A Financial Flogging

Food for Thought: Taxation

2009-09-22T06:00:00.000-03:00

An interesting idea that was discussed to me by a friend was an alternate way to pay your taxes. The normal scenario is that a certain percentace of your wages is deducted from your paycheck that goes towards income tax and other things like EI and perhaps medical benefits.

What this does though, is allows the government to use your money for projects and investments right away and they get to see the fruits of your tax dollars down the road. This short changes yourself a bit since there is another way to do it provided you have a strong sense of responsibility and willpower. What's the answer?

Don't pay taxes.

At least not yet. What you can do instead is request your payroll department to not take deductions for income tax. Then, you deduct the money on your own and stick it someplace safe, like a high-interest savings account. What you are doing is delaying paying your income taxes until tax time (around April) at which point you will have accumulated interest that in effect reduces the total amount of taxes you have to pay.

For example, lets say you make $30,000 a year and you have to pay 20% in income tax. That's $6,000 gone! Thus rather than payroll deduct $230.77 from your pay each pay period, you instead take $230.77 and stick it in a high-interest savings account.

Monthly Savings vs. Weekly

2008-09-15T06:00:00.000-03:00

Currently our savings plan has us setting aside roughly 15% of our gross pay into a main account every week. The purpose of which is to build up a hefty emergency fund that can cover 8 months of living expenses. The account we use is the fee-free (for our purposes) PC Financial Intrest Plus savings account which gives 3.05% APY.

For this particular savings account, interest is paid at the end of every month based on your average balance for that month.

Since I am a spreadsheet whore, I wanted to determine what type of savings frequency for the average individual would yield the best return and how much the different scenarios varied. For the experiment, I am

Assume the following

1. Assume annual take home income of $30,000 (any number will work, this is the one I chose)

2. You get paid every two weeks (as per most payroll schemes) on Friday which works out to be $1153.85

Note that it doesn't really matter when you get paid (weekly or bi-weekly), rather it matters when you put the money in the savings account.

3. You wish to save 15% of your annual income (most people say you should do 10%, but more is better; $4500 in this case)

4. The frequency of your placing dollars into a savings account is the variable

You can either put the money in once a month (your first check of each month), every two weeks when you get paid, once a week, or once a day

4.5 Since you are getting paid every two weeks, why would you space the savings over two weeks? Maybe it's a comfort thing and you feel better having a higher balance in your checking account in case something happens. Why would you spread things over a daily period? You likely wouldn't but if you did then it would likely be for similar reasons. Note as well that for the weekly or daily cases, you could consider that a different pay scheme as well. Instead of getting paid every two weeks, you get paid every week or every day and deposit into the savings on that same pay schedule.

5. In each case the total amount put into the savings will be the same

6. The calculation is done for 2007 so your first paycheck is on January 5.

7. The savings account we look at pays 4% APR and pays interest monthly (for the difference between APR and APY, go here ). Interest is calculated on each day’s closing balance and is paid into your account monthly (on the last day of every month at 11:59 pm). I may be wrong, but I assume that this means a daily interest rate is applied to your balance and the daily amounts of interest are added up at the end of the month. This is the way I will apply interest in this experiment.

8. You create the account on January 1, 2007 and the balance starts at $0 and you will start saving with your first paycheck.

We are looking for the way that generates the most interest in an average sense. Meaning the average person will not do the most optimal scenario of putting 15% of total income into the account as soon as possible. This would entail putting 100% of their paycheck into the account until the $4500 is reached at the expense of all other bills. Once $4500 is in the savings, then no additional savings would be put in. Mathematically, this will generate the most interest, but is simply not feasible or desired for most people. This is where the personal in personal finance comes in. Most people would not want to devote nearly 4 entire paychecks to the savings account right off the bat. The reason most people would be uncomfortable is that it would mean bills and other expenses get put aside, which would cause stress and potential penalties in terms of late fees. Thus for this experiment, "reasonable" savings plans will be employed.

If you were to employ this "brute force" method, you will have your 15% annual savings on February 16, 2007 with $115.40 left over to start paying bills. For me, this isn't worth the undue stress, but your mileage may vary. However, for completeness, I will look at some special cases: the brute force method of putting 100% of your paycheck away until your goal is reached, getting paid on the first of every month and making a deposit then, and depositing every day of the year rather than miss out on the first 4 days of 2007 waiting for the first paycheck.

In the case of putting money in monthly, you will put in $375 from the first paycheck of every month. This means that for the some months you won't be putting in the $375 till sometime mid-month.

In the case of putting money in bi-weekly (ie. every time you are paid), you will put $173.08 into the savings from each paycheck.

In the case of weekly, you break your savings contribution from your paycheck into two and in the case of daily you spread the contribution over two weeks. With the daily example, you miss out on the first 4 days of the year, but for your daily savings, you just divide $4500 by 361 instead of 365 to get $12.46/day.

Which plan will emerge the victor? Read and find out. You can download the spreadsheet with all the calculations here.

First Paycheck of the month used for savings: $4594.03. Total Interest: $94.03

Every Paycheck or Biweekly: $4591.14. Total Interest $91.14

Weekly: $4589.41. Total Interest: $89.41

Daily starting on first paycheck of 2007, Jan 5: $4588.67. Total Interest: $88.67

Daily starting on January 1, 2007: $4589.66. Total Interest: $89.66

Brute Force method: $4662.58. Total Interest: $162.58

Depositing on the 1st of every month: $4597.31. Total Interest: 97.31

So obviously the Brute force method will get you more interest, but as I mentioned above, the way to do so would likely not be worth it for most people. As for the other methods the differences aren't huge.

A few things I found interesting was that a difference of 4 days on a daily deposit schedule net's you another buck and getting your money in on the 1st of every month scores an extra 3 bones rather than waiting for the first check of the month.

So why does this happen? All it is, is the situation that if you have your money in earlier for interest to accumulate on, you will have more in the end. In terms of a bigger picture though, think about what type of savings plan works for you in whatever employment situation you're in.

Slowing down....

2008-09-07T20:53:00.001-03:00

Due to school starting back up, I am rolling back the frequency of posts to one a week (hopefully).

Goals to Complete in 1001 Days

2008-09-04T06:00:00.001-03:00

Here are my modified goals that I am actively working towards. You can read the thought process behind the change to some of them here.

1. Read the complete works of William Shakespeare.
2. Have $18,000 in savings.
3. Measure my body fat percentage in some scientific fashion.
4. Exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes a day at a minimum of 4 times per week. 4a.Plan 1 week of suppers (the meal I usually over-eat on) in advance.
4b.Do not buy non-meal food outside of normal grocery shopping.
5. Get Married
6. Open an RRSP
7. Liquidate unwatched DVDs.
8. Liquidate old books.
9. Make homemade gifts for people for various events whenever possible and appropriate. Possible items include: paintings, hot chocolate mix, salsa, bread, tomato sauce, scrapbooks, hand-written letters, gift of time to help someone with something.
10. Walk/bike the equivalent of Summerside to Toronto not including every day
walking (620/1700 km).
11. Talk to Sam about his history with money.
12. Plant and grow my own tomatoes.
13. Vacation in Vancouver.
14. Become an Ebay seller.
15. Do 100 push-ups without taking a break (personal best: 32/100).
16. Spend at least 30 minutes each day with fiance that is engaging and meaningful to both of us (ie. not watching TV).
17. Help fiance's parents clean out a room in their house by taking pictures of sentimental items, compiling electronic photo album for it, and selling the actual item.
18. Offer to babysit 3 times for my friends so they can go out (0/3).
19. Plant a tree. Look at this for next summer as well
20. Determine my personal CO2 emissions (estimate)
21. Reduce those emissions by 20%.
22. Make 10 jars of homemade pasta sauce and give it as gifts (0/10).
23. Finish the few pieces of the puzzle for the paper based on my masters project.
24. Do 150 sit-ups without taking a break (personal best 0/150).
25. Add regular maintenance tasks for car onto the calendar and do them on that day (ie. wash and wax our car, clean and vacuum the car interior every 3 months, check the car's air filter and replace/clean if needed every 6 months).
26. Move towards a (mostly) vegan diet. My philosophy is to choose non-animal products as a preference when making food for myself and to create dishes for my fiance and I that are vegan that she can eat. I am not going to get hung up on not-eating animal products in other situations where non-animal products are unavailable to me (ie. I'm not going to not eat at a family function just because there is meat).
27. Purchase a filing cabinet and organize our files.
28. Pay off completely the debt I expect to incur over the next 2 years from my Bachelor of Education degree.
29. Obtain my class 4 license so that when I get a teaching job, I am qualified to drive a bunch of kids on field trips etc...
30. Catalog our possessions for insurance purposes.
31. Learn how to swim
32. Give Blood 6 times (2/6):
1. August 29, 2007
2. August 19, 2008

Net Worth Update: August 2008

2008-09-01T10:00:00.002-03:00

Well another month gone by and I'm actually posting this on the day it should be. Numbers go a bit wonky when you go from negative debt to positive, but we'll see what happens.

Assets - 2.0% decrease
Goal set: +2.0% increase

We went in the opposite direction on this one. This is due to the combination of vacation at the start of the month where my fiance wasn't getting paid, the freezer purchase, and the fact that my comics still sit unsold. However, I did make progress on that front as I have read Ebay's selling tutorial and have approached the manager of a new local comic shop in the area.

Goal for next month: let's try for a 2% increase this month as well

Debt - increased by a factor of 10

I had been paying ahead on future debt but the early payment of my tuition sure took me out of that cushy scenario.

Goal for next month: I might going to continue setting aside dollars for the debt to keep it somewhat under control, but because I'm going to get a 6 month grace period at the end of my degree and it won't really be for very much, I might put that money to better use.

Overall Net Worth - 14% decrease
Months of living expenses - 9.23

True Hourly Wage

2008-08-28T06:00:00.000-03:00

If you've read Your Money or Your Life, then you should be familiar with the concept of your true hourly wage. In a nutshell, it is a number that takes into account all the additional time related to your job that reduces your on-the-books hourly wage. For example, let's say you are paid $10 per hour at your job and you work 8 paid hours a day for a total of $80.

But maybe it takes you a 30 minute commute each way to get to and from your workplace. Thus there is actually 9 hours of your day related to work, 8 working and 1 commuting. So to calculate your true hourly wage you take the amount of money you make each day and divide it by the total time related to your job. For our example, $80 divided by 9 hours give a true hourly wage of $8.89 per hour.

This process also works in reverse and it is to that situation I will turn my attention. I work at an inbound call center that has low to medium call volume. So during an 8 hour shift I might only be taking calls and doing tasks related to that job for 5.5-6 hours while the rest of the time is spent waiting for calls to come in. If we take the same on-the-books wage of $10 per hour, this works out to be a true hourly wage of $13.33 per hour.

This worked out very well for myself and other students as we could do homework and read our texts between calls. Unfortunately, due to a security breach in a different department, that privilege was taken away from us. That kind of sucked, but at least we still had the internet to surf between calls.

No longer.

In one fell swoop, this action pissed off many people and reduced job satisfaction since now people are extremely bored between calls. There has been talk of filling up between call time with other call center related duties so that you are being paid for what the center wants you to do. From a business perspective, I can understand not wanting to pay employees for non-work related activities. However, what this does is reduce employees' true hourly wage. If those 2 hours are filled with other duties, then employees will be making less per hour worked, plus they will be doing more work. Such a situation is not good for morale.

So I face a bit of a quandary in that I am essentially working at a place that has transitioned from one where I could pursue my own interests between calls, thus being personally productive to one that I am pretty bored at. I am faced with the decision to move on and use that extra time to be productive, yet lose out financially or stick with it and dislike the work environment.

My initial thoughts are that I will stay since I plan to only be there for another year or so anyways and to use the dollars made for the very specific purpose of a new car and a house down payment rather that just having that money be a nice extra in our accounts.

Lessons learned:
1. Don't take for granted what you have as it can be taken away at any time.
2. Defining goals for your dollars can make other parts of your life acceptable/tolerable.

Frozen

2008-08-25T06:00:00.000-03:00

Since last week, I did a roundup of current freezer prices and evaluated what we would use such an appliance for. We decided to go with the larger 7 foot model as I plan to keep different flours subject to spoilage and various nuts in there. Stock will be a staple freezer item as will bread, tomato sauce, and ice cream.

Based on my findings, we could get the cheapest 7 foot model at Leon's for $288. However, the brand name, Wood's, was not one either of us were familiar with. For an additional $11 a Frigidaire model at The Brick could be had for $299 and the same model was at Futureshop for $329.

So we went ahead and purchased the Frigidaire 7.2 cubic foot chest freezer from Futureshop even though it was more expensive.

Why go with the place that had the highest price? Here's where things get interesting. Futureshop offers a price match/beat on items advertised at competitors. They beat the price by 10% of the difference of the two items. So the Futureshop price becomes $296. It gets even better as I had $100 in gift cards in my wallet since Christmas that I used to bring the price down to $244 with tax.

When Trent over at The Simple Dollar purchased a freezer he went through an interesting analysis that looked at the total lifetime cost of the item to determine how much they need to save each month to make the purchase worthwhile. The calculation uses the average lifetime of a freezer of 8 years, factors in electricity usage, and the initial cost of the item. I went through this calculation as well for our purchase:

Initial Cost: $244

Electricity usage assuming the freezer will last 8 years it works to be a total of $279 KwH/year x 8 years x 14.45 cents/KwH = $322.52

Monthly Cost = $566.52 / 8 / 12 = $5.90 per month*

What this means is that we need to save more than $5.90 each month through use of the freezer to have made the purchase a worthwhile one. If we eat out one less time a month as a result of having something in the freezer we can re-heat, then the freezer will more than pay for itself. This does not seem an unreasonable scenario and I look forward to creating delicious food I can quickly and easily reheat.

There may be an additional cost associated with transporting the freezer. We can have Futureshop deliver it for $50 or rent a van from U-haul for about $30 taxes included. We will also explore the possibility of using our landlord's truck for free.

72 Goals in 1001 Days - 1 year 3 month update

2008-08-21T10:29:00.004-03:00

This is a long post, so if you are not interested in lists, then you may want to
avoid this one.

