30 Nov

little boxes, made of ticky-tacky

Busy busy weekend. Dave had declared that he wanted Saturday to be See No One day and for us to just knuckle down and get on with sorting out the house, since we’ve been there 4 weeks now. I’d thought we’d done really well, the main rooms were all organised (except for the study) and the boxes were stacked neatly in rooms we didn’t really need, and we could cook and find clothes, so we must be about halfway through unpacking, right? So I went round and counted all the boxes still there and there were… 56. And we started with 74. So we’d only done 18 boxes. Eighteen boxes, and we could mostly function? What the heck is in all the others?

Well, there were 15 boxes of books (they are little boxes, honest), and Dave’s old study took 10 medium boxes to pack up, and I’m pretty sure mine was about the same, so that’s what, 35 present and accounted for. And there were probably eight or so of assorted kitchen stuff, so that’s 43, so that only leaves, um, thirteen that I can’t guess to the contents. But I’m sure it’s all really important stuff!

Actually, I’m hoping to cull a lot of it. I have a lot of STUFF that I don’t really need, but is really hard to let go of. I tried to declutter my study when I was packing but apart from dropping a couple of old programming textbooks into the recycling (I’m pretty sure NO ONE wants to know about coding in Pascal anymore), I didn’t really manage anything. But! Now we have to share one study instead of having one each, so I’m expecting that unpacking will go more like, “okay where does this thing go? Bugger it, it’s too hard, let’s just put it in this bin bag instead.” And don’t even mention possibly ebaying the things I don’t want, I’m sure there’s a whole subset of crap already in this category in those boxes.

Anyway, so I managed to unpack about five or six boxes of kitchen stuff, and I found places for it all, and it looks lovely! I love a well-stocked kitchen. There’s still a couple of boxes to go but they’re all about half done already as we needed things so they shouldn’t take too long. Next weekend we’ll tackle the debacle which is the pantry and then it will be DONE and BEAUTIFUL and I’ll spend my time opening cupboard doors and marvelling at the sparkly innards, until I mess it all up again in about a month.

Dave was busy too, he started putting together our study and dragged everything out of the front little bedroom, which we’ll be using as the nursery. Which is brilliant, except he dumped every single box into the spare room, and now I can’t get in to reach anything, like towels, or bedlinen, that I’d dumped on the spare bed until I got around to sorting out the linen cupboard. But that’s all part of the plan, apparantly, and at least now we can see the nursery, which is good because we really should get a move on with painting it and working out what the heck we need to buy for this baby, because I’ve been told giving birth is not something I can procrastinate on.

But, the kitchen! Have I mentioned how lovely it all looks, all organised and nice? And I can now walk into the games room as well, and see actual floor! Ah, it feels really nice. All I want to do now is get on and sort out the other boxes, bugger this going to work and sleeping and stuff.

26 Nov

thinking personal finance type things

I’m loving personal finance blogs at the moment. My head’s all filled with budgets and spreadsheets since we settled on the new house, so I like to read about other people doing it too, which means poking through the link lists of my current blogs to find new good ones.

Thing is, I’m noticing most of the ones I’m finding aren’t anywhere in the same place as me. In general the blogs I’m finding fit into three categories:

  • dealing with paying off consumer debt (credit cards, student loans, etc), and therefore being frugal
  • being frugal, either for the sake of it due to personal philosophy, or by necessity
  • aggressively saving to fund retirement, and therefore being frugal

None of these really fit me:

  • I don’t have consumer debt anymore; I did once, quite a lot, but that’s in the past. I do have debt, but it’s all real-estate related, and while I’d love to pay off my personal (non-tax effective) mortgage, I’m not interested in making it my sole focus (it would also take a bloody long time).
  • I do like to be frugal, but mostly I prefer to be smart with money to cut costs so we can indulge in what’s important to us. I am quite frugal in many ways, but some people would disagree because we’re buying a PVR soon and spent $150 on a dinner with friends last week.
  • And I shudder away from the “saving for retirement” goal. To me, “saving for retirement” has (probably unfair) connotations of having no life now so I will be safe at 65. Also, the bloggers are mostly American and concentrating on socking money away on Roth IRAs and 401(k)s. Our comparable thing in Australia is superannuation and while it’s good I don’t like the idea of locking money away where I can’t reach it for another 30 years. What if something bad happens and we need it? What if a really good investment oppurtunity comes along?

