centsprout

I bought a bunch more groceries yesterday, bringing my total to $378.77 and it’s still week 8. This is almost $50 a week on groceries and that seems like a lot for one little person… The worst part is I didn’t actually really need to buy the groceries? I don’t know. Anyway, I have a lot of staples in my cupboard and freezer so all I really need to be buying is fresh fruits and veggies.

I haven’t really been in the mood to cook lately. Usually I avoid eating out and always try to bring my lunch to work. But I haven’t done that the last couple of days. My only consolation is that I can buy a delicious sushi lunch for less than $4 at the amazing and wonderful Fujiya. I love that place!

Week 8 my grocery total is up to $353.44. Like I said, I wasn’t going to spend much on groceries this past week and I didn’t!

Funny thing happened to me at the Buy Low though. I was only buying one thing, some egg roll wrappers to make spring rolls, and the check out lady looked at them and said “Oh! I didn’t know we had these.” she rang them through and then said “Oh. They’re expensive!”. Then I was trying to ask her where she went to buy them and what a reasonable price to pay is (I have no idea) but I guess she realized she maybe shouldn’t be telling customers that products were over priced so she didn’t really give me a straight answer. Oh well. I probably would have been better to go down to T & T or some place like that but it’s a bit of a trek out and I want to get these made today. Anyway, apparently $3.48 is expensive for spring roll wrappers.

I’ve had a whole lot of bus misadventures ever since I moved to Vancouver. So many in fact that my roomate keeps telling me I should start a bus misadventures blog… Anyway after a couple of really annoying rides last week, I snapped. I figured there Has Got To Be Another Way.

I started thinking about getting a scooter, maybe something like this Kymco. I didn’t care about style or anything, just something functional that will get me from point A to point B. But when I ran the idea past my dad (my go-to person for advice on these sort of purchases) he said not to even bother with anything under 150cc, so I’d be looking at something more like this scooter, which is a bit more than I really want to spend at this point. I mean, I’ve just about got my cushion fund where I want it, do I really wanna blow it all on a scooter?! Plus, I just found this great post over at Ginger Won’t Snap on her Vespa Investigation and I totally didn’t even start thinking about the costs of insurance or what kind of license I’d need to get. Needless to say, the costs add up fast!

It’s funny though how the combination of the weather warming up and gas prices going up to infinity really has people seriously considering alternative forms of transportation like scooters. Just over the week-end I was back in Calgary and saw that one of the neighbors had just bought a new scooter and was showing it off and riding it up and down the street. It must have been a 50cc coz even going slow on a residential street the motor was working hard and making a lot of noise.

Anyway, I realized that in Vancouver I’d probably stick to riding my scooter on the designated shared streets (meant for bike traffic, they incorporate traffic calming features and usually run next to a main street making it easy, enjoyable, and safer to get where you’re going). So why not just get a bike? And so the scooter idea was laid to rest. For the time being anyway.

Just came accross this great article called Ladies, Take off your Tiara! It talks about how statistically women have a harder time asking for higher compensation. My favourite part of the article were these tips on negotiation for a better salary:

• Start positive and get it in writing. Johnson suggests saying something like, “I’m thrilled by the offer, but I would like to get the whole compensation package that you’ve offered me in writing.”
• Be firm. If the organization offers you a figure lower than what you expected, say something like, “I appreciate the offer, but I have to say that the base salary is less (or significantly less) than I anticipated given what the appropriate range is for this position and for the skills and experience that I bring to the job. Can you give me a sense of how much room there is to maneuver on this number?”
• Follow up. If an employer still won’t budge on the number, have them agree to a salary negotiation, or review, in six months as opposed to a year. Additionally, find other areas of the job to negotiate. Whether it’s working on a specific project, or with a certain group of clients.

I also really liked the tip on keeping a monthly journal of accomplishments that you can refer to when negotiating your salary. I always draw a blank when it comes to promoting myself even though I know I do lots of great things. Having a list I could quickly refer to would be invaluable.

I like to try and keep things as organized as possible and as uncluttered as possible. It’s not always easy but I just came to the realization that it’s so important to always think about habits and always be trying to make things better.

