The ups, downs, and occasional sideways bits of trying to be mortgage free

It's not the most MSE I've ever done, but I sent Lovely Husband a late Valentine's gift at his office today (15th).

It was a little succulent in a vase, and the note said
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sorry this is late
It was stuck in peer review

Hopefully he will appreciate my scientist humour (he's the scientist, not me!). $35 but I don't care.

Awww, lovely to have you on board!

I've been thinking about the power of exact goals and numbers. I'm reluctant to post numbers because I'm in Australian dollars and the exchange rate doesn't really reflect the cost of living. My current grocery spend goal, for example, is $200/week, $800/month, and if you look at the exchange rate that's about 500 quid so you'll all think I'm madly extravagant! But actually that means carefully sticking to a list, no waste, cheap cuts of meat and everything from scratch. Before you guys Brexited yourselves and the pound fell off a cliff, the Xrate was more like 2.5 dollars to the pound, and I reckon that's a lot closer in a lot of ways!

Anyway we've been spending $300/week or more so my goal is $200. Already exceeded that this week, though: we'll have got through 8-10L of milk by the end of this week alone, and that's $20-$25. On milk! Alone! Hypothetically, how much garden space does a cow really need, do we think, to be happy?

Next month I'm going to start putting proper NSD goals in place as well - an NSD is an NSD no matter what currency you're in!

I think it went down well, I got a nice email back!

Right then. Unnecessary spending on a packet of hot cross buns yesterday but that's the only one this week, so I'm quite pleased. I have a bad habit of deciding that because I'm buying food from a supermarket, it counts as "basic groceries" instead of "lunch out", if that makes sense - like "Oh, it's just as if I bought groceries on the weekend and am taking a packed lunch to work!". But in reality, I'm picking up a fancy pot of yoghurt, a green juice, a steak pie to warm up in the oven, some snacks, and it's $15 which is more than if I bought a nice sandwich and coffee at a cafe. Last year I was doing that maybe 3 times a week - and I wonder why I wasn't even breaking even some months!

I am the person in the household that pops into the shops for top up milk and bread, so it's been tough to resist the delicious lunches this week! But I've stuck to making lunch from whatever's in the house (except the hot cross buns... ) all week and I'm counting that as a win.

What else. I have to buy a kids' birthday present this week, and DD2 has form for pleading for the more expensive option because she's worried about bringing a bad gift, so I might turn up with just $15 in my wallet and no card. Ballet's started for the year and both DDs need new tights and shoes - why do children keep growing? Surely that's not a practical way to live!

Onwards and upwards, unless you're my mortgage, in which case onwards and downwards!

Here I am at Monday morning!

Everyone had recovered enough by yesterday afternoon that we dragged the DDs out to a garden centre for a bit. Gorgeous place bursting with old fashioned plants, just my thing. We bought four new plants, total of $42, which wasn't exactly budgeted for in the right category (we always overspend in the things-for-the-house line!) but since we'd saved on all the socialising we couldn't do all weekend, I figured it was fine.

My calculations were that we'd have spent $30 getting bits in on Saturday to entertain friends, plus $80 on a pub lunch for 4 on Sunday, and that's keeping it as cheap as I could, frankly. I keep feeling that you lot must be shocked at my numbers, but it's just an exchange rate thing I promise! $80 for four of us buys a couple of kids' meals, the cheaper end of the adult range and maybe a lemonade each.

Today's a bit of a nightmare. Pupil free day that we got hardly any notice for, and I had it covered but a new client wants me to do some work for her this morning - short short short notice but I hate to say no to a new person in case they just look elsewhere. And I also have a strata title meeting for my Mum's unit, which is about deciding if the group is going to pay several thousand dollars to have work done. The fencing all needs re-doing, and some of the units (not ours) need underpinning, and I cannot even imagine how much all of this is going to cost so I have to be there!

The end result - after much ringing around friends to see if any of them could have the DDs but of course they're all in the same boat - is that the girls have gone into work with their Dad for the morning, armed with colouring books and snacks, and I'm going to be haring up and down the freeway trying to get to everything and then to pick them up. He'll end up spending money on them this morning just to keep them occupied. It's lovely that for the first time, we don't have to pay private child care fees, but it's still expensive to be a working parent sometimes!

Right, that's that complaint over. I'm very worried about the unit costs though. Last year we had a nightmare of a time at our own house, we had to re-do the fencing along one border and get two trees chopped down along the other two, and the whole thing cost about $5K. I was hoping this year would be cheaper!