Monthly Archives: March 2019

Retirement savings & hard to find good tradies!

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I check our retirement accounts each fortnight after the payments have gone through. I was happy to see that we have now reached our goal for 2019 which was $420,000!  … and its only 3 months into the year.  Of course the market fluctuates and its been up lately, but its a good feeling being able to cross off one of my goals so early.

The mortgage is now down to $124,287. next goal is end of Year 17 balance – $119,519.

No painting got done again this weekend – DH wants to do a bit more prep work and it will need undercoating in one area. I just want it done asap but I’ll have to be patient – he’s not the most enthusiastic handyman but he’ll get there eventually.

We’ve been having problems with our tap in the kitchen for a while and with a banging water pipe in the bathroom.  We had a plumber organised to come and fix on the weekend but he was a no show and no notification he wasn’t coming – its very frustrating.This is the second plumber we’ve arranged to fix it and the first one did the same thing. Why is it so hard to get a tradesperson to just turn up!  So we’ll have to try a third one now.

On a good note we had a second solar heating company come and measure up. They have a really good system that would see us change to gas hot water and any excess KW gets used to heat water first, then excess over that goes to the grid. It does a cost a bit more and we’re waiting on quotes. They also commented on how low our electricity use is which was nice as we do try and not waste it, without being misers. It will be interesting to see both quotes and the savings projections.

Well its 5.45am here and its raining steadily. The sound of it is lovely. We need the rain and the cooler change is great.  I have only about a month to work and then I’m having some more time off which I’m looking forward to. Time to do a few chores before work.

This & that…

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We’ve had a cool change in the weather since yesterday and its raining softly outside this morning. Its a nice change from the heat and we even had to put a blanket on the bed last night. We could use a bit of rain on the garden and I’ve moved my pot plants out from under the verandah so they get watered.

We did not get the lounge/dining room painted as planned. DH hurt his shoulder so we decided to leave it to next weekend.

We did get our visit from the solar power company. They are preparing  a quote for us. It was interesting when we discussed our electricity use as we only use the amount that a 1. 2 person household would use, (there’s 3 adults here) so we’re using less than half the average electricity use. We have another company coming to give us a quote later in the week. It will be interesting to see what savings calculations come back in the quotes.

I finally got paid for my second job for January and put that off the mortgage – new balance is now $125,293. 


Its back to work today for me – I feel so much better for taking some time off!

New Zealand

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So sad this morning about the terrorist attack in New Zealand.  People at prayer,  families at worship together, executed by a white nationalist filled with hate.

Over the last ten years in Australia, as in other countries we’ve seen the rise of ‘nationalism’ in our society. And just like in the US we now have people in our government who are racist and seek to divide us against our muslim community.

How fearful and shortsighted they are.

I think of my clients that are Muslim and from other countries and how sad and afraid they must be feeling right now. I only hope they know that many people do care, do welcome them and do not condone the increasing rhetoric we are hearing downunder.

We have to do better than this.