Category: Simplify

A lump sum – 14% worth

In Norway, as with a lot of countries, the interest rates are down. Now this is great news for mortgages (my mortgage interest rate is at an all time low), but is sucks for any money you might possible have in your bank accounts.

I’ve been mulling this over and I have made a decision to pay a lump sum on my mortgage rather than keep that money in the bank.

Now, I have to explain my mortgage conditions to you, so that you see that how this makes sense.

I have a very flexible type of mortgage that you can get if you stay within 70% of the value of your property.

The flexibility is as follows;

  • you decide yourself when, and if, you want to pay on the principal. You can pay nothing one month, and a bunch next month, you can pay monthly, quarterly, every second month, once a year.. whatever floats you boat
  • you do however pay interest monthly, on your outstanding balance
  • you can treat it almost like any other “bank account”, if you need some extra money for a project, you can withdraw funds from your mortgage account, without reapplying and without additional fees, as long as you are staying within your approved credit limit

Now there is one thing abut having this type of loan, one has to be pretty disciplined about it. It is such an easy thing to “use” from the approved credit line, that you need to have your finances under reasonable control, or you can suddenly find yourself “using” more than you planned! And you do have to pay down that mortgage at some time!

Now, me, I’m probably way more disciplined than my bank wishes me to be 😉 as I work really hard on paying down my mortgage much faster than I really need to.

And I just made another dent in it! As my savings don’t generate much interest, sitting in the bank, I just took a bit of a portion of them, and paid a lump sum into my mortgage account. It brings my mortgage down another 14% out of my original loaned amount.

Now I might feel a little more “broke” (well,no, not really, as I still have my emergency fund firmly intact), but it’s the right thing to do. I “lose” money (if you factor in inflation) keeping them in the bank. Putting them into the mortgage instead, saves me one hundred dollars in interest a month, and I’ll take that 😉

So here I am, down to one third of my original mortgage… and it’s only been 8 years. Not too bad if you ask me 😉

I’ve got books…

coming out of my ears!

As most of you know, I’ve been on this quest to read myself out of my bookshelves the last year. And my plans are to continue to do so this year. That’s all good and well, until I spent weeks trying to get through one book! OK, so the book had 900 pages, and yes it is the size of 2,5 regular books.. but still… I spent pretty much all of January on this one book… (that’s how it is when you only have 30 minutes here, and 30 minutes there)

How on earth am I going to get rid of 34 books this year if I need a month on each?

Well, thankfully book reading have gone a little smoother this month, and I found a bunch I can’t bother to read again. So I have managed to rack up a number for my first book instalment this year after all 🙂

Here it is, 17 books going out-the-door! 

Hey! That means I’m halfway there already! Woohoo! I didn’t realize how many it was until 3 seconds ago when I counted them up…

That’s really cool, because as soon as spring hits us! We all know I’ll be spending most of my time in the yard, and my books will yet again be collecting dust 😉

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It’s Wii time!

When I lived in US, I got a little carried away and bought myself a Wii.

You’d think I was 5, but what the heck.. I don’t care what age group you are, Mario Kart, is fun.. 😉 OK, so I didn’t really get it for the Mario Kart as I got the Wii Fit balance board and everything with it! Turns out though, that it was mostly used for games, not exercise  – funny that 😉

Since I got home from US, the Wii haven’t seen much use, as it has mostly been tucked away in one of my drawers, and it’s time to let it go!

My neighbours kids are 7 and 9, and I have tested that my american Wii works on her Norwegian television, so this weekend the Wii will be installed in her house, rather than mine 🙂

I might miss Mario a little (I told you it was fun, right), but I sure won’t miss it filling up one of my drawer.

So here it is, all the Wii stuff – 12 items out-the-door!

  • 1 Wii with power and receiver
  • 1 Wheel
  • 2 Nunchucks
  • 2 Controls with plastic protective cover
  • 1 Wii Fit Balance board
  • 5 Games

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Oh no, here we go again :-)

I told you last year about this photo project I was starting up on… well late November I packed everything away (I desperately needed a tidy house), and it’s been out of sight since 😉

I was thinking that now is as good a time as ever, to start back up again…

Yesterday I pulled everything out, and stacked it nicely on and around my dining room table. As you can see, from the picture below, it’s quite a load…  “tons and tons” of albums, negatives and loose photos.

The goal is to sort out the keepers and scan them, as I want them digitized. Then after that “little” deed is done – OK maybe not so little, as I have a few thousand photos, and I’m sure, that even after I ruthlessly go through them, I will end up with another few thousand to scan – I will sort out the ones I would like to put into albums.

I’m hoping to get down to about a couple of thousand photos to scan, and less than a thousand to put into the albums.  Wish me luck, because from the pile you see, it’s not going to be an easy task! Guess I’ll just have to eat this particular “elephant”, one album at a time… 😉

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Plans for 2015?

We are halfway into January, and you’re wondering, do I have any plans for 2015?

Yes, off course 🙂

I have plans within the areas of decluttering, finance, exercise and life in general! Why don’t you let me tell you all about it 😉

Declutter
In 2014, the focus was mostly on decluttering, and I’m afraid I still have ways to go 😦 Seems like decluttering and getting less stuff, inspires me to want less and less. So I will continue this in 2015. Last years goal was to declutter one item a day (365 items) and I far succeeded that, so I thought maybe I should try that one, one more time.. I think it will be harder this year to find the 365 items, but I’m sure gonna try 😉

I don’t know if you remember! Just like I’m reading myself out of my bookshelf, I’ve decided to watch myself out of my movie collection, and I also have this big, actually huge, photo project which I mentioned for you guys in November, that I will be spending time on this year.