So I’d rather think of it as “wealth building”, which means learning more about investing in shares and property and the occasional fund, and gives a lot more flexibility. But finding blogs which match my situation is difficult and even when I do most of the commenters are in the other groups and I don’t relate to them, or their comments miss the point and are frustrating.

Here are some of my current favorite financial blogs:

Get Rich Slowly: JD is pretty much in the same position as me, what he calls the ‘third stage’ of personal finance but a lot of his readers are not, so his blog tends to be geared more towards them. Plus he’s American, so a lot of the advice he does give isn’t really relevant to me. Which is a shame, because he has a lot to share.

Dog Ate My Finances: Dog’s doing really well, and I like reading about her personal journey, simply because she talks about it, ups and downs and all. The comments are often frustrating though, a lot of her readers seem jealous that she’s doing so well when they’re not–or have been rubbed the wrong way by one of her comments–and therefore want her to fail, or are members of the ultra-frugal set and can’t relate to someone who has a higher tolerance for risk than they do.

Wealth is Good: Finally someone who writes about investing and wealth growing in a smart, non-conservative way (not that I am a major risk-taker). I love it.

Fru-gal: a recent find, and an Aussie living in London! So I can relate. I also like that she has a mix of topics, from iphone apps to specific savings tips to general musings on money and life and how to fit them together.

What I need is some more PF blogs that are in my same stage. No, what I really need is some Australian personal finance blogs, preferably with relevant advice for our situation, but if not then just some good personal stories that I can relate to. Hey I’ll take any blog if it’s got a good personal story, non-Australian, non-financial, whatever.

Have you got any for me?

18 Nov

get a life

Something bad happened on Saturday. Well, not bad, looking in hindsight, just unpleasant. Not nice.

Dave was away for the weekend and I’d taken myself off to the local shopping centre to look for some maternity clothes and generally have a pleasant time out; I don’t often shop so it was a bit of a treat to get away from all the boxes. Unusually, the undercover carpark was already full at 11am with cars circling round like vultures. I hate doing that so I decided to park out in the sun (that’s why we buy cars with air conditioning, dear Henry), but as I got to the end of the last row I noticed a guy getting into a car. Score!

So I backed up a bit to give him some room and put my indicator on, and then I realised I hadn’t quite backed up far enough, so I moved back a bit further, and my car hit something. Odd, I thought, had I reversed into the curb? I hadn’t thought I’d turned the wheel. And then I looked in the rear vision mirror and saw a big red angry face with a shouting mouth and I realised, oh shit, I’ve hit another car.

Look, I have no fucking idea how it happened. I looked behind me when I reversed the first time, there was no one there. The carpark row is at least 150m long and there was no one. There was maybe 15 seconds between my first reverse (and check) and the second. He must have come out of a parking space, there’s no other way. And I have no idea why I didn’t check the second time. It was stupid. In my defense, I’d not moved more than a foot and it was only a soft nudge but still. Careless.

Anyway, the parked car drove off and I, mortified, parked and got out. The guy with the red face drove next to me and wound down the window.

“Really well done,” he snarled. He was your typical older aussie bloke, maybe in his 60s, red faced, overweight, in a singlet. His car was a big old red Holden. If I had to put an occupation to the stereotype, I wouldn’t have said he’d ever worked in an office. And he looked really fucking mad.

I said, “I’m so sorry. Is there any damage?” Going into submissive mode. I mean, I was in the wrong, I felt stupid. And he was pretty angry.

His lip curled. “You have no fucking idea, do you?”

