Tag Archives: money

Switching Off

May 20, 2013 Musings

A week or so ago, I got rid of my iPad. It started last year, when I turfed the iPhone. Remember I mentioned that I never used it? Initially, I think the house fire changed us for the worse. We did without a lot of basic things for a couple of weeks. Then the contents payout came. We got maximum payout, and BAM! The frustration of doing without, the feelings of loss, the grief of losing most of our baby photos, all came to a head.

Yes, we first bought all the things we needed. We replaced our clothes, our chest freezer, wardrobes, towels, bed linen, and so much more. Now, being the good little  bargain shoppers we are, we had quite a lot of money left over. When you have a lot of self-pity about your situation and a large wad of money, that’s a recipe for disaster. It’s all too easy to tell yourself, ‘we’ve been through so much, poor us! We deserve to treat ourselves.’ I still don’t think it’s a bad thing to treat yourself anytime, but yeah, I still believe we deserved some happiness after the fire.

But buying things is such a short lived way to make yourself happy. When we first started replacing our basic need items, it made us feel really good, as I think it would for anyone. The trouble is, once all our things were replaced, we just kept on going, to enjoy that feeling over and over again. Some Prada sunglasses here, some designer handbags there. An upgraded iPhone, an iPad. We bought the kids a lot of toys, and fun things, because they’d lost so many in the fire. My eldest daughter lost most of her special things, including birthday presents. But then we just kept going.

When you’re buying so many things in quick succession (and I will point out all these things were bought with our bargain shopping mindset intact), it’s like this constant rush. I won’t lie; it’s nice to have bought a few things we don’t necessarily need just for the enjoyment of it. But a lot of it was just stuff. Stuff which takes up too much space. Stuff which makes it harder to find other stuff. Stuff you have to clean around and trip over.

For me, the technology stuff was the biggest lesson. The iPad was cool. It still impresses me  as to the things it can do, the convenience. The problem is for me, it was a little too convenient. I, like most people I’d imagine, have a lot of things to do during any given day. I do my best to get them done. I was realising a few weeks ago, though, just how easy it is to grab an iPad ‘for a second’ or ‘a few minutes’ simply because I could. I didn’t have to wait for the computer to start, I could just quickly look at facebook, twitter and my favourite sites.

I’d run a bath. Now, being an old house, running a bath for someone can take a long time. So, I’d say to myself, ‘well, while I’m waiting, I’ll just have a look at the iPad’. Never mind that there are a gazillion other things I could be getting done during that time. I’d go sit outside to enjoy the picturesque views of the mountains, and guess what I’d do? ‘Oh well, since I’m sitting down, I’ll look at my iPad.’ My partner  would want to talk to me, and I’d tell him to be quiet because I was reading. Charming.

It kept building up like that. A minute here, a minute there, still getting some things done, but running around like a headless chook to do them, with this messed up perception that I had no time to do them all. I do have time. It’s just that all those seconds, those minutes grabbed on the go, well, they add up.

It was easy to get rid of the iPhone, given I rarely to never used it. The iPad was different, obviously because I was using it regularly. But I came to a point where I felt that this wasn’t what I wanted from my life. This wasn’t how I wanted my kids to think life is lived. That we need to check in with the net every once in a while. No one will ever convince me the internet is evil. I love it. I benefit from it greatly everyday. I just think now, that I needed to put the internet for me, in its rightful place. It’s great to be connected to the rest of the world in such an instant way. It’s just that now I’m learning it’s not healthy for it to be so constant. I’d always justify it by telling myself I wasn’t on there for hours. That’s true, I wasn’t. By telling myself, ‘just a sec,’ I could convince myself I was limiting my usage. Thing is, when it’s so portable and doesn’t even take time to load up, you can be connected constantly without even realising it.

I see so many people of all different ages, doing the thumb shuffle on their smart phones. It’s depressing to look at. I felt so smug; that’s not me. I was using my smart phone so little I got rid of it! See how wonderful I am? Are you impressed with my self control? I’ve come to realise that the only reason I didn’t get so hooked on my smart phone is because I hate squinting at the small screen. I was using my iPad the same way others use their smart phones. Maybe I wasn’t taking it down the street with me because it’s not as small. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to feel like some sort of a twisted little cyborg anymore.

