How much do you spend on Christmas?

I always seem to spend more than I should at Christmas. Every year I vow to reduce the amount I spend on Christmas presents but it just doesn't seem to happen. I have a number of gifts to buy for friends that I can't seem to stop doing. It's a hard thing to tell people that you'd like to stop exchanging gifts. And then when your friends have children, you end up buying gifts for the children too. So, the list gets longer and longer. Counting the number of friends and their children I come up with 11. At around $30 per friend and $20 per child, that's almost $300! And then there's family. My husband and I have agreed not to spend a lot on each other this year. But we have our 20 month old daughter. And then there is parents, siblings, nieces/nephews and in-laws. It's just too much $$ that gets spent for one day. At least I've committed to only spending cash, that we won't end up owing any debt as a result of this Christmas. That's a good step. Now if I could only figure out a way to reduce the number of gifts to give next year.

Groceries are expensive

I've dealt with this issue before and have been trying to reduce our grocery bills as everyone whose commented has stated that our grocery costs are very high. But they are just plain expensive. I agree that we don't shop around for the best prices but with a toddler and both working full-time, we really don't have the time. So, we bought groceries on Saturday and even though we didn't but much meat, the order came to a whopping $199.95 (for 1 week). Here are some of the highlights:

+ Diapers - $38.99
+ Wipes - $8.99
+ Toilet paper - $7.39
+ Toilet cleaner - $4.99
+ Dryer sheets - $7.99
+ Coffee - $8.99
+ Steaks - $16.33
+ Ground beef - $11.57

It's just crazy to have to spend this sort of money on these things.

Stressful times

I know it's been a long time since I last posted. Things are pretty crazy right now. My company has been in the midst of restructuring and performing layoffs. I thought I was going to be laid off this week but there is now a bit of a stay. I was already in the mindspace that I was leaving and have been job hunting. I was preparing to get a severance package and thinking of all of the things I could do with that if I got a job pretty quickly. But now everything is up in the air and I don't know whether I'm coming or going.

We're still trying to chip away at our debt but I have to say that we haven't been as disciplined about that or tracking our expenses. We'll have to start again in November. I'm hoping to have our cc debt below $10K by Christmas but that could be a bit ambitious. Especially with Christmas coming up.

August's Expenses

Sorry for the delay in my posts. But I now have completed expenses for August. Looking at the past three months of expenses, it is showing our total expenses going down... that's good. But I can't figure out why that would be. We aren't adding any $$ into our savings. We have been paying on bills but that is included in our expenses. So, it should all balance out. I need to think about this.

Coupons Websites

I went searching for Canadian coupon websites. In particular, coupons sites for products such as food, cleaning goods, and baby products. I've found a few that seem to have coupons that are usable in the real world with real products. Here are my selections:

Frugalshopper.ca

I ordered coupons from the next site and they came very quickly, no strings attached.

Save.ca

Redflagdeals.com

I've not used the following website for coupons as you have to create an account and I read comments from some users and it appears that some never received what they requested - but that seems to be users from other countries.

Mysavings.com

Allgoodcoupons.ca

We blew the budget

It's our anniversary today - 3 years. We went out to dinner last night and we had whatever we wanted. All total, it came to almost $190 for two of us. (Tom Selleck was dining there as well). Then we headed to the casino where I lost my $20 in about 20 minutes; my husband broke even. We agreed we weren't buying any gifts for each other but the price of the dinner more than makes up for our non-gift spending. We rarely get out to dinner together so it's a rare treat but obviously affects the amount we can pay on our cc debt.

Extra $$ - Less Debt

So, starting this Friday, my pay will be approximately $200 more per 2 weeks. In Canada you pay the Federal Government towards Employment Insurance and a pension plan. It's deducted automatically from your paycheque. It's a % of your salary up to a maximum amount, per year. I've reached those maximums for both items. So, now I'll have this extra $$ per month until January. Of course, my intention is to put most of it towards our cc debt. Of course, with Christmas presents to be bought, etc. I know that some of it will go there.

