It's About Time!

Today, I finally finished unpacking! I have been in my house for five weeks but had not yet unpacked everything. The third bedroom had sort of become a junk room, I had just dumped a bunch of stuff in there and forgotten about it.

But today, I went through it all. I am starting a nice little box of stuff to put on Ebay. I don't imagine I'll make too much from it but it will at least get me a little, plus it will get rid of the stuff I don't want!

So my house is definitely a home now :)

Oh, and it doesn't cost any money to spend your day at home cleaning!

Parking Rip Off

Today I had to pay $25 for parking! Such a rip off.

On the up side, I saw Inception and absolutely loved it!

Tim's Questions

Tim, a Canadian commenter, has asked some questions about the different facets of my mortgage. I thought I'd answer them in a post, in case anyone else out there is wondering.

I mentioned that I was using my offset account as my emergency fund. I'm not sure what other countries call this but basically, the offset account interest is applied straight to your loan. So let's say I earn $10 a month interest from a regular savings account. Come tax time, I would have to declare all of that interest and pay tax on it (no idea if this is the case in other countries). However, if I earn $10 a month interest from my offset account, that $10 is immediately applied to my mortgage and I do not have to pay tax on it at the end of the year. Another benefit is that I can take money from my offset account whenever I want. A lot of banks charge you to redraw on your mortgage, but you are not charged for taking money out of your offset account. I don't imagine it will make a huge difference to my mortgage, but it will make a slight difference and it will also reduce the tax I pay.

My mortgage is a variable loan. Tim asked if I could fix it for the life of the loan. I have read on a lot of blogs people who have fixed their loans for the entire duration. During my research before borrowing, I did not come across any loans that you could fix for the whole time. Most only allowed you to fix for three years and then reassess. Now I may have missed the ones that did allow you to fix for the whole time but as far as I know, this is not done in Australia. Unfortunate.

Tim also asked if I planned to rent part of my house, mentioning the basement. Tim, basements are definitely a North American type thing. I have never seen a house in Australia with a basement (though I'm sure some do have them). Attics are also not that popular here. I do have two spare bedrooms though and I have toyed with the idea of renting one of them out. I am not comfortable renting to a stranger and I don't know too many people in the area yet, so I will have to wait and see. It would make things a little easier each month though as I live in a fairly high-rent area.

Thanks for the questions Tim. Keep them coming!

I Still Have a Life

Angela left a comment on my last post, asking if I am still able to have a life on my budget. To put it simply, yes.

I will however concede that my life doesn't seem to cost as much as other people my age. I have only recently moved to this city so I don't have a lot of friends in the area. Once I graduated from uni, my friends and I all went off in different directions. I have made a few new friends here but for the most part, we're the stay in types. We have dinner at each others house (I can finally invite them to mine!) and do small things like go to the movies. I'm not much of a party person and am content just sitting around at someone's house, having a cup of tea and a good chat.

However, I am a girl in her early twenties. Of course I like to shop for clothes and like to splurge on certain things. It is important to me to be able to do that. I can definitely still do that, but don't seem to want to as much. Now, given the choice between buying a new pair of jeans and putting an extra $100 on my mortgage, I'd probably choose the mortgage, just to see it go down. It's such a good feeling.

I will make sure I still treat myself and still have fun, but I'll always have the mortgage on my mind and be working hard to get it down.

I hope that answers your question Angela!

Financial Stuff

An anonymous reader requested I talk more about the financial stuff of my house purchase.

Just to recap, I bought my house with my parents. They have a one third share and I have a two third share. We have separate mortgages so that we can manage it as we see fit, making extra repayments and whatnot. My mortgage is for $262 000 (it's already down to $259 000, yay!).

I got extra on my loan so that I could pay my car off, so I now own that outright which has significantly lessened my monthly burden.

I have an offset account with $10 500 in it. This is not only my emergency fund but also my savings account. I like to save up for large purchases like insurance, registration and the like. I prefer to put a little away each pay to ensure that when those bills do roll around, I'm not trying to find the cash for it. I will be saving up for these into my offset account, that way I am helping to reduce the interest I pay.

I have chosen to pay my mortgage fortnightly so I can pay an extra month per year. My minimum fortnightly contribution is $835. I have decided to pay $900 a fortnight, at least for now. Once I am more comfortable with this new idea of living in a house, I hope to increase that. I am also getting a pay rise in October, all of which I plan to put on the mortgage.

I don't plan to go crazy, still planning to save up for things like travel. However, if say I don't spend my entire grocery budget for the week, I will put whatever is left over straight onto the mortgage because I wholeheartedly believe that every little bit counts!

Any questions? Any advice?

I Love Being a Homeowner

It has been just under a month since I moved into my new house. I can't believe it! So far, so good!

This weekend just gone, I bought a dryer and a chest of drawers for my bedroom. I'm now done. There is nothing else I need. There isn't even that much that I want, apart from a couple of decorative type things. I don't have any outdoor furniture, but have two chairs I've put out there. So while I can't have guests sit outside with me, that's not a necessity.

Downstairs is all set up and nice and lovely. Upstairs however is still a little bit messy. My parents bought the last of my stuff down over the weekend so it's still quite messy upstairs.

I am slowly getting into a routine. I took my first turn at cooking on a weekend and freezing stuff and it has worked out well. It makes evenings so much simpler as when I get home from work, I am definitely not in the mood for much cooking. So now all I need to prepare is my veggies and the main meal part is all ready.

This weekend I am going to a nearby town (four hours away) to visit my sister's boyfriend. He has just joined the Army and is doing his training. This is his first weekend off and my sister cannot come down so I'm going on her behalf. Hopefully it will cheer him up a bit.

I have started trawling through old blogs looking for tips to save money. Any advice would be appreciated :)

I'm Back

I haven't had internet for the past three weeks, hence my lack of posts. I finally got it again yesterday so am back online. Is anyone still reading??