I Feel Like a Real Housewife Today

Bringing out the housewife in me

Tomorrow I am taking the bull by the horns and making my own washing powder, I have done all my homework, as today I went to the Supermarket just to make sure everything I needed was in stock. so now I know quantities and prices. Wish me luck, I have never ever done anything like this, can't wait to work out the cost per load. Although I think I will have to wait until it's all used up before I can get an exact figure.

I have been missing in action for a few days now, no reason in particular. I was doing very little on the PC very little on the expenses side of life and I decided to give my home a good clean, so now I am the proud owner of the tidiest linen cupboard in the world. The neatest kitchen cupboards and the shiniest most organised fridge in the Universe.

Pay day today for The Foxx, in one hand and out the other, such is life !!!

Ladies Of The Pink Purse

All about the Pink Purse

The pink purse is where we keep the Grocery money, it is kept in the Pantry and gets topped up every Saturday morning. When my sister was living with us we all put our money in and if any of us were picking up Groceries we took the pink purse, obviously nobody was in control of the spending but as long as we had money still in the purse on a Saturday morning when it was time to refill, we knew we had kept within our grocery limits.

Now that my Sister is no longer staying with us and my MIL is unwell the pink purse is all mine, I can hunt for bargains and budget on food to my hearts content, I am empowered as I am THE KEEPER of " The Pink Purse " better not let this go to my head.......

Many moons ago in an earlier post I wrote a letter to The Foxx
http://towardsretirementwithdebt.blogspot.com.au/2011_02_01_archive.html

I had a feeling he was reading my blog and I put this out to him in the hope that he might see how desperate I was to change our financial ways. Yesterday I let him read the post, I felt comfortable enough with our situation to let him in to one of my best kept secrets, this blog.

He offered me nothing but support after he read it and assured me that from now on things will be different, I think he was quite surprised at the whole idea of me having a blog and seemed surprised at the community in general, he laughingly suggested that this is where I get my crackpot ideas from, so bloggers keep those crackpot ideas coming my way...

The Last Pity Party Post

I am now a Housewife and Caregiver

I'll bet you had thought that I had exhausted the disasters which I have been recanting in my last 4 blog posts. but no the final, nail in the coffin of our finances was brought about by my MIL ending up in hospital with heart failure while I was away from The Foxx. I have a really guilty conscience about what happened to her as I am almost positive that the strain brought on by my leaving  contributed to her condition. So now I am unable to work as I am needed at home with her pretty much constantly at the moment. I made all the normal enquiries about a Carers Pension but as it's based on the amount of money coming into the home, The foxx's salary is too high for us to make a claim.

So now I am her caregiver without being able to make a claim for financial help, part of me is panicking and part of me feels empowered. For the first time since I can remember I am solely in charge of making sure we can afford to live like this.

So budgeting, menu planning and spending are all dictated by me. I am totally committed to getting us out of debt and living a stress free lifestyle.

I will be counting my no spend days again, taking special note of cheap petrol days, produce market shopping for fruit and veg, remembering to turn off electric lights and even making my own laundry detergent. i feel excited and I know with your help I can do this...

PS Jane can you remember the name of the website we used to use to track our spending ????

The End or is It ????

When I turned the key on The Restaurant door on Christmas Eve I think I knew that I would never trade again, nor did I want too, I had not had a decent nights sleep in weeks the first and last thing I did every day was count money, I had thumping migraines and there was no money in the bank to buy stock to open up again after the staff' came back from holiday.

When my Sister was with me we used an existing bank account of hers and with it came a credit card, this was purely an emergency backup, but let me say that we had a lot of Emergencies, of course when we broke up the partnership we closed those accounts down and opened new ones. so the CC went and the bank would not allow me any line of credit at all as we were a brand new business and nobody was willing to take a chance on it succeeding and them getting paid. Let me tell you that there is no way you can run any business without huge savings or a line of credit and I had neither.

I needed to talk to The Foxx but our conversation lead to the biggest row we had ever had, all of both of our pent up frustrations came flooding out, this was on New Years Eve and by the 3rd of January I had left him, in fact you could say I ran from everything that had gone wrong over the last 7 months. I sent the Restaurant keys back to the landlord and told him to do his worst, but he would not get blood out of a stone as I was jobless, homeless, carless, husbandless and was considering declaring myself bankrupt. 

I must have a Guardian Angel, as my Landlord has wiped my debt and cancelled the 27 months I still had on my lease, of course for that he gets all my fixtures and fittings to do with as he pleases, but I don't care I just want to wash my hands of the whole sorry mess.

The Foxx was not prepared to let me go so easily, although I made things really hard for him and as I was out of the state he could only reach me by email or phone and for the longest time I did not want to speak to him.

And then I got sick ! all of my stress etc. meant I was suffering with a severe bout of Shingles and in unmanageable pain, even the strongest painkillers were having no effect.

So who turned up to Nurse me, my Sister I was housesitting for a friend and because there was nobody there to help me she flew across Australia to look after me, some things are just meant to happen and during the time we were alone we rebuilt our relationship.

I am now back home and The Foxx and I are determined to get our marriage and our finances back on track, we do love each other, but I have warned him we play as a team or not at all. So far so good I'm not sure how he will take the saving and budgeting plans I have been making I imagine that it will be met with some resistance at first as this is a totally new concept to him. But I plan to let him see what a success we can make of this together.

But before we start to save we have got to get rid of the build up of bills we accrued between the house and the Restaurant, but we will do this as a team, wish us luck....

Goals For March

Taking my lead from Carla I am posting this months goals

Financial Goals

• Catch up time this month, as we are so far behind with everything it's not funny.
• I really need to start a holiday fund big trip coming up in August.
• Keeping an eye on housekeeping costs by menu planning.

