Thoughts about October,s Goals / Australias Layby Facility

Australia has a wonderful system in place for allowing shoppers the opportunity to buy goods with an extended payment plan, it,s called layby. It works by allowing shoppers to buy an article for say $60 and make weekly or fortnightly payments over 6 weeks or until such times as you make your final payment and then you can pick up your purchase. So no interest, although sometimes you may be charged an extra $1 or $2 for account keeping and storage as shops need to have an area to put these buys until you collect them. In July many of the larger stores such as Target and Kmart have huge toy sales with no deposit layby and they will keep the toys for you until Christmas Eve, which is a great idea if you have kids who hunt for presents.
This was all new to me when I arrived in australia from Scotland as we never had anything quite like this form of shopping, and I used and abused the system time and time again. Now that I am older and wiser I no longer make rash purchases, but now and again if there is something I really need and don,t have the available cash then I would still use this option.
Perhaps I,m preaching to the converted and you already do this in your corner of the globe, but as more and more stores have there own credit cards I can see this time worn tradition getting phased out in favour of a high interest line of credit.

I have no cash money to show YET for the first month of my spend less year, but I,m delighted to say that everything is paid up to date and all purchases for the Wedding have been paid in cash. This Wedding has absolutely on debt attached to it, and we could,nt be happier.

My Son and his Wife have just bought a new house, they have gone from a small 3 bedroomed starter home to 4 bedroomed 2 bathroomed home complete with swimming pool. They are not overstretching their budget as these two are very careful with money and are great budgeters. I am so proud of them both and so pleased that they are not following in our footsteps. Now all I have to do is persuade them to have Christmas dinner at their new place so I can have a swim.

Payday tomorrow and I have to make the last payment on my electricity Bill and also pay for the portable toilets we have had to hire for the Wedding, as we do not want to have a succession of people using our house. That might sound a little mean, but we don,t want anybody having to go inside the house, I don,t mind cleaning up the yard the next day but I don,t want to have to clean the house as well. Plus my elderly parents and MIL might want to go to bed earlier than the rest of us and I want the inside of the house to be a lot quieter than the outside.
I have had a few more overtime hours this week, so more snowflakes to come.

FOOTNOTE

As you can imagine my footnote today is about my Son. He was a rebellious young man who was travelling down the wrong road. But by the time he was in his early twenties he had turned his thinking and his life around. So no Mum could be prouder than I am when he visits with his Wife of 5 years and his beautiful Daughter. He is now a Landscape Designer for a large Australian Company and is almost finished his degree at Uni. Which he studies for part time.
So I raise my glass and toast TO MY HANDSOME TALENTED SON XXX