“I’m sorry, let me see, is there any damage?” I mean, how could there be? He had a big old car, I barely touched him. But still, my mistake, try to make it right.

He shook his head in disgust, and shouted, “You’ve no fucking clue lady. Get a life.” And then he sped off.

The whole thing was over in a second. And hey, there was absolutely no damage, not even to my little plastic hatchback (thank god Dave had the sportscar). But I was still really shaken. By his attitude, and by the fact that I did something so silly – the first time in 19 years of driving that I’ve hit anything – and so I went straight inside, found the toilets (which I needed anyway: pregnancy bladder), and shocked myself by crying my eyes out for 10 minutes.

I’m not sure why. I mean, I hate confrontation. I’ve never been bawled out like that. I was so embarrassed by what I did, and that anyone could have seen it. Also I’d had a bad dream the night before that had left me feeling sad and vulnerable to begin with. I was just so frustrated and angry, and I never got to stand up to him. It didn’t occur to me, I just rolled over and showed him my soft underbelly. As he drove away I got angry and I wanted to shout back at him, but the words wouldn’t come. It upset me for the rest of the day, I ended up just giving up on the shopping and going home.

What I’d really like to know is, why did it bother me so much? Yes, I’m crappy at confrontation, always have been. But why do I care so much that he yelled at me? He was clearly unreasonable. I barely touched him, I barely moved, there was no damage, his response was out of all proportion. But ever since then I’ve wanted to wind back time so I could shout back, Bite me, asswipe, I’ve apologised and there’s no damage so stop being such a fucking bully. But also, probably closer to the truth, is I want to say to the world, Hey! I am a nice person! I’m really smart and kind, and I do have a clue! Don’t judge me like that!

Maybe he’s right, and I do need to get a life.

18 Nov

as the dust settles

(This was written last Friday, but we have no internet at the house and my mobile reception stinks.)

Well, we’ve now been in the new house eleven days and I think we’re settling in nicely. It’s funny, everyone says moving is up there on the list of most stressful things you can do, and yet if you’d asked me in the last two weeks I’d have said, “oh I’m not stressed,” in the meantime bitching out poor Dave and being bad-tempered. Not exactly self-observant, me.

The stresses are just the usual niggly ones from finding out that all in a house is Not As It Seemed. We were a bit naive, we thought the house needed no work at all but it’s 20 years old so of course there are little things. Like some windows stick and not all have flyscreens, we can’t work the heating, and getting the internet sorted is becoming a pain. And we had no TV reception at first, even though the guy said he’d had Mr Antenna out and everything was HD ready. And oh my god, look at the cobwebs on the clothesline and what the hell were they thinking blocking access from the laundry door so down the side of the house is one big overgrown tunnel of creeper and cobwebs? And why have we only got one set of keys and what does this one do?

Like I said, only little things, but they seem huge when you’re standing amidst boxes feeling overwhelmed. I’m feeling better now though. Our brother in law crawled into the roof and discovered that Mr Antenna had indeed put a signal amplifier in but the guy had taken the external powerpoint for it (assuming it was the entire thing). But he brought it back when Dave asked, and turned out to be a nice normal sporty guy maybe 10 years older than us and not at all the mad old rip-off merchant I’d been picturing. We had a nice chat. Dave asked him some questions and I of course did my usual overly friendly thing and sucked up re the house, which went over as well as it ever does, but anyway. Afterwards we felt so much better, and then Dave listened to my meltdown over how when you buy a house you get all this other stuff you don’t want (like the tunnel o’ spiders and the unfenced spa) and pointed out, gently, that it was ours now and we could do what we want. Which, you know, I hadn’t thought about.

So anyway, the past week or so has been all about settling in. I thought we were doing really well with the unpacking until I counted the boxes and there are 56 left. We started with 74, so we’ve only unpacked 18 boxes. What the hell? What’s in all those boxes? And where’s it all supposed to go?

It’s a nice house though. Despite the cobwebs. Even the budgie likes it.