De- Cluttering

• Not so much decluttering, more extra money making, things for e-Bay.
• Take photos again for e-Bay.
• Catching up with housework.

Personal Goals

• Keep The Foxx on track and motivated.
• Keep up with everyones blog posts.
• Read one self help book monthly. ( any ideas ? )

My Sister and I

 While I really do think that our wages bill crippled our little Restaurant, I have only love for my sister, so let me put it out there. " I love you " and I know that you did not make your decision lightly.

I have spoken too my sister at great length over the last few weeks and she is aware of how I feel and because of our close bond we are still great friends. however some members of my family are putting the blame squarely on her shoulders and are less willing to forgive, however I am working on them....

After the Restaurant was put completely in my charge we experienced a couple of the worst trading months so far, it's because Christmas is just round the corner don't worry about it you will soon be so busy you won't have time to count your money ha ha I believed it all, more fool me. Remember I am completely new to the Restaurant trade.

So I put out an advert in our local newspaper stating longer opening hours during the run up to Christmas and sat back and waited for the bookings to roll in. It was not long before Saturday nights right up until Christmas Eve were booked out, Friday nights were slower but reasonably busy but mid-week nothing changed.

Except of course my Grocery list it got longer and longer and our new trading hours meant more hours for the staff, it was getting really hot here in Queensland and so the air con was on all day and night. and the bar was constantly getting stocked up.

Did I see myself making more money yes of course but it seemed as if there was constantly more going out, but I was still reasonably optomistic, about meeting all of my bills by the time we closed on Christmas Eve.

My chef was going off for a 2 week holiday as were most of my staff and so I had no option but to make arrangements to close the Restaurant over the holiday season, I felt they had me over a barrel with this decision I would have far rather worked on as it was too early in the day to be able to have no money coming in and to be able to meet my obligations, but you can't open a Restaurant without a Chef so I had no choice...

Of course I never made the money I had hoped to make and so when we closed on Christmas Eve I was struggling to pay holiday wages let alone rent and bills................

My financial matters

The Foxx and I sat down last night and paid our bills together then he jumped in the car and went to the bank to withdraw the grocery money for the week. this is the first time ever, in my married life we had kept everything seperately it was always me and you and now it's us.

I have added new debt to our finances as I did not walk away from The Restaurant completely debt free so around $5,000 is now owed outside of  our household expenses so once we get rid of our back bills we will start on the debt.

I have taken my side bars off as they had been paid off and I will think about adding new ones for my current debt.

Off now to take MIL to the shops for groceries........... till next time

The Singing Chef

When my Sister and I decided to buy and run our Restaurant I said right from day 1 that I had no interest in the Kitchen side of the business, so I became front of house and Sis wanted the Chef's position. Firstly let me say that she is an excellent COOK and not a trained Chef. Round the corner from where she lived was a very busy Italian Restaurant where the Chef's joked, sang and interacted with customers and this was where my sister thought we should be heading. Unfortunately our kitchen was a lot smaller and more enclosed in fact you couldent even see customers from where food was prepared. So dream no. 1 was dashed for her.

Running a kitchen must be one of the hardest jobs out I personally could not take the pressure and after only one week of working with our experienced chef my Sister came to me in tears " I can't do this I hate it she said " what is the alternative ? I asked, and that was to employ our supposedly temporary chef on a full time basis. We could not afford to do this but had no option, so from week one our wage bill became our biggest outlay.

Around this time my sister became really unwell and was diagnosed with whooping cough and this coincided with a visit from her Husband ( remember the one she had left 3 months earlier ) from the moment he arrived she leaned on him for everything and it soon became obvious that they were going to get back together. And 3 weeks later she let me know those were her plans, but don't worry she said I will come over every 6 weeks and help out in The Restaurant and help also with the paperwork.

Two visits later she told me she was pulling out completely, she actually bought her way out of a business which she had just bought herself into, we split all the bills some late rent, tax, and our Chef's superannuation and now the business was mine and mine alone.

Was I scared ?? you bet.

All Things Financial

I am going back to where I was before " The Restaurant " planning meals going on no spending months filling up my jars. My sidebars are all wrong and as soon as I get my head around all bloggers changes I will update them.

The Foxx and I are working as a team just now and I will tell you how that came about later in my story,

A big shout out to  my blogger friends, you are all truly inspirational and your progresses financially are encouraging, as well as your blogging skills I have been very impressed by how professional you have all become. I now know where to go for help when I need it LOL

I'm Back And In A Bad Place

It has been nine months since I last posted, at that time I was full of plans and dreams about how successful I was going to be in my new venture.

All of my savings and superannuation money went into making sure that our Restaurant was going to be a wonderfully friendly place to eat, so we sourced the best ingredients, re-employed most of the old staff and opened on the 6th of July 2011.

My Sister was going to learn all she could from our new Chef and so we employed her on a part time basis only, this Woman knew her way round Italian food and her menus and meals were mouthwatering. she did not come cheap, but as we were going to give her few hours we thought we could afford her.

Who would have thought that after a week my sister would have decided that she did not want to work in a hot sweaty kitchen and followed that up 3 weeks later by going back to her husband. Leaving me to run the Restaurant single handed.

It was all downhill from there, our wage bill grew and grew at a quicker rate than our customers and it soon became appparent to me that this venture that I had sunk everything into was doomed to failure.

And so we closed down on Christmas Eve, I am heartbroken jobless and in more debt now than I have ever been.

Obviously there is a lot more to this story and I will fill in some blanks as I blog.

I have had a quick look through some of my favourite blogs and it's great to see the success you are all still making of your financial journeys, unfortunately I can not respond to all your posts as they have changed some of the comment formats and I havent managed to get my head round them yet, still I am out there lurking.