What's your earliest money memory?

Remember this blissful ignorance of youth? When food magically appeared, mounds of toys were gifted every Christmas and birthday and you wanted for nothing? Then at some point you discovered 'money' and things were never the same. Suddenly those toys had a cost, but if you had money you had the power to buy things!

Sometimes discovering money is wonderful, sometimes it's not. I asked some of my favourite bloggers what their earliest Money Memory was, and how it shaped their path to Financial Independence.

LadyFIRE - Me!

My earliest money memory is checking my bank statement in March. I couldn't tell you what year, but I distinctly remember it being March. I got a three month statement for the high interest account my parents had set up. There would have been a couple of hundred dollars in there, and this is back when accounts were earning a lot more than they are now, so maybe 6% or 7%. We'll say 6.5% for the sake of argument. I remember reading how much interest I earned, in December it was $1.10. In January, $1.10. In February 99 cents.

Only 99 cents? Outrage! The banks were ripping me off! My dad sat me down and I learnt that banks pay interest daily, and since February only had 28 days it paid less than December and January. It definitely got me hooked on the idea of Free Money.

I still check my interest payments religiously to this day. I love being rewarded for leaving my money alone for a month.

Mrs. Picky Pincher from Picky Pinchers

My parents never talked about money in front of my sister and I. We didn't have much money when I was a little kid, so I suspect they kept us sheltered from a lot of tough conversations.

Although I didn't know things were tight, I was naturally frugal. I had a piggy bank and saved loose change I found while using metal detectors with my dad. But my earliest money memory happened on the aisles of K-Mart. 

My sister and I both got a very generous $5 weekly allowance. At first I spent my entire allowance each week on candy and cheap toys. However, one day my eyes spied a beautiful My Little Pony doll. But alas! The toy was $10 and I only had my meager $5. It wasn't until this very moment that I realized I could save money until next week to buy something nicer.

I remember walking out of K-Mart with my $5 in my hand, vowing to return later for the My Little Pony. My mom was so perplexed that I didn't buy anything. I explained that I'd rather save my money and buy one nice thing instead of blowing it each week on small things. She realized I learned what it meant to save, so then I got my $20 monthly allowance upfront from that point on.

At the time I didn't think anything of it, but this was genius on my parents' part! I got to learn money lessons on a small scale while I was young and I learned the importance of saving.

1500 Days to Freedom

Learning the Value of Money through a Big Red Wagon and a Little Red Bank

The Big Red Wagon

For my 5th birthday, my parents bought me a Radio Flyer wagon. I had wanted one for a long time and I was filled with joy when I laid eyes on it. I took it outside and hauled my toy tractors around for the entire afternoon.

That evening, I forgot to put it away and the next morning, it was gone. Someone had stolen it. I didn't even have it for 24 hours. When I realized what had happened, I cried. Then, I asked my parents for another new one. Their response was a firm 'No' along with a lecture of how I shouldn’t have been so careless. They also let me know that my dad worked hard to at his job to buy me the wagon.

It was on that day that I connected work, money and stuff. That I still remember the ordeal clearly 38 years later reminds of how powerful that lesson was.

The Little Red Bank
For Christmas when I was 6 or 7, someone gave me a little bank that looked like a old-time cash register.

You'd deposit a coin into it and pull the lever. The bank kept a running total of money you deposited. The catch was that the bank wouldn't open until you saved $10.

At first, owning the bank was infuriating to my little child brain. $10 seemed like a fortune and it angered me that I couldn't get the money out whenever I wanted. I remember it usually took me months to accumulate $10. One time, I even tried to smash it open.

However, a funny thing happened when I saved the $10 and my money was liberated; I didn't spend it. I like to think that the bank made me appreciate the money. 

J. Money from Budgets are Sexy

My earliest money memory was probably getting an allowance of a whopping $1.00 a week growing up. I'm sure my parents tried teaching me before that, but nothing puts things in perspective until you're holding cold hard cash in your hands :) I learned fast just how expensive all those things I wanted were, and even more so how important prioritizing is. Things went from costing "only $10.00" to "only 10 weeks of allowances" which completely changes your mindset! And all of a sudden I didn't want as much as I used to ;)

The Wealthy Bogan

When I was 14 I managed to rack up a gigantic phone bill. "Are you 18+?" they would ask. Absolutely I am, now let me download things.

Bordering on the line of legality, I had downloaded to a few $5 apps ("games" in those days) on my dad's work phone, unaware that they were indeed subscription based and he would also be charged $5 for the 'Welcome' text, $5 for the 'Unsubscribe' text, and $5 for each daily text. That added up pretty quick. To be honest, after he found out, I considered myself lucky to still be alive.

I was a kid so I had no way to pay that bill. My parents barely had the money themselves, and I wish I hadn't put that kind of financial stress on them.

The only thing I was good for was chores, so that's how I paid them back. For the next 3 years, I washed and dried the dishes after every meal for the whole family. I did this 365 days a year until I moved out.

There was so much guilt over what I'd done. I had offered to empty my bank account to put towards the bill but my parents refused. That money, $500, is what I moved to the city with, I used to set up my life here and to build what I have today.

When I got a phone of my own, I made sure it was pre-paid, and I have learned not to waste money quite so liberally.

Mrs. ETT from Enough Time To...

I have two early money memories, and both unfortunately have negative connotations. When we went on excursions in primary school, we were allowed to take some pocket money to buy something. I remember coming home from a day at the museum with some gemstone chips from the shop, along with my change. My mum berated me because I hadn’t bought home any presents for the family - “you used to be so generous.” I didn’t remember being generous, but I guess it must have been around that time that I became careful with money, which sees me as a natural saver today (Mr. ETT used to comment about moths flying from my wallet when I open it!). My other memory of that time is when mum and dad had to take some money out of the bank. I can’t remember what for, but I do remember excitedly asking to see it in the foyer of the bank once it was withdrawn, and being shushed quite emphatically. It was later they explained to me that it could be dangerous for people to know we are walking around with a lot of cash. That taught me that money was not something to be talked about, and that maybe we were lucky to have money that others didn’t have. Today, left to my own devices, I would keep as much as my money locked away as I could. Luckily, I have Mr. ETT to balance me, and encourage me to spend when it is important, just like mum was looking for."

