Journeyer’s Chronicles

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I’m feeling a little icky today. I think Cinderella has shared her tummy bug with me. The one that entailed a midnight change of sheets and PJ’s earlier this week. As I was looking for ways to describe the revoltingness of the cleanup (don’t worry, I’m not going to) the only word I could think of was “yukky”.

It’s been over seven years since I left the grown up world of work and entered the other grown up world of being a stay at home mum and raising kids. I’ve seen a lot of changes in myself over that time. My attitude to a lot of things has changed, I’ve become better at housework, I can make tears disappear and haggle with the best of them.

One of the stranger things that’s happened is the nosedive in my vocabulary. My words have gone. It’s a side effect of having 80% of my conversations with kids, and I’m sure I’m not the only person it’s happened to. But it’s frustrating.

I have conversations with mums that work and I feel like such a bumpkin. They use big words. They use flourishes. I say “yukky”. Do you know how annoying it is when having a disagreement with The Thinker not being able to think of a word in the middle of my killer argument?

Blogging has helped. I have time to sit here and think. I have my trusty thesaurus just a keystroke away. I haven’t quite reached the point of carrying one around with me though.

For most of last year, it was even worse. The CML medication I was taking made me even more fuzzy than the kids do and I would forget the simplest of words. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make them move from the steel vault that is my mind to the tip of my tongue. Words like “frequent” or “cheque” or…um, I’m having trouble remembering.

Perhaps I need to stop reading so many fairy stories and start reading literature. I could stop watching Playschool and Spongebob and tune into The 7:30 Report and Parliament - oh no, wait, that’s more infantile conversations (used my thesaurus for that one).

Perhaps I need to risk sounding like a complete dunce and seek out more conversations with people who still have their words.

Today The Engineer’s school is having a curriculum day. I completely forgot about it until dinner last night, even though I had it written on our calendar. Cinderella will be at preschool until after lunch, but The Little Mermaid will be home as well. My plans for the day have been thrown a little into disarray, but it’s nothing we can’t handle!

The Little Mermaid is happy to play with her dolls and the dog while I busy myself. However, The Engineer is a little less easy to please once he has had enough of his Lego’s. Mind you some days that never happens. I have had to occasionally remind him to eat because he’s been so intent on building something or other. If he does get bored, it can prove disastrous. We now have most of The Thinker’s tools locked away (the ones that can do damage anyway). Despite that The Engineer manages to pull things to bits on a semi-regular basis if I’m not paying attention to what’s going on.

So, I grabbed my dog-eared copy of 501 TV-free Activities For Kids off the bookshelf last night for some inspiration. I referred to it quite often when the kids were younger, but hadn’t thought of using it for The Engineer since he started school. It’s a great book, full of simple, cheap and fun activities. They are broken up into themes and then listed in order of age appropriateness. Each activity is accompanied by a set of icons, so you can see at a glance whether it’s for indoors or outdoors, requires supervision or requires special tools or resources.

Here are 10 things to do on a day off school I’ve picked out for older kids (6-9 years).

1. Start a gardening diary. Draw, paint, press flowers or take cutouts from old gardening magazines to create a scrapbook of the garden throughout the year (or a shorter timeframe) from a child’s perspective. They could also do some simple research to find plants that they could grow. This is one I’ll be doing today, as we have just planted out our first vegie plot. The kids are quite excited about it, so I’m going to try and harness some of that enthusiasm.
2. Sevenses. We used to play this one at school. All you need is a ball and a wall. Throw the ball against the wall:
   • 7 times catching it with both hands
   • 6 times catching it with one hand
   • 5 times letting it bounce once
   • 4 times bouncing it under your let then against the wall
   • 3 times bouncing it into the wall
   • 2 times clapping before catching it
   • 1 time touching the ground before catching it

   

3. Secret messages. The old writing with lemon juice trick. Using a cotton bud, write a secret message. To reveal it, wet the paper.
4. Make an “I Can” book. The child draws pictures of all the things they can do independantly now. Make a nice cover and staple the pages together to create a book.
5. Write a coded message for them to decode. Write a message using the following code. Replace each word in your message with the word preceding it in a dictionary. Tell them what the code is and then let them decipher the message.
6. Let them loose with a camera. Digital cameras make it so easy for kids to take and print out their own photos. Perhaps create a scrapbook page or montage of the photos they’ve taken.
7. Adding up holes. In one side of a largish cardboard box cut a number of holes, different sizes but big enough for a tennis ball to fit through. Number the holes with the largest number for the smallest hole. Each child tries to throw the tennis ball through the holes, say five times. Keep note of the scores they get for each throw, then ask them to add up the scores.
8. Go on a stay at home shopping spree. Allocate your child an imaginary allowance. Make it pretty big, say $500. Then they get to trawl through the shopping catalogues “buying” things and coming in under budget.
9. Find a route on the street directory. Copy a page of the street directory and ask the child to plan a route from point A to point B. You could also use a smaller scale map with distances on it and ask them to calculate the distances, find the shortest route, and so on.
10. Scavenger hunt. Make a list of 10-20 items to find in the backyard, at the park, at the beach, where ever you are. If more than one child is playing, set a time limit. The one with the most items at the end of the time allocated is the winner.

