Where did my money go in 2008?

Inspired by posts from Fabulous Financials and Wide Open Wallet I decided to analyze where my money went last year. For simplicity, I’m only looking at my expenses here in the USA. I have investments incurring some expenses back in Australia, but I like to think of my Australian budget separate to my USA budget. I keep the majority of my money in Australia and have some of my pay sent to the USA for Hubby and I to live on while we are here.

Here’s what my USA expenses looked like for 2008:

• As you can see a massive 48% on our expenses went on travelling. The vast majority of our travels were made in conjunction with my work trips so I was in receipt of quite generous travelling allowances. Hubby and I usually travel together on far less than I receive. I’ll have to sit down and work out how much we actually spent once those allowances are taken into consideration.
• Food made up 12% of our expenses and that included grocery shopping and dining out. In reality ‘groceries’ also included household cleaning products, bathroom products and dog food.
• Hubby and I managed to spend 16% of our budget on ourselves. Hubby used most of his on hobbies and to be honest I don’t know exactly where I used most of mine. It’s terrible that I have thousands of dollars virtually unaccounted for.
• Bills made up 5% of expenditure and the car was a further 5%.
• The most shocking discovery in this exercise was that 5% of our expenses were categorized as miscellaneous, un-categorized or cash. What that really means is that 5% of our expenses have disappeared and I don’t know where they went.

I have been tracking my expenses like this for about 10 years. I always thought I was doing a reasonable job of tracking where our money went, but after doing this exercise I now realise that close to 10% of our expenses are not really accounted for. During the month of February, Hubby and I have set ourselves challenge of tracking every single cent that we spend. Hopefully this will get us back into the good habit of being accountable for all our expenses.

Operation Booty-Buster – Week 4

I think I’m finally into the swing of things. Week 4 of Operation Booty-Buster has gone really well. What a roller-coaster!

• I worked out with my personal trainer Hubby on two consecutive mornings. We are sticking with exercises which are building my core strength and stability and my back pain is starting to decrease. I guess this is the benefit of having a personal trainer. You have everything customised to your own strengths and weaknesses. To be honest I feel myself shaping up in ways that I haven’t managed in an normal group exercise class. I’m even starting to see some abs which have been lost to me for some time!
• Socially we had a really quiet weekend, so eating and drinking was easily controlled. Hubby and I went out for breakfast on Saturday which is a rare treat these days. 
• During the week, my portion sizes for breakfasts and lunches are easily controlled. I take a packed lunch to work so there is no easy way to splurge. Dinners however had slowly started creeping up to the nearly the same size of meal that Hubby enjoys. He has a great metabolism and I do not, so my dinner-time portions needed reducing. We are now measuring out a maximum of 1 cup of carbs for my evening meal. It’s been a pretty easy change to make.
• We went for an hour-long hike on Friday. It wasn’t as long as we planned because we had the dog with us and then couldn’t find a dog friendly trail. Eventually we found one which took us down to a little waterfall and we had the whole place to ourselves. It was just beautiful. This month, I want to go for a longer hike every week. I need to shock my body with some endurance work.
• On the days that I’m not working out I need to start walking. I’m going to start with 30 minutes and slowly increase it to an hour. Now that I have a few of my other habits ingrained, it’s time to start adding new habits.
• I need to be a bit more regular with riding to work. It’s become a little too easy to take the car on days Hubby doesn’t need it. That has to stop.

My measurements haven’t shown any huge drops this week, but that’s ok. This is going to be slow progress and some weeks will be better than others. My biggest concern at the moment is whether I’m going to fit into my formal attire for a Ball I have coming up in late March. I refuse to find an alternative, so it’s imperative that it fits. Perhaps I’ll make a really big effort this week and then try it on over the weekend.

Photo by: Darren Hester

Green (eco-friendly) gifts on Valentines Day

Valentines Day is just over one week away. Typically, Hubby and I don’t do gifts on Valentines Day but if you do, please consider what your gift really means. After Christmas, Valentine’s Day is the holiday that causes the most damage to the environment and exploitation of human health and well-being. 

