Posts Tagged ‘Family’

PF Weekly Reading List #16- I Give Up……………

Posted: April 19, 2013 in PF Weekly Reading List
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Change Yourself I Give Up

What? I give up… it’s probably one of the hardest things I would have to decide to do or anyone for that matter. A part of us shatters when we are forced to make the decision to give something up in order to get out of a financial mess that we created or for reasons beyond our control.

When times are tough and it’s hard to make ends meet or we simply are drowning in debt we have to give something up. Sure we may NOT have to give something up and could keep juggling money from credit card to credit card or consolidating debt in order to ease the pain but is that enough? If you answered “that’s all we have left to do” the you need to find a way because you can’t live your life like that. It won’t last forever, the walls will crumble down on you eventually.

For some credit cards and consolidating debt over and over seems like the right thing to do but for others its way out in left field. For those that would do just about anything to get out of debt they would rather ‘give up’ something than to incur more debt along the way. It’s no secret that Canadians are sinking in mounds of debt we read about it all the time and for many reasons, job loss, work injury, illness, divorce the list could go on and on.

Never Give Up On Yourself

There are also many people who are in these situations that have come out on top because they didn’t give up on themselves. When I hear people say they can’t, I don’t know how, there is no way, it’s impossible. That’s giving up on you, don’t do that. We all have to grieve what life hands us if it’s not what we anticipated or dreamed of and for many it’s been a rotten life but we don’t have to continue down that path. Believe. If you have a crappy job for example make the most of it by finding ways to improve your skills to better your career with another employer. Think positive.

There comes a point though when we need to put all that behind us, move forward and figure out what we are going to do to make the money stretch or work harder for us.

I Give Up…

I was reading an article yesterday which was about asking Canadians what they would “give up” for $250 in extra savings every month. My mind drew a blank as I simply had no idea what I would give up if debt was taking over my life. A survey by ING direct provided information that many Canadians don’t think they are saving enough money each month.

I agree though that with simple planning and budgeting there is light at the end of the tunnel no matter what your income is.  If you don’t make enough to cover the bills the options may be  clear to you 1- make more money 2- give something up. If there’s nothing left to give then you may need to make extra money, some how, some way. The other options may be to move somewhere cheaper, move where the job opportunity takes you or start-up your own business and work for yourself.

Our friend Katrina did just that, a single mom with 2 kids who works full-time and needed more money, so she started her landscaping business to bring in more money. A friend of mine who is on disability has to be one of the smartest guys I know and also has a small side hustle. He can’t work so the family cuts down on all the expenses to fit the budget. It’s hard for him to watch his wife go work every day while he stays home to clean and cook. He said to me that “I have to do what I have to do for my family”.

If that means he gets clothes from a second-hand store or has to cut down on the groceries with no chips and snacks then they will do it. The kids don’t complain and know that their parents are doing what they have to so they don’t lose their house or their car gets taken away.

“We don’t want to be those people on that television show “Til Debt Do Us Part”  as a couple at their wits end. We want to fight the battle and never let it get that far”.

They doesn’t spend more than they earn and he also doesn’t complain about his disability to anyone. He makes his life work “for him” even though he says parts of his life gave up on him. He makes extra money refinishing items he finds for free and sells them to keep himself motivated and to feel like he is giving back.

He says ” the worst thing you can do is feel sorry for yourself, that doesn’t pay the bills”. He searches online for freebies and sells them for more money. He told me there is always a way to make more money if you set your mind to it. The best part is he’s always smiling.

Get Rid Of Debt

I know many of my fans who read Tony’s debt story on the blog yesterday about how he is pulling his family out of $100,000 in debt, it gave them some hope. It really made me realize that sometimes in life we have to give things up to solve a problem. I’m sure Tony would agree that he would do whatever it takes to get his family above water even giving up stuff for a short period until they are at a happy place with their finances.

It’s harsh to say sometimes but when you’ve already spent money that you don’t have you may just have to suck it up and do without until you can get out of a mess. Some Canadians say they would give up social media for $250 extra each month to put towards their debts.

With all the available credit surrounding us like a drug it’s hard to say, No I’m on a budget or no, I need to get out of debt first before we go on a trip and blow more money that we don’t have.