How do you keep the kids occupied when you need to get something done?

Photo: Friends, Strobist: Basketball Group Assignment 2007-03-28, 318_1838

Welcome to the readers of the 164th Carnival of Personal Finance, kindly hosted by Squakfox. If you’re new to Journeyer’s Chronicles, I’d like to extend an extra big welcome. I hope you enjoy your visit. You can find more of our personal finance experiences here. And don’t forget, if you enjoy your visit you can get regular updates by subscribing by RSS or email.

We have been facing quite a few challenges to being frugal over the last couple of months. When we made the commitment to live without our credit cards and save for our wants, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We knew we would be tempted to buy things and that we would need to make an effort to cut costs. What we didn’t thoroughly consider was the things beyond our control that would affect our goal.

There are lessons to be learned for anyone considering a more frugal lifestyle. First, lets have a look at the issues we’ve faced.

Maintenance Issues

Our house and the appliances in it must be reaching that certain age when things just start going wrong. This is what’s happened in the last six to eight months:

• The washing machine finally died. It was around 10 years old and had been repaired probably three times during its life. This time it was going to cost nearly $400 to fix. Enter new washing machine.
• We discovered a leak around a window. Fortunately it’s on a side of the house that doesn’t often feel the full force of the weather. However it will still need to be repaired. It’s on the second level in a very awkward position where I don’t feel comfortable having The Thinker clambering around. So that will be a handyman job, quite possibly with the added expense of scaffolding.
• The dishwasher died. I have put off even having someone look at it as we consider it a “nice to have”. Last week I was sick of having my hands in the sink for a good part of the day so I called the repairman. On his visit today he advised that it will cost over $200 to repair and might only last six months as the motor is getting quite worn. So now we have a dishwasher on our wants list and I still have dishpan hands.
• The TV died. Can you see a pattern happening here?

Lesson learned

While some of the things on this list are non-essentials, it still serves as a reminder that maintenance expenses need to be considered. Have some money put aside to cover the unexpected emergencies that will, without a doubt, happen (if you live in our house anyway). Use it for what it is intended (see next item).

Playing catchup

Our plan was to put money aside each month for the periodic bills so we would have it there to pay them as they came in, without taking a huge chunk out of our monthly income. We’ve had these few unexpected maintenance expenses, along with some large annual bills coming in around the same time. The upshot is that we haven’t had long enough to build our periodic bill savings to cover them. It feels like we’re playing catchup after each round of bills. This is quite disheartening as it’s difficult to see where there will be an opportunity to build a good buffer.

One of the reasons for this may be my reluctance to use our emergency fund for the maintenance expenses. Instead I have tried to squeeze it from what we have available in our bills account. These unbudgetted items then leave us short when periodic bills come around.

Lesson learned

Use the emergency account for emergencies. That’s what it’s there for. On the flip side, be wary of what you class as an emergency. Our new TV did not come out of the emergency fund. We saved for an (interesting) couple of months.

Increasing prices

You make a well thought out budget and then they go and put all the prices up. Sheesh! I don’t think anyone has been immuned to the increasing prices of everything. Mortgages are going up, petrol is going up, food is going up.

This is a challenge I can turn around though. I can set the challenge to pay off the mortgage quicker, walk more and buy our groceries for less. These are the types of things I enjoy working at.

Look at that. I saved $30 off the grocery bill this week. Go me!

We finally got our vegie plot started on the weekend. While it won’t make a huge difference to our food bills initially, we’re hoping there will be a noticeable decline in our fruit and veg bill over time.

Lesson learned

Look for opportunities in challenges. A positive attitude is a must and motivation is the key to continued success.

Motivation

Sometimes, it’s just plain hard to stay motivated. We’ve been putting in a good effort over the last few months as far as frivolous spending goes, but it doesn’t seem like we’re making huge inroads. Perhaps we’re so used to rewarding ourselves with things, that unless we do that we feel we haven’t accomplished anything.

One of the things I’ve done to make it easier for me is to give up shopping for recreation. I used to go to shopping centres probably twice a week and always leave with something. Sometimes a large purchase, sometimes small. By not putting myself in that situation, I’ve found it easier to stay motivated. I still have the spending habit when given the opportunity though.

Lesson learned

Don’t put yourself in a situation where you know you will spend money you can’t afford. Just last week I spent around $100 on a quick visit to a new shopping centre (just to have a look, mind you). Nothing I desperately needed, but I was so tempted by everything around me that my motivation went straight out the window.

Remember what motivated you in the first place and keep those reasons prominent. I was also listening to Dave Ramsay’s podcasts for a while, which I found really motivating. I think I need to start doing that again. Listen, read, do.

What are your biggest challenges when it comes to money?

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