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

armchairexpert

Yesterday was Mr E's birthday - what with the girls both being December born, it's an expensive couple of months - so we all went to town for the day and ate yum cha and ice cream and toured the Art Gallery. It was really lovely, in fact.

My neck is super sore, though. I think I need a new office chair. It's been painful for a while, but on Friday I did a 10 hour day with hardly any breaks and I was waking up with muscle pain all evening. Monday, things slow down a bit work wise so I'm going to have to splash out on some remedial massage and/or an osteopath visit. And this afternoon I'm going to take a bit out of my business account and go shopping for a decent chair. Mine's from a charity shop, and not ergonomic at all.

If my calculations are right, this month's invoices should give me a full month's salary buffer even after I've paid back the bit I took from my tax/business savings account. Lots of late payers in December because their payrolls were on leave, plus extra work, so I should be rolling in it soon. Bit proud of myself, tbh. I shouldn't actually need to dip into that extra month's buffer at all, my regular work (i.e., those clients who require the same amount of work every month) now exceeds my minimums even without the one-off jobs that come in.

January's going to continue spendy, since the girls don't go back to school until the start of Feb. There's nothing super expensive planned - we're not going away - but just day outings and things do add up a bit. I'm hoping the next few months are cheaper, but I have a milestone birthday in May and Mr E is already using it as an excuse to re-landscape part of the back garden for my party. I think he thinks I am magic money person.

VelvetFreak

Congrats on having the buffer! Laughed out loud at your conversion to fahrenheit
I am currently hiding in the house with aircon blasting. Power bill be damned.
It's good weather for drying clothes on the line, and that's about it.

Tahlullah

Good to hear work is settling into a pattern of steady income and great news on building up the buffer. But getting the chair sorted is of high priority. Nothing worse than back ache, especially when it's preventable. Ergonomic chairs are not cheap, but so worth it.

armchairexpert

Ergonomic chair purchased and my back ache has improved a lot. I still need to go and get a decent massage, but it'll have to wait until the girls are back at school. One more week to go. The issue now is that all my clients are back at work full time and expecting me to be as well so I'm trying to work evenings and grab quiet moments between entertaining the kids and it's a bit exhausting.

Heatwave continues. My house is very well built to withstand the first couple of days of heat, but after that it just stays hot until we get a proper cool change. And that's not coming for at least another week. Yesterday we went out to a shopping mall just to get some air conditioning relief, and I bought the girls lunch and ice creams.

Otherwise, though, the holidays have been really nice! We had a few days last week mild enough to let us do some outdoor stuff, so we went strawberry picking and then turned the excess into ice cream, we went to a local forest and had a picnic and a stroll, we've been swimming and played lego and generally hung out.

Next holidays, I'm thinking of paying for holiday daycare for some days so that I can properly relax and hang out with them on the other days. It's just a bit galling, because my tax rate is about to spike as well so it's starting to feel like working extra hours isn't really worth it. I don't mind a progressive tax system, I've always been happy to pay tax so that we can have a robust welfare system, but I'm about to hit the student-debt pay back threshold which adds 4% to my whole income, not just the bit over the threshold. When I add to that child care costs, dog walking costs, etc., that free up my time (since it's my time that I'm billing) - I don't know.

This is a bit of a crunch point. If I do pay for external help and start paying down the student debt, and then I increase my fees again then I will realise most of that increase. It's just this very particular income + time + life stage that's causing me to have a skyrocketing effective marginal tax rate.

Anyway! That wasn't the conversation I was intending on typing. What else is there.
1. Mr E's company continues to negotiate an increase to the award wage, which means we still haven't seen his (fairly tiny) October payrise come through. He'll definitely get one eventually, though, it's just whether it's $X or $X+2% or whatever. And it'll be back paid which will be nice.
2. We continue to fail to put money aside. Constant drip-drip-drip overspending that qipes out of on-paper savings every month. It's 100% a mismatch of priorities. I'm not convinced mine is any more objectively right than his, since he's not spending more than we earn after all, so, what do you do.
3. More exciting! I worked out the other day that I have calculated all of our fortnightly payments on a monthly basis. That is, the fortnightly mortgage payment is $647 but obviously there are 26 fortnights so I budget $1400/month to cover the 3-payment months. BUT I have budgeted our income on 2 x fortnightly payments. Both Mr E and the rent payments are fortnightly. What that means is that twice a year, Mr E gets a 'bonus' paycheque which can go straight to savings. I'm very excited about this, because it means we can realistically budget for a holiday after all.

Anyway. It's been a while since I had time to update, so forgive the novel.

Tahlullah

Hi and welcome back. Quite a lot going on there. However, I read the positives of you can afford a holiday, you have Mr Ace's pay rise to come and you are having great weather. All the rest can be dealt with as they come up.

Always positive.

Tx

armchairexpert

Pay rise has been approved, but no idea when it'll come through - it's a big government department so it has to trickle through a series of approvals and panels before we see anything. And Mr E being Mr E, he hasn't actually worked out how much it is or anything useful, so it's very wait-and-see. I'm betting that it's less than $100/month going forward, which would mean a back pay of about $500.

