Last spurt

Packing is nearly done!
We've run out of boxes so no more proper packing til S gets home tonight.
Off to make dinner so I can a) use up stuff from the fridge and freezer, and b) wash up after cooking, so everything is ready for packing.

One more sleep til the big move! Yay!

Take 2

We now have keys! Yay!
Last night S didn't get home til close to 10pm, so unfortunately we didn't end up moving any stuff. Hopefully he will be earlier tonight though.

Today was spent ringing around SO many places that need address changes. Water, electricity, gas, grocery delivery people, and credit cards just for starters. Then I started on changes I could do on the net, still only got through about a third or so of all that needs changing. Talk about information overload! My head is spinning with passwords and IDs at the moment! lol

We've given notice at the post office but that doesn't help with Sagawa or Kuroneko who seem to have taken over nearly half our postal items lately. Which means I have to tell anyone who sends catalogues and things our new address. I know Kuroneko will forward for a year, but we still have to ring Sagawa who apparently don't do forwarding unless you have a nice 担当者 who remembers you. Anyone done this before??

S was meant to be ringing Kuroneko, Yahoo BB and NTT today. Hope he got round to it cause I think it takes nearly 2 weeks or so to be able to use the net again!!! 8 working days not including weekends, it seems. No net will be a challenge, I'm sure!!

Keys

Just found out we will be getting the keys for the new place sometime today, not Sunday as we originally thought. This is GREAT news, because at the moment I have nowhere to put all the boxes I've packed, am finding it extremely hard to get to things not yet packed because of said boxes, and it's getting a bit dangerous for the kids to be running around the place with mountains of boxes piled up everywhere. So this means we can start moving stuff late tonight!Yay!

As of yesterday A has come down with a cold, so I'm in top gear to get everything done ASAP, before anyone else gets sick and makes the job any harder. Wish me luck!

Packing

Today I can see myself doing some packing, some more packing, and then probably some more packing.
One week to go before it'll start turning into unpacking, unpacking and more unpacking.
Can't wait til it's all over!

EDIT
I just published that and freaked myself out when I saw the time.
Take a look for yourself and you'll see what I mean!!!lol

Eleven eleven

So today is the 11th of the 11th.
Lots of ones in there aren't there!

I actually like these kinds of dates.
My husband and I got married on 22/2/2002.

11:11am, 11:11pm, 1:11am, 1:11pm.
Mean anything to anyone?
For something that happens only 4 times a day, why is it I seem to have the uncanny talent(?) of checking the time at that exact time? Usually once a day, sometimes more.

Anyone else out there this happening to?
Please tell me it's not just me!!lol!!

EDIT
Last night when I checked my keitai before going to bed, guess what was on the display!! 11/11 11:11
Why aren't I surprised? lol

Trial and error

Like I said, I've been using a 家計簿 for quite a long time now, but how I use it now is very different to when I first started out. The basics are pretty much the same, but the way of categorizing and recording has changed many times, and I daresay will continue to do so.

So things I have learnt. Would love to do this in point form. Can't seem to find any bullets. Hang on, have I been composing in the wrong part? Just found bullets on another screen!!

So I'm going to try to explain what we do for our daily spending- this is just for food, everyday expenses, toiletries, nappies, kids stuff, and eating out. Rent, insurance, tax, utilities, keitai, medical expenses, savings, car fund (loan and savings for 車検(shaken), insurance and tax) are kept separate and are written down once a month.

• Ok, biggest thing for me is to budget weekly and record from Monday to Sunday. I started off doing it from Sunday to Saturday because that's how the first book I had was set out, but that didn't work! For us anyway. Reason being, we would go out for lunch and do fun things on the Sunday and then nearly half of the weekly budget would be blown on the first day leaving us poor for the rest of the week. Learnt my lesson quick smart.


• No matter what the date is start afresh each Monday and work from there. Sometimes your figures won't be exactly for one month but in the long run it doesn't matter. Some months will have 4 weeks, others 5.


• Write down the name of the shop (abbreviations are also ok) and total of expense. You don't have to write down the price of everything you bought, just make sure you categorize it into food/ household items/other. That's how the book I use is set out so I just stick to the categories they have. At the moment I put groceries in food but eating out and things I don't consider extremely necessary, like a coffee from the coffee shop or donuts or something like that in other. I do this so I can work out how 贅沢(zeitaku) I've been in my spending. Nappies, tissues, pet food and kitty litter would all go into household expenses. It's up to you to decide how you want to categorize things though. Before we had kids I put groceries and eating out in the same category which was fine for us at the time because we were both working and ended up eating out a lot of the time. As an example of how to categorize, say if I bought veges, meat, washing powder, and a present for someone, I would categorize the veges and meat into food, washing powder into household items and the present into others. Then be done with it and throw the receipt away! At one stage I used to just stickytape the receipts into a memo book and add it up each week and not bother with categorizing which worked for a while but I could never figure out EXACTLY where I was spending too much. What was necessary and what was 贅沢.