Is it that sense of entitlement that creeps in here for some people?

It may make us feel better to have some liquid cash set aside in emergency savings which I think we all should have so we don’t turn to more credit when in dire need but how many actually use that emergency savings for the said purpose, an emergency.

Nearly three-quarters of Canadians say they would give up social media for three months in exchange for the chance to set aside that extra money, according to a survey released this week by ING Direct.

We Give Up ..

I was thinking about this most of the day wondering if I could give up social media and the reality is , no I can’t. Well, I could but it wouldn’t be my first pick to knock off put it that way. If I had no other choice, you bet I would, there’s always the library.

Last year I gave up smoking which was likely the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. If you are addicted to smoking, drugs or alcohol you know that you don’t really give it up for the money first you give it up to live first, so that didn’t count for me.

When it came down to the nitty-gritty If we had to give up something in our budget to save extra money we’d likely give up cable. We don’t watch much television as it is and it’s costing us around $60 a month. If we were that hell-bent on watching a TV program we could likely watch it on the computer or pretty Smart TV that we own.

That wasn’t enough though and we needed to think of more things we would give up. This reminds me of the time Mrs.CBB and I sat to do our first budget and decided to make 2 budgets. One budget was for the present and the other was just in case one of us lost our job, got injured at work or something drastic happened that we would have to survive on one income. We designed the second budget with all the things we would have to give up in order to survive and not dig ourselves into debt.

On an “I” note, I would also say bye-bye to my weekly allowance which I really only use for beer and the occasional coffee when I’m out on the road and my travel mug is empty. If I had debt that I “REALLY” wanted to get rid of I’d suck it up and scrap the allowance. Other parts of our budget we would smash is the cell phone, eating out, major renovations etc.

I’m sure we could pick it apart but the main thing is we are willing to give something up in order to have a better nights sleep and money peace in our relationship.

Love and Money

Many people ask us how we can be so happy all the time and it’s because we are so in love with each other. It’s also because we chose to give up stuff along the way together while living our life the way we want to. We plan and budget our money in order to live this life of  debt freedom at a young age.  It’s been a bumpy ride with lots of falls but we got right back up again. We will continue our budgeting journey because it has worked for us and it makes us happy.

Like Tony, his family has had to give things up and make choices they may not have wanted to but they did and they too are pushing forward, not living in the past, not complaining of how life dealt them a crap deck of cards. Living a frugal life while you are financially under construction and not giving up while you give up something is a better wau to build your castle than to build nothing at all.

We all deserve happiness, but sometimes we have to create that happiness on our own by giving up something to get something.

What would you give up for extra money in your budget to pay down debt?


Personal Finance Weekly Reading List

PF WEEKLY READING LIST

Here is this weeks reading list which includes some of the best blog posts from many blogs that I interact and comment on and who also have a common interest in CBB. I hope you all enjoy this weeks round-up. There are a few more than normal that I really enjoyed so I hope you enjoy them as well! -Mr.CBB

Mr.CBB's Olive Bread

Recipes/Frugal Blog Posts of the Week

I made more Olive Bread yesterday although I made it with white flour. I honestly thought they were turning into the bread blobs as they wouldn’t stop rising. We were thinking about a plan B just in case they fell off the baking stone. I made two giant loaves of bread and they are much bigger than the photo shares with you. Just check it out above, can’t wait to get into these this weekend with our friends!

Top Recipe: Three Ingredient Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies – Coking Whims (check out how easy it is to make these cookies)

Inspirational or Funniest Post of the Week

Inspirational: Making Sense of Cents- “My Dad Was Awesome” Michelle share a short story about her dad and why he is so awesome. Truly inspirational and another reason to enjoy life to the fullest with those you love. Funniest: Budget and The Beach : Do I Need An Emergency Fund: One Cats Dilemma  Tonya shares a guest post by  her feline friend Pepe the cat. Smart, funny and just all around an important message for all pet owners to read.

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March 2013 CBB Budget Update #3- A Quiet Month With The Budget

Posted: April 1, 2013 in Our Family Budget
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Canadian Budget Binder Monthly Budget Update

Well, here we are at the end of March 2013 with another budget update which with confidence I can say is a bit better than our February Budget Update. Sometimes it’s a good thing to have a quiet month with the budget because it helps to put things into perspective. Sometimes budgeting and saving money doesn’t always happen depending on what your priorities are that month.

