July Goal

I started off the month by riding my bike to work and then decided that I can do this and not buy a bus pass. So my goal for the month will be to ride my bike at least 3 times a week.  If I do this I will have saved about $40 on bus fare and gotten some good exercise!

My main challenges with riding my bike to work are being scared off by a forecast of rain and trying to figure out what can be office appropriate but still work on the bike. Thankfully Fridays are casual days so that will help a bit.

Comparing credit card rewards

On the week-end I used up the last of my scene rewards points to go see the movie 21 with some friends. Now I’m sad that I don’t have any more free movie tickets. So I started thinking about signing up for the Scene credit card. Based on my spending last month, I would have gotten another free movie ticket! Plus I’d get another 2 just for signing up.

I decided to compare the rewards I’m getting to see if it would be worth it.

My main card right now is a CIBC Dividends card for which I get 1% in cash back. My second card is the Capital One Rewards card which I don’t really use much, the rewards can range from about 1%-0.4% back in travel, 0.075% back in cash, or 0.6% or less in gift cards. The Scene card would give back about 1.25% in movie tickets according to my calculation.

So that’s something to consider… Although I guess the really frugal thing to do would be to not go to the movies at all!

Mmmm breakfast!

Being frugal is often about being resourceful, and this morning I’m pretty pleased with myself at how resourceful I was when it came time to figuring out what to have for breakfast (I even took a picture of it there on the left).

So, I’ve been trying to not spend any money and in order to do that I’ve been staying out of grocery stores. Unfortunately, when I woke up this morning and started thinking about what I was going to have for breakfast I realized that I didn’t have any breakfast foods at all. Usually I have toast for breakfast, but I was out of bread.

That’s when I remembered that a month or two ago, I’d picked up a bag of rice at Superstore, only to get home and look at it more closely and realize that it was called “Sweet Rice” which sure didn’t sound like regular long grain rice one eats for dinner. So I shoved it in the back of a cupboard until I could figure out what to do with it. Enter this morning where I’m racking my brain on what to make with what I’ve got on hand and I do a quick google search which enlightens me on the fact that sweet rice is actually what one would use to make Champorado ( a Filipino chocolate rice porridge I love but always forget about because I could never remember to buy the special rice you need for it).

And so I was in business. I found a couple of recipes online to get a general idea on how to make it and then just went ahead and made my own version with the ingredients I had on hand. This is what I ended up doing:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of sweet rice
• 1 1/4 cup of water
• 1 1/2 tbsp of cocoa power
• 3 tpsp brown sugar
• a dollop of vanilla almond milk

Directions: Wash and rinse the rice. Add the rice and water to a small pot, bring to a boil stirring regularly. When the rice is just about cooked (I taste a couple of grains to see), turn the heat down to medium-low and add the cocoa powder and brown sugar. Keep stirring until well combined. Once ready, pour into a bowl. Add almond milk to taste, stir, and enjoy! Makes one large serving.

So there we go, I now know how to make Champurado. Although next time I think I could get away with just 1 tbsp of cocoa powder and 1 tbsp of brown sugar as I found it a bit sweet. Actually, the way my mom made it for us when we were kids was that she would just put in the cocoa powder and then we’d add sugar and milk in our own bowls to taste. Another thing I would try doing in the future is using stevia instead of sugar.

Budget Wedding Planning books

I went to the library yesterday on a mission to find out more about this business of having a wedding and not spending the average of $30,000 on it. Found the wedding planning section and grabbed every book that seemed like it might be useful. Ended up with these:

• Fell’s Budget Weddings by Di Kivi
• Budget Brides by Di Kivi
• The Frugal Bride by Cynthia Clumeck Muchnick
• Wedding Chic by Nina Willdorf
• The Everything Weddings on a Budget Book by Barbara Cameron
• Anti-Bride Etiquette Guide by Carolyn Gerin and Kathleen Hughes
• The Budget Wedding Sourcebook by Madeline Barillo

And took them over to a table to take a closer look. Just by quickly flipping through them I was able to put aside the lame ones lacking in good information but full of general common sense tips like “If your guest list is getting out of control, stop inviting more people” like gee thanks, couldn’t have come to that conclusion on my own, or to find an affordable wedding venue “Think outside the box” yes ok I get that, but please where are the specific suggestions and ideas? So I narrowed things down to just the four and will be reading them and posting my reviews on them.

Free locations for wedding ceremonies.

