Archive for the ‘Everyday Living Tips’ Category

I Can Buy It, But Can I Afford It

Posted: May 23, 2013 in Everyday Living Tips
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Can I Afford it

Author: Katrina

I can buy it, but can I afford it. Sounds pretty simple right?  It is!

This last year has been a very educational year for me in terms of finances and managing my money. Every day I am improving and I am further along than I ever thought I could be. I’m actually really enjoying learning everything there is to know about personal finance especially when it comes to my bad habits.

Since starting my landscaping business which is a passion of mine, earning extra money has been an eye opener for me. I have also been able to engage in a few money conversations and actually feel comfortable having an idea of what I am talking about. One of those conversations happened just this past weekend.

What Can You Afford?

I have always enjoyed talking with my one Uncle and this time we talked about money! I loved it! Even more I loved what he shared with me. He mentioned that when he talks finances with people he always brings up the phrase…. ‘I can buy it, but can I afford it’?  These were just the words I needed to hear. Simple and easy to say to myself, which I will…over and over again.

 I’ve got money in my pocket, sure I can afford it.

Let’s look at a scenario together shall we? So, I walk into a grocery store to buy a bag of milk and I have a $5.00 bill in my pocket and the cost of the milk is $3.99. On my way into the store I see a display of my favourite chocolate bars, I love Mars bars! They are on sale for $1.00. Wow, what a great price I think to myself. I have $5.00 in my pocket, I can buy one! We all know chocolate is a taxable purchase which will bring the total to $1.13.

So after I buy the chocolate bar I am left with $3.87. What did I actually come in here for I ask myself? Oh yes a bag of milk….oops the bag of milk costs $3.99 and now I only have $3.87. So moral of the story here is yes because I had $5.00 in my pocket I could buy the chocolate bar but could I afford it? No!

Now I am leaving the store without what I originally went in for, the milk. I cannot afford the milk now because of an impulse purchase that I really didn’t need. This is just an example to explain the idea behind what my Uncle had to say.

Adjusting The Budget

An extreme example of this might be, say you have $30,000 in your bank account, does that mean you can afford to go down to the dealership and pay cash for a new car? What in your budget have you sacrificed to buy that car? How much are you going to have to adjust your budget for buying something that you really couldn’t afford?

Going in and out of multiple stores for my job challenges my ability to say no to impulse purchases. I usually take advantage of this opportunity to do my grocery shopping kid-free. Those with kids will agree that grocery shopping can easily get more expensive when bringing the kids in the store.

But….being I am in the stores so often it can be easy to walk past a really great sale and convince myself that I need that product when really I could have done without. If you pick up an item and you look at it and tell yourself, ‘I can’t buy it’, likely you shouldn’t be. Listen to yourself more often and you might just save a bundle.

Having the money in my wallet or my bank account allowed me to be able to buy it but it wasn’t in my grocery budget. I do now. Now it has to come out of somewhere else in my budget, so really I couldn’t afford to buy it. This phrase will continually pop into my head every time I am in stores now.

I am preparing to join the Grocery Game Challenge on June 1st , I promise I’m in! Saying this over and over to myself is going to help me stick to my weekly/monthly grocery budget. It is now. I am also starting to enforce ‘no-shopping days’ when I go to work to help me from spending money I don’t need to spend.

Multi-Buy Purchase

After working outside all day yesterday in the garden I had a handful of stuff going into the house. I set my sunglasses on the step in the garage so I could open the door.

I forgot about them until this morning when I stepped into the garage to throw out some garbage and stepped on them, breaking them to pieces instantly. Smart that was, now it’s going to cost me money to replace them.

I do not leave my house without sunglasses, even on a dull day. I find myself wearing them as I seem to get more headaches if I don’t have them on. After I finished work today I stopped in at Ardene’s to buy a new pair of sunglasses.

I usually buy my sunglasses there because they always have a deal, usually either 2 or 3 pairs for $15. Today’s deal was 2/$15. I picked out one pair then continued to look for another.

Ask Yourself This…….

Then I stopped and thought to myself….I was not planning on having to buy one pair of sunglasses, let alone two. If bought individually each pair cost $8.50. In the past I wouldn’t have even thought twice and grabbed two pairs, but in this case being an unexpected purchase saving myself $2.00 by buying two pairs wasn’t worth spending another $6.50.

