These are words that no one wants to hear when one is sticking to a budget and digging out change from the peanut butter jar to spring for milk at the end a long month......"Mom! Somethings leaking from the furnace....".
The first word out of my mouth started with mother and ended with something that sounds like trucker. We never get a friggin' break when it comes to this house!! It's been endless home owner pain from buying a fixer upper from a previous owner that jury rigged everything from the counters to the electrical to the roofing to the plumbing. Its been a nightmare from the word go.
In our first month that we lived here, the dishwasher and the central vac broke...complete replacement. The cost of replacing the carpeting that we negotiated into the deal went over budget when it was discovered that there were three layers of carpeting, with the last layer glued to the concrete foundation to keep it in place, I guess. We also discovered that the oil tank needed replacing after our first delivery of oil....there is an expiry on these things and ours was spoiled.
Too bad the home inspector missed this stuff, along with the glass windowed death trap of a door that we have between our garage and our home (think Carbon Monoxide poisoning that could kill us all), and the improper sheathing on our roof (anyone standing on our roof would have noticed), and the electrical additions made by someone clearly not qualified. Our panel is messed up and we frequently have plugs blow out on us. The wiring to our closet is backwards and we can only get the outside house lights to go on, if the closet light in our master bedroom is on too.
He also missed two leaking showers, one so filled with black mold that once the plastic fix up job was removed, its a wonder we haven't all come down with pleurisy since. Both of the showers leak since the previous owner forgot to solder the pipes when he installed one into a corner of the washroom and the other when he converted a bathroom closet into a shower. We have been able to fix one, but the other just remains shut off until we can afford to fix it. Having one shower for a family of five, with tween girls sucks. Not to mention that none of our 2.5 bathrooms had any electrical outlets in them, so for the first two years, we had to blow dry hair in the dining room.
We had stolen cable, and phone lines that were split throughout the house to make way for cable and phone lines in every room....including one phone jack right next to the toilet.....just in case you need to make a call while taking a crap and a cable line into my lazy susan, just in case the macaroni doesn't want to miss an episode of Ellen.
Last fall, our home forever changed my career path from one of business owner to employee. It also brought my marriage as close to a breaking point that I think any marriage can bear. Luckily we survived to see another year but I don't think we are alone in having a house drive a wedge between a couple.
We put off dealing with the roof for as long as we could. That is until our insurance company insisted that it be replaced by the end of 2011 or we could forgo our insurance coverage. We did all the right things, got quotes from recommended roofers and eavestroughers, made the big decision with what company to go with and set the date. What we didn't know is that a perfect storm of hell was awaiting us and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it.
Since the previous roofing had been done by the previous homeowner, who from here on in I will refer to as Jackass, we never had troughing that actually worked. When it rained, all of the water flowed somewhat evenly around the house, never actually entering the roofing system or being directed into the underground leaders.
When the new roofing was completed, just in time for a record breaking amount of rainfall the East Coast has ever seen, the eavestroughing worked for the first time, redirecting all of the copious amounts of water into the existing underground leaders that were never checked by the company to see if they were overgrown with tree roots, or plugged with leaves or damaged in any way. What this resulted in, was a naturally occurring Niagara Falls pointed directly at our basement, which in turn flooded and damaged our main living areas, our daughters bedrooms, my office (business requirement) and the only bathroom with working shower we have.
Keep in mind that this whole train wreck of events was instigated by our insurance company...certainly they would have our back. The first words out of the representatives mouth as I panic stricken relayed our rising floodwater situation to her were, "Maam....you best get your belongings out of the basement as quickly as possible since this here policy only covers up to $10,000 of damage and the tear out alone is often between 5,000 and 7,000, not including any replacement of belongings or rebuild."
Think mother....think trucker. The following day, the roofing company relayed its bad news too. In a little field trip up to my roof, I was shown that if I did a little tap dance across the main part of my roof, I could take a little trip down through into my attic. The previous sheathing has been put up by Jackass, all of the plywood was different, some of it with major gaps in between, some with little pieces fit together like something you would see on Tetris.
I was informed that the plywood would cost us an additional $7000 on top of a roofing job already priced at $18,000. I contacted Home Depot and asked them what the required amount of plywood would cost me....$500. After some lengthy discussions with my roofer and some threats that he would walk off the job, he squeezed $1000 off the bill. Apparently, he felt bad about the flooding situation and decided to do us a favour. Never mind that we were between a rock and a hard place, with another big rainstorm on the way and no friggin' roof on the house AT ALL!!
Day three of the triumvirate week from Hell finished off with our family van and my business vehicle dying...cracked block, all gaskets gone, not worth replacing. We did not know it at the time, but we were about to be $35,000 in debt, adding $300 a month in car payments, and living in our upstairs surrounded by all of our furniture piled on top of one another crammed into two bedrooms for the next 2.5 months and me with no job since I needed the house and the van to run my catering business.
A big part of the reason why the Austerity Measures budget began in our house was to begin dealing with our debt. The budget we set was to aggressively pay it all off in 2.5 years since we knew that there would be other things....like the kitchen with the state of the art cardboard cabinetry that has a plastic finish that continues to chip off and cut us when reaching for the breakfast cereal.
It's not just that either.......the whole kitchen needs to be gutted, the floor slopes a good two feet at one side and we have 2 x 4 's to level the fridge. There is a section of linoleum cut out in one corner that has never been replaced and acts a sucking vortex of all manner of dust bunnies and disgusting food remnants that get caught up in it. We have two plugs that have been replaced by an electrician twice that keep blowing on us...think Jackass.
We have painted 1970's tile as decor and the lighting consists of a white rattan ceiling fan....which I recommend if you want to collect and then spray dust over top of your food as garnish whenever you turn it on. We clean it, but a ceiling fan is a really stupid lighting choice for a kitchen. I'm lucky I don't cut off my own fingers with the amount of light it puts off since it is also positioned as far away from the counter as possible. Or maybe it could be that the counters aren't level at all...its hard to tell.
We also have our "spa bathroom", the one with the closet shower that doesn't work. Did I mention that it also includes a truck sized jacuzzi tub that was installed by Jackass and juts out into the hallway and the guest room. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't bruise my shins wandering into the bathroom in the am when I am not quite awake.
We have two different hardwoods in our living room/dining room space....it wouldn't be so bad if Jackass had laid them in the same friggin' direction....but no, he must have been drinking that day because the maple one ends right in the foyer for everyone to see and then heads off in a different direction in oak. To top it all of we have cherry laminate that connects to it in two of our bedrooms and prison coloured grey tile in the third bedroom. Good thing Jackass installed the tile too, with 2 inch grout lines that give it that "homey" feel.
We have two decks, one you can stand on for now and one that you can't unless you are feeling a little dangerous. Both were installed with no footers, are not actually attached to the house and have three 2 x 4 's nailed together as supports. On top of it, they were painted and despite our attempts to keep it looking freshly painted and nice, it requires bucket loads of paint every summer to keep up with it. Who paints decks?!!! Jackass, that's who.
We need all new windows and doors, especially doors. Our patio door is so hard to open that you could get a hernia while trying to bbq some hamburgers on our deck. We are also missing the patio door screen and even though we could get a breeze in the summer to cool down the house, we can't open the door without getting a houseful of bugs to go with it. Our daughters bedroom windows are so warped, they barely close properly and if we still lived in Toronto, it would be a safety issue for sure.
Which brings me back to the furnace. The repairman just left....I would cry but it would just cost me kleenex and since I now work in a grocery store, I know it doesn't go on sale until next week. I've mentioned in my blogs before that my husband is a bit of a heat Nazi....he hates spending money on it, friends bring sweaters and slippers....I never take offense since he turns the furnace off from April to September. I have more magic bags in my bed than some people have lovers. I am sitting here with a work order that states," Customer should consider replacing system with cast iron cold start boiler and indirect tank since existing system is 20 years old and damaged by water leaks most likely caused from turning boiler off in summer months."
Guess who's feeling like a Jackass now?
We've just spent the last five months on a $500 grocery budget so that we could pay $5000 off of our debt load and now we are going to be faced with a new debt load of around, let's say, $5000. Our 2% raises that we received last year have now been eliminated by an increase in both CPP and EI. Since January 1st, our power rate, water rate, mortgage rate and weekly gas costs have increased. Don't forget interest rate increases on the lines of credit we have our debt sitting on. This leaves our miscellaneous budget for gifts, field trips, postage, a bottle of wine, a cup of coffee, a noose....basically anything that isn't an absolute necessity at nothing. While these things are not essentials, they are the expenses that make you feel as though you are not just working to live, if you know what I mean.
I've had enough. Enough of the stupid budget, the tracking of every single expense and the staring at the spreadsheet on my computer screen waiting for the debt to disappear. Enough of trying to squeeze another week out of a bag of carrots. I'm tired of wearing long johns while watching tv at night and worrying about the extra lights the kids left on in the family room. I'm weary of waiting another ten years to get to a kitchen and bathroom renovation that we desperately need now. Most of all, I am tired of us working so hard, trading time with our kids so we can spend money on things that bring us little joy like furnaces, electrical plugs and eavetroughs.
