Saving dollars & cents – Bulk buying at the supermarket

I quick review of my weekly outgoings revealed that a significant proportion of my money was being utilised by my grocery bill. The amount was actually quite surprising, considering that I am buying only for myself and a cat.

My review further indicated that I was shopping on almost a daily basis. This practice in itself is not productive. I would buy small volumes of items I needed and invariably, there was one impulse item or another that I bought. If I was strong and avoided everything else, the pull of the confectionary aisle was always too strong. I’m still waiting for the day that since finds that excessive intake of chocolate is healthy. Until then, I try to avoid consuming too much for my waist line and my wallet.

Back to the main point, the daily visit to the supermarket was a waste of time, petrol money and I was paying a premium by purchasing items in small quantities. On the whole, the larger the quantity, the lower price you pay per kilo/pound. It therefore is more cost effective to buy in bulk.

The definition of bulk will vary for each person and their situation. For instance, buying 40 rolls of toilet paper might be practical for a large family. For me, 40 rolls of TP would last me an eon, in addition to being a lot to store. Conversely, I could probably get away with buying am individual toilet roll but it would not be very efficient financially. You have to strike the balance that works for you.

For the most part, I find that buying bulk has the largest impact with meat products, which tend to be one of the higher ticket items in my basket. I won’t buy a whole cow or 10 chickens, only an amount that will last me 4-5 days. The larger packs are usually less per kilo and it is easy to save several dollars per shop by purchasing bulk quantities.

As indicated, I only shop for 4-5 days of meat product. Ideally, larger quantities that would last me much longer would be financially better practice. I have a quirk though that I think that freezing meat effects the product. For a ‘normal’ person, buy much more!

I have started to apply a bulk buying philosophy to my grocery shop. I am confident that I should be able to reduce my grocery bill by 20%, in addition to the abovementioned reduced petrol costs and savings in time. For someone with a higher quantity demand and has the ability to shop less frequently, I’m certain that 30% or more is definitely achieveable.

One last rule is to use the savings for the purpose of savings or reducing debt. Saving money to include additional items in your shopping basket is not the aim, it’s about reducing the overall grocery bill. Leave the extra money in your own pocket, don’t use it to increase the profits of the supermarket.

 

 

Mid-Century Dining Chairs Restoration

I woke early Saturday to drive out to the ‘Tip Shop’. The Tip Shop only opens on Saturdays and sells items that have been discarded at the dump. Money from sales goes to charity.

I had never been to the Tip Shop, even though it is only a 10 minute drive from my home. In my mind, I expected that items would be broken and beyond repair. However, as I keen to pursue my interest in recycling/upcycling furniture for sale, I drove out for a look. I had heard that the best items were picked up early in the morning, so I arrived shortly after open time.

What I found was a warehouse crammed with everything conceivable and streets full of cars. People were milling around everywhere to find a treasure. The items inside (and spilling outside) were in remarkable serviceable condition. A lot only needing a bit of spit and polish to be used.

As I’m only new to the game, I decided on investing initially in a couple of chairs only. The chairs were a bit tired in appearance with faded lacquer on the wooden frame. What attracted me to them was that the vinyl seat and backrest were in good condition and that the chairs had a mid-century style. Also attractive was the $6.00 purchase price for both. You can’t buy $5.00 with 6 bucks, so I was happy with the buy.

I have decided that my goal is to find items within 10kms of my home. I don’t want to lose potential profit in petrol costs and time. I also have a low budget of $20 or under, so any loses are minimised. If I start making money, I may review the price limit if I deem the item is good value for money.

On arrival home with my new chairs, I had a quick look on Gumtree and located a desk for sale that was free. Free is my favourite price, so I called only to find that someone else had already expressed interest and would be around to collect. No big deal I thought, I will work on the chairs.

The remainder of the day I spent dismantling the chairs and sanding them. Under the faded and chipped lacquer I found wood with a pleasing grain. I oiled the chairs and ran some soap and water over the vinyl and they came up a treat. I listed them on eBay starting at $20.00. With sandpaper and oil, I probably have $10.00 invested in total, so doubling my money should be the worst result in my opinion. I will disregard labour costs as I would definitely run a deficit, even a base labour rates. That said, I enjoyed the restoration process, so it wasn’t a wasted day for me.

While watching TV that night, I received a text from the person giving away the desk that the interested ‘buyer’ had disappeared. I arranged to pick up early on Sunday morning.

