How To Be A Good Neighbour Without Monetary Expectations : The Saturday Weekend Review #135
JOIN THE GOOD NEIGBOURS CLUB
Being a good neighbour doesn’t mean you have to bake a bundt cake or invite them over for dinner just to be friendly. Generally a smile and hello will do.
We are lucky to have fantastic neighbours who have saved us big bucks this summer because they went above and beyond for us. It’s more of a balanced neighbour relationship where we help each other.
If you are one of those neighbours who value your time to the point where you will do nothing without monetary gain you probably won’t care to read any more of this post.
Not everyone who moves to a new neighbourhood cares to get friendly with their neighbours but it may be a great opportunity to save some money and make new friends.
In the past I’ve written about how you can have friends with benefits when it comes to paying for services you’d rather NOT pay for. That means if you are a mechanic and your neighbour is a plumber you could easily swap services for nothing to help each other save money.
As you may have heard, the wife and I are enjoying almost 3 weeks of holidays before I head back to my second job. We’ve decided to take some small road trips with-in Ontario to source out waterfalls, gardens and beautiful scenery with our son since he is still young. We were thinking next year would be a better time to take him to the zoo and other close attractions around Toronto since he may appreciate them more.
I don’t think there is anything wrong getting to know your neighbours, although we don’t get too comfy with them. We have always been friendly, good neighbours who stop to chat with anyone on the street. Most times our neighbours will be walking the dog, watering the lawn or just arriving home when we chat.
We do have one couple whom we have become good friends with over the years but they live further up our street. They have the WORST spying neighbours around and are always arguing back and forth. I’m convinced that every neigbourhood has one bad apple who always likes to cause trouble just to be heard or ‘in charge’.
Both neighbours have set up surveillance just to make sure they aren’t trespassing on each others’ property. The term “Neighbors from hell” doesn’t begin to describe them. They are considering moving now just to get away from them.
One of the worst things that can happen is to have feuding neighbours in your neighbourhood. No one likes to have the police or by-law officers showing up on a weekly basis. It gets old, real fast. Not only that but word spreads and if your street constantly has problems that might scare potential buyers away when houses go up for sale.
A Good Neighbour to the rescue
Since we have a few plants on our property which we normally bring in over the winter or we plant in the summer they need to get watered daily. It was also 2 years ago now that I put the new turf down and I pride myself that it is very green and has no weeds. I enjoy getting the compliments too but I work hard to keep it as nice as it is.
I was worried about what we would do to have the property watered while we were on vacation. We don’t have a big enough property to call for an in-ground sprinkler system so we decided to hire someone to help us. There’s nothing worse than investing time and money into gardening only to let beautiful plants die.
I put an online ad up and had a few people reply wanting $25-$45 a day just to come and water and then mow the lawn weekly. That’s just under $400 with tax for 2 weeks of property maintenance.
That’s pretty pricey but I guess fair if you want to pay a company to come around daily to take care of your property. While having a conversation with our next door neighbour I mentioned we were going away. We always look after his place and feed their cat when they travel.
Right away he told us to not worry about hiring anyone and that they would water our plants and mow the lawn for us. A huge smile came upon my face as if a stress was taken off my shoulders. He wants no money in return although I’ll likely buy him a case of his favourite beer. He truly is the good neighbour we all hope to have living next door.
Sometimes there are fantastic endings to a story, like this one . Now, we’re off on our vacation without any property worry.
Do you consider yourself a good neighbour?
CBB Week At A Glance
Hi Everyone!
I’m on vacation this week and next so that will give me some time to get caught up on a few things including the bathroom renovation.
We are planning to do some road trips in between driving to my wife’s parents house and possibly some other small towns around Ontario.
We love to visit waterfalls and parks with lots to photograph. If we are around on Saturday I’m sure the wife will have me out at garage sales which we both love but hardly get a chance to do.
This week I managed to score a KidKraft Table for $10 which I brought back to mint condition with a bit of elbow grease.
We may use the table outdoors although we already have a small table and umbrella which our son uses. It’s just a plastic table and chairs we bought off Kijiji last year for $5 but in mint condition.
The good thing about the table is that it’s portable where the solid wood table is not. The other option is to use it indoors as a craft table.
So, not too much going on this past week apart from getting ready to go back to my second job in a few weeks. We are also thinking about a small birthday party for our son who will be 1 soon. Boy does time ever fly!
Some of those bakery shop birthday cakes are pretty pricey running upwards of $100 with fondant additions. I don’t know if i will just make one myself or buy one. I know I could buy a slab cake at Costco for about $20 which is reasonable because it’s huge.
