What a difference a day makes! Yesterday morning I was struggling at work (they still haven’t fixed my monitor), looking down the barrel of homelessness with an eviction notice to shift out for the owner to come back end of next month, no place arranged to go, and worrying whether my finances would stand up to the cost I thought I’d end up paying to move into my own place, or whether I’d end up having to rent and put my home ownership plans on the backburner for another year or two…
Today, I’ve successfully negotiated the purchase of my first property, in a great location, and at about 30% less than I expected to have to pay for a place I could walk into and not have to fix up anything. I’m enjoying today’s public holiday (Australia Day) before launching myself back into organising paperwork to follow through, and busy working out all the things to be arranged for me to get into MY OWN PLACE!!! I feel like I’m a powerful, independent woman. Not only that, but I’ve worked out that the mortgage repayments I’m up for are going to be LESS than I’m currently putting aside, let alone the rent I’m going to save, and less than $100 more than I’d be paying per week in rent, so it looks like I’ll be able to fast track this mortgage and build some serious equity FAST. Yes, I’ve organised a mortgage that allows excess payments, and credits them against the principal instead of just the interest, so I’m honestly feeling pretty great right now.
Oh, and I googled my job title with the word “vacancies” and discovered about 20 other government agencies all looking for people – seems we’re in demand at the moment. A good thing, with the workplace reforms that the Prime Minister John Howard has just introduced, although I can’t help but think there’s going to be a lot of people in a much worse situation because of them. Essentially the workplace is now a supply and demand trading floor with no safeguards. If you’re in demand, you’re right. If you’re an employer looking for a fairly common skill set, you’re more than right – your workers are going to be available at ’sale’ rates. But the workers who don’t have specialised skills are pretty much going to be stuffed.
Interestingly, I got a Seek Job Mail this morning telling me of a job in the hunter, so out of interest I ran the search for my local area (NOT the hunter) to check if it was still pulling up jobs in the wrong area – and found another local job going at package to $100k in private industry. Interesting! Seems like if my current govt department doesn’t pull their act together and fix things, I’ve got some good alternative options out there…
Of course the best option is to keep on working on my online stuff (must draw up my book proposal this week) and get that going to the point I don’t have to worry about employers at all! Don’t think it needs take very long, either, seeing as I’ve got so many years of ground work laid already. I’m getting truly excited at the possiblities in my future, but at the same time there’s a bit of nervousness and that little voice telling me not to jinx myself.
Still, when has that ever stopped me before!?!
Crystal
