Tuesday, June 29, 2010

School holiday spending

Well, it's Day 2 of winter school holidays. 

I thought it would be interesting to post what we have planned and the cost of school holidays when we are at home.  Over the years I expect that while cheap right now, school holidays will become more expensive with each year and as TootToot becomes a teenager and is less satisfied with free (or inexpensive) activities and entertainment.

TootToot was sick last week and not at school for the whole week. Instead of being happy and content for the first week of school holidays almost immediately she gave the usual school holiday war cry of "I'm bored". The weather hasn't been co-operative and it's been so cold and miserable that outside play hasn't been an option.  Is this boredom because she was sick or is it because she's getting older and getting her grumpy pants ready to wear for adolescence?

Now, how do we entertain an already sick of being at home, bored eight year old without blowing the budget?

We allow TootToot to choose one special activity each school holidays and she can take a friend to do it with if she wants. This time she chose to go bowling with GuitarMan. Just her and Dad and that's nice. 

We are extremely lucky that Nan (my Mum) is able to look after TootToot for two days each week and that certainly cuts our school holiday costs in half. We're also fortunate to have kids a similar age to ours living on either side, and TootToot will play with them on holidays and weekends as well.

Here's our rough plan. I haven't included weekends as we'll do the usual stuff like horse riding.

Week One:

Monday - Day with Nan

Tuesday - hanging with GuitarMan. Two games of ten-pin bowling in the morning, a hot dog each, a drink and $5 of game tokens. $35

Wednesday - spend day with Nan. Collect a free Wednesday movie from the OOVIE Kiosk to watch

Thursday - Day with Mum. Go to a birthday party at lunchtime. Present is in 'present box' so nothing to be spent. TootToot's friend Rapunzel will arrive at dinner and stay over until Friday afternoon.

Friday - If weather is still horrid, will do one of the craft activities we have lying around.  I think I might get the girls to carve some apple people which they can decorate at Rapunzel's house next week. If weather not too bad we'll head off to the Botanic Gardens with a packed lunch and do a school holiday activity for $3.30 for each girl.

Total cost for week $41.60

WeekTwo:

Monday - Day with Nan

Tuesday - Day with Mum. Girls Day. We usually choose to stay in our PJs all day and just chill. Eat some chocolate and watch one of TootToot's DVDs and snuggle in my bed. GuitarMan often comes home on Girls Days to find us fast asleep in our bed.

Wednesday - Day at Nan's

Thursday - TootToot will spend the day at Rapunzel's. I think Rapunzel's Mum has promised to take them to see Shrek. I'll send along $20 for popcorn and a drink for the girls.

Friday - Day with Mum. We'll visit cousins in the morning and after lunch spend some time at the library.

Total cost for week $20

I'll post an update at the end of school holidays and compare how we really did compared with our plan.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

WISH card challenge end of week seven and still rolling

Seven weeks of the challenge are over and a very good week it turned out to be.  Our average spending for both food and fuel has made it under $200 per week, only by 1 cent but under none the less.

There was an article in the Sunday Herald Sun last week which quoted current Australian Bureau of Statistics cost of living figures with an average of $250 per week spent on food and $100 on transport.  We are averaging only 57% of that amount.

This was definitely our most successful week so far on this challenge. Doing an inventory of the freezers and pantry has really helped me plan and reduce costs. The total spending for this week was $114.91 for fuel and food.

I expect that I won't buy much more than basic staples such as fruit, vegetables, bread and milk this week.  Spending for this week should stay well below $200.

No spending from my general stockpile money and have enough funds in that at the moment.  So the 'spare' $40 will be spent on school holiday fun in the coming week.


Week seven, day seven

Gift cards $500.04
Stockpile $197.50
Spent so far $1399.96

Average spend: $199.99 per week

Sunday, June 20, 2010

WISH card challenge end of week six

Six weeks successfully completed.  I've managed to keep the combined fuel and grocery spend to just over $200 again.  Fuel accounted for $70 of this weeks spend, so $130 this week at Woolworths.

I found the last three marked down bags of Purina dog food on Monday and bought those.  As the saving is $5 per bag they were too good a buy to pass up even though they cost $60 and almost doubled this weeks Woolies spending. I won't be buying any dog food for at least three months now.

Still nothing spent from my general stockpile money so another $40 added to that.

