Saved by the tin

About 6 weeks ago I was looking ahead at a 2 week holiday in April on Phillip Island. In the school holidays. Meaning at last we'd be here when the 'extra' fun things were open... like mini golf and pony rides. I had been looking forward to letting the kids do these things, since we last visited the Island, out of school holidays about 18 months ago.

Six weeks ago I remembered the things we'd been looking forward to doing and realised the impact of Pete not being employed.

NO fun money. Period.

Thankfully the holiday itself was a 'gift' of sorts - house/pet sitting for a family we churched with a number of years ago who have moved to the Island since. So the holiday was all go and I was wondering how much more I could squeeze out of the grocery budget in the coming weeks to put some dollars aside for a couple of fun things while we were away.

God then reminded me of the tin...

Soon after our last visit to Phillip Island 18 months ago, I started collecting all $2 coins and putting them in a sealed money box/tin with the idea of using the savings for Pete and I when we finally got a weekend 'kid free'. This happened last November and the tin happily produced nearly $500 in $2 coins after 12 months of saving them. Dinners out, a new vacuum cleaner and a fun weekend came from that tin. Very happy.

Right away I started saving again, from mid November till now and this time both $1 & $2 coins.

In only 4.5 months there was plenty in there for 2 weeks of sensibly spread out fun. So far that's been Amaze'nThings and Grumpy's Mini Golf, with the Wildlife Park, Pony Rides and Go Karts ahead!

The next money box is already at home, ready to once again be saving all our gold coins for 'whatever next' and the best bit is, we don't even notice the absence of the money from the usual cash flow!

Love it!

Cutting the grocery budget

This is not always straight forward because you have to be able to live with yourself too! I could feed our family on about $100 a week long term if I wasn't so determined to go with the health benefits we've discovered of raw dairy, high protein and best practice preparations of grains and other foods.

However, sometimes I'm happy to switch to 'budget' of our dietary needs or 'super budget' and not do too badly in the health department. $100 a week for the 6 of us would be a 'super super tight budget' and wouldn't not have much room to consider our chosen food health. So something like that would only be a short term 'we need cash now' option. Usually I spend $200 a week on groceries for the 6 of us - yes, Miss Charlotte does count as nappies and formula are in there! $200 a week allows us things like smoked salmon, free range eggs and plenty of meat... so that's not too tight and gives me room to trim it down a bit if I want money for other things.

Here are some really easy ways to shave the grocery budget
-Toilet paper... I'm amazed at what people will spend on toilet paper. I use to go on the guage of 50c a roll being a good deal. Now with thicker fancier toilet papers it's not a good deal as you end up using more of those!! We use Aldi 16 rolls for $4.99 which is 31c a roll which saves us over $113 a year - on just one simple item. If I wanted to save more, I quite probably could. Because of different roll lengths and thicknesses, the best way to calculate cost & savings is to try different options for a week and see how many rolls your family goes through in a 7 day period and work out your costs from there.
-Dishwashing liquid... again, you need to test how long a bottle lasts you to figure this one out. We were using one skin friendly one (you can't get such a thing from a supermarket btw) and were going through it too fast. All this year I've been using a new one and have been dating my bottles. One bottle at $23 dollars lasts me 14 weeks, so $1.65 a week. I'm pretty happy with that, especially as it had been up around $3-$4 a week. I've used cheaper ones but they're loaded with chemicals I don't want on my dishes. We do a LOT of dishes here as we cook from scratch and I'm really happy with how this one is going. Again - you need to do your own testing/assessment based on how many chemicals you're happy to have on your plates and what you're willing to spend.
-Don't throw out food. Buy a capsicum at $6 a kilo? Half of it doesn't get used and goes in the bin? The capsicum you did use, just became $12 a kilo, which you'd have never paid in the first place! Dish small serves and allow for seconds instead of uneaten portions going in the bin. Cover a meal and make sure it DOES get eaten later.
-Home made 'takeaways' can save a fortune... Pizza from the shop is $17 for our family or about $10 with  frozen slightly topped bases and our goodies added... Fish n chips about $25-30 from the shop or about $13 oven baked. Choose to adjust your taste buds accordingly. One takeaway a week turned into a home done one can save over $500 a year! What would you do with that $500? Work out your own 'no time to cook'  meals that will help you save on takeaway, like frozen spaghetti sauce and shepherd's pies, and your own 'we want a treat for dinner' options like spring rolls, oven baked fish, dim sims, pizza etc. Put the thinking cap on, then remove these items from the regular menu plan so they become the treat or time saver you want them to be.
Just doing these things saves us $700 a year which means I can either a) buy higher quality foods like smoked salmon etc OR b) I can use the cash for other things... and that's not all the savings that are available either!

There's a whole lot more buzzing around in my brain but this is it for starters... remind me if I forget to come back to it!

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Home Education Budgeting

I've often wondered what other people spend on home education and those around me IRL seem to be quite random with it, no set figure or plan other than 'as little as possible' or 'whatever I need to'. Glad that works for them... neither would for me LOL

I have a budget of $200 a month - most of those that know this, before I've now shared it with the world, are a bit gob smacked by it and indicate they think it a great & generous amount. I'd guess though, that it's about what they're possibly spending themselves and they're just not as aware of it.

