I am officially an adult!

OK I turned 39 next week but I finally feel like a responsible adult now.

This post is only going to Debbie, mum and Julie (so say hi to each other) because its about money and finances and I really really hate having to admit to myself that I haven't been paying this as close attention as I should have been.

So feel free to ignore, otherwise I wouldn't mind any constructive advice or criticism - I'm open to suggestions. I'm also happy to send my spreadsheets if you want to see what I've done more closely.

Finally Wednesday night this week, I came to within a hair's whisker of coming a cropper financially speaking.  My pay comes through every second Wednesday night. Only this week it didn't.

Wednesday night found me with no food in the house, no petrol, no money apart from a few coins and a car registration that had to be paid *right now* or I couldn't legally drive it on the road.

So I sat and I got depressed and I wondered how I got to this place yet again .... it seems every few months I fall into a hole, then it seems to go alright for a while and then wham! out of nowhere I'm in a hole again.

So over the past few days instead of stitching or playing Warcraft I've set myself up a set of financial spreadsheets in Excel.  Its nothing fancy but it does the job.  I have all the raw data on the first worksheet, all the big money owing on the second sheet, and then all the regular and irregular bills on successive sheets thereafter one per month for the next 18 months.

Now I usually have a fairly good handle on my living expenses. I put aside money each pay for the regular and irregular bills so how come I'm getting in a hole?

By listing absolutely everything I pay regularly (loan repayments, phone, internet, electricity, cat food, vet trips, hairdressers, foxtel (cable TV) migraine medication) I've discovered the problem.

I'm used to receiving a much larger disposable income than I currently am.  When putting money aside for bills I have not been putting aside money for medications, hairdressers, cat food etc because that's just been paid as needed out of the disposable portion of my income.  I don;t have that disposable portion anymore.

So now I've included everything I can think of in that series of spreadsheets, no matter how big or how little, if its money I spend regularly, its gone in there.  And based on my current figures I will be $3300 short by August 2011.  I spent $3300 more on regular items per year than I budget for. 

So what to do to bring that figure into the positive side of the equation ...

1. I have not renewed my cross stitch magazines subscriptions. I have three UK mags I've been subscribing to and these are all due now. I'm not renewing any of them.
2. I've rearranged some payments, so I'm putting $50 more per pay into the ongoing bills and $50 less per pay into the big three.
3. I'll be cancelling the Foxtel. I have a big enough DVD library and my work gets in a large range of movie and TV series on DVD that I can cope.  I can also torrent any new stuff I can't wait for ....
4. Cancelling the hairdresser and going back to dying my own hair.

These changes mean that I will (with a little topping up on a couple of months) make it through to October 2011 with all bills covered and paid for and the big three paid off. Using the snowball method, working from highest interest rate to lowest, I should achieve:

• Personal loan paid off mid-March 2011
• Credit Card paid off late May 2011
• Debbie paid back in full in mid-October 2011.

Now all of this is worked on my current 54 hours per fortnight base wage.  It also includes allowance for:

• $50 or one tank of fuel per fortnight
• $28 for parking per fortnight ($4.00 per days for 7 days)
  
• $100 food for me and canned food for the cats per fortnight
• $40 for everything else

Everything else includes, buying lunch at work occasionally, going out with friends from work, buying cross stitch supplies, birthday presents, christmas cards, plane trip home to visit mum and Alison in October etc etc.

All this is worked on my base pay.  I am often asked to work additional hours and some weekend overtime shifts but they are additional so I can;t rely on them.  Any that come through will certainly be put towards plane trips, presents, framing costs and helping pay off the Big Three faster.

So now I have a proper plan.  Barring anything wayward like spending hundreds of dollars per fortnight on car repairs or medical specialists, I should be a ble to manage this.

Given that my fortnightly income should be around $1500 (subject to change - as they are in the process of reclassifying all of our positions!) my simple set up is:

Money goes in to a BankWest account.
Money goes out to:

• Bendigo bank loan account (personal loan)
• Bendigo Bank credit card (credit card bill)
• ING Savings Maximiser Account (paying of Debbie)
• Bendigo Bank standard account (where all regular and irregular bills come out)

Given the very small amounts I'm working with I haven;t set up any investment accounts or short term money markets or anything weird.  Just simple, money in and then money back out to where it needs to go.

Any suggestions or thoughts?

WIP - Wild Thing

Ruby Slipper designs

Ruby Slipper designs

A project for Alison's 50th Birthday in late August 2010.

