Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Weekly Work Recap (Nov. 21 - Nov. 27)

So I am officially on maternity leave now.  Just waiting for my record of employment to come in so I can actually apply for my mat leave paycheck.  Last week was my last week at work at being so, as well as having a huge list of things to do to prepare for baby, all enthusiasm for work went out the door.

MondayScheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 4:50 - 9:40  4.33 hours

Tuesday
Scheduled: 5:30 Dinner
Worked: 5:30 - 8:00  2.5 hours

Wednesday
Scheduled: 5:30 Dinner
Worked: 5:30 - 9:30  4 hours

Thursday
Scheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 5:00 - 9:30  4.5 hours

Friday
Scheduled: 5:30 Dinner
Worked: 5:30 - 8:30  3 hours

Saturday - Sunday
Officially on maternity leave!
Estimated Hours:  16.5 Hours
Hours Worked:  18.33 Hours
I feel like a bum.  Oh well, I am done now, and considering I have been off for 5 days now I have been very busy!  Still lots to do before baby's arrival, and at our appointment yesterday the doctor said she will definately be early, if not right on time.  Any day now!

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Weekly Work Recap (Nov. 14 - Nov. 20)

This week was exhausting!  Including last SUnday I worked 6 Late shifts in a row, not necessarily long shifts, just a lot of work involved.  Then my 7th shift in a row was just a dinner shift but we got slammed and it ended up being my ongest shift of the week. Go figure.

Anyways, finally a day off today, Baby Shower!  5 more shifts then as of Friday evening I am officially done work :)

MondayScheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 4:30 - 9:00  4.5 hours

Tuesday
Scheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 4:30 - 9:10  4.66 hours

Wednesday
Scheduled: 5:30 Dinner
Worked: 4:40 - 10:00  5.33 hoursPicked up the Late shift
ThursdayScheduled: Day Off
Worked: 5:30 - 8:40  3.17 hoursPicked up a 5:30 Dinner shift.  Kyle was the actual late but I did it for him, then he stayed late, which was really only 20 minutes longer than I was there.
FridayScheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 5:00 - 10:40  5.66 hours

Saturday
Scheduled: 5:00 Dinner
Worked: 5:00 - 10:50  5.83 hours

Sunday
Scheduled: Day Off
Baby Shower!
Estimated Hours:  19 Hours
Actual Hours:  29.15

Monday, November 14, 2011

Weekly Work Recap (Nov. 7 - Nov. 13)

Shifts are officially sucking at work, but I only have 2 weeks left.

MondayScheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 4:30 - 9:40  5.17 hours

Tuesday
Scheduled: Day Off

WednesdayScheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 4:50 - 10:10  5.33 hours

Thursday
Scheduled: Day Off
Worked: 5:10 - 9:12  4.03 hoursSwitched my Saturday shift for Thursday.

FridayScheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 4:50 - 10:15  5.42 hours

Saturday
Scheduled: 5:30 Dinner
Worked: Day Off
Switched this shift for Thursday's because the family baby shower was today.
SundayScheduled: 5:30 Dinner
Worked: 5:30 - 9:10  3.17 hoursPicked up the late shift, however it was extremely dead and didn't add much time to my shift.
Estimated Hours:  20 hours
Actual Hours:  23.12 hours
All I have to say about that is 'boo'!

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Mini Update

So I haven't posted much lately due to busyness and lack of inspiration. I'm still here though!  I've almost finished the work for my financial accounting class so I can schedule an early exam, as it's supposed to be right around my due date.

I have several plans for posts but can't post them yet since they're not quite done.  Just finished most of our Christmas shopping the other day, but still a couple things to get so I will wait until it's all done to post a summary.  Also had our pre baby shower yesterday with my family, the big one is next Sunday, then we will know what we still need to buy.  Based on what we already got yesterday, it won't be much. :)

Kyle and I will be discussing our 5 year plan soon, I already have a spreadsheet made up to organize it (of course).  We are also thinking of visiting my parents and step brother in Vancouver in January/February, since now they can't come until May.

