Monthly Archives: April 2018

Extra work and extra expense…

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Its been another really busy week here, work is full on with dramas at the moment and I can’t wait till next week when it will quieten down a bit and I can catch up on paperwork.

I’ve had to spend some money on my second job – bought a few books that I’ll need $142,  my printer died yesterday so a new printer $212 and I have other expenses of approx $150/month. I’m enjoying it though and it’s all part of me getting experience so that I can have the option of a bit of part time work after I retire if I want.

The other company that I was going to do some work online for emailed me again yesterday about doing some work so I’m looking at that again as well, perhaps a few hours on the weekends.

Its going to be a bit of a balancing act of not doing so much that I get too tired and unwell but if I can do this extra work for a year or so we would reach our goal so much faster. 

I also made a $1000 payment off our holiday this week. I want to get it all paid for before we go so will make payments more often now.

I’m looking forward to the weekend!

Food & weight loss success.

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The last few weeks I’ve been flat out at work and working two days a week after my day job doing the extra work I took on. So not as much time for blogging unfortunately.

I’ve been doing really well with eating lots more veggies and fruit and less processed food.  I made a lovely soup yesterday using up all the veggies that had seen better days and added a couple of tins of beans, some turmeric, cumin, herbs, rocket and celery leaves. It cooked away all day in the crockpot and tasted really good. I froze it in single serves.

I always chop the leaves off the celery and freeze them, then I use them up in soups.  I also do that with any herbs that might be starting to wilt. I never use salt in cooking (history of kidney problems) and I find celery is a good replacement.
I’ve been eating lots of salads for lunch with pumpkin or sweet potato, no cheese, dairy or oil, so eating two avocados a week as well as a handful of nuts & seeds each day.

I cooked up a big pan of zucchinis, tomato and onion- just cooked them in a little stock, no oil and then put them in a tray in the oven for a while. So I just add some pumpkin or sweet potato or other veggies for an evening meal

I made a big batch of chickpea and veggie curry and froze it in single serving sizes so I can grab a meal easily when I get home from work.
My basic meal plan this month is no meat, dairy, oil or sugar. I have had a few things ‘off-plan’ but I’m 95% on plan.  I feel much better, achey joints have stopped, concentration is better and I could not resist jumping on the scales this morning – I have lost 3.6kgs / 8 lbs since the start of the month!!
So I’ll keep on eating this way and I’m back to walking now daylight savings is over. I get my blood tests done at the end of the month and hopefully I’ve got  the insulin resistance down. 

12 months debt reduction progress

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This morning I posted my progress report to my thread at the Simple Savings forum. It’s a year since I started tracking this financial goal to retire at the end of 2022, and when I added up my progress over the last year I was pleasantly surprised!

12 month debt reduction progress:

  • credit card debt reduced by $7,010
  • mortgage redraw reduced by $70,343
  • mortgage reduced by $17,661
  • Total debt reduction: $94,014

About half of that was money that my father left me unexpectedly. That means that we have been able to pay one whole wage towards debt over the last year!

My calculations tell me that we could retire reasonably comfortably on about $40-$45,000 a year, That would still allow us to travel and live life pretty much as we do now. Seeing that we have lived on about that amount of money without feeling deprived is really encouraging.

Well its back to work now after four days off over Easter.  Went for an hours walk earlier which was great and I’m feeling very motivated after seeing these numbers.  Just gotta keep plodding along towards that goal!