Case in point, I save all my receipts for anything I pay by credit card, and every month when I get my credit card bill I go through all the receipts and reconcile everything. When I’m done, I neatly staple the receipts to the credit card bill and file it away.

I thought it was a pretty good and organized system. But, I just realized that really, I don’t need to be saving a big stack of grocery receipts every month. After the reconciliation, do I really need to hang on to those receipts? I’m thinking… no. So going forward I’ve decided I will only keep receipts for larger purchases and transit passes (for when I do my taxes next year). But all those $10-20 grocery/restaurant/not important receipts are going in the garbage as soon as they’ve been reconciled.

Anyone know of any good reason to hang on to those receipts?

I’ve been sloppy about updating my grocery total, so I just sat down and went through all of my receipts. I’m up to $347.41 at week 7, which works out to about $50 a week. I think that’s a little high. But the good news is I’m probably not going to spend much on groceries this week so if my total stays about the same it should average out to about $40 a week which I’m happy with.

I just found out about this promotion through FuturePhoto where if you have an existing account with them (which i do) you can get 100 free prints from Kodak Gallery. I haven’t used FuturePhoto in a couple of years but the lure of 100 free prints was just too great and I logged in to my account to claim the free prints. I was really surprised to find that all the photos I had previously uploaded and printed were still there! I’m talking photos from 5 years ago! Total blast from the past! It made me really happy to find those photos again. And now I also get my free prints. I liked using FuturePhoto because they let you upload from home and gave the option of free in-store pick-up, which will continue now that the service will go through Kodak Gallery.

So if you have a long lost FuturePhoto account, go log in before the site goes down May 31st!

I enjoy my job (for the most part) and I’m really interested in the sector the company is in (technology/finance). So much that lately I’ve actually been thinking that this is a career path I’d like to pursue and trying to figure out how to go about it and wondering if I should consider going back to school to get the skill set I need to progress.

That said, I just completed this Passion Puzzle activity I stumbled across and surprisingly enough the results are pointing me back towards my original plan of starting my own business. I’m actually quite surprised because just earlier today I wrote a long journal entry about how I might be giving up on that dream and trying to pursue this new career direction. But the passion puzzle has made me realize that I shouldn’t give up on my original plan.

I need to take some steps to make that happen.

MDJ has an interesting post today on giving money as a gift, but what I found really interesting were all the comments where people shared the costs of their own weddings. I’ve put wedding planning on the back burner because I got too frustrated with it, but I should start get back on the proverbial horse. In fact today on the bus two girls were having a loud conversation about a friend who was struggling to get an available date for a wedding venue in August 2009, that’s over a year away!

Wedding planning is complete madness I tell you. Weddings are overrated!

Given my recent contemplating of salaries and negotiating and the like, I found the discussion following Krytal’s post on her 3 month review very interesting. I found this comment to have some good pointers I’m going to have to keep in mind next time I face a salary review.

It was also interesting to read people’s comments on expectations one should have after a 3 month review. For my first salaried position I got a bit of a bump right after my 3 month review. It was an unexpected surprise, but it’s funny how it lead to the expectation that that was the norm. When I negotiated my salary for my current job, I kind of assumed that there would be a 3 month review and I’d get a raise. After the position was offered to me I was a bit disappointed to find out that salary reviews only happen once a year, so unless I change to a different position, the salary I negotiated is the one I’m getting for the next year. A bit of a bummer since it was the lowest I’d be willing to take. Lesson learned.

Squawfox has a good post on why freebies are for the birds. This past week-end I had to scramble to use a $25 gift card that expired on Sunday. I got the gift card when I made a purchase at a clothing retailer back in March. At the time I thought I was being so clever to get the gift card, but it came with all kinds of restrictions and in the end I spent it on a $30 scarf. I love the scarf, but in real life I would pretty much not ever spend that much on a small piece of fabric. So yeah I got to use the card, but it wasn’t really saving me money on my original purchase (which is the way I’d spun it in my head) since it’s money I wouldn’t have spent if I didn’t have the gift card.