Nov
05
Tis the season, the Christmas craft fair season! I visit and buy many of my gifts at local craft fairs and farmers markets because I like to support small businesses and my fellow Canadians in their money endeavors.
Another benefit I see to buying at craft fairs are that most likely, the item bought will be handmade and therefore not likely mass produced so the recipient the gift won’t be wearing the same shawl, shirt or bracelet as his/her neighbours. And buying local helps reduce our stamp on the environment (less fuel used to transport goods), too.
It is true that farmer’s markets and craft fairs are not always the cheapest places to buy gifts and other items but at least you know where the goods come from (most likely the vendor if also the maker of the item and no sweatshops) and you are helping the economy so in the long run, you may just be helping yourself, too.
If you live in the Vancouver area, here are the upcoming crafts fairs that you can visit for this season be sure to check out:
1. Bonsor Community Centre’s Christmas Fair -
November 21 & 22, Saturday and Sunday, 10AM-3PM
6550 Bonsor Ave., Burnaby, BC
2. Blim Craft Fair -
Sunday, November 29, 11AM-5PM
215 E 17th Ave., Vancouver, BC
Or visit the link below to get a list of fairs around town all year round!
www.gotcraft.com/aroundtown
Happy shopping!
Nov
03
Yes, I know, Halloween has just passed and already I am writing about Holiday shopping. But for good reason! My family celebrates Christmas and we have dinners, get-togethers, gift-exchange, etc. And since I tend to be a little obsessive about giving gifts people will cherish (or at least like), I have to start early (at least by early November) to avoid undue stress.
This is the time I tend to do a lot of window shopping. Whether I am looking to order online, buy something at the mall ready-made and off the rack, or planning to make a gift by hand, I take some time to browse at lunch time or after work and get some gift ideas (and prices). It is also handy to have your gift list ready and with you at this time.
After a week or so I have an idea of what handmade gifts I am making so I buy the materials and I start creating them. As I create, I wrap and tag them so that I don’t forget what goes to whom. If I decide that I am making something edible, I carefully calculate and then buy as many of the ingredients as early as I can to avoid mad rushes at the food stores closer to the holidays. A day or two before our celebration, I can bake/cook without too much worry that an ingredient is missing.
Same goes for ready-made gifts. I tend to buy early for fear of not getting the right size or colour of toy, garment, gizmo, etc. or worse, not being able to get the thing at all for the “hot” items. And for the online orders, now is the time to buy them to make sure the gift arrives on time. You really don’t want to pay more for a last-minute gift!
Happy shopping, everyone. And for those looking for some gift ideas, I’ll be posting some articles on those in the coming weeks.
Nov
01
Last night my partner made dinner; spaghetti and meatballs. He used a bottle of Ragu Pasta sauce and added chopped green peppers, mushrooms and meatballs. But he also added water. It would have been an awesome meal except for the added water in the sauce. Instead of a lovely sauce that stuck to your noodles, the sauce instead was an almost tasteless soup that collected at the bottom of our plates.
When I asked my partner about it, he said he added the water because some of the thick sauce stuck to the bottom of the bottle and it was hard to get it out. The water made it soupy enough to get out. I was upset. The meal wasn’t appetizing so I felt we wasted money while trying to save a few pennies by getting the most sauce he could from the bottle.
Moral of the story? I guess my partner and I learned it’s not worth trying to save a few pennies at the risk of ruining a good deal (or meal in this case). This initial story might sound just a little bit silly but it reminds me of another. My relatives had an after-school tutor for their child to help her with Math. This tutor was wonderful, the kid liked him and her grades were improving, he got along with the parents and he came at a reasonable price. However, he was always 10 minutes late. Even when the family suggested that they bump the session times a bit later in the day, he still came 10 minutes late. After a few months, the parents fired him. They were not able to find another tutor that was as effective after that. They lost their good deal.
So, another moral might be, don’t be TOO anal about savings or getting your money’s worth. It might just bite you in the a$$.
Oct
29
Just two more sleeps and it’s Halloween! I love Halloween as it gives me an excuse to dress up (this year, I will don a cardboard head and wear my lab coat because I’m dressing up as Beaker of the Muppets) and it allows me to by hoards of candy and chocolates (I have a huge sweet tooth).