I'm doing a stocktake of the freezers, pantry and stockpile today.With some careful meal planning, I hope to extend this challenge beyond the eight weeks by living from the freezers a fair bit.


Week six, day seven

Gift cards $614.95
Stockpile $197.50
Spent so far $1285.05


Average spend: $214.18 per week

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Pantry Magic

At the same time as the WISH Card Challenge, I've been taking the opportunity to organise my pantry, freezers and stockpile.  It's meant that I've uncovered some finds that quite frankly nobody wants to claim.

The finds have not been anything to be excited about - usually something that has been pushed to the back of the pantry because nobody wants to look at it never mind eat it.  The exception are the surviving chocolate bunnies from Easter. Said bunnies are now living on borrowed time now that TootToot has remembered they are there.

One particularly unpleasant find was the discovery of a container of a muesli type cereal which had been lurking at the back of the middle pantry shelf since February. The picture on the box had promised us a feast of dried fruits, wholegrain flakes, oats and slivered almonds.  At home and with the box opened up it both resembled and tasted like horse chaff or sawdust.

Could frugal knowledge and cooking from scratch skills allow me to turn something that was truly inedible garbage into a tasty treat?

Muesli bars were thought of and swiftly discounted. TootToot has braces and really chewy sticky foods are not on the menu.  GuitarMan asked if it could be used in cookies. Brilliant!

I grabbed my $21 Challenge Book and made a half quantity of the basic biscuit mixture on page 176 and added a few additional ingredients.  Here's the result.

Muesli Cookies


1/2 quantity of bulk cookie mix (you can view the basic recipe and method via the link above)

To this I added

2 Cups Muesli Cereal
5 Tablespoons Maple Syrup
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

These may not be the best looking cookies you ever saw but they're tasty and will make good lunchbox treats in coming weeks.  I got 65 cookies from this batch and I'll freeze them to grab later when making up lunches.

You know, when I think of the amount of food we previously threw out I cringe.  When we were still firmly in our spendthrift ways, the cereal would have gone straight into the garbage with never another thought. Now I view things differently, challenging ingredients are an opportunity to work some pantry magic.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

How funny is this?

After dinner I make my usual cup of coffee which I enjoy while GuitarMan listens to TootToot read.  Tonight was a little bit different.

After much laughter from Jane, GuitarMan, TootToot and one photo later - here's tonight's result to share with you.




Sometimes these silly end of day moments provide a terrific end to the day and set you up so well for tomorrow.  Hope it brought a smile to your day too.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Where did those WISH cards come from? (making frequent flyer points and my credit card work for me)

When I posted Extra money for little effort, GoGoGoanna asked how I came to have $1900 in WISH cards for my challenge.  A very good question, and here's how.

Our family loves to travel. I think it has something to do with living on the world's biggest island combined with my need to explore what's on the other side of the horizon. Having the funds and the time to travel is one of our biggest motivators in life.  

Wanting both enough money and time to make our trips happen has led us to become increasingly frugal with our time, energy and money in areas of life we are not so passionate about. GuitarMan is happy anywhere in the world as long as the two ladies he loves are with him and he gets to indulge his passion for music along the way. We've been travelling with TootToot within Australia and around the world since she was 15 months old.

The $1900 of WISH cards for my challenge were obtained from Qantas when I redeemed frequent flyer points , but this could just as easily be another major airline or via a credit card reward scheme.  You have to be very disciplined about your credit card use though and I certainly wouldn't recommend getting a credit card just to try this out. If you are fundamentally opposed to credit cards then this probably isn't for you.

Earning Frequent Flyer Points
  1. All three of us are frequent flyers with multiple airline programs. Any travel booking for flights, hotels etc will give us miles with one airline or another. We redeem these miles for hotel stays, vouchers etc.  Of the points we redeemed, 47,538 were earned on one overseas trip last year.
  2. Qantas frequent flyer accounts allow you to transfer points between family members once every 12 months.
  3. I have a credit card which is linked to our Qantas frequent flyer account.  I pay for everything using the credit card. I park the money in our mortgage offset account and then transfer the money when the bill is due.  When I wasn't so disciplined about credit card debt, I would transfer the money each day.
  4. I have no annual fee on the credit card as it is part of our home loan package.  The annual fee for my package is more than saved by having no transaction fees for banking plus a considerable reduction on the variable interest rate for investments.
  5. I have paid for renovations, a car, plus deposits on land and an investment property using my credit card.  Most businesses are happy for you to do this in a number of smaller payments over a few days as long as they know what you're doing.  We are just about to build an investment property and will use the same strategy again.
  6. If we're considering any purchases, going to dinner, concert tickets we will see if the item or service is offered by a Qantas partner and accrue points that way plus on my credit card.  We'll only use the partner if the price is right.  Woolworths Everyday Rewards card is probably the partner most people would use.  The WISH card challenge is in fact giving me frequent flyer points as I use them up thanks to my Everyday Rewards Card.
  7. I don't ever fall in the trap of spending to accrue extra points and pretty much ignore 'bonus point' specials or weekends unless I was planning to buy that item/spend that weekend anyway.  The promotion of 'bonus points' has become a major strategy for both major supermarket chains in Australia and the benefits are generally not for the consumer.
Redeeming Points