Here is an update to the list of goals that I wish to have accomplished by February 15, 2010 that I originally posted here.

I have made very little progress on the goals and I think I know why. Many of them I just added to get a higher number of goals, attempting to reach 101 and weren't really that personally important to me. Of the original list, I completed 18/72.

Much like Trent from The Simple Dollar did, I think I can re-evaluate what is left and condense them into better, more concrete goals. As well, I will try to come up with at least one actionable item to make towards it. In essence these should be SMART goals. "S" for being as specific as possible, "M" for being able to measure progress, "A" for being attainable by changing habits, "R" for being realistic for me to willingly work towards it, "T" is for a specific time frame. In order to measure all my goals, I think I will create a spreadsheet with each refined goal then keep track of when I work on them and what the next step is.

2. Obtain my Bachelor of Education Degree: this is going to happen unless I try very hard for it not to, so I do not think this should be on my list.
CUT

4. Read the complete works of William Shakespeare: I have the complete works sitting on my bookshelf and I want to read through it.
Next step action: read 5 pages a day for 263 days until I finish it.

6. Make my own windex: we have regular windex in the apartment and may not go through it before the end of the 1001 day experiment. However, when cleaning tasks come up, I will look at homemade solutions first. This goal gets the axe too.
CUT

7. Have $18,000 in savings. We are very close to this goal and due to our automatic payments to the main savings account, we will reach this in about 12 weeks.

8. Measure my body fat percentage in some scientific fashion. I don't think I need to do this, but it is interesting to know what it should be and find ways to reduce the %.
Next step action: determine what my % body fat should be and locate a place to calculate it.

9. Become lighter by on average 0.5 pounds a week. This is a very nebulous goal as it contains no information about how I will actually do this. Instead of a weight loss target for a goal, I think a better idea is to have excercise and diet goals and then the weight loss is a side benefit.
Next step action: This goal gets reworded to: excercise for a minimum of 30 minutes a day at a minimum of 4 times per week. Plan 1 week of suppers (the meal I usually over-eat on) in advance and do not buy non-meal food outside of normal grocery shopping.

10. Get Married: the season for weddings is usually summer and I suspect 2009 is
mostly booked.
Next step action: discuss with fiance values for the future and children to make sure we are on the same page.

11. Open an RRSP: this is something we really need to do.
Next step actions: read The Boglehead's Guide to Investing (whenever it comes in at the library), speak with a financial advisor about options (next time fiance and I have a day off together), and determine which financial institution to house retirement accounts.

12. Invest in a mutual fund: this may be taken care of in #11, but I suspect we will invest in index funds. This is cut.
CUT

13. Buy stock in a single company: the most risky of investment strategies that we will only take on if we decide we have enough time to do the proper research. Cut for now.
CUT

14. Liquidate unwatched DVDs.
Next step action: sort DVDs into ones that are immediate keepers and onces to be sold. Do this 08/18/08.

16. Beat Halo 2. Cut as I have little interest in vidja games right now.
17. Beat Jet Set Radio Future. Cut for same reason as #16.
CUT

19. Liquidate old books.
Next step action: sort books into ones that are immediate keepers and ones to be sold. Do this 08/18/08

20. Make 5 homemade gifts for people for various events (birthdays, Christmas, etc...) (2/5: mother's day coupon book, and homemade bread for Father's day). I like the idea of this goal as I am much more conscious about a consumer lifestyle than I once was. My preference will be to make gifts whenever possible.
Next step action: start fiance's birthday gift 08/19/08

21. Go on 10 relaxing drives around the island with fiance (1/10). This is going to be lumped with #31, #34 and #37.
CUT

23. Walk/bike the equivalent of Summerside to Toronto not including every day walking (620/1700 km). I am keeping good track of my biked kilometers and will continue in the winter at the UPEI gym.

24. Watch Season 1 of The Shield.
CUT

25. Read the Complete Cerebus series (4/16 TPBs). I don't think this is important to me when I have other more thought provoking material on my "to read" list.
CUT

26. Talk to Sam about his history with money. I am interested in his views on this.
Next step action: contact Sam via email/facebook to set up a chat time.

27. Plant and grow my own tomatoes. I am interested in producing my own food for
both environmental and personal satisfaction reasons.
Next step action: growing season for 2008 is over, but I will draw up a list of materials and
investigate the possibility of having a patch in a community garden rather than
grow them in the apartment.

29. Vacation in Vancouver. We really want to go back here.
Next step action: discuss with fiance when we would like to go, how much it would cost, and how musch to set aside to save up for it.

30. Play 5 games of Ultimate Frisbee (0/5). This ties in with #9 as excercise so cut.
CUT

31. Cook 12 romantic dinners for fiance and I (0/12). Lumped with #34, 37, and 31.
CUT

32. Become an Ebay seller.
Next step action: setup seller account, take photos of comics I want to sell.

33. Open an online trader account. cut for now as it depends on what we do for #11.
CUT

34. Get flowers for Pam "just because" 5 times (2/5). Lumped with #37 and others
CUT

35. Paint another 2 paintings in the Bob Ross style (0/2). I enjoyed the process of painting and seeing the results.
This will be lumped with #20.
CUT

36. Do 100 push-ups without taking a break (personal best: 32/100). I am actually working towards this based on the schedule found here.

37. Spend 10 complete days with fiance (3/10). This is going to be reworded as spending at least 30 minutes with fiance each day. I realize that it actually sounds bad to schedule time with loved ones and that it should just happen naturally. However with the way I am it is too easy to pursue other things and let more important matters slide. I need specific actions to take or timeframes
to do them in order for them to be done.

38. Help fiance's parents clean out a room in their house. They have way too much stuff in their home as many of the items are from my fiance and her sister's childhood and have sentimental value. I think I have developed a clever way for them to clear out clutter. For every item that has sentimental value that honestly will likely not be used again, take a picture of it and compile an album on the computer for these items. That way you can bring up the pictures, still have
the memories associated with the item, clutter is reduced in your home, and the item might find use with someone else. Win-win all around.

40. Offer to babysit 3 times for my friends so they can go out (0/3). This is something that might be difficult during the school year, but can be looked at next summer.

44. Plant a tree. Look at this for next summer as well

45. Attend a farmer's market and if I like what I see 30 more times (10/30): We've been attending off and on for the past little while and I do enjoy it once food is in season. It has become part of our food buying routine and will continue.
CUT (keeping track of it that is)

46. Determine my personal CO2 emissions (estimate)
Next step action: use a variety of online calculators to determine this

47. Reduce those emissions by 20%. Depending on what $46 turns up, this will follow

48. Convince 5 people to switch to PC Financial for their banking (1/5). Why do I
need to do this again?
CUT

52. Read 52 in one sitting to see if it makes much sense. I have little interest in this anymore. CUT

53. Make 10 jars of homemade pasta sauce and give it as gifts (0/10).
Next step action: decide on a recipe that is delicious and suitable for gifting.

54. Finish the few pieces of the puzzle for the paper based on my masters project. Very close to finishing this now and we are under the gun since other research groups are close to publishing

55. Do 150 sit-ups without taking a break (personal best 0/150).
Next step action: try to implement the same routine as for th 100 pushup goal

56. Wash and wax our car 4 times (0/4)
57. Clean and vacuum the car interior 4 times (0/4)
58. Check the car's air filter and replace/clean if needed 4 times (every 6 months)
(0/4)
Next step action for #56,57,58: schedule maintenance tasks on the calendar

61. Have the only animal I eat be fish/seafood for 4 consecutive months
62. Have my only beverage as water for 8 consecutive months: I don't think this is necessary as I drink soy milk every now and then to get B12.
63. Try being a vegetarian for 5 consecutive months (no animal flesh - eggs/milk/cheese OK)
Next step action for #61,63: I am actually moving towards a vegan diet for the most part. My philosophy is to choose non-animal products as a preference when making food for myself and to create dishes for my fiance and I that are vegan that she can eat. I am not going to get hung up on not-eating animal products in other situations where non-animal products are unavailable to me (ie. I'm not going to not eat at a family function just because there is meat).

64. Organize our filing container.
Next step action: get a freaking filing cabinet

65. Pay off completely the debt I expect to incur over the next 2 years from my Bachelor of Education degree. This is in progress as explained in other posts

67. Help Mark finish his basement. Cut for now as it is unclear if they will be staying in that house long enough to finish it. If he does start the project I will be more than happy to assist.
CUT

68. Obtain my class 4 license so that when I get a teaching job, I am qualified to drive a bunch of kids on field trips etc...
Next step action: find booklet or additional information about this license

69. Catalog our possessions for insurance purposes.
Next step action: start simplifying our stuff to make the cataloging process easier.

71. Learn how to swim: this will be a great way to exercise.
Next step action: find out where lessons are and when they are

72. Give Blood 10 times (1/10): 10 times will not be doable at this point but
Next step action: make appointment to give blood
1. August 29, 2007

See part 2 for the condensed form of this list to see what I will actually be working towards over the next year and a half in a much briefer form.

Brrr...It's Chilly

2008-08-18T10:00:00.000-03:00

My fiance an I have been thinking about getting a small chest freezer for the apartment for a while. The main reason is that we have an abundance of frozen products right now and don't really have much room for anything else. However, this is a rather large purchase and warrants some thought both in financial terms and in efficiency.

How much does it cost?

We are looking at models in the range of 5-7 cubic feet of space (though we looked at smaller and larger ones) and have scouted various stores around Charlottetown for pricing. 5 cubic foot freezers range in price from $230-$259 and the 7 cu. ft models ring in between $294-$379, with the majority of stores below $300. When you work out a price per cubic foot number, the 7 cubic foot models are cheaper by around $8/cu. ft. Though striving to get the best unit price on something like rice is a noble endeavor, for reasons below, it might not be the primary consideration when buying an appliance like a fridge or freezer.

How much does it really cost?

Not only are you paying the upfront cost, but you pay an additional fee each month as part of your electricity bill. Luckily freezers come with a tag showing how much energy they approximately use each year. Something I found interesting was that going from 4 cu. ft to 7 showed a big jump in energy usage but starts to level off at larger freezer sizes. Due to my anal nature, below are two plots showing the cost per cubic foot (left, blue), the total cost per cubic foot with energy usage added in (left pink), and energy use vs cubic ft.

Note that the 5 cu. ft freezer is the most expensive per cubic foot.

What will I use it for?

This is an easy question. As my June experiment showed, I can save mucho dinero by cooking meals at home and is something I plan to continue. A freezer facilitates this process by allowing me to cook in bulk and freeze the leftovers for additional meals. As well, we can take advantage of sales on freezer goods and stock up, something we can not really do at the moment.

How much space do we need?

This is the biggest question. The benefits of the 7 cu. ft model are that we can really stock up when sales hit and it will serve us well in the future when our family expands to include children. However, sales for items we would actually use might be few and far between and/or I may find that I don't have sufficient time to do all the cooking I'd like resulting in us not using the extra space, yet paying to keep that space cold.

On the flip side, the 5 cu. ft model would meet our current needs splendidly but may not once there are more mouths to feed. Plus these models are more expensive per cubic foot.

Other notes

I like the idea of the upright freezers since it is much easier to find items. However, they are about $100 more expensive for the same cubic footage, which I do not think is warranted, plus when the door is open on these, the cold air will flow out much more easily than the traditional models.

I am thinking of getting a 5.5 cubic foot model from Home Depot pictured below, but am unsure of the Danby brand name.

Conclusion

Since we had a ton of car repairs in the last few months, we have been putting off the purchase of a freezer. We have the funds now to buy one, but I think we are starting to be a bit stingy with our money and are now avoiding it since it is a large purchase. I'll keep you informed as to how it goes.

Vacation Nation

2008-08-14T10:30:00.000-03:00

Post frequency has taken a bit of a dive in August as we were on vacation. Thankfully we are back and wallets are definitely lighter for it. We did not budget a cent for the 10ish days that we were off but I don't think we did too bad. The biggest thing was eating out during the week as well as gas for all the driving we did.

This year we chose to do a mostly local vacation with a tour of eastern PEI. We went from Charlottetown all around the eastern coast to East Point, then down to Montague and home. We also had a night of camping in the Cavendish area and visited with my fiance's family for a few days. The non local event was a trip to the Moncton Zoo with my fiance's sister and her nephew.

In terms of the cost of the week let's see how much we actually spent:
Confederation bridge: $41.50 - $20.00 from fiance's sister = $21.50
Zoo admission: $23.00
Campground: $28.93 after work discount
Gasoline: $145.73
Dining: $100.72
Firewood: $12.00
Total: $331.88

While this is much cheaper than some family's' vacations, we definitely could have done better on eating out. We splurged at the The Friendly Fisherman buffet in Cavendish (it was excellent) and tried a new pizza place in Montague called Old World Pizza (also excellent). I'm not going to worry about it too much since both places we something different and added to the enjoyment of the vacation, despite our guts being busted after TFF.

What really made the vacation were some very nice memories: playing horseshoes at the campground until it got dark, carrying a really heavy load of firewood to the campsite with my fiance, walking under the Confederation Bridge and seeing the future of energy production on PEI.

Note that other than the gas, these memories were created without spending much money at all and I endeavor to have more vacations like that.

New Worth Update: Double Whammy (kind of)

2008-08-04T22:39:00.002-03:00

Well there was no update for June as I was struggling with how to represent my net worth in meaningful terms since I am paying ahead on future debt. I've realized that doing so can basically be thought of as extra assets and there is no real need for any major modifications. In addition to the net worth calculation, I am also calculating how many months worth of current living expenses we have.

June Assets - Up 2%
Goal set: +5.0% increase
July Assets - Up 0.1%

June saw a small jump in assets, whereas July barely moved. This is due to some extensive car repairs that took a chunk out of our emergency fund.

Goal for next month: a 2% increase should be reasonable, though we are on vacation now and will lose some income from that. This should be compensated by extra hours at work when I go back and I AM GOING TO SELL COMICS ON EBAY despite my previous procrastinations about it. However, we plan to buy a small chest freezer for the apartment which may null these increases.

June Overall Net Worth - Up 2.7%
June months of living expenses - 9.32
July Overall Net Worth - unchanged

I am looking at August to be a frugal month which should result in a good net worth increase.

