My Daughters Hens Party is today, I can,t believe it,s only 2 weeks until the big day. The bucks night is also happening tonight and I,m imagining that there will be a few sore heads tomorrow. I enjoyed the days activities but the night time ones are not for me I,ll leave them to the younger generation. And I,ll do the babysitting.

Tomorrow we are going to a friends place for food and drinks, they are Sri Lankan and cook the best curries and spicy dishes I,ve ever tasted, so no dieting for me.

I have had a big month financially with all of the final payments towards the Wedding being due, as well as 5 birthdays ( my Mum,s is today )all of the bills were paid this month as well, and I,ve been stocking up my pantry, so nothing saved and all of my snowflakes going towards making her big day even more special. As a surprise we have organised a Piper to play her out of the church, just to remind her of her Heritage.

Somehow my lack of savings is not bothering me at all, I am just so happy to be able to manage to do all I can, to make this a special day for everybody.

FOOTNOTE

At last the rain has stopped and left behind it a legacy of flowering shrubs and beautiful green grass, I can,t imagine why I complained about it, I should have known that Mother nature would,nt let us down.

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

Spending update / Tardis moment.

Since Saturday I have spent
$100 on Groceries
$20 on petrol
$13 for my prescription
$50 towards debt 1
$50 Ebay for Wedding stuff
My Groceries actually cost me a little less than $100, but I have put the rest aside as I had sent Hubby and MIL to do my shopping as I was working, and they forgot to take the list and as a result I will be running out of a lot of essential items before Saturday, which is my next big shop day.

I managed to finish all of my projects for The Wedding my final one was the candelabras for each table, I mentioned earlier that I had bought them from Ebay. So I resprayed them an Antique White, glued Ivy, Gold sprays and ribbon to them and now they exactly match the Ivy Garland I had made for across the front of the Bridal table. I,m sure that there will be some last minute tweak my Daughter will want to make but on the whole I am organised.
This weekend I will have to buy Serviettes to wrap the Wedding Cake in before we put it into the cake boxes, around 100 tealight candles as we have that number of votives to put around the Marquee and also plastic wine and soft drink glasses, which we will take up to the Wedding venue for our guests to drink out of before we come down to the Reception. The owners of the wedding gardens have stipulated no glass as we will be around a pool area.





FOOTNOTE

My car may look like a little old Toyota Corolla, but this morning she became a time machine, I had turned on the radio to get the news and weather forecast while driving into work, and a song came on which immediately transported me back to Christmas 1974 I was 6 months pregnant with my Daughter and we were at a dance in our local Town Hall. I usually associate songs with people and places and for 3 minutes while it played my Hubby had my head on his shoulder as we danced round the floor, great memories. I wonder where I,ll be tomorrow !!!!

Week 4 of my 5 Week Pay month/ My Snowflakes

I absolutely can,t believe we are almost at the end of the month once again. Today I was given my Secret Santa name as most of my workmates are doing their Christmas Shopping. I wanted to hand them back the scrap of paper and scream STOP I,m just not ready for that kind of expense yet. Although I am sure that the majority of my family will be feeling the same as they are all forking out for Air Flights and Wedding presents just now. So perhaps little remembrances will be acceptable this Xmas.

Sharon at Musings of a Midlife Mum spoke about her snowflakes and the meaning behind the term, the PF meaning of course, go in and have a read she explains it so well. You will find her blog in my side bar as I have not yet learned how to link it, sorry. Anyway I have got a veritable snowstorm coming my way this week in the shape of overtime, I worked 2 extra hours at time and a half and 10 extra hours at double time, so I,m looking at $387.55 before tax. I know I will be taxed pretty heavily on it but even if I only come out with an extra $200 I,ll be a very happy bunny, a snow bunny LOL

FOOTNOTE

Life can deal us some really scary blows and so today my prayers are with Jane and her Daughter, as this gorgeous young woman was in a car crash on Saturday which could have been much worse than it was. Jane is going to be home for the next couple of days nursing her Daughter, and dealing with what could have been. Chin up girls.xxx

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. :)