Archive for December, 2010
Money Saving Idea #1: Frozen Food
I’ve had the nasty habit of going out for lunch and dinner instead of making my own lunch — thus costing me a substantial chunk of money each and every month. One of my goals for 2011, is to turn this trend around by cooking more at home — this not only lets me save more, but eat better along the way.
While I’ll never be a chef, I can follow some simple recipes. One of the recipes I attempted today was for soup: Minestrone Soup with Sausage to be exact. While you can always buy it in a can from Campbells, home made tastes better, and has a lot less sodium and preservatives.
The great part about soup, is you can make it in one batch, and then freeze it — and it’ll taste the same on day 1, and day 100. Makes planning lunch as simple as grab and go.
Looking at the actual cost component of it, it breaks down as follows:
- Total Cost of Ingredients: ~$16.00
- Number of Meals Made: 6
- Cost Per Meal: ~$2.65
Seeing as lunch out cost me about $15/meal, I was able to make 6 lunches, for about the price of one. Doing the math, making my own food in bulk has just saved me about $90 from NOT eating out — plus it actually tastes great and is healthier.
Gift Cards: Show Me the Money!
This holiday season, I’ve noticed an emerging trend in the uber popular gift card arena… incentives!
Typically, when buying a gift card for someone, I have to pay the face value of the gift I want to give. Now, I’m seeing companies start to offer some pretty good incentives to buy them. Knowing this, you could stretch your dollar even further by taking advantage of the various promotions out there, and cash in on the freebies.
Some of the offers I’ve seen lately include:
- Great Clips: Free haircut (~$20) when you buy a $100 gift card, a 20% return.
- Subway: Free six inch sandwich (~$5) when you buy a $25 gift card, a 20% return.
- Triple O’s: Free original burger (~$4) when you buy $20 in gift cards, a 20% return.
- Extreme Pita: Free $5 when you buy $20 in gift cards, a 25% return.
- Boston Pizza: Free pizza or pasta (~$10) when you buy $50 in gift cards, a 20% return.
These offers are pretty good, seeing as you get 20%+ more if you took advantage of any of them. Regardless of who they’re for (even yourself) you would earn above and beyond the face value of the gift card in cash or freebies — and who doesn’t love freebies?
The only draw back to this, however, is the reality that not all gift cards get used up. Even with the best intentions to use them in full, cards can get misplaced, plans can change, and in some cases, the balance can start to diminish automatically over time. As well, some of the freebies have heavy restrictions around them, making them even harder to take advantage of. So, giving a particular company money in advance for their services, could be a hard pill to swallow.
But, for things you know you’ll use up — like a Subway gift card — this could be a very rewarding incentive.
Next year, I’ll keep a better eye out for these gift card incentives when shopping — they could just sway my purchasing decision from one company to another, either for myself, or for someone else. My guess is, this trend will ramp up over the next few years, as companies realize the impact it can have on a consumer.
Boxing Day: Sale or Not-So-Sale?
With Christmas done and over with, its time to turn our attention to something new… Boxing Day!
While there has been a notable decline in the quality of “door crashers” over the years, along with any sense of urgency to “act now” (seeing as the ‘day’ is now a ‘week’, heading into a ‘month’), it still does make for a good day to buy some high value items.
Now, I’m not stupid enough one to to freeze my butt off waiting in line to save $100, but I am willing to wait online to buy, and did just that this morning.
I’ve been debating replacing my old TV (about 8 years old now) and upgrading to a big LCD one for quite some time. I’ve been holding off, simply because I didn’t think the new TV’s were worth their price. Before, they were around $800+, but for the online Boxing Day Sale, I was able to get a nice big 42″ LCD TV for just $599…. what they claim to be $200 off.
I’m typically a cynic when it comes to sales as the major chains always seems to have very similar offers and prices, almost every other week. So when these ‘sales’ pop up, they’re really not a big deal — merely reflect the actual price of the product.
To make sure this was an actual sale, I quickly shopped online with other electronic retailers, and realized the actual hard savings I would get is around $100 off (not the $200 as advertised), since the same TV at Costco is $699. So by buying on Boxing Day, I actually did save money… $100 to be exact.