The Value of Your Time: Part 2

2008-07-28T10:00:00.000-03:00

Based on Part 1 of this post, I showed that making your own sandwiches at home beats buying the premade version. However, I did not really include the monetary value of the time it takes to make the sandwiches yourself.

I've thought alot about this and you can look at things in the traditional sense of calculating your true hourly wage and determine how much money you are losing by doing things yourself. For example, if my true hourly wage is $6.50 per hour then making 4 sandwiches costs me $2.82-$3.79 at a total time cost of 26-35 minutes. This increases the cost of the homemade sandwiches to between $12.04 and $13.01. This is still cheaper than the premade version, but that's not really the point of part 2.

The point is I don't think it makes sense to include that time-money component unless you were going to do something during that time that would make you money.

For example, had I chosen the premade option, I would have used the 8-10 minutes I really spent making my sandwiches by eating it in the lunchroom at work while watching TV or reading the newspaper. In essence, this time would be wasted. I would much rather spend the time doing something I feel is productive and/or gives me a positive feeling about making good choices. Unless you are using the time you save by going the convenience route productively, then the time spent doing it yourself and the time wasted from TV, etc... cancel out and should not really be considered in cost calculations.

Trent at The Simple Dollar recently discussed the dollars we assign to our time.

The Great June Experiment

2008-07-24T10:00:00.001-03:00

As mentioned a post or two back, during the month of June, I challenged myself to not spend money on eating out or on "junk food." Also during this month, I wanted to do some sort of physical activity every day above and beyond my normal routine. Below is a picture of the calendar I used to keep track. The X's are the days I did physical activity and the check marks are for the days that I made no extra food purchases.

As you can see, the exercise days are a bit spotty, but the "no-spend" days were very consistent. There were only four occasions where money was spend needlessly on dining out/snack food that wasn't part of a normal grocery run. I think I was so successful with this endeavour because I kept track of it on a consistent basis. However, it wasn't a complete success since there were those four times where money leaked out of my pocket. Thus, what follows is an explanation of the meals/snacks that I bought and what I learned from them.

Day 1: I ate a southwest chicken combo at the MacDonalds at Wal-mart. This came from poor planning on my part. I had to take the car in to Midas since we has some issues with the braking system. Once the diagnosis came in, we decided to have the repair done then rather than wait. The reapir, unfortunately, took place over lunch time. So I was pretty hungry and I didn't care to wait until the repair was done so I hoofed it over to the Wal-mart and ate there.

Lesson Learned: When knowingly entering a situation that has an unknown time frame to resolution, bring a snack to hold you over until you can get home for a meal.

Days 2 and 4: I drank a pop and a few handfuls of candy. Where I work is a virtual cornucopia of junk food temptations. From vending and pop machines to those 25 cents-a-pop candy dispensers, if I have change on me, I usually succumb to their sugary goodness.

Lesson Learned: Stop carrying small amounts of change/cash on me when I go to work until I determine that I can withstand the neon glow of vending machines.

Day 3: My fiance and I ate lunch at Wendy's. We will always have a place in our hearts for Wendy's as this is where we initially met. It is by far our favourite fast food place, or Quick Service Restaurant to use the new lingo, and we hadn't eaten there in a while. We ran some errands and chose to eat there for supper.

Lesson Learned: Making dining out a rarity makes you enjoy it more. Even though it was only Wendy's, it was a satisfying meal that we could savour since we hadn't been there in a while and likely wouldn't go again for at least another few weeks. By going much more frequently, you end up wasting more money for what, at this point, is just a regular meal. You are much better off financially cooking and eating at home for the majority of your meals and by treating eating out as a rare event to be enjoyed.

Where to go from here?
I'd like to keep up this mentality and behaviour for July, but I've already gotten up to five days of eating/out snacking during the month. One occurance was justified as we celebrated my fiance's new position within her organization by eating supper at East Side Mario's. While there, we shared an entree which helped cut the costs. Another day was again poor planning on my part and went to Subway for supper. Some snacks at work grabbed hold of me for third and fourth offenses and we treated s neighbour to lunch at Wendy's for the loan of his car. While not terrible compared to some people's routines, there is room for improvement on our part and I will try to make the rest of July spend-free. on the flip side, my exercise routine is much more consistent now that we have some good biking weather.

Conundrum Resolution!

2008-07-21T15:11:00.003-03:00

A few weeks ago I made my concerns known to the world about my receiver/subwoofer/surround sound system. Today I am pleased to report that I have the unit back and in operational order. Let's crunch the numbers to see how much it was to repair the unit.

This particular electronics shop charges a $20 fee + tax to look at whatever you bring in. Then if the repairs will cost under $100, they will go ahead and fix it, whereas over $100 gets you an estimate and the option to repair. In either case, the $20 is spent.
Deposit cost w/ tax: $23.10.

I brought the unit in to the repair place on July 8th and picked it up today, July 21. During this time I racked up $7.95 in parts and another $60 in labour.
Repair costs w/ tax and deposit deducted: $78.49.

As Schaef mentioned in the previous post, time as well as gas is a factor, especially since it was up west. When I dropped it off, I had to go down to Summerside for a dentist appointment anyways, so for that leg of the trip, I'm only counting kilometers and time from my parent's place to the repair shop and back. However, picking it up required a special trip.
Total km for drop off and pickup: 166.5 km. Based on out average 10.864 L/100 km that works out to 18.09 L of gas. At average prices for the time period of repair, total fuel costs are: $24.70.

Total Monetary Cost: $126.29.

Total Time cost: 186 minutes which includes driving, explaining the problem, and testing the device before paying.

Was it worth it? I think it was, since I have my system back with no worries about receiver compatibility with the speakers, and I'm not contributing to the cycle of consumer waste. When will I replace it? Likely when the cost to repair is more than replacing the unit with a completely new system, including speakers.

The Value of Your Time: Part 1

2008-07-14T17:05:00.000-03:00

The Value of Your Time: Part 1

Based on Scholarly Warrior's comment found here, I've been thinking more about the cost of my time and how it should/shouldn't be applied when making your own food, doing your own repair, etc...

This post will focus on the time taken for the home made sandwich case versus the "convenient" case of buying premade food at a grocery store.

Case 1: DiY Sandwich Making
The total, upfront cost at the register would have been $9.22. From the time to enter the store, roam the aisles picking up bread, tomato, pickles, mustard, meat, standing in line and leaving, I think I spent 10-15 minutes. Assembly for two sandwiches, as I said in the previous post, took about 8-10 minutes. This gives a total time investment of 18-25 minutes.

Case 2: Convenience Food
The total, upfront cost at the register would have been $7.49. I estimate that from entering the store, grabbing the premade item(s), paying for them and exiting to be approximately 6-8 minutes depending on line-ups. This estimate seems reasonable.

Comparisons
The time investment in this Case 2 is clearly less than buying individual food items and assembling a sandwich on your own. However, things get interesting when we compare long term, repeated behaviours of eating convenience items to doing it yourself.

With the goods I purchased, I had an abundant of leftovers to make an additional two sandwiches. If I were to make those two additional sandwiches, the only time sink is construction, and, if made at the same time, would cost another 8-10 minutes. Thus total time for creation of 4 sandwiches, made two at a time would be 26-35 minutes. Total monetary cost is still $9.22. This gives a unit cost of 26.3-35.5 cents per minute. Note this does not include the value of my time (see part 2).

If I was at home and wanted to have a quick bite and decided I wanted a convenience food item, I have to pay the total cost in dollars and time of Case #2 every, single time. Thus if I did this four times, I would have to drive to the store and back (round trip time 12 minutes) and pay $7.49 along with 6-8 minutes in the store. Thus total monetary cost is $29.96 (excluding gas costs) and total time investment is [12 minutes*3 round trips] + [6-8 minutes*4 stops at the store] = 60-72 minutes. This gives a unit cost of 41.6-49.9 cents per minute.

In closing for Part 1, each individual case of the "convenience" items seems cheaper and more time effective, but if we look at the long term effects of going this route, it turns out to be more expensive.

To Eat or Heat

2008-07-07T10:00:00.002-03:00

Gas and oil prices are high. This is not news. What is news though, at least on PEI, is that people are complaining about how prices of home heating oil are so high that they can't afford to buy food. Say what?

Granted food prices are increasing as well, but what annoys me is that people are clamouring for government to help them out rather than looking at their own spending. The people that are complaining would likely be up in arms at the mere suggestion that they don't need cable television, a 3000 square foot home, or 3 vehicles.

"But we work hard and deserve those things" the masses might say. Listen up folks: beyond the needs of food, shelter, and clothing, anything else is a luxury item. You might not like to hear that, but that does not make it any less true. Thus, do not look to government to bail you out, but rather see what you can do to help yourself. Let's see if we can get an extra tank of oil per year by trimming some spending from the average household's expenditures. For the purposes of this calculation, I am using the average household size from the 2006 Census of 2.5 persons per household.

From this page, we'll assume the average tank of oil holds 300 gallons or 1137 L. Based on current home heating oil prices in PEI of 125.5 cents per litre, a tank of oil will cost $1427.

According to the 2006 Census, the average expenditures per 2.5 person household includes $1714 for tobacco products and alcoholic beverages. Hey! Look at that! There's our tank of oil right there!

Well, a lot of household might not have smokers and/or drinkers so what can the more health conscious household do?

Cut your cable. Chances are that on PEI, it is through Eastlink whose prices range from $24.72 to $54.95 for basic and full-tier cable respectively. What to go digital? Try $57.95-$85.85 per month. Eliminate this bill and save $296.64-$1030.20 per year.

Switch your lightbulbs to CFLs. Trent from The Simple Dollar shows that you can save about $100 per year by changing over to these more efficient bulbs. Due to the recent increase in energy prices in PEI, the savings would be about $138 per year based on $0.14/kWh.

What else could you do?
Stop eating out and make your meals at home. I spent upwards of $100 on dining out a few months ago and am now making most meals at home. As well, there is only about a $10 difference in grocery bills plus I am eating healthier. Yes, eating at home saves that much money. The Defense of Food sites that half of American spending on food is for dining out, but just using myself as an example, if you spend $100 on eating out and change to cooking at home, the net savings each month would be $60 since you spend an additional $10 each week on groceries. Annual savings: $720.

Avoid the coffee shop. Rather than spending $1.50 each morning on the way to work, why not drink some water and perform a few light aerobic exercises to get the same wake-up effect. Annual savings: $390.

Tallying these savings up we get an annual savings between $1544.64-$2278.20, more than enough for a tank of oil. These are only some of the options available to you to save money for heating oil. Here are some others:

- install a programable thermostat
- drive less, using gas savings for oil
- energy seal your home
- move to a smaller home, which would cost less to heat
- sell a vehicle if you have more than 1
- get a roomate to share energy bills
- make more money
- move into an apartment that pays for the heat

In closing, I think the assumptions made in this article are reasonable for the typical PEI household. I expect, there would be more challenges for people with very low or fixed incomes, but many of these strategies can be applied there as well.

Moral of the story: Suck it up and be personally responsible for your situation. Stop whining to the government for help when you can easily make small adjustments to your lifestyle in order to get the result you want.

The Debt-inator

2008-07-02T22:04:00.000-03:00

In my last net worth update, I mentioned that my debt was completely wiped out. So how does one kill nearly $4000 worth of student loan debt in one fell swoop? The answer my friends is punctuality and the Canadian Millenium Scholarship Foundation.

During my tenure as a substitute teacher between January-June 2007, I was made aware of the scholarship by two pre-service teachers that were on their practicum at Kinkora Regional High School. They told me that you have to submit the application with some other information on the first day of your classes and that it was basically first come, first serve.

That day came and I marched myself to Student Financial Services located in the Sullivan building in downtown Charlottetown. I dropped off the submission form and proceeded to forget about the entire thing for seven months.

Therefore it was a complete surprise when I opened the mailbox to see that I was the recipient of a $4000 scholarship that would be applied to my student loan! How awesome is that?

I'm not trying to toot my own horn on this, but it was very comforting to know that I would essentially only be paying about one and a bit years worth of tuition for my education degree. This makes my repayment of the remaining debt (to be accrued in September 2008 and January 2009) a much easier task.

Speaking of which, I still plan on continuing to put $100 away each month as a bit of a head start to repaying the loan. I have all my remaining student loan money in the intrest-plus savings account through PC Financial and although I could likely make more money faster by investing that $100, I'm still not at an investing stage yet. As well, this method is very low risk and will give me the peace of mind of being able to pay off the debt in a reasonable time-frame.

Thus, my net worth updates might look a bit weird in the upcoming months since I now have negative debt. I'll figure out a way to meaningfully represent this somehow and discuss it more in the next update.

A Conundrum

2008-06-25T16:30:00.001-03:00

In May of 2003 I purchased a Panasonic surround sound system that can be classified under the heading of a "home theatre in a box" as all the necessary components come in one convenient package: 5 speakers, sub-woofer, and 5-disk DVD player/receiver. This auditory wonder has served me well over the past 5 years, with only an easily fixed, over-heating problem to speak of. However there is now a problem:

It's dead.

About a week ago we noticed that after being turned on for several minutes, the unit would power down and go into standby mode. At this point, the unit can not be powered back on unless the power cord was unplugged.

Being the internet savy person that I am, I explored the wonders of Google to discover that this is a known issue with this, and other, surround sounds systems. Generically dubbed, "The F61 Error" has three possible causes: faulty cabling leading to the subwoofer, an amp being blown, or a power supply issue.

I removed all cabling from the device, yet the error persisted. I opened it up to see if there was any charring from something being blown, but nothing was evident. Thus I reach my conundrum: What is the best way to get this situation resolved?

