We had a great February, achieving our second highest savings rate ever!
We thoroughly enjoyed our pancake dinner for Shrove Tuesday yesterday.
We had some bills, some unexpected expenses and a weekend away- but still managed to save a lot. That’s exactly what we’re aiming for in 2017.
Poopsie spent the first week of February still away with work in a remote mining town. He had to get his groceries from expensive Woolworths, and also enjoyed some dinner and drinks out with colleagues. This inflated both our grocery and eating out categories a little bit, but nothing too drastic. He will be going back to the same town toward the end of March, this time for three weeks. We expect to again see an increase in those categories, but we’ll work hard to keep everything else low to compensate.
How I welcomed Poopsie home on his return.
Our suburb has finally got NBN and we decided to make the switch. We will save close to 40% a month from our old internet costs. It did however mean signing up to a new company, which included purchasing a new modem. Next month we will also have to pay our final bill at the old company with an exit fee. Even with the new modem and exit fee, we will still save a significant amount of money over a year by making the switch, so we are pretty happy with this.
We have recently had a very bad problem with ants. We tried everything ourselves, but this month I had had enough so we got someone to come out and spray and lay ant poison. It seems to have worked! We haven’t seen any ants since so that has definitely been worth the $185 we spent.
Finally, we spent a lovely weekend away in Noosa. This was a spur of the moment trip after Poopsie spotted a good deal online. We had a very nice and relaxing weekend, with lots of time spent in the pool. While we certainly don’t do these types of weekends too often, they’re very nice when they come up.
While we were in Noosa, we wandered around the Eumundi Markets.
Here are the rest of our February expenses:
| Category | Amount | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Gifts | $16.47 | A welcome home for Poopsie. |
| Internet | $111.00 | We signed up for our new NBN internet, which included a new modem. This will be much lower in future months. |
| Groceries | $474.06 | Over, but considering Poopsie's week away with work, not too bad. |
| Car Costs | $100.39 | Very low this month. We got a $40 refund from our E-Toll account, so this is reflected here. |
| Kids | $1,533.04 | Our first full month of paying our increased child support costs. |
| Council Rates | $336.55 | Quarterly rates. We got a small discount for paying early. |
| Mobile | $18.00 | Poopsie is back to paying for his mobile phone after the initial three months up front has ended. |
| Household | $322.84 | We got our house sprayed, bought some new CO2 canister for our sodastream and got Poopsie's antique clock repaired. |
| Miscellaneous | $43.00 | We joined the RACQ Loyalty program to get a discount on our electricity. The discount is more than worthwhile even after factoring in the joining up fee. |
| Mortgage Interest | $779.29 | Very low. Gotta love a short month! |
| Eating Out | $94.70 | A combination of laziness and celebrating Poopsie's return home. |
| Travel | $433.35 | We spent a weekend in Noosa. This includes our hotel cost, some groceries and some lunch at the Eumundi markets. |
How did you go with your spending in February? Did you hit your savings goals?
Congrats on your second highest savings rate ever!
It’s tough working away, especially if it means an increase to your expenses. Is Poopsie entitled to any compensation for working away from home?
It will be interesting when the NBN comes here. I’m in a very built up area so won’t need to switch for some time (if ever!) since at the moment the plan is still to have some offerings of the old internet in our area. I’ve had mixed reviews so far on NBN speeds so will be interested in hearing how it goes for you.
How great are Eumundi Markets! Well they were when I was last there quite a few years ago now. I loved the eclectic and peaceful vibe, and all of the recycled and eco friendly things.
Here’s to an awesome March ahead 🙂
Hi Miss Balance, thanks for dropping in. Yes, Poopsie does get a little bit of extra pay which is nice, but we’re still floored at the exorbitant costs- a mixture of Woolworths prices being higher than Aldi in general, and also probably a little bit more as it’s a remote town.
The NBN hasn’t connected yet, but we are looking forward to it. We occasionally stream, but other than that our use is very regular so high speeds aren’t super important to us. We shall see!
The ants are also crazy at our place! We get random infiltrations where we go to bed, then wake up to an orderly stream of thousands. They aren’t even fussy about where they break in – it could be the kitchen one time, then a bedroom, then the bathroom. We’ve been letting loose with the Ant Rid, but it’s time we stepped it up a notch. It’s a shame, because we like ants. It’s just gotten out of hand.
We’ve got the NBN – we had reasonable speeds before that, so I can’t say I’ve actually noticed a difference (although I’m sure if Mr. ETT wasn’t asleep right now, he would strongly beg to differ!) No matter what, though, that’s a great saving.
I hear you on the ants! These ones had no regular pattern and didn’t appear to be attracted to anything in particular. It was so frustrating. But, touch wood, they’ve been gone since we got them sprayed so I am very pleased!