LadyFIRE note: Mrs. ETT sent this through to me saying "This was an interesting exercise. I tried to think of some positive stories, but honestly couldn't remember anything." I think it's super valuable to include 'negative' memories like these to highlight that not everyone has pleasant money memories, but we can rise above them. Thanks for sharing Mrs. ETT!

Adventures with Poopsie

When I was in grade two, a boy in my class named Thomas told me that he had a share portfolio. I probed a little deeper and it turned out, his dad had started each of his son's a share portfolio when they were born. I thought this was amazing! I didn't know what a share portfolio was, but I imagined that he had a leather bound portfolio that he kept safe at home. I imagined this little seven year old boy walking around with his portfolio, and I knew I wanted one too!

I ended up asking my dad about shares and he explained them to me, showing me how to track the prices in the newspaper. Fast forward a number of years and I now have my very own share portfolio. I don't keep the information in a leather bound portfolio, but I am thankful for the introduction Thomas provided me all those years ago.

A huge thank you to all the bloggers who responded. I'm super chuffed to have superstars like Mr 1500 and J. Money here! Leave a comment and tell me your earliest money memory, and who I should reach out to next time!


 

Eggscellent pets: Frugal and flavourful!

Check out these beautiful ladies. Tempest, Ethyl and their (unpictured) sister Wookie have been keeping me rolling in eggs for almost three years now. I've owned chicken since late high-school and they are some of the greatest animals in the world. On top of producing eggs daily, they dispose of any food scrap you can think of (except onions and citrus fruits) are solely responsible for the eggscellent soil in my veggie path, and are just so darn adorable.
Chickens make brilliant additions to a frugal backyard because on top of actually making you breakfast (well, you still need to cook) they can be the most self-reliant pets you forgot you had, or they can be lap chickens up for a snuggle.

Getting started - the expensive bit

To get started with chickens you don't need much space, but you do need security. Chickens are silly little featherheads that will fly over a fence and parade in front of a doberman if they see something snacky. Or if they're startled by a falling leaf. Or if the sun is the wrong shade of red. Honestly if they can jump a fence and find something dangerous they probably will. Your first month with hens will be coming home to find poop across the back porch and a thirsty, hungry bird will run up to you begging to be saved. They won't run close enough to easily be picked up and popped back in the pen, but they will come running nonetheless.

Coops, roosting and nesting

Thankfully, hens aren't that big or strong, so once you get some decent fencing in place, you'll have them safely contained. First you need a coop. That's the indoors bit with solid walls. Sometimes.

You definitely don't need to be this fancy, but it looks great!

There's a variety of wisdom about the benefits of four solid walls (for warmth) versus three walls and an open side (for ventilation) or some combination of the two. Personally I have three full walls with a small gap along the top, and a half wall with a small gap at the top, and a chicken-height gap at the bottom. I also leave the door open at all times because I'm in a built-up, suburban, fox-free area (fingers crossed, touch wood!). If you live in a rural area, or near a nature reserve you'll either need to close up the coop at night, or ensure the run is fox-proof.

Firstly, the interior of the coop. Each hen needs a minimum of 40cm perch space. But since hens constantly squabble with one another, I recommend 1 perch for a pair, 2 perches for 3-6 hens, and 3 perches if you have more, with enough length for an extra bird (i.e. for 3 hens, you would need 2 perches and 160cm of space). Make sure the perches are more than pecking distance apart or you will have two grouchy birds taking over all the perches, and the rest sleeping on the floor in their own poop. Yuck.

Chickens are also ground birds, their feet are more suited to walking than gripping branches, so use wide flat perches. Roosts are for sleeping, so you want your birds as comfortable as possible.

DIY coops can be gorgeous! Pro-tip, you don't need to be this good.
The hens won't know it's ugly! Source

Next, you need a nest box, that's where the eggs go (hopefully). Nest boxes are tricky to plan. You want them at least the width of your hen so she can fit comfortably, but not so big she feels like she's out in the open. We have 2 boxes side by side that are 45cm cubed (roughly). You should always have at least two nest boxes, with roughly one box for every 4-5 hens. But they will inevitably choose their favourite one or two and always lay there, hens have been known to line up!

Runs, for diggin' scratchin' and good times!

This bit is easier - hens need at least one square metre of space each. Obviously that is a really really tiny space, so you're flock should get 2-3 square metres to start with, plus their one each, plus the space inside the coop. Anything less and you will end up with fat, grumpy hens who will constantly squabble. If you have a small yard, build a moveable run, then you can pick two plots of land and alternate them between chicken yard and pre-fertilised veggie garden!

If you have dogs, or live in an area with foxes use hardware mesh (not chicken wire) to build your fence, and bury it at least 50cm deep. If like me, you're in a 'safe' area (touch wood again!) you can use bird netting strung between garden stakes and weighed down at the bottom,

So what does it cost?

Well, if you're in a hurry, you can buy this bad boy for $195. Mr. FIRE and I were in a rush, so this is what our ladies live in. The floor has rusted through, the door fell off and I've had to cover the sides and put an extra perch up. It was a terrible purchase, but our old coop was falling down. Plus it is FAR too small for even two hens to live in full-time. It's an acceptable overnighter if your hens will be free ranging, but if not you need to build a run.

For a frugal solution, keep an eye on hard rubbish, Gumtree and listen in on your friends getting rid of scrap wood! You can pull together something much more effective (and cheaper!) for a third of the price with some basic woodworking skills. Mr. FIRE and I will be replacing our coop in the coming year and plan to build it from scratch.

Our run is currently made from a length of bird netting ($20) and garden stakes and old bricks we had lying around. Our ladies live under an apple tree, so they're protected from the elements and I think they ate more apples this year than we did!

