That FIFO Money

2023 - here we are! It's been a slow start to the year as my partner and I spent the first week of it with COVID. It was also over my first birthday off work in 3 years so that was annoying. via GIPHY It was an interesting and unexpected end to the year but the unexpected is starting to feel expected as another year working on solar farms rolls over.  New Year is always a good time for self reflection and thinking back has certainly made me feel like 2022 was more of a success than it may have felt more recently... A lot can happen in a year!  I may be a little late to the party on the whole year-end reflection and goal setting for 2023 posts but cut me some slack, I was ill and spent the last week working in the stinking heat whilst still not feeling 100% after COVID... I did manage to create a content schedule for That FIFO Money blog until June so I've gotta hold myself accountable and stick to my content plan, even if it is coming  a little later than planned. So I thought

Well... what a week! Feeling exhausted and bloated from too much fun and food with my bestie and her husband last week! They came to Australia for their honeymoon a year after their wedding and luckily they fell in love with the place so it's good to know they'll definitely be back. They spent a week travelling up the east coast from Brisbane to Cairns in a campervan before flying down to Adelaide to stay with my partner and I for 8 days. We had the BEST time but f*ck me - what terrible timing for our bank accounts!!  So, I had already been "stood down" (in inverted commas because it looks like we won't be going back to that job ever so not really a stand down at all) from my job as an Electrical TA on a solar farm a couple of weeks before they were due to arrive and had been trying to get on another solar farm that has started closer to home but that fell through just before my friends arrived.... AND THEN.... my partner flew home as planned for what should'v

 ' The Mental Toughness Handbook ', is the name of the personal development book I am currently reading. I started it before I got stood down from my job unexpectedly two weeks ago and now every night I get into bed and read a few pages of this book before falling asleep, it's like its telling me exactly what I need to know to cope with my current situation. My first night at home, I opened this book where I had left off and it said this:  "Life throws curve balls. The moment we're confident that a situation will work out exactly as we anticipate, we encounter unforeseen circumstances that threaten to make a mess out of things.     Most people are surprised, and even paralyzed, by unexpected developments. This is another area in which mentally strong people stand apart from the pack. They realize that while making plans is useful, unpredicted situations can quickly ruin even the most carefully prepared plans. So they learn to adapt. They train themselves to be ment

Typical! Just days after posting a nice little breakdown of how I planned to split my savings up until the end of the year on my Instagram (shown below); I lost my job... 😑 So yeah... I guess this is now null and void! ☝ Now, I've not technically completely lost my job as our company told us that they were just "standing down" all of the Electrical TA's for 2-3 weeks because we are catching mechanical too quickly and running out of workfronts for electrical (solar farm niche content right here, sorry). But, in solar farm world, timeframes are ALWAYS pushed out longer than normal. Although, apparently not when it means keeping people working for as long as planned, as it turns out hahaha (if I don't laugh, I'll cry). I could go on about the unfairness of it all and how its a massive kick in the teeth because I've worked for this same company (through labour hire) for 3 years across 4 projects back-to-back and always make sure I work hard to prove my value

I need to get back to my strict budgeting... I've definitely noticed lifestyle creep lately. If you don't know, lifestyle creep is a phrase that defines how people's spending increases as they earn more.  I've seen it in my own parents, especially as I was in my 20s. They have admitted to me that they always spend what they earn. So, even though they were earning good, tax-free money in the Middle East for the 10 years before they retired; I don't think they started knuckling down and saving until they had the realisation that they were due to retire in the next couple of years so would need to learn to live on less.  If you're a FIFO worker, think back to when you first started and how much you spend vs. now. Is it more or less? Did you splurge when you got your first FIFO job and thought, "fuck it, there's more where that came from?!"; Or were you more like, "wow, I could save for a house deposit (or whatever your goal may have been) really

I've actually been doing these working away from home construction jobs for 4 years since starting on a solar farm on my second day in Australia.... absolutely clueless about what to expect (I had to Google what a solar farm was at the airport before I left the UK LOL). However, what I earned on my first solar farm, was spent down to the last cent before I started on my second so hence the title of this blog post. It's been about 3 years since I started taking my finances seriously and my partner and I set ourselves some goals. I don't regret spending all that money from my first job in Oz. I had 6 months off after that, went to Sydney and had a luxurious holiday in Bali with my - then, new -  partner and explored my new home between landscaping our front and backyard and just getting settled into the new house and living together.  As mentioned in my previous blog post, "How My Money Values Have Changed Since Working FIFO" , my partner was just finishing building