Dragonfeathers Afghan

Fantacat Designs

I've had the chart for years but only finally acquired the afghan fabric courtesy of Colours Down Under in July 2010.

Mel's Sunday Update

To start I'd like to say "I'm sorry" to everyone who has been expecting communication from me and hasn't been getting it.  The migraine pain is back despite the meds. Also despite the meds, the migraine has. never. gone. away.

The combination of the two has made me quite depressed and miserable. I'[ve been faking it well at work but I just don't have the energy to fake it at home, so I am sorry.  I will get to that backlog of correspondence as I can :(

On a happier note, I did force myself out in the sunshine yesterday and went to the WA Craft Fair.  In some respects it seemed smaller than the Craft & Quilt Show I went to back in May but the vendors and crowd here seemed to be more serious crafters.

There are apparently only two major craft fairs in WA annually.  Having been to both it seems like the May fair is the "oooh look honey, you always said you'd like to try X, lets get a beginners kit"  whereas the July Fair is "here's my shopping list of things I need and a notebook to jot down this year's trends".

I could be wrong but that's how it seemed to me.

I took a certain amount of cash with me and spent the lot, mostly on consumables.  A couple of hand-made food vendors were there - including a bakery opposite the ColoursDownUnder stall who was selling gluten free food.  I have enough GF bikkies now to last me a couple of months worth of meetings ...

Janine also had in for me the black afghan fabric required for Fantacat's DragonFeathers Afghan.  There was also some joking around about if I could get this one finished in time for the May Fair next year.  I stretched the fabric out this morning - EEP!  There are 32 blocks to be stitched on this - that's more than one block per week! Especially as I can't even start it until October!  And you know how hot Aussie summers are .... somehow I'm not sure this will even get started before May 2011.

The only other stitching related purchase was one piece of royal blue fabric big enough to stitch Golden Cat and Golden Peacock.  OH and I gathered supplies for another birthday gift, but can't talk about that here {grin}.

At present I'm frantically stitching Alison's (Best non-stitching friend) Wild Thing.  It suits her to a T and she's moving mid August back to Canberra, so this will be a combined 50th birthday present and housewarming gift.

Unfortunately I was disappointed yet again at the difference between the cover picture and the Real Thing.  The recommended fabric is Picture This Plus Cashel Heather.  In the cover photo the fabric looks a mottled blue.  When the fabric arrived, it was, as you can see in the photos, a mottled mauve/pink color.It did disturb me when I started because the cover pic was of cool tones and there is quite a bit of black and ecru in the border, but the warm Heather does seem to be quite fine so far ....

After that its onto a number of round robins (one current one and a couple I'm behind on) and then another birthday present and then I can start thinking abort stitching anything else :)

In the rest of life I'm just plodding along.  Stitching or in World of Warcraft when my migraines allow it, picking up any extra work I can to make the bills and then Gusty getting through each day.  Today I have been productive: I have stitched on Wild Thing, made a large batch of fried rice to take for lunches all week. Done the washing (its out on the line drying) and I have a loaf of bread in the oven.

The top photo is of Trubs protecting the bread as it is out in the sun to start to rise.  Yes it is covered in plastic so it wont dry out or get covered in cat hair :)

Just to mop the floors and change the cat litter and that will do for the housework :)  Tonight some of us from work are planning to go out to the Hare Krishna's Food on the Jetty. Lots of good vegetarian food, mostly gluten friendly and you pay what you can afford.  A few of us decided rather than going to a mid-range fancy restaurant, we would go here and spend the same amount of money and feel good that we are helping a charity. Apparently the food is superb and there's lots of it!

So that's my update.  Mmmmm - that bread smells ready to be taken out of the oven now :)

Damnit!

I just finished reading the latest Jim Butcher Harry Dresden book "Changes".

I was hesitant to start this book because I had already read a couple of spoiler-free reviews where people went "wait, you can't finish it there... "

So going into this book I felt I kinda knew this in anticipation.  As I was reading I was mentally going "oh right, I see,  I see where we're going.  Yep that makes sense."

I feel I have a relatively good idea of this author. Most of the big reveals were "well duh!  That was obvious because ...." and still an enjoyable read.

Until the last page.

I'm not sure I can forgive Mr Butcher for the last page. 
For it BEING the last page. 
For making me wait until March 2011.

For using the last page of the book to define the title of the book.

DAMN YOU!

Stitching Update: May - July 2010

Due to many factors mostly stemming from my migraine still being with me (started late March and here still here) I have been very quiet on my blogs and with my stitching.

