IKEA Heaven

The new IKEA catalogue has landed! A new IKEA catalogue is as exciting to me as a new Apple product launch would be for other people. I just love their stuff and daydreaming about my perfect apartment set up.

I show restraint though and don't actually go into the store unless I have a very specific item to pick up, as it's completely set up for the impulse buyer. It's an incredibly clever marketing and sales strategy really, which I have to appreciate!

My current goal fund for new bedroom furniture will be spent almost entirely at IKEA, and I've now worked out I'll need just under $2,000 to realise my goal. It's a complete refit of my bedroom, with queen bed and latex mattress, bedsides, lamps, a chest of drawers, new pillows, doona (quilt/duvet/comforter) & linen.

Yes it's a lot of money, but the ensemble I'm sleeping on is well over 15 years old, so it's worth spending decent money on something you'll spend a third of your life in. A good night’s sleep helps you in so many ways, from protecting your health to being more focused at work and with your family and friends; it should be invested in wisely.

This weekend will be dedicated to drooling and daydreaming. I may even take the catalogue down to the Posh Garden Centre to enjoy with this month's my free coffee! The weather here is just glorious at the moment, when it's not pouring with rain of course.

Work and study have been so full on the last few weeks; it’s going to be nice to just think about lovely new things for a change.

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A Year Ago Today

A year ago today I started this blog. I was $56,772 in debt, and horrified, so decided to do something about it.

• I had a personal loan that consisted of a car loan and a previous consolidation loan of my credits cards, which I had run up again & added new ones to – I was so smart – not.
• I was making decent money but only paying the minimums & then reusing my cards over and over.
• I was paying for things I didn't need or use and did nothing about it (gym membership, online DVD rentals etc)
• I was buying my lunch every day, and buying up to 4 ‘bought’ coffees a day too
• I ate a lot of take away meals & ate out in cafes & restaurants most weekends too
• I was driving to work every day, and paying $17 a day for parking.
• I was paying for my broadband service, even though there was a free staff plan available

I got a great new job in October, which I still love coming in to do each day, and pays me a lot more money!

In November I found out I had to move house. I had no emergency fund at all, no savings, so onto the credit cards it all went. Right before Christmas, and in the Sydney rental market, it was a nightmare.

December and January were consumed with the joys of finding a new place to live and actually moving house. I had a couple of nice financial surprises in the forms of some found money in my travel wallet & all my share dividends, as I’d never updated my mailing address. So I managed to still get my numbers down.

In February, all the moving bills came in and my total debts had actually increased to $61,836! Talk about two steps forward & three steps back. The credit crunch has also hit the world hard by this stage & all my interest rates had gone up, many more than 2%.

March saw my Baby Emergency Fund reach $1000 for the first time – Hurrah!

In April I shopped around for a cheaper Greenslip for my car, and knocked the front bumper off in the local KFC carpark – good times…

I bought a snazzy new vacuum cleaner in May, turned another year older and saw a run of 4 months of consistent debt reduction kick in – finally, some progress, small, but consistent.

June was an awesome month, my annual bonus arrived so I was able to make a serious dent on my debt and still put some money aside for my other goals. It also saw petrol prices in Sydney hit record highs.

July saw me get back under my original debt amount of $56,772 for the first time since February, it was a great feeling. I also scored the employee of the month award at work, which is worth $150 and I still haven’t spent it yet.

August was a pretty boring month to close out my first year, I am getting a lot more offers in the mail to increase my limits though and calls regarding financial advisors, so someone’s noticed I’m trying to pay down my debt.

What will the second year bring? Not sure yet, but I’ll continue to reduce my total debt every month, set goals for myself, and blog about it here!

So as numbers go:

• September 2007: -$56,772
• February 2008: -$61,836
• September 2008: -$51,704

Total debt paid off so far: $10,132 – not too shabby, but I can do better!

I've got a new medium term goal, to double that amount in the next year, so my goal for September 2009 is a total debt of no more than $31440, which is $20,264 less than today. Plus still have my overseas trip in May/June in 2009!

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I Love My Posh Garden Centre

Why on earth am I spending regular time at my local posh, ‘used for photo shoots by major publications’ garden centre, I'm supposed to be saving money right?

The main reason is I just love it there. Living in an apartment, I have limited outdoor space and this centre is huge. Half of the place is the nursery where you can buy all manner of plants and pots etc, but it’s also got a huge display garden with different styles of gardens to wander round and enjoy, everything from ultra modern rock gardens to an organic vegetable garden, complete with chooks! (Chooks = chickens for the non Aussies)

Second, they have an art gallery, and a cafe that does great coffee and food. Sitting out on the terrace with a latte and my buddy looking over the gardens is a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning. Often her almost two year old joins us to ‘play ladies’, and the sight of her hooking into her baby-cino with such gusto never ceases to make me laugh.

Third, that coffee we have? It’s FREE! The centre has a club you can join (also FREE) which entitles you to a complimentary coffee each month – nice huh? The art gallery is also free, as are the gardens to wander around in at your leisure.

Last but not least is the newest and now most powerful attraction I discovered on my last visit. They have an allotment garden for the local community! They have 6 spaces available to members to put their names down for and when it’s your turn you get 3 months to grow things in your plot. I have of course put my name on the list to get my own plot, it’s very exciting!

There was a lovely old man watering his plot last time we were there and he was telling us he and his wife had recently downsized to an apartment after always living in a house, so this was an ideal solution for him to continue to enjoy gardening without having too much to manage on his own.

Yes it’s only 3 months when I eventually get one (unless no one else has their name down for the next session), but I still think with the right research and careful plant selection I should be able to produce some great veg, and enjoy every minute of getting my hands dirty.

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Show Me The Money!