It's always such a great feeling to get more money for not doing any more :) But then when January comes around and you see your bi-weekly paycheque go down again, it's a bit defeating. Until the next time it increases :)

Are you stuck in a job you don't like?

I have a good job... good money, good benefits, good people to work with (except my boss) and generally an interesting job. But I really don't want to be doing it. I'm sick of doing what I do. I see myself doing so many other things. Other things that would mean a cut in income. And at this point, I need my income. It's very frustrating that I have to keep working in a job that I don't want to do. If I had extra $$ I could think of many things I'd like to do - real estate investmenting, organizing people's homes, and staging for sale. But you need money to be able to make a big career move like that and we just don't have it. Are you in this situation? What are you going to do about it?

Minimal Spending Weekend

I hardly spent any money over the weekend. But my husband paid for the groceries and our dinner when we got take out on Saturday night. It all comes out of the overall bucket though. One victory was when I went with a girlfriend shopping on Saturday and I didn't buy anything... not one cent... nada. That's good for me. I am in a golf tournament today for work so I'll be spending a bit on lunch, etc. but overall everything is paid for by my employer so it won't be a big hit to the pocket book. All good.

Now I need to review how much extra money I have to put towards the credit card debt. I want to have the Visa completely paid off again before the end of the month - it includes the lawn care costs and shoes that we bought. And anything left over will go towards our MBNA 0% interest cc.

Grocery Expense

So, I took our most recent grocery bill and broke it into categories. There were a few non-typical expenses last week but there always seems to be a few of those each week. Please review and let me know where our spending seems too high. Thanks.

Updated Spreadsheet

Here is our expenses spreadsheet for July. Some expenses such as dining and gas are higher because we were on vacation the last week or so. I have taken many of your comments about our high grocery expenses to heart. I even posted a question about what others spend on groceries on a finance forum I frequent. I don't know how some people are able to spend so little on groceries. I do admit that we spend a fair amount on meat/poultry/fish as we typically have something like that every night. But otherwise, I don't think that we are overly extravagant on our groceries. On my post tomorrow I'm going to break down our grocery bill and see where our money is going. I'm hoping you can all chime in and tell me how that compares to your grocery bill.

Expense Spreadsheet

Here are our expenses for May and June. I'll be maintaining three months of expenses so we can compare them and make sure that we're keeping everything in check.

Last day before vacation!

Last work day before vacation. I'm really looking forward to having 2+ weeks off to relax. I need it. It's been an exhausting 6 months since I've been back to work. For the first week we are going to my sister's cottage and then popping over to another province for 2 nights, staying in a hotel. The remainder of the vacation will be spent hanging around the house going on day trips here and there. Overall, it shouldn't be a really expensive vacation. But we will certainly be eating out more than normal. But we'll try to keep it under control. I don't want to charge anything that we can't pay off right away.

I've been working on an expense spreadsheet that I'm hoping I can post here soon. I just have a few last things to update and then it should be ready to go. I'm hoping it will be a good tool to use on an ongoing basis to keep us on track.

May Expenses

I know that it's been a little while since my last post. But I do have some updates. We tracked our expenses during the month of May and I loaded them into Excel and subtotals various categories. Ugh - a whack of expenses on stuff that is unnecessary. But here they are:

House (includes mortgage, property taxes, insurance, oil, and furnace lease) - $2,669
Lawn/Garden (includes soil, sods, and equipment to lay sod in back yard AND lawn maintenance) - $858
Bills (payments on credit cards) - $1009
Lunch/Dinner (lunches, dinners, and coffees) - $365
Groceries (food and toilettries bought at grocery store) - $1,076
Transportation (car payment, gas, and bus) - $815
Loans (student loans) - $430
Utilities (water, electricity, cable, internet, phone, and cell phone, etc.) - $386
Daycare - $600
Gifts - $140
Miscellaneous (includes clothing, lotto tickets, service charges, membership dues, alcohol, donations, toys, and "treats") - $671

This doesn't include $2,100 I paid for my recent work trip expenses.