During this time of year, I splurge on a big bag of candy, and I don’t buy the cheap kind, I buy the “good” candy. I think this is a worthwhile investment. No, I will not keep it all to myself, but I do buy stuff that I like and most people like, you know, the popular stuff like Cadbury’s and Hershey brands. Why? When Trick-or-Treaters come to your door, then bring the candy home to eat, you want your stuff to get eaten by someone, anyone. More likely, the popular brand candies will get eaten. There are too many homes that give out the rock hard, plastic tasting no name brand candies that get stuck to the plastic wrapper and become inedible by the time the little Halloween ghouls bring their loot bags home. These yucky treats get thrown in the trash and that’s a waste!
Another reason to buy the good candy is because each year the number of Trick-or-Treaters that come to my door varies. Some years I have so much left over candy that my family has to consume it ourselves. If we don’t like the candy, it goes in the trash. But if we do, it eventually gets eaten.
That’s why I buy the “good” candy. More chance of it getting eaten, less waste.
Oct
27
Uh-oh no costume yet? Halloween is only 4 days away but it’s not too late to make yourself a very cute and affordable Beaker Costume. Really easy, it only takes around an hour to make. Here’s how to make his head…
Materials:
Pink poster board - $0.50 at Dollar Store
Orange flat foam material - $1 per pack at Dollar Store (or you can use orange poster/card board)
Styrofoam balls, 2 sizes (for eyes and nose) - $1 per pack at Dollar Store
Markers or acrylic paint, glue, pencil, eraser, scissors, ruler, tape and/or stapler
1. Wrap poster board around your head. Mark it with pencil just above where your eyes are and where you mouth is. Then draw an arch in the middle of the poster board. The top of the arch starts from where you marked and bottom points end just around your mouth. This arch is going to be the opening for Beaker’s mouth and doubles as your eye holes. Cut along the arch with scissors.
2. Paint bigger styrofoam ball orange and make a black dot on each of the smaller styrofoam balls. These will be Beaker’s nose and eyes. Glue the orange nose styrofoam ball just above the arch you cut out and the two styrofoam eyes just above the nose.
3. Shorten the poster board by marking one inch above the styrofoam eyes then cutting across.
4. Cut the orange foam or poster board into triangles. These will be Beaker’s hair. Glue, tape or staple hair to top of poster board.
5. Roll the poster board into a cylinder and tape ends shut. Put over your head and wear a lab coat or long white shirt over a patterned shirt and tie and you are Beaker from the Muppets!
Happy Halloween!
Oct
22
Here’s a great money habit my boyfriend has, he puts all his pocket change and coins in a jar when he gets home from work at night. After a few months, the jar (it’s a big one) gets full. He then empties it and finds that he has a couple hundred dollars worth. It’s amazing how much money can be saved this way. He usually uses the cash to treat himself to some music books or accessories but imagine how much better it would be if he put the cash into his savings account or towards his mutual funds instead. I wonder how amazed he would be with how much money he put away with just his change after a few years. (I’m trying to convince him to take this route, by the way…)
The benefit to this habit is that you hardly miss the money. It’s “just” change. Change he might have used to buy an impulse item like gum or a cup of yucky coffee at the gas station. It’s harder to spend a twenty dollar bill than it is to give your change away.
So, get a jar, any jar, and start fillin’ her up!
Sep
27
Last night my boyfriend and I decided to go to the casino. We are not gambling folk, the most gambling we do is buy the occasional lottery ticket and play poker with our poker group with a $5 buy in and a $20 a night limit. We went to the casino because we wanted to see the Dynamics, a great 12-piece R&B band that plays around my city a few times a year.
I haven’t been to a casino in at least 10 years and had forgotten how it is there - free drinks, free shows, free parking. It was great for us because we just wanted to listen to some fun music and see the band play and did not want to spend much money to do so. If we decided to go to a pub or dance hall to see the band, we would have had to pay cover and too much cash for drinks to sit at a table, not to mention parking fees. At the casino, where everything is free because they want to make it easy for customers to spend all their money gambling, we got a great night with a small bill for a couple of desserts.