My 2002 self would know what to do of course: go to futureshop and buy the coolest looking surround sound system they had. However, I'd like to think I've grown wiser in the intervening years and think I should investigate the following three options:

(NOTE: time frames and costs are estimates only as I have not done much research yet on options #2 and #3)

Option #1: Get it professionally repaired
Ideally, this option makes the most sense. However, there are a very limited supply of people that do consumer-level electronic repair work. I went through 6 places before I called one that could do it. The catch: they have a two month backlog because the main guy that would do it is always out repairing big-screen TVs since they make more bang per buck that way.
Estimated Option #1 Cost: $50 labour + parts
Estimated Option #1 Timeframe: 2+ months

Option #2: Purchase a new receiver w/o subwoofer and use current speakers
With this otion I would sell/get rid of the current 5-disk changer and subwoofer and get a new receiver which would hook-up to my current 5 speakers. I have to investigate whether any receiver can work for these speakers or it needs to have certain specifications. I'm wary about that since the instruction manual says not to hook different speakers to the subwoofer. Does anyone know if that works in reverse: hooking the speakers to a different receiver?
Estimated Option #2 Cost: $200-500
Estimated Option #2 Timeframe: 1-2 weeks as I need to research my concerns.

Option #3: Bite the bullet and get a brand new system
This option requires the least amount of thought and time yet will be the most expensive by far. It would be great to cave-in to my technolust and get a snazzy wireless suround sound system, but I can probably keep that crazy beast subdued in the back of my brain.
Estimated Option #3 Cost: $300-1500
Estimated Option #3 Timeframe: immediately

So looking at those options it's kind of neat to see the inverse correlation between cost and the time investment to resolve the situation.

However, despite all this, I have to ask the question: "Do I really need a working surround sound system at this point in my life?" It honestly does not get that much use as it is and if we want to watch a DVD we can always hook up the X-box to the tv in the living room. I'm more just pissed off that one of the constants in my life, my entertainment status-quo as it were, is effed up.

Net Worth Update May 2008

2008-06-14T22:32:00.000-03:00

A little later in the month than usual, but let's see if I reached my goals I set for May, shall we:

Assets - Up 4.7%
Goal set: +3.0% increase

A moderately higher asset increase than planned. I won't complain! This is due in part to keeping a reign on spending and you know, not purchasing $700 beds.

Goal for next month: I expect a nice bump in assets for next month since I'm getting a fair bit of subbing at island schools and I am back at Resolve full time. I am also going to try and unload some comics finally! As a bonus, I am resolving not to buy items that contribute to my "Latte Factor," such as chips, pop, coffee, muffins, etc... and really curbing my eating out at places like MacDonalds, Wendy's, and A&W. So let's go nuts and say a 5% increase.

Debt - Down 103.5%
Goal set: 2.0% decrease

Wow!!! WTF??? This month saw the total elimination of my current debt. How you might ask? Stay tuned...

Goal for next month: Well, this is interesting, isn't it? Since we aren't at the point where we are comfortable investing our savings yet, I may just keep adding to the bank account that will be used to fuel student loan payback as I will be accruing debt in September. This may be the topic of a future post. In terms of a goal, I think I will keep things simple and just focus on paying off the credit card consistently like I have been doing.

Overall Net Worth - Up 29.5%

That's certainly a hell of a bump. Next month should be back to more moderate increases.

Foodery

2008-06-10T23:51:00.003-03:00

One of my main vices for over spending is on eating out. Not nice sit -down, enjoy yourself, enjoy the atmosphere type meals, but rather the quick and dirty, often greasy take-out fast food variety. Those fatty deep fried morsels just taste so good on the tongue that it is often hard for me to resist the neon signs and 2 for $6 burger deals.

So I made a pact to myself: For the month of June I will not buy/eat this so-called food in the efforts to improve my health and also my wallet.

It shames me to say, but I spent over $100 on eating out last month. Not all of those dollars went towards fast food. No sir. Incldued in that 3-digit figure is a coffee here, a coffee there, here a pop, there a pop, a bag of chips sounds good type items. Those little things, which would be considered under the category of the Latte factor, really do add a significant drain on the pocketbook.

I would like to say that things are going very well thus far. I've cooked big batches of food including barley-chicken soup, chili, cornbread, and barley-lemon Tabbouleh (recipes and cost analysis to follow), so I don't have the often-used excuse that there is nothing to eat at home. So far for the month of June I have not indulged in any of my culinary vices.

I almost, possibly, kind-of slipped today though.

I didn't have a large lunch today and as I drove my fiance to work, I felt a familiar pain in my stomach saying "FEED ME". Rather than drive back home to get something to eat, my last month self would have swung into Wendy's or A&W and called it Good Eats. I was sorely tempted to purchase a premade $3.99 sandwich at Superstore today to feed my hunger. I know for a fact that if I did so, a $2 pop and a $1.50 bag of chips would have tagged along with it. This would have represented a $7.49 meal before any applicable taxes. I'm pretty sure that the chips would have been taxed and the pop price is with tax, but for the purposes of this analysis I think taxes will be inconsequential.

I did not take this option.

What I did instead was as follows:

1. I moseyed on over to the discount baked goods section and picked up a 50% off loaf of in-store baked European 12-grain bread. Cost after discount $1.25.
2. I sauntered to the produce section and took hold of an especially firm, medium sized tomato. Cost: $0.80.
3. I wandered to the deli counter and ordered 2 slices of Vermont style Ham and 2 slices of Roast Beef. Cost: $1.89 and $2.40 respectively.
4. I strolled to the condiment aisle and snatched a small bottle of mustard as the deli counter did not have small fast-food type packets. Cost: $0.89.
5. I side-stepped in the condiment aisle and secured a jar of deli-style bread and butter pickles. Cost $1.99.

Total price of the goods here: $9.22 and these items are tax-exempt.

I then drove to work, spent 5-10 minutes constructing two, 1 meat slice sandwiches, grabbed a free leftover bleuberry-bran muffin and a cup of free leftover Vanilla-Hazlenut coffee from the cafeteria, and had a delicious and nutritious meal.

Going the non-last-month-me-way provided the means to create 4 sandwiches with ample leftovers for other delicious things. Based on the total price of $9.22, this works out to be $2.31/sandwich. 42% cheaper than buying the premade one.

One could argue that since I had two sandwiches I really spent $4.62 on sandwich food, more than what would have been had with Superstore's convenience item. However, the calculation above ignores the fact that I have most of a tomato, a nearly full bottle of mustard, a jar packed with pickles, a good many future pieces of toast, and two more slices of meat leftover, all of which will be used. It also ignores that I had a free beverage and muffin rather than the pop and bag of chips. A deeper analysis could be performed to get the price of each pickle and slice of bread based on the number of each in the package/container, but that's a bit too anal even for me.

Thus ended my almost slip-up of not eating junk food. It was a good choice I think both for my health and my wallet and will think about options like this in the future if I feel myself craving those convenience foods.

[Edit 06/11/08: Turns out I am that anal. As a per item cost the breakdown is as follows:

1. The loaf of bread had 16 slices that were suitable for sandwiches. Unit cost:$0.078 per slice.

2. The jar of pickles had 16 large pickle slices. Unit cost: $0.124 per pickle.

3. I figure I could get 12 tomato slices out of the tomato I got. Unit cost: $0.067 per slice.

4. The bottle of mustard had 250 mL in it and I'm guessing that each sandwich can have 25 mL in it. Unit cost: $0.089 per 25 mL serving.

5. The ham was $0.945 per slice and the roast beef was $1.20 per slice.

Thus as a total cost for each sandwich:
Ham sandwich: $0.945 + $0.078x2 + $0.124 + $0.067 + $0.089 = $1.38 per ham sandwich.
Roast Beef sandwich: $1.20 + $0.078x2 + $0.124 + $0.067 + $0.089 = $1.64 per roast beef sandwich.

Total cost of sandwich goodness for this one meal: $3.02. Again, cheaper than the pre-made variety.]

The Stigma of Success

2008-05-26T20:24:00.002-03:00

While not directly related to personal finance, it does touch on the personal side of our lives that help us obtain said finances.

When did being successful or accomplishing things in your life become such a bad thing? I'm reflecting on this point as I recently made contact with a few high school aquaintances via Facebook. After the initial back and forth messages, eventually the questions were raised from both parties about what I've been up to. I take this as a query into the past 8 years of my life. Therefore I summarized my accomplishments and what I have done to get them up to speed. The list was as follows: I referred to myself as a school junkie: went to UPEI and obtained a BSc in Physics, met my fiance, moved to BC where I spent an amazing two years and obtained an MSc in astronomy, drove back to PEI, started substitute teaching and really enjoyed it, enrolled in the education program at UPEI of which I just finished my first year.

Does the above come off as arrogant or bragging? I am aware that it might given the non-emotional context of electronic communication. I ask because in both cases after sending the above and asking what those people have been up to, I have not heard back from them. Did I just come off as a prick or are they jealous because they don't think they have met with the same level of success?

It ties with something I've read recently that education in the eyes of others = success/accomplishment and is one of the biggest things. However, people don't see the downside to education at least in the short term. I can think of 3 big ones right away:

1. Opportunity cost: the 8 years I've been in post-secondary education could have been doing some job and earning income that could have been invested.

2. Debt: in the majority of cases, people continuing post-secondary studies take on a massive amount of debt that takes years to pay off. I've been blessed with very little debt accumulation during my education as I had a full-tuition scholarship during my undergraduate degree and the benefit of dual-incomes during my Masters and my current degree. However, many people are not as fortunate and put alot of their dreams on hold to pay back the burden of debt. Which leads to...

3. Non-education aspects of life become secondary: this won't apply to everyone, but it definately applies to me. I focus singularly on education tasks such as assignments ans such, often pushing other personal issues in my life to the wayside. It has caused problems in the past and is something I am constantly trying to improve on.

The three effects listed above are some of the downsides to education. What are some others?

On the flip side, those two people have situations in their lives that I would consider significant accomplishments/goals. One for sure is married right now, which is something we're still working on and the other is aspiring to enter the RCMP, a very noble profession.

The point is that we should all learn that success is not measured comparitively with others. You should only compare where you are now with where you were in the past. If you've made decisions that have made you happier now than you were or made poor decisions and learned from them, then that's a pretty successful life in my eyes.

Net Worth Update April 2008

2008-05-14T13:27:00.002-03:00

Let's see if I reached my goals I set for this month, shall we:

Assets - Down 2.6%
Goal set: +2.0% increase

A reversal of numbers here. Again, as I mentioned last time around, I didn't make as much income in April because of practice teaching and I think I underestimated exactly how much that would effect things. Next time I know of something like that, a more detailed look at the numbers should be in order. As well, we took advantage of a furniture sale at Dow's furniture here in Charlottetown and upgraded to a nicer bed and boxspring which depleted most of our "big-item" fund. This was an unplanned purchase, but we saw it as a good opportunity to get rid of the ole' spring poker. On the plus side, we sold the old mattress and boxspring combo for $75 dollars.

Goal for next month: We'll keep things simple at a 3.0% increase in assets while the income streams come back under control. I will hopefully get around to selling some stuff on EBay, but this bump might not show up until June's update.

Debt - Up 1.3%
Goal set: 2.0% decrease

I didn't quite make that as I didn't pay off the credit card balance in full prior to the end of the month, which I usually do.

Goal for next month: Keeping things modest here too, a 2.0% decrease should prove doable, but if things took place that should have, a significant drop will be shown here next month. The details of that will be the focus of another post.

Overall Net Worth - Down 3.4%

Since we are in this for the long haul, months where there is a slight dip in net worth is really worrying as the general trend is onwards and upwards!

Good news and bad news

2008-04-05T13:01:00.003-03:00

The Good News

PC Financial sends out a form for tax purposes showing how much money you made in interest if it is over a certain amount! That was a fantastic surprise as we thought we would have to track it all and bring in slips when we got our taxes done. Very convenient service!

The Bad News

PC Financial's interest plus savings account, touted as the greatest in the land, has dropped their interest rates significantly from 4.10% to a paltry 3.35%. This is of course in response to the shitty dealings in the south. Boo-urns on that.

Expect a net worth update in a few days

Net Worth Update March 2008

2008-04-05T12:49:00.003-03:00

Let's see if I reached my goals I set for this month, shall we:

Assets - Up 11.3%
Goal set: +4.2% increase

This one was sure blown out of the water wasn't it. Allow me to elaborate. Tax refund. Any questions? Without the refund though it only would have been a 3.9% increase. Time Horton's breakfast sandwiches will be my financial ruin. This vice should get better next month as I bought a box of green tea to remove my excuse for getting coffee. Conveniently this removes the very real possibility of getting a breakfast sandwich.

Goal for next month: A 2.0% increase should be doable despite less funds coming in during April. I'm not working at Resolve while on practicum so that takes a big chunk of our money. Once school is over, I plan to unload some stuff on Ebay to hopefully make up that difference.

Debt - Down 4.9%
Goal set: 6% decrease

I didn't quite make that, but I'm not worried. The only reason was not shuffling some of the extra assets around to cover this. In theory it's done, just laziness prevented it from becoming a reality.

Goal for next month: A 2.0% decrease should be ok as again, there will be less income for the month of April while I am on my practicum.

Overall Net Worth - Up 15.5%

We did great this month since we got our tax refunds. We need to not let this go to our heads and keep things up when we don't have such a windfall.

Net Worth Update February 2008

2008-03-03T20:04:00.004-04:00

Let's see if I reached my goals I set for this month, shall we:

Assets - Up 2.8%
Goal set: +5% increase

Yeah, so the idea of making February a frugal month? Didn't really pan out. Our expenses were almost identical to those of the previous month, though it was distributed differently. I purchased a expensive board game, there was an impromptu trip to Moncton, and dining out, while less frequent than it has been in several months, still reared its ugly head. Still, there was an increase.

Goal for next month: A 4.2% increase should be doable since I will be on practicum and the ability to eat out will be much reduced. As well, much of my time will be spent making lesson plans, negating my ability to go out and spend money.

Debt - Down 4.5%
Goal set: 4% decrease

I accomplished this goal rather easily despite not spending much less than usual. Paying off the credit card every week is a good idea that helps in this area and the little chunk I'm paying on the student loan is doing its work as well.

Goal for next month: A 6% decrease is more than what I did this month, but should still be achievable provided less money is heading outwards.

Overall Net Worth - Up 4.5%

Overall we did ok and we are still experiencing steady growth.

72 Goals in 1001 Days - 9 month update

2008-02-21T13:26:00.002-04:00

Missed the 6 month update, but meh.
For various reasons (most of which were laziness) I haven't been working on these as much as I would like. I am going to try some visual reminders for some of them to keep me on the ball.