I might miss a post in the next week because I’m not around and didn’t plan anything because I’m just not ahead of myself with life. I do however have 2 great guest posts coming up this week so please have a read and enjoy.
How was your week?
Published This Week
Just in case you’ve missed any of my blog posts this week I will share them all below.
If you have a question that you would like to ask Mr.CBB fill out the Contact Mr.CBB form on the Home Page and send in your questions.
If you want to share a story via a Fan Question only please ensure that there is minimum 500-1000 words and details… we love details!
Right now CBB is posting Tuesday (Grocery Game Challenge) , Thursday (Personal Finance Post), Saturday (Personal Finance and Weekly Wrap-Up and a recipe on Sunday!
- The Best Turkey Chili Recipe
- 11 Ways to Feed your Family when you have Little To No Money
- Why are you Being Frugal when you don’t have to be?
- 7 Ways to Save Money On Baby Items– She Knows Canada Post
Budget Brags
Submit your Deal or Brag:
Saving money while grocery shopping is essential in the CBB family and that’s why we share our grocery shops every week in The Grocery Game Challenge 2015.
What I love the most is when my fans share their amazing shops with me whether it be groceries or other deals they find at a garage sale, online or freebies!!!
If you have a brag that you want me to share email me at canadianbudgetbinder@yahoo.(ca) < remove brackets) or fill out my contact form by Friday each week to have your brag considered for the Saturday post.
Hi Mr.CBB,
I found this brand new Infantino Deluxe Go Cart shopping cart cover which we can use for our baby boy while out shopping. The cover retails between $35-40 . The price tag at the garage sale was for $3.00 and I paid $2.00.
-Jen P.
Making A Difference (MAD)
Note: If you are a personal finance blogger (anywhere around the world) and would like your blog to be MAD featured simply drop me an email and I’ll explain the process to you.
This is my way of giving back to the personal finance community through networking and sharing knowledge with my fans.
Today I’d like to welcome my blogger friends from !
Hello CBB readers,
My name is Pira and I’m the blogger behind FrugalistaFinance.com.
Growing up an only child, I had everything I ever wanted. I owned the trendiest clothes, the latest toys and even got a car when I turned 18.
I had no concept of money and only years later came to realize that in order to give me the world, my parents were in debt. I love them and hate them for it because it meant that moving into adulthood that I continued my spendy ways and became irresponsible with money.
My turning point came five years ago when I realized I was heading into my late 20’s with nothing to show for it except a pile of debt.
My parents did the best they could but I knew I wanted to do better. Since then I’ve turned my life around by slashing my spending, taking on a second job and investing my money.
During this time the personal finance community became my lifeline. It helped encourage me to reach my goals faster and I created my first blog incarnation (Cents & Nonsense) to help keep myself on track and share my story.
Thankfully, in recent years debt repayment has been eclipsed by wealth accumulation as my primary financial goal. With so many fantastic blogs out there (like CBB!) I can only hope that sharing my own experiences in my little corner of the internet might help inspire others to live their best, frugal life.
Join me as I discuss everything from home-ownership to life as a newlywed to investing in the stock market. Who says personal finance can’t be fun?
-Pira
Top Recipe
Food and grocery shopping is a BIG part of CBB because food is a large part of the budget which people struggle the most with.
If you are someone who would rather buy convenience meals or products consider cooking homemade meals or baking from scratch.
Not only will you save money but you will be proud of what you accomplished and you’ll see that from the smiles on those you feed.
If you don’t already know I have a second Facebook page called The Free Recipe Depot where I share recipes from other Food Bloggers from around the world.
I also share recipes on CBB once a week on Sundays either made by me or my in-house home blog cook Nicola Don!
This week our Top Recipe Pick goes to The Slow Roasted Italian for this amazing looking Blueberry Almond Breakfast Cake recipe. I can’t wait to make this in our kitchen!
Editor’s Pick
Every week I will pick a blog post of the week from around the web that I found interesting and want to share with you and an Editor’s top blog post pick.
Editor’s pick (That’s me Mr.CBB) this week goes to Mindy at Creative Money who wrote How Bacon Can Help You Get Your Spending Under Control.
She talks about grocery shopping for healthy food all the time when she really just wants mac n cheese or a Bacon, lettuce, Cheese and Avocado sandwich after work.
This is a great post about getting what you want so you eat less and spend less doing it. It’s about conscious about what you really want.
How people find CBB
Every week I get thousands of people visit Canadian Budget Binder because they did a search online and found my blog. Keep in mind any spelling errors below are because I share with you the exact way they typed their search engine query to land on my blog.
