A year long money challenge

 I love a good challenge, it seems to keep me focused. One that I entered into twelve months ago was to put aside one dollar each week and two dollars the following and so on. I think some bright spark said that it would add up to almost $1200 if it was kept up.

Me, being me thought I would do it twice, one adding up and the other going down. $1 to $52 and $52 down to $1. I drew up boxes in my diary so that I could cross them off as I put the money into the money box. I bought quite a large one that didnt have a stopper so that I was not tempted to help myself tt it at times.

Having the actual cash in hand became difficult so I arranged for $106 to go directly into my saving account from my pay, as I couldn't keep it up. That was good and I did not take anything from there all year.

This morning I decided to see how much money was in the money box as I had continued to put coins in it when I had some and thought about it. The only way in was to cut it, a tin opener didnt work but a sharp knife and a block to knock it in did.

Look at all that lovely money, even some notes, I must have been flush that day.

I counted it all and there was $322 altogether. 

Warren came in and saw what I was doing and remarked that it was from the shell, he was gifted an expended artillery shell years ago as a leaving present and we have always used just thrown loose change in there, sometimes it would be used to get some coin. 

We decided that we might as well count and cash in the shell money as well. Only once had it ever been full although we had cashed it in usually when we moved houses as we didnt want to carry such a heavy thing with us.

Inside we found a piece of paper which stated $397.85 when full it was dated 13 Dec, the last time it was emptied. The shell was about half full and had $122.85, lots of five cent pieces and no notes.

Warren had to go out this afternoon so he offered to take it to the bank although we are keeping out some two and one dollar coins for our trip, often they are needed for different machines and they can be hard to come by.

My new challenge for the new year will be to try to travel for $800 or less a week and keep the food bill under $100 for the week. Both I think will be a challenge but I will see how many weeks I can achieve it. 

A nasty nasty thing happened over the weekend

I have been collecting money for our (Red Hats) bus trip that is coming up next month. Today being the first free day that I have had for awhile, I decided to go and pay it, although need to sign paperwork so I paid the bus company a visit. I paid using my credit card and put the cash into my account.

Not my favorite thing, collecting money, especially if it is not mine but I must say our group is really good about paying up and I do have them trained now, to give me money one at a time. We dont do a receipt book as we don't take that much money instead we just use a members list and I make sure that I mark off the person's name as paid before talking to anyone else. Thankfully the money and people all married up.

I was transferring money from my account to the credit card and saw that there was $3200 pending! What! should only have been the bus trip money and possibly a little more as Warren had filed the jeep so not more than a thousand. I did some research and discovered that on Saturday night there was a transaction put through from a travel agent!!!!! I rang Warren to ask if he had planned and pay for a surprise trip. I didn't think so but needed to ask, he said no and to ring the bank straight away.

Luckily they did take my call as even though the account is in joint names, he is the primary holder. They have cancelled our cards and will issue new ones and have to wait until the transaction goes through before they can do any thing more. Thank goodness I did check, sometimes it could be two weeks between us checking our accounts on-line.

Banks in China

So many big banks in China in some places it seems like one on every corner. Any bank that I used had a security officer and one or two staff members out the front. Mostly the member at the front did speak English and they were there to direct people to which teller or form that they needed.

Warren and I had both kept our bank accounts open when we left as we always intended going back and thought that being able to put money into an account there rather than carrying a large amount of money would be a good idea. Well, yes we returned but we didnt use them so one day we went into the bank to close the accounts and of course withdraw the money that we had in there.

Armed with our bank cards and passport we head to the bank. We were given a slip with a number and then it was sit and wait. There were four rows of seats, several people were already sitting. Five tellers are working and above the tellers is a number  that that they are dealing with at the time.We only have nine numbers in front of us, five tellers, nine numbers, no time at all. Twenty minuets went by and only two people had left, hummm not going to be as quick as we thought.

After an hour we are at the front, we decided to go separately.I could hear Warren talking to his teller but mine didnt speak English or if she did, not to me.  Our accounts had been frozen because they hadn't been used for over twelve months so they had to be reactivated, so that meant two or three pieces of paper. Then our passports that had had to be photocopied did not match the passports that we had opened the accounts with which meant more paperwork. An hour at the front of the tellers and finally we were done with 360 RMB each in our hot little hands.

Those poor tellers, I felt guilty, I think that they filled out a dozen or more forms, I know that I had to enter my number around eight to ten times. I am sure they were glad to see the back of us.

At each tellers cubicle there is a press button with three buttons labelled in both English and Chinese, labelled Satisfactory, average or unsatisfactory  I would have liked to hit excellent but had to be happy with Satisfactory. All that paperwork!

We bought a caravan

On Sunday we went to the caravan and camping and came away being the owners of a new caravan. How the h......did that happen?

We had looked at another camper and it was set up similar to ours with a north south bed, more room and a bit stronger than ours BUT we want to be able to pull up on the road and get into the van, make a coffee, have lunch even have a quick lie down if we want so another camper doesn't fit the bill (plus we have a caravan! even though we have nothing to pull it.)

We looked at Jayco Doves, Swift and a Hawke, all light weight but again cant access them without setting them up. Then a salesman came over and starting chatting and we were discussing what we wanted from a van and he said something along the line of "There's a light weight one over here that would probably suit" of course we went to look and within thirty minutes we were signing on the dotted line.

We had done what we always do with one saying no we cant, the other well yes we could and we go back and forth until we both agree.

Positive things are we don't need to buy another car, it will fit in the garage therefore we don't need to concrete outside or erect a new fence and gate, its new so hopefully no problems or it will be under warranty and finally stuff it its only money. (we have since realised that even though it will fit inside the garage, the door opening is not high enough to allow it to go through the door, bummer)

negative side is the cost (again stuff it, its only money)

It does take three months for the vans to be made but we could nominate a date up to the end of the year, as we had no plans to go anywhere except motorbike riding, we asked for a pick up date in early December.

This is a picture of our new van, we went for single beds (gives a full length bed and a little more room inside by having singles) have an A/C, and a microwave, no oven which I didn't want anyway. An awning on the outside and we opted to have an TV aerial fitted which they added in the price, bonus. Now we need to sell our fixer upper caravan.