A quick update - work and cars
Tuesday February 19, 2008

I had my performance review today at work. It went quite well. It was definitely the best review (in terms of the way it was run and what was discussed) I’ve had since I’ve started.

I talked to my manager about not liking programming and about how I feel a little vulnerable in the industry because my skills aren’t as good as what I believe the industry is asking right now, and I think that I got my point across well.

Next week I will be meeting with my manager to talk about my “other” roles (senior dev and dev team leader) to really try and pin down what we should be trying to achieve with them.

I’m relieved.

It also helps that I got a way decent pay rise.

What doesn’t help though is the fact that the pay rise puts me into the next tax bracket. I need to start investing my money and getting some other tax offsets. Just donating to charity isn’t really going to tide me over when it comes to the end of the next financial year…

But hey, it shouldn’t be too bad this year. I hope.

But I don’t really know that I can afford to spare a few thousand dollars to even invest in shares right now, because I need to pay for the wedding AND… (drum roll)… on the weekend we bought a car. Sigh. I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to go and “look”. It’s like taking a shop-a-holic window shopping.

What did we buy? We got a Honda Civic Sport.

It was a toss up between that and the Honda Euro Accord, and well, we ended up getting the better deal with it.

The down side is that because a certain somebody only wanted black, we have to wait a month for the car to be delivered. The upside is that the month will be enough for us to get our finances and insurance together.

Anyhoo, I’m off to go and clean up after dinner. Take care!