Brr, it's freezing today. A southern blowing all the way from Antartica, and snow down to 300 meters. I need warm wooly socks, so bought sock needles for nz4.30 with my discount. I have forbidden myslef from buying any more wool until I have used up my stash - good job I have lots of fingering wool.

What happened? I took nz 40.00 from the ATM on Wednesday and two days later I only have 14.50 left. This is what happens when you're not paying attention - automatic pilot takes over.

I have just started a spirituality course which includes a section on mindfulness. Instead of watching my breath in and out I think I shall have to start watching my cash in and out. Dollar Buddhism.

I love cheese, but rarely buy it as it is so flippin expensive - and fattening. Today I thought I would splash out on a far too small piece for nz5.00. I have already eaten all of it on toast. I don't regret the money, but now I'm worried about getting on the scale!

...but it pours. Today I got offered a second job, working at the LYS (local yarn store) on Saturday. I hope I can cope with 2 part time jobs, but there is a chance I may be offered more hours at the yarn store, in which case I will let the cleaning job go. In the meantime, I think it will be enough to see me through the winter (always a difficult time for me)

My mouse decided to celebrate by dying on me, so purchased a new one for nz29.95. I also thought I would buy myself a little treat, so went to a cafe I haven't been to before. A club sandwich and a long black cost me nz8.20. Ouch! I'll stick to a samosa from the Indian takeaway in future.

About 15 years ago, New Zealand deicided to get rid of the 1 cent coin, as you couldn't buy anything with it. From then on, everything was rounded to the nearest 5 cents. However, in their attempts to make us think we were getting a bargain, the shops continued to price in nines. So you'd see a can of beans at .99 and think, less than a dollar, but when you got to the checkout, it cost you a dollar anyway. But if you bought 3 cans, $2.97 rounded down to $2.95. Two cents saved!

Now we have got rid of the 5 cent as well and everything is rounded to the nearest 10 cents. Meanwhile the shops continue to sell mushrooms at nz9.99 a kilogram, so your purchase may come to nz4.76, which rounds up. Add the other things you're buying ending in 9 cents, and it may go up or down. Personally, I make it a game to get a total which will round down.

This morning I lucked out. I bought fruit and veg for nz9.78, so paid two cents extra. However, if I'd paid by debit card, they would have charged me the exact amount. Go figure.

I went on a retreat over Easter, which I've been doing for several years. Lovely peaceful setting, good meals provided, and all for only nz$100. Definitely not giving that up. i took lunch up with me, but on the way back down we stopped at a very expensive cafe, and I spent $13 on lunch, because I didn't want to say no to the others. Oh well, if it's the only time I eat out this month I'll be doing well.

I briefly considered giving it up and drinking water, then I went and bought more coffee. nz2.50. I'll save on something else. No point having piles of money if I can't have what I like with some of the excess.

I have these periodic savings binges where I stop spending on virtually everything to save money, but that's not sustainable long term. I actually enjoy spending money on something I want, even if Depression-raised family voices keep telling me I should stick it under the mattress, in case I need it more later. I have no intention of being a multimillionaire centenarian full of regrets for how I deprived myself. So I'm planning to go on a retreat at Easter after my Lenten frugality.

Sorry to gripe a bit yesterday. Dealing with officaildom is getting me down a bit. I know I'm really fortunate to live in a country with a system so I don't wind up begging on the street.

Did my end of month sums. I used

www.simplesavings.co.nz to enter my daily spending. I had an income of nz$742 and outgoings of $960. That was caused by spending nz$400 on a computer, otherwise within budget.

I tried to make a distinction between needs and wants. Needs was essential bills and groceries, apart from that I chose to spend another $88. But what is a need. In many parts of the world a phone and ISP is a luxury, I don't have to make charitable donations, I could walk instead of catching the bus, refuse to eat out for my friend's birthday etc. But I would become an unlovable skinflint in the process, and very miserable to boot. So long as I keep regularly putting money aside, I can have a few treats now and then. I should have 2 more NSDs before Friday, then I'll have a burger with my friends and still have another nz$10 for my EF.

