Archive for January, 2011
Money Saving Idea #2: 40% off Shoes
As a guy, shoes tend to be more of a utilitarian type of thing, rather than an obsession. So when I need to buy new running shoes, I’ve found a way to save about $60 off the actual price, for the exact same shoes I would buy in store… its called eBay!
I’ve found, shoes from the same brand (eg: Nike, New Balance, Adidas) have pretty consistent sizing — so if your a 12 in one type of Nike, you’ll be a size 12 in all Nikes. Knowing this, it makes shopping easy — pick your brand, and know your size, and you can order almost anything without trying them on.
That’s where eBay comes into play. By spending a few minutes searching their shoe section, you’re able to see a plethora of different shoes, with low minimum bids and buy it now prices. While the selection sometimes varies, you can typically find most of the popular styles online all the time, with prices up to 40%+ off the retail price — and most of the time, the seller is actually a shoe store somewhere in the country.
To break down the cost from buying off eBay:
- Nike Running Shoes: $69.99
- Plus Shipping: $23.00
- Taxes: none!
- Total Cost: $92.99
So for $93, you can get a brand new pair of shoes, that are the exact same as those sold in stores. Compare that to the same shoes, costing $139.99 in store, PLUS tax (12% here in Canada), thats $157 total.
This may not be for everyone — but if you buy the same brand, and same size, its an easy way to save money.
And the Winner Is…
Over the past two weeks I hosted a contest for one lucky winner to walk away with a $25 Amazon.com gift card. I’m blown away by the response — I had nearly 100 people comment on the blog post alone, not to mention tweet me, subscribe to my RSS feed, and even post about me!
Thanks everyone for entering, and I hope you keep reading my blog after this (even if you didn’t win!) 
The lucky winner is…. Jenn @ Paying Myself. Congratulations!
Jenn not only commented, tweeted me, and subscribed to the post, but she also wrote a quick blog post, earning her 15 entries into the contest. Now that’s dedication! I’ve just shot you an email to confirm your address, and then I’ll send over the gift card.
I’ll write later this week about the success of hosting the contest… But overall, I’m quite happy. I saw lots of engagement, picked up a whack load of new Twitter followers, and was able to get a bunch more visitors to my site!
My 5 Year Goals
This time of year, it seems everyone is setting their 2011 goals. I set mine the other day, but also set a few longer-term goals to help guide my way.
Just like anything in life, the farther out you look, the harder it is to accurately determine outcomes or set goals, so I take these with a grain of salt. As life happens, and situations change, these will likely need to be updated.
Within the next 5 years, I want to…
- Buy a Home
This one has been on my radar for some time, and figure it will likely happen in the next few years. Right now I rent, and judging by home prices in the region, renting isn’t necessarily a bad thing in my case. As I get more established career wise, buying a home will be a smart investment. - Travel
I used to travel a lot when I was living with my parents, but since I finished high school I’ve been almost no where, as I’ve been in school non-stop. I want to turn this around, and head over seas (Europe? Australia?) to get another perspective on the world. I’m not talking 2 weeks, I’m talking a few months. - Start and Grow My Own Business
I’ve always had the entrepreneurial bug in me, and want to venture out on my own and create my own career path. I’m still figuring out exactly in what area, and how to do it, but its on the radar. My guess is, it will involve developing a variety of revenue generating properties, which is in keeping with what I currently do for my employers. - Figure out the Work / Life Balance Once and For All
I’ve spent the last 5 years attending work and school at the same time, and have never been able to set a real ‘routine’ for life, that balanced work, sleep, school, exercise, and fun. I want to find a way to do all of this, without burning out, once and for all. - Build a net worth of $150,000
This is through a combination of saving, investing, and eliminating any debt. I’m at $22k right now, so its a long way to go!
These are pretty broad buckets, but are the big priorities I want to accomplish over the next several years… I figure if I can reach all of the above, all of the other goals in my life start to fit in place.
Do any of you have any 5 year goals? Share them in the comments below!
Another Day, Another Guest Post!
I forgot to mention, I also got the opportunity to guest post on Studenomics — its a great blog geared towards college students who are looking to find financnial freedom in life. If you haven’t been there before, it offers a really broad range of articles and advice thats based in reality — and its written by a recent grad too.
I wrote about my internship experience back in my college days, and how it really helped solidify my career path. Three months of working for free kinda sucks, but the outcome paid off many times over!
Thanks MD for letting me guest post!
My First Guest Blogging Experience
Since launching TSM, I’ve been seeing a great response in terms of visitors and commenters to the blog, and gaining new readers each day. One of those readers reached out to me a couple weeks ago, and asked if I’d like to be a guest blogger on his website, brokeprofessionals.com — While I’ve never guest blogged before, I took him up on his offer anyways.