The desk was a minor disappointment in that it was mostly MDF with a wood like coating. Other than being dusty though, it was solid and had almost no damage. I drove away with it in my ute trying to think how I could make the desk a bit more desirable.

For some reason, I don’t like to buy and sell straight away to make a profit. Somehow, I consider it unethical and that I should input time and effort into making the item better than when I purchased it. As the legs on the desk were wood, I sanded them back and covered them with a coat of poly.

In hindsight, taking the flat-pack legs apart without taking detailed photos first wasn’t the best idea, as reassembling the trestle leg setup took almost as long as the sanding did. In the end though, I was pleased with the outcome. I posted the desk on eBay with a starting price at $20.00 also. All up I probably have no more into the desk than $5.00.

Anyway, the chairs and the desk have been listed and I await the outcome in 5 days. Here’s hoping for a profitable financial outcome. Ideally, I would like to generate enough money with my furniture sales to cover my weekly grocery bill. I eat a lot, so this is no small order, so we will see how we go.

Saving dollars & cents – Baked Beans

I have been told that when you have money you eat steak. When you’re broke you eat beans. Well, I like baked beans and eat them when I’m flush with money or when the purse strings start to tighten up.

I live by myself, so the unfortunate flatulence normally associated with eating baked beans is of no issue to anyone but me and the cat. I will note that through frequent eating of baked beans, my digestive system has adapted and I don’t have a gas reaction to bean consumption.

Admittedly, I’m a sucker for a fart joke but will move on to more mature discussion. I genuinely enjoy baked beans. I like the flavour, texture and they fill me up. I prefer to eat them cold straight from the can. I rarely go a day without eating a 420gm can of baked beans. I just like baked beans! The cans of baked beans can be sometimes loaded with too much sodium but other than that they are healthy and provide a good source of fibre.

ok…maybe one long fart joke before I move on….sorry!

Anyway, in line with my transition to the frugal way, I started to take more time in the supermarket to determine what brands of baked beans are the most economical, while still retaining decent taste. The following is my review of the most common baked beans brands:

Heinz – For me, Heinz produces the best baked beans. The beans have good texture and the sauce is flavourful and has a pleasant consistency. However, at a normal retail cost of $2.15 a can, they are the most expensive. I do find them at half-price quite frequently, so stock up when I can. 9/10

Homebrand – These are the cheapest at $0.65 per can. In this situation, you get what you pay for. The sauce is watery in consistency and flavour. Only edible for me if drained. 3/10

SPC – I usually find these beans for $1.15-$1.30 a can. Beans are good and sauce is decent. A fair way from the quality of Heinz but they are not bad at all for the price. 6/10

Corale – A really good, cheap baked beans. $0.85 a can, so definitely on the lower end of the pricing. The sauce is fair but it is the beans that are a stand out for me. For lack of a better description, I would call them ‘al dente’. There is a slight firmness to the bean that is not present in other brands that I really enjoy. They are my second choice behind Heinz in preference and first as far as cost. 8/10

I haven’t included the organic baked beans available. On the whole, they are more expensive then most, so I don’t eat them. Obviously, you could save additional money by making the baked beans by scratch but time is a valuable resource for me, so I take the quick and easy way to obtain my baked beans fix.

I’m sure that someone submitting a blog on the prices and virtues of various baked beans is uncommon, however, I am committed to providing information of where I am finding options to save on my grocery bills.

Pennies saved today adds up to dollars over time. Not every step towards early retirement has to be a big one. Any step forward is a positive one.

 

 

 

Saving dollars & cents – The frugal beauty of the succulent

I was at work some 20 odd years ago, when I made a passing comment to a colleague that I liked the plant on his desk. To my surprise, he arrived the next day with a cutting of the plant. If there was a level less than zero, that was my knowledge of plants. They were just green things my mum had in the garden.

My colleague advised me that the plant was a Jade plant and it was considered to be good luck. I flooded him with questions about how to care for it, what soil to use, what sized pot, how many times should I water it, etc etc. His response, with a bemused smile, was to put it in soil, give it a water and leave it be.

How right he was. I often neglected my Jade plant for weeks on end and still it thrived. With the knowledge that I obviously had a green thumb, I frequented the garden nursery for new plants every weekend. I applied the same principle of minimal plant care that I had to my Jade plant to find that they often went to plant heaven within a month. However, in the meanwhile, my Jade plant was still healthy and growing.