I din't take any snacks with me and when I got hungry I spent nz1.80 on a piece of ginger crunch. I'm supposed to be watching my weight as well. At least I could have bought an apple.

I know it's not much, but I find it too easy to rationalize little spendy habits by telling myself just this once. It all adds up, and every unnecessary dollar I spend takes me a dollar further away from being financially independent.

I was on morning tea after church this morning. I meant to bake last night, but wound up going out to a free concert. So I was late getting up and decided to make some pikelets (Scotch pancakes) but found I'd run out of milk. So I had to buy 2 packets of cookies and some milk, nz5.99, tho I generally try to avoid shopping on Sunday.

In the afternoon I visited my neighbor to congratulate her on a great performance - she was in the choir at the concert last nite. I wound up helping her bottle pears, then unravelling and reknitting a hat she was making. She was very pleased and gave me a pot of apricot jam.

I still have some veges left, so made pumpkin cakes and cooked some black beans with the remaining celery.

This morning I walked 13 minutes in the rain to my own bank ATM so I wouldn't have to pay another bank withdrawal fee. After that I spent 25 minutes in the supermarket scrutinising all the bargains before buying
6 day old pumpkin seed buns nz1.00
sandwich tuna 1.30
quarter cabbage 1.00
can pineapple 1.10
peanut butter 2.00
I also went to the Asian food store where the legumes are cheaper and bought some black beans for 2.00
I also found .20 cents as a reward for being up bright and early. I was thinking what i could buy with it. I can get a knitting pattern from the Sally Army or maybe some popping corn from the bulk bin. I guess I will put it in the Christmas jar.

Was going to make today a NSD, but got a flyer saying pasta was on sale at my local supermarket, so bought 2 packets macaroni. That should keep me going for some time, and I still have .30 left over from my challenge.

this morning I made potato and lentil patties, with the can of tomatoes and tonite I made some gingerbread. I had one or two slices - okay, five. It was good.

And I found .70 cents.

Like lessisenough I often only eat 2 meals a day -so did most of our ancestors until 200 years ago. The word luncheon was only invented in the 19th century, and it was for rich people. Because it is difficult for me to get up in the morning, I cook my main meal then. It gives me energy to face the day, and I go out feeling I've done something good for myself. And if I'm too tired to cook in the evening, I can just have a bowl of cereal.

So this morning I started with vegetable soup, made with barley, split peas, carrot, celery and potato. I made it really thick and had 2 good bowlfuls. I didn't have lunch but ate a handful of wild blackberries, and had a coffoe and a slice of chocolate cake at a friend's. This is not about turning down free food with some high minded remark about poor people ( heck, on my income I am a poor person) because I haven't paid for it out of my alloted nz3.00 per day. I intend to continue my normal way, just cut the usual grocery spending to nz21.00 a week.

I bought some salad bananas for 1.30 and apples for 1.10 because I had no fruit. This evening I made some banana porridge with cinnamon. I also had several cups of tea with milk, but I'm running out of teabags.

Bought groceries for nz$16.30. Zucchini is cheap at the moment, $3.49 a kilo, so am having zucchini fritters for dinner tonite.

Not that I'm superstitious - actually I can't ever remember anything bad happening to me on a Black Friday. I got 8 sesame seed buns from the day old bread bin for $1nz. Then in town the Presbyterian opp shop was having an end of season sale - 5 items for a $1. So I got a plain black skirt (because you can never have enough for work), a navy dress and a red dress, a pink blouse and a turquoise top. When I added up the price tags they would normally have cost me $22nz. Because today is Friday I had fish and chips for dinner $2.80nz. Hope all for whom the day is just starting are smiled on by fate as well.

that's what my wall oven went on Friday. I called the repairman to replace the fuse, and he tells me they no longer can get parts for that make - Ok, it is 25 years old. So I'm looking for a new oven this weekend. Unfortunately, they are also made to different measurements nowadays, so I'll have to get some joinery done as well. Noooo i want to hold on to my money!!! But as I am still looking to sell this place further down the line I guess it's worth getting a decent job done.