Kids back to school Monday. Work is going well, but I do need to get out there and hustle some more. I'm currently obsessed with the Frugalwoods blog and trying to see if I can cut expenses/groceries/etc a bit more. The problem is that when I do so I just end up resenting Mr E for the discrepancy in how we approach spending. And that's no use: he's lovely and I adore him and he's not financially irresponsible, he just wants to enjoy his income. Perfectly reasonable. But he spends his evenings browsing Etsy, and he's always looking for an excuse to spend money on things (he leaps at my offhand mention that I could do with black leggings, for example, because it means a justification to go clothes shopping. Or did I say I want a garden party for my upcoming milestone birthday? Well, then he'll just have to buy some plants and start re-landscaping the entertaining area. You know. For me). And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but the older I get the less stuff I want in my life. So there's a disconnect, but it's me that's changed. It's not even just about money, it's about stuff and priorities: I feel like I'll scream if one more ornament or piece of art or furniture enters my house, even though he has excellent taste and the place isn't cluttered by anyone normal's standard. I have to be careful that my burgeoning obsession with frugality and minimalism doesn't make his life uncomfortable.

Anyway. Can't change him, shouldn't even try, can change me. So I'm going to hit a huge charity store on Tuesday and buy the two things I know I will need for autumn/winter (I own no cardigans or jumpers, so I need at least one of each of those), and then, my friends, I am DONE with buying clothes this year. Except underwear. I am also sticking to my 2017 ban of not buying any more wool, since I barely have time to knit with what I do have. Books I'm not sure about: I do use the library, but the occasional kindle book is such a treat. Skincare I'm not buying until what I have is used up, even if my friends do keep going on about an amazing toner, or a serum that will definitely even out my skin tone more. Makeup ditto: I have about 5 basic things I wear regularly and will replace, but I don't need to add anything to that repertoire.

Those are 2018 bans. For February, I am also not buying take away coffee or anything in a cafe, unless it's a work/client meeting.

Okay, that's all!

Tahlullah

Wow. Yes there does appear to be a big disconnect between you. Almost as if you are not both on the same page. I thought I had read before that he wanted to pay off the mortgages as much as you do - I will have to go back and re-read your diary - but somewhere along the line, he has started to enjoy the process of buying for the home, for you and for the kids.

To be fair, a lot of people would be over the moon with this. However, you are travelling in two different directions and as you said, the one who has changed is you.

How to try to get back on the same path. Sounds difficult. I don't see how you can convince him to stop spending his money on his home and family. As you said, he isn't spending more than he earns. The best you will get is to give him a particular focus perhaps. For example, tell him that he ha to pay for the holiday in its entirety. Not sure if that sort of challenge would work. At least he would stop spending and you would get something specific out of it, that you want to get anyway.

Otherwise, you are the one who has to adapt. Hope you can think of a way to do that without driving yourself mad with the wastefulness of it all.

I can honestly say that I have felt the way you do for years, but it usually comes to the fore at Christmas. When I have to pretend to be overjoyed and thankful for another ornament, or candle, or bit of froufrou that I have absolutely no use for and do not want cluttering my home and collecting dust. If at my age, I haven't managed to get what I need to be comfortable, then something has gone woefully wrong. And it hasn't. I have enough stuff already. I don't need more.

I hope you find your path ACE.

Tx

armchairexpert

No, he's never been that fussed about paying down the mortgage. I run the budgets, and he's happy for me to try and squeeze some money out of the accounts in order to save - he's always impressed when I tell him where we are financially - but he's happy to just jog along really.

I mean the thing is that he's not spending gallons on money on utter crap. He does most of the work around the house himself, so the expenses are, like, enamel paint and nice shutters and woodworking tools. It's a lot less money than if we were buying expensive furniture and redecorating all the time. It's just that it's still money. But yes, most people would be over the moon. He works hard, and then he comes home and spends his energy on making the house and garden beautiful. It's all good.

We did have a conversation about this the other day where I basically went look, you're unlikely to get more than modest pay rises from here on in, given the career path you've chosen (which is great, don't get me wrong, but he stepped out of high stress private sector work into much more pleasant and flexible government work, and there's a pretty low ceiling), and our expenses are going to go up in the next decade because we'll have teenagers, so savings is a now or never thing. And his position is, well when we have less spending margin we'll spend less, as long as we're always within our means what's the big deal? But I think he also did think about it. I don't want to be making him feel bad about his career choices, I'm genuinely much happier with him in a lower paid lower stress job. It's just that there are trade offs.

I mean, look. I malign him. He's shifted away from expensive soft drinks and makes his own kombucha. He bakes bread regularly and uses up leftovers. He packs picnics when we're out for the day. He does do his best. It's just that shopping is his hobby. And even when it's just online/window shopping, it drives me crazy because I don't want any more stuff, and I would feel like that even if we were millionaires.

ANYWAY! Things are on a very nice even keel around here this month. February's always a good thrifty month after we've recovered from the holidays. Girls back at school today HURRAH! It was horribly hot over the weekend (40!) so I stayed in all weekend doing prep things. I have cut up veg and fruit and hard boiled eggs and marinated chickpeas and prepped overnight oats for breakfast and basically stashed the fridge full of healthy food for the week. I'm halfway through a bowl of overnight oats with berries at the moment and I can't finish it, it's so filling. I also sorted out a bunch of cupboards and am basically as organised for the new year as I can be.

armchairexpert

I've been trying to eke out the week with what we have in the pantry and fridge, but it's only Tuesday and I was sending my kids to school with jam sandwiches because we had no other acceptable fillings, so I've had to give in and go buy cheese and ham and fruit. They're all very patient with my budgeting ways, but there are limits.

Mr E's back paid tiny rise is still working its way through the bowels of the government bureaucracy and will be for some time, but when it does come through it's going straight to the holiday fund. As is the 'extra' fortnightly pay that we'll see next month. And he reckons he has a field trip or two scheduled in the next few months which are worth $1K or so each in overtime. Put all that together and I reckon we'll finally get out of the country for a while!

Cherryfudge

Hello ACE, just popping in to see if you're okay? It's been quiet here for a while... missing you!