And finally, you have to buy then hens themselves, unless you're lucky enough to find one walking down the road. That's how Wookie came into our lives. You can order a half dozen day-old fresh out of the shell hens for around $2-3 each if you find a nearby farmer. Commercial stores will sell them for more, but that's convenience for you! Day old hens require heat, special food, carefully stocked water and a whole lot of other trickiness. However you can buy fully fledged hens (ready for the great outdoors) from $6 - $25. The younger they are, the cheaper, however you have to shell out for food until the freeloaders hit laying age around 18weeks. 

Life with chickens 

Okay, now that we've gone through all the drama of set up and your hens have arrived (and you've chased them back into the pen a hundred times and plugged all the holes in the fence) you can settle down and enjoy them. Hens are generally quiet unless they've laid an egg and want to brag about it. The worst I've had was fifteen minutes of the 'egg song' at around 8am. More often than not, your neighbours will be surprised to find out you have hens, they're so quiet.

If you want to handle your hens, they will do anything for food. Start as soon as they come home, and hand feed them kitchen scraps, budgie seeds, weeds you pulled from the footpath. Soon they will know you've got the good stuff and come running when they see you.

In terms of food and water - make a top fill dispenser to ensure they always have pellets available (our pellets cost about $35 for 2 and a bit months) and fresh water at all times. The more kitchen scraps they eat, the less pellets you'll use. You can build brilliant DIY feeders with a few lengths of PVC pipe - simply grab a 180degree elbow, about a metre of pipe about 20cm diameter and a cap and glue the lot together. For the food pipe, leave the cap loose so you can fill from the top. For the water, glue the cap on, then fill by flipping upside down. Water will flow down until the level sits higher than the bend and will sit there like a vacuum seal, similar to putting your finger over the end of a straw.

Finally, start collecting junk mail (without any plastic gloss) old newspapers and bills. You don't need to buy straw to line the nest boxes, simple fill with shredded paperwork and change every week or two. 

And you're done! Enjoy free eggs for the rest of your life! You can up the care quality by regularly providing treats (watching hens fight over spaghetti is amazing) and checking for mites and bugs, but with access to a good amount of fresh dirt, hens are largely self-sufficient.

Notice I've been saying hens this whole time? Because roosters are LOUD! Technically they are great for flock dynamics and will keep the ladies in line, protect them from cats and announce the good food. But they are so so very loud, from the first tiny glimmers of sunshine two hours BEFORE dawn to that last breath of sunset they don't stop. It's not just the crowing, but the incessant chatter. Unless you are rural and want the baby chooks or perhaps to make Coq au Vin, steer clear of roosters, no matter how pretty. 

Makin' a little on the side

So far our hypothetical hens have cost us about $250 in housing, and $18 a month in food. But they give back an average egg every 2 days. In summer they'll lay daily, and in winter when the days are shorter they'll slow down and take a break. My three hens are eating $18 worth of food a month, and giving back almost five dozen eggs! To buy five dozen cheap, ethically questionable eggs would cost me $21, to buy free-range eggs would be $31.50! 

There are so many eggs I can't find enough ways to use them all. I have zuchinni slice, cake, banana bread, eggs and rice, bacon and eggs, quiche and yet somehow I still have dozens of eggs left over! Thankfully my area has a thriving trade culture and I've swapped a dozen eggs for close to $10 worth of produce (hello Kale!) as well as being able to sell a dozen eggs for $3 or $4. I'm not sure if I'll make back the cost of the expensive but cheaply made coop I bought online, but as far as cashflow goes, the hens sit in the plus column!

Except that time they escaped and ate all my peas... right down to the ground.

Tell me about your pets! What do they cost in dollars? What do they add to your life that makes them completely worth it? Bonus points for photos!

Ratesetter: Peer-to-Peer Lending

Have you ever looked at the huge fees and interest rates that personal lenders charge and thought 'damn, I wish I could be on that side of the equation'. While banks and credit unions are offering us a piddly 3% interest rate on 'bonus' saver accounts, they are charging 13-20%. Someone is making a killing there, and it's not me.

Enter RateSetter, where you can be the lender and reap the profits.

Basic concept

RateSetter and other peer-to-peer lending companies act as the middle man between you and someone who wants to take out a loan. Personal lending is rife with risks, what if they don't pay you back? What if you lose a friend over this? What if you don't lend them the money and you lose a friend for refusing to 'help'? My favourite author Patrick Rothfuss used the phrase "There are two sure ways to lose a friend one is to borrow, the other is to lend", or for a classic version from Shakespeare himself, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend."

RateSetter place themselves as a middle man between you and the borrower. This creates a lovely layer of protection between you and the borrower (you could be lending to your mother and you'd never know!) as well as opening up a huge pool of borrowers for you.

You can get started for as little as $10 which almost matches the minimum Acorns investment of $5. RateSetter doesn't have a nice mobile app like Acorns does, but it exposes you to a different market and (in my experience) has far better returns. 

Pros: Easy to start, easy to use, low fees

RateSetter has a slightly tricky menu that could do with some better labels, but you'll get your head around it in about five or ten minutes. They give you a variety a ways to deposit funds, either by RateSetter pinging your account using POLi payments, or you can use BPAY to send money across. I haven't used POLi, but BPAY deposits are generally processed within 48hours.

Once your funds arrive, you jump over to the lending tab and pick your market. You can lend for 1 month, 1 year, 3 years or 5 years. In the 1 month market you receive all your investment plus some interest back at the end of the month, generally for a rate around 3.5 - 4%. In the one year market you receive small interest payments throughout the year, and you investment back as a lump sum at the end. One year markets generally have a rate of around 5%. Honestly, neither of these offer enough return to be worth using in my opinion.

RateSetter shines in the three and five years markets. Each payment returns a small around of your principal, plus an interest payment (just like when paying off your own mortgage). The three year market is currently offering 8.4%, and the five year market is at 8.7%, though it tends to hover closer to 9 or even 10%.

