Category Archives: Money Stories

Aug 23 4 comments
Cheap Eats, Money Stories, Money and Relationships

The Price of Being TOO Cheap

I know this blog is all for saving money, but sometimes one can be too cheap.  And when one is too cheap, she, or her boyfriend, often pays a high price for being so later on as the story below illustrates…

True story, I almost killed my boyfriend once.

This happened when I was around eight months pregnant with my now 17 year-old kid.  I was not the most pleasant pregnant lady.  In fact, I was a raging bee-atch most of the time.  Aside from the worry that I wouldn’t be able to afford to keep the baby, the hormones were making me cranky, and honestly, very stupid.  Sometimes my sense of judgement was waaay off, making me paranoid and irritable.  My boyfriend at the time was very supportive and patient.  He would shower me with gifts and drive around the city just to get me the food I wanted and despite all this, I wasn’t very nice to him.

One day, a couple of girlfriends witnessed me being mean to him.  ”You are very lucky to have this man.  He’s so good to you, why don’t you treat him better?” they said.  This opened my eyes.  I resolved to be nicer and decided to make him a home-cooked dinner.  But I didn’t know how to cook.  All I knew to do at this time in my life was microwave TV dinners.  I found an old recipe book and decided I could make grilled chicken and fried rice.  I started cooking.  No surprise that the dishes didn’t turn out well.  The rice was both mushy and crunchy and the chicken did not look like chicken.  ”I can’t throw this out, I spent all this time and money on it, it would be a waste,” I thought, so I served it to my boyfriend anyway.

Upon seeing the catastrophe that I brought to the dining table, my boyfriend said, “Ummm, I don’t think this fish is quite cooked, honey.”  ”So you don’t want to eat what I slaved all day making for you?  Here I am being so nice and you won’t eat my food!?!” said I.  ”Well, why don’t you have some first?”, he said.  ”Excuse me?  This is YOUR food, I can’t eat it!”  Anyway, I MADE him eat it and the next day, all day, he was in bed very sick.  Oops.

So, moral of the story?  Don’t ever eat bad food or feed it to someone else just because it would be wasteful to get rid of it.  And be nice to your boyfriends all the time.

Want more real-life Money and Life Experiences?  Visit the Money Stories section of this website.  Or how about reading on how money affects our relationships?  Read the Money and Relationships section.  Craving Cheap Food Recipes?  Visit the Cheap Eats section of this website for some tasty meals.

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Jun 07 1 comments
Money Stories, Money and Relationships

Bad Weddings: Too Expensive to Attend

It is June, traditionally wedding month so I thought a story and writing my opinions on wedding celebrations would be appropriate.  I think friends’ and close relations’ weddings are special and treat them as such, after all I am bearing witness to the start of a couple’s new life together: I give thoughtful and useful gifts that can help the couple start their new life, I dress appropriately and while at the wedding, I am friendly and courteous to everyone there - a good guest.

Ideally a wedding celebration is the way the new couple shares their joy with others.  Unfortunately, a lot of weddings are not about that.  I have been to many where guests were invited only because they were able to give lavish gifts or because the couple felt obligated to invite these people.  In my opinion, a wedding celebration should be comprised of the couple and only the people that know and appreciate the couple and that the couple truly cherish.  A wedding celebration can cost a lot of money (for both the couple and their guests) and the marriage contract too important for it to be otherwise.

I went to a number of weddings and receptions in the past few years, two stand out in my mind.  One was absolutely wonderful and the other truly awful for me.  The first was my good friend’s wedding, the wonderful one.  It was such because the couple emphasized that the celebration was not just for them but for the guests as well, stating that it was “not only our celebration, but yours, too” on the invites.  And they truly made it an awesome occasion for everyone there.  Firstly, the invite list was very small, 30 people, the couple’s closest friends and family, only.  In fact, no dates were allowed, no one the couple didn’t know or didn’t know well.  Their budget of $30,000.00 was spent mostly on food and entertainment, in short, on the guests.  They really wanted the guests to feel welcome and appreciated and loved.  It worked!  Unlike so many weddings I’ve been to, at this one, everyone knew and liked each other there, everyone wanted to be there.  No one was left alone and talking to no one or felt they were only invited for their gift.  In fact, the couple emphasized that no one was to bring any gifts!  The dress code was set as loose and emphasized that no one should feel that they had to dress expensively or have to buy a new outfit.  Our presence was good enough.  As it turns out, everyone looked great, wanting to be sure they were at their best for their friends’ wedding.  Everyone had a grand time.  It was the most fun matrimonial occasion I had ever been to and I will remember and cherish it always.