I’m still connected, and always plan to be. I’m still learning to curb my internet usage. I’ll probably always need to find ways to tame the urge. Now, though, it’s different. I’m loving having to wait for the laptop to start up. I’m loving being able to tell myself, ‘it’s not worth stopping what you’re doing right now to wait for that thing to load,’ then getting on with living my life. Doing the things I thought I had to rush around to do because of my perceived lack of time.

I mentioned just the other day how I’ve started enjoying Keek. My partner and I very nearly agreed that because I finally had a use for a smart phone, maybe I should just get a cheap one? It bugged me for a while, then I realised, my partner has a smart phone. He shares it with me anytime I ask, and I don’t ask often. Why is our first thought to go out and buy a second one?

I think I’m just so tired of the waste. My wasteful thinking, trying to shake wasteful spending habits and watching the waste go on all around me in this world. I’m just going to share my partner’s phone.

I think I’m slowly waking up. Waking up from this electronic stupor.

2 Comments

Making it More Simple

January 16, 2013 Family, Food, House, Musings

Remember when we first moved into this house, and all I showed you of the kitchen was the window? There was a very good reason for that. You see, we moved from a house with a much larger kitchen, to this tiny little postage stamp-sized one:
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When we arrived here, you could barely see the kitchen for all the boxes of stuff everywhere. This kitchen is old, small, with little cupboard or bench space. I’ve worked out, from sheer stubborness, that you have to do things a lot differently in a kitchen like this with a family of five.

Until I made some big changes, I wasn’t able to keep this kitchen clean or cook easily.

I started by getting rid of a lot of our plates.

 

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These aren’t all our plates. But I had to get our plate storage and usage down to the barest minimum. That means five of each plate type and no more: dinner plates, bread and butter plates and bowls. This lets us actually fit our plates into the cupboard and doesn’t let them pile up when they’re dirty on the non-existent bench space. I’ve done the same with cutlery, and will be attacking my other cupboard full of cookware soon. In doing this, I’m hoping we’ll be able to store more food in the kitchen, as opposed to other parts of the house.

I also want to eventually change my plates over to vintage ones. Vintage plates are much, much smaller. If you look below, you can see that my modern dinner plate on the left is almost the same size as my vintage Corelle platter! No wonder our nation is becoming obese. Now, although I need to eat more, not less, I think this’ll give healthier portion sizes overall for the family. Not just that, but more cupboard space.

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I’ve learned  that you cannot  function in a kitchen this size without a good compost system. I’ve also learned that the less stuff I have in a tiny kitchen means I’m not cleaning for nearly as long. Dishes only take ten minutes tops to wash, and the kitchen itself, the same amount. I’ve never enjoyed cleaning, and I don’t want to look back on my life to see that I’ve spent lots of that time cleaning.  It spurs me on to simplify further.

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I know this isn’t a fancy, McMansion style kitchen. I don’t like the style of it, nor the lack of cupboard space. But, it’s a small sacrifice to make for home ownership. I would never want to buy the most expensive, fancy house when I have a young family. I don’t think it’s worth the financial and time strains on everyone. I think as a society, so many of us expect new, new, new when it comes to buying a house these days. Generations before us would buy something modest and take years, decades in some cases, to do it up to their liking.

We have all the time in the world to make home improvements, and I think a lot of people forget that. Generations before us didn’t have as many problems as this generation, just paying off their house and owning it. There are so many families buying outrageously priced houses in Australia, that they cannot afford, even if both parents are working. With loads of mod cons they just don’t need.

Of course, if that is the choice others make, then I will respect that. I’d just like to point out to anyone who believes the myth that this is the only option, you’re wrong. Clearing out our kitchen has made me realise just how little we need to be comfortable. And as ugly as our kitchen is, it’s made me happier to release the burden of the ‘stuff’. A burden has been released from me.

I look at our little country kitchen, and it drives home how old it is. It’s not 100 years old like our last place (which had a more modern kitchen). But it’s still really old. It makes me wonder why kitchens were so much smaller in those days. Was it because families grew their own veges, rather than store it all inside? Was it because families made everything from scratch? Probably.