Something has got to give....I really don't want it to be us. We have given enough to this house of hell, that should be our home of happiness. If there was ever a fairy god mother, we certainly could use her help now.
This is why I am submitting this entire blog post to the Ramar, home sweeter home contest. They want to know how a $100,000 renovation would change our families life. http://homesweeterhome.ca/
Winning a renovation of that magnitude would erase the next eight to fifteen years of stress and struggle trying to juggle the costs of fixing our broken dream home and caring for our family. It would mean that we could enjoy our home now instead of later when our children are already gone to University or leading their own lives somewhere else. It would mean that we could spend our money on things that really matter, like our kids education, that honeymoon we never got around to or a trip to Dairy Queen for an impromptu ice cream.
We honestly thought that we could manage better financially when we purchased our house but like many other families in the same struggle, we had too many problems that were unexpected and too many things went all at once leaving us with little chance to catch up. I think back to what we envisioned our family life would look like in the excitement of buying our "broken" but fixable dream home. None of it has gone according to plan and many of those dreams have instead become nightmarish experiences and painful memories with what seems like no ray of hope that things will get better any time soon.
We still believe in our broken dream home, that she has the potential to become a great home. We certainly have given her a lot of love already, but we are running out of options financially when it comes to giving her the TLC she needs. Living in Nova Scotia where the incomes are lower and the taxes are higher sure isn't making it any easier. Somehow we will find a way....maybe this contest could be a little miracle for us, since I've not a clue what else to do.
We are your average Canadian family and home ownership is making us crazy!!!
Friday, 15 February 2013
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Crowbars Are A Girls Best Friend.....
There is something about January that drives people round the bend....seriously, think about it. Maybe its the pressure of overly ambitious New Years Resolutions, the guaranteed horrible Canadian Winter setting in, the constant darkness, the twinkle lights coming down or the big December hangover when the credit card bills roll in that make us crazy but it all adds up.
For most people....January is a month that starts on a high and ends with a crash and burn. We are on week three now, and for most people that means that you've already blown the diet, the exercise regime, the abstaining from smoking, drinking and other bad habits. Don't worry you are not alone.....
We did our best to stick to a budget in December and achieved a far better end result than any Decembers in our history together, but running over the bills at the end of it all, we still blew the grocery budget and the miscellaneous budget mostly due to eating and drinking indulgences for ourselves and a few friendly visits from loved ones.
Renewing our vows to stick to the Austerity Measures budget, we toasted in the New Year with a cheap bottle of Nasty Asti to celebrate our commitment to pay down the debt in 2013. It was a great feeling to know that out of the four months since we started sticking to one we met the budget for three of those.....
Flash forward to two weeks later and as I am sitting at my desk inputting the latest expenditures into our spreadsheet, I feel a sudden case of the Frowny Downy's coming on. Staring at the computer screen, I feel a sense of frustration at the numbers, as if I could just will away the money we have left owing on our roofing job and flood disaster.
With a click of the mouse I could make it all disappear and believe me, I want it to. For example, we have 28 months left of living off of a budget that only allows for $500 in groceries for a family of 5 per month, and $200 for extras like Tim Horton's, trips to the Spa to remove my mustache, fun family outings with our kids and other money things that suck that we need to pay that we haven't budgeted for.
It's like starting a diet and all of a sudden all you can think about is chocolate cake. It is exactly what happened to me last weekend, when I woke up and went off the deep end. We have what I refer to as my broken dream home....it is an amazing house that we bought as an investment of love that keeps us way busier than ever anticipated. If you have never seen the Money Pit with Shelley Long and Tom Hanks, and you have a broken dream home of your own, you need to watch it. It will keep you from jumping out the basement window on the days when you just can't take it anymore.
I woke up and wandered into the same horrible looking bathroom that I have wandered into for the last four years and maybe it was the January miseries that pushed me over the edge, but I just couldn't take one more day of the ugly puke beige colour and the 1980's sailboat border.
Nor could I stare at the mirror that the previous owner put on the wall probably found at the local dump, with the trim that he used and nailed directly to the wall around it in a lame attempt to pretend like it was an actual framed mirror.
No more could I tolerate the rusted knobs on the home crafters DIY bathroom cabinetry that require me to get a tetnus shot in order to retrieve my lip gloss. Added to my moment of inner furor is the realization that we have zero budget for any repairs for the next three years!!!! That means 36 more months of sailboat salutations that make me want to scream!!!
Like an out of body experience, out to the garage I went in a frenzy to find anything and everything I could use to do something before 2016. Dragging paint cans left over from previous reno's off the shelf, I determined I might have enough paint to do the job including the trim. Found extra paint rollers, clean brushes, wall paper remover, and window trim since the 1970's trim full of screw holes was NOT going back up. Grabbed my crowbar and hammer, screwdrivers and paint cans and stormed back into the house to confront my ugly bathroom with an attitude of Momma's gonna knock you out!
The first thing on my agenda was the ceramic wall mounted toilet paper holder and towel bar, long since painted over several times and the wooden bar in our towel holder replaced years ago by a stick probably found in our back woods, again by Mr. Cheap, the previous owner of our home and the reason why our home is in such a sorry state. Whoever came up with these ceramic wall mounted wonders, most likely a man, should be kicked in the nuts. (I can just picture the guy too, putting them in, saying..."Look honey, we will never need to replace the toilet paper holder and towel bar ever again. Its in there good and tight.")
As I smack away at the crowbar with my trusty hammer, in the background I hear my kids yelling at my husband as they run towards the bathroom in excitement, " Hurry Dad!!! Mom's smashing stuff......". Yes, indeed, Mom's smashing stuff, which means Dad definitely doesn't want to know what's going on....too many years with me and he knows its best to leave me in my madness.
My youngest two spot the tools and want to get in on the action. "Can we smash something Mom?" Boy, this could get really nuts with the three of us on board so I relegate them to using the screw drivers to remove the doors off the crappy cabinet and to pull out all the extra nails we seem to have in the walls for no apparent reason. Tens minutes into demolition, Lucy lets me know that this is the best day ever! I agree it is as we remove the last sailboat and take out the plastic vertical blinds caked with dust and yellowed with age...it is indeed a better day.
I get Lucy to work on painting the cabinets a fresh white trim colour....this being the easiest reno job ever since there was no agonizing over whether we should use maple syrup from Benjamin Moore paint or maple spice....we chose colours based on how much was left in the cans in our garage. I get her to paint the trim too and somehow she manages to get more on herself than the trim but she does it with a smile so who really cares?
In a day we manage to get the new chocolate sundae paint on the walls, redo the cabinet in white, paint a bookcase that was hanging around to use as storage for our toiletries and cut the trim for the window. The following day, I head out to Home Depot to pick up new knobs for the cabinet, a mirror found in the 70% off pile that needed a little touch up, patches for holes left by my demolition and some new holders of paper products. Total cost of renovation....$100, out of our miscellaneous budget for the month. Cost of returning my mindset to sane again.....priceless.
It can seem at moments that living on a tight budget is tough. There is no doubt that it has forced us to be a lot more creative with money than we have ever been. Waking up into a new bathroom the following morning....I realized that being on a tight budget is not as bad as it seems with the right attitude. Its okay to fall off the wagon every once in a while too, so long as we apply the 80/20 rule that says we get it right more often than we get it wrong.
I am currently reading, "Mindfullness and Money: The Buddhist Path to Abundance", in which the author describes five precepts to the path of abundance. The third precept deals with Cultivating Contentment which teaches us how to deal with our passions, our desire for stimulation, intensity and excitement. You may think I am talking about 40 shades instead of my impromptu bathroom renovation but it is much of the same thing and it manifests in our lives daily.
"Our desires go to the very heart of who we are. They shape and define us. What we take, what we push out, under the sway of craving and aversion make us who we are now. There are two kinds of desire: skillful and unskillful; reactive or creative."
The book goes on to describe how we can train ourselves to check in with our desires to convert our unskillful, reactive desires in order to make space for more skillful, creative desires to flourish.
"The root of all reactive desires is the deep, but often barely conscious sense we have that somewhere, somehow, we are currently incomplete. There is a hole deep in the center of each one of us, that we try to fill with sensory experience. Whether it is a chocolate bar, a cigarette, a new car, more money, the perfect vacation or a complete bathroom renovation, there's always something out there that we think will make us complete."
Certainly I woke up with an powerful itch that needed to be scratched last weekend, and while the relief was instant from the moment of the first crack of the hammer, I am so glad that I chose to work with what I had on hand instead of allowing the real urge of wanting to take the entire room out from the faux marble retro sink to the seniors geriatric toilet to the converted shower in a closet.