As a sharp contrast, the second one, my boyfriend’s friend’s wedding, had a big invite list where many people didn’t know one another.  I talked to several guests and many said they were surprised to be invited as they had lost touch with the couple for many years.  Many looked bored and ill-at-ease at the reception.  It seemed like the couple scrimped on the venue (which was too small, had no windows, didn’t have enough parking or seating for the guests and had no easily-accessible bathroom) and the food (not enough for everyone as they served finger food at an hour when dinner was expected).  There was no photographer recording the event, no music to dance to or in the background, which I thought odd.  There was a too-long slideshow, though, for our entertainment: pictures of the couple on their many trips abroad to luxury destinations.  It seemed that the wedding celebration was more of a “you’re here to watch us get married so give us a gift” rather than a “we’re getting married and we’d love to have you help us celebrate” type of deal.  Many people were hungry and upset, many left early and one woman left with her gift in tow.  I had bought a thoughtful gift and a new dress (since the invite said to dress formally) and regretted I had spent the cash and made the effort to even show up.  I was sorely disappointed in the bride after that because I knew she had the money to spend and had been planning it for months stating she had the venue she wanted, the menu in order, etc, way in advance.  I felt she was greedy and used the wedding to show off and to get gifts.  It was the worst wedding ever.

I’m not sure what the moral of this post might be, but I do know that I will be declining invites to weddings if I feel the couple has ulterior motives for celebrating and asking me to come.  They are just not worth my time and frankly, too expensive for me to attend.

Want more real-life Money and Life Experiences?  Visit the Money Stories section of this website.  Or how about reading on how money affects our relationships?  Read the Money and Relationships section.

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Apr 12 0 comments
Money Stories

A Money Diet?

I was speaking to a good friend of mine about money recently; let’s call her Ellen.  I hadn’t spoken to Ellen for a long while because she went into a sort of hibernation.  This hiding from the world was brought about by her work circumstances.  Because of the recession, her hours at work have been greatly diminished and as she is paid by the hour, her finances have suffered. Her spouse’s business, although still doing OK, was not bringing in the same number of customers as before.

When Ellen has a problem to deal with, she hunkers down, creates a strict plan of action and follows through with a vengeance.  She is in charge of the household’s budget and to cope with the income loss she decided that she would dramatically cut down on her and her partner’s expenditures.  She did this by vowing not to buy anything that they did not need and for the items that they did need, she would not buy them unless they were on sale.  Ellen’s definition of “needs” was very simple: groceries, public transport and shelter including utilities.  They were not to eat out, no going to the theatre or renting DVDs, no visiting with friends because even a cup of coffee out would cost money (Aha!  This is why she didn’t return my calls!).  She told me that she didn’t buy tomatoes or mouthwash the whole time since she couldn’t find any on sale.  She and her spouse lived like this and in semi-isolation for a couple of months.

One day her spouse called her at the end of the workday, “Ellen, I had so many walk-in customers today, we did really well.  Can I please buy myself a treat?”  Ellen said yes and her spouse came with a new set of drums. “What did you do?” Ellen cried.  “I thought you were going to buy a bucket of ice cream!”  “Please, please, please, can I keep it?” said her spouse.  “Fine,” said Ellen, “but if you get to keep that, then I get to buy an iPhone!”

I laughed when Ellen told me her story over the phone.  “It’s like you went on a strict diet and then binged after a few days of deprivation!” I said.

Weight loss diets have been proven to fail in the long run; dieters lose a lot of weight at first then tend to gain it all back after a while.  The same holds true for a money diet.

Ellen and her spouse saved a lot in the first couple of months only to blow it all on luxury items in the end.  Ellen went about saving money in a way that didn’t work for them because her plan was centered solely on deprivation and will power.  The plan might have worked better if: A. They revised their budgets less drastically at first, taking smaller steps to savings rather than cutting things out their lives so drastically; B. They had small “rewards” built into the plan if they stuck with their money diet (or example, they can go rent a DVD and buy some pop corn and invite friends over to for movie night on Friday if they stuck to their budget all week).  These steps could have helped them to sustain their resolve to stick to the plan that would hopefully eventually change their whole lifestyle and mindset about money.

