Ha, good call. Missed the 2013 entirely.

Fixed all the years

I was thinking... man that's one helluva time change right there.

The second last payment went to the Once CC yesterday. Today I upped the payment from $500 a fortnight to $870 (according to Rashan at the call centre that’s enough to cover the closing costs), which means the next payment due on the 25th of January will be the last one, and I will be onto them on the 27th (the 26th being a public holiday) to ensure it gets closed out.

That'll be two debts gone since August.

Way to go!

And I love that you use the word "fortnight". I wish we used that term here in the US.

Update time.

We made it through the month without going too overboard during the holiday break, and we have measures in place to ensure there definitely won’t be any financial issues for the next.

Current debts:

House Loan: $519,477.12
Gold Credit Card: $4,987.97
Once Credit Card: $859.43
CUA Personal Loan: $27,456.53

That’s a decrease in debt of $1206.09.

In the positive column we have:

House: $575,000
Car: $12,800
Other: $5,000
Super: $94,823.26
Cash: $2035.30

And that’s a decrease of $1703.52, in the main due to the reassessed value of our car. I checked out Redbook and have priced it in at the top end of the used car value for a private sale, as it’s still under their estimated usage for kilometers for its age. Planning on holding onto it for at least another year, maybe two, as it’s a late 2003 model and only has 160,000 kms on the clock.

We’ve reached our target of $2000 in cash, our preferred EF value. It’s currently split over three minor funds, our actual EF, Car fund and House repair fund, but its still $2k in cash! The Christmas fund is empty, as we used all of it last year.

The Once Credit Card will be paid off and closed before next months update. I upped the payment as mentioned earlier in the thread and look forward to the 27th. The extra $130 in the budget for the regular monthly payments went straight off the Gold CC.

Next month we’re looking at snowballing the payments from the Once CC onto the Gold CC, it’s killing me to see how much we are still reliant on it on a monthly basis. Number crunching sees it being paid off in April, which coincides with my original estimate of paying it off at $1000 per month and putting back on $300 of bills a month.

Couple of other things to note for this month.
- We have a new mobile plan for Nicole, it’s now $90 a month, up from $52.57, but she has a new phone and her work pays ¾’s of the bill, so we’re supposed to only be up for $22.50, a saving of $30.07 a month.
- We used our time off to employ a new house cleaner. It’s now $60 a clean, whereas the old one was $83, saving us $23 a fortnight.
- Still waiting for Qantas to refund our out of pocket expenses for the extra stay in Melbourne.
- We both have time off work booked for our Anniversary holiday.

So our targets for the year look like this:

It’s done!

The Once CC has been paid off and cancelled! That's a debt of $5,034.68, plus $4.95 a month in account keeping fees, for a total of $5069.33 paid off since August of 2011. We also saved 11 months and $49.50 in account keeping fees by paying it off early.



Cheeky buggers stung me for another monthly fee of $4.95 before they’d close the account. I was hoping to avoid that as I was closing the account before the 1st of the next month.

Never mind. At least it’s done and dusted, and the cards been cut up and then shredded.



Closing statement will be in the mail next week.

Now to attack the Gold CC.

Bugger!

Had to tap my EF fund today.

Woke up yesterday morning to find I’d bought an iPad in my sleep, something I’d never thought I’d buy, let alone while sleeping. Someone had co-opted my paypal account and bought an iPad online. By the time I’d woken up, it had not only been bought and paid for, but the seller had left feedback on my paypal account and had sent me an email telling me it had been shipped.

I jumped onto paypal and registered a reversal straight away, and within an hour they’d processed it all and closed out the claim. In the meantime I contacted the seller letting them know what had happened and they refunded the amount straight away, but have not provided me with the shipping address that I asked for, so I could forward it to the authorities that deal with fraud.

Unfortunately, after all that, paypal still took the cash from my account, which I found today when checking my balances. As I keep no cash in my paypal account, it dipped into my linked bank account, and overdrew it. And as it’ll take 3 to 5 days for paypal to effect a refund, my account is in negative and will be until either payday on the 15th or the refund from paypal comes through. I have had to transfer my EF fund to my bank account to bring it back into the black.

Hopefully it gets sorted before the end of the week.

Yeah! for having an EF in place.

What a nightmare (literally!). I hope you changed your paypal password or whatever. I don't use paypal, so I'm not sure how the hackers got your information.

Thank goodness for extra money on the side. I hope everything works out and you get your refund and can put it back in your e-fund. Scary mama.

Yeah, passwords were changed, everywhere that mattered.

Still can't work out how they've done it, it's got me scratching my head. I'll find the answer eventually.

Hope it doesn't cost me more money though.

Update time.

Had an interesting, and somewhat positive, month.

As mentioned previously, the Once CC debt was paid off.

The car was serviced and there was money sitting in an account for it, bonus! They noted a couple of things which will need to be dealt with in the next couple of weeks, one is leaking tappet covers that I have been putting off for over a year, and as we have a Subaru with their horizontally opposed engine, that means two tappet covers, so double the cost, joy!. Add on the brake pad replacement which I knew was coming and you get a nice chunk of cash that would be taken from our monthly budget to get fixed. Thankfully we have the money saved in the car maintenance account for these types of situations.