• I put a set amount of housekeeping money in my wallet and work with that and only that. Depending on what's left on the Sunday we go out for lunch or get takeaway, and I pool anything else leftover. When there's enough there we usually use it to go to an onsen or somewhere. Kind of a ご褒美(gohoubi) for sticking to the budget.

By the way I don't allow for rice in the weekly budget. I haven't always kept it separate, but I have done so for the last couple of years. We usually go through 10kg in about 3 to 4 weeks so I buy that when it's necessary, and just make a note with the date, place of purchase and how much it was to remind myself when I last bought it.

And S gets a weekly allowance so I know how much he uses but we don't record anything in detail. For us it's just easier to get a total figure and leave it at that.

So, that pretty much covers it I think!
Any questions?
Hope I didn't turn anyone off!!!lol

家計簿

Thanks for all the encouraging comments people have left recently!
Quite amazing actually that people have taken the time to read my posts. Thanks!

So to the title of this post.

家計簿 (Kakeibo)
Or housekeeping notes. Very exciting stuff, I know! Ha!ha!

Lily mentioned that she uses one, and so do I. Have done so for a long time. Going into my 8th year now actually!! Writing things down really seems to help with spending, makes me rethink if I really need something or not, or whether I should hang on a bit longer to make that purchase. It started out as a bit of fun but has turned into an addiction!

Anyone who has visited a book shop recently must have seen the piles and piles of 家計簿 displayed. Is it just me who gets all excited by this? Does anyone else out there bother and buy one? Or stand there like me thinking oh this one looks nice, or wow this one even has graphs and envelopes!! What to do what to do... Decisions decisions... Which one shall I use next year?

And then, after 10 minutes or so debating on which one suits me the best, a purchase is more likely than not made. But for some unknown reason I can never seem to bring myself to actually use that new 家計簿. Instead, I end up using the same style of book every year (which comes free in a magazine)!!! So do I buy the magazine which comes out next week with the free 家計簿, or break the habit and use one of the other ones I've already bought. Hmmm, I'll have to get back to you on that one!!

What's in a day?

Dinner tonight was a very simple affair.
Not one box has been packed today.
The kids have become a tad too energetic for my liking.
They're happy laughing and playing away together so I'm not about to stop them though. It's kind of nice actually.
It's just that I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.

It must be Friday.

What a shame the weekend for us doesn't start til Sunday!!!

Giving people a chance

Just keeping this short but you might have noticed I've put a new banner over to the right there somewhere. It's for Kiva, something I discovered by chance only a few months back but think is a WONDERFUL idea and the more people who do it the better. Personally I'm on my 5th loan now, which you can see here, just reinvesting so to speak the money that has been paid back. If anyone is even remotely interested please take a quick look!

Coming or going

What was that cold snap the other day? Very very cold. Brrrrrr....

So the packing has been going pretty well the last few days. Still a long way to go though. There are so many other everyday things going on that make it a slower process. Just your normal preparing, cooking, eating and feeding 2 kids 3 meals a day takes a big chunk out of the day. Not to mention cleaning, washing, washing up, cleaning the cat's toilet, blah blah blah. The list goes on. 家事. Don't you love it when a Japanese word can sum up everything so nicely.lol. I'm busy with 家事, that's my problem!!

Oh yeah, almost forgot. S got the rest of his pay on Monday- thank goodness for that! I just hope they don't make a habit of paying them like that or we won't be able to save for our (me and the kids) next trip home. Speaking of which, my brother sent me this link this morning which freaked me out a bit. We don't normally fly Jetstar but we did in April and it was an absolute disaster. Never ever again!!!!! It was also the day before the exact same flight had major trouble and a fire in the cockpit, and was diverted to I forget where -maybe Guam?. So this story is scary scary scary.

Anyway most of the time we fly Asiana with a free stopover on the way home in Seoul. Suits us much better and so much easier with the kids flying direct to and from Kumamoto. It's the only international flight so no worries about the 2 hours before thing either. Check-in starts 90 minutes before your flight and they don't even open up the immigration bit til an hour before! Much better than other airports in my opinion. Well I've only used Narita, Kansai, Nagoya, Kumamoto and Fukuoka for international flights but still it's the best out of that lot!! Not needing to get to Fukuoka earns BIG brownie points in my book!Ha!Ha!

Ok, A's asleep and B's watching Anpanman. Think it's time for a cuppa!