I decided I should so some of research about my Jade plant. Bear in mind that this was the early days of the internet and information was gained by those ancient devices called books. No Google search or YouTube information back then, so for me it was very much trial and error. I found out that the Jade plant was a succulent, a term that meant nothing to me at the time. I was familiar with the word ‘cactus’ though, which I understood was a succulent…but not all succulents are cacti. Slightly confused, I was still intrigued by these plants and purchased a different type at the garden nursery. Again, this plant thrived under my neglect until I decided that twice weekly watering would make it grow even more. Hmmmm….I guess not. Another dead plant but lesson learned. Still…the Jade plant lived on.

To cut a long story short, over the decades since, I have developed a real passion for the succulent. The variety of these plants seems endless and I find them beautiful. I still have no idea about plants and don’t even know their common names, let alone the Latin one, but succulents are my plant of choice. Look at the variegation on this one. Just wonderful.

What I hadn’t realised until recently was how economical the succulent is. I don’t need to buy several of the one plant, I just buy one and use cuttings to produce more. I’m not into the time-consuming process of propagating, I just stick a cutting in the ground and it normally grows. They even look after the process themselves in some cases. The plant in picture I bought for $2.00. Over 12 months it grew steadily and then started to sprout new plants at the tips of the leaves. The weight of the new plant drew the edge of the leaf to the ground and starts up another plant. Even better for my lazy garden skills.

My whole succulent garden is made up of plants that cost no more than $10.00. The majority, in fact, cost less than $5.00. Several more are from snapping off a freebie cutting while wandering the neighbourhood streets. When I want more, I just break off a cutting and make a new plant. Couldn’t be easier, or cheaper.

Money is saved again with the reduced need to water the succulents. We had a particularly hot, dry and humid summer this year. I was often drinking 3-4 litres of water a day to keep myself hydrated. My succulents received no such level of sustenance. I watered them fortnightly at best. They suffered through without issue, though they admittedly didn’t exactly grow much during that period. When the rain did come, they exploded with growth.

By chance, that initial comment to my colleague sparked a passion for the succulent that continues on. And that Jade plant? It lives on today.

 

The evolution of my Friday’s

Today is Friday and I’m ready for the weekend! ‘Friday’ is a bit of a loose concept with 7 day shift work but, as it is, I actually have the whole weekend off.

Friday has always been a great day for me during my career but for different reasons.

The very early years (Work sucks years)

I hated work. I hated having to get up for work. I hated the customers. I suffer from social anxiety, so customer interaction was painful. How times have changed there but I will get to that in another post. Anyway, it was painful and I hated every minute of it until I left for the day. I had almost no friends and the weekend was an escape for a couple of days. Friday was basically the end of a week of suffering, so it was a day I looked forward to.

The middle years (The drinking years)

One day, I was invited out by a colleague for a drink at the pub. I had honestly barely touched a beer to that point and had never been out socially. Anyway, it was almost like that scene in Old School with Will Ferrell when he drinks after a period of abstinence. I was totally uninhibited. I was singing, dancing and generally being loud and having fun. I woke up feeling terrible and threw up but the memory of the fun I had was there.

Friday night became ‘go out drinking night’. The purpose of which was not to have a quite drink and be merry but to drink to get drunk.

Sadly, the need for alcohol became a crutch for any social event. If there wasn’t alcohol involved, I wasn’t going. I considered myself charming and interesting as a drunk and dull and boring when sober. I was more likely irritating and loud as a drunk and yeah, maybe I was dull and boring when sober.

Anyway, people change and my colleagues moved on to get relationships, got married and have kids. Not me though, I stuck to my Friday night commitment to get drunk. I would spend the entire week recruiting people to go out with me on Friday night. Friday night was party night, Saturday was hangover day. My only saving grace during this time was my passion for gym training or even more days would become drinking days. As you can imagine though, my Friday nights (and sometimes Saturdays as well) cost a lot. Alcohol alone cost a fortune, add on a meal, cab fare to and from, lap dancing, etc etc. Ok, I’m joking about the lap dancing…..but there was that one time….

I eventually found a couple of regulars that shared my passion for drinking on a Friday and seemed to have the same inability to sustain lasting relationships. For far too many years, and long past the age when I should be there, I frequented night clubs dancing and drinking.