Here is an update to my list of goals that I originally posted here.

Here is an update to my list of goals that I originally posted here. Numbers that are missing are goals that were complete before this update

2. Obtain my Bachelor of Education Degree

3. Sort through my comic books and see which ones can get the boot Started June 17, 2007

Currently I have 8 short boxes and 2 long boxes of single comics. On this date I went through all of them and immediately cut 4 short boxes worth of issues to get rid of.

4. Read the complete works of William Shakespeare

6. Make my own windex

7. Have $18,000 in savings IN PROGRESS

We are actually not too far away from this, so I think this should be reasonable.

8. Measure my body fat percentage in some scientific fashion

I plan to purchase one of the scales that measures body fat as well as weight after researching whether or not they actually work. And suggested by Sam, the official way is to be submerged in water and there is some displacement measure or something. I don't know the details yet though.

9. Become lighter by on average 0.5 pounds a week

10. Get Married

11. Open an RRSP

Deciding whether to get one now for compound reasons or hold off until I need the tax break and contribute several "back-years" worth all at once. Apparently if I start one now and expect my income to increase significantly in the future (I do), then I will be taxed a higher rate than I was paying when I put it in, negating the benefit. However, this will have to be evaluated against both the growth of the RRSP and inflation.

12. Invest in a mutual fund IN PROGRESS

The first step here is to become educated on the subject and I've chosen The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing and you can read a review here. This is on my wishlist for both Amazon and Chapters.

13. Buy stock in a single company

14. Liquidate unwatched DVDs IN PROGRESS

This process has been made much easier due to the move to our new apartment in June. A move is a very nice excuse to go through old junk and get rid of it.

15. Purchase a Paderno pot set COMPLETED

I'm calling this one completed as we received 4 decent Paderno pots for Christmas, negating the need to purchase a set of our own. We may pick up a few other pieces this summer, depending on how far along my culinary skills are.

16. Beat Halo 2

17. Beat Jet Set Radio Future

18. Get rid of my old computer COMPLETED

A friend in the education program had a ridiculously old computer so I formatted my old hard drives, installed windows XP and put some programs on that I thought she could use. My reward? A delicious meal at the Gahan House.

19. Liquidate old books SEE #14

20. Make 5 homemade gifts for people for various events (birthdays, Christmas, etc...) (1/5)

1. Book of Coupons for Mother's Day

21. Go on 10 relaxing drives around the island with Pam (0/10)

23. Walk the equivalent of Summerside to Toronto not including every day walking (104.3/1700 km)

I've decided to include biking in here as well because I enjoy that MUCH more. I purchased an odometer for my bike and it seems to be pretty accurate, so I will be using that to chart my progress. FYI my average bike ride is about 12-15 km.

24. Watch Season 1 of The Shield

25. Read the Complete Cerebus series (4/16 TPBs)

26. Talk to Sam about his history with money

27. Plant and grow my own tomatoes

29. Vacation in Vancouver

30. Play 5 games of Ultimate Frisbee (0/5)

31. Cook 12 romantic dinners for my fiance and I (2/12)

32. Become an Ebay seller

33. Open an online trader account

34. Get flowers for my fiance "just because" 5 times (2/5)

35. Paint another 2 paintings in the Bob Ross style (0/2)

36. Do 100 push-ups without taking a break (personal best: 21/100)

37. Spend 30 complete days with my fiance (4/10)

I've increased this from 10, because 10 is really low. 30 is low too, but I'm not going to push it ;)

38. Help my fiance's parents clean out a room in their house

40. Offer to babysit 3 times for my friends so they can go out (0/3)

44. Plant a tree

45. Attend a farmer's market and if I like what I see 30 more times (5/30) IN PROGRESS

46. Determine my personal CO2 emissions (estimate)

47. Reduce those emissions by 20%

48. Convince 5 people to switch to PC Financial for their banking (1/5)

1. Matt Angus, a student that works at Resolve

52. Read 52 in one sitting to see if it makes much sense

53. Make 10 jars of homemade pasta sauce and salsa and give it as gifts (0/10)

54. Finish the few pieces of the puzzle for the paper based on my masters project IN PROGRESS

My supervisor contacted me again in January to get back on things. Simulations are currently running with some modifications to our old technique. Unfortunately, many of our results will change and some rewrites to the manuscript will have to be done.

55. Do 150 sit-ups without taking a break (personal best 20/150)

56. Wash and wax our car 4 times (1/4)

57. Clean and vacuum the car interior 4 times (0/4)

58. Check the car's air filter and replace/clean if needed 4 times (every 6 months) (1/4)

59. Calculate our net worth COMPLETED

See this post about how I calculate the numbers.

61. Have the only animal I eat be fish/seafood for 4 consecutive months

62. Have my only beverage as water for 8 consecutive months

63. Try being a vegetarian for 5 consecutive months (no animal flesh - eggs/milk/cheese OK)

64. Organize our filing container IN PROGRESS

65. Pay off completely the debt I expect to incur over the next 2 years from my Bachelor of Education degree

66. Sit down and work the numbers to see if my Mosaik Mastercard is worth paying $100/year for it.

This goes hand in hand with #41 except by downgrading the card and not paying this year's fees, it gives me some time to actually do this.

67. Help Mark finish his basement

68. Obtain my class 4 license so that when I get a teaching job, I am qualified to drive a bunch of kids on field trips etc...

69. Catalog our possessions for insurance purposes

71. Learn how to swim

72. Give Blood 10 times (1/10)
1. August 29, 2007

Total goals complete (16/72)

Net Worth Update January 2008

2008-02-01T13:58:00.002-04:00

Ala The Simple Dollar, I have started tracking our networth and began several months ago. I hope to post monthly updates as percentage increase/decrease as actual numbers are somewhat relative.

I calculate the numbers in a relatively (I think) straightforward manner. On the first of every month before out rent comes out of our account, I add up the values in our bank accounts and add the value of our car into the mix. To find the value, I researched the Blue Book listing for it. This is the only real uncertainty in my numbers, which is only mildly disconcerting. I plan to relook at the value of the vehicle every 4 months to see how much it has depreciated. However, since it is a 1999, I believe the rate of depreciation will be low.

I then add up all of our debts and subtract this number from the assets. The monthly progress is done through the formula (current month - last month)/last month. The simple spreadsheet that forms the basis for what I do can be found here.

Assets - Up 9.6%

I attribute asset growth this month to several factors:
1. Being somewhat frugal by not buying ridiculous amounts of boardgames even though I really wanted to.
2. The Island Student award granted to Prince Edward Island students at UPEI.
3. Refund from dental costs.

Goal for next month: I plan to make February a mostly frugal month so I would like to see an asset increase of 5%

Debts - Up 129%

Wow, what an incredibly large number! The main reason for this was of course second semester tuition payments which are funded through a student loan. Credit card balances on the first of every month are included here as well. These tend not to be high month-to-month as we pay it off weekly.

Goal for next month: I am unsure. The debt is accumulating, but I am wondering if paying small amounts on the student loans now is worth it or not. This will be the topic of a future post. Let's say 4% though.

Net worth - Down 4.7%

Despite the large debt increase, our overall networth did not change as much as I thought it would, which is great. This will hopefully be a positive number next month.

I should note as well that since we have a "low" net worth any increase/decrease will generate larger swings in the overall percentages than someone who is well established on the financial track. For example, if my networth is $1000 and I increase it by $100, that's a 10% upswing. Someone that has a net worth of $100,000 would have to increase their NW by $10,000 to generate the same 10%. Not an easy thing to on a monthly basis. Though I could be wrong!

Status: Not Dead

2008-01-26T15:57:00.001-04:00

So I'm back after a lengthy hiatus. School started up in September and that occupied much of my time. As such, I lost site of many of my goals and the state of our finances. Upon reflection, I think that it was in keeping up with various blogs and posting here that really kept my eye on the prize in terms of making good financial choices. How did things derail you might ask? There were three main things of note:

1. Dining out. November, and December were terrible months for this. Mucho $$$ was spent on a Jr. bacon here, a quarter chicken dinner there which ended up totalling over $300 for the combined months. This money was spent needlessly as I need to be cooking more food at home. It should be interesting to look at things in a few days to see how January fared.

2. Christmas. Despite the fact that we had continuously saved each week for several months for presents, when it came time to buy stuff, we didn't pay attention to cost. The two have to go hand in hand. I honestly have no idea how much was spent on presents. My fiance has some idea as I found a sheet of the gifts she bought with their costs written down. This is a fabulous idea: jot things and the cost as you get them. I just wish she had of told me about it before I went out and bought stuff.

3. My lack of making a fundamental choice. I just don't think I'm quite there yet in making the root/default position in my life frugality. In fact I know I'm not and the reasons for this are still being worked out in my head.

Stay tuned...

The Plan

2007-09-13T12:38:00.001-03:00

Recently I began my Bachelor of Education degree at the University of Prince Edward Island. In order to do so, I willingly accepted a debt burden in the form of student loans. However, unlike most people who use that money for both living expenses and tuition, I am hoping to cover basic needs with several jobs. Thus student loan dollars should only be going into tuition.

With that being said, I am hoping that my final assesment of the loan will give me enough to cover two-years of tuition so I don't have to reapply next year.

To keep track of the amount I owe, I plan to put the full amount of what I get into a seperate high interest savings account through PC Financial. Not only will it be easy to see how much is there, but I will be able to gain some interest before repayment time hits.

Finally, as part of a repayment strategy, I plan to start putting money into that savings account while I am still in school. I beleive with this plan I will be in good shape to pay off most of the balance relatively soon after obtaining my degree.

66 Goals in 1001 Days - 3 Month Update

2007-08-21T13:24:00.000-03:00

Here is an update to my list of goals that I originally posted here. Numbers that are missing are goals that were complete before the last update

1. Read the complete archive of The Simple Dollar Website DONE August 14, 2007

I work in a low/medium volume call centre, so downtime between calls gave a perfect opportunity to go through the archives. As I went, I jotted down articles that I found interesting and would read again at a future date. Some may form the basis for my own posts.

2. Obtain my Bachelor of Education Degree

3. Sort through my comic books and see which ones can get the boot Started June 17, 2007

Currently I have 8 short boxes and 2 long boxes of single comics. On this date I went through all of them and immediately cut 4 short boxes worth of issues to get rid of.

4. Read the complete works of William Shakespeare

6. Make my own windex

7. Have $18,000 in savings IN PROGRESS

Viewing this goal may be unrealistic with school costs...I will think about it and re-evaluate.

8. Measure my body fat percentage in some scientific fashion

I plan to purchase one of the scales that measures body fat as well as weight after researching whether or not they actually work.

9. Become lighter by on average 0.5 pounds a week

10. Get Married

11. Open an RRSP

Deciding whether to get one now for compound reasons or hold off until I need the tax break and contribute several "back-years" worth all at once. Apparently if I start one now and expect my income to increase significantly in the future (I do), then I will be taxed a higher rate than I was paying when I put it in, negating the benefit. However, this will have to be evaluated against both the growth of the RRSP and inflation.

12. Invest in a mutual fund IN PROGRESS

The first step here is to become educated on the subject and I've chosen The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing and you can read a review here.

13. Buy stock in a single company

14. Liquidate unwatched DVDs IN PROGRESS

This process has been made much easier due to the move to our new apartment in June. A move is a very nice excuse to go through old junk and get rid of it.

15. Purchase a Paderno pot set IN PROGRESS

We had set up a "Big Item Account" in May for this very purpose. Essentially we put $25 per week into the account until we have enough for the set free and clear (ie. no consumer debt). However, some car maintenance and an impromptu trip to Halifax has made it so we can not achieve this until next summer when the next Blowout sale is.

16. Beat Halo 2

17. Beat Jet Set Radio Future

18. Get rid of my old computer

19. Liquidate old books SEE #14

20. Make 5 homemade gifts for people for various events (birthdays, Christmas, etc...) (1/5)

1. Book of Coupons for Mother's Day

21. Go on 10 relaxing drives around the island with Pam (0/10)

22. Get in touch with Jon Ben DONE August 2, 2007

- he was online in MSN and we got caught up. This may or may not have been provoked by my entry into the Facebook world. He also promted me to think about veganism which is a very interesting topic.

23. Walk the equivalent of Summerside to Toronto not including every day walking (104.3/1700 km)

I've decided to include biking in here as well because I enjoy that MUCH more. I purchased an odometer for my bike and it seems to be pretty accurate, so I will be using that to chart my progress. FYI my average bike ride is about 12-15 km.

24. Watch Season 1 of The Shield

25. Read the Complete Cerebus series (4/16 TPBs)

26. Talk to Sam about his history with money

27. Plant and grow my own tomatoes

28. Visit Neil in Halifax DONE August 4, 2007

We went over on a somewhat impromptu trip. My fiance was wrapping up her vacation and we hadn't really done much together as I was working most of it. She mentioned going and we made a weekend of it, visiting Neil on the Saturday and driving around, seeing the sights on Sunday. It was good we got to do this as Neil is heading to Manitoba soon and there may not have been many other opportunities. Plus we did several things that saved us money on the trip which may be the subject of a future post.

29. Vacation in Vancouver

30. Play 5 games of Ultimate Frisbee (0/5)

31. Cook 12 romantic dinners for my fiance and I (0/12)

32. Become an Ebay seller

33. Open an online trader account

34. Get flowers for my fiance "just because" 5 times (2/5)

35. Paint another 2 paintings in the Bob Ross style (0/2)

36. Do 100 push-ups without taking a break (personal best: 21/100)

37. Spend 10 complete days with my fiance (2/10)

38. Help my fiance's parents clean out a room in their house

39. Write an e-mail to the Guardian about why I won't be voting in the upcoming provincial election DONE May 24, 2007

Here is a transcript of the Letter to the Editor that I sent in:

Yesterday I decided that I would spoil my ballot in the upcoming election. Not because I didn’t want to vote for a candidate, but because I found out that district 23 only offered two options. Guess which ones? I was very frustrated that I could not support the Green Party with my vote. I feel that this is the fault of our current electoral system.