According to the author, Dominic Houlder,"No other modern people have consumed as much as we do today, and none have been so discontented. There are many apparent causes for our discontent such as social fragmentation, the pace of change, and the constant subjection to brand advertising." (I blame the Property Brothers for my bathroom reno...they made me do it!)
"The real issue is that deep down, at a part of our being we're barely conscious of, lies a sense of our own incompleteness." Perhaps this is true, I know that I felt a sense of being torn from the New Millennium with the horrible state of my bathroom since it is the first room that I start my day off in everyday....
Is the point of the third precept that we all have to give up our candy bars, our massages from the local spa, our fuzzy slippers, mochachino lattes and household comforts? Not really....it is all about having some conscious awareness when it comes to consumption and bringing the balance of material acquisition back into proportion, while learning to maintain our humanity and creativity in the context of a consumerist society.
Dominic offers five antidotes to compulsive spending urges Buddha-style. They are:
1) Cultivate the Opposite: Instead of focusing on the dream bathroom renovation with the rain shower fit for two and being bothered by our toilet that is so close to the sink that I can wash my hands while still pooping.....I could focus on applying my mental energy to enjoying what we already have or by experiencing beauty without craving by visiting an art gallery, walking in the park with my kids or catching up with a girlfriend on the phone.
2) Play out the Consequences: Thinking about where we would be financially next month if I had of allowed my desires to go unchecked would affect the things that really matter to me. The stress and worry of financial burdens quickly crowds out the good stuff in our daily lives. Most stuff is simply not worth it.
3) Cultivate a sky-like mind: My mind is far from sky like, unless you are referring to Atlantic skies which can change at a moments notice, but understanding that I don't need to act on everything that floats through my brain is important. Allowing thoughts to pass through like clouds, allows us to simply attend to the feeling, see where it is coming from, and reflect on it as opposed to acting on it.
4) Suppression: Not to be confused with repression, sometimes you just gotta say no. We don't deserve everything....that's just crazy talk. Yes, you have been a good girl or boy, that doesn't mean we get whatever we want. Tell yourself no.....even if it means saying no to something you really want like a double sink to share with your husband.
5) Make a Commitment: "We don't work to overcome our reactive desires because they are bad in themselves. Rather, we do so because we want to make room for our more creative desires to flourish, and our creative desires are often tied, not to material possessions, but to somewhat more intangible matters- to our relationships with friends or family, to our personal development and to causes we really believe in."
This is the old concept that when you say no to one thing, you are really saying yes to something else and vise versa....there is always a yin/yang experience when you make decisions. Figuring out what opens up when you say yes or no makes the difference in our ability to maintain commitment.
We have much hidden wealth and it truly is the key to our capacity for happiness. They key to my completeness in my bathroom renovation was not so much the renovation itself or the satisfaction of walking in the following morning, but the joy I got from seeing my son totally engaged in using screwdrivers removing hardware from cupboard doors and from Lucy's exclamation of, "This is the best day ever!" as she slapped paint on cabinetry.
We are your average Canadian Family and we smash stuff at a bargain price.....
For most people....January is a month that starts on a high and ends with a crash and burn. We are on week three now, and for most people that means that you've already blown the diet, the exercise regime, the abstaining from smoking, drinking and other bad habits. Don't worry you are not alone.....
We did our best to stick to a budget in December and achieved a far better end result than any Decembers in our history together, but running over the bills at the end of it all, we still blew the grocery budget and the miscellaneous budget mostly due to eating and drinking indulgences for ourselves and a few friendly visits from loved ones.
Renewing our vows to stick to the Austerity Measures budget, we toasted in the New Year with a cheap bottle of Nasty Asti to celebrate our commitment to pay down the debt in 2013. It was a great feeling to know that out of the four months since we started sticking to one we met the budget for three of those.....
Flash forward to two weeks later and as I am sitting at my desk inputting the latest expenditures into our spreadsheet, I feel a sudden case of the Frowny Downy's coming on. Staring at the computer screen, I feel a sense of frustration at the numbers, as if I could just will away the money we have left owing on our roofing job and flood disaster.
With a click of the mouse I could make it all disappear and believe me, I want it to. For example, we have 28 months left of living off of a budget that only allows for $500 in groceries for a family of 5 per month, and $200 for extras like Tim Horton's, trips to the Spa to remove my mustache, fun family outings with our kids and other money things that suck that we need to pay that we haven't budgeted for.
It's like starting a diet and all of a sudden all you can think about is chocolate cake. It is exactly what happened to me last weekend, when I woke up and went off the deep end. We have what I refer to as my broken dream home....it is an amazing house that we bought as an investment of love that keeps us way busier than ever anticipated. If you have never seen the Money Pit with Shelley Long and Tom Hanks, and you have a broken dream home of your own, you need to watch it. It will keep you from jumping out the basement window on the days when you just can't take it anymore.
I woke up and wandered into the same horrible looking bathroom that I have wandered into for the last four years and maybe it was the January miseries that pushed me over the edge, but I just couldn't take one more day of the ugly puke beige colour and the 1980's sailboat border.
Nor could I stare at the mirror that the previous owner put on the wall probably found at the local dump, with the trim that he used and nailed directly to the wall around it in a lame attempt to pretend like it was an actual framed mirror.
No more could I tolerate the rusted knobs on the home crafters DIY bathroom cabinetry that require me to get a tetnus shot in order to retrieve my lip gloss. Added to my moment of inner furor is the realization that we have zero budget for any repairs for the next three years!!!! That means 36 more months of sailboat salutations that make me want to scream!!!
Like an out of body experience, out to the garage I went in a frenzy to find anything and everything I could use to do something before 2016. Dragging paint cans left over from previous reno's off the shelf, I determined I might have enough paint to do the job including the trim. Found extra paint rollers, clean brushes, wall paper remover, and window trim since the 1970's trim full of screw holes was NOT going back up. Grabbed my crowbar and hammer, screwdrivers and paint cans and stormed back into the house to confront my ugly bathroom with an attitude of Momma's gonna knock you out!
The first thing on my agenda was the ceramic wall mounted toilet paper holder and towel bar, long since painted over several times and the wooden bar in our towel holder replaced years ago by a stick probably found in our back woods, again by Mr. Cheap, the previous owner of our home and the reason why our home is in such a sorry state. Whoever came up with these ceramic wall mounted wonders, most likely a man, should be kicked in the nuts. (I can just picture the guy too, putting them in, saying..."Look honey, we will never need to replace the toilet paper holder and towel bar ever again. Its in there good and tight.")
As I smack away at the crowbar with my trusty hammer, in the background I hear my kids yelling at my husband as they run towards the bathroom in excitement, " Hurry Dad!!! Mom's smashing stuff......". Yes, indeed, Mom's smashing stuff, which means Dad definitely doesn't want to know what's going on....too many years with me and he knows its best to leave me in my madness.
My youngest two spot the tools and want to get in on the action. "Can we smash something Mom?" Boy, this could get really nuts with the three of us on board so I relegate them to using the screw drivers to remove the doors off the crappy cabinet and to pull out all the extra nails we seem to have in the walls for no apparent reason. Tens minutes into demolition, Lucy lets me know that this is the best day ever! I agree it is as we remove the last sailboat and take out the plastic vertical blinds caked with dust and yellowed with age...it is indeed a better day.
I get Lucy to work on painting the cabinets a fresh white trim colour....this being the easiest reno job ever since there was no agonizing over whether we should use maple syrup from Benjamin Moore paint or maple spice....we chose colours based on how much was left in the cans in our garage. I get her to paint the trim too and somehow she manages to get more on herself than the trim but she does it with a smile so who really cares?
In a day we manage to get the new chocolate sundae paint on the walls, redo the cabinet in white, paint a bookcase that was hanging around to use as storage for our toiletries and cut the trim for the window. The following day, I head out to Home Depot to pick up new knobs for the cabinet, a mirror found in the 70% off pile that needed a little touch up, patches for holes left by my demolition and some new holders of paper products. Total cost of renovation....$100, out of our miscellaneous budget for the month. Cost of returning my mindset to sane again.....priceless.
It can seem at moments that living on a tight budget is tough. There is no doubt that it has forced us to be a lot more creative with money than we have ever been. Waking up into a new bathroom the following morning....I realized that being on a tight budget is not as bad as it seems with the right attitude. Its okay to fall off the wagon every once in a while too, so long as we apply the 80/20 rule that says we get it right more often than we get it wrong.
I am currently reading, "Mindfullness and Money: The Buddhist Path to Abundance", in which the author describes five precepts to the path of abundance. The third precept deals with Cultivating Contentment which teaches us how to deal with our passions, our desire for stimulation, intensity and excitement. You may think I am talking about 40 shades instead of my impromptu bathroom renovation but it is much of the same thing and it manifests in our lives daily.
"Our desires go to the very heart of who we are. They shape and define us. What we take, what we push out, under the sway of craving and aversion make us who we are now. There are two kinds of desire: skillful and unskillful; reactive or creative."