I received my pay rise letter late last week, and I'll be getting a 6.5% raise starting the 15th July, which is a healthy increase considering the current economic environment.

Since July 2007, my salary has increased by 21%, not too shabby! I went after and got a promotion last October which really helped that number along, but I've done well in that new role and have been rewarded accordingly, if I do say so myself.

I spent the weekend (no, not the whole weekend – what do you think I'm like?) tossing around what I should do with it against what I really want to do with it. I’m happy with the compromise I've decided.

One of the easiest ways to pay down your debts or save for your goals effectively is to not increase your lifestyle along with any salary increases you receive.

This makes for a substantial snowflake to add to your goals each month.

I did this when I started in my new role back in November last year (having already started paying down debts by then thank goodness), and will do this again in a modified way with this new increase.

I'm really looking forward to using 50% of the extra income to increase my debt repayment efforts, and will allocate the other 50% to the 40th Birthday UK Tour Fund.

I'm comfortable with how my lifestyle is these days, with a healthy focus on debt elimination, while planning for upcoming expenses, and still having something left over to enjoy my life along the way.

I have nothing but admiration for those who have a single minded, do without all 'wants', nothing until the debts are gone, 'gazelle like' intensity to eliminate their debts, but I know myself well enough to understand I need to find a level that would address everything I want, including paying off all my debts.

Just like the name of this blog, paying down debt is like a diet. If you go too extreme for you (what extreme constitutes is entirely subjective of course), you’ll end up 'bingeing'. In my case on unnecessary items, like trashy novels, unplanned trips to Ikea and takeaways every night.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Are there things you've kept in your budget that others might not consider necessary?

I'd love to know what you budget for that's may seem frivolous to another, or are you extremely focussed and have cut out all 'wants' until you’re debt free, I'd love to hear about that too.

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Work Perks – Volunteer Leave

I'm really excited about this one. My company has recently implemented a policy that allows all permanent full time and part time employees a day of paid volunteer leave in each calendar year.

The purpose of the volunteer leave is to encourage us to provide assistance and support to a charity or not-for-profit organisation with their charitable and/or community activities.

I'm particularly excited as this will allow me to get involved in something I'm really passionate about, children's literacy. I really believe that helping a child to not only learn to but enjoy reading, opens up a wealth of opportunities and possibilities for them.

I get paired up (with another volunteer) and matched with a year five or six student to provide one-on-one reading mentoring and support. Every week, we will alternate visiting the school and reading with the student for an hour. So I’ll visit the school once a fortnight for the whole school term.

My police check (required when working with children of course) is all through, so I'm now just waiting for the training to kick off and we start in May with the kids.

I'm so excited! This something I've wanted to get involved with for years, but due to school hours being shorter than my working hours I've never been able to find a way to do it, and now I can with my companies endorsement! Even better is that due to my living so close to work, it's one of my local schools so I'm really helping my local community.

Does your company offer or get involved in anything similar as part of their corporate responsibility programs?

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Keeping Up With My Joneses Part 1 – The Car Guy

One of my friends is a very successful, well paid professional; who travels overseas at least 3-4 times a year, has a gorgeous apartment filled with beautiful things and drives a luxury convertible. He just loves luxury cars, we talk about them all the time (I’m a bit of a car nut myself).

He’s very smart with his money. His car is fantastic, its 12 years old though, not brand new. He bought it second hand ages ago and he just loves it. It’s just so him. He’d like a new one some day, but is perfectly happy with what he has right now, and works towards anything new he wants.

He works incredibly hard. His travels are how he loves to spend his downtime, visiting his family and friends all over the world. He comes back with so many stories and experiences.

He’s incredibly generous with his time. He helped me buy my first car last year, spending numerous weekends driving me around town test driving cars under $5000, and he genuinely enjoyed it. He also talked me around from wanting to spend $10,000 for my first car, so he saved me $5000 in effect.

He enjoys the simple things as much as the big shiny things. He spent a very pleasant yet simple evening at my place fixing my rickety dining table and eating the dinner I made with gusto (I’m a good cook though, so he’s only human). He also enjoyed jetting off to Europe to go to a car show with some friends for a couple of weeks not long after.

How have I incorporated his way of life into my own?

Living within my means is an obvious goal I’m working on, buying quality over quantity, working hard for the things that bring you genuine pleasure in life, and remembering to enjoy the simple things.

Why wouldn't I want to ‘keep up with this Jones’?

This is part 1 of my series Is Keeping Up With ‘The Joneses’ A Bad Thing? In order to protect the privacy of my ‘Joneses’ I've tried to be as generic as possible about their particulars.

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Is Keeping Up With ‘The Joneses’ A Bad Thing?

I believe it’s who your ‘Joneses’ are, and what your motivation for keeping up with them is.

My entire life seems to have been spent comparing myself to others, from the ‘cool’ girls at school, through to people getting promoted around me at work, to seeing the successes of my friends and family manifest for them.

I've come to realise that this is because I didn't have any real goals or dreams for myself, so I relied on tagging along on other peoples. Or became envious when they had or did cool things, when I of course could have had or done those cool things if I’d made the same choices as them in many cases.

Now my focus has shifted more towards identifying what’s important to me, and what my dreams and goals are, I see things differently. Rather than envy those who have done and achieved great things in their life, I look and ask them how they did it, and if it’s something I can replicate in my own life, to pursue my own goals and dreams then I can and do!

I have quite a broad range of friends, all of whom I consider successful, as they are living their lives the way they want to. It’s not all about money, but having it, (or not having debt more importantly) does play a part in each. It’s the freedom to make choices for yourself that really stands out, not the level of income/money itself.

I've got a few examples that come to mind, so I’ll be looking at each of these people in more detail and writing separate posts about them (names changed of course) over the coming weeks.

• Part 1: The Car Guy
• Part 2: The Investors

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