Want more real-life Money and Life Experiences?  Visit the Money Stories section of this website.

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Mar 01 0 comments
Money Stories

THE MONEY LIFE CAFÉ: BEGINNINGS

Why publish another blog about money? Don’t we talk about it too much? Well, consider this: Money is just so important to us that many of us work at jobs that we hate, and some of us marry those whom we do not love because we want it. We love to hate celebrities with so much of it. Some of us would cheat on our tax returns, break the law, steal, or risk our lives to get it. It is the number one cause of all marital arguments. It can and has destroyed families, friendships, and lives. We have given it so much power that we can’t stop thinking about it. We worry because we cannot imagine how we would live without enough of it to sustain the lifestyle we want or that we are accustomed to. And given that many of us have so many emotional issues around money, yes, I think another blog about money is appropriate.

The Money Life Café was born from my belief that life should be lived the way one wants to live it. Life should be enjoyed regardless of what your bank statements say or how much money you have in your wallet. A rich, full life can be attained with less than we think.

The Money Life Café will give you cash saving tips and investment ideas - things that we don’t normally think of as investments. There will be discussions about lifestyle changes, thoughts about the important stuff one should be spending money on and posts about very personal money decisions from real people. MLC will provide articles on cheap recipes, affordable gift ideas for the holidays, ways on how to live creatively, and publish ideas about life and money issues. And money stories, because everyone has a money story. So let’s start with mine…

For as long as I can remember, I have always been a money-saver.  When I was a kid, I did it because I wanted to have what my cousins had - those cousins my mom labeled as “rich”.  These cousins enjoyed huge homes complete with pools and manicured lawns, got all the brand name clothes, drove nice cars, and traveled the world while I watched on the sidelines wanting to live the luxurious, exciting lives they had.  I was angry that my parents could not provide me with the decadent lifestyle of my relatives.

My mom would tell me, “Save your money, we’ll put it all in the bank and one day you’ll find yourself rich.”  Thus I was convinced that if I saved enough money, I would one day live the good life, too.  So wanting so very much what my cousins had, I scrimped and saved everything I could. I’d never spent a cent of the birthday cash I got, I picked up and asked for people’s loose change, I’d do chores for pay and give everything to my mom to deposit in my savings account. It did me no good. When I was eleven, my dad gambled away our lives. The loan sharks came and took our house and all other assets. And of course, what little money I managed to save in the bank my dad took to pay his debts.

I found out the hard way that if I wanted to live like the luxurious life, I’d have to do more than scrimp and save my pennies.  I’d have to keep a close eye on my cash and earn a lot of it, too.  Well, I found out how difficult it would be to earn it, especially when I immigrated to Canada and became a single parent.  It was not easy finding and keeping a job and caring for a toddler at the same time.  Thank goodness I had some money-saving skills in my pocket by then (as well a little outside help).  But on the whole, through many years of trial and error, the money-saving skills I acquired got me through times of hardship and unemployment.

My wish for living my cousins’ luxurious lifestyles has diminished after many years.  I’ve discovered that what’s really important is that I am able to do the things that matter most to me.  Even during the times when I had very little income, I managed and live on less and kept more of my hard-earned money to be able to do the things I love.

It is my sincerest hope that what we share here will be of help to our readers be able to keep more of their money to use on the things they truly care about. Thanks and welcome to The Money Life Café.

*I have accompanied this welcome note with nine other pieces to give readers a better idea what we’ll be posting in the future. I hope you enjoy them. And we’ll be posting something every two weeks (although posts may come more frequently in the future). Please subscribe to our feed to make sure you don’t miss out on new items.

Want more real-life Money and Life Experiences?  Visit the Money Stories section of this website.

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Mar 01 0 comments
Money Stories

MONEY STORY: LESSONS FROM BANKRUPTCY

There can life after bankruptcy if you work on dealing with your money and other issues. This is proven as MLC interviews Friedrich (not his real name) who went through bankruptcy and has since fixed his Money Life.

MLC: You’re successfully self-employed so it surprised me to hear that you went through bankruptcy some time ago. Tell me what happened.

