Journey to Future Freedom

Tag: Finance

  • Budgeting…

    I had a recent conversation with a colleague and was blown away when he said he had no idea how much money he spent in a week. Back info he is a single male. I declared, “But you must know!” He said no he would have no idea. He just takes his pay check pays bills and spends the rest.

    This alone nearly gave me heart palpitations. I have a budget. To be honest it is one of the things I really enjoy doing each week(call me geeky). Some weeks it’s frustrating but most weeks I love seeing just how far we can stretch the money. We don’t live week to week, nor month to month. I budget based on annual expenses + 5% and I review this every monthish based on what we have coming up. We have sinking funds an emergency account and additional savings accounts. We are not wealthy but we are comfortable.

    I have trouble sleeping if I feel as though we are not prepared for the unknown. So it totally blew me away that he was so blase about how he spent his money. I think the frustration came from the fact that he often complains he will never be wealthy or have anything. I felt like shaking him and saying, “Do you realise how much you are wasting each week?” His opinion, life’s short it’s not worth worrying about.

    Luckily his finances are none of my business nor worth me stressing over but it did leave me thinking. What is the difference between him and I? Is it education? I often think about the legacy that we will leave for our children and Grandchildren but he has a child and Grandchild so it isn’t that.

    I know that I have always been interested in budgeting and how I can make my money grow with little effort on my part and because of this interest I have educated myself and spent lots of time reading up on these things.

    I feel as though a budget is a necessity and should be it’s own subject at school for at least one Semester. We wouldn’t have savings without a budget as it would all just disappear into the oblivion that is life.

    Do you budget or do you wing it ?

  • What do you do when you don’t like your job but you can’t leave?

    We own a collision repair business…so you crash your car we fix it. I kind of landed in it when the business started to grow. I left my job as a teacher and came to work with my husband and I am now the admin person. It’s been this way for 10 years now.

    Surprisingly we get along really well 99% of the time and the 1% is usually caused by outside influences. Working together is fine although I would love at the end of the day to ask, “How was your day?” and not already know the answer. It would be great to add to the list of things we get to discuss.

    The problem lies in the fact that neither of us really like the job. I am not a lover of cars and never have been. There is also the fact that the customer that comes to you has crashed their car or someone else has and therefore they are in a slightly heightened state of emotion over it already. Insurance companies take their time. Parts take forever to get to NZ if they are overseas and I am generally the bearer of shit news for the customer. Which I cop it for. I get that! But the reality is…I didn’t crash the car. I am the one trying to help get it fixed.

    There are very few decent staff available in our industry and therefore this limits the amount of work you can get through and creates a world of problems in itself. When you have shit staff you have a hard time getting rid of them and when you have great staff you feel constantly pressured to keep them happy.

    So where does this leave me. Sadly I have bills to pay and I feel kind of stuck so I guess the only way forward is an exit plan? It needs to be fairly solid as it’s not like one of us is walking away from a job we both are….
    What would you do?

  • Bartering- old fashioned or a way forward?

    We did a job at work for a very regular customer and yesterday. Not a big job just a quick and easy fix. A couple of hours later he came back into work with fish for us. Now if you live in NZ you know that fish is bloody expensive. It really doesn’t matter if you buy it or go out fishing for it. It is costly.

    So I was so grateful to have a meal of fish that would have cost us $50 if I had purchased it. Although being honest I wouldn’t have purchased it because I would deem it too expensive.

    Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the fish burgers and there was plenty leftover for lunches today. The dogs even enjoyed a small piece each.

    It got me thinking though. “How much could we reduce our groceries if we shared what we had? How much waste would be reduced if we shared what we had? How much time would be saved if we cooked in bulk and shared it?

    We often share surplus with others in Summer when there is a surplus of fruit available but honestly it’s never gone any further than that. Is it really an old fashioned way of trading goods and services or could we benefit from it? Hubby said it never works because the transactions are not equal. The exact reason money was brought in in the first place.

    What if we started sharing more of what we had without expecting anything in return. Would people then feel that they had to repay you?

  • Meet the Frugalwoods & Why/

    This book spoke to me! I am currently reading it again after getting to the end on Friday. It basically told the story of what I want to achieve. Having a why as to where you are heading on your journey is so important. Sometimes I feel as though my goals are just not even realistic and so to read about others achieving it really helped me focus on yes. This is achievable. It won’t look like their journey did as the cost of living in NZ is completely different from where they were. It will be our journey.

    My husband has worked every weekend for the last three and juggled kids sports in between so he can try and be there. This morning he said, “I don’t want to go to work today”. I could hear in his voice how much he meant it and I thought this is why we are on this journey. He very rarely complains about having to work and is the hardest worker I know by far. I am so proud of everything he has built up with our business and how hard he has worked to get us here but we can’t continue to work at the pace we are doing something that we really don’t like doing.

    This is my why. This is what keeps me focused. It’s what keeps me saying “No” when the kids are nagging for takeaways or treats. Don’t worry they aren’t completely deprived. They get plenty of treats…takeaways not so much.

    When you have a strong why then it makes staying the course so much easier. Especially on those days when you question whether it’s all worth it.

    When I started this journey I had no idea where it was heading and therefore decided to learn as much as I possibly could. Read everything I could find. Take the information that spoke to me and discard what didn’t. The journey is slowly becoming clearer. At the beginning I knew there would be a financial aspect to it but I didn’t realise it would .be the glue that allows the freedom to all come together.

