My 100th Blog Post

I can,t believe it 100 posts already, so I would like to take a few minutes to say thank you to my blog followers, and to some wonderful helpful people who have popped in and offered me all sorts of advice when I,ve been stuck for the right answer. The world of PF is a whole new concept for me and I,m getting so much out of reading other inspiring blogs and finding out from successful savers the techniques used to achieve security.

I bought the bed today and put $20 of fuel into my car, usually I would fill her up on a Friday but I could,nt miss out on the lowest petrol price I,ve seen for awhile. What difference is a day going to make anyway, as I had the cash in my fuel jar. The bed frame was $99 and I managed to pick it up myself. I was frightened to wait until the weekend in case they were sold out. So instead we,ll spend the weekend putting it together as it,s flatpacked. I now have new sheets for this bed bought a few weeks ago, new pillows, again bought some time ago and still packaged, I have a fairly new quilt cover set, which I,ll put on the bed and I also have new white bath towels to put into the room for my parents use while they are with me. So it,s only a mattress protector I have to buy and that should be their room organised. So all I have to do now is find out their dietary requirements and then I,m ready to receive guests.


FOOTNOTE

My enjoyable experience today was financial. I,ve been struggling with my money or lack of it for so many years that I,ve had no joy out of buying anything as I knew that really I could,nt afford it. So today I got a buzz out of handing cash which I had in my wallet, over for the bed.
Another highlight was my Grandson and Granddaughter,s kisses before they went home tonight, they had all popped in unexpectantly to make my Thursday night.

I Need to Spend Even More Money

If I was broken hearted about having to put petrol into my little car yesterday, then today I am devastated to discover that I,m going to have to buy a bed this weekend. I need to have a decent Queen sized bed for my spare bedroom, and at the moment I only have a single bed in there. I was offered the opportunity to borrow one as my elderly parents will be staying with me for a couple of weeks and as close as they are a single bed was just not going to do it for them LOL
But somehow the girl offering the bed and myself must have gotten our wires crossed over the dates, because she needs the bed during the time I wanted to borrow it. As you can imagine 24 days before The Wedding with everything on a tight budget the last thing I wanted to do was fork out for a bed. I have a decent Queen sized mattress so all I need is a frame and after much searching online and through catalogues I have found one for only $99. It will fit into the back of Hubbies Station Wagon so no delivery charges. Now to go back online and get some inexpensive bedding, will it never end ?????????? !!!!!!!!

FOOTNOTE


This is my time to sit back and reflect on some really positive moment in my busy day, a moment which is special to me and I,m honestly wracking my brains to think of one. A day in my life cant possibly have gone by without a memorable moment, but there it is !!!

I got My Apology !!!

I mentioned yesterday that I had a run in with my boss, well today I got my apology. I,m sure I only got it because I was threatening to take my complaint to the next level, still I accepted it. I did however mention to him that I would forgive but definitely not forget and if I found out that it had happened again I will be straight back into his office. After all the fuss had died down he asked me to stay behind today for a couple of hours of overtime if I wanted it, my instant reaction was to tell him where to stick it, but that would be cutting my own throat. So another few dollars earned.

I had to spend $10 today it nearly broke my heart but my little old car needed some fuel, so I only put in enough to get me to payday. So far this week I have spent $35, hopefully it will be Friday before I have to spend any more.




Footnote

With all the dramas at work my head has,nt been in a very good place, I work in a dirty, noisy, disorganised workplace with people most of whom are rude, lazy and opinionated. So today I took myself off on my own to have my morning tea, I picked a spot across the road from our printing firm, which was quite green and leafy. And as I sat down to enjoy the peace and quiet, I was joined by one of our native green tree frogs, these little creatures are gorgeous with their bright yellow feet and huge big eyes, so we sat together for about ten minutes studying each other before he hopped off. It was all I needed to make my day a lot brighter, so thanks little guy for bringing some peace into the turmoil.

Apologies for putting his photo at the top of the blog, it,s a slight technical hitch. :)

Issues at Work / Spray Painting

I had a fabulous weekend on Saturday which was my MIL,s Birthday all the family came over for drinks and food and we also managed to organise who is doing what, when and where for the Wedding So thanks to some great suggestions we now have the seating arrangements done and yesterday because the weather was pretty glorious I worked on my second to last craft project which was to spray paint the candleabras for the tables, and over the next few nights I will decorated them with ivy using my trusty hot glue gun. I bought these candleabras from a girl on Ebay who had used them for exactly what we wanted them for and she had already sprayed them so all I was doing was freshening them up. So ten Candleabras for $115 plus $10 for the spray paint and I already had the ivy, this is the same ivy I used to make the Garland for across the front of the Bridal table. Talk about finding ways to cut back on the expense !!!