But wait, the Green Party could have run a candidate in district 23 so it must be their fault right? To that, one has to remember that the Green Party has somewhat non-traditional views on major topics. Thus I imagine that they have met with much resistance when trying to change the minds of stubborn islanders when finding possible candidates. In fact, I applaud the party for managing to have candidates in 2/3 of the districts.

So why am I so upset? I think that every islander should have the opportunity to choose between each and every party that will have a say in the governing of our province. I realize that Islanders had the opportunity to change the electoral system to mixed-member proportional representation and that it was strongly voted down. From what I can tell (I was in BC at the time), this was from the lack of quality information about what Islanders were actually voting on. A change so drastic should have warranted a media bombardment of information so that Islanders could go to the polls knowing full well that such a system was in the best interest of the Island. But we do not have such a system. We have to work with the district method. I do not particularly care if a Green Party candidate lives in my district, so long as I could help get someone elected from the one party that most reflects my opinions and values.

And that’s what voting should be: an extension of ones own values and goals. Often I’ve heard people say that they would not vote NDP or Green because those parties would not win anyways, so why bother. These people want to be on the “winning team” and fail to realize how valuable their votes actually are.

With that in mind, if you belong to districts 3, 14, 23, 25, or 27, where you will only have the choice between Liberal or PC, really consider whether those parties have platforms that are reflections of your own beliefs. If they are, then by all means mark a neat little “X” on your ballot. But if you find these parties to be lacking in an area that you feel is important, please do not let them steal your vote. That is exactly what they are doing if you do not agree with their politics but vote for them anyways.

40. Offer to babysit 3 times for my friends so they can go out (0/3)

41. Call Mastercard to see if I can get lower or no annual fees without changing cards DONE August 8, 2007 (sort of)

I didn't bother with this and instead told them to downgrade my service to the 1 air mile per $40 option that has no annual fees. I also removed the preferred interest rate option of 12.5% as it cost $25. There is no point when paying off the card each month. Unfortunately this means that I've lost the ability to fly anywhere Westjet flies for 1600 air miles. Since we wouldn't be going on the trip we have in mind for 2 years, that's fine as I can upgrade the card again later, skipping out on 2 years of fees.

42. Write a letter/e-mail to the guardian explaining my thoughts on the Nitrate groundwater issue and why debating about it in the upcoming election instead of just fixing it is stupid DONE May 25, 2007

Here is a transcript of the Letter to the Editor that I sent in:

The Nitrate problem in our province's water supply is nothing new. Not only have we known about the dangers of chemical contamination for years on the island, but this problem extends to anywhere in North America where there is a highly developed agricultural sector.

So why are the Liberals and Conservatives acting like this is a new problem? Why are do these parties insist on studies and committees? Just. Fix. It. You do not even need to come up with a new idea to do so. A simple Google search of "nitrate removal groundwater and side effects" yields a result about a company in the US (Basin Water Inc) that specializes in the removal of water contaminants. Nitrates have been removed from several communities in the states so why can't this ion-exchange system work here? It's relatively cheap, efficient, and low maintenance. I believe that this filtration system would bring down nitrate levels. Coupling this with legislation to curb the addition of new nitrates into our water supply would revert our island back to the pristine condition it was always meant to be. So I have a message to all parties that fail to follow through with concrete solutions: stop trying to re-invent the wheel.

As a bonus, the above letter, slightly edited, appeared in the May 29, 2007 edition of The Guardian.

43. Write an e-mail explaining to Diamond Publishing why Comic Foundry should be included in their catalog

Rendered MOOT because of online community's much faster response which actually convinced Diamond to offer it in the catalog.

44. Plant a tree

45. Attend a farmer's market and if I like what I see 30 more times (2/30) IN PROGRESS

First visit on June 9, 2007. Was not impressed but it was early in the growing season.

I returned several weeks later and it was a much more positive experience. I purchased the best green onions that I have ever had, tomatoes, snow peas, and fresh homemade pasta. I'll definitely be there again.

46. Determine my personal CO2 emissions (estimate)

47. Reduce those emissions by 20%

48. Convince 5 people to switch to PC Financial for their banking (1/5)

1. Matt Angus, a student that works at Resolve

49. Go through unwanted clothing and donate it to the salvation army DONE August 17, 2007

On my birthday, I did a whirlwind clean of the apartment and realized that the box of clothes I had set aside when we first moved in exactly for this purpose, was still, well, set aside and unchanged. Thus I took to box of clothing and donated it to Value Village as the Salvation Army in Charlottetown does not take clothing to my knowledge.

50. Reinforce my computer desk with a 2x4 to get the bow out of it DONE May 22, 2007

I went to my friend Mark's place because I knew he had some wood leftover from when we built a gaming table. He let me have about a 3 foot length and we attached it to the desk and it did the trick. As a bonus we put together a bench and did a rough layout for his basement renovation.

51. Reinforce my makeshift TV stand so it doesn't get a bow in it DONE May 30, 2007

Same as #50: used spare lumber from Mark and attached it with carpenter's glue and screws.

52. Read 52 in one sitting to see if it makes much sense

53. Make 10 jars of homemade pasta sauce and give it as gifts (0/10)

I may modify this and include homemade salsa in the 10 jars.

54. Finish the few pieces of the puzzle for the paper based on my masters project

55. Do 150 sit-ups without taking a break (personal best 20/150)

56. Wash and wax our car 4 times (1/4)

57. Clean and vacuum the car interior 4 times (0/4)

58. Check the car's air filter and replace/clean if needed 4 times (every 6 months) (1/4)

59. Calculate our net worth

60. Attempt to make my own laundry detergent as per the Simple Dollar DONE June 13, 2007

Made 1/4 batch to see how it worked and it was very successful albeit very gross as the detergent is a very slimy goop. I did this twice and realized that it wasn't very time efficient to make 1/4 batches, so I purchased a 10.5 L bucket and made a 3/4 batch which should last a good while.

61. Have the only animal I eat be fish/seafood for 4 consecutive months

62. Have my only beverage as water for 8 consecutive months

63. Try being a vegetarian for 5 consecutive months (no animal flesh - eggs/milk/cheese OK)

64. Organize our filing container IN PROGRESS

65. Pay off completely the debt I expect to incur over the next 2 years from my Bachelor of Education degree

66. Sit down and work the numbers to see if my Mosaik Mastercard is worth paying $100/year for it

This goes hand in hand with #41 except by downgrading the card and not paying this year's fees, it gives me some time to actually do this.

New Goals

67. Help Mark finish his basement

68. Obtain my class 4 license so that when I get a teaching job, I am qualified to drive a bunch of kids on field trips etc...

69. Catalog our possessions for insurance purposes

70. Search for the best rate on tenants insurance and purchase a policy DONE August 14, 2007

I didn't do much research into different companies but rather signed up for tenants insurance with our auto insurance provider. Doing so saw a 3% reduction in our auto insurance costs which means the net monthly cost for the new insurance is about $2.50. Not too shabby.

71. Learn how to swim

Total goals complete (12/71)

The Value of Tracking Your Spending

2007-08-18T09:15:00.000-03:00

In the past, I mentioned that I am using Microsoft Money to track my spending and finances. Essentially what I do is the following:

1. Visit the PC Financial, Scotiabank, and Mosaik Mastercard websites and login to the online features.

2. In each case there is an option to download transactions to the program of your choice (Quicken, Excel, Microsoft Money, etc...). If you live in the states or have a US bank, you can set it up so that Money automatically downloads your information for you so you don't have to do it manually. I don't like this option because when it comes to finances you should definitely be in control of when information like that is sent over the net.

3. Once you download them, in each of your accounts in Money, the new transactions will be in bold waiting for reconciliation as shown below

The transactions in bold here are transfers to by credit card but any new ones would be similar.

4. At this point you can assign categories to each transaction. For example automobile -> gasoline, entertainment -> comic books, etc... Whatever you spend money on, you can categorize things to no end. This also works for income as well in terms of things like net pay, interest, and monetary gifts.

I perform these steps very diligently, downloading new transactions every week or so. However, I was assigning transactions to categories but not really seeing the big picture. I wasn't thinking about where the money was going other than "ok, $X spent on this, on that, goes in this or that category. I was pondering this when figuring that we should have about $800 per month to "play" with after living expenses were taken care of and we definitely weren't seeing our savings go up by that amount each month. Thus I did some digging.

Money has a nice feature that for different blocks of time you can see your expenses represented in either bar or pie chart format. This is our July 2007 Pie

When I sat down to truly look at where our money was going I was happy to see that approximately $300 was spent either unnecessarily or on one time fees (like electricity hookup). Why was I happy to see that much money basically go down the drain? It meant that things weren't as tight as I previously thought and that we had lots of ways to make improvements. I never would have realized where this money was going if I hadn't kept track of our spending. You should try it and see if you find some surprises on the way (ours was ~$100 on dining out).

As a closing note, after this exercise I am pleased to report that August is shaping up much better.

Reader Comments Inspire Update

2007-08-10T12:24:00.000-03:00

Several comments on some of my cost comparison posts have prompted me to look at the issues in a bit more detail. Firstly, that of comparing the cost of driving to work versus taking public transit. The comment that made me re-evaluate things was this, posted by Mark:

"I think you would/should also factor into the interest/extra you might be paying for a lease, and if you own said car you need to factor in a cost associated with yearly maintenance as your asset is depreciating

As well you also should factor in such fees as insurance, license, registration, inspections etc"

Originally, my comparison was the cost of a student bus pass which is $50 to that of the gasoline cost which was $27.24. I ignored maintenance fees and other such concerns as the car wasn't a dedicated commuting vehicle. We use it for shopping and traveling back home etc... However if we make an estimate here that we put 1500 km per month on the car we can work with the percentage of use that is for work related commuting. Traveling to work every day for 20 days eats 240 km so that works out to a nice 16%.

All that remains is to work out the fees. For oil changes we get about 4 per year at $45 each so that's $180. Our insurance at the time of the original post was a ridiculous $168 per month for 12 months gives a total of $2016. I will make a high estimate that counting all extra maintenance, license fees, inspection fees, etc.. to be $600 per year. Add this up and you get $2796 annually or $37.28 per month. We have since re-negotiated the cost of our insurance to around $95 per month so that brings down the annual cost to $1920 or $25.60 per month.

Thus to commute to work every day would have cost $64.55 and now costs $52.84. So that means that right now, in a pure number comparison, it is cheaper to get the student pass at $50 per month using public transit. And if you are not a student then it is still cheaper to drive, though the difference isn't as much. However, the 90 minute commute time is still a big factor to consider when making the decision.

The best way to get to work would actually be to bike. It's a triple threat in the fact it is much cheaper than the above options, good for my body, and good for the environment. Plus it takes less time to get there than the bus!

Drive-in Regular Theater Comparison

There were two comments I'd like to address regarding this post. The first by Daniel:

"You should add "Renting a Movie" to the break down, just to beef things up. I guess it would include buying popcorn from the rental place and drinks too. Then just add the average driving distance, and voila!"

To refresh, the cost of our drive-in experience was $18.89 which included admission, the cost of homemade snacks, and commuting. The regular theater was a total of $43.89 and this included admission, snacks bought at the concession stand, and commuting.

If we were to rent a movie, we would likely get it from Jumbo Video. The price for new releases is $5.99 for one or $15.16 for three. Older movies are $4.07 each or $8.17 for three and you get them for 7 nights. These prices are with tax. If we did get the movie, we would likely not get food at the video store and would make our own goodies at home which would cost $2 (as per previous post). The Jumbo video store is roughly 2 km away so that means 8 km total (4 to get it and another 4 to return it) for a cost of $0.92 in gas.

I called Jumbo to get information on their food items and if we did happen to be silly and get stuff their we would spend $1.74* on popcorn, $3.84 on nachos, $4.07 on salsa, and $4.86 on water making the snack total $14.51.

One should note that there is a significant time factor here as well. To watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on video, we would have to wait several months for it to come out on video as a new release ($5.99) and even longer to get it at the older movie price. Thus by saving money by renting you are sacrificing waiting time which should be considered.

That being said, rentals are your best choice for movie viewing at a cost of $8.91 for a new release or $6.99 for an older one, including home made food. So basically, you are paying the extra $10-$12 to see a movie as soon as it comes out. It is a personal decision whether saving that money is worth several months of waiting time. If we got the snacks there then it would be $19.50 - $21.42.

The final comment I would like to address is the following, left by Mark:

"And to have apples to apples you should have compared the cost of bringing your own food to both, or buying at both, or both options at each..."

I didn't pick the option to bring my own food to the theater as it is usually frowned upon and for the amount of stuff we took, it would have been incredibly obvious that we had "contraband". This would have likely resulted in us having to leave the stuff in the car or being kicked out of the theater. Be that as it may, if we were able to get everything into the show successfully the cost for the traditional theater would have been $20.30.

However we could certainly done the reverse and purchased snacks at the Drive-in concession. Let's see if the cost is as ridiculous as Empire Theaters.

An extra large popcorn would be $5.30*. Nachos would be $9.38 at $4.69 each. The Drive-in does not sell water, but if we were to get the equivalent amount in soft drinks it would cost a total of $5.40. So if we tally things up, buying concessions at the drive-in would bump the total experience to $32.28, which is still significantly cheaper that the regular theater.

Final Wrap up

Cost of Drive-in, own snacks: $18.89 purchased snacks: $32.28
Cost of Theater, own snacks: $20.30 purchased snacks: $43.89
Cost of Renting, own snacks: $7-9 purchased snacks: $19.50 - $21.42

I hope this post has cleared up the previous ones and provided people with the depth of detail they wanted.

*all prices listed include tax

Spice Up Your Wallet

2007-08-09T08:53:00.000-03:00

A while ago I may have mentioned that when shopping for culinary spices, one is best to buy in bulk at a store like the Bulk Barn, as the prices are much better than the standard supermarket. Well, that got me thinking and I wanted to see how much better Bulk Barn actually was. Tonight we find out.