FRIEDRICH: I was in my early twenties, about a year after I came to Vancouver. I was simply living a lifestyle I couldn’t afford. I would buy things that I wanted, knowing I couldn’t afford them, but at the same time ignoring the voice in my head that was warning me to stop. I put everything on my credit cards. I was using one credit card to pay off another.

MLC: Did you stop payments and have collectors come after you?

FRIEDRICH: No, it didn’t come to that point, thank goodness. I tend to feel guilty about not doing things right. That guilt got so bad when my car broke down, I didn’t have the money to get it fixed or pay off my credit cards even with the credit juggling. I decided then I needed to do something about my situation.

MLC: So you decided to declare bankruptcy. Couldn’t you go to family for help first?

FRIEDRICH: No, my parents bailed me out of debt twice already, the first time as a teen when I couldn’t pay off my credit card bills and another time when I blew my student loans on booze and partying. I couldn’t graduate until I paid the school $3000. I didn’t want to go back to my parents for help, so I went to a credit bureau.

MLC: You mentioned uncontrolled spending and partying. What kind of lifestyle were you leading and what were you thinking during that time in your life?

FRIEDRICH: Yes, I as partying all the time: living life not caring what tomorrow would bring. When I wanted something I bought it. I realized after the whole bankruptcy experience that I had some emotional problems to deal with; that the emotional issues were what caused my uncontrolled spending and money problems. The spending was just one way that I coped, and it was a distraction from what was really going on with me and how I felt about myself.

MLC: So bankruptcy opened your eyes to this?

FRIEDRICH: In a way, you see, when I declared bankruptcy, the credit bureau kept tabs on me. They followed my spending for months after that. I had to do a budget and stick to it, I had to write down each and every item I bought and why. What it did was not allow me to spend, cope, self-medicate, whatever you want to call it, like I was doing before, therefore forcing me to deal with the real issues at hand.

MLC: How do you deal with your finances today? Do you still buy things you don’t need?

FRIEDRICH: Yes, I do buy things I don’t need, but only on occasion. The difference is, if I see something I want, I think about it first. Is it something I really want or is it something that will make me feel better at that moment, and then I couldn’t care less about the item in a few hours or days? And I only buy it if there’s room in my budget. I still use that same budget tracking system I learned from the credit bureau years ago.

MLC: And emotionally, how do you cope nowadays? Are you happy now?

FRIEDRICH: I deal with what’s bothering me, I feel the feelings I need to and go from there. So yes, on the whole, I am very happy now.

* Bankruptcy laws may differ depending on where you live. Please check with your local bank, a local accountant or credit bureau about laws in your area if you are considering filing bankruptcy.

Want more real-life Money and Life Experiences?  Visit the Money Stories section of this website.

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Mar 01 0 comments
Money Stories

MONEY STORY: I WAS A STARBUCKS BLENDED DRINK-AHOLIC

Hello, my name is Margarita and I was a Starbucks Blended Drink-aholic.

It all started a few years ago when a friend gave me a pre-paid Starbucks Coffee Card for my birthday. I used to occasionally visit my local Starbucks for a tea or coffee, or a small latte at most. Since I now had a gift card, I decided to splurge and try a blended coffee drink. I ordered a White Chocolate Mocha and that’s when the addiction started; I was hooked on those fancy “froo-froo” coffee drinks. The card had $25 on it that first day. Five and a half days later, there was nothing left. So I whipped out my credit card and bought a Caramel Macchiato, thinking that it would be my last trip to Starbucks for a while. Not so, I went back the next day for a green tea latte, also charged to my Visa. Soon, one sugary Starbucks drink a day was not enough and the addiction grew to two drinks a day. I was spending around $9 a day on coffee or tea. This was ridiculous, because I was now spending more on the drinks than I was for all the meals I ate in a day.

After a few months I quit cold turkey. I avoided Starbucks like the plague. I started making coffee at home, mixed with hot chocolate powder and milk, put it in a thermos and brought it outside to drink at a park. When the weather started getting colder, I went back to Starbucks, but I didn’t succumb to the temptation of a blended drink! I conquered my addiction. I ordered a plain tall coffee for $1.18 CDN and I think I enjoyed it more than all the sugary drinks I used to crave.

Want more real-life Money and Life Experiences?  Visit the Money Stories section of this website.

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