I worked a couple of hours overtime last week, but I had also been asked to work a few hours on Saturday and as this was all at double time I quickly said yes, before I went home on Friday I was told that the overtime shift they were putting on had been cancelled, I was naturally disappointed as I had kind of worked out in my head how much I would be paid and what I was going to do with the money. But when I went into work this morning I discovered that there had been a shift working on Saturday and one of our casual workers had worked it in place of me, I am a permanent employee. I have never come across this happening in any other workplace I,ve been in where permanent employees are always given first refusal. So I had a huge blow up with our Production Manager this morning, who told me that he could pick whomever he wanted to do the overtime and as far as he was concerned he would pick the best person for the job, which believe me in this case he had definitely not, so he had added insult to injury by telling me this. Yes I did feel insulted and even although I have now calmed down I have decided to take this further. I did,nt do it today because I felt too angry but tomorrow I am going up to the office to see our Plant Manager, and lodge a formal complaint. I am not normaly confrontational, but I think I am being discriminated against because of my age, my recent hand injury, or the fact that the other girl working prefers the company of this casual. Whichever one it is it,s just not on.

Week 3 of my 5 Week Pay month

As I have mentioned before I have a less than stimulating job, and on Wednesday of this week while doing a fairly slow boring repetative job I started to write out ways of dividing up my wages.

Plan A)
Had me pay off a massive Electricity Bill, leaving me very little to play with.

Plan B)
Had me make part payments to the Electricity Bill, leaving me savings money, money for The Wedding and also extra Groceries to help fill up my pantry before my visitors arrive.

Plan C)
Had me split the electricity Bill into 2 payments, leaving me less to put to The Wedding and Groceries.
After working out how these payments would effect me right up until the week of The Wedding I decided to run with PLAN B) so this is a breakup of my wages.

Electricity $100
Food $ 100
Petrol $20
Debt $25
Charity $42
Wedding $100
Savings $150

I appreciate that these savings will be used to entertain visitors and any last minute payments to the Wedding fund as there is always something you forget. I won,t let the fact that I am spending this money spoil my Daughters big day for me. As I am determined to pay for everything using no debt, and start again at square one on the 21st of November.

Footnote

Today I sat round our 8 seater outdoor setting and every chair was filled with my loved ones, my Grandchildren decided to entertain us with break dancing and singing and I laughed and smiled until my jaws ached. These are the days that memories are made of. Nearly forgot Happy birthday MIL xxx

My Nightime Plans

Because this is a PF blog you might expect that I would spend quite a bit of time per week, budgeting, blogging about it and reading other PF bloggers good and bad stories. But last night I also spent most of the night lying awake and planning my next financial moves.
PLAN 1)
Now that I have turned sixty I qualify for a part UK aged pension, to be precise in January of next year. I left the UK in 1986 and as a result I don,t qualify for a full pension, I,m not actually sure but I,m imagining I would get around 40/50%. Because I am still working I will have to declare it on my taxes, so I was thinking that if I Salary Sacrifice the same amount of money as I would receive in a pension then I could put all of that amount straight into my Superannuation and not have to pay extra tax. I hope I have made that clear, it,s clear in my head but was,nt easy to put onto paper. This option will mean there will be quite a bit extra going into my retirement fund, and as I,m still working I won,t even notice the difference.

PLAN 2)
My Mother-in-Law is now needing a lot more care than she did when she first came to live with us, apart from the bad fall she had last year, there have been a lot of more subtle changes, which require us to have to be more aware of what her needs are on a daily basis. She also has to have weekly Pathology tests done as she is on Warfarin and frequent Doctors visits. My hubby and I take turns running her to these appointments and we are finding that our spare us time is getting less and less. So we are going to apply for a Carers Allowance to help us look after her better. This allowance is not taxed and I think it is around $140 a fortnight.
So these are a couple of ideas I had running around in my head while I was supposed to be sleeping. Plan 1 will help towards my retirement fund and Plan 2 will give me more money on a weekly basis. Now all I have to do is make some phone calls and start the ball rolling.

I have spent no money since Saturday, and I have a full freezer and Pantry.

Footnote
Today I watched the miners in Chile making there slow progress back into the world, and the arms of their loved ones. The hell those men must have gone through when they first realised that they were stuck underground. So today I became more aware of my freedom, freedom to walk in the Spring Sunshine, freedom to tell my loved ones how much I care, freedom to stop and smell the roses.

Birthday,s and Births

I mentioned last week that I was upset with not being able to join my BFF for her 60th Birthday. I need not have worried as she was joined on her special day today by a brand new Grandson.

Congratulations To All in Adelaide