The fees are quite reasonable - RateSetter takes 10% of your earnings, rounded down. That sounds like a lot, but when weighed against a 9% return, it works out really well. e.g. lend $1,000 at 9%, that's $90 a year. You get $81, RateSetter takes $9. You have still made 8.1% on your investment. But also, because you can deal in teeny tiny $10 loans, and their cut is rounded down, I quite often have an interest payment of  7 or 8 cents, which RateSetter won't take any of. In my February goals update RateSetter made me $78, 2% of my financial independence needs!

Next up in brilliant features is the reinvestment settings. By ticking a couple of boxes (that you can change anytime) you can ask for all repayments to be automatically reinvested for the length of time your choose at either market rate, or your set rate. If you set a rate and the current market rate is higher, your funds will be invested at that higher rate. You can also split it by loan term ,so your 1month loans can cycle endlessly in the 1 month market while building a separate nest-egg in the five year market.

And finally, RateSetter has a provision fund. Fees collected from borrowers are stored in the provision fund so in the unlikely event that a borrower defaults you can claim back your initial investment. Unfortunately the provision fund won't pay any missed interest, but in eight years of business RateSetter has not lost a single dollar. That's a wonderful track record!

Cons: Medium risk, locked in funds

Okay, I've gushed about how much I love RateSetter, let me talk about the things that are less than perfect.

Lending money is risky. This isn't like a term deposit where the bank is super solid and there are government checks and balances to protect you. This is a company who has promised to protect you, but they are a business, and you are a lender. Loans sometimes default, it's a fact. So peer-to-peer lending falls into the Medium risk category. Some might say high, but the track record and provision fund make me willing to call it Medium.

Next, the terms. Your money is locked away for five years. It's a pain in the proverbial. When I started I was using all four markets for variety, before realising I much preferred the five year terms and started switching my money over. I started using RateSetter in November 2014, I changed to only lending in the five year market in March 2015. I still have money stuck in the three year market. And it's there for another year. Stuck because of a choice I made two years ago. No getting rich quick with RateSetter, just a long slow build. On the upside though, once you hit FIRE, you can change your reinvestment settings to reinvest your principal and pay out the interest to you. Easy cash flow for your retirement income!

And finally, the one little thing that offends my delicate sensibilities. RateSetter's biggest business is car loans. Mr FIRE and I are a one car family (with four bikes!) and scoff at people who take out car loans! But I guess I should be grateful that their financial choices are funding my retirement!

RateSetter are currently offering a $75 sign-up bonus if you invest $2,000 before the 15th of April. This referral link will also give me $75 (thanks) but will only work for me five times. If you chose to sign up, you will get your own referral link to share with your friends.

RateSetter aren't currently offering any sign up bonuses, but that doesn't minimise their appeal to me. After fees, I'm earning more than 9% per annum, and after four years I can honestly say I am very happy with my investment.

Links to RateSetter are referral links.  If you have any experience with peer-to-peer lending, I'd love to hear your story!

Where should I put a windfall? Tell me what you think

I have an unexpected 'windfall' coming my way. I purchased $5,000 worth of bonds that were listed to last until 2074. Given the current low interest rates a lot of companies have been paying out these bonds and opening new ones with much lower interest rates. It's good business for them, but it means they're closing my investment and I'm about to have $5,000 in my pocket. I have some ideas what I want to do with it, but I'd love to hear your opinion.

Option 0: A neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew car!

Hahaha, kidding. I had to throw this in here. There is no way the money is getting spent on anything but buying back my free time. 

Option 1: Put it towards the savings goal

This is the obvious option, I've got a goal to reach $20,000 in savings by the first of July (check my last update for February) but honestly that feels like cheating. The goal was to save $20,000, not to pull it out of my investments and put it into my savings account.

Option 2: Pay down some of the mortgage

This is an oldie but a goodie. Unexpected money can always be put towards mortgages, and the way mine are set up any excess payments can be withdrawn later free of charge. But it's not the best use of the money, the bonds were earning 5.05% and the mortgage is only costing me 3.99%. It'd be a net loss of 1% interest each year.

Option 3: Invest! But where?

This is where I'm headed! Invest! But where? The money is coming out of bonds with one of the Big 4 banks. Should I put it back into the same place, or somewhere different? The bank is offering reinvestment in their new bonds, but they pay about the same as my mortgage is charging.

I could drop the money into my Acorns account and dramatically decrease the percentage I'm paying in admin fees. My highest performing investment is in peer-to-peer lending (review to come!) but I have more than 20% of my non-real estate investment there already and I think that might be a bit risky, even if the 9.5%+ return is lovely.

I could also use it to balance my Vanguard portfolio, or I could dig in a bit more research and purchase some strong performing dividends shares, or another set of bonds.

If I get the time, I'd love to think about this more. But I'm also super aware of Warren Buffets advice that boils down to "If you don't know what you're doing, toss it in a low cost index fund like Vanguard and leave it there forever".

According to the stats on this blog close to 100 people drop by every day, most of you come from other personal finance blogs. I'd love to hear what you think (and verify that my stats aren't entirely robots!). The money hits my account on the 31st of March - what should I do with it?

How the Pink Tax is ruining your finances

Have you ever actually sat down and worked out how much it costs to be a presentable, functional human being. There's clothes, hair, make-up, hygiene, the inevitable caffeine hit to get you through the morning. Sometime in the past some smart marketing gurus figured out that if they make us feel bad about ourselves the way we are, they can sell us products to 'fix' ourselves. 

And then they realised they could hit women twice as hard. 

Some women are enamored with hair, make-up, nice clothes, nice shoes and will go the whole nine yards every day, whether they leave the house or not. Let's start by saying I'm not one of them. My makeup in high school was black eyeliner (as thick as it could go) and my hair was permanently in a pony tail. Unless I had just cut it in a vague attempt to be stylish, then I was just wishing for it to grow back.