It's hard to believe that we can be spending this much. There is certainly room for improvement. At least we now know where our money is going.

We've finished the sodding - Yahoo!!!

So, after 1+ weeks of hard work, working around a 1 year's old and full-time jobs' schedules, we have finished sodding our back yard. By doing it ourselves, it cost us around $675. That includes the sod, soil, a garden cart, shovel, rake, and tarps. Compared to $2000 that landscapers were quoting, we did pretty well in our spending. And it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. We still need to work on the garden areas but the sodding has been completed. Whew! And we are still going to buy a shed and some gravel to sit it on. That will be much more costly - probably around $1,200. But I'm selling some stock options to cover all costs so that it doesn't impact our existing debt. If that darn stock price would just go up again. :)

Credit Card Debt Update

So, I calculated our debt on the 1st of June and we've officially paid off $786 of our cc debt in May. That represents 6% of our debt. I'm pleased with our accomplishment for the month. There are still lots of areas for improvement but it's a good start. And now, with the transfer of the final balance to the 0% cc, there is only one cc to worry about paying on every month. And since it's not accumulating any interest each month, everything paid on it will go directly to principle. We can just focus on that one card.

Taking Others Advice

How much do you rely on others (friends/family, colleagues, blogs, etc.) advice for your financial decisions? I certainly like gathering information and then making a qualified decision from there. And, being in the currently debt situation that we are in, I certainly wouldn't qualify myself as an expert. So, I take all the help I can get.

One item that I reached out to a financial message board on is whether we should move the balance of one of our credit cards (approx. $6800) over to the 0% credit card that we recently received. I had moved over the balance of 2 cards but was hesitating to move the final one as the rates were lower (5% and 12% - split across the card) than most credit card rates. And I felt that we wouldn't have all of the cc balances paid off by next March when the rate of the 0% card increases to 19.9%. So, then I'd have a large balance at 19.9%. But someone had a good point, move it now and we wouldn't be paying any interest on any cards at all this year. Duh!!! Made perfect sense. So, I sent the cheque off on Monday to transfer the balance. Once all is settled, I'm going to close the credit card where I am transferring from. I have no loyalty to that card other than the lower interest rate. I have kept some of my other cards as the will be used for work expenses or paying for items with them so that we can get the rewards. Then we'll just pay that card off right away. Then, when next March rolls around, whatever balance is left on the 0% card, we'll just find another 0% interest cc.... or a LOC or something like that at a much lower rate. And it means only worrying about paying one credit card. I think it's a good decision all around.

If I Had A $1,000,000...

or should I say, $30,000,000.

One of the national lottery's (6/49) jackpot is $30,000,000 this Wednesday night. You can't help but think about what you would do if you were to win a big lotto such as this. Here are my top 10 things I would do if I were to win a large sum such as this one:

1. QUIT MY JOB!!!!
2. Pay off all bills
3. Give large sums to our immediate families
4. Give $$ to our extended friends and families
5. Go on an extended trip
6. Hire a nanny/housekeeper to take care of the house and baby
7. Build a dream house
8. Buy a house/villa in Italy
9. Invest, invest, invest (especially in real estate)
10. Buy some great cars

Of course, many of these could be achieved without winning a lotto but it would certainly make it easier. It's so fun to dream :)

I'm fed up

I feel like we're not getting anywhere on our debt reduction quest. We keep racking up bills and pay off what we spent the month before. So, although we aren't getting any further in debt, I don't feel like we are reducing our cc debt. I know that I am a large contributor to this but I can't seem to stop myself. And it's going to continue. We need to sod our backyard... buy a shed... etc. etc. So, I'm going to sell stock options to pay for that. So, it won't increase our debt; but it won't reduce it either. Why can't we seem to make a dent in our cc debt amounts. It frustrates me that we have that much debt, but obviously I'm not frustrated enough. I don't want to be dealing with this for years on end. But I can't seem to find a solution. There always seems to be something that comes up that needs to be paid for.