I had a list of spices/baking products that I wanted to have for various recipes so we will use that as our metric:

Oregano
Cumin
Dillweed (used in a surprisingly large amount of recipes)
Cayenne pepper
Onion flakes
Thyme
Marjoram
Sage
Basil
Chili powder
Baking powder
Baking soda
Cornmeal
White sugar

What is compared? I went to the Atlantic Superstore and got the prices for 3 brands of spices they had in stock, McCormick, Club House (which is apparently the same company as McCormick), and No Name. The packaging for each is glass bottle, plastic bottle, bag respectively. At Bulk Barn, you just dump however much you want into a bag and label it with the bin #. As well, not all spices were available in all brands, so I will, of course, mention only the ones that were there. For the baking supplies, I chose the cheapest available at Superstore for the Bulk Barn comparison.

McCormick

When I originally bought my spices for the kitchen several weeks ago, I did get them at Bulk Barn, but I checked Superstore before making a final purchase. I perused the unit price of this brand of spices as they looked to be of high quality. Much to my surprise, the unit cost, which is 100 g, seemed to be lower than Bulk Barn. I was reading 25.4/100g, 41.4/100g, etc... I thought that this was great; you get the spice, plus the little jar. Then I realized that those unit costs weren't 25.4 cents per 100 grams, but rather 25.4 dollars per 100 grams. Scary. The breakdown is as follows:

Oregano: 11g bottles for $2.79 = $25.36 / 100 grams
Cumin: 43g bottles for $3.99 = $9.28 / 100 grams
Dillweed: 20g bottles for $4.89 = $24.45 / 100 grams
Cayene pepper n/a
Onion flakes: 55g bottles for $3.59 = $6.53 / 100 grams
Thyme: 15g bottles for $3.19 = $21.27 / 100 grams
Marjoram: 7.7g bottles for $3.19 = $41.43 / 100 grams
Sage: 18g bottles for $2.99 = $16.61 / 100 grams
Basil: 15g bottles for $3.69 = $24.60 / 100 grams
Chili powder: 53g bottles for $2.99 = $5.64 / 100 grams

Thus if you purchased 100g of each item (ignoring fractional bottles) it would cost you an astounding $175.17. You can compare below, but out of the brands available at Superstore, this was the one with the most variety. Coincidence that it is the most expensive and has the most selection? I think not.

Club House

There wasn't as many options for Club House but what was there breaks down as follows:

Oregano: 33g bottles for $3.79 = $11.48 / 100 grams
Cumin: 90g bottles for $5.69 = $6.32 / 100 grams
Dillweed: 50g bottles for $4.69 = $9.38 / 100 grams
Cayene pepper: 81g bottles for $4.39 = $5.42 / 100 grams
Onion flakes: 116g bottles for $4.39 = $3.78 / 100 grams
Thyme: 28g bottles for $2.59 = $9.25 / 100 grams

Thus if you were to purchase 100 grams of the same items from McCormick it would cost $86.89 whereas here it is a mere (but still insane) $40.22.

No Name

One would think that the No Name products would trump the rest. And you'd be right. Selection isn't great here, but you get the basics.

Oregano: 30g bags for $1.19 = $3.97 / 100 grams
Cumin: 97g bags for $1.99 = $2.05 / 100 grams
Onion flakes: 150g bags for $1.89 = $1.26 / 100 grams
Thyme: 45g bags for $1.99 = $4.42 / 100 grams
Sage: 80g bags for $1.99 = $2.49 / 100 grams
Basil: 40g bags for $1.29 = $3.23 / 100 grams
Chili powder: 150g bags for $2.39 = $1.59 / 100 grams

So again if you were to get 100 grams of the same items from McCormick would cost you a whopping $109.29 while going with No Name is a reasonable $19.01.

Baking Supplies

For the baking supplies I chose the one at the supermarket that had the lowest unit price for the comparison.

Baking Powder: $0.664 per 100 grams
Baking Soda : $0.159 per 100 grams
Cornmeal : $0.298 per 100 grams
Sugar: $0.118 per 100 grams

Not bad. So if you purchased 500 grams of the above, which is reasonable for small baking purposes, you would spend $6.20.

Bulk Barn

Ah the wonder that is Bulk Barn. By far your best option for spices and some baking supplies

Oregano : $0.93 / 100 grams
Cumin : $1.30 / 100 grams
Dillweed: $2.37 / 100 grams
Cayene pepper: 0.81/ 100 grams
Onion flakes : $1.08 / 100 grams
Thyme : $0.88 / 100 grams
Marjoram : $1.41 / 100 grams
Sage : $1.50 / 100 grams
Basil : $0.86 / 100 grams
Chili powder: $1.03 / 100 grams
Baking Powder: $0.42 per 100 grams
Baking Soda : $0.16 per 100 grams
Cornmeal : $0.19 per 100 grams
Sugar : $0.13 per 100 grams

So if you were to get 100 grams of each of the spices available from McCormick, (which would last an incredibly long time by the way), it would cost you a measly $11.36. A savings of $163.81. In fact, you would have to get 1.55 kilograms of each of those spices to match the McCormick price.

Notice that sugar and baking soda are more expensive at Bulk Barn, but not by much. I'm unsure as to why that is.

As a final tally, it would cost $16.67 for 100 grams of each of the desired spices and 500 grams of each baking supply at Bulk Barn. Not bad for stocking a kitchen to the gills.

On a side note, I assume the high prices have to do with packaging and brand name. Glass is more expensive than plastic and plastic bottles are more expensive than bags. This leads to a functionality issue as well. If you do any cooking at all, you realize that having spice jars, like the ones McCormick spices come in, simply doesn't work in the cooking process. They are great to store in a rack, but when it comes time to actually use the spice, you never just shake spice out (at least I don't). You measure it with a measuring spoon, which would require you to remove the cap and dump some out, wasting time. It is much easier to use the bulk barn bags and just scoop out what you need. For storage, I just stuff them in some old tupperware containers and put them in the cupboard.

Thus as a final point, if you are thinking about stocking a kitchen, you are much better off getting materials at bulk barn and forgoing convention by not using spice jars.

A Frugal Night at the Movies

2007-07-30T23:00:00.000-03:00

On July 19 we went to the Brakley Drive-In to view Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This turned out to be a great idea as both the drive-in experience is quite entertaining and it is far cheaper than going to a traditional theater. Here's a break down of the costs:

Drive-in
Admission: normally it would by $7.50/person, but we went to the Drive-in website and printed off some coupons for $1 off each person so $13.00. Note though that this is the cost for two movies. We only stayed for the first one, but if you watch both then your savings will be even better.

Snacks: we brought our own air-popped popcorn, water, as well as our delicious 7-layer dip. I'll say as an estimate that this cost $2

Fuel to get there: the drive-in is about 17 km out of town so based on my data for mileage at 9.824 L/100 km, this works out to $3.89 based on an average gas price of $1.165/L.

Total Cost: $18.89

Traditional Theater

Admission: ticket prices Mon-Thurs are $8.75 and more on the weekends. If we had of gone to the regular theater on the same night, this would have cost $17.50.

Snacks: here's where things get interesting. For the equivalent food that we ate, had we bought it at the theater, we would have paid $6.74 for two 591 ml bottles of water priced at $3.37 each, $12.80 for two things of nachos at $6.40 each, and $6.05 for a large popcorn for a total of $25.59.

Fuel to get there: it's about 3.5 km to the theater from our place so given the numbers above, fuel would cost a mere $0.80.

Total Cost: $43.89

Conclusions

To no one's surprise, the traditional theater is about 2.3 times more expensive than the drive-in. This is pretty much an expected result given the huge mark-ups on food. However, you can combat that somewhat by bringing in plastic bags and taking liberal advantage of the unlimited free refill policy on large popcorns :D.

PEI Public Transit: Hard on your wallet and the evironment

2007-07-16T18:27:00.000-03:00

I've occasionally been commuting to work via a mixture of public transit and driving our car. To ease on wear and tear of our vehicle, I've have been toying with the idea of getting a monthly bus pass. The cost for a single bus trip is $2 (see UPDATE below)

You can see the route here and it works out to be just over 6 kilometers. Conveniently enough, I've also been tracking our mileage on the car for the past 3 months and have built up a good data set. The pink line is the average #L/100km while the straight blue line is the trendline.Our average mileage for this time period was 9.7L/100km.

With this information I can see roughly how much it would cost in gasoline to drive to work for every 5-day work week. Six kilometers there and back = 12 km round trip gives 60km per week and 240 km/month. This distance equates to 23.3L. If I take the average gas price for this time period to be $1.17/L (I kept track of prices as well) then this amount of gas would run me $27.24.

This is significantly cheaper than the $50 per month student bus pass. A regular pass costs $60. Thus in order to break even on the student pass I would have to drive an extra 200 kilometers per month which would cost $22.76 in fuel. These extra kilometers would have to be in areas where the bus services of course. As well, gas prices are always fluctuating so those extra kilometers are just an estimate. For an extreme, gas prices would have to be $2.15/L for me to break even with no extra kilometers.

In addition to the high cost of the pass, there is also a time investment. It takes roughly 10 minutes to drive to my job. However, the adventure that is public transit begins at 6:54 am followed by a transfer at 7:21 am and finally arriving at work at 7:37am for a total of 42 minutes of transit. Coming home, the bus doesn't arrive until 20 minutes after my shift is over at 4:00pm, then there is a transfer at 4:40 and arriving at home at approximately 4:48. For those following a long, you'll note that the grand total for transit and wait time for the day is 90 minutes.

That is a lot of time to spend doing essentially nothing although it does give me a chance to read.

Finally, the environmental side. I find that many people do not take advantage of public transfer and the buses are usually quite empty. I am often the only passenger. It would be interesting to see what the break even point for a diesel engine versus several cars would be in terms of emissions. I think more people need to be using this service for it to help the environment in any significant way.

One can argue that the bus will be running anyways regardless of the number of passengers, so that by driving, you are only saving money at the expense of the environment. This is a valid point. However, using a portion of that $22.76 difference between fuel and bus pass, one can offset those C02 emissions by purchasing a re-usable shopping bag, purchase some CFLs, or some other green venture. Thus for now, I think the majority of my commuting will be done by car unless I can be convinced otherwise.

UPDATE: As mentioned, I have been using a mix of bus trips with public transit. Curious to see where the break even point was between a combination of both and just getting the pass, I fired up Excel and did a few calculations.

To drive to work assuming $1.17/L (we get midgrade), costs 11.4 cents per kilometer. If I buy a pass and just use it for work related commuting, the cost per kilometer is 20.8 cents. If you just pay $2 every trip, the cost is 33.3 cents per kilometer. Thus driving is actually cheaper per kilometer than public transit. This of course ignores maintenance related issues for my vehicle, but for 240 km, I'm assuming the cost is negligible. Our oil change is about $40 every 3 months so you could tack on an extra $13.33/month or 5.55 cents per kilometer to the driving cost and still end up saving money.

Assuming that I choose to continue what I am presently doing, if I take the bus 18 times and drive the remaining 22 trips, the cost is $51, at which point it would be cheaper to have just gotten the pass (ignoring the value of time concern described above).

A Public Apology

2007-07-02T09:00:00.000-03:00

Over the history of the Boyz Boyz, no one was more vocal than I in giving Sam a hard time about his not spending money.

However, now that I am older and (somewhat) more responsible with my money, I realize that Sam had his head on straight from a very early age. As far as I know, he simply didn't buy frivolous things. The only major money that left his hands was for skim milk (8 litres a week?!) and for vehicular reasons; first with a truck that I believe he went half on with his brother and then his current car. I'm sure Neil will correct me on any particulars here.

When we went out cruising, often without Sam, we'd joke and go on about his unwillingness to part with money. I don't think that we really understood why he wouldn't want to go out and spend time (and usually money) with his friends. The comment I believe I made about this was in reply to Sam saying "there's more ways to have fun than by spending money". My response: "Yeah, that's called masturbation." I realize now that he was right.

I still don't know what the origin of Sam's frugality is. Whether it comes from his parents instilling the value of a dollar in him early on or through his own realization that yes indeed, I don't have to spend money to have fun. It might have come through an early determination about what his values and goals are and that money only played a role in fulfilling those. Or it really might be an attitude of "it's my money you can't have it." I'm not sure, but I am going to find out.

Grocery Musings

2007-06-18T13:40:00.000-03:00

Recently we moved to Charlottetown and with that comes a myriad of new expenses. Food is obviously one of the more important ones and as anyone that has moved before knows, that first few weeks of groceries can get pretty expensive.

With that in mind, I made up a shopping list of items we would need for our first foray back into the supermarket scene. Once I had the list, I decided to go through it at each of the two main supermarkets, The Atlantic Superstore and Sobeys to see which place had the cheaper product. This was done prior to actually going out to purchase items so there is an extra travel cost associated with doing this. As well, it takes a long time if you have a big list. I spend about an hour at each place finding items as well as calculating their unit cost.

I found that around 75% of the items on my list were cheaper at Superstore, while the remainder was less pricey at Sobeys. There seemed to be a general trend that the items that we needed which required freezing or refrigeration such as frozen veggies, extra lean ground beef, and margarine, were cheaper at Sobeys. Staple items such as canned goods, fresh produce, and toiletries could be found at lower cost at Superstore.

Naysayers to this method may state that their time is too valuable to be doing this every time you go shopping. Well to save a trip the following week, we went to Superstore first, priced our new list there and the following day went to Sobeys, priced items and purchased them at the same time if they were cheaper. However, this run we noticed that no items on our list were cheaper at Sobeys, so back to Superstore for us.

As well, despite taking time and effort to determine the location of cheaper goods, that time is only overhead for the first few months at most. Once you've done that and collected a good database of information about the prices of items you regularly buy, then a simple comparison of grocery list vs. spreadsheet can tell you where to go. So over the long run, you will save money and time.

Some additional points should be mentioned. In addition to the basic cost of goods, both stores have flyers every week that should be looked at and factored in to where you will shop. Both stores also have reward plans for shopping: Superstore has PC points and Sobeys has Air Miles. Both points can be redeemed for merchandise other than groceries, though with Air Miles the selection is much broader. If these plans would influence where you shop, make sure you pick the one that makes the most sense for you.

In closing, I'm still on the fence about doing price checks again as it does take a fair bit of time and I haven't convinced myself that the potential savings are worth it. As well I can say one thing for sure: If you are shopping at Superstore, you are probably already saving money. I say probably because the amount of items that are more expensive is so low, that the savings you generate from other items outweigh their extra cost or at least break even.