But even with my minimal approach to hair and makeup, I was endlessly frustrated with how expensive everything was. And not just that it was expensive, but that it was more expensive for me than my partner. I once rang every single hair dresser within walking distance (I was young, I didn't have a car) and checked their pricing. On average to get a haircut was $40+. I then asked them how much it would be to get a haircut if I was male. If you're ever bored and want to make someone extremely uncomfortable, call a hairdresser and ask that question.

Me: "Hi, just wondering how much for a haircut?"

Bored sales voice "$40 for a style cut and blow dry"

Me: "Okay thanks, and how much if I was a bloke"

Very baffled person "... excuse me...?" 

Me: "If I was male, how much would you charge me for a haircut?"

Extremely uncomfortable person "Oh, ermm, ahh. Mens cuts are $20"

Me, super chipper "Thanks! Have a nice day!"

It was half the price, just for being male, not just at one hairdresser, but consistently at every salon. This was when it was becoming quite common for women to have short hair (I like to call them 'Power Cuts') and men were having styled, sculpted hair. Without seeing me face to face there would have been no way for the person on the end of the phone to gauge the amount of time and effort my hair would cost, but because I was female they were willing to charge me significantly more.

The same ridiculous costing applies across the board, anywhere a product can be classed male or female. A quick search of my local supermarket tells me that a 4 pack of womens razor blades is $17.60, while the same brand, same style for men is only $15.35. Identical toys for children could be priced higher merely for being pink, without any other differences.

In a popular Mr. Money Mustache post, he talks about the Universal Men's Grooming Device. While I love this post and all it entails, it frustrates me as just another example of Pink Tax. He recommends that all men toss away their razor blades, immediately cease visiting a hairdresser and pick up an electric razor for under $100. With the right attachments, this razor can be used for both facial hair and head hair and lasts for years. Which is amazing, especially when haircuts are $25 a pop. Except it's amazing for men. Women tend to be frowned upon when sporting a buzzcut.

Now this might seem like an entire post on social justice and a fair bit on whining on my part, but no one said you had to purchase the female version of things. It's just a giant marketing scam to try and tell you that your poor delicate female self needs special products. The fact is that you don't.

My partner and I signed up to the Dollar Shave Club. For $7 a month we received a fancy 4-blade razor, with 4 cartridges. After six months we had to cancel our subscription because we had too many blades. Even though we were both using them. And I have to say, after years of going through different brands of 'soft and smooth' women's razors, this is the best shave I've ever had. No Pink Tax, much higher quality.

The same goes for the soap, shampoo, moisturisers and haircuts in this house. I might have said above that buzz cuts on women are frowned upon, and I'm not saying you have to take the plunge with me but I love my buzz cut. I bought the fanciest set of clippers I could get for $100 when they were 50% off during the post-Christmas sales. They've served me faithfully for over a year when I first had an undercut and later moved to a full buzz cut. Since both my partner and I use them we've easily saved over $300 in haircuts in the first year alone.

If you don't want to join me in the buzz cut club (although I think every woman should try it once! such a liberating time-saver) the internet is full of tips and tricks for cutting your own hair. Sure you might not be able to manage the fancy layering technique your hairdresser uses, but if your hair lives in a ponytail anyway, you aren't missing out on much. Or maybe you could team up with a friend and learn together. No pressure, but if you give your bestie a bad haircut, you know she'll be the next one wielding the scissors!

Leave a comment and let me know what you're sick of paying the Pink Tax on. What tricks do you have? And guys, do you find yourself paying more for anything because it's "For Men"?

She's making a list...

I used to keep a big list of everything I wanted to buy. Every time I had a passing whim to buy something I would throw it on the list. At the end of the week while I was tallying up my budget I would write in an extra $5 next to each item. Things stayed on the list until I had enough money set aside to buy them. It seemed like a great system until I had over 100 items on the list, and almost $3,000 'held' for things I was never going to buy.

Since my March goal is to keep my Other / Miscellaneous spending as low as possible, it seems like a good time to revive the list.

In the last twelve months I've been spending an average of  $540 a month on miscellaneous stuff. This is pretty heavily influenced by paying through the nose to get an ACL reconstruction in a private hospital. My mental health was suffering from being restricted by my physical health so I chose to skip the queue and pay for the surgery ASAP. By the way, I have hospital insurance now, hindsight is great.

But even without looking at that one giant bill, over the last three months I've blown my $250 budget completely out of the water. Not just that, my overall spend for each month since I started this budget has been over budget. So I'm going to revive the list, using a google spreadsheet so I have it on me at all times, no temptation to cheat!.

The list rules

Rule #1: Hey look, a Thing I want! 

If I want something, it goes on the list. If I spot it on the list and think 'why the hell is that there' it comes off the list. If I think I want something and I find that it's already on the list, I'm going to keep a tally of how many times I've thought "wouldn't it be nice to have a life size lion statue" (hint.. never, I even had trouble putting that sentence together).

Rule #2: How much can I put to the Thing right now?

Any time that I review the list I'm going to ask myself how much I could put towards that Thing right now. If some money fairy was going to come spirit my money away, how much would I give him to save for that Thing ?

And to keep myself from going too crazy, nothing more than $10 a week. These are going to be fun purchases for the most part, although I may have to be flexible with things like 'Bathroom renovation'. Or be super inventive on doing the renovation on a teeny little budget!

Rule #3: If I had the money, would I actually buy this Thing?

This might seem like a repeat of step 1 and 2, but with my old list I would often have the money. Sometimes double the money. But I wouldn't go out and buy the thing I had saved for. Some of the magic of this list is that it seems really super duper important that I buy that Thing right now. Then I go and save for it for a while and realise I really don't want to spend $400 on a life-sized lion statue, I'd rather be that much close to retiring


Unlike my last list, I won't be looking at this once a week and pushing money into it. That would put me right back in my old dilemma of having thousands of dollars put aside. Instead I'll review this list as I think of it, keeping in mind Rule #2 above, not more than $10 an item a week.