Curtains were bought for our study which hasn’t had any since we stripped it and repainted it 18 months ago. Afternoon summer sun pounds through the window, heating up the space and making it uncomfortable to use. Again, money was in the household maintenance account for this to happen. Now we just need to be home long enough to get them installed

We also went on our trip to Melbourne for the christening of our nephew. It was just an over nighter and it cost us a minimal amount of cash, just car hire for the two days and we covered about 400km. We had free flights from Qantas from their industrial action back in October of last year which we used for this trip. We also stayed with the parents, my brother and his wife, so accommodation was free as well. They took on the idea of us putting money away for him and were positive about it, my brother especially, as we both believe something like this would have made a big difference to our own lives. So, we will organize for this to happen in the near future after our current debts have been dealt with.

Speaking of Qantas, they’ve finally reimbursed us for our out of pocket expenses from October. I chased them up on the 27th of Jan and finally got some action. They claim the CC details they had didn’t work, something about having issues refunding an Amex card., so I gave them the Visa details and it went through. And for those paying attention, the Gold CC we have is two cards (Visa and Amex) linked to the one account. Apparently the bank does that so that travelers can use the Amex when overseas and Visa locally. As we don’t go overseas, I end up using the Amex when paying bills as it racks up double the frequent flyer points of the Visa. So the previous purchases to Qantas had been made on the Amex, yet they can’t refund onto it. Weird.

Confirmation came through yesterday from Nicole’s Super annuation company that they are in the process of rolling over all her other funds (3) into her current fund. Can’t say it’s been a speedy process. Maybe they and Qantas use the same systems?

I’m also at a point where some of my hobby stuff can be sold. So hopefully I can convert the value of the Other component of my assets into cash that can be used for other hobby interests.

We'll be ignoring the issue with Paypal, for now, all funds have been returned and are back in the appropriate EF fund account.

Current debts:

House Loan: $518,394.96
Gold Credit Card: $4996.75
Once Credit Card: $0
CUA Personal Loan: $27,002.46

That’s a decrease in debt of $2386.88.

In the positive column we have:

House: $575,000
Car: $12,800
Other: $5,000
Super: $94,823.26
Cash: $2444.76

That’s an increase of $409.66

So our targets for the year look like this, with one already accomplished:

Looks like you are on a roll. Keep up the good work.

Update time.

Car was serviced as planned yesterday and as it’s an overnight job, it’ll be finished today, estimated costs are ~1k, all good as there was money put aside for this kind of thing in the Car maintenance fund. Will know final costs when they ring to tell me it’s ready this arvo.

Had a minor roof repair done in the last week, a slight leak that occurred when rain comes from a specific direction. Hopefully the repair job works. Again, there was cash put aside in the House maintenance fund for this, so when the bill comes in it’ll get paid straight away.

What I don’t have a fund for is out of pocket medical expenses. Last month I had an MRI to identify the source of a persistent painful elbow issue that dates back to a self inflicted exercise injury in November. Unfortunately there’s no cover for that kind of procedure, either government or private, which left us out of pocket. The follow up Ultrasound for treatment was half covered. So, the EF fund was tapped to pay for this, that’s why it’s dropped this month. After the CC is paid off, we will put aside a bit of cash for this kind of situation. Even though we both have private health insurance, there’s still times where we have to fork out cash.

Two of the super funds have been rolled into Nicole’s main fund. There’s still an outstanding one that’s being delayed as it was from before we were married, and they wouldn’t roll it over without proof of a name change. They’ve ignored the fact they’d been sent this info 10 years ago when we were married. It makes me wonder whether they’re milking this to get more cash out of the account for management costs or something else ridiculous. Once it’s all sorted we will try to get a more up to date balance, though we may have to wait until the June end of financial year paperwork from her super fund to come through.

I’ve started the selling off of unused hobby stuff. I’m putting the money to one side to purchase other hobby stuff, so it’s a like for like swap of cash amounts, but I believe I’ll just run down the Other amount in my asset allocation and remove it entirely.

Current debts:

House Loan: $517,135.98
Gold Credit Card: $4927.00
CUA Personal Loan: $26778.31

That’s a decrease in debt of $1552.88.

In the positive column we have:

House: $575,000
Car: $12,800
Other: $4850
Super: $94,823.26
Cash: $3403.97

That’s an increase of $209.21

So our targets for the year look like this two full pay months in, with one target already accomplished:

I love my car, really I do, but when it breaks down on the day it was scheduled to get an annoying noise looked at and costs money for towing and parts, I find that the love isn't reciprocated.

$55 excess distance towing fee + $200 new axle (due to a stripped spindle at the wheel) + $45 mechanics time = noiseless car and a happy me.

Thank you GRS and the advice to put money away for eventualities.

Came into the office this morning and my boss handed me a letter. It was our bonus and pay rise. We’d been lead to believe that the pay rise wasn’t going to be much, but the bonus was going to be good. And that’s pretty much how it panned out.

The pay rise was better than CPI at 3.3% and the bonus was just over 7%. Pay rise is effective in April’s pay, back dated to the first of this month and the bonus hits our account on the 30th of this month.

Looks like I’ll be able to pay back the money I’ve had to dip into from various funds, including the EF fund and also pay a nice chunk off the Gold CC.

Jealous? Who me? Maybe .

Congrats