So I have a lot of budgeting coming up, just need to organize it all then I will have more posts.  I apologize for how boring I've been!

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Weekly Work Recap (Oct. 31 - Nov. 6)

This week was okay, I was scheduled 6 shifts and picked up a shift on the day I was off.  I was excited when my manager told me last week he scheduled for for 6 days, until he added 'they're not long shifts though since your maternity leave depends on what you work before you leave'.  How does this make sense?  Giving me crappy short shifts benefits me in no way, especially stretching them out over 6 days instead of 5, that's a day I could have just enjoyed at home.  Oh well, I made the most of it.

MondayScheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 4:40 - 9:00  4.33 hours

Tuesday
Scheduled: 12:00 Lunch
Worked: 11:30 - 2:00  2.5 hours

Wednesday
Scheduled: 5:00 Late
Worked: 4:45 - 10:50  6.08 hours

Thursday
Scheduled: 5:30 Dinner
Worked: 5:30 - 8:30  3 hours

Friday
Scheduled: 5 Late
Worked: 5:00 - 10:40  5.66 hours

Saturday
Scheduled: 5:30 Dinner
Worked: 5:30 - 10:00  4.5 hours

Sunday
Scheduled: Day Off
Worked: 4:30 - 9:40  5.17 hoursPicked up the 5:00 Late
Estimated Hours: 21 Hours
Hours Worked: 31.24 Hours
Wow, that's very dissapointing to add up 7 straight days of work and only have worked 31 hours.  That's only one hour more than the bare minimum I have to work in a week.  I'm really getting a lot of crappy shifts where I can barely get 3 hours in.  It almost makes me wonder if I'd be better off going on maternity leave early.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

The Dollar Challenge: Where I Spend My Dollar

(I know, the formatting is all off, blogger keeps glitching, just bear with me)

I have decided to participate in The Dollar Challenge organized by 20s Finance.  Personal Finance bloggers are invited to compare where they spend their money each month to see how we decide to split up our finances.

Although our budget will be changing drastically next month to make room for baby, this is based on our current budget.

1. Housing  42.2%
Rent  36.9%
A little more than it should be, but really the chances of finding a 2 bedroom apartment/house for less is slim to none.  We were pretty happy that we did manage to find a place this cheap that met our standards.

Utilities  5.3%
We got a very good deal from Roger's thanks to the guy on the phone that set up our account.  One of my most pleasant experiences on the phone with a company:)  However it will go up a bit in March.  Our hydro and water tank rental charges were also much lower than we expected which is great!  We'll see how great it is though once we turn on the electric heating.
2. Transportation  0%I love that we pay nothing for transportation.  We don't have a car, and I boycotted our crappy bus system over a year ago.  It's the most expensive in Canada, and has the worst service in Canada.  Who wouldn't boycott that?  We either walk or bike to work as it's not that far, and if we ever need to do errands that require a car we borrow one from our parents.  (We fill it up, but that money will come out of our 'other' money)

3. Food  9%I just boosted our grocery money, because $220 a month isn't enough when you drink as much milk as we do and I'm trying to eat for two.  For November I've set our milk budget aside from the rest of the food just so we remember to go out and buy a bunch of groceries with 10 days left and leave nothing for milk.

4. Insurance  2%This is for our renter's insurance.  I had the option to pay the annual premium upfront but decided to go monthly to work it into our budget, and also in case we do make a claim and it changes I won't have to worry about already having paid for the upcoming months.  We just got our medical and life insurance though work, which we don't pay for (not 100% sure about this yet, we'll see next month I guess) and I also have extra medical coverage under my mom until I'm 25.

5. Personal Care  0%I'm setting this category to 0% because any personal care items we buy we either get with our groceries or with our spending money, which I've put in the entertainment category.

6. Entertainment  3.6%We each have $50 in spending money each month for us to buy whatever we want.  This includes clothes, personal care items, shopping, etc.

7. Savings  36.8%My RRSP  1.8%I put $50 aside each month to my RRSP.  Not much, but I'm only 20 and right now I have bigger things to save for coming up like a down payment and school.  Once we have enough money set aside for these items (or we come into more income) I will boost my RRSP contributions.  However I did put about $2,000 into it when I started it.