Chocolates

Six chocolate manufacturers process half of the globe’s cocoa, giving them tremendous leverage to dictate prices and conditions experienced by farmers. As a result of this hyper-consolidation, conditions in the cocoa-growing world tend to be wretched. In the Ivory Coast, where 40% of the world’s cocoa beans are grown, cocoa farms often run on forced child labor. 

Fair trade chocolate organizations work to ensure the certified chocolate you buy does not involve slave labor, is pesticide-free, grown and manufactured without genetically modified ingredients, and farmers and cocoa workers receive fair wages. Global Exchange reports currently less than 1% of the $13 billion dollar chocolate market is fair trade certified. Go to GlobalExchangeStore to find organic and fair-trade gifts from small, sustainable farms.

Flowers

Flowers have an ugly side most consumers don’t know about. Approximately 40,000 flower workers in Ecuador and more than 100,000 in Colombia work to grow, harvest, and package flowers and carnations for North Americans. Flowers are one of the top pesticide-intensive agricultural crops. The Green Book estimates if all the roses purchased for Valentine’s Day in the USA were organically grown, it would prevent the use of 22,700 pounds of pesticides. One report also indicates that flower workers experience higher-than-average rates of premature births, congenital malformations and miscarriages.

A greener gift choice would be to consider a native potted plant from your local nursery or buy organic flowers from one of these local growers.

Gift cards

Each time you purchase a card made from non-recycled paper you are contributing to the erosion of forests. More than 370 million tons of paper products are used each year in the world. The paper trade is considered to be a non-sustainable industry because there are not enough wood resources to continue to supply global paper demand indefinitely. 93% of paper still comes directly from trees.

Cards made from sustainable materials like hemp, animal dung, cotton rags, hosiery cuttings, bananas, flowers and straw are just a few of the materials papermakers around the world recycle into tree-free cards and paper. Why not try Smockpaper for all your gift cards. All their cards are printed sustainably on pesticide-free bamboo paper and 1% of all sales go to environmental causes.

Photo by: lay d lay

Food Waste Reduction Challenge

Since Hubby and I are home for the entire month and not traveling anywhere, I’ve decided to get involved with a monthly challenge over at Crunchy Chicken. The challenge this month is to reduce the amount of food waste in our household. 

We don’t deliberately waste food and we always make an effort to turn food which is on its way out into something edible. Inevitably though, we forget some feta cheese in the back of the fridge or find some old rubbery celery in the crisper weeks after it resembled anything edible. Thankfully we have a dog who eats almost anything so most of our waste isn’t going into landfill and once we have our compost system up and running, we’ll eliminate any food going to landfill at all. That’s not really the point though, wasted food is still a waste of money and a waste of energy. A lot of energy has gone into the growing and transporting of our food and throwing it out just means our environmental impact is higher than it needs to be.  

Ok, so what will we be doing this month? It’s pretty simple. Our goal is to try to reduce the amount of food we throw out, feed to the dog or put into the compost. We’ll keep track of the food that we have and make sure that it gets eaten or preserved before it goes bad and needs to be disposed. It will take a little planning, some organization and the willingness to be creative, but I’m sure we are up for it. 

Our first job yesterday was to go through the fridge and cupboards to see what’s getting close to its expiry date or is starting to go off. Here’s what I threw out:

• Two bottles of salad dressing
• A tube of sundried tomato paste
• Two packets of Starbucks coffee (Didn’t even know I had them)
• Half a bottle of very old Coca-Cola (from a party last June)
• Quarter of a bottle of Powerade (from our trip back from Central America a month ago!)
• Half a bunch of baby spinach 
• Baby potatoes gone to seed
• Dried apricots
• A whole collection of interesting things given to us by friends as they left (pickled onions, jello, gravy mix, food collouring etc)

Here’s what’s close to expiring and which we’ll need to eat up soon:

• Two boxes of cereal and oats
• Gravox
• Bread crumbs
• Custard powder
• Feta cheese
• Tinned fruit
• Long-life milk
• Green Apples

I’m amazed at how much stuff I had to throw away. It was really quite painful, but I think it was a very necessary step to start the month with a clean slate. Now we just need to come up with some recipes to use up what’s soon to go off and then be more mindful of what we buy and eat for the rest of the month.