A Good Feeling

2007-06-04T14:05:00.000-03:00

Last week I performed an action that felt very rewarding. This was the first time I did said action and it's everything everyone says it is. What action is it, faithful readers? That of paying yourself first.

If you've noticed the growing list of financial advice books on the sidebar, you know that I have been acquiring knowledge at a reasonably brisk pace. The common theme throughout many of the books is the importance of paying yourself first. This is also known as The Golden Rule. In short, look at your gross income on your paycheck and take 10% of it and set it aside in a savings account or in some sort of investment. Doing it automatically would be an even better idea as it takes the thinking and sitting-down-to-do-it-ness out of it. The idea sounds simple (and it is) but rarely do people put it in action. It is a key step in setting yourself up for financial freedom/independence in the future.

What I have done prior to last week was pay all our (fiance and me) bills, not spend very much, and what was left at the end of the month was dumped into our PC 4% savings account. This did work out pretty well because our monthly expenses are rather low. We have no rent, no groceries, and no utilities because we are living with my parents. A fine system with which to save money. Many people have the mentality that they will save what ever is left over from paying the bills, but often time there is none left. Little things come up that eat away at your income and erode your potential savings.

So even though our savings were growing every month, I was still paying everyone else first, as if they are more important than us. They aren't. Pam and myself are the two most important people in our lives and as such, we should come first. Thus, last week I looked at our paystubs, figured out 10% of our gross income and transferred the amount into the savings account. No thought was given to car insurance. I couldn't care less about a cell phone bill. I was putting money away for the first time that would help ensure that we will be able to retire early. And it felt good. Try it yourself and I think you will agree.

66 Goals in 1001 Days

2007-05-21T12:32:00.001-03:00

This post ties in with the importance of goal setting and though it doesn't necessarily tie to personal finance, I think these exercises are good for personal development. This can help with finances in the long run.

I think it would give me a great sense of accomplishment to follow along the lines of some other sites such as The Simple Dollar and make the following list of goals I would like to achieve in the next 1001 days (2.75 years). The stipulations of the list are as follows from Triplux:

The Mission:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days. [I've worked on this for a week and came up with 60 or so that is what I am using. It will still give me a sense of accomplishment and I can add more goals later on.]

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

Why 1001 Days?
Many people have created lists in the past - frequently simple goals such as new year's resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organizing and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.

Some common goal setting tips:
1. Be decisive. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how you plan to achieve it.

2. Stay Focussed. Any goal requires sustained focus from beginning to end. Constantly evaluate your progress.

3. Welcome Failure. Frequently, very little is learned from a venture that did not experience failure in some form. Failure presents the opportunity to learn and makes the success more worthy.

4. Write down your goals. It clarifies your thinking and reinforces your commitment.

5. Keep your goals in sight. Review them frequently, and ensure that they are always at the forefront of your thinking.

And thus, my list* (in no particular order) that I hope to have done by February 15, 2010:

1. Read the complete archive of The Simple Dollar Website DONE
2. Obtain my Bachelor of Education Degree DONE
3. Sort through my comic books and see which ones can get the boot DONE
4. Read the complete works of William Shakespeare
5. Locate an apartment in Charlottetown DONE

We found a nice 2 bedroom apartment in Charlottetown on Falconwood Drive near that messed up intersection of St. Peter's Road and Belvedere Avenue by the Esso. We move in on June 1.

6. Make my own windex
7. Have $18,000 in savings
8. Measure my body fat percentage in some scientific fashion
9. Become lighter by on average 0.5 pounds a week
10. Get Married
11. Open an RRSP
12. Invest in a mutual fund
13. Buy stock in a single company
14. Liquidate unwatched DVDs DONE
15. Purchase a Paderno pot set DONE
16. Beat Halo 2
17. Beat Jet Set Radio Future
18. Get rid of my old computer DONE
19. Liquidate old books DONE
20. Make 5 homemade gifts for people for various events (birthdays, Christmas, etc...) (5/5) DONE
21. Go on 10 relaxing drives around the island with my fiance (0/10)
22. Get in touch with Jon Ben DONE
23. Walk the equivalent of Summerside to Toronto not including every day walking (0/1700 km)
24. Watch Season 1 of The Shield
25. Read the Complete Cerebus series (4/16 TPBs)
26. Talk to Sam about his history with money DONE
27. Plant and grow my own tomatoes
28. Visit Neil in Halifax DONE, but in Winnipeg
29. Vacation in Vancouver DONE in August 09
30. Play 5 games of Ultimate Frisbee (2/5)
31. Cook 12 romantic dinners for my fiance and I (0/12)
32. Become an Ebay seller
33. Open an online trader account
34. Get flowers for my fiance "just because" 5 times (1/5)
35. Paint another 2 paintings in the Bob Ross style (0/2)
36. Do 100 push-ups without taking a break (personal best: 0/100)
37. Spend 10 complete days with my fiance (0/10)
38. Help my fiance's parents clean out a room in their house
39. Write an e-mail to the Guardian about why I won't be voting in the upcoming provincial election DONE
40. Offer to babysit 3 times for my friends so they can go out (0/3)
41. Call Mastercard to see if I can get lower or no annual fees without changing cards
42. Write a letter/e-mail to the guardian explaining my thoughts on the Nitrate groundwater issue and why debating about it in the upcoming election instead of just fixing it is stupid DONE
43. Write an e-mail explaining to Diamond Publishing why Comic Foundry should be included in their catalog
44. Plant a tree
45. Attend a farmer's market and if I like what I see 30 more times (0/30)
46. Determine my personal CO2 emissions (estimate) DONE
47. Reduce those emissions by 20%
48. Convince 5 people to switch to PC Financial for their banking (0/5)
49. Go through unwanted clothing and donate it to the salvation army DONE
50. Reinforce my computer desk with a 2x4 to get the bow out of it DONE
51. Reinforce my makeshift TV stand so it doesn't get a bow in it DONE
52. Read 52 in one sitting to see if it makes much sense
53. Make 10 jars of homemade pasta sauce and give it as gifts (0/10)
54. Finish the few pieces of the puzzle for the paper based on my masters project DONE
55. Do 150 sit-ups without taking a break (personal best 0/150)
56. Wash and wax our car 4 times (0/4)
57. Clean and vacuum the car interior 4 times (0/4)
58. Check the car's air filter and replace/clean if needed 4 times (every 6 months) (0/4)
59. Calculate our net worth DONE
60. Attempt to make my own laundry detergent as per the Simple Dollar DONE

61. Have the only animal I eat be fish/seafood for 4 consecutive months

62. Have my only beverage as water for 8 consecutive months

63. Try being a vegetarian for 5 consecutive months (no animal flesh - eggs/milk/cheese OK) DONE
64. Organize our filing container DONE
65. Pay off completely the debt I expect to incur over the next 2 years from my Bachelor of Education degree
66. Sit down and work the numbers to see if my Mosaik Mastercard is worth paying $100/year for it DONE

*Bear in mind that this list was pieced together over a week or so, so some of the items are complete as of posting.

I will post updates to what I have accomplished every three months as a way to track my progress.

Mmmmmmmmoney

2007-05-07T09:05:00.000-03:00

So I have begun to reach my goal of mastering Microsoft Money 2006 Edition in order to track our purchases and finances. It is a very cool program and it is pretty easy to get the basics set up. I currently have all our bank accounts entered and there's a nice little pie chart that shows the distribution of expenses. You can set an expense or asset with the use of categories. For example, there is a category for Hobbies/Leisure and I have two sub-categories under this right now: one for Comics and the other for Sewing (for Pam, not me). Another is Automobile with the sub-categories gasoline, maintenance, payments, etc... Categories are a very nice and necessary feature. More on categories later. Here's an example of a typical pie chart that I found.

However, I have encountered an issue which is solved here, but I have yet to implement it. Any time that money is taken out of an account, Money treats it as an expense. This is fine normally except with the situations of transfers between accounts and credit card payments. For example, if I transfer $1200 from my savings to my chequing account, it thinks I spent $1200 and wants me to categorize it, even though the money hasn't really gone anywhere. The same idea happens with credit card payments. Ideally you would like the credit card as an account and everything you put on it (DVDs, comics, and of course junior bacon cheeseburgers) to be tracked as an expense. The issue lies when you pay the credit card from your bank account. Again money is leaving your account so Money wants to know why. You could put it in the Credit Card Payment category. Do you see the problem with that approach? Money tracks the $10 you spent at Wendy's on the CC, but also considers the $10 for the CC payment as an expense so it looks like you actually spent $20.

Apparently there is an easy fix to this with special categories that cover transfers. Thus bank transfers between accounts and transfers of monies onto a credit card are not counted as either income or expenses. I had tried this during my first run with Money but I must have did something wrong as it messed up my balances within the program to a ridiculous degree. So I deleted all my accounts, including the credit card one I had there originally and started fresh. I have yet to put the credit card back on as I wanted to figure out the transfer problem first. As well, when I redid all my bank accounts there were many more default categories than I had initially. I have zero clue as to why this is.

In short, I am still learning the ins and outs of this program and it should be fun to figure out what useful information I can extract from our spending habits. If you're interested in using a software program to track your monetary endeavours that has more bells and whistles than a simple spreadsheet, think about Microsoft Money. A free alternative called GnuCash can be found here.

Sidney Crosby Would be Proud

2007-04-30T22:10:00.000-03:00

Since it's playoff season in the NHL, I thought it appropriate to post about my viewpoints on goal setting and list several goals that have been rattling around in my gray matter for a while. I feel that the important thing in a goal-setting exercise is to set both realistic and positive goals. For instance, saying that you want 2 million dollars in your bank account within 2 years, though possible, is more than likely a pipe dream. Setting that kind of goal is not a constructive endeavor because you are unlikely to achieve it. However, that's not to say that setting the bar high is a bad thing. You just need to set it high enough that it is just out of reach, but still within your grasp (I stole that rhetoric from a Montague Senior High agenda if you can believe it).

Another example of unrealistic goals cropped up yesterday when I was speaking with Doug Keefe about a "finance" book I had read entitled "Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids, that the Poor and Middle Class Do Not" (post about this will follow). This book emphasizes investing in assets which can generate something called passive income. In short, this is income that comes from a source where you have not earned it by doing a job. Another way to look at it is that an initial investment of some amount generates cash flow; your money makes money without input from you. Anyways, I thought about this and I decided I wanted enough in the way of assets to generate ~$200/month within 2-3 years. Apparently that is a little ambitious and so, would be an example of an unrealistic goal.

Some realistic (I hope!) goals I've been thinking of are the following:

1. Start an RRSP in some form within 3 months (add other options to it later maybe; ie. what it includes, be it mutual funds, stocks, GICs etc...)

2. Learn how to use the Microsoft Money program that came with my computer to track my finances and spending. Time frame: 6 months at most.

3. Become a home owner within 5 years.

4. I will aim for an investment portfolio that gives me a 10% rate of return. Obviously this is not guaranteed so I will be satisfied with 8%. Any less and the portfolio will be shuffled. I would like this set up within the next 3-4 years if possible (this may or may not be realistic).

It is not enough to state the goals though. What about the actions I am going to take to make them a reality. I think that can be tougher when you are in my situation of just starting out in personal finance control. For instance, I can say that I will read all I can about RRSPs for Goal #1, but somehow it doesn't seem specific enough to give me a clear path. With regards to this and Goal #4, I think some sort of professional advice is likely in order.

Goal #2 should be the most straightforward as programs such as this, while sometimes overwhelming, often have good tutorials and help menus to get things started.

Goal #3, home ownership, while the most income intensive (debatable?) of my goals actually has the most concrete step in achieving it. I know next to nothing about home ownership (the little I do know coming from my friends Mark [has a house] and Doug [knows an eff-load about them] as well as from The Wealthy Barber) so a good opportunity to learn some useful information has arisen. PC Financial is hosting a seminar at the Charlottetown Atlantic Superstore for first-time home buyers on Thursday May 24 from 7-9 pm. Topics include: finding the right mortgage for you, fixed and variable rate mortgages, tips on paying off debt quicker, the pre-approval process, etc... It should be an informative 2 hours and I am looking forward to it.

That does it for realistic goals, but what about positive ones? Well, it's all in the clear wording of your goal as well as some sort of reinforcement such as a time frame with which you wish (say that 5 times fast) to accomplish said goal. For example: say you make $2000 per month and 25% of that, $500 gets spent irresponsibly on random crap you don't need. You decide to take responsible action and make the goal "I am going to cut my spending by 50%. Apparently that person has a less likely chance of accomplishing that goal because of the wording. By including the word "cut" the goal has a negative context and subconsciously the brain will think that doing this thing will be bad. The same goes for smoking. When people say that they will quit, our brains have been conditioned to think that quitting is a bad thing. Thus it becomes harder to achieve the desired goal.

Instead, the smoker should set a positive goal with some sort of reinforcement. Rather than saying "I will quit smoking", the person can change the wording to "I will become a non-smoker within 4 months." By using the word "become" the goal becomes a positive one and apparently, the person is much more likely to actually stop smoking. As well, the addition of the deadline puts internal pressure on the person to make a serious effort. This should work well for people that increase productivity when under time constraints (like me).

Back to the financial example. Instead of "cutting" spending by 50%, the person could say: "I want to increase my monthly savings by $250 (50% of the $500 he was spending) and will have that process in place within 2 months. Again a positive outlook with a deadline.

With practice, I hope to regularly set these types of goals as the foundation for my financial success.

A New Blog Cometh

2007-04-16T23:19:00.000-03:00

Welcome to A Financial Flogging. The purpose of this blog is threefold.

Purpose the First: to commit my ideas to an easily manageable format

Purpose the Second: to track my progress when it comes to learning about financial matters, to observe any long term trends when it comes to positive returns, and to set and achieve goals

Purpose the Third: to hopefully generate some discussion in the comments that can help me on my way to learning more and learning more faster/smarter

As well, this will be the first step in taking responsibility for my personal finances (second if you count opening a 4% savings account with PC Financial; you can read some reasons why to switch here) which is an important task for everyone in this day and age.