As an example, last month we saved no money in our emergency savings, a big fat zero. We actually spent more than we earned in February which can be discouraging but also motivating to do better the next month.This month we didn’t have any big-ticket expenses like our water softener that cost us over $1000 in February.

We didn’t have alot going on this month in terms of expenses but we did pre-pay the full 20% of our mortgage of over $32,000 for the 2013 year which I will get into in an upcoming blog post. I’m expecting next month to be costly for us with having another installment of city taxes to pay and our hydro./water bill will be coming due.

Other than that with spring and then summer just around the corner I will start to get the deck sanded down and treated. I already purchased the Thompson’s sealer with tint at Canadian Tire earlier in the year when it was on sale. I’ll also be looking at our landscaping projects which is top priority this summer as we’ve put it off for far too long.

I’ve got the vegetable seeds ready to go for the garden, so we will see how much money we will be spending on plants this summer but hopefully not too much. I had a peek in the compost bin which I jammed full of leaves and other organics at the end of last summer so I’m sure I will reap those rewards shortly. I did manage to save some of our flowers and plants from last year by bringing them indoors for the winter although next winter I will be pickier on what comes in. I try to do whatever it takes to shave some expenses off the home maintenance budget for the year including re-using and re-purposing items we already have.

I also plan to start renovating one of our main bathrooms with a full tear down, heated floors, new cabinets, new counter tops and faucets,toilet, Shower faucets, tile floor to ceiling, new mirrors, accessories, heated towel bar and shower curtain and bar. That’s a big project for me but I’ll be tackling the outside before I do any indoor work. This job alone will take a big chunk of our budget but will add value back into our home.

What spring cleaning do you do? 

How We Budget Our Monthly Expenses

Below are links to my budgeting series which I wrote while designing our spreadsheet. I’m not a financial planner/advisor so I can’t tell you how you should budget but I can show you how we budget. I’m just a regular guy just like everyone else, some might call me a budget nerd. I love seeing money grow and where it has gone. Please take the time to read through the budgeting series and I hope you take something away from the information.

  1. How We Designed Our Budget Step 1- Gathering All the information
  2. How We Designed Our Budget Step 2- Categories
  3. How We Designed Our Budget Step 3- Tracking Receipts
  4. How We Designed Our Budget Step 4- Note-taking
  5. How We Designed Our Budget Step 5- 5S Organization
  6. How We Designed Our Budget Step 6- Who Does What and When?
  7. How We Designed Our Budget Step 7- Balancing Our Budget
  8. How We Designed Our Budget Step 8- Knowing our Coupon Savings
  9. How We Designed Our Budget Step 9- Reading Our Bills
  10. How We Designed Our Budget Step 10- Projected Expenses

Click this link if you want to see a sample of a budget sheet spreadsheet that we designed>>> Finances+Budget= Success Formula

Changes to the Monthly Family Budget This Month

I mentioned a bit about our life insurance policies and how we applied for life insurance as non-smokers since we are now over 1 year smoke-free. We received our assessments back and we are now only paying $70.43 a month as opposed to the $135.05 so that is a bit of savings for us at $64.62 a month.

Our income taxes are done and I’m proud to report that I did them on my own. I read everything I needed to read in a couple of days and did them online for free. We are getting just over $200 back which isn’t much but that’s fine as long as we don’t have to pay the government any money. I’ll be removing the $2.50 a month we were saving in projected expenses out of our budget and put that money in our emergency savings now.

March Monthly Household Budget  Percentages Overview

Our savings of 60.18% includes savings and investments. I’ve also went ahead and added in our projected expenses this month at 12.53%  which brings the total budget percentages to 100% for the month of March.

March 2013 Monthly Budgeted Expense Chart 2

The CBB Family March Budget Expenses Breakdown

We have 3 Canadian Bank Accounts with our Chequing account being with President’s Choice Financial. We chose PC Financial as one of our banks because we didn’t want to pay any bank fees. We also have never felt the need to see anyone personally inside of a bank but if we do Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) will gladly help us out as PC is affiliated with CIBC.