I reminded myself that yes I could buy two pairs but really I couldn’t afford two. Buying one pair was already something I would have to take money from somewhere else in my budget. I could justify one pair as I need them, but not a second pair.

Every time that I see a multi-buy discount now I will stop and think it out again. Do I really need to buy the second one and is the deal really something that I can afford? If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

What I can afford is patience….

I do occasionally shop for clothes and fun things for myself and the kids, although the majority of my impulse spending is on groceries. I am not the person who has to have every new gadget on the market.

I’m also not someone who will spend $100 on a pair of jeans. I also can’t afford to. When I do buy something for myself I don’t like to feel uneasy about how much I’ve spent. I’ve learned to have a good amount of patience for the things I need to purchase but haven’t saved the money up for yet.

I Love My Job

Working in a retail environment for a few years, I have learned lots about how companies strive to achieve top sales. I work on behalf of multiple companies as an in-store marketing representative. Part of my job includes working with the store to maximize sales and secure optimal placement of their products and advertising materials and displays in-store.

My job is to market products to maximize sales and I understand the reasoning behind why manufacturers want their product seen. I also know that as a consumer I have the right to make informed decisions whether the product is in my face or hiding on a shelf. Alternatively I might decide to buy something the day the product is released, or wait a few weeks/months until the price drops significantly.

It’s a pretty simple concept even though many find difficulty with it like I have in the past. Having it said to me and being a catchy, simple phrase really stuck in my head, and it just makes sense to me. I’m working so hard sticking to my budget so why do I want to throw my budget out the window just to buy something I really can’t afford?

How do you avoid buying things you can’t afford?

Post Contribution By: 

Katrina is regular contributor for Canadian Budget Binder and is as passionate about personal finance as she is gardening. Katrina is a horticulture graduate with over 10 years experience with landscaping and greenhouse production.

Her goal is to share her knowledge and experiences blogging about gardening and her continued passion for personal finance in hopes of motivating others. While being a single mom of two and an in-store marketing representative  for major retail shops she also runs her own Landscaping Services in Southwestern Ontario.

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Junk To Funk: Some Woman Down The Road Left Me With Hardwood

Posted: April 29, 2013 in Everyday Living Tips
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Barrel Planter

Turning junk to funk isn’t a side hustle of mine just yet but I do enjoy putting a little elbow grease into something that practically lands in my lap for free. Although I enjoy saving money in our budget picking up junk and taking it from poo to new it is something I will do as long as it doesn’t cost me a fortune in money and time. You can’t just pick up any old crap, sometimes it’s thrown out for a reason. 

Free Stuff

So as long as I keep finding these freebies, I’ll keep blogging about them especially if it’s saving us money, better yet, making us money. In the past I’ve talked about finding beer cans that my neighbours don’t seem to want to return for the cash. Sure it’s only cents but all us frugal minded and personal finance people know that a few cents can add up to a barrel of money over time. 

I found a particularly crusty looking Lawnmower once, but after replacing a couple of parts it only cost me a few bucks and some time to clean it up and it looked brand, spanking, new again. It sure was worth it considering the comparable newer models runs into the hundreds of dollars at Sears. That is how easy it is to get free stuff and bring it back to life, especially if you have a knack for fixing things.

Last year we were gifted a lovely fig tree and with specific instructions to put it in a half wood barrel. He said, I don’t care if you use a wine barrel or a whiskey barrel just find a barrel and right away. At the time our tiny fig tree was planted in a tall white bucket something you would probably buy bulk paint in.

I didn’t want to leave it in there to start rooting and making friends with the bucket. I wanted to give it a new home in a reasonably priced whiskey or wine barrel or whatever I could get my hands on.

Free Stuff Online

At first I thought I would trawl the free ads on kijiji and freecycle to see if anyone was giving one away. I’m not into the wine barrel construction business but I may take it up as a part-time Cooper when I retire one day. There was absolutely naff all but I was optimistic that I would come up with a solution.

I was sure someone was bound to toss one out sooner or later because they don’t want to take the time and give it the attention it needs to fix it up or even better they are changing their garden decor and no longer want them.

We did our fair share of routing round garage sales during the weekends last summer and came to the conclusion that there’s nothing out there unless it’s falling apart or over priced. Looking online today one year later I see that people are selling used half wine or whiskey barrel planters for a reasonable price comparable to new.