I was standing there one Friday night at some stupid hour of the morning in a drunken stupor under neon club nights when I observed that everyone around me was almost 2 decades younger than me. It was a sobering moment and I decided that things had to change.

Unfortunately, my friends wanted to continue the drinking lifestyle. I didn’t want to offend my friends and also didn’t have the willpower to decline, so I continued on with Friday night drinks for some time yet.

The only way out I could see was to escape. I sold up my home and moved interstate. Perhaps a drastic step but it was the only way I could see to get out of the situation I was in. Initially, I wasn’t that successful. I would go to pubs in the new city by myself and drink. Eventually though, the frequency of the pub visits reduced until they didn’t occur at all. I would occasionally grab a couple of beers to have on a Friday night while watching football or a movie on TV but that was it. I was drinking because I like the taste of beer, not to get tanked.

The next stage (the spending years)

Financially, the next stage was no more productive then the ‘drinking’ stage but at least it was healthier. Friday night meant that the weekend was tomorrow and it was time to buy things. If I wasn’t buying something or looking for something to buy, I didn’t feel that my weekend was productive. Sometimes it was just something little like a new plant and sometimes it was something much more costly, like trading in my car or motorcycle for an upgrade.

It became very clear that I was bored. I had no goal except to…actually, I didn’t know. I seemed to be in an aimless mission to nowhere and was getting there fast.

Now (The Frugal Years)

I had a health scare! What a blessing that turned out to be. It gave me the realisation that I was mortal and so was my family. I would die one day and who knows when they day might come up. I packed up shop, quit my job and moved closer to my family.

After securing a job (and grateful I was that I got one very quickly) and I bought a new home. Somehow, the reality of mortality came with an understanding that I had to consider my financial future. I sold the high performance motorcycle I had and bought one that was practical. Riding 300kms an hour wasn’t necessary and was well beyond my courage/stupidity level anyway.

I bought a house that was suitable for me. Not too big, was a reasonable commute to the city and most importantly, didn’t have an excessive mortgage.

Frugality started to influence my life. I didn’t socialise outside of work. I started to buy things based on need rather than want. I avoided further liability purchases and tried to limit my larger purchases to those that would create value, such as home improvement.

Finally, to create a purpose for the new saving mentality, I set a goal. Early retirement to Thailand. Everything started to make sense and had a reason. I wasn’t saving money for the sake of it, I had a reason to work hard, hustle for a buck or two and make some sacrifices. The new goal is almost constantly in my mind and directs how I live my life now.

Of course, I wish I hadn’t waited until my early 50’s to wake up but as the old saying goes ‘better late than never’.

 

Saving dollars & cents – Do what you love and..hopefully..money will follow

Filling my head almost constantly lately has been thoughts about how I would accrue additional money to fund my dream to retire early.

I have honestly found it quite frustrating that nothing suitable to my skills was coming to mind. I don’t have any particular skills that I could utilise to increase my savings. Additionally, as I work on a rotating shift, it’s not really that practical to schedule in a second job.

Last night, I was browsing eBay and Gumtree (I believe it’s equivalent to Craigslist in the US) for second-hand furniture. I’m always on the lookout for an item that needs a bit of TLC or something quirky. I realised that I browse these sites every day and I generally spend my time away from work upcycling and restoring furniture. I have always kept the item to add or replace items I have already in my home.

It occurred to me that I should attempt to make some extra income doing what I do anyway for fun. Keep an eye out for run down furniture, give it a sand, make minor repairs, oil and generally present well in photos and see how I go.

Initially, I’m looking at pursuing this with low cost items or finds dumped at the side of the road. This way I’m not taking a big financial risk should I make nothing or lose some money. Should I find that I’m generating a good return for my individual restoration style (and my admittedly limited skills), I will start looking for bigger and more expensive projects.

Today I purchase a cute little dining table for $10.00. Totally solid but perhaps just a little on the tired side. I also picked up an old chamber pot seat for $20.00. Definitely on the quirky side and probably a limited market but I will tidy up and see if there is a dollar to be made. Ideally, I would like to double my money but we will see how we go.

Only started today, so will give it a red hot go and post my efforts and outcomes when I get some things sold…or not.

Saving dollars and cents – My morning coffee

I’m old enough to remember when there wasn’t a café on every corner selling speciality coffees. Go back a few years earlier to that and those corners were probably pubs instead.