Even though I'm only working 20 hours a week, I find it very tiring and don't have much energy for anything else, which is why you haven't heard from me for a while. However. I'm getting used to the job, and my bank account is looking much healthier. $4180 in my EF, plus over $1000 in my billpaying a/c, and $600 in my home repairs a/c. I paid $260 to get the garden all tidied up. Next month I'm flying up to Auckland for the National Conference of my support group, airfare paid for, so I only have to find $100 for accomodation. I also bought 2 pairs of shoes for work from the Warehouse, one for $19.98, the other for $14.98. Working is good as I have less time to wonder round the shops, but I'm getting a bit lazy about cooking for myself. Too many purchased sandwiches. There is a challenge on The Money Man to spend nz$21 a week on groceries. I will give it a go.

I got a prescription filled nz7.82. Apart from that I stayed home and knitted. so long as I'm doing that I'm not out spending money.

I went out briefly to the shop to buy some milk, nz3.20. I put on a jacket I hadn't worn for some time and was pleasantly surprised to find 1.20 in the pocket. Aside from that I was lazing around eating bananas on toast and surfing the net. I found this free pattern

http://cdevine.typepad.com/photos/lace_work/rosetrellisl.html
so dug out some vintage pink laceweight I found at the opportunity shop for nz6.00 and bravely cast on. So far so good. I hope to have a beautiful shawl in time to wear to England.

Some of my friends have been complaining about not being able to contact me on the phone, so I decided it was time I finally sidled reluctantly into the 21st Century, like a little crab coming out of its shell, and got myself voice mail. i signed up for the standard Telecom package of call minder, call waiting and caller ID for nz$10 a month. Unfortunately my old phone is a very basic one I bought at The Warehouse 6 years ago and doesn't support caller ID, so I bought a new cordless Uniden for nz$89. Ouch! But I've been having fun programming it - now my best friend is trying to talk me into a cell phone. Sure I'd like to have all these wonderful things like digital cameras, but I noticed my new phone is only guaranteed for 2 years - the same length of time as the rechargeable battery!! It will take me that long to figure out how all the functions work. I guess by the time the warranty runs out there will be some new technological marvel I need to update to. What concerns me is what happens to all the now useless gadgets. I guess they get shipped off to China and some poor person gets exposed to toxicity while disassembling it. I try to reduce the amount of stuff I buy because of concern for the environment, but if I'm to stay in contact, especially now most of my family lives overseas, I have to have some of the new bells and whistles. So we are all dragged along by the pace of change willy nilly.

The mad whirl of Christmas parties has begun. Today my Bible Study group had an end of year function, also to say farewell to a couple who are moving. We went for morning tea at a cafe nz$7.00. I had some scrummy ginger crunch. I stopped at the supermarket on the way back to buy some eggs, nz$1.80, and on the back of my reciept was a coupon for a free coffee at the very cafe we'd been at. Hearty use of words that are in the King James.

Then I got home and in the mail was an invitation to a free lunch with a presentation on making money on the Internet. I suspect some scheme to seperate me from my money, but a free lunch sounded good. Then I looked at the available dates: 3rd, 4th and 5th of December. Hullo, it's the 5th already? What marketing genius in Auckland didn't realize it can take mail 5 days to get here? More use of Authorized language.

looks spectacular. I was very careful to spend only on needs, not wants, as I'm saving for Christmas.

Total Income nz$733.26
Expenses $491.24
Savings 242.02

Groceries 100.76
Donations 37.70
Clothes 3.90
Meeting friends for coffee 25.70
Medical 23.00
Local body taxes 90.67
Phone & ISP 67.74
Insurance 49.45
Power 75.00
Misc 17.32

When I go to the shop I feel like the Greek philosopher who went to the market and commented "who would have thought there could be so many things I have no need of." I have basically lost interest in spending money apart from meeting friends for coffee - and I'm reconsidering that expense. I'd rather save up and have a big decent trip than fritter it all away on little bits and pieces that give no lasting satisfaction.