Some places to buy a full barrel can run you into the hundreds of dollars. I’m talking, brand new with nothing ever in it. You may even find you pay a bit more or less depending on what was in the barrel and how seasoned it is. As you can see a used half oak barrel might run someone $25 but I found that on the low-end compared to others I had seen last year.

Sometimes people just don’t know what they have and what it’s worth is so they sell it low just to get rid of it. I’ve got plenty of items around the house I’ve picked up that way as well.

Here are some ads I found online for hardwood barrels:

  • Hardwood Barrels for sale; new, but artificially aged.  Large (150 gal.) $75.00  Medium (75 gal.) $40.00
  • Used Half Oak Planter Barrel $25
  • A shop Located in Sydenham, north of Kingston are selling hardwood barrels for the following prices
  • $65 per half unstained
    $75 per stained half
    $130 per unstained full barrel
    $150 per stained full barrel

The other day my wife nearly attacked me before I could get through the front door (not that I’d be complaining) but it wasn’t out of lust and love for me it was for a bloody barrel she noticed outside of our neighbours house. Typical that is, we bought a Disney Barrel (Plastic) last year because we couldn’t find a real one and then find one for free, that’s sods law that is.

That’s right we bought a plastic barrel planter for our fig tree just so we could get it out of the plastic bucket. We couldn’t bring ourselves to pay the high prices the shops were asking for half wood barrels just for our little fig tree. Just for the record the plastic barrel is holding our fig tree just fine but having the real hardwood barrel effect would have been optimistic although it does look like the real deal (from a distance). 

That evening the wife was throwing a bit of a wobbler because she didn’t want me to miss out on a bargain hardwood barrel that some woman down the street left out on the curb. Those barrels aren’t super heavy but they are bloody awkward to carry, especially when the previous owner fails to empty it. I wheeled my dolly down the road loaded it up and returned home with my spoils.

Turning Junk To Funk

So, we make it home all happy in our pants knowing that the free barrel that once was our neighbours junk was now our pride and joy. The next day I went into the garage and got down to business cleaning all the crap out of the half barrel. It was fairly wet and the metal hoops were falling off. Clearly I could see why someone would toss it out if they had no intention of repairing it. The sad part was, it didn’t take much to give a new lease on life.

Once the barrel was dry I used a ratcheting load strap to hold the barrel together while I hammered the metal hoops back into position. Once I had them in place I was good to go and removed the strap. I have plenty of sand paper so I sanded the entire barrel down which took me about 30 minutes to do so it was smooth and no rough edges. The barrel was already coming to life but all I needed to do was spray paint the rings black and stain the outside of the barrel.

Mr.CBB's Junk to Funk Barrel

Off to Canadian Tire I went and picked up a small can of  chestnut stain for $8.49 and I know that sounds like a bit but there is plenty left for other projects. While I was at Canadian Tire I also picked up a can of black spray paint for $2.99 and away I went with my materials which cost me $12.97 with tax.

Judging by the online ad posted above a fully stained half barrel would run me at least $75.00 to purchase. I have to spray our urn planters black again so the left over spray paint will be more than enough to do part of that job.

Mr.CBB's Junk to funk barrel 2

Taping off the barrel with newspaper around the wood allowed me to spray paint the metal hoops black without over spraying on to the hardwood. I’m a bit of a perfectionist so even if it takes me a bit longer, I’ll make sure I do it right. Once the hoops were dry I removed the tape and the newspaper and got to work with the staining.

Staining the barrel took hardly any effort or time at all and I had that done in about 15 minutes. My wife was impressed with the end result as am I especially since it only took me about an hour of my time and a few bucks of paint and stain to bring it back to life. The barrel now looks relatively new and although we won’t be putting our fig tree inside we will likely fill it with an assortment of flowers and keep it displayed proudly outside of our home with a sign, “Our Neighbours Junk”.

Ha-ha, not really but it’s just one of those things that saved us some money in our budget and without hardly any effort at all. To some people they may view a project as too much work, or they don’t know how to finish the project so getting rid of it is the easiest way out.

I thank all you lovely people that are like my neighbours and because of you I will continue to save money and make the neighbours think I’m keeping up with the Joneses when all I’m doing is keeping up with turning their junk into funk.

What have you found for free and gave a new lease on life?

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