- The Welfare Diet Recipe-What?? Do I even want to know?
- Welfare Meals– There is NO such thing.
- Husband hoards his money should I leave him
- Welfare diet cookbook– Ok, I went looking for this and couldn’t find it. These are just frugal meals that don’t cost much to make. It has nothing to do with how you earn or receive your income.
- What is cheap in Bulk Barn?– Oh, not much haha! That $3 off when you spend $10 coupon goes a long way.
Thanks for dropping by and reading!
Don’t forget to subscribe to my daily blog post by entering your email address on the home page and verifying the subscription email once it is sent to you.
-Mr.CBB
Related Articles:
- The Saturday Weekend Review #131 : 5 Tell-Tale Signs It’s Time To Sell Your House
- The Saturday Weekend Review #132: Mom Dresses Child in Designer Clothes to show Wealth
- The Saturday Weekend Review #133: Property Seller Removes house listing after many frustrations
- The Saturday Weekend Review #134: 6 Ways to Give Back Without Monetary Expectations
Hmmm, that is a very interesting point about the semantics of using the term “welfare” diet instead of “tight budget” diet, especially since the word welfare is stigmatized. I was very interested about this woman’s work, so I read several articles about her, and she specialized in working with very low income families, including those on SNAP/food stamps which is a part of the American social assistance program.
After a little thought, if I were to create a cookbook, I would name it along the lines of “The Modern Country Woman’s Guide to Nutritious Meals in a Hurry”. I love the homecooked meals my mom and grandmother made on the farm, just that many of them weren’t so healthy, took a lot of time, and had a lot of packaged ingredients. Plus now, with so much exposure to “foreign” foods in my local supermarket, I have a bit more adventurous taste than they did.
That table outdoors a small table and umbrella is really cute! I had a perfect week, me and my friends went for a picnic with our kids.
I can’t recall how old your little guy is, but don’t think he can’t appreciate the animals yet! My daughter was in 7 mos old the first time we brought her to the zoo (it was in our community and pretty cheap $12 for each adult and she was free. They let you use what you pay for the day’s tickets if you decide you want to buy the annual membership). She was absolutely fascinated! Her eyes would light up once they landed on the animals. She practiced her animal sounds and clapped her hands. We wore that annual membership out! 7 years later and we request a pass for Christmas every year.
Lots of little local fairs will do petting zoos too…they love. My oldest now wants be an animal doctor as a side hustle for her architecture career!
He’s almost a year now but we thought we would wait until next year to start bringing him to the zoo. We did bring him to Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto and he loved it.
You are probably getting all the welfare diet search hits because of your post a few days ago on feeding your family with little money. There is actually a “welfare diet book” and it is an amazing resource http://www.leannebrown.com/ for everyone who likes to cook.
I just don’t understand why the “welfare” part Beth. Food is food to me and it doesn’t matter where we get our money from. I don’t know. That looks like a nice book but it doesn’t say it’s a Welfare diet book it’s all about cheap eats. Although once you read on you see this,
“Good and Cheap is a cookbook for people with very tight budgets, particularly those on SNAP/Food Stamp benefits”
I don’t know, just seems odd they would make a cookbook after a source of income rather than just tight budget or limited income. I guess there is a cookbook for everything. What would you name your cookbook if you created one Beth? The pdf looks interesting. Thanks Beth 🙂 Oh, the hits are from 2 years ago when I did the Welfare Food Challenge. It was a challenge to show how difficult it was to buy food on money from the government.
I can’t wait to have a good look over that cook book Beth!!! I found out the other day our local library now has that book so I got on the waiting list for it!! I’m number 4 on the list so it might take a few weeks but I can handle that.
We have a grouchy cuss next door but I am pretty good at ignoring him. I’ll give him a nice cheery hello if I see him. On the other side of us is a very small duplex with an older woman in the back section. Two of her three daughters live close by but both work and if she needs a ride or what ever she knows I am right here. Both of her girls have children in university, one grandson is starting his second year and the other’s girl is starting her first year. Both at the same place up north. The two cousins are close so they are all happy about this. The dear lady has a medical appointment in London on Sept 1 so I will be driving her to that as the daughters will be taking the two cousins up north to university then. I’ve taken her to places before and I am glad to help her out.
We used to have neighbors that would come in and look after our cats back in the day if we went to the in-laws for the weekend or for a few days. I looked after their dog when they went away… it all works out. I liked that I had someone checking on the house too.
That’s quite the little seat cover Jen got for Conner!!!
Have a good time on your holiday and drive safe!!!