Monthly Archives: January 2019

Another Mortgage Milestone!

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This morning I’ve finally reached another payoff milestone with the mortgage!

The balance is now $132,384 which takes us just below the end of Year 15 balance.

Next goal is to get into the $120’s.

I am waiting for backpay from my second job to come through which will all go off the mortgage so I hope that arrives in my bank account soon.

In the meantime I’m back at work and doing my best to stay positive, but its not easy. This week I had a significant part of my work taken away, without notice or discussion, another bit of my job description has been carved off and given to someone else – its frustrating!  But it is making me wonder if its part of a long term plan to reduce or get rid of my position. My goal is just to do my best to stick it out and see if I get redundancy next year, but honestly, its not easy turning up in this environment. I also think they are hoping people just leave so they don’t have to pay them out.

So, I’m very focused on reducing our budget right now and also on switching off from work when I get home. I’m thinking of setting myself a grocery challenge soon just to push myself a bit out of my comfort zone and I’m busy watching lots of movies on Austar before it ends as we have cancelled it.

Once I get my more detailed budget finished I might post some more specifics here on the weekend so I can track my progress better.

Heatwave!

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We are in the middle of a heatwave downunder at the moment. I hate to think what our electricity bill is going to be! Yesterdays temperature was predicted to be 41C (106F) but it ‘only’ went up to 39C. However today and tomorrow its expected to be 42C (107) here.

Our poor air conditioner is really getting a workout. We usually don’t put it on until the temperature reaches 27C inside (80F). Well I slept on the lounge last night as its just too hot in the bedroom and when I woke up at 3.30am the temperature inside was already at 28 and outside its 25C and rapidly rising. I’ve got the windows open and there’s a slight breeze which is helping.

Fortunately for me my workplace has good air conditioning so its comfortable to work in during the day. And we don’t even live in the hottest areas on the map, we are just off the purple colour on the map in the link above where temperatures are getting up to 49.5C (121F). We are going to look into getting ceiling fans in the rooms before next winter and we’ve started looking at solar power suppliers. Energy costs in Australia are amongst the most expensive in the world and heating and cooling are one of our biggest expenses so at least solar would reduce those costs over the long term.

The other thing we need to be aware of in the summer heat is snakes. My workplace has brown snakes in several areas and each summer we have a signpost of a cartoon snake the goes up to remind us to be careful. One of the areas snakes have been seen is the area just outside the entrance to my office block. A big brown was caught there last year, about 1.3meters. We also had a big brown snake in the next door neighbours garden last year. I am very careful when walking out to the car each day as our garden is a real mess, would be plenty of good hiding places there and we need to clean it up. But working in the garden at this time of year would be pretty silly so we’ll have to wait till the temperature goes down a bit. Snakes are very fast in the heat.

Oh well, its about 4.30 here now, inside temp is now down to 26C and the outside temp is 25.5C. I’m so tired from not sleeping and apologies for rambling lol!

On the finance side I’m waiting for a big payment from my second job which will go straight off the mortgage.

New Budgets & Mortgage payments

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Yesterday we received our first pay with DH’s reduced wages. So his income has dropped $200/week or $800 a month which is quite a lot. My income has gone down $250/week since I’ve reduced my second job hours. I have gone back to using YNAB and done up a new budget for the year, looking for where we can make some savings.

DD & I have banned ourselves from going to the shopping centre just one block away as we overspend there. Instead we have been doing the shopping online & collecting it each week and we’re spending less. I’m sure I can reduce our grocery spending further in coming months.

To reach our goal of paying $35,000 off the mortgage we will need to pay $673 per week plus approx. $100/week interest = $773/week. So my goal is $800 per week. I will pay all of my second job income off the mortgage which is $800-$1000 per month.

So today, after paying some bills and doing the grocery shopping I transferred an extra $350 off the mortgage, taking the balance to $133,521


I can’t wait till I see that number go under $100,000 some time in 2019!