Monthly Archives: February 2018

Problems with tenants

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We’ve had some problem with our ‘good’ tenants this week, which came as a real surprise as they’ve been good up until now. Its a strange situation that ended up with us giving them notice to move out. They got caught out in a lie which was designed to steal money from us. I don’t want to say more than that but our agent is also pretty shocked at what they tried to do.

A sudden change in behaviour like this really concerns me but the one thing I will NOT tolerate is being lied to. And if they got away with it then thats theft – I don’t have any time for thieves either. I’m not giving them a second chance as they cannot be trusted now. We’ve been very good landlords, always getting repairs done immediately, cutting them some slack when they had trouble paying the rent for a short period. No rent raises for several years. I’m annoyed that they thought they could take advantage of us when we’ve treated them very well.

We’ve owned this property for almost five years now and only had one weeks vacancy. This is our first tenant problem so we’ve been pretty fortunate. We will probably have a few weeks vacancy this time as we’ll see if it needs painting or any other repairs etc once its empty.

This will also put a bit of a dent in the budget which will slow down the mortgage payoff next month. DH and I are looking forward to going back inside and having another good look. We’ve only actually been inside twice. We inspected it and made an offer to buy it and it was leased straight away. We went back to see it again in between tenants so thats about four years ago. I’m looking forward to seeing it again – its where we will move to when we sell up here.

Grocery shopping & some of this weeks meals.

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Its week two of our $60/week minimum spend at Coles. I forgot to use my triple points voucher so will use it next week. Heres our grocery spend for this week.

IGA: $11.54  2 litres milk, 1 litre iron enriched milk, 460g sundried tomatos

Butcher: $11.82  4 chicken breast halves

Bakers Delight: $14.50  1loaf bread, 4 turkish rolls, 6 cheese & bacon rolls

Corner Shop: $14.52 12 xsparkling water , pkt ham, slices roast beef, pkt lollies

Markets: $17  1 kg honey 1 jar orange whiskey marmalade

Coles: $86.15   savings $42.44 + $10 off – total shop value $138.59

 Our cat wanted to be in the picture…



1 red cabbage $2.50
1 green cabbage $2.90
7 bananas $3.36
650g red capsicum $5.75
4 pink lady apples $2.38
700g red grapes $2.75
300g green capsicum $2.08
125g raspberries $4
1 bunch coriander $3
500g pasta $3.15
4x 48 pk carefree pads $9
2x 42 pk carefree pads $5.10
2x 100 Liptons teabags $5
1 kg bread flour $3.40
2 decor containers $4
10 pk AA batteries $8.48
5 x 400g cat food $7
6 pk cat food Dine $4.80
2 x 432g pineapple $4
600g yoghurt  $4.50
1 BBQ chicken $9

Total Spend this week: $138.53

Good buys this week were the half price specials:  carefree pads, teabags, batteries & decor containers.

Only one trip to the corner shop this week and that was DH.

We ate two pkts of frozen vegetables & a pkt of potato wedges from the freezer and some frozen beef which I stewed in the crockpot. Tinned baked beans & tomatos eaten from the stockpile.

I’m managing to eat more veggies and fruits and am cutting back the chips and chocolate…   Heres a few of my meals from during the past week:

I took a tin of baked beans, the last half rasher of bacon and the perino tomatos that were going soft and half an onion in the pan with a bit of olive oil.

The next day I baked a sweet potato and put the leftover beans over it with half an avocado over the last of the mixed bag of lettuce – tasted fantastic!

This is meat I did in the crockpot. I put if on before work and when I came home at lunchtime I emptied the bag of baby potatoes into it. Had it with broccoli and the frozen veggies done in the pan with some onion added and cheese on top.

I’ll weigh in the the 1st of March again. I do feel like I’ve lost a bit of weight so am curious to see what the scales say.

Markets & Snowballs!

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This morning we had a lovely trip to the local markets. They are held once a month and I’ve been saying I should go for years – well today I finally made it. Had a lovely time. It was a lovely sunny day, lots of farmers outside with produce and all the inside pavilions were filled with all sorts of goodies. 

I only took $20 to spend and bought 1kg of honey for $10 and a beautiful jar of orange whiskey marmalade for $7. It tasted divine!  The lady who had the jam stall wins all the prizes at the show and I will definitely be visiting her stall again next month.

Threw a couple of nice big snowballs at my mortgage this week after making the regular payment & all the bills being paid.  The new balance is  $161,794!


Its exciting to see the number dropping!  Every time I see something I want to buy I just tell myself it can wait till after the mortgage is paid off. I just want it gone.  I’m looking forward to seeing the interest payment start to drop down – might track it in the sidebar.

Had a wonderful walk this morning 6.5kms (4 miles) before the sun came up. We walk for an hour and a half on weekends now and an hour 3 days during the week. I feel so much better for it. Its good to get outside in the fresh air and we’re lucky to have so many lovely green spaces to walk in.

Overall its been a very good week.