Interest Rates Have Risen To HOW MUCH?
For really the first time since Talented Hubby and I have been married, I’m starting to get a little worried.
A ‘complimentary and friendly’ email reminder landed in Hubs’ inbox this morning informing us of our current official interest rate. Of course we aren’t blind, and the rise in rates has been ‘gradual’ (a subjective term!)so we knew already that we were paying this, but the realisation of what was actually occurring was mind-boggling.
We’re now paying a full TWO PERCENT (plus a smidgeon extra) in interest over the level we were at when we first purchased this house almost three years ago. We’re on a variable rate. We expect more damage soon. The last several months have been the worst - every month a new rate rise. I know to some degree our economy is dictated by the economies elsewhere but come on!
We were so smug when we bought this house. Talented Hubby has a wonderful, stable job with much room for advancement. We saved like our lives depended on it for an intensive period of 14 months and even surprised ourselves at how much we were able to pull together in such a short period of time. Of course, we had a clear goal in mind and we were absolutely single-focussed. We’re not the sort to hold very expensive pastimes or hobbies anyhow, but we were very concious of every dollar that filtered through our hands and - dare I say it - very proud of ourselves for realising something which had been a dream since the kids had started arriving many years before.
Our quest for a home was in part fuelled by my own childhood experience of moving every couple of years as Dad followed work. My parents once owned a small farm (more of a hobby enterprise than anything else, very small) and lost it due to the global crash in the late eighties which saw them paying SEVENTEEN PERCENT at the height of their loan. It took them a decade and a half to recover and they never owned another house until well after I’d left home. I never really felt settled. The move away from the farm years earlier had occurred in less than two days, from announcement to driving away in our precariously-loaded car. I guess it always felt as though we could up and move on at any moment.
I never wanted that for our kids. I wanted them to go to the same school from first day to last, to get grounded in a neighbourhood. To put down roots. Thus the urge to get into a Real House and out of the rent cycle.
I married a good egg though. Talented Hubby definitely has his head on straight, LOL. Me? I’ve always been a little more ‘free’ with my spending habits, a product, I think, from never having quite enough growing up. Now I don’t really feel secure unless I have a little more than enough, a little leftover. Though I’m nowhere near a spendthrift, Hubs has (on more than one occasion) been the voice of reason in our finances. The stability and future advancement of his job gives us confidence.
The rising interest rates do not.
When we first took out the loan, we nominated a weekly payment that was above the minimum payment, giving ourselves a healthy buffer. In addtion, we were manually transfering an additional, regular sum every fortnight. We gained speed in those early days. Gradually though, each new interest rate has chipped away at our buffer. With each new chunk gone, the time it takes for us to pay off the house increases. We had originally hoped to be signed and sealed by the time Boofah went to university, about 12 years in total (and just 9 years from now!) I find it very hard to imagine this happening now, although I do admit to holding onto the last shred of the dream of not having to pay university tuition AND a home loan at the same time.
In our marriage to date, I have not had to work. I can’t begin to express how grateful I am for this. We live adequately on Talented Hubby’s income. Our bills are always paid, our needs always met. We spend money on leisure and fun stuff. I don’t have to itemise every grocery purchase (I probably should, mind you, but I don’t have to). Yes, Hubs would dearly love to throw down a cool couple of thousand with wild abandon on his dream SLR camera, but he would never do it. Just like I wouldn’t buy the new MacBook Air just because it can (apparently) slide into a standard yellow file envelope which is very, very cool (sigh - LOL).
But it’s not just the interest rates - absolutely everything else around me is rising in price too. Meat, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, the list goes on and on. Planning a menu - and sticking to it - are fast becomming my main concerns. I used to manage very nicely on $150 per week for groceries (don’t freak out - this is for a family of five, in Aussie prices, and it’s probably considered low, LOL) Even though we were never wild spenders, we now have to sit down and really consider the worth of an item. Even though we didn’t have extravagant tastes for things like Date Nights before, we now have to consider whether it is more worthwhile to get a meal at McDonald’s for $15 over a $40 restaurant meal. And we don’t go out that often, so a ‘real’ sit down meal is a big treat for us. It’s kind of ho-hum to be having a romantic dinner at the same place you took your kids the week before, you know?
Things are just so much more expensive these days. We cannot imagine how a newly married couple can afford to break into the housing market for the first time. One income families are becoming rarer as wives who would otherwise stay home are forced back to work. The rental market where I am has skyrocketed. There are more people than there are houses, rents are astronomical compared to what they were when we were renting and landlords are getting upwards of two dozen interested parties for each new rental that happens to come up. People are actually electing to pay MORE than the listed rental price just to secure a place. It’s ludicrous! There’s just no way we would have been able to save for our house deposit paying the rents some of our friends are paying now. No way on earth.