The post is appearing today on his site, and is all about how I personally see post-secondary education as an investment, and how since graduating, I’m already enjoying a positive return on it. In fact, a 222% return, each and every month. You can read the full post at BrokeProfessionals.com.
If you’ve never been to Broke Professionals, its a blog by a twenty-something married professional, working towards financial freedom by paying off his six figure student loan. Its a great read, and its updated daily! The guy behind Broke Professional will also be guest blogging on TSM in the coming weeks, so keep your eyes out.
Weekly Roundup – Jan 16th
Its been a busy week! Managed to survive the first full week back to work, launch a contest last Monday, and got mentioned on Consumerist.com (which sent my web traffic soaring!) I’ve been blogging for a few weeks, and have had a great start thus far… almost broke most of my goals which I gave myself a YEAR to reach… I need to get more aggressive in them 
If you haven’t already entered my contest to win a $25 Amazon.com gift card, do so today… I’m drawing the winner next week! Click here to learn how >>
I’ve been sticking to my budget for the most part — I think at the end of the month, I’m going to shift some money around between it. It wont increase my expenses, but rather, better allocate (Eg: make eating out, and grocery shopping interchangeable… so if I buy more groceries, I’ll eat out less, and vice versa)
Around the personal finance networks, some of the interesting posts that caught my eye included…
- The Financial Blogger wrote about 30 Financial Moves Before 30… most of which I’ve done (or will do). I thought it was really interesting, as some of them are really good ideas.
- WalletPop examines Student Debt Dilemmas, something that I’m familiar with myself, and shares some stats about Canadian student loan amounts.
- Fiscal Geek asks if you Should Start Your Own Business, and some areas to think about before taking the plunge.
- While not finance related, My Life ROI had a great article on Jump Starting Your Fitness Routines for 2011.
Later this week I’ll be sharing a post on my 5 year goals…. kinda the broader goals I’m aiming towards, but nothing too definitive just yet.
Why I Don’t Need an Emergency Fund
At the turn of the new year, a lot of bloggers shared their 2011 financial goals. One of the big ones on everyone’s list, was building an emergency fund. If you look at my goals, an emergency fund is missing — because I don’t need one.
Now, its not to say I’m invincible to anything bad, but rather, I have a different plan in case a disaster happens, or I get laid off (or fired!), or something completely unexpected pops up. And this plan also gives me the ability to earn money on it too (more than those 2% high interest rate accounts).
Emergency Scenario
So lets say (nock on wood), that my upstairs neighbor’s water pipe bursts, and turns my apartment into an aquarium. That would be bad — really bad. In fact, I would declare it an “emergency.” Even with my tenant insurance, I’m going to need to figure out a lot of things quick, including where to live in the short term, what to eat, what to wear, and how to deal with the loss of all my personal items, and so fourth. Tenant insurance will cover a fair bit of it, but they can be slow to move — so in the short run, I’ll need to come up with cash, and fast.
My answer? My credit card — well, at least at first. My credit card has a $10,000 limit on it, and I never carry a balance, so I have an instant $10k in my pocket.
But with the exorbitant interest rates, that credit card could get dangerous pretty quick. But thats fine, as I’m really only using it to buy me some time as I have money in the stock market I can cash out. My TSFA (tax free savings account), is one of my trading accounts for the stock market, so it has thousands of dollars in it. If I needed the money fast, I could sell my stocks (at whatever the market price is at the time), and then transfer the money back to my personal bank account. Doing this, would probably take a few days at most.
Then, once the money is in my bank account, I can pay off any of the credit card debt, and work from that fund going forward.
Fixing the Financial Damage
After that ‘emergency’ is over, I just need to sit back and wait for the tenant insurance to pay out for the losses that are covered (they pay up to $10,000, with a $1000 deductible). Even though I have to eat the $1000 loss, I’ll take the other amount, and then transfer it back into my TSFA stock trading account and re-buy the stocks I sold.
Doing all of this, essentially puts me back to my original position, less my deductible.
(In the case I lost my job, and had to live off of this money, I’d be able to ride it out for a good 6 months — by then, I’d expect to have a new job, and would be back to rebuilding my TSFA one pay cheque at a time.)
So instead of having an “emergency fund”, I prefer to call it an “emergency plan.” As long as there’s no emergency, the money in my TSFA will be earning a good return (several times better, on average, than being stuck in one of those ‘high interest savings rate’ accounts the bank keep promoting). While it will take a few days to turn completely liquid, my credit card more than bridges the gap.
That, is why I don’t need an emergency fund.
Reader Questions: (answer in the comments)
Do you have an emergency fund and/or plan? If so, what is it, and are you earning money on it, or is it just sitting in a savings account? Why?
Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card!
As a new blogger, one of my goals is to grow this site and make it the hub for twenty-somethings trying to manage their personal finances. Part of reaching that goal, is by increasing my visitor base substantially — so I figure, what better way to do just that, than by holding a contest!
This contest is quite simple, and there’s lots of ways to enter listed below. It starts today, and runs until January 24th, 2011, so you have two weeks to enter!
How to Enter:
You have five different ways to enter, and can do one, some, or all of them to enter, for a maximum of 15 entries per person. The more difficult ones, like writing a blog post, will earn you 5 entries, while just commenting will earn you 1.
- +1 Entry: Write a comment on this post below
- +2 Entries: Follow me on Twitter and say hi - @TSMoneyBlog
- +3 Entries: Subscribe to this site via email in the top right corner of this website.
- +4 Entries: Tweet this contest to your followers, with a link back to this post
- +5 Entries: Write a quick post about this contest on your blog, and link back to this post.
If you do all of the above — you’ll earn 15 entries into this contest — pretty easy, huh?
How I’ll Pick the Winner
I’ll make a spreadsheet with all those entered, through any of the ways above, and count how many entries you’ve earned. (eg: If you tweeted it, commented, and wrote a post, you have 10 chances to win). Then, using Random.org, I’ll pick the lucky winner’s number — its as simple as that!
Good Luck!
Legal Mumbo-jumbo: This is a fun contest, so only enter if your capable of not being a sore loser, if you don’t happen to be the lucky winner. You can earn a maximum of 15 entries for this contest, by using each of the above options to enter, unduplicated. On January 24th, 2011, I’ll draw the winner, and announce it the following night (Tuesday). I’ll email the winner to confirm their email address, and then send over a $25 USD gift card from Amazon. If you have any questions, shoot me an email at mail@twentysomethingmoney.com. If you hate contests, or don’t want to enter — simply don’t enter.
Weekly Roundup – Jan 8th
This week has flown by — while Monday was a holiday, Tuesday was the first day back at the office, and Wednesday was the first of day of my two night courses. Getting back into the 7.30am wakeup call was tough, but I made up for it by waking up at 11am today.
One of my more challenging budget goals, was to eat out less to save money. Before, I’d eat out anywhere from 7-9+ times/week. In the past week, only twice! One, because I was late for work and needed something to eat, and the other, was a planned get-together with friends. Overall, I’d say this week was a success. Out of my $250 restaurant budget, I’ve only used up $25. 4 weeks to go, looking good! If I’m far below the $250 at the end of the month, I’m going to reduce that budget all together to save more.
I’m also excited to say, that on January 1st, I had my best web traffic day yet! While still early on, its great to see such a response so quickly, not to mention the wide range of comments too!
Some blog articles that caught my attention this week, include…
- Million Dollar Journey had guest writer Mike Holman, where he discussed Why Low Interest Rates Are a Good Thing. A really detailed and interesting read on the realities of interest rates.
- Studenomics talks about Vegabonding 101: Everything You Need to Know to Travel the World, a great post about tips to get started and what to do while away.
- Nickel by Nickel talks about Renegotiating Utility Contracts and how her mom saved 20% on her electricity bill, simply by saying a competing company offered her a better deal.
- Christian Common Cents asks the question on whether to Rent or Buy a House, and has some powerful arguments against buying right away.
- Fiscal Geek shares his 4 Best New Years Resolution Ideas that he thinks can pay off big. I really like the idea of setting a % for saving, rather than a hard amount.
Now I’m on to start the weekend, in the beautiful (but cold) day outside… That, and maybe tackle pages of reading for class, and start doing some of the leg work on a passive income business I’ve been kicking around for some time now.
Question: Giving to Charity?
I’ve never had a plan when it comes to donating to charities, but want to start doing it smarter. For the longest time, I always donate whenever I’m asked by a friend (either to sponsor them for a marathon, the 50/50 draws, secret auctions, etc) but with no real rhyme or reason. Every year, the amount I would donate would also vary, along with the organization.
The other day, I was watching the CBC, and one of the commentators, Kevin O’Leary (the money-loving guy from the show Dragons Den), said he personally had what he called a “5 x 5″ plan. Where he gives to 5 charities, for 5 years. Then at the end of that time, he picks moves on to five new charities (or keeps some of the old ones on), and continues to give.
Personally, I think at my income level, I could be more effective giving to just one charity — and receive the tax receipt — rather then giving 1/5th of the amount to five separate charities.
But either way, it got me wondering what to do… I want to give back, but just don’t know where to start. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, in the comments below.
Reader Questions — Answer in the Comments:
- Do you have a charity giving strategy?
- How do you decide how much, and who, to give to?
- Is it better to give less to several charities, or more to one?