Weekly Spending Report / Working on Next Years Budget

The top picture is a typical Australian holiday picture, and the one below is typically Scottish, I feel really torn at this time of the year between a cold and a hot Christmas. Both have distinct advantages, and disadvantages. And for this week I will be celebrating the differences in photographs.

I have finally managed to get my budget down on paper, the savings and debt repayments are going to be a little lower than I would have liked, but my money in jars and wallet is higher, hopefully making me feel as if I am making great strides while budgeting. I also updated my sidebars, and very little progress has been made to pay off my debts, as I am only paying a minimum amount. So I have upped the anti on those repayments. and will post my new updated budget on 1st January 2011


Weekly spends From 12th to 18th December

CAR EXPENSES
2010-12-12	Petrol	$10.00
2010-12-15	Petrol	$10.00
2010-12-18	Toll Charges	$24.24
TOTAL FOR CAR EXPENSES		$44.24
CHRISTMAS 2010
2010-12-12	Gifts	$20.70
2010-12-18	Gifts	$233.00
TOTAL FOR CHRISTMAS 2010		$253.70
DEBT
2010-12-18	Transpacific	$50.00
TOTAL FOR DEBT		$50.00
ENTERTAINMENT
2010-12-12	Coffees and Cakes	$11.00
2010-12-18	Coffees and Cakes	$3.50
TOTAL FOR ENTERTAINMENT		$14.50
GIFTS
2010-12-17	Wine	$28.00
TOTAL FOR GIFTS		$28.00
GROCERIES
2010-12-12	Coles	$6.10
2010-12-18	Woolworths	$30.00
TOTAL FOR GROCERIES		$36.10
HAIR AND BEAUTY
2010-12-18	Nails filled	$30.00
TOTAL FOR HAIR AND BEAUTY		$30.00
HOUSEHOLD
2010-12-12	Crazy Clarkes	$11.98
2010-12-18	Phone/Internet/Cable	$132.02
TOTAL FOR HOUSEHOLD		$144.00
MISC.
2010-12-18	Photo Developing	$23.58
TOTAL FOR MISC.		$23.58
SPENDLESS YEAR
2010-12-13	Spend Less Day	$0.00
2010-12-14	Spend Less Day	$0.00
2010-12-16	Spend Less Day	$0.00
TOTAL FOR SPENDLESS YEAR		$0.00
SUNCORP
2010-12-18	Lost Card Charges	$12.00
TOTAL FOR SUNCORP		$12.00
TOTAL		$636.12

ONLY 6 SLEEPS TO GO

My Guilty Conscience at my Uber Expensive Saturday

I have just had the most expensive day, for months, as I have had very limited funds and my spending has been kept to a minimal. So this is the big push to pay everything off to give me a clean slate for January 2011. I will post a proper breakdown at the end of the week but till then here is a bit of a breakdown.

• $50.00 towards my debt this is paid fortnightly.
• $132.02 part 1 of a 2 part payment for Phone/Internet/Cable
• $23.58 Needed a few prints to send to parents from The Wedding
• $12.00 Bank fee to replace lost ATM card
• $24.24 This was a fine as I went through a toll point without a current toll token on my car.
• $233.00 Christmas 2010 gifts, cards, stamps, wrapping paper, gift tags.
• $30.00 Spent getting my french nails filled my only personal expense and so worth it.
• $30.00 Groceries but I,m not through yet, more to come tomorrow.
• $3.50 a Latte to take into the nail shop, while I waited in a loooong queue.

$538.34 My biggest blowout in ages, and it was all budgeted for and accounted for. I went with a list and an amount for each category and I stuck to it. So feeling pretty chuffed. So why the guilty conscience ???

