This morning I have been looking for inspiration! See for a little while now I have felt a little unfulfilled I guess.

I have felt that there is a part of myself that has not yet seen the light of day!

For reasons that I am not sure are great excuses anymore.

Whilst the money is still a large issue, one of my other excuses was what if I no longer fit in?

Well the one of two things that pop into my mind is (something my mothers cousin is famous for,) A forehead slap directed straight at me!

The other is something one of the lovely ladies told me when I was attending a course (that I think every stay at home mum should attend) Run by the Wise foundation called buziness babes, one of the little tasks we had to do throughout the course was to write down a goal we had set ourselves and achieved, I had originally written down finishing my pastry chef apprenticeship, and whilst i am proud of achieving this while everyone had started to share there goals I had the urge to change mine and I placed my hand up to share it immediately my goal was throughout the whole course I had to be myself and I didn't care what people thought of me, but I had to do it for myself! and I had ! so that's what I was proud of, and one of the many lovely ladies sitting next to me turned to me and said " And we all like you anyway!" well at that I nearly cried !

Any way back to my point I had lost sight of that a little and gone back into being the Beth for everyone else and not myself.

So my plan for the next month is to be myself and do things that I like and don't care what anyone thinks about it or me for that matter.

I am going to spend my ten dollars a week of personal spending money that is allocated to me in our budget on stuff I love and not just on cheap magazines and junk.

So look out second hand shops around Brisbane I have money and will spend it!

Talk to you all soon!

Beth

Took the kids to daycare on the bus on Tuesday, and this is the thing I don't get cause it would not cost me the $7.20 in petrol that it cost me to catch the two buses there and then home again.

It also would not take me nearly three hours to walk that far in fact if I thought that the kids would make it I would have just walked the whole way as it used to only take me half an hour each way and that was when I was about six our seven months pregnant.

so my question is this what is the incentive for the general public to catch public transport?

It is not convenient, it is not cheap and it is not quick.

I mean I get it if you are on your way out and it is cheaper then a taxi but then you are not really in a hurry and if you have to go into the city for work where is little or no parking, and I get that some people have no other choice, but what about the rest of us I mean those of us who have lots of errands to run and only a limited amount of time to do them in ?

I am as you may know a stay at home mum ( for the moment anyway) and when I look at what I would like to get done today I know I could have used those two extra hours a lot better and what if I was not a stay at home mum and had to catch public transport to drop the kids at day care and then get too work?

If I worked in the city and started at 8 Am I would have to get up at about 5am and have the kids at daycare at 6 to 6.30 am and then get into the city by at least 7.30 am and I know for a fact that the buses around here do not start that early. it makes for a very long and argues day don't you think?
Talk to you all soon.

Beth

Okay! It's Saturday morning and the kids are all out playing in the back yard and hubby is sound asleep in bed after a late night, I am trying to work out a menu for the rest of the week and write a grocery list, but I find this task rather difficult as I am scared I am going to miss something and then because I have spent the budget I will just have to make do, or what if I don't get enough stuff for the week and we find ourselves short a meal or two?
I know the right answer to this is Beth don't be so silly you have been buying the groceries now for how long?
I know that I am over reacting but this could make or break our whole budget!

Meanwhile, why I hesitate to get the groceries the money in the bank is dwindling fast and I don't know where it is going, do bank accounts get holes in them?
If this whole budget thing is going to work I think I am going to have to grow a pair of ( excuse the saying!) balls!!


Okay so my to do list for today is as follows:

• Clean out second fridge and turn it off
• Finish all the washing ( damn! out of laundry powder, crap that means I have to do the shopping first! :( )
• Grocery shopping

on top of the normal house work and feeding the kids( and hubby!) and keeping them all from killing each other. Somebody remind me what a weekend is again!

Sorry its only a short one today but I just felt the need to have a whinge!!!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Beth

The Family Budget

I have many things I wish to write about here but I guess I will just share with you a little of me.

I am a wife, a mother of three, a qualified pastry chef, and a women in my own right.
I have thoughts, beliefs and opinions, so here I am going to share them with you On just every day things weather it is something that happened to me that day or something from the news.
I will share with you parts of my journeys I am on, and things I am doing.

So now that that is out of the way, the major journey I am partaking in which I am sure many families in Australia are going through right now, is one to semi financial freedom. Now when I say semi I meant that as a one income family I know that we will be paying off our mortgage for a long time yet.

Now my husband quiet often says to me when I try to talk about money issues with him is that " If we had a million dollars in the bank, you would still want more! "
Know just to clarify, all I want is to live comfortably and be able to pay the bills as they come in and buy the things we need and some that we want without too much stress.
Is that too much to ask for ?

After nearly loosing our car to the bank we decided that we needed to re asses the way we handle our money. We sort the help of a local financial councilor to help us get things in control, and what we found was that our out goings where far more than our in comings.
(no wonder we could never get ahead!)
So now our challenge is to see if we can trim that down so we are living well within our means again. So to do this we have to keep track of everything we spend, and only spend what we have budgeted for. For instance if we have only budgeted for $70 for petrol that's all we spend on petrol and if we don't need to spend that much we keep it aside for when we need to spend more then $70 on Petrol.
The other thing that we were unaware of was exactly how much we spent on groceries. this means every trip to the corner store for more milk and bread, or down to the supermarket 'cause we feel like something extra special for dinner.
So now we have set ourselves a budget of $180 a week for all things groceries and while both hubby and I think this might be too much ( not forgetting we are a family of five) I am scared that I can't make this work. Now I know that is a stupid thought because we have to make it work, But I can't help but think 'what if I stuff this up?' silly I know, and as a result I have been putting off doing the groceries shopping this week!

So I am going to set myself some challenges to accomplish this week

• Write out a menu for the next week until payday, and do the shopping, and stay within the budget.

• Shop around for a better deal on the electricity.

• Buy a bike (cheaply of cause ).

I hope you enjoy my blog and I hope to hear your thoughts.

I just want to leave you with something to ponder.

Why is it we never learnt anything about our private finances at school? and I don't know about the rest of you but growing up we never talked about the family budget or money of any sort really ( this is something I plan to change in my family.) So its no wounder people like you and me fall into debt faster than we realize.

So thats it for now I guess. I hope to see you again soon.

Beth.