Off to Melbourne

Tomorrow morning, J & I are flying off to Melbourne for the weekend to celebrate my birthday. This is J's gift to me (the flight + accommodation for 2 nights) and a special birthday dinner. He is the best!

Yesterday after work, 2 of my work friends & I had our manicures done ($20) and one of my friends treated me to a yummy Thai dinner. Tonight, J & I are going to Night Noodle markets in the city to meet up with a few of our friends. I've really had a smorgasbord of wonderful food lately!

Budget for the next two weeks (Oct 15 to 28)

Income: $1970

Rent: $400
Family: $249
Personal Training: $90
Uni Loan: $146
Credit Card: $115
Japan travel fund (to J): $325 (paid to my CC)
Week 1 budget (15 to 21): $500
Week 2 budget (22 to 28): 150

I've severely inflated my Week 1 budget due to our Melbourne trip which would include copious amounts of eating out and hopefully shopping. What I don't spend I will insert in my credit card debt.

Our Japan budget is becoming confusing so I might document it now. J paid for our fares which is $1170 each so therefore I owe him that amount. Last pay, I gave him $450 so that would mean I now him only $720.

I booked our accommodation to Tokyo though for 5 nights which came to $650 or $325 each so instead of me paying him another $325 I just inserted that in my credit card instead.

So I now owe him $395 which I will give to him on my next pay!

Expensive October

I've braced myself that October is going to be an expensive month for me. It's my birthday on Saturday (the 17th) and I usually celebrate all month long. I love birthdays and I couldn't resist - I never used to be this way. When I turned 20, I was hyperventilating because I thought I was "too old" but I'm turning 28 in 3 days and I just could not wait. Finally, I'm relishing getting older!

My $200 Week 2 budget just sufficed (kind of - I had to use the black card once or twice). Some major expenses include:

$23 - treated a friend at work to a birthday lunch on the 8th. She bought me lunch today for my birthday. Now we have a new tradition!
$50 - Sydney Harbour Island hopping ticket - my girl friends and I went on a half day cruise around the islands (4 in total) and it was fun albeit a bit cold. We bought drinks and food and just ate and chatted our way through out the whole day
$20 - wine & beer. We had dinner at J's parents place and we brought some drinks over.

The remaining was spent on groceries and more food! We've eaten out so much since last week. Last Saturday night, we had Spanish tapas for a friend's birthday dinner, we had the Indian dinner on Sunday night and I treated J to Thai on Monday night.

And I'm going out again for the next two nights... eep, that's another post in itself plus new budget!

The weekend ahead...

I went over $38.70 in my Week 1 budget (which was $145) which I've borrowed from my Week 2 budget which is $145. I could probably that on the phone recharge card I had to buy which was already $30.

Today I spent:

$20 - new shower curtain from Target. We have to replace our shower curtain every 6-7 months or so because it gets super mouldy.
$8 - chicken & pesto salad from Sumo salad for lunch. J bought us drinks & sushi.
$5 - groceries
$50 - Country Road top (from black CC - I have a $30 gift voucher but I couldn't find anything I liked within that price range so I finally picked an $80 top... oopsss)
$58 - Natio skincare & make-up from my previous post to get the GWP's. For Free as I used a gift voucher!

Total: $33

I have a total of $80 until Thursday! The weekend hasn't even begun yet!

Tomorrow, J & I are going to an open day for Macquarie University because I'm still deciding on whether to pursue a Masters degree in 2010. And we don't really have any plans for Sunday other than a dinner here at home with J's sister. I'm hoping to get all my groceries done for breakfast & lunches on Sunday afternoon and get a few more NSD next week!

On Wednesday, I have to attend a training day for work. The fare would probably cost me around $15 but I would be able to get that reimbursed from work but not until the week after so I have to leave around $25 on me for Wed. So that means $55 to spend between Saturday & Tuesday which will most definitely be spent on food. No more clothes shopping!

My Weekend Recap

I have 4 days off this week from Friday to Monday - so good!

Here are my expenses for the last 3 days:

Friday:
$25 - dinner at our favorite Japanese restaurant - Sushi Samurai
$2.99 - Knowing DVD

Saturday: NO SPEND DAY - J bought me lunch and we had a BBQ dinner at J's parent's house.

Sunday:
$35 - groceries at the markets

Total: $62.99

Not bad. I did make a massive change to my budget though. I don't think the categories are working out for me because I just end up substituting the shopping money, for example, for entertainment and everything just becomes one big blur. At the moment, I'm over in the Groceries, Entertertainment, Misc and Gifts category and I've had to use my Shopping money for that. I'm re-doing my budget for the next pay and instead of categories, I'll just use a weekly tally and I can pretty much spend on whatever I want as long as I have the cash for it (no more credit cards!).

September 2009 goals coming soon.

Weekend Recap

I had a very eventful weekend with a lunch and dinner with friends on Saturday and a kids birthday party today. I also had a farewell lunch for a work colleague and friend on Thursday. Here's a recap with their respective categories.

Thursday:

$5 - Breakfast (entertainment)
$10 - contribution for friend's farewell gift (gifts)
$15.20 - Lunch at cafe (entertainment)

Friday:
$20 - Aldi (groceries)
$30 - gift card (for 1st birthday present - gifts)

Saturday:
$5 - The Big Issue Magazine (misc - I would soon put a category under Charity - more on this magazine later)
$7 - Drinks for friend & I in the city before lunch
$7.50 - share for lunch (both entertainment)

Sunday:
$5.20 - Boost Juice (entertainment)
$4.60 - McDonalds Mcmuffin & hash brown (ent - I don't usually eat McDonald's apart from sundaes. This is probably my first McDonalds breakfast for the year!)
$3.20 - Bus to party (ent)
$34.90 - Groceries
$9.25 - Magazines (misc)

Total : $156.85

Not bad at all considering I went out 3 times over the weekend. J bought me dinner on Saturday which was very nice or that would have been another $25 and I still had left over bus tickets so the fare wasn't as bad as I thought.

My Weekend = $60

It's the middle of August, the last month of winter in Australia and it's 28 degrees outside. No wonder I'm sweating! Our summers can go as high as 40 degrees. At this temperature, people start fainting, the trains stop working because the train tracks are scorched, half the city is burning with bushfires and majority of people are in the cinema. I'm dreading summer already.

I spent a solid $60 this weekend and I didn't even have a night out. Saturday, I spent $12 hiring 5 new weekly DVD's from Blockbuster (half of Heroes Season 1, Penelope & Nights in Rodanthe) and the rest I contributed to J's grocery for lunch.

Today, being the beautiful day that it is, J & I went for a walk and had lunch in a cafe ($20). I also spent another $20 for groceries for my work lunches for the whole week. At this point, and because I only work 4 days a week, I have lunch for every day of the week. There's also no need for me buy coffee in the morning as I still have a tub of flavoured coffee which would probably still last two weeks and also a small tub of hot chocolate which would last another two.

I have $25 left until Thursday (pay day!) and I only have to cook for one night of dinner until then for 3 people which I'm budgeting $15 for. My goal for this week is to also walk home everyday. Sometimes I get really lazy and either catch the bus ($1.90) or have J pick me up when it's only 25 mins. walk away.

Savings Fund update:
Emergency Fund - $2800
My savings (home deposit) - $2236
J's savings fund (home deposit) - $3000 approx.

I think we're closer to our goal than we think which is $18,000 by June 2010. At this rate, we might have around $14,000 before 2009 ends.