  • 20% Planning 80% Execution

    I have always been a planner. I can make the numbers work out beautifully on paper or I can come up with itinerary that has the best intentions. However, I really fail on the execution!

    I have come over the past year to realise that the planning means jack shit if you don’t put it in practise and consistently.

    Let’s use saving money on takeaways as an example. It’s easy to cook every night for a week but then kids sports go later than planned, and one of us ends up working late and you find yourself thinking, “We will just stop for something on the way home.” It is such an easy trap to fall into. Then you think oh I’ll do better next month, but next month comes and the same thing happens.

    Well I put a stop to this!

    First thing I did was load the freezer with easy meals. You know the ones that are ready in 20 minutes, require very little cooking and best of all no thought! Tacos, Nachos, Soups, burger patties. This meant that I no longer had time as the excuse.

    The second thing I did, was point out that if we purchased takeaways then effectively one of us had worked late for “NOTHING” Lets say we spent $80 on takeaways, easily done for a family of four in NZ. Then the 2 hours working late had been completely in vain. Nothing more degrading than hubby walking in the door and me saying, “Welcome home, here’s dinner that you just paid for with the past two hours of working . It isn’t worth it!

    Gone are our days of takeaways- I think it’s been a good three months since we had them. Or so the kids keep telling me. Although I have noticed they have pretty much stopped asking. I prefer now to eat out on a special occasion where we can have one on one time together with no devices .

  • 2/365

    Well I forgot my entire handbag today. Good to know I don’t feel quite so tethered to it, I guess. So that meant no spend. I really didn’t factor in the school holidays though.

    I came home from work to an extra child for the night which meant changing up dinner to a meal that would fill the stomachs of teen boys that had been out biking all day so Mac and Cheese it was.

    Thought i’d throw a cake together for snack and morning tea for tomorrow and got half. way through it only to discover said teens had used all the eggs. So off I sent them to the supermarket with $10 and the don’t buy anything else spiel. Well they came back with the smallest pack of eggs ever and a bottle of soda water. Oh well. $7.50 spent.

    This is going to be so much harder than I thought. I spent some time today browsing the supermarket sites and man NZ food prices are horrendous. I know we are in desperate need of butter but $8.29 was the cheapest 500g block I could find. So we will be using it very sparingly from now on.

    Feel free to through suggestions on butter alternatives at me. For now I’m just using up the very large container of coconut oil I found in the pantry.

  • 1/365

    Day One of 365 saw me spend $4 on a loaf of bread. I managed to throw together a bento bowl using what we already had at home. In my rush I had grabbed chicken thigh fillets with the bone in for the meal so I got to work deboning the chicken so we could use it, thank goodness there was only one bone in each.

    The dogs sure were happy to munch away on the raw chicken bones. I looked at the price of these only and was shocked to see that buying the thigh this was is $10 cheaper per kilogram so for the extra few minutes we will definitely be doing this again.

    Crunchy coating was made using a Skinny Mixers recipe- I had no idea I actually had tapioca flour in the cupboard. I can’t recall the recipe it was purchased for either. It will be good to use up some of the stored items that we have. Not sure what will happen after that?

    One child was away for the night so there was plenty of chicken left over for todays sandwiches.

  • Financial Freedom

    What will this look like in the future? A future where I don’t have to rely on going to work every day at a set time in order to pay the bills and make ends meet. This week I read a book called, you guessed it “Financial Freedom” by Grant Sabatier.

    Wow- What an eye opening book. I thought that if I just saved really hard I would eventually get to where I needed to be but according to this book I have no hope – this thought led to a glass or two of wine. But once you get past realising that what you are currently doing is not working the book is full of the most amazing inspiration and it really makes investing in your retirement seem like something that anyone can do.

    While we have fairly solid Kiwi Saver funds that are on track to have we will need to retire at 65- who the hell wants to wait that long, who knows if we will make it that long! And sooo…my plan for this coming week is to open a managed fund. One that can build up money and wait for it I can access before I am 65!

    https://www.mightyape.co.nz/mn/buy/mighty-ape-financial-freedom-31779244/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product_listing_ads&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22013289064&gbraid=0AAAAADqxfikaN9DuHYvjFC9oyDAMSb26O&gclid=CjwKCAjwi-DBBhA5EiwAXOHsGbG3MarHbKXd6nXcTRkkhzRnPikA7X6PtDDWGCg16_R_-At6FbkIERoCZuoQAvD_BwE

    https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Financial-Freedom-Audiobook/1984846132?source_code=SEMPP30DTRIAL4520414230009&ipRedirectOverride=true&noapp=1&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=298131605&gclid=CjwKCAjwi-DBBhA5EiwAXOHsGf0pgDu7v9vD4t10twVVrs3RnhGVMqlxllBkgex1ipLT-GtC8leaIxoCfGAQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

    https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Financial-Freedom-Audiobook/1984846132?source_code=SEMPP30DTRIAL4520414230009&ipRedirectOverride=true&noapp=1&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=298131605&gclid=CjwKCAjwi-DBBhA5EiwAXOHsGf0pgDu7v9vD4t10twVVrs3RnhGVMqlxllBkgex1ipLT-GtC8leaIxoCfGAQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds