Ooops

My plan of trying to live on a strict budget kind of backfired, as I miscalculated and left myself so little money that a cheque I’d written bounced. There’s $35 thrown out the window.

Maybe I shouldn’t try to cut it so close. Anyway, the experience left me a little exasperated but I’m ready to try again. I wonder if I would have better success trying this while not using a credit card. I find my bill is sometimes higher than I expect. Although sometimes things are on there that I’m getting reimbursed for, like work expenses or health expenses (reimbursed by benefits).

Fast track to early retirement inspiration

I randomly came across the blog Early Retirement Extreme today while not even looking for anything to do with the topic, but wow is it ever a good extra push for me!

The points on maximizing savings are good ones. I always thought my 15%+ guideline was good enough, but I can definitely push it higher if that means reaching financial independence sooner! I worked with my numbers and while I can’t do the 75% without some major life changes (moving would be one big one, I do after all live in downtown Vancouver and rents are what they are), I figure I should be able to easily do 41%. If my math is right, that means I should be able to reach financial independence by 50. Not quite the 37 I’m aiming for but better than 65.

That is a good start and I am happy with that. If I were willing to spend the next 19 years without leaving Vancouver, I could do 51%, but life is for living and I’m willing to postpone financial independence another 4 years for a vacation once in a while.

So this is how I’m going to be dividing my pay cheques:

• 45% on all monthly spending – including regular expenses and splurging (previously it was 60%)
• 10% on long term savings – vacations and other life enhancing goodness (previously 20%, half of which was supposed to be for education and other knowledge enhancing activities)
• 4% on gifts – could be readjusted but i want to see how this goes (down from 5%)
• 41% savings and investments – (previously 15%)

Let’s see how this rolls!

Food is my vice

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!

Grocery total update

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.

Groooceries

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.

Salaries and freebies.

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.

Grocery update

Just about halfway through week 4 of tracking groceries and my total has shot up to $113.52. Over the week-end I had to make some non-food purchases of cleaning products and ziplock storage containers which I’m including in my total because they are expenses that do come up. Still, it’s not bad for almost a month’s worth of spending. Although I may make a Superstore trip soon and those generally run high.

Grocery total to date: $113.52

Paying myself back

Ok so I got paid on Friday (yay!) and had a fun week-end. Now it’s time to get down to serious stuff… Paying myself back. I basically took all the spare money I could ($775) and socked it into my Cushion fund. I don’t want to call it an emergency fund because I don’t really think of it as such. I want to get my cushion fund back up to $5000.

I’ve got $37 in my wallet and I’m not going to a bank machine until I get paid next. Granted that’s only a week away. If my pay days seems wacky it’s because it’ll be my first pay for my new permanent position. So after my next pay I’ll have a better idea of what my take home pay will be and I’ll be able to seriously start budgeting.

While it’s a relief to finally be able to count on a regular paycheque, I still have such a nagging feeling that I should have negotiated for a higher salary. I’m trying not to think about it too much because obviously it’s too late now. Instead what I should do is start keeping track of little victories at work so that down the road when I’m up for a review or a new position I’ll have lots of ammunition as to why I’m great and deserve more money.

Yay I made it!

Well I made it through to pay day with the $25 I had as of a week and a half ago. That’s not bad for a week and a half. I spent my last $5 yesterday on littles cakes for a friend who came over, so that was a nice treat. But all this time I’ve been making a mental list of all the things I’d like to buy once I got paid, so I’m going to have to be careful not to go on a crazy spending spree. I finally started a permanent position so now that my income is going to be pretty regular I have no excuse not to start carefully managing my finances. That’ll be something to do this week-end.

Grocery update

I still have $7 in my wallet to last me until Friday when I get paid, so I’m pretty happy about that. I did cheat a bit and go out for lunch on Sunday with some friends and put it on my credit card, but it was a $9.95 all you can eat buffet in the afternoon so it counted as lunch and dinner. A good deal!

Made a couple of trips to the grocery store to make sure I have food to make my lunches at work so I don’t have to buy lunch. It’s now 2.5 weeks into tracking groceries and my total to date is $63.90.