The book goes on to describe how we can train ourselves to check in with our desires to convert our unskillful, reactive desires in order to make space for more skillful, creative desires to flourish.
"The root of all reactive desires is the deep, but often barely conscious sense we have that somewhere, somehow, we are currently incomplete. There is a hole deep in the center of each one of us, that we try to fill with sensory experience. Whether it is a chocolate bar, a cigarette, a new car, more money, the perfect vacation or a complete bathroom renovation, there's always something out there that we think will make us complete."
Certainly I woke up with an powerful itch that needed to be scratched last weekend, and while the relief was instant from the moment of the first crack of the hammer, I am so glad that I chose to work with what I had on hand instead of allowing the real urge of wanting to take the entire room out from the faux marble retro sink to the seniors geriatric toilet to the converted shower in a closet.
According to the author, Dominic Houlder,"No other modern people have consumed as much as we do today, and none have been so discontented. There are many apparent causes for our discontent such as social fragmentation, the pace of change, and the constant subjection to brand advertising." (I blame the Property Brothers for my bathroom reno...they made me do it!)
"The real issue is that deep down, at a part of our being we're barely conscious of, lies a sense of our own incompleteness." Perhaps this is true, I know that I felt a sense of being torn from the New Millennium with the horrible state of my bathroom since it is the first room that I start my day off in everyday....
Is the point of the third precept that we all have to give up our candy bars, our massages from the local spa, our fuzzy slippers, mochachino lattes and household comforts? Not really....it is all about having some conscious awareness when it comes to consumption and bringing the balance of material acquisition back into proportion, while learning to maintain our humanity and creativity in the context of a consumerist society.
Dominic offers five antidotes to compulsive spending urges Buddha-style. They are:
1) Cultivate the Opposite: Instead of focusing on the dream bathroom renovation with the rain shower fit for two and being bothered by our toilet that is so close to the sink that I can wash my hands while still pooping.....I could focus on applying my mental energy to enjoying what we already have or by experiencing beauty without craving by visiting an art gallery, walking in the park with my kids or catching up with a girlfriend on the phone.
2) Play out the Consequences: Thinking about where we would be financially next month if I had of allowed my desires to go unchecked would affect the things that really matter to me. The stress and worry of financial burdens quickly crowds out the good stuff in our daily lives. Most stuff is simply not worth it.
3) Cultivate a sky-like mind: My mind is far from sky like, unless you are referring to Atlantic skies which can change at a moments notice, but understanding that I don't need to act on everything that floats through my brain is important. Allowing thoughts to pass through like clouds, allows us to simply attend to the feeling, see where it is coming from, and reflect on it as opposed to acting on it.
4) Suppression: Not to be confused with repression, sometimes you just gotta say no. We don't deserve everything....that's just crazy talk. Yes, you have been a good girl or boy, that doesn't mean we get whatever we want. Tell yourself no.....even if it means saying no to something you really want like a double sink to share with your husband.
5) Make a Commitment: "We don't work to overcome our reactive desires because they are bad in themselves. Rather, we do so because we want to make room for our more creative desires to flourish, and our creative desires are often tied, not to material possessions, but to somewhat more intangible matters- to our relationships with friends or family, to our personal development and to causes we really believe in."
This is the old concept that when you say no to one thing, you are really saying yes to something else and vise versa....there is always a yin/yang experience when you make decisions. Figuring out what opens up when you say yes or no makes the difference in our ability to maintain commitment.
We have much hidden wealth and it truly is the key to our capacity for happiness. They key to my completeness in my bathroom renovation was not so much the renovation itself or the satisfaction of walking in the following morning, but the joy I got from seeing my son totally engaged in using screwdrivers removing hardware from cupboard doors and from Lucy's exclamation of, "This is the best day ever!" as she slapped paint on cabinetry.
We are your average Canadian Family and we smash stuff at a bargain price.....
Sunday, 30 December 2012
2013 is gonna be a rocky year for this Rabbit...
For everyone born in the sign of the Rabbit, 2013 is a tough, stressful and tiresome year according to Feng Shui forecast.
http://www.fengshuimall.com/feng-shui-forecast-2013
It is good to know, so that I can be prepared to face the Year of the Snake head on. I am told to "Be positive and strengthen myself! To stay strong and healthy this year to face the year’s challenges and to try not to overwork and get enough sleep." Both of which for most people are not a challenge but for this bunny getting enough sleep and not overworking myself is like asking me to breathe regularly.
Apparently my spirit chi and vitality energy is lacking, and I will not be as enthusiastic as last year in my approach to work, or life. I thought the energy drag I have felt as I head towards the New Year was mostly do the chocolate hang over, lack of exercise and the laying around I have done over the Christmas holidays.
There's no doubt that my energy levels feel a little off kilter, but like everyone, I plan on making New Years resolutions that more than likely I will have difficulty keeping since only 8% of Americans actually follow through....sorry no Canadian statistics, but I doubt there is much of a difference.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/
Just as a side note, the top 10 New Years resolutions for 2012 are (no surprise)...
1) Losing Weight: I need to say goodbye to 12 pounds minus whatever I gained over the holidays. Sorry not willing to look until Jan 1st...until then glug, glug, glug and someone pass me a chocolate truffle!!
2) Getting organized: Yippee! I am on this one....thankfully I am Mrs. Organized. That doesn't mean my plans always follow through or that I don't single-handedly organize my own disasters. I can over plan days like Mrs. Claus can bake too many fruit cakes....and I do this often. It is a curse and sometimes a super power....hence the lack of sleep and down time.
3) Spending less, saving more: No kidding! This is a resolution that got started in September and will be carried on into in January. Its not about how much money you make, but how much you keep. I plan on keeping most of it in 2013 despite my inner rabbit's dire predictions in the area of finance for 2013. There is no doubt that focusing on consolidating my resources is good advice considering the focus that I now have for reducing our debt and sticking to a budget. There may even be an awesome ray of hope....
My financial forecast says, "Be patient and composed. Do not be hasty in taking risks, starting new ventures or expanding business as it will drown you with troubles. Best to stay low key. Not a good year to change jobs or put money into investments. The 26 year old Rabbit will suffer very bad wealth and health luck. However, wealth luck is shining on the 38 year old." Lucky me....I will be a 38 year old rabbit!!!
4) Enjoying life to the fullest: I will be making good on this one in 2013 and that doesn't mean blowing everything at Vegas or building a stocked wine cellar or eating Prime Rib every night (Mmmmm, prime rib....). I am going to enjoy living to the fullest by hugging my kids a little closer, getting the rest and exercise I need, investing more time into the relationships that matter most, growing a little garden, and learning how to meditate or maybe just meditative breath.....hey, you gotta start somewhere.
5) Staying Fit and Healthy: See #1, no doubt that staying fit and healthy ties in with losing weight. The last three weeks have been spent baking, decorating, and participating in Christmas activities which means that exercising, healthier cooking and taking my vitamins have completely flown out the window. When I over schedule, the first thing to go is my personal health.....I am not alone in that, I am sure.
"Every Rabbit should take note of food hygiene and should seek early medical treatment when you’re ill." I learned this the hard way in 2012 when I let a plantar foot injury get so out of hand that I couldn't walk on the foot anymore. I am still struggling with it and need to resolve to invest in my health in 2013. As for the food hygiene, I can guarantee that everything I have stuffed my face with for Christmas was delicious and sanitary!
6) Learn something exciting: "Success luck is rather poor." So if it works better for me in 2013 to relax a bit, go with the flow and make it a year to upgrade myself with knowledge and skills, I am all for it. As I approach my 40's, I have this nagging feeling that if I ever wanted to change careers, the next two years is the time to do it while I still have plenty of time before retirement to save.
7) Quit smoking: Thanks goodness I don't have to do that....unless the resolution is about me quitting being smoking hot.....NEVER, will I make this a resolution, nor should you!!! :)
8) Helping others in their dreams: This is probably the best resolution out of the top ten and the easiest to stick to. My children have dreams of their own...things that they want to accomplish in the New Year and I can support them if I stick to my budget and pay attention to what they need. I am also open to what I can do for others in my family, my community and beyond. This is the kind of resolution that can fill you up.
9) Falling in love: I would stretch this resolution beyond the signing up on the Plenty of Fish website for those in my life who might still be single but rather being in love with the life that you already have or giving yourself the permission of self love and forgiveness. It is a worthy gift and it seems that in most cases, everything falls into place after that....
10) Spend more time with family: Good resolution to have....we can't replace time so spending it wisely is a great way to start the year!
For the Rabbit born, the Snake Year of 2013 surrounds me with challenges that require the use of physical, symbolic and cosmic assistance. I am told to make sure I use the necessary feng shui treatments to overcome my problems and to help me sail through the year.