This ingenious savings technique I have come up with has a name, it's been around for a while. It's called waiting. Mind. Blown! Did you know you could save money merely by waiting?! Amazing! Back when I was a teeny tiny child my brother and I wanted to by GameBoy Colours and the first Pokemon game. I got Red, he got Blue (not Fire Red, or Leaf Green, cast your minds way back to the late 90's). It felt like we were saving forever. Our parents bought us a 'money tree' - a kind of plastic money box that fit 100 gold coins in a tidy stack. As your filled it it had little markers on the side to tell you how far you'd gotten.

My brother and I hustled hard back in the day. We vacuumed the house, washed cars, learned basic remedial massage (my Dad had terrible shoulder muscles). My brother also 'lent' me his toys for a fee - took me a bit to catch on that he never accepted any of my toys back. Sneaky sibling got about $20 ahead of me doing this at one point.

When we finally hit $100 each we got our games. A quick google search tells me the release price for the GameBoy Colour was $69.99, and the game was $29.95 (oh how times have changed!) which comes out to $100. I know for a fact that my parents got them cheaper because I remember getting to keep some money in my tree. So by waiting we saved a little bit of money, but we also really appreciated those games.

I always thought I hadn't succumbed to Lifestyle Inflation. After all I didn't have more toys than when I was younger. In fact I might even have less, I used to buy a LOT of books and video games. But this difference is how quickly I would buy things. I used to saved for 2-3 months before I bought a game. Now if I decide I want it, I have the money to buy it immediately, and sometimes I will. I have a frustrating number of games in my Steam library with less than 10 hours play time. The issue isn't that I bought these things, it's that I bought them immediately, without really thinking through the purchase. By stopping, waiting, and thinking about how much I want something I will inevitably find I don't actually want most of them.

I recently used this 'Waiting' technique to great success with a set of weights. I've been making noises about wanting a decent set of weights for about six months now. While I haven't had it I've been doing body weight exercises, but I was really starting to get to a point where I needed some more resistance. A friend piped up with a set of weights that had been gathering dust (and cobwebs) for a couple of years. Retail value should have been somewhere $150-200, he handed them to us for $50. Winning!

Leave a comment and let me know what you've gotten for cheap by waiting? What have you paid a premium for just to have right now?

She's making a list...

I used to keep a big list of everything I wanted to buy. Every time I had a passing whim to buy something I would throw it on the list. At the end of the week while I was tallying up my budget I would write in an extra $5 next to each item. Things stayed on the list until I had enough money set aside to buy them. It seemed like a great system until I had over 100 items on the list, and almost $3,000 'held' for things I was never going to buy.

Since my March goal is to keep my Other / Miscellaneous spending as low as possible, it seems like a good time to revive the list.

Acorns: Small change investments

Whenever my friends mention on Facebook that they have a bit of savings and they're wondering what to do with it, I'm always the first to pipe up with an opinion. The problem is that most services require a hefty amount to get started (Looking at you Vanguard and your $5,000 minimum buy in) or you need to leave you money there for a long time for a decent return (RateSetter) or the fees are just so appalling you lose half your investment paying someone to manage your tiny nest egg.

Enter Acorns, an absolutely fabulous little platform for getting started.


When I was twenty I took my first foray into the stock market. I bought 20 bonds in a medical supplies company. I figured people were always going to be getting sick, and according to their website, their main target market was GP's, chemists, physios and other first-call health care providers. The bonds paid 8% per annum with quarterly distributions, at a time where my bank account was paying only 5%. I paid $97 each for them, and sold them three years later for $100.

At the time I was making roughly $15 an hour and studying full time. It took me close to six months to save my first $2,000 to get into the stock market. After that I had a big elaborate spreadsheet put together that told me how far away I was from buying another set of bonds (I moved up to spending $5,000 each time), how many hours at work I would need to pick up to be able to earn this much money, and I started cutting everything I could out of my budget. At that time, living at home not paying rent, cutting down meant snacks and energy drinks. Back when interest rates were nice and high (I had no debts, high rates were great for me) I was quickly earning $1,000 a year of free money.

But it was hard. Waiting six months between each purchase was demoralising, and I was constantly lamenting the missed earning times. The price of bonds fluctuates, leading up to a dividend payment the price spikes, then after the payment is crashes down before slowly climbing back up. Each time the price would drop on my chosen 'next buy' and I didn't have the money I would grit my teeth and grumble at myself and cut harder into my budget. As much as I loved the investing and the free money that came out of it, I absolutely hated how big the buy in was. As a twenty-year-old full-time student, putting aside $5,000 was a huge endeavor.

In 2012 someone else who must have had the same gripes with investing and a wonderful grasp of application development and business wandered onto the finance scene with Acorns. In February 2016 they kicked off in Australia. Acorns embraces the concept of building great things from humble beginnings, and lets you start investing for a mere $5.

Basic concept

You can link up Acorns to all your transaction accounts (credit cards, debit cards, etc) and it will monitor your transactions, rounding up each purchase and investing the difference. So if you spend $4.50 on a latte, another $3.75 on lunch and $2.25 on a KitKat, you will have $1.50 invested. It all happens quietly in the background without you lifting a finger.

That money is then invested into a balance portfolio including Australian and international shares, as well as government and corporate bonds. The whole thing comes bundled in a friendly phone app that lets you deposit or withdraw money with a few quick taps.

Pros: Easy to start, easy to use, low risk, quick access to withdrawals/deposits

Getting started with Acorns is appallingly easy. Download the app, tap in your bank details (they use super fancy bank level encryption to keep all your data safe) and deposit some money. The whole thing can be set up by the least tech savvy people in under ten minutes. There are no transaction fees so you can deposit bonus amounts anytime you want and the money will be invested within 3 business days.

Withdrawals are just a simple, in just two taps you can reach the withdrawal menu. Simply type in the amount you want an hit withdraw. There are no limits so if you want you can pull all your money out in one go.

