly Expensive Day. Hope your day was much much less.

Reading About Wealth Creation

We have been treading the frugal life since our daughter was born and more and more carefully in the past 2 or so years. At the time Dolly was born (5yrs ago) I was a 36 year old full time trainee student in Business Administration earning a low wage of $20,000 but receiving free education along the way. The Rambling Expat was a full time 40 year old university student completing a Masters on a 2 year scholarship of $50,000 and a fee waiver where he also had no educational costs. We were being paid to study and that was awesome!

Currently our only debt is our mortgage from our purchased home nearly 5 years ago, which we pay extra cash into on weekly basis. We are aiming for our unit to be paid off within another 3 years. We paid cash for our small economical car last year and never have problems paying the bills because we budget for everything. We used to spend spend spend - mainly on rent, going out, alcohol, magazines, restaurants, cigarettes, music, clothes and luxury food.

We have been frugal and careful to the point of saving a large sum to replace our windows and our own personal savings. Everything else is split down the middle except for groceries. He pays a little more as I have cut back work to care for our daughter which benefits us both.

So now has come the time to get our joint and personal finances organised. I also want to start developing myself to learn on how to create (passive) income by using my savings wisely. I am reading 1 to 2 hours per day from relevant books that will help my progress. This week I am reading Money For Nothing by Justine Davies from my public library. I'm finding it excellent with homework at the end of each chapter and budget sheets to work from. My focus this week is to rework my budget and start looking at our mortgage and see if we can get a better deal to lower our interest and Government owned portion.

I also purchased a book Ms Millionaire with my book credit for inspiration. The book has online tools and bonus at each chapter end which I am exploring. Each woman highly encourages personal and professional development as most found this was their turning point in creating changes, wealth and abundance for themselves.

It's all fun reading and motivating. I'm not a risk taker now that I'm a saver, so it's daunting to take even small steps. But as my knowledge increases and my confidence grows I will make a few financial investments that will benefit me and my family. Maybe it will take me quite some time to make that 1st step but I'm inching there. As for personal and professional development I'm making steps towards that too. I too think it can only be a good thing for me.

Do you invest time or money in your own personal and professional development? Do you invest any of your savings? I would love to hear your thoughts.

(The above books are very Australia focused - so my international readers may be inspired but may not find them as useful as a book from their own country).

Cash For Cans and Free Medical Assistance.

Hi Everyone,

When I picked up Dolly from school yesterday she looked tired but I loaded up the car with our bottles and cans and headed for cash for cans. We made $8.90 with no effort in the past week. Last week we made $11.20. Dolly is enjoying looking at coins and talking about saving for big ticket items. Her spend as she wants money box has also been filling up and she pulled money out to purchase a school bookclub book. You could see the pride and ownership of her actions in her tired 5 year old face.

Then in the middle of the night she woke with a fever and headache. I called the poison line as a couple of days previously she licked rain water off a very toxic Cycad Plant. (The stuff kids do in the blink of an eye!!) The poison line told me to get her to the hospital to have her checked pronto. So we spent 3 hours in emergency last night. It seems that she has a respiratory infection and is not poisoned - thank goodness. The hospital is FREE and we had kind nurses and the BEST doctor I have ever met. He spoke to Dolly with gentleness and the out most respect. He explained everything he was doing, directly to her in a soft calm voice and asked her if it was okay that he check her ears, stomach, mouth and chest. We left the hospital with her being so happy, chirpy and skipping we must have looked like a scam family.

I am grateful for FREE hospital care that allows me to keep out of debt and that my daughter is okay. Children can do the most crazy stuff. My health has been great so far this year after a lousy 2011. With biking to and from work I feel I'm getting fitter and stronger slowly but surely :-)

Life is very good for me at present. If feels full of potential and opportunity. I haven't felt this good in a few years and I think the cut back in my work hours and the physical activity is doing wonders to my mind and body. How about you? Having a good run or feeling down and overwhelmed?