No spend day

Today I can proudly say I have not parted with a single cent. Now that is a reason to celebrate and I am happy about it. Every day I manage to keep every penny of mine in my bank account makes me one stop closer to debt free.

This is one of the times when having an offset mortgage and a credit card which is paid in full every month works to the advantage of the mortgage holder. With the way my mortgage works I still pay a standard 25 year minimum payment but having money in savings means more of that payment goes towards principal than a standard loan.

Of course this only works if you are careful. With the way my package is structured I can redraw any extra payments I have made but not as simple as heading to the ATM or logging on to my banks website. This feature makes the BNZ Total Money package better than a normal revolving credit loan in my opinion. It means I can't splurge at the mall because I can use the redraw and I still have to budget for all my expenses. It's a great way to get ahead and it is working for me. Each month I am managing to pay an extra $85 in principal simply for doing nothing and showing some self restraint. All up in the almost 3 years I have had the loan I have managed to pay off about $3000 extra. And this is money I will never have to pay interest on ever again. In my opinion that's a great deal.

So if you want to save money and pay off your home loan faster just like I do then look into offset loans. They are not overly popular in NZ yet but if more people want to start using them more banks may offer them.

Holiday planning

Today I got out the holiday planning information and decided I am going to have to pick up the pace a little.

We are planning 2 weeks in Queensland in March of next year and so I have been putting aside $20 every week for this. I've also been collecting air dollars on my credit card purchases (CC paid off in full each month so no interest charges) and making sure I swipe my flybuys card to collect those points whenever possible as well. Also when we started saving for this holiday in March of last year after the last trip I was being very good and putting lots of bits and pieces extra into the savings fund. One thing I started especially well at was selling outgrown or unused stuff on Trade Me with all funds being set aside for the holidays.

I have however gotten very slack lately and it's been quite a while since I last topped up with anything extra. Every spare cent has been hitting the morty or paying back the money I borrowed from the lads to buy the dishwasher.

Some might say just postpone the holiday but for us that's not an option we want to do. Our last visit to the Gold Coast was one of the most amazing things we have done as a family and all 3 of us are really keen to do it again. So I guess it will be tighten our belts time. Lol we might have to lose weight though as there's not a lot of room to make things tighter. Actually tightening the belts is not at all an option as there is no way we could find the extra money we need.

So it's on to plan b then. Plan b is back to the beginning. Get some stuff sorted out and sold on Trade Me, save any unexpected windfalls and make sure I am making the most of the CC and flybuys for the points.

So far I can fly me to Brisbane with air dollars but I can't come home and I can't take the lads. I want to get enough points for at least my return flight. To do this I need to make sure I make as many purchases as possible on the CC.

With flybuys I can get all 3 of us in to Dream World and White Water World for free on a 2 day 2 world pass. I will ask my parents to get us Sea World passes for Christmas. Then I need more flybuys points so I can transfer them over to air dollars and hopefully pay for one of the boys return ticket. Again with this I just need to shop smart and remember to use my card.

The rental car is a goal I have given the boys when we got back from the 2009 holiday. I have given them a target of $500 to save for the rental car + they need to save their own spending money. It's up to them how much they save and so far they are at nearly $400. Not long to go and they will be onto their own spending money.

So other than accommodation and my spending money a lot of the big stuff is worked out. The main problem is the small stuff - the boys both need new passports, petrol money for the rental car, food money for groceries as we won't eat out all that much, a fund for misc. expenses that come up unaccounted for, and travel insurance should cover all the bits and pieces. I currently have enough money saved for about half the spending money and all the accommodation.

Here's the dollar values of what we need. This is kind of ball park figures as a lot will depend on how the currency stands at the time of booking and travel. Also I won't know what if any special deals we will be able to take advantage of.

Passports x2 $180
Food $200
Petrol $150
Travel insurance $70
Airfare x 1 child $450
Airport taxes $200
Spending $750 (minimum)
Total $2000

Now that is assuming I manage to scrape together enough air dollars for both mine and one child's return flights. I am currently putting aside $20 each week and have about 38 weeks to go. So we will still be about $1250 short at this rate.

$1200 in 38 weeks. That's my new goal. Now for ways to achieve it.

Super cheap cheese

Countdown supermarkets have a super special deal on cheese for the next couple of days. $5.99 for 750 grams. As part of keeping my grocery budget as low as possible ($80/week or less) I have to pay attention to specials like this. Luckily I have a wee friend who always emails me things that are a great deal. I missed this special yesterday so called back in today as I was driving past and grabbed 2 blocks. Now I didn't really need cheese this week as we had almost a whole kg in the fridge but this really is a great special that shouldn't be missed. And lets face it cheese in an unopened packet really does last quite a while.

One step better than that though I borrowed a girl friends blender with grater and grated about 2kgs which I have divided up into bags and placed in the freezer. About 90% of the cheese we use is grated so this is perfect. And it will come in especially handy when I make scrolls for the lads lunchboxes as the hard work will already be done.