Something I find super appealing it the ability to set your own risk profile. Higher risk always equals higher rewards in the share market game, but equally it exposes you to the potential for greater losses. Acorns will ask a few questions about you, where you are financially and how you feel about the potential for your investment to tank and recommend a risk profile for you. This is open for you to change at any time, and once again the interface is so simple you can do it in just a few clicks.

Cons: The fees, deposit structure, possible bank fees

Let's start with the fees:
$1.25 a month on accounts under $5k
0.275% on accounts over $5k

Acorns makes a big fuss about letting you start investing for as little as $5, but then they slug you fees of $1.25 a month. If you were to start with that small $5 investment and not add any more, you would be paying 25% a month. Equal to 300% per annum!! My account right now is showing approximately 7% p/a return and I bought in right before the Trump rally (absolute fluke that has set my investments off to a great start). My bank account is offering a 3% return, which means if I'm paying more than 4% in fees then I'm better off leaving the money in my bank account. This means that your minimum 'buy-in' for Acorns to be a viable investment is just over $300. While it's still significantly less than most other products, it's a lot more than they put on the flyer.

Next, my other pet peeve is the deposit structure. The claim is that you spend $3.50, Acorns rounds that amount up and take 50c for themselves. Which sounds to me like I'll have a $3.50 and a 50c charge on my card at the same time. That would be the ideal mindless investing. But that's not actually what happens. Acorns tracks your spend, and when the rounded up amounts equal $5, then they take $5 in one hit. If you're like me and keep an eye on your account balances, it ruins the illusion.

The bigger risk with the deposit structure is if you don't keep an eye on your balance. If you're someone who regularly drains your account just before pay day you could be in a lot of trouble. Acorns doesn't know how much you have in your account, so when the time comes, they will attempt to withdraw a contribution. If you don't have $5 in your account, then your bank is going to slug you a dishonor fee.

Conclusion

After reading the cons you might be a bit put off, but this is a great tool as long as you can throw in $300-400 in seed money, and you keep a decent amount of cash in your funding account. Anything above $10 will be enough to avoid those dishonour fees. I have my account set up with a regular deposit of $5 a week, which also adds in my round-ups. In a month I squirrel away roughly $30 without noticing. If you're just starting out investing it's a fantastic way to dip your toe in the water with a small buy-in and easy withdrawals.

Get started today with this referral link and Acorns will drop $2.50 in your account (and mine) as a welcome bonus. 

**Disclaimer: All the links to Acorns in this post are referral links. If you sign up through them we both get $2.50 added to our accounts. They aren't paying me for this post, this is a deal that Acorns runs for all it's customers. If you open an account, you to will have a referral link to share with your friends. Offer ends 30th March, 2018.

Acorns: Small change investments

Whenever my friends mention on Facebook that they have a bit of savings and they're wondering what to do with it, I'm always the first to pipe up with an opinion. The problem is that most services require a hefty amount to get started (Looking at you Vanguard and your $5,000 minimum buy in) or you need to leave you money there for a long time for a decent return (RateSetter) or the fees are just so appalling you lose half your investment paying someone to manage your tiny nest egg.

Enter Acorns, an absolutely fabulous little platform for getting started.

Goals Update: February 2017

Spending the money, a lot of money. Based on my past budgets the start of the year is always super expensive as I pay all my annual bills and deal with the Christmas hangover and eating expensive food because it's too hot to think straight, but this month has been ridiculous.

At least I got a decent tick on the non-financial goals.

Do physical fun stuff 4x a week

The derby season is picking up and I was cleared by the surgeon and the physio to hit people! I am super stoked. I'm still not allowed to play for another three months, but I can start training contact drills, as long as I listen to my body and build up slowly.

I also got out on the slack line a couple of times, and have picked up Yoga again. I use an app called Down Dog that I cannot recommend enough. The ability to adjust time, difficulty and type of practice (restorative, strength or mixed) is amazing, the instructor is really easy to follow and the flow of the practice is simply beautiful. I find myself feeling super relaxed and stretched after a 20 minute session and strength workouts are just the right amount of struggle.

My only complaint this month is I didn't make it rock climbing. It's been close to three months now and I'm really really missing it. My partner and I have been taking turns being sick and he's been travelling for work. We we're really really hoping to get out tonight but it's been 35degrees plus (95 Fahrenheit) for a few days in a row so I'm not keen on climbing in a big tin shed. Fingers crossed to getting out again soon.

Grade: A-

Create something each month

Ummm, I completely forgot about this goal! Oops. I did go on a hectic cleaning spree of my house. I'm taking out another mortgage against this house to use as a deposit on my next investment property so I needed it to look good in case we had an in house valuation. I also took photos of the bathroom and photo-shopped them to see how a renovation might look! Fun, but not really creating anything.

I did write seven articles for this blog, and I have 14 drafts containing half baked ideas, so I'm going to grade myself quite well for this month.

Grade: B

Apply for one freelance task a week

This is getting super frustrating. I am applying for tasks and getting no response. I'm getting invitations to interview for tasks out of the blue and getting no response. When I started on UpWork I was getting about 1 in 10 success rate applying for positions, now it just feels like the site it packed full of flakey people who don't follow through on the tasks they advertise.

Success for me meeting the 'apply' goal, absolute failure of actually seeing any work out of it.

Grade: B+

And now, the money!

Here we go

February Totals

Income

Salary	$4129.98
Sidegigs	$100.00
Home	$600
Investment Property	$1097.30
Dividends	$0.00
Total	$5927.28

Salary

I put through a tax variation which lowered the amount that my employer takes out of each payslip. It means I'll get a smaller tax return at the end of the year, but it also means that money is in my account working towards my goals. The government doesn't pay interest on the extra money it takes from you and that's totally not okay.

Side gigs

I had an old high school friend contact me out of the blue and ask me to be involved in a focus group. $100 cash in hand to spend 90 minutes having strong feelings and getting a free feed. Massive win!

Home

I bought home entirely in my name, but my partner lives here. He pays half of all the bills, plus $150 a week in rent. Pretty sweet deal.