Overseas folk - how are rates looking in your countries? Aussies - how are you managing with the swift increase in rates and general increased prices on things like groceries?
Cheers,
Lizzie
And This Is Why I Hate Tuna
This is a can of tuna.
The fact that it is even in our house at all is testament to the fact that I am, clearly, the Best Wife Ever.
I have not eaten tuna - or any canned fish product, for that matter - in 21 years. And I have NEVER had to share my marriage with tuna. Until today.
A couple of days ago Talented Hubby shocked the life out of me by requesting I have a few cans of tuna and salmon on standby for quick work lunch fixin’s. In all the years I’ve known him - coming up to twelve this year - I have never purchased canned fish. He may as well have asked for sliced Rump o’ Hippopotamus. And there’s a very good reason for this.
When I was seven years old, I was forever scarred by a dinner-making debacle which lives on in infamy within our extended family. My mother’s sister was staying with us at our farmhouse and, being what she supposed was a good house guest, she offered to cook dinner for everyone. I had long since had a moderate dislike of all things canned fishery so you can imagine my surprise when she placed in front of me a gelatinous pile of goop.
Tuna Mornay people. TUNA!
I looked around for Mum, hoping she’d bail me out. Tuna was the one thing she never made me eat - vegetables yes, but tuna, no. Unfortunately she’d been held up doing something for my Dad and was nowhere to be seen. My Aunt, unaccustomed to a child who was not used to being bullied into eating, sat at our dining table and watched me force down each mouthful. I won’t go into details but it was a harrowing experience which did not end until three hours after everyone else had left the table. My parents had, of course, realised what was happening but for whatever reason (unapparent to my 7 year old brain at the time) had chosen to back my Aunt.
When the last mouthful had been choked down, Mean Aunt gave a satisfied “Hrrumphh!” and disappeared, presumably to bark orders at my cousins. I did what any tuna-stuffed, force-fed, green-gilled seven year old would do. I ran to cry in my bedroom.
Now, before I tell the rest of this story, I have to introduce you to my Favourite Toy of 1986:
I guess the Heart Family were like Barbie’s poor cousins? Anyhoo, I remember this very specific nursery set as being my most prized possession that year (actually just searching for that picture brought back lots of memories - I also had the car). I don’t know what happened to the Dad and the little boy. It’s quite sad. At any rate, there I was, feeling decidely the worse-for-wear and before I knew it, I realised I was about to experience The Second Coming of Tuna. I reached for the first thing I saw and prompty emptied the contents of my stomach. See that cute little cupboard thingy? Uh-huh.
But wait, it gets better…
At that EXACT MOMENT, my Aunt happened to walk past my bedroom window and caught me retching into the poor toy. In her house, toys were to be looked at, never played with. You can imagine her reaction when she realised this sobbing, vomiting child was defiling Something That Cost Good Money.
And this is where my Mum, hero that she was, stepped in and put Mean Aunt in her place. I was bathed, crib/bath whatsit washed and sterilised, and tucked into bed with a bucket and a sympathetic look.
And that is why I hate tuna.
One time, I walked into the Piglets’ daycare to smell a fish-type mornay being served up for the kids and literally had to return to the car and send Talented Hubby in to collect the kids. Yes, it is that bad.
Over the years, I’m almost ashamed to say, my canned fish neurosis has rubbed off onto the kids. They’ve clearly never tasted it in our home but have come across it once or twice elsewhere and have also developed a healthy (ish!) distrust of the little green cans. I’m sorry kids, really, but one thing Mama will never cook in this house is tuna.
I tell this story merely to illustrate that I should, in fact, receive Wife of the Year for today’s tuna purchase. Never mind that the canning process seals in the smell and (given that they were bought for Talented Hubby’s work lunches) I will never see the inside of the can. The picture on the can sent me right back to 1986 with my Aunt sitting across the table from me, drumming her fingers in that annoying ‘hurry the heck up’ way really impatient people have. Sigh.
It was almost comical trying to buy them actually because have you seen the canned fish section of the grocery store? When Nasty Aunt served up her mornay glop back in the mid-eighties there was probably just tuna in oil and tuna in springwater. These days there are flavours like chilli, lemongrass, smoked…good grief! I’ve never bought tuna in my life before! I had no idea what to get! I stood there dumbfounded before finally picking random cans off the shelf.