I found a list of places in Vancouver where one can hold an outdoor wedding ceremony for free on a first-come first serve basis (scroll down to the part where it says ‘Or Choose a Less Formal Setting’). If you did that and didn’t have a reception, the whole shebang should cost around $200. Although, I’m figuring in a bit extra to buy a big golf umbrella in case it’s raining. Oh and plus the cost of the rings. But that’s a whole other topic for another day.

Funny, I totally didn’t plan this but just realized my wedding post falls on Valentines day. Way to be on theme!

Eating out is expensive.

Ok, I know the subject of this post is common knowledge, but yesterday just really reminded me of that. I was lazy and didn’t pack a lunch for work (even though I’m usually really good about that) but I knew that since I’d be working downtown there would be decent options a plenty for food. I ended up spending about $6.50 on sushi, which I thought was reasonable for a filling lunch.

On my way home from work I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some produce for meals this week and when the cashier told me my total was $4.50, I was surprised at how little it was! I wasn’t buying much, but definitely enough to cover at least 3 meals, and all for less than the price I paid for my lunch! A definite reminder to be making my lunches and not eating out. Although eating out is a nice excuse to get out of the office, and unfortunately the office where I’m working now has a really sorry and depressing and generally unpleasant lunch room. So if I bring a lunch, I’ll probably end up eating it at my desk and that’s not much of a break. This experience is definitely making me appreciate companies that make the effort of providing their employees with a nice lunch room.

Comparing digital photo prints

The other thing I have not had any time to do since I got here and started working right away is to personalize and decorate my room a little. Since I’m obviously not going to go all out and spend a bunch of money decorating my room, I was thinking of sprucing up the bare walls with some prints of photos I’ve taken over the years. I decided to do some price comparisons of different digital printing services and found some surprises.

I threw in Shutterfly and Snapfish, some online printing places, just to compare them to brick and mortar shops. The disadvantage with going with an online site is that you have to pay for shipping to Canada. The other places allow you to have your photos shipped to a nearby store location for free pick-up. What really surprised me though was that getting a bunch of 12×18 prints would almost make a Costco membership pay for itself! For 8×10s Shopper’s is surprisingly competitive, but otherwise, FutureShop seems to be a good deal. I’ve used Black’s, Future Shop, and London Drugs for digital printing in the past and been happy with the quality.

Anyone know of any digital printing places I’ve missed?

Deep discounts.

It’s that time of year when clothing retailers are heavily discounting their winter stock, and as such it’s a great time to find a good bargain. I lucked out because I finally found myself a nice suit at a good price. I’ve been looking for a suit for years pretty much, but I could never bring myself to pay the $300 a decent one would cost and couldn’t bring myself to spend $100 on a crap suit.

Seeing as how I’m in job hunt mode, a suit is pretty important. I used to think that only people applying for higher level positions needed to wear suits to interviews, and that I could get away with wearing some nice pants and a collared shirt. But a few years ago a recruiter set me straight and now having worked for a recruiting agency (one of my many eye-opening temp gigs), I have to say that it really does make a much better impression if someone shows up for an interview in a suit regardless of the position they are applying for.

Anyway, my suit criteria was good construction and a nice quality fabric (a light wool, ideally). And I totally lucked out and found myself a nice wool blend suit for $120, regular priced at $280. Of course, when shopping the deep discounts, it’s slim pickings. For example I didn’t get to pick the color because they only had my size left in one color, and they didn’t have any skirts left in my size either unfortunately. Ideally, one should buy a jacket with matching pants and skirt for optimum versatility, but at this price I can’t be too picky.

For anyone suit shopping during this sale period, I would really recommend going in the afternoon on a week-day if you can swing it. Matching jackets and pants and finding sizes in the limited stock that’s left is a lot easier if you have a sales clerk helping you. I’d actually gone to the same store on the week-end but the place was a complete zoo and of course all the sales clerks were too busy. But when I went during the week I lucked out, the store wasn’t too busy and a really great sales clerk gave me the low down on what sizes were left in what colors and ran around all over the place, checking the back and so on to find me the combination I needed. It was totally thanks to her that I walked out a very happy customer.

Anyway, I’m really happy that I finally got a nice suit. And I was also able to find a replacement shirt for the one I ruined with the iron at 60% off. So shopping the sales and waiting for the good deals really can pay off in the end.

Keeping up with technology can save money

So along with rent and food and all those other costs we can’t just magically make disappear or shrink out of our monthly expenses is a phone.

