A CREDIT CARD HAS ONE MISSION-TO MAKE MONEY. Would you open your window while driving and empty your wallet out? Laughable, however too many of us do this without even knowing it. Never ever just open a credit card bill or any bill and just pay it. If you do this then you run the risk of throwing money out the window. This almost happened to us but thankfully we DO read our statements and found a surprising credit card fee that was not expected. Related: Why you should always read your grocery receipt Besides earning rewards some people they pay a heavy price for holding a credit card balance and paying the minimum. That’s really not what I’m going to talk to you about today though. Quite the opposite actually which not only sent us to the telephone with our jaw dropped but to find out almost all credit card companies do this. Credit Card Fees…. there’s more than 1. We’ve never once paid any interest to a credit card company and don’t plan to begin but this isn’t an interest charge it’s an over credit limit charge. If you thought that your credit card would send out […]
How I Turned Grocery Shopping Into A Daddy Vacation : The Grocery Game Challenge 2017 #3 July 17-23
WHEN GROCERY SHOPPING BECOMES THE HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR DAY. Parenthood is more than just having a baby, it’s about finding ways to keep sane in a busy world of dirty nappies, feedings, work and lack of sleep. Things have changed as they should since we’ve become parents especially for myself since our son wants to do everything with me. If you could imagine me coming home from work and attacked by a toddler while Mrs. CBB waves and says, “have fun” that’s how it all goes down. At times he’s like a television that has no off button but I appreciate his inclination to learn and talk non-stop from the time he wakes up until he falls asleep again. It hasn’t been until the last year or so that we are really feeling the push from dealing with the terrible two’s. I read a meme that stated how parents who go grocery shopping alone attribute the experience to a vacation. Mrs. CBB laughed because some of the other moms she chats with has said the same thing. I wanted to see if I got that same vacation feeling so I put myself up for the daddy vacation challenge. When […]
How A Life Changing Illness Shaped Our Financial Future
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT EVERYTHING WAS GOING WELL YOU’RE HIT WITH AN ILLNESS THAT WILL FOREVER CHANGE YOUR LIFE. I’ve been writing about money for much of the past decade but I didn’t always have my act together, financial speaking. In fact, I spent most of my twenties deep in debt, and it took a big, scary, life-changing event for me to have my financial awakening. I’ll never forget the day when my world changed. It was 2008, and my wife had complained of a headache – a pain behind her right eye, to be exact. She was in excruciating pain and nearly went blind, temporarily, seeing only red spots out of her affected eye. An ophthalmologist confirmed it was optic neuritis, an inflammation that affects the optic nerve. After prescribing an incredibly high dose of prednisone to bring down the inflammation, the doctor referred my wife to a neurologist who diagnosed her with Multiple Sclerosis. We were devastated. At the time, we didn’t know much about MS and how this disease would impact our lives. All we knew was that each flare-up of the disease caused nerve damage, which would gradually get worse over time and lead to […]
Should you Invest in an RRSP, TFSA or Non-Registered Account?