So where does $200 go every month and super fast at that?

A year's maths materials for Melinda (8yo) will cost me $208, so there is one month gone. In the last 6months, I've already had a similar outlay 3 times (approx. $150 each time as I already had a reusable part, which this time I need to get a duplicate of)
Thankfully from now on Melinda is the only one I need to outlay for at that cost and once a year should be plenty. It buys the teacher book, test book & dvd as well as the student work book. For each of the other children I'll only need the to get the student workbooks each year at about $60 per child per year.

Swimming - yes, all activities have to fit into the budget as well... and so they are well thought out. Most I know don't count the activities i.e. gym, ballet, music lessons etc as part of their home education expenses.
I've chosen swimming to focus on, because I believe it to be an important life skill and the lack of can have life and death issues as well as social issues. Things like ballet are nice but not something I could fit into the budget along with swimming, piano and curriculum! Swimming costs approx $200 a term for two children (no rebate available as I mention below). That's up to 1/4 of the year's budget! We won't be doing it this next term as a new baby will take priority but I hope it can be managed for the remaining 2 terms of the year - the children love it and seem to be doing really well.

Our English curriculum (Language Arts) costs about $100 for teacher and student books but then only about $40-50 for the student books which is all I'll need for the children that follow. After this initial lay out, I've added in 'optional but recommended' books - about 10 I think for the grade 2 level and only 4-5 for the grade 3 level. With clever use of booko these don't cost a whole lot. And remember, in Australia, we get the educational tax rebate of 50% on all books, curriculum, computers, stationary, internet etc so any of these extra books end up costing me even less.

We use Apologia science - again, about $40 for a year's curriculum, when bought carefully regardless of number of children, and 50% of that comes back to me at tax time too.

Books books books. I love books. And this is why it's good my budget is capped LOL

I want my children to be influenced by great books. Godly books. One can't readily access these without owning them. Even recently I went to the picture book shelf and put all the godly books on one side and the secular books on the other. I was devastated to see that less than 10% of books that are influencing my 1-5 year old's, point them toward God and to God's way of doing life. We're now working to rectify that!!!

Thankfully internet access doesn't have to fit into my monthly budget, but I'm sure glad I get the 50% back on it at tax time. It's not part of our home ed budget because we'd have it anyway - even if we were childless!

Tax time is around the corner and you know what? I've already 'spent' the rebate in my head. A lump sum of $500-$750 is the best time of year for me to be spending on computers don't you think? So this year the rebate will go towards a new laptop for the older 2 children to share. The bonus being that in the following year, I can claim 50% of that back too LOL

So why have a home ed budget?

FREEDOM

I don't need to run each and every item past hubby! The budget as a whole was run through with him in the first place and he trusts me with our children's education needs - and LOVES browsing the home ed shelves for something to read himself *grin*

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Loving the bills!

On arriving home from holidays there was the inevitable pile of mail to go through, including 2 bills.

I am thrilled to announce that neither were scary and one was a YIPPEE

Phone bill (includes home, 2 x mobile and internet) just as budgeted for... I aim for it to be $16__'something' and it was $167.93.
This represents a savings of about $50 a month on our old plans.

The YIPPEE award goes to the GAS BILL.
We've been extra careful here with heating and this bill came in at an average of $3.42 per day. I wasn't overly thrilled with that till I dug out a bill for the same period in another year. When we were averaging $6.02 PER DAY for gas.
On this one bill that's a savings of $158.00 and there will be one more in the same season... so we're looking at saving over $300 in the year on our gas bill alone.

This little chickadee is happy to have the heating off at night and put up with cooler days if that's what it turns into!

On those two bills alone, we are $900 tax free dollars ahead each year! That's like getting a $1200 pay rise. Gotta love when simplifying life has such measurable results.

(Having said that, the warmer weather in Qld was wonderful and I am going to have to force myself to wear extra clothes and keep the heating low tomorrow!!)

Money.

Wonderfully dreadful.

We are now implementing our cash plan.

If we stick to it, life will be great. If we don't, we'll dig a hole.

I suppose that's how it is anyway... we're just focusing on it!

We're a bunch of Wusses'!

The heating on at night annoys us as it starts by blowing cold air and then barely gets warm before switching off again - this is because we had it set at just 13 degrees. This as a house temperature is quite fine at night but annoying with the heating functioning the way it does.

So, we cured it. The last 2 nights we just switched it OFF

Can I tell you, it gets mighty cold! Just 1-2 degrees colder makes a huge difference when making the bathroom dash in the morning!

I am reminded though of when I was growing up. We didn't have air conditioning till I was about 13 and then it was reserved for the lounge/dining/kitchen as it was all one room. Heating was pretty much the same! Doors closed so the heat didn't go up to bedrooms or the bathroom.
It was not uncommon either, to arrive home from school to find dad airing the house - in the middle of winter!!! No heating anywhere!

And this was just life as we knew it.

I won't go back to that but from now on the heating will be off at night. Why pay an extra couple if hundred dollars each year just to have a warm bathroom dash in the mornings. When I think about it, that is an obscene waste of our money and it can be put to a more productive use elsewhere.