The truly wonderful thing about this kitchen though, is that when the day comes when we can afford to modernise it, I’ll have less stuff, and be able to make more room for food storage and bench space. For such a tiny space, it won’t cost nearly as much as a McMansion kitchen. Brilliant.

On the topic of a more simple life, I’m going to give a little update on how my partner is going after his accident. Initially, we thought he only had a dislocated thumb. The x-rays came back clear for the bones in his chest. You can see the bruising that came up the next day from the seat belt:

 

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Now, at the hospital, we unfortunately got Dr Incompetant dealing with my partner. Which means, that with the bruising my partner had from his seatbelt, he should’ve been treated as though he had a clinical fracture to the ribs, which can’t be detected via x-ray. He didn’t. My man developed this lump over his ribs, and it started hurting when he breathed.

He went to our new, good doctor, and it turns out that the lump is a haematoma, which often happens with a clinical rib fracture. New doc was unimpressed that my partner had been sent home with such an inadequate amount of pain killers, and no instructions not to lift things. If he lifts anything too heavy, the fracture won’t heal well. It’s just lucky he had the dislocated thumb which prevented him from lifting much at all in the early days.

My partner’s accident is, unfortunately, known around town. Kind of like ‘the boy who lived’, he’s the guy who should be dead! The one who, if he’d hit the tree on his side with the impact that the passenger side took, he wouldn’t be here. Since then, sadly, someone else in town has died in a car accident. It makes us realise we are extremely lucky people.

Our lesson this year, I think, is to learn to live life much more simply, and to allow ourselves to enjoy it. Everyone deserves that.

We also got our car replaced very quickly, thankfully. We decided on a sedan this time, instead of another petrol-guzzling SUV, and are already loving the savings! I look back at so many of our choices over the years, and while yes, we got the house purchases right, we’ve made so many other spending choices that could’ve been better. We’re good at bargain shopping, which is great. But  we can do so much more, by downsizing our perceived needs. By not just buying something bigger at times we’ve thought, ‘well, we can’.

 

 

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I’m going to be simplifying our entire house this way, it’s going to be a big job! But how can I say no, when it frees up so much cash flow for us, and makes day to day life easier?

10 Comments

Can You Get a Pension if You’re a Home Owner?

January 10, 2013 House, Musings

I‘m going to need to give you some context to my being motivated  to write this post. I was in a discussion here about Macklin’s idiotic claim she could live on $35 a day. I want to make it clear that this post is not about that. Ok?

I joined in the conversation in the comments below that article. Here’s what I wrote:

We’re both on the pension with three kids. We own our house outright, so that makes budgeting a LOT easier. We have some nice things, but we always bargain shop, and we’re always looking at ways we can spend less.

We live rurally, so that cuts down a lot of expenses. My partner was working full time when we had our last child, and I was doing a little work from home from time to time. We have both agreed it would not be fair to bring another child into the family now that we’re on this budget.

We’re also trying to figure out ways to get one or both of us into the workplace in the future. It could be a long road towards that, but for now, we have to focus on getting my partner as well as possible. We dont really know what ‘as well as possible’ means for him yet.

I think most people on benefits are doing the best they can. We always have to look for ways to spend more wisely. My partner and I try to do that, but still try to allow for some joy in life too. It’s not just something we can ‘get off’ in three months, so we do allow for some wants as well as needs, but we just try to be moderate with those.

Now, here’s what sparked today’s blog post. The reply I got:

 How is it possible to claim the pension when you own your house outright? Wouldn’t you redraw from your house during difficult times instead? I see so many friends struggling to get into the property market, working long hours etc. It seems unfair that you have paid your house off and are still able to obtain a pension?

Oh deary me, Anonymous, what a shit I’ve been. All this time your friends have been working hard and not owning a home, I’ve been living the high life and just rubbing your noses in it.

As for my partner, well, what can I say? He’s just a selfish prick in the face of you. He really was a dickhead to turn grey, have something resembling a heart attack (tests on that remain inconclusive), and not do a terribly good job of breathing. He really should have tried harder to suck more oxygen into his paint poisoned body so he could continue to spray paint the cars you drive and powdercoat the furniture you use. But no. That bastard instead, had to go to hospital for two weeks, on your tax dollars, mind you, instead of just picking himself up and  going back to work. He should not made such a convincing show of looking like he was going to die and leave his missus and three kids behind. Oh boy, I tell you, he had me fooled!