Planning our spending and maximising the points we can get from multiple sources has really ramped up how quickly we can accrue points. The next step was working out how best to spend them.
  1. Experience has taught me that redeeming points for flights isn't effective as you have to pay the fees and charges associated with the flight. For example a return trip from Melbourne to Los Angeles on special costs $1100 buying via the web.  If you redeem frequent flyer points you'll have to pay taxes of $455 plus redeem 96,000 frequent flyer points.  The cost for the non-tax part of the flight is equivalent to 148 points per $1. 
  2. Unless you plan your trip twelve months in advance, you are stuck with the flights that nobody really wants. I usually don't want them either as they involve multiple connections or I can't travel on the dates I want.
  3. Redeeming points for WISH gift cards, you can get a $500 gift card for 72,500 frequent flyer points.  This is a cost of 145 points per $1. When you use your WISH cards you can also use your Woolies Everyday Rewards card to accrue further frequent flyer points.  Transferring Guitarman and TootToot's points to my account gave me a total of 275,500 points to spend on $1900 worth of WISH cards.
  4. You can also redeem for vouchers from specialist retailers at a slightly better rate of 135 points per $1. This wasn't an option that was good for us as we generally don't shop at those retailers anyway, so why start now?
Isn't it interesting that flights give the worst redemption return?

Sunday, June 13, 2010

WISH Card challenge end of week five

Five weeks are up. My original aim was to have the gift cards last for eight weeks for groceries and fuel.  I am well on the way to achieving that.  As we get closer to the end of the eight weeks, I'll move that date as far as I think it can be stretched.

Most of this weeks spending was on fuel for both cars. Normally we prefer to use only one car wherever we can but various appointments and conflicting schedules made that impossible this week.
Nothing spent from my stockpile money so another $40 more added to that.

I'm not really happy about the average spend per week, but being restricted to only one major supermarket chain it's proving very difficult to get below $200.  I'm sure this is mainly due to the high cost of fruit and vegetables at Woolies as I know I wouldn't pay anywhere near their prices where I normally shop.

Still I know that our spending is still well below the amount an average family of three with two cars in Melbourne's outer burbs would consider 'normal' so overall our habits haven't changed too much.

Week five, day seven

Gift cards $818.84
Stockpile $157.50
Spent so far $1081.16

Average spend: $216.23 per week

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Extra money for little effort

I'm always looking out for ways to increase my income or get free stuff without too much effort on my part.  I'm talking about $5 or $20 at a time not massive windfalls, but the amounts can sure add up quickly.  "Can't be done" you say.  Yes it can be done and here's how.

Over the last few years, I have joined various survey and market research companies.  If they're particularly worthwhile, then GuitarMan joins them too.  Not everyone's partner is going to spend a few minutes each day completing surveys, so I'm lucky that he indulges me that way.

Now GuitarMan was sceptical at first that there was any benefit in signing up for market research but once the vouchers and cash started coming in he has ever so slowly changed his mind.  I've found that the longer I have been doing surveys for each company, I have started receiving higher paid surveys and product tests.  Although the website blurbs don't say so, it appears your effort, time and loyalty are sometimes rewarded with better assignments.

I'm not going to guarantee the hourly rate will be fantastic but I like completing surveys and I like trying out products I probably wouldn't buy so it works for me.  I also like that the only investment required from me is my time and I can undertake the surveys at a time of my choosing.