Kyle's RRSP  2.9%
Kyle puts aside $20 a week to his RRSP, which averages to $80 a month, however two months a year will have a $100 contribution.

Extra Savings  32.1 %
Technically this isn't a budgeted account in our budget, it's all the money that's leftover each month after all our other budgeted expenses.  So there's a lot of room to expand our other categories like spending money, but we keep it tight (but liveable) so that we can grow our savings faster.  It's roughly $890 each month, but usually higher than that because we tend to bring in more income that what we have budgeted for.


8. Other  6.4%
My cell phone  1.6%I recently switched to a better plan that greatly decreased my bill, although I'm extremely upset with Solo and their super crappy customer service (not to mention their money snatching loop holes, which one call center guy fessed up to).  And as much as I love my phone, it's starting to crap out, so once it dies I think I'll be switching to an iPhone.  Yes, I'm giving in. Sigh.

Kyle's call phone  2.9%Kyle has an iPhone, so of course his bills are much larger than mine, although I've been bugging him to call them to try to negotiate a slightly cheaper plan.  Damn data!

Other  1.8%
We use this account for any random but necessary purchases that come up like repairs, medicine, or household objects (plugs, cleaning supplies, etc).

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

November 1st Net Worth

Since I first got accepted into the fashion design program in Vancouver in Sept 2010, I started tracking our net worth.  We needed a lot of money, between my tuition, the cost of moving, and wanting to have enough money leftover to not be broke, and we had just under a year to get it.  I needed to make sure that we were setting aside enough money each month to meet our goal of $20,000 on time.  Of course now school has been postponed for another year, but I still keep track of our net worth.  Why not?  It's nice to see how much your money grows each month :)  Here's our net worth as of November 1st compared to our net worth at October 1st.



















The green highlighted column is the total of each category.  The white column to its right is how much that category increased from the previous month.  Our cash is generally our tip out money.  But my cash went up a lot more because Kyle's brother paid me back for ordering something online for him when I ordered Kyle's Christmas gift.  At this point I've maxed my Tax Free Savings account for this year, so for now it's just bringing in interest.  Plus I got my anniversary bonus this month, only $1.65, but still, that's a $1.65 I didn't have before!

Our vacation pay we've been saving up for when the baby comes.  Mine will automatically be paid because I will technically have to be terminated to get my maternity leave.  Kyle is saving his for the two weeks he'll have off when she's born, that way we won't be broke.  By the time she comes he'll have enough that after taxes it will be the same as a regular paycheck.  How's that for planning ahead? :)

However, unlike most net worth statements, I don't include our RRSP savings.  This is because I'm keeping track of all spendable cash so we know we have enough for school and the move, as well as what we have left over for emergencies or other savings like a car or down payment.  Since our RRSPs are locked in and for retirement, we don't have access to that money, therefor I keep track of it separately.

The best part is that we have no liabilities.  The few times I actually use my credit card to buy something I pay it off as soon as it shows up on my account.  It's a nice feeling to have no liabilities :)  Of course, I'm still excited to get a car and buy a house in a few years.

All in all it was a pretty successful month especially considering how much we over spent.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

October Budget Review

Finally get to post my first monthly budget review.  I wish I had been able to post September's, as it was much more impressive.  This month we went over budget in almost all of our variable spending.  However, I don't consider this to be a bad month because on top of all our extra spending and the fact that I ordered Kyle's Christmas gift (which I set myself a budget of $100, it came to $101.11 yay!) we still ended up setting aside an extra $200 than we were supposed to.  Meaning we set aside $1,027.78 from our regular income, woo! 

Our tip outs have been bigger than what they show in the budget because it's paid in cash and we take any of the change and put it in our big change jar for our Christmas fund.  So we still made plenty in tip outs and set at least $15 in change towards Christmas shopping :)  It was also nice to get our first Hydro/water tank bill and find that it was much lower than what I was expecting, and that included set up fees!  However with our place already freezing I'm not looking forward to turning on the electric heating, that's gonna be expensive.