What kind of Feng Shui treatments might save me from the dire warnings of "The Rabbit born sitting smack on the Natural Disaster Star in the year of the Snake 2013?" I am told to "wear red as much as possible, to consciously tell myself not to let anyone or anything to irritate me. I should also "curb my temper and show more concern to my spouse or loved ones to strengthen relationships."
By doing all of the above I should be able to avoid the Natural Disaster Star "which brings accidents and misfortunes, dangers of getting sick, being betrayed or losing something that I value such as the loss of a relationship, the loss of wealth or income, or the loss of one’s good name."
The red is easy...the allowing stupid people not to irritate me, not so much. I will do my best, but when someone asks me if I like to cook stuff and I am wearing a Chef uniform...it kinda goes without saying that it is a pretty annoying stupid question and deserves my scornful temper. Call it karma or fate or cosmic consequences for the offender but sarcasm is my body's natural defence against stupidity.
However fun it may be to use Chinese Astrology to discover our fate...I know that our destiny is determined by us and us alone. This Lucky Bunny predicts that if I continue on our new financial path and stick to my resolutions...all things in 2013 will be better than expected.
Happy New Years Everyone and All The Best For You and Your Family in 2013!!!
We are your average Canadian Family and we resolve to do things a little better in the New Year......
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
12 Days of Giving without Spending a Dime....
I have been asked so many times in the last few days if I am ready for Christmas. Usually when this question is asked it generally implies that the asker is really asking,"Have you finished shopping yet?". My answer to this question has been,"Yes, I am ready in spirit."
Without giving any elaboration to the askers since most people are also gauging how high your stress level is, in comparison to their own, like we compare weather and brag when ours is sunnier than someone else's, I choose to let others think that I am way behind thus giving them the upper hand as opposed to the truth.... which is that we are having a "Buy Nothing" Christmas at our house.
That doesn't mean that we will have nothing under our tree this year for those of you who may be worried that my Austerity Measures have turned me into the Ultimate Mother Grinch, soon to be a new storyline for Disney in theatres near you. (Notice how the mothers in Disney movies for kids are always dead, curiously missing or evil.....why do we buy these movies!!!!)
We already have a few pressies under our tree from Grandpa Christmas, and will soon have a few more from our other wonderful Grandma's and Grandpa's who wonderfully spoil our children over the holidays. We are incredibly grateful....even if it means that they will probably supply our children with enough chocolate that if weighed would match their equivalent body weight in mass. I can't wait till my kids have kids so I can completely forget what large amounts of caffeine and sugar can do to a six year old over the holidays!
It makes sense that if we are fortunate to have grandparents supply the bling of the holidays, to stick to our budget and start the New Year off right for a change. It sounds great in theory, but as the big day approaches, it gets tougher and tougher to find ways to give without wanting to spend. We desperately want to let others know that we care and appreciate them in our lives, and frankly we want to spoil them too, since it feels so wonderful to give.
I'm not the only one who thinks it feels better to give than to get.....Michael Norton has devoted time and research to determine that money does indeed buy happiness. But not in the normal way that you might think.
Watch this short video clip to see what he has to say about how you can use your money or to give in a way that will cause you to feel happier.
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_norton_how_to_buy_happiness.html
Does that mean its time to whip out the plastic? Hardly, it means we need to get a little more creative this year so that we can stick to our budget and spread some holiday cheer....you would think it would be easy to find ways to give without spending a dime with a simple google search....not as easy as one would think, but I have found a few:
To feel Holiday joy by giving to others:
1) Give to the Hungry: http://www.thehungersite.com/ You can give food to others simply by clicking on a button on the website. Totally free and you can click once a day. Should you wish to buy something from their advertisers, you can give even more food every time you purchase.
2) Donate Blood: http://www.blood.ca/ Approximately every minute of every day, someone in Canada needs blood. Check out their website to find locations that you can donate...its free and you may even get some juice or a cookie.
3) Donate Food, Water, Education and Money: http://www.ripple.org/ This is another fantastic way to use a simple click of the mouse to donate to others. Ripple works as a win for everyone and together we can make a real impact on poverty in our world by supporting simple websites like this to help others.
4) Donate Rice: http://freerice.com Improve your vocabulary, science and math skills or answer questions about art and donate rice to others. Its simple and fun! I am improving my spanish vocabulary for my next trip to Mexico and every time I do, I am helping others and not just with rice donations. I am sure the Mexicans would appreciate not having to communicate to me with my broken Spanish as well. "Cuanto is the busso to Puerto?", must be agonizing to listen to......
5) Goodsearch, Donors Choose and Kiva: http://www.goodsearch.com/ Choose your cause, donate or raise donations with a facebook page and help others in your community or around the world. You can track the progress of donations and inspire others.
Help teachers from around the world get the supplies they need to educate kids. You pick the project and help supply the materials or the money. The kids will even send you a thank you...http://www.donorschoose.org/project/stuck-in-canada/198847/
Empower people around the world with a $25 loan. Our kids donated their own $25 to their first entrepreneur a year ago, its been repaid and reloaned four times over. They choose the project and person to donate to. They receive the loan back in installments, depending on the ability to pay and once the final amount is received, they can then choose another project and person. It's a wonderful way to support entrepreneurs around the world. http://www.kiva.org/ ...
To Give Merriment to Family Members:
6) Slideshow/Pictures: Put that Windows XP to work with a slide show of your families year, complete with pictures, whitty text and cheesy background musak...its a gift that keeps on giving and is great for family members from afar since they often miss out on your day to day. I bought a digital picture frame for my grandparents last year, so now all I need is a thumb drive to send to them to update it every year.....here's hoping Grandma and Grandpa can figure it out.
7) Baking using Existing Ingredients in Pantry: Austerity Measures baking can go a long way to providing delicious gifts for others. I did some Austerity Measures canning last year and I have enough pickles to sink a ship.....there's nothing that says Christmas like Garlic Dill Pickles! Hey, they are green and it is the thought that counts...I am gonna add a little ribbon and some decorative fabric...et voila!
8) Coupons for everything from massages, house cleaning, car cleaning, babysitting, snow shovelling, house painting, or furniture moving can be created and will be much appreciated....I would like them all!!!! Can you give a better gift than time to do stuff that everyone can never get around to doing or to give your family members with small kids a break from life with toddlers or babies....I don't think so.
9) Cash in on Air Miles, PC Points, Bonus Rewards, and Optimum Points....now's the best time of year to get things for free....We are booking some ski lift passes and movie tickets using our Air Miles this year as a gift to ourselves and the kids. If we could get Moosehead hockey tickets...it would be even better!!! These could also be used to purchase items for others....save some money, use the points, they are the only benefit from overspending.
10) Make a mixed tape.....I mean, a mixed CD....damn, is my age showing!!! My family spends too much of our budget on music....so we have enough of an already paid for resource to give some great tunes to the rest of the family. We can even update the sound collection of our grandparents with maybe some Michael Buble...or a little Flo Rida, who knows?! They might dig it!
A little gift giving for your spouse:
11) Read 50 Shades of Grey if you feel like getting funky or use your imagination for a little romance.....its not complicated, and it is a great gift that can sometimes keep on giving and its free. Say no more......
To see smiles on your children's faces:
12) The gift of time is the greatest gift you can give your children. Build lego, play with Barbies, cuddle on the couch reading books, show them the joy of board games (remember those?!), build snowmen, make hot chocolate, try out the Just Dance on the Wii, and take time to listen to what makes their holiday special. The return on this gift in not measurable.
And here's a bonus gift just for you:
13) Read a book uninterrupted for an hour, sleep in, take a bath, give yourself a free yoga class (classes online or just lay in childs pose for awhile...close the blinds if you are worried about the neighbours), give yourself a pedicure (don't worry if you do a lousy job, no one will see your feet in December), watch a Christmas movie, eat chocolate chips from the pantry, go for a walk by the seaside, toboggan with the kids, paint something, stop worrying about tomorrow, kiss your kids, love your time off from work, let the housework be done another day, love yourself just as you are and be grateful for the little things that make your life joyful. Some of these are the best gifts you will get all year.....and they are free.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
We are your average Canadian family, with big hearts and oodles of joy and we have plenty to give.........
Without giving any elaboration to the askers since most people are also gauging how high your stress level is, in comparison to their own, like we compare weather and brag when ours is sunnier than someone else's, I choose to let others think that I am way behind thus giving them the upper hand as opposed to the truth.... which is that we are having a "Buy Nothing" Christmas at our house.
That doesn't mean that we will have nothing under our tree this year for those of you who may be worried that my Austerity Measures have turned me into the Ultimate Mother Grinch, soon to be a new storyline for Disney in theatres near you. (Notice how the mothers in Disney movies for kids are always dead, curiously missing or evil.....why do we buy these movies!!!!)