For the month of June so far, here's how GuitarMan and I are going.  I've written the company in brackets in case you want to check them out for yourself.
  • $50 Coles Myer Voucher (Opinions Paid)
  • $5 cash (Lightspeed Panel)
  • $20 Bunnings voucher (Valued Opinions)
  • Another $20 Bunnings voucher (Valued Opinions)
  • 4 x Adult Movie Tickets (Nielsen)
  • 2 x Free Tickets to see The Losers on 21 June (Contagious Network)
  • 2x Oral B toothbrush heads for our rechargeable toothbrushes (Vibe Village)
  • 4x travel tubes of Pronamel toothpaste (Vibe Village)
  • $60 cash for attending a focus group (Read Research)
All up, the value in vouchers, tickets and cash is around $265 and it's only the 12th of June. 

On the way but not yet arrived:
  • $75 cash (Pureprofile)
  • Yet another $20 Bunnings voucher (WDYT)
  • Bertolli Pasta Sauce (Contagious Network)
  • $50 USD (Global Test Market)
  • Masterfoods Spices (Vibe Village)
I may also attend another focus group on Thursday and the payment will be an $80 Coles Myer voucher. I got a message yesterday but can't contact the company until Tuesday due to the long weekend, so fingers crossed.

Focus groups are something new for me and I'll need to do a few before I decide whether they are right for me.  I registered for two companies this week and immediately got contacted by both. Although the money is good, I've yet to decide if the convenience factor makes it worthwhile for me.

Anyway, off to lunch at Mum's for my brother's birthday.  No money spent and an afternoon with family.  Lovely.  TootToot has a friend staying for the weekend so there won't be much money spent in this household.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Coffee anyone?

Australia loves coffee, no doubt about it.  Not for us drip filtered or instant coffee, we are in love with strong European espresso style coffee and it's milky cousins.

GuitarMan and I both love coffee and so we took the step a couple of years ago of purchasing a high end DeLonghi coffee machine.  The DeLonghi coffee machine grinds the beans, makes all varieties of coffee at the touch of a button and all requiring absolutely no skill on our part.  GuitarMan bought the DeLonghi (on special of course) for $1600.  I can almost hear you cry "What $1600 for a coffee machine!"

Here's why the decision to buy a coffee machine was a frugal one for us. 

GuitarMan and I both love our coffee.  I drink one a day as I generally prefer tea.  GuitarMan however is a fan of espresso so strong it pulls your cheeks in when you drink it.  GuitarMan averages four cups a day. At $3 each our average coffee cost during a working week was $75.  We'd usually have another couple each while out on weekends so lets say $90 each and every week just for coffee.  That's a whopping $4680 each year or $9360 in two years.

The DeLonghi coffee machine cost us $1600.  We spend around $25 each month on coffee beans and say another $20 for power, water, milk etc.  Over a two year period, making espresso and cappuccino at home has cost us $1080 and even when we add in the $1600 purchase price of the coffee machine we have saved a whopping $6,680.

I have been reading about The Latte Factor on David Bach's website and how by recognising your Latte Factor, you can change your spending habits and turn your finances around.  Interesting reading and certainly something I hope will help stop those $2 coins disappearing from my wallet.

I wonder what David has to say about buying books and musical instruments?

Saturday, June 5, 2010

WISH card challenge end of week four

One month of the WISH card challenge completed this week.

Spending was up this week as Woolies had some great specials and so I stocked up on some really expensive items.  It made for a big spend but as you can read below, the savings were worth it.

First of the expensive buys was $100 on Purina dog food.  This was reduced by $5 per bag, so by spending $100 we got 5 x 8kg bags instead of the usual four.  This will last the dogs for a couple of months.

Next was $39.98 on 2 x1.5kg bags of coffee beans.  These are normally $29.99 each, so another $20 saving.

Then there were the baked beans for $1 a can.  I bought enough to save $8 on the usual price.  These will probably last for the rest of the year as we only use them to shove in a toastie on the weekend.

Lastly, there were the Kidney Beans for 69c a can, saved roughly 30c a can.  Restrained myself and only bought six cans but should have bought more I think.

Added to these bulk buys was the usual fortnightly grocery spend of around $105 plus fuel for my car ($51.25).  Total spending for the week $313.03

Oh, but nothing spent from my 'official' stockpile money this week so $40 more added to that.  I expect this week to spend around $50 on a top of fresh produce and $50 for fuel for Guitarman's car.

Week three, day seven

Gift cards $1068.94

Stockpile $117.50

Spent so far $831.06

Average spend: $207.76 per week