1st weekend on a budget = hard, very hard.

As the title states, this weekend was hard. During the week it was easy to avoid temptation, make cheap food & limit the amount of booze I was drinking. The only saving grace for my budget this weekend was that our plans included plenty of cheap beer.

I was successful in some aspects of my budgeting this weekend.

As lots of people (can I call you fans now???) have stated, setting a goal for yourself will help with the saving. After a lot of research I finally found the DSLR I want to buy and strive to save for. I have created a new envelope called 'Camera Fund', not extra money, not carry over money, but an envelope that I will fill with $1,000 for my new camera. We have $15 in this envelope right now as we returned all of our empties. I think it's really easy to just throw your empties in the recycling bin and contribute to your local canners income, but after spending an hour gathering all of the cans and taking them to the return it depot we realized that this is a quick way to get some extra cash.

I am now 5 days into my enveloping and budgeting and am doing fairly well. The envelope for the animals food is empty so they may be eating dry pasta with me every night, but other than that I properly budgeted my groceries, dining out envelope and booze.

I posted a link to another blog that I found that is dedicated to cheap & healthy meals. I highly recommend that you check it out. We have made two meals from this blog, both were tasty and inexpensive.

Happy Monday.

Day one was successful, but that might be because all of my envelopes are still stuffed!

I had a minor panic attack when I put my plastic to rest yesterday; I even stood in line at the bank to take money out instead of accumulating bank fees.

After my initial 'oh my, I only can spend this much on food and booze for the next two weeks', I remembered why I was doing this and how I never, ever want to hit rock bottom again the way I did a month ago.

For the first time ever I actually wrote out a grocery list. I have budgeted myself $50 for this pay period for groceries. Instead of just walking around the grocery store randomly grabbing things that looked good, I compared prices and stuck to my list. My grocery bill for the week came out at $20.55. Pretty good so far.

Today I decided to take out money from my coffee fund and have a coffee this morning. In this envelope I've limited myself to $20 per pay period. Keep in mind that I was spending, on average $25 in coffee from Monday to Friday and usually the same amount on weekends (when I factored into buying Glen coffee). Needless to say this will be one of the tough ones.

Next challenge will be the weekend. We have already agreed not to go out for dinner, but a show tonight (= booze) + poker + more drinks with friends. This will be hard. I also didn't budget for poker, but hey, I could win and be on top! Oh, that's not the way I should look at things, right?

Have a great weekend and keep the comments coming!

Dooms Day

I got paid today which means that today I start my envelopes.

I was really excited about this last week, but realized over the weekend how hard this is really going to be and how diligent I need to be with my money. I used my "plastic" about 20 times this weekend for various things, and continued to use my favorite phrase "no, I'll take care of this" another 20. Today that stops....and I know it's going to be hard.

Thanks for all of your emails and comments. I've had a lot of great responses.
A few great ideas that I personally loved are:

1) Any money that's left over at the end of your pay period, put in a savings account for something that you really want; this will help you be better with your money if there is something you want at the end of it all.

2) Leave the plastic at home

3) Take a look at bills from Shaw/Telus and see if there is anywhere that you can save money. You no longer need a contract with Telus so it's easy to swap companies.

Keep sending your comments and I'll keep posting!

Restaurant of the day: House of Dosa's (Monday is half price dosa night).
Corner of Kingsway and Knight

Problem with posting comments

I've received a bunch of emails the past few days regarding people trying to post comments and not having any luck.
I'll try and get this problem fixed over the weekend as I really would love input from you all.
Have a great weekend!

Budgies burritos sounds much better than a budget!

Budgies Burritos? A great, inexpensive vegetarian burrito joint at Main and Broadway in Vancouver, BC.


Step #1 to starting this process was to set up my budget. My friend Sarah sent me a great link to http://getfinanciallynaked.com/get-financially-naked after a lengthy conversation one night about being financially stupid (me, not her).

I downloaded the budget template and started from there (you can find this budget template on the righthand side of the screen - if you go to the link you can download this for yourself)!

I figured that my best first step was to give myself a taste of reality. Instead of starting off with how much I want to spend each month on each given thing, I decided to use that column to guess how much money I spend on everything each month.

From there I went to my online banking and downloaded the last 3 months statements, printed them off and with highlighter in hand went through and tallied up how much money I had spent at the grocery store, liquor store, gas etc. The only problem here were the withdrawals I made and having no idea where that money went. I am guessing that that money should be calculated as part of the "entertainment" section.

This was a real eye opener. An example - I guessed that I spend $60/month on groceries. After I added up the little things I got here and there, going to the grocery store every day, I was almost triple that amount.

Lesson of the day: shop for the week/pay period, not for the day.

Now what am I going to do?

So a few weeks after bouncing my rent cheque I decide that enough is enough and I"m going to take action. Taking action included actually answering the phone when the credit agency called and dealing with the unpaid phone bill I'd been avoiding for a year. Feeling empowered by the thought of finally getting my stuff together, I picked up the phone only to find out that the amount I owed last year was accumulating 25% a day. Needless to say I was once again beside myself and once again had to rely on someone else to help me out of this jam for now.

So as of today I have a clean slate. Pay day is in a week and I have a plan.
This blog is set up to document my journey and hopefully help other women be empowered to get control of their finances. I'd appreciate comments, articles...anything you can contribute.

My plan so far includes:

A budget - I've completed my budget and allotted a certain amount of money to everything and anything I spend money on.
I'm the QUEEN of debit. I LOVE my debit card, but I don't pay attention to the amount of money I have (or don't have) in my account. So as of my next pay day the debit card stays at home. I've put together envelopes for everything and I am going to stick to my budget.

Will let you know how that goes!

How did I get here?

I woke up on the morning of May 3rd, 2010 and thought to myself 'Oh my god, my rent cheque is going to bounce this month, how is that possible?'. My heart was beating out of my chest and I was thinking to myself 'if only I could explain to my landlord that I....'; what? That I make the same amount of money as most double income families living in this city? That I don't know where my money went, but wherever it is I hope it's having more fun than me right now?

After borrowing money off my boyfriend (for the umpteenth time over the course of our 2 year relationship) I felt a bit better and decided that today was going to be the day to get my head above water.

Little did I know that I was going to be hit with another "biggie" that would just dig me deeper. This is where it all began and this is the beginning of my journey to get out of debt and be able to stand on my own two feet!