February 09 Goals

Finances

• Finish working through Your Money or Your Life 
• Keep track of every cent that Hubby and I spend for the month
• Submit 2008 tax return
• Claim all medical receipts from my health insurer
• Chase up refunds due to me

Work/Business

• Complete assignments for two work courses
• Tackle some more in-depth topics on this blog

Personal/Spiritual Development and Education

• Document my vision for the future and set my 101 in 1001 goals
• Read daily and participate in bookclubs
• Download podcasts and listen to them while walking the dog

Relationships

• Write letters to all my Grandparents (including in-laws)
• Have a good chat to my sister about her finances
• Go on a couple of dates with Hubby

Social/Fun

• Research ‘Must see’ things in New York City and find a bargain on a hotel
• Get in touch with all my friends located in Washington DC prior to my visit in March
• Go to a murder mystery night with friends
• Have a hot tub party with friends

Health

• 23 no alcohol days
• Train three days per week with Hubby
• Go on four 2+ hour hikes
• Continue to take weekly measurements to track progress

Household

• Build a vegetable garden plot in our courtyard and plant seeds
• Partake in Food Waste Reduction Challenge

Photo by: pasma

Wrap-up of January 09 Goals

Finances

• Work through Your Money or Your Life  I’ve made good progress, but still have about half of the book to go.
• Update my budget for 2009  We’ll have enough to pay all interest on our mortgages and other loans and save about $30,000. Not as much as I would have liked, but better than nothing.
• Submit overdue tax returns I’ve done everything I can and am now waiting for news from my accountant.
• Claim all outstanding money

Work/Business

• Coordinate a function/party for work Done. It was a huge success
• Complete assignments for two work courses.
• Blog five times per week for the month Done.

Personal/Spiritual Development and Education

• Read daily and participate in Bookclub Done.
• Download podcasts and listen to them while walking the dog. I downloaded the podcasts, but didn’t get to listen to them.

Relationships

• Call my good friends in Australia Done
• Write at least one letter to someone not on email Done
• Go on a couple of dates with Hubby Done. We went to the Electric Vehicle presentation and for a hike. How romantic!

Social/Fun

• Finalise plans for my March travels Done. Flights are all booked.
• Catch up with local friends Done. Had a couple of fun catch-ups

Health

• 25 no alcohol days. Fail. I think I had about 20 no-alcohol days, so it’s wasn’t too bad.
• Train three days per week with Hubby I’m going to say I achieved this one, despite one week off for a bad back.
• Go on a 2+ hour hike at least twice Done
• Take weekly measurements to track progress Done

Household

• Implement an improved system for managing household paperwork. Sort of. It’s been operational for a few weeks, so we’ll see if it sticks.

Photo by: macwagen

I want to buy a house

All this talk of buying houses by Early Retirement Middle Way and Money on My Mind has me yearning for another property of my own. Of course, it’s completely out of the question for the moment because:

• I’m in the USA for another two years so there is no point buying another house back in Australia now;
• My finances are such that I probably couldn’t get a loan for another property now anyway; and
• Apparently house prices have started dropping in Australia, so I can’t really recoup a profit from one of the other houses if I sold it.

Still, it doesn’t stop me dreaming. I love having my own place. I envisage having my own garden, putting in rainwater tanks and a greywater recycling system. I foresee a solar system on the roof. I want to live close to town so that we can do without a second vehicle and so we can walk or ride to shops, cafes and work. If we rent, we won’t be able to do any of these things.

Unfortunately, in order to buy a property close to the town I’m thinking, with enough land to have a garden and fruit trees, it’s going to cost a pretty penny. *Sigh* I guess I’m going to have to relegate this dream to the ‘longer term’ pile and just focus on the baby steps to reach that goal.

Photo by: Aaardvaark