So lots of cheese in the freezer now for me which is great and also I now have 3 pounds of butter in there as well. These are items that are essential in our house and getting them on special for financially tight times seems like a smart idea.

I baked chocolate chip cookies today using the Sophie Gray recipie and OMG they are the best cookies I have ever tasted. I also added a cup of rolled oats to the mix just to improve the nutritional value. That's a good thing as I have not stopped eating them since they came out of the oven. I am glad I gave some to the girl friend whose blender I borrowed as it means less for me to eat.

Also money saving in another sense I have not had to feed the lads a lot over the long weekend and that will continue tomorrow as well. They have spent 24 hours with my parents and will spend most of tomorrow with their Granny on the other side so I have saved on a lot of food. Also they brought home 6 caramel surprise muffins from my parents place this morning which will go in the freezer for lunchboxes. Actually it might be a good idea to organise a freezer stocktake and use up all the baking in there to make room for a good meat stockup.

Rain rain go away.....

But do not come back another day! I am so over the rain. I am over looking at the washing filling up my lounge room. But I am determined I will not cave and use the clothes dryer.

I have leaves that need raking outside as the trees continue to drop them everywhere. Our place looks like a carpet of leaves. I did get some raked up yesterday but not enough. And now it is raining again for the next few days so it will have to stay carpeted.

We haven't done much that is saving money these past few days. Mostly just the little things we do on a daily basis. I have managed to put about $10 in my money tin however and other than a blocked drain problem yesterday no unexpected expenditure. One thing I learned yesterday was that if you notice a problem on a Saturday get onto it straight away. The charge for the drain layer was $112.50 (which given the job was a fantastic deal) but had it have waited until Sunday or heaven forbid the public holiday on Monday then the bill would have been much larger. I am super grateful that I discovered the problem first thing Saturday morning saving us a lot of money.

Dinner tonight was a $$$$ saver though. A jam sandwich and maybe a banana later on if I get hungry. For lunch we had ciabatta bread with cooked chicken and I am still full. Or maybe I am full because I ate half a packet of m&ms. Either way I don't feel hungry so had a super cheap dinner.

I can't believe I forgot

Wow we are 4 days into June and I have not updated on my reason for this blog. That is getting my home loan down to a big fat 0 in my 10 year time frame.

So 30 May was "M" day and payments were made and interest added. I hate interest with a passion. Then again it is a necessary evil for me as there is no other way I will have a home. At least now my interest rate is a reasonable 5.99% rather than the evil 9.1% I settled for when moving day arrived.

So last months payment of $1440 to my larger loan included $613.26 of interest. This month was a little better - $609.14. So that means each month I will pay approximately $4 extra to principal. What I am pleased to see is the $830.86 that came off the total loan balance this payment. It's great to see that over half of my money is improving my overall balance. Then there is the smaller more pleasant loan. Now this one I almost like as it is approximately 50% offset which is fantastic. This is also the loan I throw all spare money at. This months payment was $260 + $500 extra. Only $72.87 was for interest meaning I paid $687.13 off the balance. I would love to have this loan fully offset if I was to be unemployed but that might be asking too much.

Whichever way you look at it though for the month of May I managed to reduce my home loan by a whopping $1517! I am always super happy when it goes over the $1500 mark. Not bad for a single Mum on a very average income :O)

And the key to success is ..............

Organization. I cannot believe how smoothly the mornings have gone these last 2 weeks. It has been amazing. Ok so I had to bribe the lads to walk themselves into school but it has been so easy. I wonder if I will keep it up next week?

Had to take Mr8 for x-rays today as his hurt arm was still sore. $32 because ACC no longer covers the full cost. One has to wonder what you do for medical care when you are truly broke. Thankfully all is good so it's just bruised. At least we won't have to sit for hours at the hospital over the long weekend now.

We have planned a very quiet weekend. I have to pick up a car key from the city on Saturday morning for my Aunty and Uncle and the lads have the party on Saturday as well. We will catch up with my folks and visit my nana in the afternoon and have a quiet evening. Also the lads will be staying with my folks Sunday night so I can have a nice sleep in on the public holiday Monday. Yay for sleeping in.

Anyway brought myself a puzzle today because I am spending far too much time online. Off to see if I can get the edge done before an early night.

1 Chicken 4 meals.

Wow. Last weekend I brought 4 size 20 chickens. I had read on Simple Savings of members getting 3-4 meals off chickens this size and thought it would be worth trying the size 20 instead of our usual size 9 which does 2 meals for $5.

Day 1 Sunday - roast chicken and vegetables.
Day 2 Monday - chicken noodle stir fry.
Day 3 Tuesday - chicken and pasta - just me tonight.
Day 4 Wednesday - was supposed to be chicken soup but turned more into chicken stew.

So that was successfully one chicken 4 meals and 3 nights of very simple dinners as the meat was already cooked. Very happy I stocked up on that one as we now have weeks of simple meals ahead.

So thanks to Simple Savings I have found yet another way to make my grocery money stretch a little further and we still had healthy meals. I will definately keep an eye out for chicken specials like that in the future.