Dollars and Sense Update

Our fridge for the next four weeks

 - Renovations:  Our renovation plans went full speed ahead this week as July is the slowest month of the year for our business.  On Monday we cleaned out our master bedroom closet, took down half of our closet organizer and painted two coats.  Tuesday we put the closet organizer back and made sure to sort through all of our clothing before it got put back.  Three bags full (approximately 40 items) were deposited at Sally Ann.  This closet was previously pink - the colour the bedrooms used to be.  Three years ago when we moved in we painted the bedrooms but needed a place to unpack and store all our stuff so the closet was left and we have been meaning to paint it ever since.


Just FYI these closet organizers are a complete cow to paint around whether you take them down or leave them up.  If we had to do it again we would have left all of it up as it took another hour to get it back together.  We also picked out our flooring and paid a 50% deposit with the company of choice after receiving a couple of bids which were nearly identical in price but one company will take half the time as the other as they have more staff.  Two less days with my home in total chaos was the clear choice - especially with a puppy.  We also freecycled our vertical blinds (*just not our taste - we have been meaning to remove them for 3 years) in a record breaking 30 minutes from Facebook posting time to pickup time.  Ironically, the lady who picked them up is extremely happy as they go with her mini renovation and are in excellent shape.  We did not want to try selling them as they are unwieldy to store and we just wanted them out of the house.  We also repaired the wall and touched the paint up after removal.  In several months we will pick out some drapery and install a rod - all the other windows in the home have nice horizontal wood blinds that we like so those are definitely staying. Wednesday we put our existing 8 year old appliances up for sale as a package thinking that by our August 14th flooring completion date we needed the old appliances out so the new appliances could be delivered.  Um, they sold that day.  An extremely nice man came and looked at them with his adult daughter whose identical fridge had just died.  We made them such a great deal they decided to upgrade their much older appliances.  They took the fridge last night (after I cleaned it out and scrubbed it spotless) and they will come get the stove, dishwasher and range fan in 3 weeks time.  In the mean time we will be using this little minifridge for our groceries.  Fortunately we have a minifreezer as well so I was able to empty the fridge freezer and everything fits as had been anticipating this - although we didn't expect it to happen quite so fast.  I took a box of fridge items over to Mom's for storage for a month as she was able to clear out a shelf in her fridge for me, thank goodness.

The pink is gone! (sorry no before shot)

Freecycled our vertical blinds 

- The travel fund is still looking healthy as was not completely drained by our Mexico trip. We have a couple of places in mind to travel to in the Spring but are reserving our decision until a couple of months before travel to see how the current economical/political/safety situations play out.  Either way we are back in travel SAVE SAVE SAVE mode.

- In further travel news we finally hit the RBC Avion point mark for one free airline ticket to Europe up to $1300!   Woohoo!  We put all our business expenses including ones that clients reimburse us for on this credit card as well as have a separate Avion card for personal use.  We just put all our car insurance on it and then immediately paid it off as we save for car insurance year round and the funds were in the bank account. We will continue to save all future Avion points for long haul trips as it saves us the most money and we travel somewhere every year.  My air miles mastercard is primarily used for buying groceries and helps me accumulate trips to Alberta to see family or for the kids to fly here.  I have enough saved for our annual pre-Christmas family visit.  It pays to play these point games as long as you incur no interest and pay them off immediately.

- The Christmas fund - The goal is $1000 in points/GCs/Cash to be saved by November 1.  To date:

$581.85 Cash
$  25.00 Walmart Photocentre credit
$  70.68 in Amazon.ca GCs from using Swagbucks
$  30.00 in Shoppers Drug Mart Points
$  40.00 in Superstore Points
$  21.50 in Checkout 51 online app Grocery rebate
$  77.46 on Infolinks blog income (no longer have advertising after I cashed out)
$  19.19 in Grocery items rebates
$865.68

I expect by the end of August to have this fully funded plus will then also have to pay for taxes on our air mile airline tickets.  My second oldest stepson just got a great job (after 2 years of college and a full year of looking for a job in his profession) and his own apartment and has offered to let us stay there when we visit so we no longer have hotel expenses - so nice to see the kids growing up :)

-The sealed pot fund is at $301 - not bad for just squirreling away change and the odd bill.  Originally this was tagged for weekends away but with the dog we don't travel as much so we will be spending some of this in August when my eldest Stepson who is in his first year in the army comes to visit.  He met his first serious girlfriend and is bringing her along - this should be both a fun and interesting visit.  He has never let us meet anyone else he has ever dated.  They met in basic training - hopefully in a few months they will be stationed near one another right now as he is in New Brunswick and she is in Ontario.

- prices in Mexico have been on the rise and deals are far fewer than in the past.  The area we traveled to in June is called the Mayan Riviera and has some of the highest prices in all of Mexico.  One day we were craving more than our continental breakfast of fruit and toast so we decided to go to Oxxo (convenience store) and buy some eggs.  You buy them individually and carry them up to the till in your hand.  We bought 4 at a whopping price of 2 pesos each which is approximately 17 cents Canadian per egg - nice and cheap!  They were obviously fresh off the farm - still had some chicken doo doo on them (if that puts you off you shouldn't eat eggs, that just means they came from the chicken this morning or yesterday at most) .  They gave us a little sack to take them out of the store with us.  It felt weird walking around with four eggs in a little sack but they made it back to our hotel room safely and were extremely tasty the next morning.

-In other news my 17 year old stepdaughter did pass all her highschool courses but just barely.  Her attendance is at about 60% and she doesn't have a job.  We are paying a flat room and board fee for her to stay with her boyfriend and his father in Alberta of $500 per month ($400 room and board and $100 for phone and extras) until she graduates high school in June 2016.  If she drops out of school we cut her off at age 18 which is in October.  Hopefully she soon grows out of this stage as currently gets along with hardly anyone in her family and still has not spoken to her Mom in almost a year.  We maintain contact and somewhat of a relationship after she decided she did not want to live with us.  She is the only kid of ours who doesn't really have her s*hit together but you have to be grateful for what is positive and that is that she passed her courses.  She is not living up to her part of the deal which was to have a job but we refuse to give her more money (unless emergency medical or school fees) to spend on fun when clearly she could be working in a town with lots of jobs available.  I think her being broke for a while will do her good as soon she will only have herself to take care of bills.  If you think we are hard*sses, well, we believe in the school of hard knocks and have raised all the kids that way.  No kid was ever handed anything.  If she does graduate highschool there is a money incentive of $1000 gifted to her which is exactly what each of her brothers received. There is money for college that was set aside for many years if she chooses to go but that she has no access to unless she actually goes (we don't give a gift at college graduation as paid for the courses).  What ever will  be will be I guess and soon she will be an adult and have to live with whatever path she chooses.

And that, in a very long winded post is what we have been up to.  Have a great weekend everyone!