Today was a glorious day - the sort where you smile at total strangers and say lovely day, and they smile back and say isn't it. I spent the day idling round. In the morning I seamed the cardigan I knitted. Of course I ran into the Murphy's Law of the button jar, one button short of the 10 I required. I went to the thrift store on the corner and found a dress for $1 which I snipped the buttons off. In the afternoon I went out to the beach with a friend and we sat and watched the surfies doing their thing. My sandal broke as I was walking back, but I was able to fix it with superglue. Had a yummy chocolate icecream for nz$1.50.

This is a very nice town to be in if you are broke. There are free museums, parks and art galleries, and open lectures down at the University. I live a very simple life and am totally satisfied. I keep thinking about when I was in India. If I converted my assets to rupees, I would be a millionaire, and I certainly was compared to the people around me. Even though I was staying on an ashram, living out of one suitcase and eating simple meals of lentils and rice, I felt I had so much to be grateful for. When I got back I was so annoyed with people complaining about how hard life was. I have my little house and I can afford food, clothing and power, and I still have eyes that can see and legs that can walk. There are millions in the world who would love to change places with me. I think even if I won the lottery I would not change much. I could be very happy being financially independent on an income of say, $1000 a month. The one thing I would like to do more of is travel. Not only does it broaden the mind, you feel like there's no place like home when you get back.

Goods news is I got my scarf back. And I have another interview tomorrow.

Sad news is an old school friend's brother has died. I went to look for a nice card - I cannot believe the prices. Just a blank with a nice picture so I could write inside cost up to nz$5. Well, how to do the decent thing as a human being without drinking milkless tea for the rest of the week? I have got Publisher so could make my own card, but
i) I don't like the cheap look of paper compared to heavy card
ii) I guess so many people have switched to making their own or sending ecards, that's why they're getting more expensive.
Then I thought of making some stationery with a pretty border and writing a sympathy letter instead. I turned up a webpage of quotes and found a Chinese proverb that says:
You can only go halfway into the darkest forest, then you are coming out the other side. I added some lines of my own about my memories of him, and went to print it -
oops, run out of ink. When I went to the computer store, the guy said for some reason the cartridges were hard to get lately. Bye bye nz$18.
Compared to losing a dear brother, it's nothing to complain about.

One of the great things about living in a college town is there are regular open lectures by all sorts of visiting professors, to which members of the public can go - for free.
This afternoon I went to a talk on Shakespearean acting by a performer from the London Globe. It was fantastic. Not only was he a mine of information on the history and language of the times, he was also wonderfully entertaining. We were in fits of laughter - the Globe is now definitely on my list of places to visit when I take a trip to England.
I came out and had a dry throat, so thought I'd go to the Student Union for a cup of tea. Only a couple of years ago you could get a decent cup of coffee or tea for a dollar. Now - they've all gone upmarket and the barrista charges you nz2.80. I could live with that, but they also have these huge tempting slice of chocolate fudge, ginger crunch, and all manner of luscious muffins. So I wound up spending nz5.20. Agghh - that could have gone to my trip to England!
The groundlings in Shakespeare's day would never have stood for it - they'd be rioting and hurling nuts. Now all these wellmannered intellectual students study Shakespeare from texts and they don't realise how revolutionary he actually was! I was fascinated to hear the speaker from the Globe saying the hiphop artists are the true modern Shakespeares.

There are two schools of thought about this. One says; stay out of shops as much as possible to avoid temptation. The other says; keep going back to get the best bargains. I shilly shally - actually I do like browsing to see what's on sale, but I impulse splurge far less than I used to. (I used to be one of those ooh-a-bag-sale-at-the-thrift-store-I'll-get-five-bags-of-stuff-I-don't-need shoppers)

But today I got lucky - thrift store was selling herb plants. I got some basil and lemon balm at a dollar each. I also saw two new stores had opened. One was a consignment store. Wow, did they have some lovely stuff! Many garments with the original price tags still on them - up to 80% off. Of course they were horrendously overpriced in the first place, which is why the store of origin probably went bust - but still good quality. Will definitely go back there when I am earning again.