I'm even avoiding posting on the blog right now because of the current situation. This has to change. I'm fed up.

How to spend $600 in one easy step

I called and had 2 lawn maintenance companies assess our lawn and provide a quote for repairing what is a mess of a lawn. They both agreed... it needs lots of help. We have grub damage, weeds, and is generally quite brown. It needs dethatching, fertilization, top dressing and overseeding. Both quotes needed at least one call back to the company to have them interpreted. And of course, they offer discounts when you buy the annual "package". So, with all of our debt to be paid, what do we do????? Sign up for an annual package and the grub removal/"don't let our lawn die" commitment. I did pick the quote that was over $200 less than the other. It seems that one wanted to charge almost $300 for top dressing. I'm expecting that the "winner" of the quotes will be able to accomplish this without needing to use dirt laced with gold.

I know that it seems like we are going backwards in our debt reduction quest. But if we don't do something to save our lawn now, we'll have to replace the whole thing by the end of the summer. So, we aren't spending $600... we're saving $2000. We're spreading the payments over 3 months and I'm going to use my savings to pay for most of it. So, at least we won't be adding to our cc debt. We also need to install sods in our backyard. And after seeing those three quotes, we have decided to do this ourselves. It will be interesting to do with a 1 year old but we're going to try. I just can't part with $3000+ to add some grass to our yard.

Oh yeah... and speaking of yards: I'm participating in a yard sale on this Saturday. That is, if the weather holds up. They are calling for rain. I'm doing it at a friend's house. I have a number of items to sell but I'm pricing them pretty reasonable so that I can get rid of them. I don't want to have to bring anything home again. Especially the larger stuff. I'm hoping to make at least $200. That's my goal.

I missed the boat

Our company stock was going up early last week and I was so tempted to sell all of my vested stock options and the few stocks that I own. We need to finish sodding our backyard and need a shed. I was going to use the money for that and put the rest towards bills and perhaps save some for our vacation this summer. But I wanted to wait until it at least hit the next full dollar amount. And I set up a sell order on the trading website for slightly more than the full dollar amount (so I would clear $7 per option). And then.... it happened. The stock declined on Weds... and again on Thurs.... and again on Friday. Now, it's down over $0.50 from its high on Tuesday. I totally missed the boat on that one. I'm just hoping that the stock increases again soon.

I need to sell some stock to pay for the sodding. We don't have the spare cash to pay for it on our own. And the three quotes that I received to complete all of the sodding (and other landscaping items) are just too high. I think we're going to have to do it ourselves. Which is fine but with a one year old, it makes it hard to do. We are going to have to hire someone to work on the lawn though... it needs it bad. That will be around $200. But it needs to be done. There's always something to take away our money. It's just how the best way to spend it and what we're prepared to spend.

Advice from a forum

There are multiple forums on SavingAdvice.com where you can post questions about your financial issues. The users are very helpful and more than willing to provide good advice. I posted a question and it has helped me to make a decision about our cc debt issues. There are so many questions I have about so many things. Sometimes I feel like I need a Financial counsellor to go to :) I know that the priority right now though is to pay down this cc debt. Then we can work on student loans. And we really have to start an RRSP for our daughter. I feel so guilty about that one. In fact, we should start that now. Or she'll be 18 and we won't have any money for her to go to university.

It's so hard to balance all of our expenses. I hate being in this situation. I want to stop worrying about finances and feel good about them. And have spare $$ to put into investments or take impromtu trips. It's a challenge that I wish I didn't have to deal with but at least we are working towards a solution. It's just going to take some time and I'm not the most patient person in the world :)

Debt Reducer Tip

Since my husband and I have decided to record all of our expenses for the month it has caused me to second guess my purchases and not want to buy anything because then I'll have to record it. When you have to put it down on paper, it makes it real. If you use a cc or debit card, somehow it doesn't seem real. It's too easy to pull out plastic and forget about the purchase until the statement comes in the mail - and then it's like "Where did that come from?" "Who was using my cc?" :)

As a result of recording my spending, I know that I've spent less than I normally would have at this point in the month. I still had to pay a bunch of bills so they can't be avoided. But I've certainly reduced my eating out and trivial purchases. I can just feel it. Since I have only just started recording my purchases, I don't have quantitative evidence. But my gut tells me I'm right.