We already have a few pressies under our tree from Grandpa Christmas, and will soon have a few more from our other wonderful Grandma's and Grandpa's who wonderfully spoil our children over the holidays. We are incredibly grateful....even if it means that they will probably supply our children with enough chocolate that if weighed would match their equivalent body weight in mass. I can't wait till my kids have kids so I can completely forget what large amounts of caffeine and sugar can do to a six year old over the holidays!
It makes sense that if we are fortunate to have grandparents supply the bling of the holidays, to stick to our budget and start the New Year off right for a change. It sounds great in theory, but as the big day approaches, it gets tougher and tougher to find ways to give without wanting to spend. We desperately want to let others know that we care and appreciate them in our lives, and frankly we want to spoil them too, since it feels so wonderful to give.
I'm not the only one who thinks it feels better to give than to get.....Michael Norton has devoted time and research to determine that money does indeed buy happiness. But not in the normal way that you might think.
Watch this short video clip to see what he has to say about how you can use your money or to give in a way that will cause you to feel happier.
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_norton_how_to_buy_happiness.html
Does that mean its time to whip out the plastic? Hardly, it means we need to get a little more creative this year so that we can stick to our budget and spread some holiday cheer....you would think it would be easy to find ways to give without spending a dime with a simple google search....not as easy as one would think, but I have found a few:
To feel Holiday joy by giving to others:
1) Give to the Hungry: http://www.thehungersite.com/ You can give food to others simply by clicking on a button on the website. Totally free and you can click once a day. Should you wish to buy something from their advertisers, you can give even more food every time you purchase.
2) Donate Blood: http://www.blood.ca/ Approximately every minute of every day, someone in Canada needs blood. Check out their website to find locations that you can donate...its free and you may even get some juice or a cookie.
3) Donate Food, Water, Education and Money: http://www.ripple.org/ This is another fantastic way to use a simple click of the mouse to donate to others. Ripple works as a win for everyone and together we can make a real impact on poverty in our world by supporting simple websites like this to help others.
4) Donate Rice: http://freerice.com Improve your vocabulary, science and math skills or answer questions about art and donate rice to others. Its simple and fun! I am improving my spanish vocabulary for my next trip to Mexico and every time I do, I am helping others and not just with rice donations. I am sure the Mexicans would appreciate not having to communicate to me with my broken Spanish as well. "Cuanto is the busso to Puerto?", must be agonizing to listen to......
5) Goodsearch, Donors Choose and Kiva: http://www.goodsearch.com/ Choose your cause, donate or raise donations with a facebook page and help others in your community or around the world. You can track the progress of donations and inspire others.
Help teachers from around the world get the supplies they need to educate kids. You pick the project and help supply the materials or the money. The kids will even send you a thank you...http://www.donorschoose.org/project/stuck-in-canada/198847/
Empower people around the world with a $25 loan. Our kids donated their own $25 to their first entrepreneur a year ago, its been repaid and reloaned four times over. They choose the project and person to donate to. They receive the loan back in installments, depending on the ability to pay and once the final amount is received, they can then choose another project and person. It's a wonderful way to support entrepreneurs around the world. http://www.kiva.org/ ...
To Give Merriment to Family Members:
6) Slideshow/Pictures: Put that Windows XP to work with a slide show of your families year, complete with pictures, whitty text and cheesy background musak...its a gift that keeps on giving and is great for family members from afar since they often miss out on your day to day. I bought a digital picture frame for my grandparents last year, so now all I need is a thumb drive to send to them to update it every year.....here's hoping Grandma and Grandpa can figure it out.
7) Baking using Existing Ingredients in Pantry: Austerity Measures baking can go a long way to providing delicious gifts for others. I did some Austerity Measures canning last year and I have enough pickles to sink a ship.....there's nothing that says Christmas like Garlic Dill Pickles! Hey, they are green and it is the thought that counts...I am gonna add a little ribbon and some decorative fabric...et voila!
8) Coupons for everything from massages, house cleaning, car cleaning, babysitting, snow shovelling, house painting, or furniture moving can be created and will be much appreciated....I would like them all!!!! Can you give a better gift than time to do stuff that everyone can never get around to doing or to give your family members with small kids a break from life with toddlers or babies....I don't think so.
9) Cash in on Air Miles, PC Points, Bonus Rewards, and Optimum Points....now's the best time of year to get things for free....We are booking some ski lift passes and movie tickets using our Air Miles this year as a gift to ourselves and the kids. If we could get Moosehead hockey tickets...it would be even better!!! These could also be used to purchase items for others....save some money, use the points, they are the only benefit from overspending.
10) Make a mixed tape.....I mean, a mixed CD....damn, is my age showing!!! My family spends too much of our budget on music....so we have enough of an already paid for resource to give some great tunes to the rest of the family. We can even update the sound collection of our grandparents with maybe some Michael Buble...or a little Flo Rida, who knows?! They might dig it!
A little gift giving for your spouse:
11) Read 50 Shades of Grey if you feel like getting funky or use your imagination for a little romance.....its not complicated, and it is a great gift that can sometimes keep on giving and its free. Say no more......
To see smiles on your children's faces:
12) The gift of time is the greatest gift you can give your children. Build lego, play with Barbies, cuddle on the couch reading books, show them the joy of board games (remember those?!), build snowmen, make hot chocolate, try out the Just Dance on the Wii, and take time to listen to what makes their holiday special. The return on this gift in not measurable.
And here's a bonus gift just for you:
13) Read a book uninterrupted for an hour, sleep in, take a bath, give yourself a free yoga class (classes online or just lay in childs pose for awhile...close the blinds if you are worried about the neighbours), give yourself a pedicure (don't worry if you do a lousy job, no one will see your feet in December), watch a Christmas movie, eat chocolate chips from the pantry, go for a walk by the seaside, toboggan with the kids, paint something, stop worrying about tomorrow, kiss your kids, love your time off from work, let the housework be done another day, love yourself just as you are and be grateful for the little things that make your life joyful. Some of these are the best gifts you will get all year.....and they are free.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
We are your average Canadian family, with big hearts and oodles of joy and we have plenty to give.........
Monday, 3 December 2012
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.....
I have a confession to make....my daughters and I just took a weeks vacation to Mexico for a girls trip to celebrate my mother and sister's birthdays. Now before some of you cry fraud, cheater, or give a tsk, tsk of disappointment at our lack of austerity measures....let me show you how we did it and still stayed on budget. Yep, that's right,....ON BUDGET!!!!
There are lots of creative ways that families can take a vacation without a humongous expense. For us, it was easy since my Mom owns a home in Puerto Vallarta, which keeps accommodation, food and entertainment costs to a minimum. She also has a vehicle that we drove Mexican style with no working seatbelts, but minus the open truck bed in the back with lawn chairs (we refer to them as Mexican car seats).
We had also purchased our tickets prior to the Austerity Measures on a great seat sale from WestJet. My children covered the cost of their own through birthday and Christmas savings.They have more in their bank accounts than we do because they prefer to save. Our kids are smarter than we are....almost always.
We were there for family time which also keeps expenses low, since our priority was sitting around my Mom's pool catching up and not drinking ourselves stupid, swimming with dolphins, or sitting through some god-awful time share presentation so that we can get free tequila and a day at some resort filled with other North Americans.
My biggest splurge was taking my Mom and sister out for dinner which was truly a fine dining experience with an outdoor playground that kept the kids happy (why don't we have this in Canada?!!) and involved 4 appetizers, 7 entree's, 7 desserts, pre-dinner drinks, and a bottle of wine. We had four wonderful Mexican men attending to our every need and we received welcome shooters for both us and the kids to kick off the evening (all kids deserve real fruit juice shooters!). I won't even share what our wonderful evening cost me...it will make the average Canadian family cry, especially when a dinner at McDonald's with a play place can cost you $30.
When we did shop, it was at the local grocery store or Wal-Mart. Even with the probably inflated gringo pricing at the local market, we still made off with bags of fruit and veggies for less than $7. My precious bottle of rum that I have refrained from buying since our austerity measures kicked in was purchased for $12.50, a gift from my Mom (they say Mothers know best....cheers to that!). The same bottle costs me $38.95 in Nova Scotia. The pineapple juice and cream of coconut to make killer pina coladas for the entire week cost me $4.00.
We travelled into Puerto Vallarta twice from where my Mom lives in Nuevo and it cost us the equivalent of .26 cents return. Our taxi and valet service from the airport, which is the most expensive place to travel from cost us $23 plus I gave them much more in tips.
We splurged on ice cream, hot nuts and orange pop too! It was a lot easier to stick to our grocery budget, even with the extras. Everything except purchasing power and the mortgage interest rate is cheaper in Mexico, compared to Canada. Makes me wonder why we live here at all.
