March Budgetary Results & Hoppy Easter!

I hope everyone has a Happy Easter and if you don't celebrate at least enjoy a few Spring Days! This little postcard was given to my Grandfather as a child somewhere between 1910 and 1920. It was not mailed but hand delivered so a little hard to pin down the exact date. I love the cute bunnies playing tennis with an egg, the pussywillows, and even the tiny bits of old glitter on the eggs.



March Budgetary Results:

Grocery Budget $426.59 minus February overage of $74.60 = $351.99 Budget

Actual $382.29 or $30.30 over - I still managed to shave over half of the overage from February off so feel this was successful.

Coupons used: $16.84

Nonfood purchases of the $351.99 were $86.29.

I did not include groceries purchased in BC at our new residence as part of those were left there and some of the groceries like garbage bags were taken there so feel it will all even out.

The discount trashbags I purchased at 1/4 of the cost of Glad bags are completely great - no complaints from hubby and yet another win in the grocery budget.

We finally freecyled some badminton net and badminton racquets to a family on Thursday evening. These were originally listed in January but no takers - people don't like to think ahead these days.

Clothing Budget (Year) $200
To Date Spent - Zero! I even purged some more clothing that has not been worn in a long time.

Hair Budget (Year) $400
To Date Spent - $52 with nothing spent in March
I have scheduled a long overdue cut and colour scheduled for this Friday. There will also be some hair product to buy but as I don't really have grey hair yet (43 and lucky - just the odd one) I can stretch this budget to two professional colours per year. My last was in early December. Hopefully this plan will work - if not I may have to sneak in one home colour.

We signed up for a free trial of Netflix this month in hopes to reduce some of our cable coverage - So far so good but it took us a while to figure out how to hook up the laptop to the tv as don't have a video game console to do it. We have unlimited internet at home so no extra charges that way. Canadian Netflix is not really comparable to USA Netflix as we are much more limited on selection but it sure beats renting movies or buying movies from our Cable TV provider.

Two interesting things happened in Canada this month - the Canadian government approving ceasing production of the Canadian penny. This is a positive cost cutting measure and is prudent - now business do have to do some price adjusting so everything can be rounded off to a nickel but I see it as a smart move to cut government spending. I don't think the end cost to consumers will be more than $3 per year per person. I would rather pay less taxes and have no pennies.

The second cost cutting measure the Canadian goverment took was increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67 (date to collection old age pension). Unfortunately this had to happen sometime as there were insufficient funds to fund the current structure. If you are 54 or older currently this change will not effect you and you can still collect at age 65. As I am 43 and hubby 49 this will directly effect both of us. Our retirement plan does not include any money from the government as we decided a long time ago the only way to be financially independent is to have zero reliance on government income. Anything we do actually collect will be icing on our cake. If more people took this approach to self reliance the world economy would stabilize - my two cents.

Off to finish cooking the turkey as we are having our family get together today so the kids can be there as they spend Easter with their Mom tommorrow.

Finally - a quick shot of what back yard and ponds look like after our foot of snow dump on Thursday - is this really April??