Anyway, back in the ‘olden days’, you could still get a coffee in a café but it was normally to accompany a meal and it was often served from a jug that had been percolating for hours. The coffee was often rough and only served the function of providing a caffeine hit.

Move to today and you can barely walk 20 feet without coming across a café, van, pop up shop or any hole in the wall that is big enough to fit a coffee machine and a human. The term barista has now a common place word, whereas in the past it was normally associated with a poor spelling for a lawyer.

Over the years, it was my practice to grab a coffee on the way to work to start the day. To me, it was a nice treat to start the day and get me going. Over the years also, the prices have gradually (and sometimes not so gradually) increased and increased. Most recently, I was often paying $4.50 for my morning coffee but occasionally found I was paying up to a dollar more. Many shops I’m assuming trying to justify their prices by a speciality coffee blend that had been sourced from some exotic country from the excreted remains of a camel and pressed individually by hand through a blessed cloth…ok, maybe I’m stretching that part a bit.

Even at only 1 coffee a day, I’m was spending over $30 a week on my morning coffee. Multiply that by 52 weeks and its over $1600! The math isn’t hard if you are a 2 or 3 coffee a day person. It really starts to add up to something significant..

Just out of curiosity, I did a quick Google to find out the breakup of my morning coffee cost. The following table was indicative of what I found.

Though the $3 figure is obviously a bit dated, it provides a reasonable idea of how the cost is made up. Based on this chart, the product associated with my morning black coffee is only $0.35. The majority of the money handed over is for labour. While I definitely won’t argue that a worker should be paid, the coffee normally takes around a minute to make. That’s a pretty decent hourly rate, with the majority presumably going to the owner. I don’t want to get into a big economical debate though, with the main point being that it really adds up to buy my morning coffee.

Anyway, as I’m pursuing the frugal way, my morning coffee is now instant coffee. It took me a while to get used to the taste. While not offensive, I can’t say the instant coffee compares to a barista coffee. I drink black coffee, so it’s hard to mask the taste of terrible coffee so I do tend to spend a little more to buy a good quality instant coffee just to improve the taste slightly. That said, I’m probably talking $2-3 dollars more a can, which still works out massively cheaper than barista made coffee.

My best rough calculation is that I’m spending less than $100 a year now for coffee versus $1600 for barista coffee. That’s $1500 a year that will now be going towards paying off debt and making steps towards by end goal of early retirement.

 

De-cluttering – One Way to Focus a Messy Mind

With my newly developed mission to retire to Thailand in 5 years, I was sitting in my lounge contemplating how I will achieve this. While trying to think, I was constantly distracted by the things around me. There were half completed projects, cleaning, an excess of furniture and décor items and many other things that made it difficult to focus on my goal. 

I did manage to come to one focussed thought and that was that I have too many unnecessary distractions and I had to clean house, initially literally, to achieve a mentally clean house.

First step – Assess the mess

I simply looked around me. I started to list items as follows:

• What items have a functional use
• What items make me happy
• What items haven’t I used in 6 months and have no immediate plan to.

I approached this process to my immediate surrounds as I sat in the lounge. The post photo is just a few of the items that immediately jumped out at me. As my living area is not that large, I had obviously accumulated far too much crap. The process defined what to keep and what needed to go.

Second step – Complete projects

I determined to finish projects before I started anything new. I have so many projects that are half done. Some furniture restoration, landscaping and home renovation. I get started on one and get half way, get distracted by something new and shiny change and start something else. I started to list projects that I had outstanding and prioritised for completion. I decided my first project would be the landscaping, which I ended up completely within only a few hours. One off the list, which gave me a sense of accomplishment and reduced one item from my mind clutter. I will note here that I haven’t had a kitchen sink for 3 months, so maybe that should be pretty high up the list to get sorted out!

Third step – Clean up the crap!

I had to clean up. This is perhaps that simplest step and the one that will have the most immediate impact. I have a terrible tendency to pile things onto counter tops, table tops…really any flattish surface. It obviously looks messy and annoys me and does nothing to keep my mind at ease. I started with the kitchen. A packed things away, threw out things that were inexplicably just sitting there and tidied up surfaces.