To give you an idea of the difference, have quick browse at this, and then add 10% since it is probably based on Toronto pricing and almost is everything is more expensive in Atlantic Canada.
| Mexico | Canada | Difference | |
| Restaurants | [Edit] | [Edit] | |
| Meal, Inexpensive Restaurant | 65.00 MXN | 156.20 MXN | +140.31 % |
| Meal for 2, Mid-range Restaurant, Three-course | 300.00 MXN | 781.00 MXN | +160.33 % |
| Combo Meal at McDonalds or Similar | 65.00 MXN | 104.13 MXN | +60.21 % |
| Domestic Beer (0.5 liter draught) | 20.00 MXN | 65.08 MXN | +225.42 % |
| Imported Beer (0.33 liter bottle) | 30.00 MXN | 78.10 MXN | +160.33 % |
| Cappuccino (regular) | 30.00 MXN | 45.56 MXN | +51.86 % |
| Coke/Pepsi (0.33 liter bottle) | 9.25 MXN | 25.90 MXN | +180.03 % |
| Water (0.33 liter bottle) | 8.00 MXN | 19.53 MXN | +144.06 % |
| Markets | [Edit] | [Edit] | |
| Milk (regular), 1 liter | 13.00 MXN | 25.90 MXN | +99.26 % |
| Loaf of Fresh White Bread (500g) | 22.00 MXN | 32.54 MXN | +47.92 % |
| Rice (1kg) | 15.00 MXN | 43.61 MXN | +190.71 % |
| Eggs (12) | 20.00 MXN | 39.05 MXN | +95.25 % |
| Local Cheese (1kg) | 80.00 MXN | 130.17 MXN | +62.71 % |
| Chicken Breasts (Boneless, Skinless), (1kg) | 70.00 MXN | 142.98 MXN | +104.26 % |
| Apples (1kg) | 30.00 MXN | 38.46 MXN | +28.21 % |
| Oranges (1kg) | 12.50 MXN | 39.05 MXN | +212.40 % |
| Tomato (1kg) | 16.00 MXN | 39.05 MXN | +144.06 % |
| Potato (1kg) | 15.00 MXN | 25.11 MXN | +67.40 % |
| Lettuce (1 head) | 10.00 MXN | 19.53 MXN | +95.25 % |
| Water (1.5 liter bottle) | 12.00 MXN | 26.03 MXN | +116.95 % |
| Bottle of Wine (Mid-Range) | 120.00 MXN | 195.25 MXN | +62.71 % |
| Domestic Beer (0.5 liter bottle) | 15.00 MXN | 35.80 MXN | +138.64 % |
| Imported Beer (0.33 liter bottle) | 20.00 MXN | 39.05 MXN | +95.25 % |
| Pack of Cigarettes (Marlboro) | 40.00 MXN | 130.17 MXN | +225.42 % |
| Transportation | [Edit] | [Edit] | |
| One-way Ticket (Local Transport) | 6.00 MXN | 35.80 MXN | +496.60 % |
| Monthly Pass (Regular Price) | 360.00 MXN | 1,054.35 MXN | +192.88 % |
| Taxi Start (Normal Tariff) | 25.00 MXN | 46.86 MXN | +87.44 % |
| Taxi 1km (Normal Tariff) | 5.20 MXN | 23.91 MXN | +359.90 % |
| Taxi 1hour Waiting (Normal Tariff) | 150.00 MXN | 390.50 MXN | +160.33 % |
| Gasoline (1 liter) | 10.00 MXN | 16.82 MXN | +68.24 % |
| Volkswagen Golf 1.4 90 KW Trendline (Or Equivalent New Car) | 200,000.00 MXN | 290,272.45 MXN | +45.14 % |
| Utilities (Monthly) | [Edit] | [Edit] | |
| Basic (Electricity, Gas, Water, Garbage) for 85m2 Apartment | 1,000.00 MXN | 2,329.30 MXN | +132.93 % |
| 1 min. of Prepaid Mobile Tariff Local (No Discounts or Plans) | 3.74 MXN | 3.91 MXN | +4.41 % |
| Internet (6 Mbps, Unlimited Data, Cable/ADSL) | 400.00 MXN | 585.75 MXN | +46.44 % |
| Sports And Leisure | [Edit] | [Edit] | |
| Fitness Club, Monthly Fee for 1 Adult | 600.00 MXN | 650.84 MXN | +8.47 % |
| Tennis Court Rent (1 Hour on Weekend) | 150.00 MXN | 255.06 MXN | +70.04 % |
| Cinema, International Release, 1 Seat | 60.00 MXN | 156.20 MXN | +160.33 % |
| Clothing And Shoes | [Edit] | [Edit] | |
| 1 Pair of Jeans (Levis 501 Or Similar) | 649.00 MXN | 715.92 MXN | +10.31 % |
| 1 Summer Dress in a Chain Store (Zara, H&M, ...) | 623.61 MXN | 572.73 MXN | -8.16 % |
| 1 Pair of Nike Shoes | 1,100.00 MXN | 1,301.67 MXN | +18.33 % |
| 1 Pair of Men Leather Shoes | 845.00 MXN | 1,301.67 MXN | +54.04 % |
| Rent Per Month | [Edit] | [Edit] | |
| Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Centre | 3,500.00 MXN | 12,365.87 MXN | +253.31 % |
| Apartment (1 bedroom) Outside of Centre | 2,900.00 MXN | 10,348.28 MXN | +256.84 % |
| Apartment (3 bedrooms) in City Centre | 7,000.00 MXN | 19,525.05 MXN | +178.93 % |
| Apartment (3 bedrooms) Outside of Centre | 6,000.00 MXN | 16,270.88 MXN | +171.18 % |
| Buy Apartment Price | [Edit] | [Edit] | |
| Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment in City Centre | 11,631.96 MXN | 47,836.38 MXN | +311.25 % |
| Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment Outside of Centre | 10,000.00 MXN | 33,084.15 MXN | +230.84 % |
| Salaries And Financing | [Edit] | [Edit] | |
| Median Monthly Disposable Salary (After Tax) | 10,000.00 MXN | 39,050.11 MXN | +290.50 % |
| Mortgage Interest Rate in Percentanges (%), Yearly | 12.00 | 4.00 | -66.67 % |
| Last update | December, 2012 | December, 2012 | |
| Contributors (past 18 months) | 409 | 1572 | |
| Currency: MXN |
There are ways to travel and stick to a budget. Most often the way we overspend on vacations is because it is our "opportunity to live large", kinda like an extra Christmas. People also buy a lot crap that they don't need on vacations. We walked along the Malecon which is like an outdoor Ikea along the beach filled with so many good deals on stuff that if you were handed a giant yellow bag, you would immediately start stuffing with no clue as to why.
The Mexicans constantly approached us with things to buy which at first my girls were intimidated to say no, but by the end of the day had become experts in saying, " No, gracias". Imagine if they did this at Ikea...you would probably have to hand over the keys to your house and give them your first born too!
Even though it wasn't high tourist season, there were plenty of gringos buying souvenirs some of which are beyond my understanding as to why anyone would actually exchange money for. Sand in a vial from the beach, tequila shooter glasses, seashells, and ugly T-shirts galore were being bagged up and most probably going to be Christmas pressents for some poor relative at home who will have to feign excitement. Who buys sand in a glass?! I brought some sand home in my shoes....it was free. Maybe I can re-gift it for my buy nothing Christmas. Now I just need to figure out who the lucky relative will be.......
The average Canadian family can still have a vacation with a little help from family and friends or not. We are fortunate to have family across Canada and in the United States. It gives us great places to visit and in exchange we open up our home in the summertime to anyone who wishes to visit us. We love having guests and are fortunate to live in the Maritimes, which I think is the most beautiful province to live in within Canada.
For those of you, who can't imagine a vacation with relatives....sometimes it can be a fine line, we have all seen National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation....there are others ways to stay on a budget.
Here are just 5 ways that you might be able to squeeze a vacation in without breaking the budget:
1) Home Swapping: Want to save on accommodations? Try swapping houses with someone else! There are many websites dedicated to the idea, some are free and some are not. If you are open to switching with another family and have a cool house to offer (you should have a look to see some of the places available!), then you might be able to get a great vacation and have an authentic experience in another country. Here is just one link: https://www.homeexchange.com/landing_page2/1homeexchange?alias=1homeexchange&gclid=COK92eu9_7MCFQ-e4AodDBwA0Q
2) Visit Cheap Destinations: According CNN travel, the current five cheapest destinations to travel to are Mexico, Thailand, Burma, Egypt and Greece. Choosing where you travel can help with your budget as well as your airfare. If you can pick a place that balances out the airfare with your weekly spending budget, you may even come out ahead. Given that you are using company paid vacation time, it can actually be a week away without any financial sacrifice. http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/escape/5-cheapest-travel-
3) Stay fit and Meet Locals: The Warm Showers Community is a free worldwide Hospitality exchange for touring cyclists. People who are willing to host touring cyclists sign up and provide their contact information, and may occasionally have someone stay with them and share great stories and a drink! I can't think of anything cooler since there are over 15,000 hosts in many countries all over the world. Spa vacation be dammed! http://www.warmshowers.org/
4) Couchsurf: Travel the world & stay with friends you haven't met yet! Pick a travel destination, then search through the members to find someone who is willing to let you crash on their couch. They may be also willing to share food, show you around and split a 6 pack. It's all done through facebook and you do need to sign up to start your BFF search for a travel buddy. http://www.couchsurfing.org/
5) Volunteer Vacations: Make a difference in the world and change your perspective. You can even choose the place and get some downtime. Think of the appreciation your children would have for their day to day, even if it is short-lived (my girls didn't fight with their brother for three full days after we got home....) with an experience of helping others. This is one that has really got me thinking about all of our BIG plans that we thought we needed to fit into our future budget. http://www.globeaware.org/
I am currently reading a book my father found at a garage sale called "The Power of Positive Thinking." Published way before "The Secret" in 1952 by Norman Vincent Peale, a minister who was notoriously anti-Catholic, accused of using hypnosis on his followers to convert them, and opposed the election of John F. Kennedy and supported Nixon (hey, not everyone is perfect.....).