I’m just glad I don’t have to be around when he opens them.
Cheers,
Lizzie
It Felt Like Two Years
Tomorrow, the Piglets go back to school after 2 weeks of holidays. For those outside of Australia, our school year runs from late January through till around mid December and is broken up into four equal terms of around 10 weeks each. At the end of every term we have a 2 week break, and at the end of fourth term in December, the summer holidays are 6 weeks.
Anyhoo, the kids’ bags are packed, lunches have been premade (my single biggest timesaver for stress-free mornings) and I’m psyching myself up for another ten weeks of after school reader books, charts, show-and-tell, school excursions, lost canteen money, and rotten apples. This term Boofah and Miss Moo also have swimming lessons, run through the school (it’s part of the school curriculum in my state that where possible, 5 x 45-60 min swimming lessons at a local pool are run once per year. They do this over the course of one week. Some rural areas without ready access to a pool may be exempt though - I’m not entirely certain). Master J, the lucky thing, gets a weekly swimming lesson all the way through the year, as part of his special ed classroom’s curriculum. Which, I might add, is a completely brilliant program. That kid is part fish.
So I’m sitting here now twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the dryer to finish. After all, it wouldn’t be the night before a school day if I wasn’t running a load of something at 11 o’clock at night.
We have a busy week planned. Tomorrow is grocery shopping day. Usually this would not take long but I haven’t finished my menu yet so I’ll have to do that first, plus I’m hoping my sweet husband will take me on a mini drive to the butcher and fruit and veg shop. I don’t get to go there every week so I’m planning a stock-up.
Tuesday, after the Piglets are safe and sound in their classrooms, Talented Hubby and I are heading into the city where we’ll be swinging by a photography exhibition and also an iconic church. Okay, so it’s a cathedral, and our city is actually called ‘The City of Churches’ (although, I suspect the Vatican might have words to say on that one), but I’ve always wanted to have a sticky-beak in that place and have never had the opportunity until now. Hubs frequents a couple of photography websites and came across some awesome interior shots of the cathedral and got an itchin’ to duplicate (or, knowing Hubs, to better) the images. It seems that this isn’t as uncommon a request as we’d thought so depending on when it is convenient for the staff, Hubs will do his photog thing (it goes without saying that we would never impose on a service or take photos with anybody present). He’s really quite brilliant at it. No, not biased at all, LOL.
Wednesday is a potter-about-the-house kind of day and then Thursday I’ve scheduled an MDO (Mum’s Day Off) which will probably involve another trip into the city (this time for shopping of course!). Good Times.
Bloggityville Blood Drive 2008 is scheduled to start on Monday 5th May however so far it seems nobody is coming to the party! The needles really aren’t that big. Honest! If you are planning to have a go, leave a comment to this post so I know whether to put up the Mr Linky or not. If there doesn’t seem to be any takers, I may have to reschedule for later in the year. In a weird twist of fate it appears I cannot donate blood during my own blood drive. My last donation (whole blood) was in late March so the three months rule won’t be up until late June. I had hoped I might be able to give a platelet donation before then, but it doesn’t seem likely. This was always a possibility but I was always going to host the carnival anyway :)
Well, that’s the dryer done. Nighty-night Bloggityville!
Cheers,
Lizzie
Bloggy Giveaway WINNER!
Before we get onto that, some info. When I closed the giveaway post at lunchtime today, I’d had 176 entries - just wonderful. Thankyou to everyone who had a go. However…
Of that 176, I had to delete a further FIFTEEN entries who somehow missed the instructions to leave an email, or had otherwised fudged their entries. I didn’t delete any ‘regular‘ email address (although I did feel a pang of sympathy because they’ll probably end up with extra spam) because I wanted as many people as possible to have a chance at winning. But I did go ahead and delete those who completely missed the instruction altogether. In addition, three or four of those fifteen forgot to add a blog URL at all making it impossible to contact them even if they had won! Some were still contactable via their links back to their blogs but - and don’t hate me for this! - when you’re talking 176 comments it really does take up a lot of time to chase up the stragglers. This is kind of why I stressed the issue of including your email in the first place. It just makes it a whole lot easier for me and a whole lot more fun when I get to give stuff away! Please don’t look too deeply into it if your entry was one that was deleted - I’m not a mean person! LOL. But I did feel as though I needed to make it fair for the folks who entered correctly. The more incorrect entries I allowed through, the less chance of winning for everyone else.