UNDERSTANDING HOW YOUR MONEY IS INVESTED IS HALF THE BATTLE One of the most common questions I hear in my job is ‘what type of account should I be saving in?’ If you are just getting started with investing, then you may have heard about RRSP’s and TFSA’s but not really know the difference between them and when you should be using each one. That’s what I’m here to talk about today, the pros, the cons, and the best time to use each of these accounts. When it comes to basic investing you have three main account types you can use; an RRSP, a TFSA, or a non-registered account. Each of these have their own positives and negatives, so it’s helpful to figure out the most valuable for your current situation. You can hold a variety of investments (stocks, mutual funds, ETF’s, etc.) in any of these accounts; there are a few limitations in RRSP’s and TFSA’s, but unless you are a very high risk, speculative investor, this will likely never come up. RRSP’s (Registered Retirement Savings Plans) Since you are here reading a blog about finance, I’m going to assume that you have heard of an RRSP. […]
How To Dehydrate Vegetables To Cut Grocery Costs : The Grocery Game Challenge 2017 #1-2 July 3-16
FROZEN VEGETABLES ARE EASY TO DEHYDRATE AND WON’T SUCK YOUR GROCERY BUDGET DRY. The best dehydrated food I make starts with gorgeous fruits and vegetables and ends with sweet treats or easy powders to trick even the pickiest of eaters. Parents take note as I show you how to make sure your child gets the nutrition he needs even if he hates fruits and vegetables. Hi my name is Heather and I absolutely love to dehydrate food to save money and space in my kitchen pantry. I began dehydrating food shortly after attending an Emergency Preparedness class here in Vancouver. They tell people to be ready for more than 72 hours (more like 6-9 months) in case of an emergency. Living in an apartment I needed a way to store food that didn’t take up a lot of space. I came up with a brilliant solution to my lack of pantry space that I’ve been doing for a while now. Today, I am still storing food, but I am finding we use it everyday. The powdered veggies are a great example. Dried fruit I keep in powdered and whole form so we can use it in smoothies, oatmeal or […]
Men, Women, and How They Think About Money
MONEY IS MONEY BUT ADD GENDER TO THE MIX AND THE MEANING BECOMES SOMETHING MUCH DIFFERENT. Money is central to our existence and we all know it. We need, want it and got to have it. There’s nothing new to report here about any of that. It’s the basic reason we all get up every morning, battle the elements and the traffic, and hunker down at our jobs every day. Whether you are a Canadian or an American like me, there are differences between the genders. If you’re a man, you’re more likely to be coming home from work each day, unwinding and spending your time as you see fit. If you’re a woman, not so much. For as long as there have been people working outside the home, women have born most of the burdens of taking care of the home, kids, chores, and those kinds of things. When you look at the last 30 years of changes to our society, i.e. the big addition of women to the workforce, there may have been some changes in that old school approach…but not enough. Men still fundamentally think of women as the responsible party when it comes to family, […]
How To Grow A Budget Vegetable Garden From A Homestead Expert : The Grocery Game Challenge 2017 #3-4 June 19- July 2
GARDENING HELPS KEEP YOUR FOOD COSTS DOWN WHILE INSPIRING IMAGINATION. This year may be the year you decide to finally grow a vegetable garden in your front or back-yard. Gardening can be as inexpensive or costly as you’d like depending on how you approach it. My name is Karen from the blog Lil Suburban Homestead and I hope I can inspire you to get out and dig with our best kept secret vegetable garden tips. To start your vegetable garden you may feel a bit intimidated, don’t be. To ease your worries I’ll share with you our success and failures over the years. We’ve been through it all which has helped us become homestead experts for our family. Sometimes failure is only the beginning to your success. Beginning to vegetable garden is about learning When we started our vegetable garden let’s just say our first attempt turned into a failure but not without a learning experience. I was disheartened but not discouraged from continuing my quest to grow home-grown, delicious food! I guess you could say it was in my DNA as when I grew up my parents always had a tiny garden but I always wanted […]
Mortgage Freedom Means You Still Need To Run : Our May 2017 Budget Update
EVERY DAY IS LIKE A FINANCIAL ROAD TRIP WITH BUMPS, DETOURS, GREEN LIGHTS AND FLAT TIRES. Teach me how to get rich my sister-in-law asks me surprisingly a few weeks back since finding out we’ve been mortgage free 4 years as of May 2017. I don’t know about the “Rich” part but I can certainly talk for hours about budgets, frugal living and the importance of it all. Mortgage Freedom is just the beginning Since burning our mortgage papers Mrs. CBB and I have done one thing that some people might stop doing. Do you want to know what it is? Of course you do. Related: How we became mortgage free in 5 years We never stopped with the financial discipline we’ve ingrained into our routine over the past 10 years. Sometimes it’s hard to look back and think it has been that long but not really when you consider the life of a typical mortgage is 20-25 years. I don’t have all the answers but I do know that if you aren’t prepared to invest in your finances then you must deal with what you have. I don’t care if you’re already rich, collecting welfare, earn […]