  1. Chequing- This is where all the bills get paid from.
  2. Emergency Savings Account- This is a high interest savings account.
  3. Regular Savings Account- This a savings account that holds our projected expenses money.
  4. Monthly Budget Total: $4611.65
  5. Monthly Net Income Total: $8544.05
  6. Total Coupons Used (includes points redeemed, big box store coupons, not just grocery coupons:=$91.38
  7. Projected Expenses: These are expenses we know we will pay for throughout year and save monthly for = $1282.90
  8. Total Expenses Actually Paid Out: $2927.97
  9. Total Expenses Actually Paid Out Calculated is $8544.05 (total monthly income) –$4333.18 (total monthly savings)–Projected expenses $1282.90 = $2927.97
  10. Actual Cash Savings Going Into Emergency Savings Funds: $4333.18
  11. Calculated is $8544.05 (total monthly net income) – $2927.97 (actual expenses paid out for the month)–$1282.90 (projected expenses) = $4333.18

March Budget Updates

What are Projected Expenses?

PE= A Projected Expense is money which is automatically saved each month ready for when the bill comes in or for when you need it as in the example below. We go over our projected expenses at the beginning of the year to set up our yearly budget and adjust as we go along if a new projected expense arises and needs to be added to the budget.

This has happened on many occasions but it’s bound to happen as we can’t predict everything we have to pay for over the course of the year. The important part for us is that we are saving for the expense and we no longer have to stress about taking money from our savings to pay for them. To learn more about projected expenses read Step 10 in my budgeting series.

Projected Expense Example: Clothing we budget $50 per month. If we don’t spend it we move it to the projected expenses account. This means we should have $600.00 per year for clothing to spend. We have to track that expense as we spend it.

Below is our Budgeted Amount for March-Money that we budgeted to spend minus the savings as that gets added once we see what is left for the month.

Budgeted Amount March 2013

Below is our Actual Budget Expenses for the month of March-What we actually spent plus our emergency savings

Actual Budget March 2013


March 2013 Goals Revisited
  • Network with some new Bloggers let’s say 2 for now, keep it simple.- PASS
  • Reach 4200 Facebook Fans- PASS  4830
  • Reach 1500 Twitter Followers-PASS 1528
  • Reach  900 Blog Subscribers-PASS 905
  • Order 1 personal finance book from the library and start reading it (not sure how well I will do with this one but I’ll try) Any recommendations?-FAIL I really need to get on this.
  • Clean out the garage mainly the salt on the floor and organize it a bit- FAIL
  • Get my flower seedlings going as I’ll need lots of flowers this year!- PASS
  • Guest Post for an awesome personal finance blog (not sure who yet though)- PASS  
  • Complete our Income Tax Returns on my own (fingers crossed I don’t mess it up)- PASS
April 2013 Goals
  • Pre-Pay another 20% off the mortgage
  • Pay the mortgage in full after we pre-pay but will see how this all comes together
  • Order a personal finance book from the library and actually start reading it
  • Reach 5000 Facebook Followers (lofty goal but I’ll try)
  • Reach 1575 Twitter Followers
  • Reach 920 Blog Subscribers – I’m just taking baby steps with the blog until I move to self-hosted soon
  • Work out the final touches on the new blog design with my designer
  • Clean out the garage
  • Guest Post for an awesome personal finance blog (if you want me, email me)
  • Take the winter tires off and store the winter beater to bring out my hot rod (not really but I like my set of wheels)
  • Clean out the inside of the vehicles
  • Start sanding down the deck
  • Get the indoor plants out
  • Clean the windows inside and out around the house
  • Scrub the front porch
Our Year To Date Percentages 2013

Year To Date Percentages March 2013

Overall: March overall was a good month for us as we had paid down the mortgage which left us with $417 a month expense that we would typically use to pre-pay but are now at our max for the year. We didn’t spend as much as we budgeted in March simply because we didn’t go out too much and we didn’t have anything to purchase. All good things come to an end though so we will see some healthy expenses in and around the next few months to cover renovations around the home. We will also be paying off our mortgage hopefully by the end of April 2013.

How did you do in March with your budget?

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