The way he made his skin turn dark grey and his eyes sink into his head was diabolical. But you know what these welfare bludgers are like, always fooling everyone.

Look, I’m with you. I don’t believe he was hallucinating and seeing bugs crawling all over  the house. When he coughed and vomitted, I reckon it was fake blood. I don’t think for a minute he left the gas stove on when we lived in Sydney because he lost his sense of smell temporarily, he was just too lazy to turn it off. He wasn’t overeating because he’d lost his sense of taste temporarily and never felt liked he’d eaten, he was just greedy, like all welfare bludgers.

Encephalitis is no excuse to be not working. Neither is mental illness. You’ve got two bloody arms and legs, you should be able to walk out that door and go to work. I’ve tried to tell him I don’t care if you have agoraphobia, but he just doesn’t listen. Bloody centrelink bludgers.

And look, don’t get me started on the injustice of him owning a house because his mum died and left him an inheritance. I know, it’s not fair at all. Why can’t it be your friends’ mothers who get to die? I can understand why you’d wish to be in our shoes, because let’s face it, who doesn’t enjoy grief? I mean, that in itself does wonders for someone mentally ill.

You see, Anonymous, I’m with you. We have a charmed life. It’s not everyone who gets to have all these experiences that lead to them needing a disability pension, and a pension for the person looking after them. There’s plenty of other wonderful things we get to experience too. I feel sorry for you that your kids and yourself have never been screamed at because the kids got to bed at 7:01pm instead of 7pm. My man has this silly idea that seven is his safe number, goodness me, anyone would think he was mentally ill? It’s not fair you don’t have that in your life. And you really haven’t lived until you’ve spent those first two years since your partner  got sick, on permanent suicide watch. Woe is you.

And you know something? When he used that inheritance to buy his family a house, I thought he was so stupid. What sort of an arsehole father tries to give his family a roof over their head, just in case he dies and leaves his missus a single mother? I was LOOKING FORWARD TO PAYING $320 A WEEK ON THE SINGLE PARENT PENSION, YOU DICKHEAD!! It would have been character building for me to drag my three kids up, but no. He had to take that away from me. Prick.

I’m telling you now Anonymous, since he didn’t end up dying, I feel like a fool. Being able to pay my electricity bill without panicking just makes me feel like shit knowing friends like yours have to work for it. I was looking forward to scraping money together after paying everything on rent, to be able to clothe my kids and feed them.

I was wrong to envy friends like yours who are able to work. Because I own a house and they don’t. I clearly have it better than they. I like meeting new people and when the question comes up, ‘where do you work?’, because it means I get to rub their noses in it and say, ‘hey, we’re both on a pension,’ because that always impresses  new people.

None of my contributions to society are of any use to you good, tax  paying folk. Not the taxes we used to pay when we worked, not the GST we pay now. It doesn’t benefit anyone that we’ve moved to the country and buy lots of fresh produce directly from the farmers. Our money doesn’t support these farmers at all, because it’s dirty pension money, and not as good as yours.

Any charities we contribute to are not even worth spitting on. Nothing we do is worthwhile unless we are leaving the house and getting paid to work. When my partner is well enough to test the waters to see if he’s ready to start work again, he’ll probably ease into volunteer work first. And I’m telling you now, that’s not helping bloody anyone. If you’re not getting paid for the work you do, and paying taxes on that work, it means jack shit, and I’m gonna tell him so. See how he likes those apples.

I’m also sorry Anonymous that I’m such a selfish bitch. I really should just leave my mentally ill partner and three kids at home to rot, while I go out to work. Why can’t they just all fend for themselves? I really wish I had that crystal ball to know my partner was going to get sick, because hey! You and I both know, why have kids if you can’t afford them, amirite?

