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Piggy Bank

I am attempting to save for a home loan so I can buy a house, using both indirect and direct methods. This section is dedicated to documenting the various ways that I am doing so.

Money saved: $700 / 30,000

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The results are in

Hey, does anyone remember this post I wrote about my money box? Me either. But I just cracked it open and spent an hour counting the money inside. How much do I have? Well first, here’s a photo:

Excuse the glare, I’m shitty at photography. The total of the bagged coins comes to a nice $236. Sweet. I point out bagged, because on top of that there was an addition $48.15 in loose coins, which I’ve thrown into a new money tin that’s approximately 50% bigger than the last one. Since I got roughly $285 in just six months, the goal for this year is to get $500 by this time next year.

I’m pretty happy with myself.

Slipped, a little (lot)

Well, my savings attempts hit a bit of a slump in the past few weeks, with a few factors being responsible. The foremost of which being the accidently purchase of XBox 360 and some games. Totally spur of the moment, but it put a fairly decent dent in the savings…$600 to be exact.
Then to top that off, we had Studio2000 sessions, which led to a $200 purchase of photos (and it was only two photos). So now with that setback, and with a few more minor ones, I’ve gone a little backwards in my plan.
Also, I’ve had to pay off some things here and there, and haven’t had much opportunity to put anything away. I really need to get my priorities in line, don’t I?

Where actually doing the math pays off

I got my tax back, and purposely put a healthy $1000 of it into the savings, bringing it up to a healthy $1400. I say healthy, because this is the most I’ve ever saved.

But that’s not the real purpose of the post. Doing some thinking, and it occurred to me that if I put away more from my fortnightly pay than I already do, I could reach my goal  in around two years. If I saved $500 a fortnight instead of just $200, that becomes $1000 a month, and $12,000 a year. That coupled with any little extras I get, should allow me to reach that much sought after goal that much quicker.
It’s so smart I can’t believe I didn’t realize this before. What a foolish thing to do. Awesome, yes?

I love tax time.

This week I got my tax done, with a little surprise that made the lady doing it to say “I’m going to be your best friend all afternoon.”
So after that, it was revealed how much I’m getting back, and it’s a healthy sum. After I buy some clothes and such, the leftover (which will still be a bit) will be thrown into the savings for the house. The leftover will be at least $1000. The plans right now to “passively” save for the house ensures the process is going to be slow, so a sum like this definitely helps. WOO!

It’s time for change.

I hate having all that silver, I’m scared of my friends wallet; it’s 90% loose change, and is so heavy that if I dropped it on a kid, it’d recreate the scene from Final Destination 2 with the glass and the pigeons.
I always have change from buying a drink or similar, and it annoys me. Sometimes I pump it into the pokies after work, but it occurs to me that it’d probably be better if I stopped wasting it on a flashing screen.

I’ve gotten a large money tin, and every time I get home, I’m going to drop any coins of any sort I have on me. The tin already weighs a fair bit from all the coins in it, and on a rough guess there must be at least 30 dollars in there. I know for sure there’s a fair bit of gold in there, so it might even be more.
Once it’s completely full, I’ll crack it open, count it, and add it to the savings. I’m hoping when it’s full, to get maybe $150-$200 out of it. Fingers crossed.

First weeks savings

Look over at that little sidebar thing; it actually has some money inputted!

I put away my first $200 away towards the goal, and it feels so much better to have some actual money towards it.
Of course, today I accidently slipped and ended up with over one hundred dollars worth of DVDs, so I’ll need to try and not spend anything big for the next week or two; it’s too hard to fight the temptation to withdraw more money when I run out of shopping funds…

Futile money grabbing

I’ve tried it in the past and it failed me, but I decided to start advertising on a few of my sites again in hopes of getting maybe a few dollars extra. The idea is that I already write on these sites for free as my own personal hobby of sorts, so if I manage to make a few extra dollars here or there through it, then that’s just an awesome perk.

Currently I have two types of ‘ads’ on my sites. First, the obvious advertisements are the Google Adsense ads at the bottom of posts. They’ve never earned me anything in the past, but I’ve decided that it’d be better to have them just in case.
The other attempt at additional moneymaking is through a small amount of affiliate marketing. On this site to the right, there is an image of the 31DDDB eBook. The book is for sale for roughly twenty dollars through ProBlogger, and focuses on helping a user make content for their blog. The image is a link to the product’s information page, where you can buy it from. The trick is that it’s an affiliate link, and buying it through that link gives me a percentage of the sale. I don’t know if this will actually make any sales (it’s made absolutely nothing so far), but once again, if it worked even once and got me a few dollars, it would be worthwhile.

It’s pointless and I doubt it will help bring in any significant money, but I’m willing to try anything.

First up: we state the obvious.

First, the most obvious way to save money; work. I work a job that earns me roughly $400 to $500 a week, with one hundred going to rent, and fifty to paying off my computer.
It’s safe to assume, that with those payments, I need to find an amount for luxuries, unexpected payments, and saving. Since I get paid fortnightly, and for the sake of underestimation, we’ll say I get paid $800, and after rent I end up with 500. Which…wow that’s a lot now I’ve written it and can see it.
So, with $500 to work with, I think we can assume that I should be able to save $200 a fortnight. This leaves me with $300 to work with for phone bills and random wants like alcohol.

Now it’s just a case of sticking with this.

Introductionary post

I’ve had trouble for forever when it comes to saving money; it burns such a hole in my pocket that almost as soon as I get paid I spend it all and end up broke again. It’s stupid, and any attempts I make to save money fail. That’s where this blog comes in.
The aim of this blog is to talk about how I’m working on saving my money, the various ways I try to get some extra coinage, and so forth. I’m unaware of how often posts will be made on here, but when I have something to say on this topic, it will be published.

My goal

The main reason for saving my money is to get enough money to get my own place to live. To get a home loan, I need 10% of whatever I seek to borrow from the bank beforehand. So, I need to aim for roughly $30,000 saved. I will be moving in with a friend, but it’s much better to have more money than necessary, to cover unexpected expenses.
Turning this into a blogging game should keep me going, and hopefully get all the money saved as soon as possible.

Saving money

I need a house.

That’s the basic drive behind my latest attempt to seriously save some money. I’ve looked, and found out that to get one, I need to have at least 20% of whatever the size of the loan is. So to be safe, my goal is to save $30,000. This will be more than enough, because moving out is something I’m planning to do with my friend.

To help myself plan and keep track of this, I’ve created another site to document progress as it happens, as well as the different ways I attempt to save or make money towards the goal, and whether it worked or not.

Creative as I am, the site is named Piggy Bank (Piggy Bank has been merged into this blog), since that’s effectively what it’s going to be. The site uses a free Facebook styled theme, and I’m not sure how often I’ll post; much like this site it could be rarely, or several in a single day. As long as I have something to say, it’ll be published.