Unless you have a gambling problem or tendencies to want to play the slots, I recommend you check out a local casino’s entertainment line up. It might be an unexpected yet good place to go to save some cash off your “night out” bill.
Sep
22
Recently we had a our regular once-a-month poker game at my partner’s best friend’s house. The poker group decided we wanted to have dinner together too and so it turned into a potluck event as well. I think potlucks are a great money-saving idea (see Potluck), but this night it didn’t turn out so economical for me and my partner.
It was my boyfriend’s night to cook and so it was he who would be in charge of our contribution to the potluck - the salad. He was feeling a bit lazy and decided to buy a ready-made salad at the local supermarket near his best friend’s house. Never having bought a ready-made salad at the supermarket myself, I thought, it’s mostly just a bunch of veggies, how much could it cost to buy enough for 6 people? The answer is: $30 CAD! Ouch.
I was very angry at my partner for: 1. being too lazy to make his own salad, 2. being too lazy to estimate how much the ready made salad would cost before ordering it (the cost was determined by weight), 3. being too lazy to change his mind and just buy salad kit to assemble at the his friend’s house. Needless to say, next time we buy anything by weight, I’m bringing a calculator.
We were lucky in that this was just a salad and were out only $30. Imagine if you were too lazy to do your due diligence before buying a house? If you did not do market research before starting up a business (as I understand it many start-up business owners do not - yikes)? How about investing $20,000 on a stock tip your cab driver gave you without checking it out first? Lazy can cost you!
Sep
20
Fitness Club memberships are a scam.
Let’s tell the truth. Very few people exercise and keep fit regularly. Majority of the population are just too busy and/or lazy to keep a regular exercise program. People have good intentions especially during the new year but after 3 months, they are back to their regular routine of eating too much and not exercising. Fitness Clubs know this and they take advantage. They sign you up for a long term contract when you are eager for a change knowing full well that after a few months you’ll probably be paying the club for a service you’ll never use again.
For those who don’t already know, when you join a fitness club, they make you sign a contract stating you must continue to pay monthly until your contract runs out regardless of whether you keep coming to the club or not. And, with some clubs, unless you tell them specifically not to, they will keep renewing the contract over and over again so that you continue paying. They make it very hard to get out of the contract, they either make you pay a fee to break the contract or won’t let you break the contract at all. I know someone who kept her fitness club membership for 8 years and only set foot in that club in the first month she signed up. When asked why she never canceled the membership, she said that she had to go down to the club and had to cancel the membership renewals in person and she was so busy it was easier to continue to pay the fee.
If you want to exercise, try your local rec centre or some other place where you do not need a membership to use the facilities or to join the classes; where they accept a drop-in fee or at the most, ask you to buy a 10-visit punch card.
I love the rec centres in my city (Burnaby, BC). They have great fitness facilities, yoga classes, boot camps, weight training, Pilates, step classes, dance fit classes, etc. You can come to any class or use the weight/fitness room at any time for a drop-in fee of $8-12. Just as good as any fitness club, no obligations or contracts, way cheaper and no scams.
Sep
17
When I first started working, I would buy my lunches. Then I realized that $5 a day on lunch would add up to roughly $100 a month. I was only earning $8 per hour then and after taxes, paying rent, sending my kid to daycare and shelling out cash for other monthly expenses, I really couldn’t afford to eat out, even if eating out meant eating at a fast food food joint or buying a soggy sandwich at the office cafeteria (yuck).
Needless to say, I started including bread and sandwich meats to my grocery list and started bringing sandwiches for lunch. Then I found that if I cooked a bit more for dinner, I could bring the leftovers the next day to work. I liked those a bit better than a cold sandwich. Today I earn more than $8 per hour but I still believe that buying lunch daily is an extravagance. Most offices now have refrigerators and microwave ovens so why not use them?
Got a sweet tooth? Or do you like to snack on junk food from the vending machine? Like your coffee in the afternoons? You can bring all these with you, too. Just like buying a lunch daily, these items, even if they cost only around a buck each, add up to roughly $60-70 per month. So, buy your candy and chips in bulk if you can and include them in your lunch kit. Bring our coffee in a thermos or if you have access to a coffee pot at work, use it!