The other place was a new Asian food store. Lots of very cheap convenience foods - catering to local Asian students. I prefer the one in town where I can buy mung beans, big bags of rice, vegetables and other real food. I ocassionaly get some soy or other sauce, but all that MSG does me no good. The only thing I bought today was some soy milk for nz$1.70

Going past McD's drive in I remembered I had some packets of their ketchup still sitting in the pantry - it was from when a friend came round with burgers as a treat, but he doesn't eat ketchup - So when I got home I made a risotto with the last red pepper and squeezed in McD's blood for some flavor. Well, let's just say I'm glad I've got some herb plants now.

My friend H, who had a breakdown earlier, is doing well now, and I spent the day in town with her. We both have to be very careful with our money, so we went to the thrift stores, where she was quite excited to find such good clothes so cheap (having always bought from high price stores) I got 2 very nice tops for $2 each.

This month is NZ Music Month and a lot of the churches are having free lunchtime concerts. We went to First Church and listened to a violin sonata played by senior music students. It is really neat being a college town - we can get to hear talented young musicians before they become famous and cost a fortune.

Then we took in a doll exhibition at the museum - for free. They were just so beautifully dressed, and they sell for around $800 each. H said, "you know, you can look at things and you don't have to buy them." I am so pleased she's getting it.

We finished up going to the supermarket and buying some surimi, pineapple and a couple individual quiches which are sold at half price at the end of the day. Then went back to my place, made a salad and sat and listened to Van Morrison. Paris Hilton, eat your heart out - we couldn't have been any happier if we were millionaires.

Having said which, I now realise I left the bag with my new tops in her car, but I'll pick them up later.

Total spent today nz$10.70

Now that my old clothes are too big for me, I thought I would try selling some of the better quality ones thru a consignment store. Today a check arrived for one of my suits - $30. I was very pleased as winter is setting in here and I needed a new coat. Set off to the thrift store and found a very nice one for $20. The remaining $10 will be set aside for new underwear.

Back in my university days I was a size 14, just an normal sized woman for my height. It was no problem going to a store and getting clothes, and if I wanted something a bit different I sewed it myself from a standard dressmaking pattern. The only problem was the average woman was supposed to be 5' 5" and as I am taller, the arms and legs tended to be a bit too short. I learned to live with that.
Over the years an interesting thing happened. I gradually put on a couple inches all round, top, middle and bottom - BUT, according to the labels I was still a size 14! it wasn't till my waist got to 33" that I went up to a 16. I suspected the manufacturers of becoming more generous in their cut as the Western world's waistlines expanded.
Having now dropped some weight I was looking forward to getting back into smaller clothes. I did a quick googol to see what I should be now. Oh me! I couldn't decide if I was an old size 14, a size 10, or, if I wanted to go to Europe; a British size 16, a Spanish 38 or an Italian 42. The entire system, it seems, has gone nuts, with each company deciding for themselves what they will label their clothes - except they are all trying to one up each other by flattering the consumer they fit the smallest size. There is even a size 0!! Round here the only people with a chance of squeezing into that are tiny Asian students.
Being accustomed to thrift store shopping and being a bit conservative in my taste, I hadn't quite caught up with this. But one I started looking I realized the labels were actually no help at all. One labels Petite fitted me quite well; another's Large was far too tight. I even found a skirt boldly labelled 28" waist that fitted my 31" waist very nicely thank you. I now realize why I'd so often grabbed a bag full of size 16s, only to find they didn't fit me at home - previously I thought they'd shrunk in the wash. Grr, the money I've wasted. I'll never buy without trying again.
In the end I got a size 6 jacket, a size 14 pair of pants, and several blouses in 8-10 sizes. All for $2. Iterestingly, they all looked as if they'd never been worn. Maybe somebody else has the same sizing problem?

Last month saw the start of the academic year, with thousands of students pouring into town, and much beer pouring in the hotels. It does get pretty rowdy during Orientation Week, so I steered clear of the University last week. But I did get to sell some old textbooks - $26.25 in. Good.

Then I attended the market with oh so many stalls selling all manner of interesting bric-a-brac. I bought some magazines, jewellry, and some pain au chocolat and a cheese filled croissant from the Alliance Francaise. $13.50 out. Bad.

I have quickly transferred the other $13 to my online account. From now on, I am only allowed to spend the interest I earn from it on goodies.