My declutter goals for 2015;

  • 365 items
  • 100 Movies – that’s half of my collection
  • Cut my physical DVD series collection by 30% (yeah, that’s a lot, I have a lot, a lot of series)
  • 34 books –  I did 82 or something like that, out-the-door last year, but now I’m getting into more of the books I love…
  • Photo collection – oh lord…  I can’t even tell you what my goal is for this year! Half maybe?
    My overall goal is to keep key photos as physical photos, scan the other ones I’d like to have access to, and get rid of the rest. Now having several thousand photos, this is a task that will take time, and most likely spill over into 2016…

Only buying necessities
My focus last year on only buying necessities ( I want, I want – I want it now!!!) served me very well, as I had to spend quite a bit on medical treatments instead. It served me so well, I think I’d like to continue the focus this year. But with a small change compared to last years – I will add an allowance;

  • Books – I can still buy up to 10 books/magazines – preferable as e-books
  • Eating out – We did pretty good last year – we will try to squeeze even more this year, by reducing another 25% on last years results.
  • Flowers and plants – stay at the same level of last years result
  • New allowance: I can buy up to 10 non essentials throughout the year 🙂

Other financial goals
Last year I managed to pay off my car (a few months early) and I’m pretty happy with that 🙂 My ultimate goal on the other hand, is to have my house mortgage paid off, in 16 years or less, compared to the 25 it was originally. I’m 7 years in and have almost halved the mortgage so far, which is phenomenal! But it’s getting harder now that I’m on a severely reduced pay due to not working so much. Every January I pay a lump sum towards the mortgage, so my goal for 2015 is to save up 60 000 NOK for my lump sum in January 2016. If I manage that on my reduced pay, I’m doing very well.

Activity and exercise
Due to illness I have not been the most active person the last few years, every time I think I’m ready to start exercising, I’ve managed to screw that up somehow, and I’ve gotten worse again. Now on the other hand, I’m feeling better than ever and I think it’s time to give it another shot. But this time around I’m going to be careful about it and take my time!!!

The goal for this year is to build up to, by the end of the year: 7 days of activity a week, with 3 of these as real workouts.

  • By activity I mean something that gets me up and going and preferable out of the house, like a walk in the neighbour hood, work in the yard, run around playing with kids… just about anything that gets me out of that couch, gives me some fresh air, and brings me into a moving state 😉
  • With real workout I mean an activity like for example going to the gym, yoga, biking, running, Rollerblade … you get the drift.

Other activities/projects this year
I have a few other things on my agenda 🙂 Like; travel, projects in my yard, other projects, throw a garden party, ++
But these, I think I’ll tell you more about, as we move into the year 😉

So that’s it for my 2015 goals… enough don’t you think?

 

My 2014 goals – how did I do?

In 2009, after having lived in the US for two years, I came home with enough stuff to fill up a entire house (after having furnished an empty condo in Houston), and I already had a house full. Since then I have slowly but surely gotten rid of stuff, and I’ve dwindled it down to one household again. But as good as I had been at it, I felt that there was still more that could go out of the house. Which is why I decided a year ago that I would make 2014 a year to declutter and living with less.

And to be accountable – I started this blog 🙂

I decided my main goal, would be to get rid of an average of at least one item a day, all through 2014 – yepp, 365 items!

I also made a second goal, a promise in my post I want. I want – I want it now!!! – to make an effort to buy only necessities, needs rather than wants.

Have I managed what I set out to do? The short answer – YES!

So here it is – my MAIN goal;

2014 tally of items out-the-door  – 634 items, 2200 bookmarks and 14485 emails 🙂

Curious about what items I shed? Check it out;

  1. January tally – 63 items
  2. February tally – 45 items, 2200 bookmarks and 2450 emails
  3. March tally – 12 items and 7535 emails
  4. April tally – 58 items and about 4500 emails
  5. May tally – 126 items
  6. June tally – 22 items
  7. July tally – 22 items
  8. August tally – 45 items
  9. September tally – 103 items
  10. October tally – 7 items
  11. November tally – 23 items
  12. December tally – 108 items

My second goal – only buying necessities; 

I did better on this during 2014 than I did in 2013 (which was the first time I tried this). I replaced broken items, only if I had too. I used up before replacing or even did not replaced at all.

I did really good at not buying anything but necessities, until my trip to US in September, when I ended up buying some clothing I didn’t really strictly “need”. I do however have an excuse as my luggage was lost for several days, and I got sick of walking around in oversized men’s clothing that I had borrowed. So I caved and bought some ladies things 😉 And it’s not like the clothing won’t come in handy, when I wear out my older stuff…

Other than that, as far as I know, there are only a few other items I got, that were strictly not a necessity. 1 small box set I thought was really cute, that I really haven’t found a use for, yet! And then I got a a few cheap IKEA wine glasses for my birthday grill party, as I did not have enough glasses for the champagne toast! (thinking about it, I believe this could be considered a necessity 😉 )

I did have some allowances for the year! Things I could do and things I could get that aren’t really necessities;

Books – I could buy up to 10 books/magazines – I bought one physical book, and two or three e-books

Eating out – the goal was to cut down to half the amount of times we (a friend and I) eat out compared to 2013 – we didn’t quite manage, as we only cut 39% on times. But what we did manage was to cut the amount we spent, with more than 50%, which was ultimately the goal.

Flowers and plants – The goal for 2014 was to cut down to procuring less than half of what I normally would – Done 🙂 I did even better than half as I cut my procurement of plants for the garden closer to 70% compared to any other years.

So all in all, I would say that I passed my goals for 2014!

Did I pass with flying colours? Hmmm, probably not, I’m sure I could have done better, but I’m pretty happy 🙂