One can try and fantasize living cut off from society and not needing a phone, and in fact I totally tried to do this when I first left home to go to university because I thought with the internet, there was no need to be forking out at least $30-40 a month for a phone (landline or cell phone). Unfortunately, even as a university student living on campus I was not able to pull that off and shortly ended up getting a cell phone.

Again, when contemplating my budget and expenses for my current live-as-frugal-as-possible lifestyle in which I move to a rather expensive Canadian city without having a job, the question arises of how to get around this expense of a phone. At bare minimum usage, a phone is around $30-40, whether it’s a land line or a cell phone. Those $25/month cell plans never actually cost $25 a month and it’s been my experience that even using it as little as possible, invariably the pitiful allowance of included minutes are used up and charges for additional minutes get mercilessly tacked on to the bill pushing the cost up to at least around $40/month if not more.

And yet as someone in need of finding a job, the most important part of job hunting is having a reliable way for potential employers to get a hold of you.

So what is a frugal girl to do?

The answer can be found where so many other answers can be found, on the internet.

First of all, this only works for someone who has a high speed internet connection at home, but if there is one expense that can’t and will never be cut from the monthly broke-college-student budget, it is high speed internet (incidentally, this is another reason why having roommates isn’t so bad because you can split the cost of the internet with them) and of course a computer.

The solution to this problem of a phone is in two parts.

• First, for outgoing calls I use a headset (mine was a gift, but even if you have to buy one it’s a one time expense that will pay for itself over and over in money saved) and set up Skype. Then, by subscribing to Skype pro for $3 month, yes that’s a three with no zero after it, I can make calls to any land line or cell phone in Canada or the USA for no charge. $3!!! Compare that to any unlimited long distance plan! Can’t be beat. Now, if I was living in a country such as the USA, Australia, Switzerland, basically a whole lot of countries except Canada, I could pay a few dollars more and get a phone number at which people could reach me or leave me voicemail and all my problems would be solved. I’d have the equivalent of a home phone line for something like $5 a month. Except Skype doesn’t have any Canadian area code numbers right now, so that’s an option I’m still waiting for.
• Second for the issue of incoming calls. I went to RedFlagDeals and did a search for cheap cell phones. I found the SpeakOut wireless deal where you buy $100 worth of minutes that don’t expire for 1 year and you get a free phone. If you use the phone as little as possible and basically only for incoming calls that you keep short (if a friend calls me to chat and I’m at home I call them back using Skype), the minutes should last a whole year.

So between Skype and my cell phone, I anticipate spending under $12 a month on phone services including unlimited long distance in North America. Not too shabby if I may say so myself.

Look a gift horse in the mouth!

So living a broke college student lifestyle in a brand new city means always being on the lookout for deals and even better, free stuff! That doesn’t mean combing the alleys the day before garbage pickup or checking freecycle every five minutes. Sometimes just putting the word out there to your friends can do the trick. Most of us who have been living in one place for any length of time tend to accumulate crap we don’t need and are more than happy to pawn it off on a friend in need.

But as the recipient of free crap, you should always always carefully inspect it (after you’ve accepted it and muchly thanked the person who gave it to you) to assess the item’s condition and if it needs any repairs or something like that. Sometimes not doing that can actually cost you, as I learned the hard way.

But first I just want to clarify that I’m in no way whatsoever criticizing the person giving the stuff, I’m just saying that any free stuff should accepted gratefully, ‘as is’, with no expectations whatsoever on their working condition or anything, but after you’ve gratefully received it, don’t assume it works like new either!

A well-meaning friend of mine gave me an extra iron that they happened to have lying around and I thought “sweet! one less thing to buy!”. Unfortunately, I failed to really take a close look at it before I fired it up and went to iron a light colored dress shirt to go to work. At first contact, the iron left a small but very visible black streak on my shirt that basically ruined the shirt. So in the end, I got a free iron but am out a shirt. And this totally could have been avoided if I’d just taken a close look at the iron, tested it out a bit first, realized it needed a bit of cleaning and cleaned it up before using it. Then I’d have gotten a free iron and still have the shirt!

And again, to clarify, I’m not blaming my friend in any way what soever. Like I said, we all have crap lying around that we don’t use and if somethings really been just sitting in the basement or in a closet for some undetermined amount of time, people can sometimes forget why it ended up there in the first place. And from diging out of its storage space and putting it in a bag to give away, they might not always realize that it actually needs a good cleaning or a small repair. It’s up to the grateful recipient of the free stuff to make sure things are clean and in good working order before putting it to use.