Investment Property

This month my tenants appear to have been charged at the old rate, despite the rental agreement being due for an upgrade on the 19th. I need to keep a close eye on my property manager, which I am not pleased with.

Dividends

No cash dividends this month. Anything that's automatically reinvested is counted in the next section.

Investment performance

	Deposit	Dividends	Annual Return
RateSetter	$100	$78.20	5.76%
ASX	$0	$0	5.69%
Vanguard	$400	$0	3.83%
Acorns	$25.44	$0.03	7.03%

Disclaimer: I'm definitely calculating my returns in a weird way. Current Value divided by Amount Invested equals overall return. The number is then adjusted to be annual. It means if I dump in a huge sum of money my return appears to go down. This means the return quoted here is a conservative number and I'm okay with that.

Expenses

	Spent	Budgeted	Annual Average
Home	$1,425.51	$1,250	$1322.09
Investment Property #1	$1569.20	$1,250	$1696.46
Personal Bills	$140.60	$142	$96.38
Groceries	$218.52	$200	$195.09
Pets	$70.95	$25	$17.95
Derby	$120.71	$108	$74.57
Travel	$0	$108	$131.19
Other	$360.26	$250	$543.18
Total	$4,464	$3,333	$4076.89

Home

Bills again!

Investment Property #1

Urgh, body corporate fees. They're roughly $3,000 a year, paid every four months. They used to be closer to $5,000 a year when the body corporate was embroiled in a legal battle with the (crappy lazy) on-site managers. Since the new on-site managers have taken over the fees have been steadily dropping, woohoo! Still another expensive month though.

Personal Bills

This is my phone bill and health insurance, it should never change.
The average is low because I upgraded my health insurance to include hospital cover in January. So the average is reflecting the old, lower cover and will steadily come up across the year.

Groceries

So, I took out a Coles Credit Card, spend $110 online, got free shipping on the order and 22,000 FlyBuys points, that I can convert back for $55. Nice. I bought items with no expiry date that I would have bought anyway like rice, long-life milk, tomato sauce, toothpaste. Boring stuff that I don't need to buy again for a while now.  Oh, and they sent me a voucher for $100 off my next shop. By the time I'm done I will have spent $100, and received ~$250 worth of goods. Winning!

Apart from that the costs have been staying pretty low because I've had a bumper crop of zuchinnis from the back yard and I've been eating them in everything. This week my lunches were zuchinni slice, zuchinni soup and zuchinni pasta.... I'm not sick of it yet!

Pets

Hey Big Spender! I thought I blew the budget last month but this is out of the water! I found an online deal for kitty litter that was half what I usually pay. But it was a minimum $49 spend for free shipping so I bought ninety litres of kitty litter! I have one cat, I suspect this will last a while.

I'm starting to feel that I have set this budget far too low. I spent $25 on a months worth of cat food, and next month I'll need to buy another bag of chicken feed. I'm strongly considering rebalancing the budget to take some money from another category and move it into here.

Derby

Paid dues this month and I bought a flight to Queensland for $40 and rewards points. I am stoked because one of my goals this year is to get my derby travel for as close to free as possible. This flight would have cost $210 on super special, and it's the best flight of the day. I'm starting to feel that I've overestimated how much I need to put into the derby category. Although I need new wheels, so that cost will be coming through soon.

Travel

No travel, no spend. Easy peasy :) Any travel for derby is counted in the derby category.

Other

We broke another coffee glass so I had to buy some new ones, and our friends unloaded a bunch of spices on us so I finally caved in a bought a couple of storage baskets ($17). I honestly don't know how I coped without those baskets. The spice shelf is above my head, so it's so much easier to pull the basket down and find what I want. No more hunting, no more worrying about knocking something on the ground.

I also had to replace my earphones. I only had one functioning earbud for about 9months and they finally gave up on me. I found them on eBay for $25 while they were selling in store for $75. Massive win for 5 minutes effort!

We had a couple of 43degree days in a row and really didn't want to cook so we went out for dinner ($31). Plus I went to the dentist and got another filling ($61). Should be fine for a couple of years now.

There was a $99 annual fee for one of my credit cards. Jump over to my post about travel hacking to see why this isn't actually a bad thing.

All in all I was going to be okay with what I spent in the category until the last day of the month when someone stole the lights off my bike. Yepp, those lights I bought exactly 40 days ago when I replaced my stolen bike were also stolen. I had barely used them because it's summer and sunset isn't until 8pm. After 2 years of hassle free bike communiting I have had over $1,000 worth of gear stolen in the last six months. Not thrilled, I spent another $100 to replace these lights. I'm also going to sew a bonus pouch into my bike bag specifically for holding my lights because apparently I can't leave them on my bike in broad daylight.

Savings Goal

High Interest: $4,664.67
Offset Balance: $5,589.84
Owing on Credit Cards: $1,518.89
Total: $8,735.62

Increase from last month: $933.03
Amount remaining: $11,264.38 (approx $2,800 a month)

As a whole I'm pretty unhappy with my progress here. My spending just feels completely out of control. I can make excuses at myself about my bike theft, or the annual fee on my credit card being worth more than it cost but... it's just demoralising to see my spending so far over all the time.

I'm going to set myself a specific short and (possibly) hard goal for next month to just keep the 'Other' column under budget. It's Mad March in Adelaide which means events coming out of your ears, but barring another catastrophe I should be able to do it, watch this space. If I can keep my budget in check (under $3,300 a month) I should be able to scrape through this goal on my current earnings. Otherwise I need to make more money (I really need to make more money)

Check out the history of this goal:

• December 2016 - $6,992.39
• January 2017 - $7,088.91

Goals Update: February 2017

Spending the money, a lot of money. Based on my past budgets the start of the year is always super expensive as I pay all my annual bills and deal with the Christmas hangover and eating expensive food because it's too hot to think straight, but this month has been ridiculous.

At least I got a decent tick on the non-financial goals.