The treatment for my migraine revolves around short-term medication leading to regular sleep patterns and lifestyle changes (both work and at home). As part of this, I'm getting back into my stitching and  reconnecting with the world again.  Anyway enough whinging, onto the update:

Stitching update!



In June I finished off poor Jasper in Bloom.  Jasper was a project I cross-stitched in May-July 2008 as one of my train commuter projects.  Unfortunately the back stitching was getting me down so I put him away.  I found him last month while looking for a different project, and decided to "be good" and just struggle through the back stitching.  The struggle turned out to be a mere two nights in front of the TV, and he was done.

A lesson there in building molehills into mountains and the fear is worse than the event and a few other platitudes.


I then, flushed with this success, went back to New York and finished it off completely.  The silver scroll-work was a pain to do on Aida but well it always is :)  This Vervaco kit, unlike Moscow, contained enough fibres to complete the whole project.  I've included a photo of the finish here so you can see that Vervaco uses generous fabric sizes in their kits.  If only they included evenweave or linen as an option...

In late June-early July my mum visited for a fortnight. Mum brought over all of her finishes so we took them down for a Show and Tell visit to Colours Down Under :)

While mum was here, I mentioned that I had a "Fall limited edition" range of Carrie's Threads that was released in a collaboration pack a couple of years earlier.  I hadn't given away any of the threads because they all blended well together but I hadn't found a chart that I could use them on.  Coincidentally, the next day Tracy released a new free pattern, Celtic Spiral, to those on the Inkcircles email list.  Mum and I pulled out those threads and some fabric and started stitching!

Unfortunately for the stitching, I introduced mum to World of Warcraft that night and no further stitching was done for the rest of the visit.  The day she flew home I sat and stitched the rest of this piece, all except for the last 10 stitches.  You see mum and I both chose one colour the same in our palettes and I gave the rest of the skein to mum to take home with her.  I was a) quite sure I had enough and b) given our history mum always finishes our collaborated projects months ahead of me. In this instance, I was wrong on both counts.

Mum has popped a length of the thread in the mail and when it finally arrives I will finish off this poor thing.  Or not.  I just found out that the direction of the project should have been reversed for the Southern hemisphere.  {insert expletive here}.

After that I became all enthusiastic about our private round robin group starting up again, so I pulled out the Historical Dress Sampler that went around last year. I had great plans to stitch up the rest of the grey border pieces to make life easier for placement for the others. In the next four weeks I stitched precisely 10 stitches on it.  I gave up and just sent it on as is.  I feel so ashamed that I just couldn't motivate myself enough enough to stitch on it.

After it went, I started a new project, a piece for a friend's birthday in late August.  So this is my focus piece for the next few weeks.  I'll put up a separate blog with pictures and progress on this project on the weekend.  I was going great guns until I found one row of the wording was out of alignment, so I've unpicked it.  Hopefully I can have that area restitched before Sunday.  I will once again be using the Sunday updates to help keep up my motivation.

And that's it - all my stitching over the past two months :)

On the nature of love and friendship

At work this afternoon I was chatting to a customer who told me a story about how her hubby (then boyfriend) had surprised her as few years ago. She had had a bad week at work and he working at one of the mine sites and wouldn't be back for a another few weeks.  Just before 5pm on Friday, one of the other women she worked with let him into the work area, and came up behind her, picked her up, twirled her around and then kissed her senseless.  She said it was like something out of a movie and every time she remembers it she automatically adds in "that hollywood swell of music".  She and her hubby still look very much in love and I suspect this incident was from more than a couple of years ago.

Thinking on this afterwards, I became a little depressed as I realised there was no-one in my life I could even fantasise about putting in that role.  None of my friends, no hotties from work... no-one.  I think this is the first time in my life I'm not even having a fantasy love life!

Then when I got home this evening I caught up on one of my favourite blogs and read the following in the comments section to a post:

See, the wonderful thing about being grown-up is that other people have finally lost the right to tell you exactly what that means, and you're free to choose. Except of course for very close friends, but really, you have to excuse them because they are, after all, close friends, and there is a certain level of irreverence that's to be expected when they tell you you're being an idiot. Although often they are being idiots with you, so the whole thing's a rather moot point in the end.*

... and quite a number of names came to mind!  In fact I feel a few of you will be reading this and going "YES! YES!" in a non-Meg Ryan-ish manner.

So while I may not have any person to cuddle or even many to brunch with right now, I do have a heck of a set of friends!  Far more than I deserve, and I thank each and every one of you for being there! For being my friend, and for being exactly who you are!


* If you want some context, read the blog post and all the other comments here.