How I ended up doing it in the end was to simply copy/paste the entire 176 original comments into a Word document where they popped up with numbers next to them. Viewing them underneath the post meant no numbers, and viewing them via my Wordpress admin gave me numbers but mixed them up with other recent comments from my other posts so it all got far too confusing (yes, I could have counted manually - but ouch on the eyes!) Then I deleted the necessary comments via the Word document. It wasn’t worthwhile to bother doing twice the work and deleting them from the site also - this is why, underneath the giveaway post, you’ll still see ‘176 comments’ when the final count was actually 161. And then I just used a random number generator (www.random.org) to arrive at the winner.
Who is, without further ado…
No. 148 (adjusted!) ~ katklaw777! Kat doesn’t appear to have a blog so I can’t direct you there but congratulations Kat!
Again, thankyou to everyone who participated and I’m sorry I had to get all Fussy Lizzie on the comments issue. Nobody hates me, right?
Please come back.
Please? (LOL)
Cheers,
Lizzie
Giveaway Update…And Some Thoughts
If you haven’t already entered my giveaway, you’ve only got a few more hours to do so! I’ll be announcing the winner sometime tomorrow afternoon my time (middle of Friday night, US time) so quick sticks people!
Also, apart from checking my spam filter to make sure I wasn’t screening out legit entries, I have not moderated the comments/entries since Tuesday. I’ll be doing that later tonight (you’ll still have a few hours to put your entry in after that though). By moderation, I mean that I’ll be double checking all the entries are up to scratch - and there may be the odd deletion.
Regarding entries to giveaway posts in general - what’s the consensus on asking folks to do a ‘little extra’ to enter? I’ve been thinking about this ever since the last Bloggy Giveaway at the end of January. Barb over at A Chelsea Morning touched on the idea back then but for the life of me I can’t find the exact post on her site to link to. Anyhow, the gist was, because Bloggy Giveaways is such a big deal now, with nearly 900 participants each quarter, there was often a huge push to join as many giveaways as humanly possible, as quickly as possible, just because you could. It’s sad to say that many of those entrants, in their mad rush to get to the next giveaway on the list, only write something like ‘please enter me’ and that’s it. To be fair, hosting blogs have the right to put whatever rules they like on their giveaways, but I do understand what Barb said. Out of the 170 or so entries I’ve had this time around, a small (but significant) portion still didn’t pay attention to the requirements for entry - and they weren’t hard! But it goes beyond that. It’s the whole ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’ attitude. Last time around I entered twenty giveaways. Caught up in the hysteria, I worked my way down the list from No. 1 until I finally exhausted myself and came to my senses (being that I’m Australian, 75% of the blogs I visited weren’t opening their giveaways to me anyway, so that’s plenty more than 20 blogs visited). I didn’t even get to look at the last half of the list. And honestly, it didn’t matter in the end (I did manage to win something though, which was wonderful!). I always made a point of adding an actual comment instead of just my email when I entered. It’s just good manners. This time around, I only entered 7 giveaways. I think a self-imposed limit of 10 per giveaway is a good thing to aim for, but then, that’s just me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not getting down anyone who didn’t write a novel to enter my own giveaway, LOL - I’m just saying it all becomes very impersonal after a while, almost like the only reason we’ve bothered to visit a new blog is to get some free stuff. Which is probably true to some degree. But sad nontheless. Am I the only one who feels like this?
Of course, the flip side to the coin is twofold. Many bloggers I’ve spoken to have hosted giveaways to increase traffic and to ‘advertise’ their blog in an arena which is highly popular, such as the Bloggy Giveaways site. I’m kind of guilty of that one myself. One hopes that at least a few of the entrants stick around long enough to subscribe, or to browse your archives. And it’s just plain NICE to extend your boundaries a little. Then there’s that nice little ‘kick’ to seeing your comments skyrocket - even if the totals are a little skewed. But joining in, moderating comments, joining in others’ competitions - it all takes so much time and energy. Some people thrive on that, and that’s okay. I was stoked to get my pink t-shirt last time, LOL. But I still seriously considered giving the whole idea the boot this quarter. In the end I decided to sign up because there is still that wonderful buzz you get from giving something away that really can’t be beat. I do love that first email to winners, LOL.
Which brings me back to my original question. Would you feel as though it is far too much trouble to go the ‘extra mile’ to enter a giveaway? I’m not saying writing a three page essay is on the cards, but perhaps something along the lines of ‘tell me your favourite childhood memory’ or somesuch. It’s likely some are going to think that’s too much hassle and entries will drop, but do you think it makes the whole experience a bit more authentic and not so much ‘what can I get out of this?’
Suggestions welcome.
Cheers,
Lizzie
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