Fourth step – One step at a time

I decided that I shouldn’t try to do everything at once. I know this is what has caused me to fail before and probably will again. I get all hyped up and start cleaning, start gardening, start doing this and that. In the end, I only touch the surface of the problem and see no real progress and get overwhelmed. I just end up adding to my list of unfinished projects. Focussing on one thing at a time will get a task completed and show a positive result. A structured way to approach this is to create a task list and prioritise. Ticking off items on completion will give a tangible visual that things are getting done.

Fifth Step – The purpose for the surplus

This is an extension of the First Step. After I determined what bits and pieces that I no longer needed, I had to decide what their next purpose would be. Options were as follows:

• Sell stuff that I considered had potential to make money. I have listed items on eBay and Gumtree and hopefully will make some money to contribute to the goal. Once everything has been sold, I will blog the final amount.
• Give to charity. This applies mostly to my clothes. I have clothes that have travelled with me across 3 states over 8 years and still haven’t worn. Time to let go for someone that may need it and doesn’t have the means.
• Recycle. There are recycle centres that are available that let me dump certain items for free.
• Dump the rest. Smaller items I will dump in the bin and the medium sized items I will throw in the back of the ute and take to the tip. As tipping fees apply to the rubbish weight, I will save some of the bigger items for a council kerbside clean up next month. The pick up is limited to a trailer size equivalent but as people tend to ‘shop’ the kerbside, items are usually taken to allow me more room for something else.

Well, that’s the plan for now. I may tweek it as I progress to include more de-cluttering ideas but this is the start.

Sugar vs Sugar – Which is sweeter to your pocket?

Though I have only recently been approaching frugality with focus, I have always had the approach that I (1) buy the best priced product if it is of comparable quality and (2) that I do not want to purposely give more money to large corporations to make them larger.

During a recent shop, I had to purchase some white sugar. I won’t name any brands but it was obvious that there was a huge disparity in cost. A 1 kilo branded sugar cost $1.90 and a generic brand cost $1.00. A further bit of research found that there were a number of different brands of sugar with prices varying from just under a $1.00 a kilo to $2.14.

Clearly, with this cost disparity, there must be a difference in the ingredients that make one superior to the other. Imagine my complete lack of surprise to find that the sole ingredient in every package was 100% cane sugar!

Perhaps where the sugar was manufactured resulted in the cost difference? An army of cheap labour from overseas maybe? No, they were all produced in Australia.

Finally, the taste must be considerably different, resulting in the significant extra for the branded product? Low and behold, the ones I have tried all tasted like…sugar! Go figure!

My only assumption is that I’m paying for a recognised brand name, which has yet to pay me for my loyalty, or that only less attractive sugar canes are harvested for the low price brands.

I reckon my money is better in my pocket than fattening someone elses. Look around and keep it to yourself.

Living on a former income

So, the first change that I have made is to have a quick overview of my spending. One thing I have always done is increase my spending every time I secured a promotion or higher salary. This usually results in me obtaining more things I want but don’t necessarily need. I then sell the item almost with fail for a loss or just fill my home and garage with stuff.

In November 2016, I secured a new job. The base salary was almost exactly the same as the previous job I had but with the benefit of shift penalties and overtime. Both shift and overtime were in no way applicable to my previous job, so the only option of obtaining more money in the role was to gain a promotion or wait for incremental pay rises.

In my new job, shift penalties are standard, adding between 12.5 and 15% per hour for an applicable shift. If I secure a shift on a weekend or public holiday, additional penalties and overtime apply. Subsequently, though a bit inconsistent, my pay has been considerably more than my previous job. The lowest being around $150 to nearly $700 net more per fortnight.

It occurred to me recently that I was able to live comfortably on my old salary. (It is strange how the mind seems to work far more logically when there is focus and a goal.) I never saved a lot with my old salary and overall it was tight. In saying that, it was rare when I was counting the days for a payday to come up. In theory then, there is no reason that I shouldn’t be able to live on my former salary and take any additional pay and use it to reduce debt. Given that the interest rate applicable to credit cards and loans is considerably higher than a standard savings account (with an almost non-existent interest rate), it is obvious that reducing debt is a priority.

The biggest debt I currently have is my home loan. This loans allows for additional payments that can be withdrawn if a big expense pops up. Until that big expense happens though, the interest on the loan will be calculating on the lower amount.

I know that mentally, I will really feel a lot closer to my goal when the debt is under $200k and then $150k and I will know that I’m closing in on the target when I crack the $100K mark!