So, I’m sorry life is unfair for you, Anonymous. I’m sorry you have it so tough. I kneel down before you and kiss your feet. Thank you for your tax dollars, and I sincerely apologise that our existence inconveniences you so much. We are nothing but con artists, and no one has even sent your memo to Centrelink to tell them that pensioners aren’t allowed to own homes. I mean, we told them about the inheritance, and about the house we bought, and they didn’t seem to care. I mean, what the fuck? Has no one told Centrelink how you, Anonymous, thinks life should work? What you think the rules should be? Or maybe they have, but it’s just that no one gives a shit what a small minded Anonymous, armchair critic ZERO thinks. Must really suck to be you.

 

 

 

20 Comments

The $96,000 House

August 31, 2012 Country Living, House

mountain life

 
I always thought our next house would cost more than the $110,000 house we’ve just sold. This house just cost us $96,000 after some haggling! It’s so much more beautiful than our last one. I don’t always like to discuss the cost of things, but in these tight financial times, a bargain should be shared, right? I like to let people know that affordable houses are still out there. I’m so thrilled that we found one in such a beautiful town with so many conveniences nearby (unlike the last town we just left).

 

We haven’t fully unpacked and set up this house yet, but we’re working on it! Here’s a few things I’ll show you that I love about our new place so far:

 

Our cute kitchen window. Today, I was at the kitchen sink when it began to snow heavily; big, fluffy snowflakes. In this window it feels as though I’m spying on the snow up close, seeing more of the feathery details of the flakes. Pretty exciting when you haven’t seen snow since you were three years old! This will be our first room to renovate, because it’s small and really old.

 

We have these style windows throughout most of the house. It makes our home feel so cosy. This is Missy 4 and Mr 6′s shared bedroom window. They like to watch the snow here from their beds, look at parrots and kittens that visit our verandah.

This is one of my favourite parts of this house: the fireplace in our master bedroom. It’s so quiet at night here. We can’t hear anything but the fire flickering. We drift off to sleep, watching the flames make orange patterns on the walls. This room gets a lot of sunlight, and I’ve spent many a happy afternoon so far on my bed, basking in the sun, fire burning, reading. I have some book reviews coming up very soon, so stay tuned for that! It’s been lovely to read so much again.

I can’t wait to show you more of the house as we settle in.

16 Comments

The $110,000 House

February 10, 2012 Country Living, House

Last year, I started what  was to be a facebook page for a new blog I was planning to write. That page was called, ‘Back of Buggery’

Given that this is a personal blog, I’m going to incorporate Back of Buggery into this blog. So if you think you’ve read this post before, chances are you have – in the form of a note on the ‘like’ page. Because I’m shutting down my other projects to focus on just one blog, any posts about living in the country or our house will henceforth be known as a Back of Buggery post at Funken Wagnel. (Please keep in mind that this post was written last year, so some things have changed since it was written)


I‘ll start with a bit of background: our family consists of two parents and three kids. We were living in Sydney over a year and a half ago. Rent was crippling us. Our house was a pissy little two bedroom cottage, and overcrowded. We needed to move into a bigger place. The trouble was, if we stayed where we were, then that would mean impossibly priced rent! Even to move to suburbs nearby outside of Sydney were expensive. My partner became sick with paint poisoning from work, and all doctors and specialists implored him to get out of Sydney for his own health (think smog, bad lungs, etc…)

 

Then, my partner came into an inheritance. Half of the sale of his mother’s house. We were always going to buy a car, as we’d been car-less for about five years. Then, it occurred to us; what if we could buy a house outright?  No mortgage, no rent? It seemed insane.

 

However, we felt it didn’t hurt to look. We scoured realestate.com.au for months on end, for hours on end. We came close many times, but often the prices were just above our budget. As we became more proficient at refining our searches, and learning which towns were cheaper, more and more options seemed to pop out in front of our very eyes!

 

We stuck with it. I mean really… to go from paying $320 rent per week to nothing? That’s a massive reduction in our cash flow! We narrowed it down to a few options, and settled on the house in the photo. A 100 year old cottage in the middle of nowhere, with a shop attached to it. It has three bedrooms, and the shop has an office attached, which we are considering maybe turning into a bedroom for my partner and I. In the meantime, our two daughters share a room.

 

Of course, at that price, and being so old, this house needs a lot of work. Soon, I will share photos of different parts of the house, talking about what we like, and what we need to repair or would just like to change.

 

 

 

 

 

4 Comments
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