My Daughter and her family came over today and we exchanged gifts and had an early Christmas Meal, it will be 2011 before we catch up again, and I,m going to miss having them with us for Christmas.
I have mentioned on many occasions that it would be Grandchildren only for gifts this year, however one of the lads I work with his Wife, has just given up her online shop, and she was selling off her stock at $10 per item, so I bought a handbag for MIL a handbag for DIL a broad brown leather belt for DD and 2 bags for little old me. $50 is all this little treasure trove cost me, and I have costed it into today,s Christmas Gift money. I gave my SonIL a nice bottle of red I had been keeping for just such an occasion, and I have between now and Christmas Eve to think of something for my Son. I am so pleased that I was able to manage to give them all a gift. And it was all because of a lucky break and some overtime.

ONLY 7 SLEEPS TO GO

Lightening Strikes Stopped Blogging

I was going to write a long chatty post last night but instead I had to turn off the PC, In fact I turned off all the power switches and had an early night, as we experienced the most horrendous thunder and Lightning storms, one of the worst we have had and we also had Hailstones. Yes this is Australia and yes we are in summer, but what the !!!!!!!
I have stopped worrying about the change in weather patterns as it is no longer a worry ( the wedding is over ) still this is not what we are used to and it seems there is more rain on the way. By the way the lightning photo is of my City, and I think she looks beautiful no matter the weather.
I am having a few financial problems since I lost my ATM card, I am now left with a Visa Debit card linked to my account which I can use, but not to make any cash withdrawals, because I can,t remember my pin number. So I had to go to the bank in my lunch break today in order to have enough cash for all my cash payments. I stopped short at telling the counter Assistant about my jars and seperate accounts, I have the feeling she just wouldent get it LOL

Tomorrow is going to be a big spend day for me as I have to finish all my christmas shopping, and do a big Grocery shop for my family as we are having an early Christmas Dinner at my house before they head off on holiday.

Today was almost a no spend day but I had to buy bottles of wine as gifts for a couple of workmates who were good enough to lend me their expertise when I needed some things for my Daughters Wedding. So spends today were $28.00

Working and Babysitting

After working a 10 hour shift today, I came acros to my Daughters house for Dinner and to start my next job. That of Babysitter to the 8 and 4 year olds, these two are now at the stage where they don,t need me to keep them entertained, so while they sit at one end of the table drawing, I am at the other writing my blog.

Not that I have a great deal to blog about, as I am still struggling with my budget for next year. I have made it so tight, that if I sneeze I won,t be able to afford a box of tissues. And that is definitely not going to work. I don,t want to make things so tight that I fall at the first hurdle, and yet as a low paid worker who wants to see savings and debt repayment as priorities in 2011 there are some things I,m going to have to do without. So it,s back to the drawing board, maybe I,ll put my priorities into a hat and see which I pull out first !!!!

A no spend day today and another two hours of overtime worked. My Boss told me that overtime was available all week if we wanted it, don,t know if I,ll work back every day but it,s nice to have the option.

Working Hard But Benefiting Financially

I worked back tonight, after making sure Hubby would be home with MIL, I took the opportunity to earn a little extra cash, so this weeks total of extra hours worked is 6 and at time and a half that,s 9 extra hours pay. If I get the chance I,ll do another couple tomorrow and that will give me the total of an extra $201.36 before Tax, this will be paid to me on Friday and it will mean that all presents will be bought and all bills will be cleared. We are really busy at the moment and it may be necessary to work even more hours in the lead up to Christmas, by the time the holidays get here I will certainly need the break.






This is the online website I use to earn a little extra dollars by reading emails, doing surveys as well as going through them to shop. I used most of my points up a couple of months ago to buy a Gold Membership, I figured it was their money anyway so why not. Since becoming a gold member my points are accumulating even quicker and this morning I received a $30 cheque from points Ive accrued lately. So I,m proudly heading for the bank tomorrow to deposit a free $30.

I had a no spend day today plus I earned so today was a real bonus.

There are Umbrellas and then there are Umbrellas

It is still raining would you believe it !!!! I have had the most rotten day today. I decided not to give into my Hubby,s bad behaviour and he has,nt spoken to me since. I had to phone him from the Pharmacy to let him know that his prescription was,nt available to him as it had finished. And he did,nt answer the phone, so I took the initiative to get the script with the instructions that he had to go to his doctors some time during the week and I blasted him for being too lazy to answer the phone. He retaliated and before we knew it war had broken out. I could probably have handled it better, but so could he, so it,s stalemate.


Today I started on next years budget and it,s tight, I,m not ready to post it yet as it probably needs a bit of tweaking, but I would love to stick with this one as I will make an amazing amount of financial progress if I could just stick to it. The only thing is that in order to slice up my wages the way I would like to I would have to have 4 bank accounts, some jars and a wallet.

1. Bank Account 1) To put my wages into and pay off weekly amounts as well as leaving standing orders in.
2. Bank Account 2) Emergency Fund
3. Bank Account 3) Holiday Savings
4. Bank Account 4) Life Savings.
5. Jar 1) Food Money
6. Jar 2) Petrol Money
7. Wallet ) For anything that,s left.
   

Maybe one or two of these could go under the same Umbrella what do you think ????

Spent $50 today, $10 on petrol, $20 on clothes for Grandson,s Christmas present, $6 for 2 coffees and $14 for my prescription at the Pharmacy,s, this was all budgeted for even the coffee,s

End of my Financial Week / Garage Sale Finds

Today is the last day of my Financial week and at 3.30pm on Saturday afternoon I now know that I won,t be spending any more money. The Christmas Party that we had arranged with the girls I work beside has been rained off, not just rained off but poured off. It is now a matter of some urgency to get the Ark finished.

Total spend for 05 Dec 2010 - 11 Dec 2010: $510.00

CHRISTMAS 2010
2010-12-10	Gifts	$132.00
TOTAL FOR CHRISTMAS 2010		$132.00
CLOTHES
2010-12-10	Millars Clothing	$13.00
TOTAL FOR CLOTHES		$13.00
COFFEE WITH ROSE
2010-12-10	Coffees	$12.00
TOTAL FOR COFFEE WITH ROSE		$12.00
DEBT
2010-12-10	Lion Finance	$25.00
TOTAL FOR DEBT		$25.00
ENTERTAINMENT
2010-12-07	Christmas Night Out	$40.00
TOTAL FOR ENTERTAINMENT		$40.00
FOOD TREATS
2010-12-10	Christmas Lunch Out	$56.00
TOTAL FOR FOOD TREATS		$56.00
GARAGE SALE
2010-12-11	Bird Feeder Jugs and Lights	$8.00
TOTAL FOR GARAGE SALE		$8.00
GROCERIES
2010-12-10	Aldi	$162.00
2010-12-11	Morning Rolls	$6.00
TOTAL FOR GROCERIES		$168.00
MOBILE PHONE
2010-12-10	3 mobile	$56.00
TOTAL FOR MOBILE PHONE		$56.00
SPENDLESS YEAR
2010-12-05	Spend Less Day	$0.00
2010-12-06	Spend Less Day	$0.00
2010-12-08	Spend Less Day	$0.00
2010-12-09	Spend Less Day	$0.00
TOTAL FOR SPENDLESS YEAR		$0.00
TOTAL		$510.00

As you can see I have had 4 no spend days this week, so I,m happy about that. What I am not so happy about is that I bought a new piece of clothing, a really light cotton top, which I really wanted and needed in a nice shade of denim blue, still it was marked down very heavily from $39.99 to $13.00.

You might notice that I bought at a Garage Sale, that happened this morning my Kids and Grandkids had come over to have a family breakfast with us and had noticed a Garage Sale just around the corner from our house. So off we all trotted and we were so glad we did, the Bird Feeder I bought was $1 I looked it up online and it retailed for $50 and it was still boxed. I bought heavy duty lights for outside in our patio area for $4 and because he had a set without a plug on he threw them in as well, and last but not least 2 gorgeous little glass milk jugs for $1 each. They will be perfect on my Dinner table. I have added a photo of the exact Bird Feeder, now all I need are the Sunflower Seeds to attract our native birds. I can see me getting a lot of enjoyment out of it.