Anyway, I hope this tip helps you as well.

First Research Project

I had lunch with an old friend on Friday. During our discussions, we started talking about finances. She told me that she and her fiance are looking to get into to income properties. I was so excited to hear someone else looking at this investment direction as well. They have a plan in place and are further ahead than I am. I have been thinking about it and have decided that I will really put effort into researching this idea. And I'll make contact with those who can provide me with information about required finances or the real estate approach. This will be the first research project I'll address in my blog. Tomorrow shall be the first day of my project. I'll keep you all posted.

A little red wagon

We spent more money today. We had a gift card for my daughter's birthday that we used to buy her a wagon. But we had to cover the taxes and buy a few other items that were needed. I say "we" but my husband actually paid for everything. And since we still maintain separate accounts, it really does mean that one or the other pays for each item. For me, I didn't spend any money today.

I received one quote for the landscaping so far. Drum roll please..... $3200. There is no way we are going to be spending that much money on some sods. If the other quotes are similar, it looks like we'll be doing things ourselves. I'll still have to cash in some stock options to do this but it really does need to be done. And I'm considering a shed as well. That would be another $1000. We really should be using this money to pay down the debt. And I do plan to use what's remaining towards that. But we can't live with mud in our backyard forever.

I've been surfing around reading other's blogs and I think I'll be adding feeds to some of these. If I can figure out how to do it. I downloaded Sharpreader software but am still confused by it all. I'm going to have to do some more reading. And once I figure it all out, I'll probably add feeds from my site as well. I do plan to develop my financial info available to all. It's all just going to take a little more time.

Should I sell my stock options?

I spent $0 yesterday and today. Although I haven't paid for my overdue car permit renewal yet. That'll be another $142. I'll have to dip into savings to pay that. When does it end?

I'm pretty sure that I'm going to cash in my stock options and company stocks to pay for the landscaping that needs to be done. The rest I'll put on the debt. I am torn about this decision but we really need to get something done with the dirt in our backyard and we tried to grow grass ourselves - that didn't work. And we really need a shed too.

I'm trying to think of ways to increase income. I have a few ideas - one is to monetize my blog or create some sort of a income generating website OR get into real estate. I'm thinking I'd like to buy some rental units. But I still need to do lots of research - in both areas. I'm guessing it would be hard to buy properties when I don't have any money but I could be wrong :)

And so it begins

I'm on a mission to reduce our debt and increase our savings. I am so stressed out lately about money. We both make good money but we seem to be living paycheque to paycheque. If we could reduce our debt, I could be putting more money into RRSPs, RESPs, and savings. And, most importantly, I can do things for the house that I want to do. We have a nice, new house but don't have the money to buy new furniture or do extra things that we want to do around it.

So, I asked my husband to track all spending for May. It's something that he actually seems to be keen to do. I admit, I spend more than he does. But I'm the one buying everyone's gifts and things needed for the house or for our daughter. He doesn't think to do those sorts of things. So far this month, I've spent $140.44 (of which $130.72 is for bill payments that I made).

It's challenging but also exciting to know what you owe in debt and then set a plan to eliminate it. One of my big decisions is whether I sell stock options or use savings to reduce the debt. I'm guessing yes. Also, even though the most popular train of thought for tackling debt is to pay off the highest interest credit cards first, I just got a credit card at 0% interest for one year. I moved 2 credit card balances over to it and think that I should tackle this card so that we can pay down as much as possible before the rate goes up.

Once I put all of our current debt into the spreadsheet that I set up, I'll post our current debt amount as of May 1. Then I'll track our monthly progress. I'll also track our net worth through Networth IQ.

If anyone has any suggestions for the approach I should be taking, please feel free to comment.

Ta ta for now :)