The book itself was on the New York times best seller list for 186 consecutive weeks, so there must be many great things about Norman too. Most things you need to read with a grain of salt, if you know what I mean.
Whatever his personal defects may have been, there are some good things within the book, and a quote which I will share, "The way to happiness: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by."
Vacations don't need to be expensive, luxurious or fanciful to be fantastic. Yes, we spent ours in sunny Mexico but the main reason we were there was to spend time with our family creating memories that will last our lifetimes....it just so happens that we are fortunate that my Mom lives there and not in Brantford, Ontario anymore. (Sorry Brantford, but your time of greatness passed when Wayne Gretsky left town.....)
We are your average Canadian family and we are truly grateful that we can take a vacation from time to time without breaking the budget.........
Thursday, 29 November 2012
We are the stupidest people alive….
I truly
believe that there are signs in the universe that if you take the time to pay
attention and listen to them, they will let you know when things are going off
the rails or when you are heading down the right path. I don’t think I am the
only one who has beliefs that support the idea that you can manifest the good or the bad in your life
based on the messages that you are sending out.
Just to
give you an idea of what that might look like, believer or not, here is how we
spent one month listening, cringing, paying attention and then heading down the
right path.
Jeff
Foxworthy uses the phrase, “You might be a redneck if….” as a starter to his
many jokes, to help you identify the signs that you are indeed a redneck. Here are my signs that, “You may be in
trouble financially if….”
You max out your borrowing account to cover
your Mastercard payment. If you are playing what I refer to as the money game each month, with a
revolving door of money going around in circles from high interest credit
cards, to low interest borrowing accounts to zero percent interest credit cards
for six months only, and then back again….you may be in financial trouble.
You paid the Mastercard bill by mistake twice
in one month. How
often do you and your spouse have conversations regarding the accounts, bill
payments, savings and retirement? More importantly, how often do you have this
conversation uninterrupted by bigger priorities like work, sleep, appointments,
events and fighting kids?
There is a
horrible gap between the proportion of time that we set aside to discuss our
financial planning with each other compared to the relative importance of what we need to discuss.
The result of our lack of devoting the
necessary time means that I have left the retirement planning entirely up to my
husband. He has left the bill paying mostly up to me, but not always.
If he were
to die tomorrow, I would have little to no knowledge of what we have saved and
where to access the money we have in anything from RRSPS, to investment
accounts to life insurance to his own company’s benefit plan.
If we were
to both die simultaneously, I recently found out that our children would end up in foster care until the
courts decide who best to raise them and our estate would be up the air in
until the government gets paid and our funeral costs get covered. Even then, there is no guarantee without a
will that our children would receive anything that we own or be placed with a family member.
Kinda important?! No kidding, yet we dawdle like many others in
getting a will in place because we never seem to have the money for it. It’s outrageous!
The signs
of this lack of communication in our relationship shows up in small and big ways in our current
financial well-being. We both paid the Mastercard this month….someone, not
naming any names, neglected to write the payment down on the statement. (It
wasn’t me….but someone….) The result left a credit balance on our Mastercard
and our line of credit extended to its limit when it wasn't even necessary.
The cheques you gave your sister for your
nieces birthday's bounces and you are charged $90 for overdraft on your line of
credit. I can’t believe I am sharing this, because it
is SO stupid, it’s beyond embarrassing and I haven’t even had a conversation
with my sister yet. So the cheques I wrote in August, she cashed in
October…right at the same time that we double paid the Mastercard and maxxed
out our borrowing account to cover it. The shame I
feel is worse than the extra charges we need to fit into our budget for next
month to make up for it.
I mean the
timing couldn’t have been worse….this is like the perfect storm of stupid on so
many levels….I don’t know where to begin. Maybe I should have started with…..If
you are writing birthday cheques to pay for gifts on your borrowing account,
you may be in financial trouble. Or how about…If you are not checking to see
that the cheques you write are cashed on your account before you write more
cheques…... or best of all is,..... if your finances are
shaming yourself with other family members, you are definitely in financial
trouble…..
A lousy financial strategy leads you to put money
into a high interest saving account while you are paying fees on your chequing account due to overdrafts. Imagine my surprise when my husband
and I sat down to sort out this mess to find out that he had money being
deducted off his paycheck each month to go into a high interest savings
account. Yet he couldn’t keep his chequing
account from going into overdraft each month because of the deduction of income.
It’s so crazy, I can barely believe it!
We also
realized that the other reason the chequing account was overdrawn was because
the money being put towards the kids RESP was going into the wrong account and
has been for 10 months! It’s ridiculous, but so easily solvable once we made
the time to discuss it and fix it. There was also a windfall waiting for us in
the other account since the money was just sitting there, not being applied to
anything. Nuts!!
What came
out of this giant anvil on the head from the universe was that we seriously
needed to start talking more about where we are at financially and not once a
month….but rather, we decided, once a week. While it sounds like a big
commitment from two people who would be lucky to have had a yearly conversation
in the past, we both felt that by talking weekly, it gives us time to make the
adjustments we need before an entire month or better yet, ten months, is financially wrecked by stupid
decision making.
There are good signs as well....this is how you can tell that you are on the right track financially after going down the wrong path.....
You may be on the right track financially when
cheques from your health insurance provider start landing on your doorstep. Remember that HSA spending account
I discovered through taking the time to understand my company benefits? We
received five pay checks in the month of November that covered spending for my
entire family and topped up the benefits my husband’s company provides. It’s
like winning the Set for Life of Lottery at our house! I can’t believe how much
lost income we were missing out on because I didn’t want to take the time to
understand my policy….which I am paying for, by the way.
You review your bill statements and find a
windfall. We just
received our fuel oil statement this
month and because I was paying attention, not just filing it and forgetting it,
I uncovered another double bill payment back in July of almost $500. We must be
the most vigilant bill payers on the planet….that or we are the worst investors
ever. Say, honey…if we overpay Bluewave and Mastercard….do you think they will
send us profit sharing? Yikes, it’s painful. The silver lining was a windfall
in our bank account when we contacted our fuel supplier and politely asked for
the money back.
You increase your disposable income by finding
more affordable services or using less of what you have. By switching our Cable provider,
looking at our home heating costs, reducing our electricity consumption, making
tough choices about our childcare needs and getting smart about using the
resources we already had, we spent substantially less then every month
previous. Hard to believe it can be that
easy to slow down the bleeding when it comes to money, but it is. There are
always ways to spend less and in a way that makes sense for your family.
Finally, you finish the month, and there is still
money in your bank account and the bills are paid. Who knew we could stick to our budget one month
into the new plan?! But we have! We finished
the month of October with our first payments of 15% made to decreasing our
debt, paying all of our bills without credit and having 5% of our income saved
and in the bank. We also got the buffer back on our borrowing account by not having to pay anything on our Mastercard this month and by using our financial windfall.
Our Austerity Measures pantry and freezer cooking month paid
off too. We saved our entire grocery budget by eating only from our existing
kitchen inventory. We had some interesting meals (Pasta Surprise with three
kinds of noodles was a hit with the kids) and also some excellent ones (forgot
about some T-Bone steaks in the freezer that were a hit with the parents).
The
greatest thing out of the austerity measures pantry experiment was a turnover
of the product in our fridge and freezer, an immediate reduction in the food
being thrown out, an increase in our kitchen pantry space and our kids seemed more open to whatever was on the table
since we included them in the changes we needed to make along the way.
Our son who is six asked in the beginning of our Austerity Measures discussion, “So does that mean we are poor now?”, which gave us a
great laugh since we may have little money in the bank right now, but if you
look around our home, there is no poverty….all the money is around us.
We still
have a long way to go, but when I look at how many signs we have had that,
“things might be better financially if…”, I can’t help but feel empowered by
the changes we are making. No shopping spree for things we don't really need or impulse purchases on treats we think we deserve could make me feel this good.
We are your
average Canadian family and we make stupid financial decisions, sometimes
without even thinking about it………..
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