I think I’m going to stop while I’m ahead here, as most of the other sale items out there simply don’t interest me or hardly have any actual savings. Not to mention, everything good is already sold out! (and uh, my lack of willingness to stand in the freezing cold for hours)
A purchase like this has been on my radar for the last few years, but never actually in my budget — this one, I’ll slip into my 2010 spending and can easily pay for with part of my slush fund savings account.
2011 Budget
I’ve found that over the past year, I had great intentions of following a budget, but never followed through.
While I’m typically not one to go out and just ‘buy’ things for the sake of buying them, I did manage to blow upwards of $500/month dining out for lunch and dinner – something that I’m going to change.
In 2011, my goal is to turn this around by actually packing a lunch and cooking dinner regularly, so that I can use the money instead to pay off my student loan (~$10,000) and max out my RSP contribution (~$10,000). I think its a pretty safe thing to say, that killing off my debt, and saving for retirement, is more satisfying than a half-cooked, over processed, foot long sandwich from Subway.
On top of that, I’m going to be more conscious of where I spend a month in general — not to a detailed level like some do, but in broad buckets. If I manage to stay within them, I’ll be on track to meet my above goals.
Monthly Income is roughly ~$3,400 after taxes
2011 Spending Budget (per month)
- Home Basics: $1,100
includes Rent, Hydro, Cable, Internet, Insurance, Cell Phone - Groceries: $250
currently spend ~$75/week, but expect to go up since eating at home more - Dining Out: $250
still a lot, but this is half of what I spent before - Convenience Items: $100
wide bucket, includes stuff like coffee, pop, snacks, transit passes, personal care, etc. - Entertainment: $70
fun stuff, movies, music/app purchases, etc - Other: $200
for anything random that comes up or is not covered above
Total: $1,970 /month
2011 Savings / Debt Repayment (per month)
- Student Loan: $600
currently sits just below $10,000 - Retirement Fund: $600
part of this will be withdrawn for down-payment for a home in next few years
Total: $1,200 / month
(this level amount alone doesn’t reach the $20k needed to pay off my student loan, and save $10k, but my annual bonus and tax return should bring me over the top)
With this budget, I don’t use up my entire salary to live — but gives me a general idea of where and how much money in each bucket I should be spending. After all of that, I still have ~$250/month remaining for my own choosing — likely, I’ll save this for a couple planned expenses down the road, like a new MacBook and TV.
Does this budget sound reasonable? Anything major I’m not considering?
Welcome to Twenty Something Money
I’ve been reading personal finance blogs for the last couple years, and realized it was finally time for me to start my own. It seems most of the blogs are about married people with kids, struggling to pay off their mortgages, where my blog is slightly different — I’m a twenty something guy, who rents, and has no kids…
But I’m at the point in my life, where I’ve got my college degree, have a good job, and am now struggling to set a solid financial plan for the future. This blog is to keep track of where I am financially, and where I want to be.
I’ll be posting a couple times a week about my personal finance, debt repayment, as well as how life affects it all. Follow along by bookmarking or subscribing to the feed above!
Where I’m at Today
- Student loan of ~$10,000
- Retirement Fund of ~$28,000 (in a variety of stocks)
- Tax Free Savings Account of ~$4,000 (liquid savings account)
- No credit card debt (always pay off on time)
- Bank account of $400 on average
Income
- Earn around $4,500 (before tax) / month from full time job
- Earn about $75 / month from advertising on another website
Monthly Expenses
- Rent for Studio Apartment: $975
- Cable / Internet: $55
- Cell Phone: $65
- Misc Living (insurance, hydro): $50
- Food, entertainment, savings, etc, take up the rest.
Where I Want to Be
- Pay off my $10,000 student loan by the end of 2011
- Save $10,000 by the end of 2011 (for retirement/down payment)
- Buy a home in the next few years
- Earn an additional $5,000/year from sources other than my full time job
- Become financially independent and work for myself
My goal for 2011, is to get on track financially with a budget I can actually achieve, increase my savings (for a home down the road), and minimize spending on things I don’t really need.
To learn more about me and my story, read the About section.