Food Frustration

You know what's kind of a piss off? Having food spoil before you can use it.

Specifically, sale food.

I've been trying to make a concentrated effort of buying food sale to bring my costs down. The problem is that there is only one of me eating it. I might find bread for $1 off, but I get half the shelf life compared to the bread I buy full price. I know it was at a discount, but I don't feel like I get my money's worth when I throw half of it away. The other piss off is when you avoid giving into the urge to eat out, and make the decision to make food at home instead, and find that the stuff you needed to use is spoiled. Bloody frustrating.

You might be able to tell I'm just a little pissed off about having to throw away half a loaf of bread.

I'll admit I'm terrible at cooking (and grocery shopping) for one. Its a skill I have yet to master, despite my efforts. I come by it very honestly, my mom cooks like a typical farm wife.

For example: Thanksgiving 2009. I expected to be working (out of province) that weekend, and my sister expected to be at her boyfriend's parents for dinner. My mom planned a dinner with enough food for her and my dad. The day of, I managed to get out of work and made the drive up north to my parents. At the same time, my sister and her boyfriend changed their plans and went to my parent's house as well. The dinner for 2 now had to feed 5 adults. No one, except my mother, was concerned about this. At the end of the meal, 2/3 of the food had to be packed up as leftovers.

So, all of you single ladies and gentlemen, what tips and tricks do you have to make cooking for one easier? How do you prevent food from spoiling? When it comes to something like bread, do you buy individual buns, or put it in the freezer and thaw individual slices? I could use some advice right now. I'll be set when I have a family, but for now my food budget feels like it's being unnecessarily abused.

Covering All Bases

So there is a distinct possibility I MAY have a second roommate moving in. Maybe. I'm kind of excited about this to be quite honest with all of you.

Anyway, it's laundry day week for me. And by that I mean I've pretty much neglected washing my clothes for weeks and I'm working through the stuff I don't normally wear anymore. Given the fact that I take the more European approach to clothes (wear them more than once if they aren't actually dirty), this means I haven't done laundry in a while (save a load of undergarments 2 weeks ago).

Most of you probably already read FB's blog Fabulously Broke, but if you haven't sauntered over to her other blog The Everyday Minimalist I'd suggest you check it out. She did a post a couple days ago about how people dry their clothes around the world that got me waxing nostalgic about my university days. When I moved into my apartment I bought one of those folding drying racks from IKEA to hang my delicates to dry on. It was under $20 at the time, and was one of the smartest purchases I made during that timeframe.

Now, I grew up in a rural area, on an acreage, where you get dirty looking after the animals/gardening. My dad is a mechanic, so you can be sure he gets pretty dirty too. We had one of those extra large washers that advertised it would wash 20 pairs of jeans at once, along with the matching dryer. You could do a lot of laundry in my parent's washer. Imagine my horror at realizing that my apartment only had 1 tiny washer and dryer per floor (Shall we say 3-4 pairs of jeans?), and that it would cost me $2.50 a load to wash, and $2 a load for ~25 minutes in the dryer (plus more for extra drying time).

W...T...F...

It didn't take much mental math to figure out that I wasn't going to be using that washer and dryer. I just flat out refused, both for the sake of my wallet and out of principle.

I spent my entire 3rd year of university washing my clothes in my bath tub, and hanging them to dry on every surface I could find in my apartment. I lived alone, so I really didn't really have to worry about pissing off my roommates doing that. The only thing that caused me grief was my bedding, which I periodically took down to the laundry mat. I stuffed as much clothing into those industrial washers as possible to save myself the tub washing, but that only happened when I had a load of sheets to wash.

By 4th year I did pay to use the apartment machines occasionally for convenience sake; senior design projects sure do know how to take the wind out of you. But, I still tub washed a lot of my clothes.

Fast forward a few more years and I'm now paying to have clothes dry cleaned. Why? Because I bought a tonne of clothes for work that were dry clean only.

That was smart. S-M-R-T....

I had been cursing the cost of cleaning my clothes, when I looked down at my jeans and realized they also had a dry clean only tag.

Seriously???? It's 98% cotton and 2% lycra! Since when is cotton dry clean only?!?

Seeing as my jeans had already been unceremoniously thrown in the washer and *gasp* didn't shrink, it got me thinking about my other clothes. Why are they dry clean only? What are they made of?

Cotton. Wool. Lycra. Cashmere. Polyester.

Funny, none of those fabrics in and of themselves are dry clean only materials. Cold water hand wash sure, but dry clean? Nah. From what I understand cashmere actually does worse at the dry cleaner's than it does in hand washing.

My wallet hurts thinking about the fact that it's been duped.

I have one dress that I bought in Paris which reads "Special Dry Clean Only". From what I gathered (googled) that meant it was to be sent to "trusted" dry cleaners only. That dress will continue to be dry cleaned.

The rest? You guys have a date with my tub, ASAP. Enjoy the cold bath.

Ode To My Car

Every time my car has to go in to the dealership for yet another problem, I always think about Adam Sandler's "Ode to my Car". While I don't use that many expletives in my day to day life, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like using them when it comes to my vehicle.

As you can guess, it's back there again. This time it's my fan. It happened last weekend when I was at the bank depositing some of my casino floor earnings (woo hoo!). I came out of the bank, turned on my car, and... nothing. No air flow at all. I turned it on and off a couple times, tried adjusting things to see if it would come on... nothing.

Great.

It was a very cold drive home with no warm air in the vehicle. Thank god for heated seats.

So this morning I took it in for an early appointment at the dealership. I'm really hoping this is a warranty issue, I don't really want to be spending my little savings account on getting the fan fixed in what has been a problematic car.

I talked to my mom about the fact that I want to sell my car, but my parent's aren't comfortable with the idea of me being completely vehicleless when I live so far away from them (8 hours). It sounds like, all going well, I may actually end up borrowing one of their vehicles when I sell mine. Its a summer vehicle only, so I'm not sure how I'll deal with this come winter, but it gives me secondary transportation when I do put mine on the market. I'm very grateful for the fact that they would offer to lend me one of their vehicles, I definitely wasn't expecting it.

In the mean time I'm still quite frustrated at mine. *steaming*

Anyone else having car problems right now?

Edit: The dealership just called, the car had a fault in the blower motor. It's being replaced under warranty. I can stop holding my breath now, but it's still frustrating.

Interesting Rate

I received an anonymous comment a couple days ago on my month end review telling me that my line of credit interest rate was exceptionally high. I hadn't actually given my line of credit interest rate any thought at all, it was just something that was there so I accepted it. The comment however spurred me into gear. I didn't expect to get the 4.5% interest rate he/she mentioned, but if my interest rate was high why not look into getting a decrease?

To google I go!

Apparently the internet isn't a very good place to go to find interest rates on lines of credit in Canada, the banks play that information pretty close to their chest. So, I called my bank Tuesday at lunch, and managed to get an appointment for after work on Wednesday. That was fast!

I almost got my hopes up there!

So, I went in and discussed a rate decrease. No dice. Apparently the major banks tie their line of credit rates to the "customer relationship" they have with you, ie: The more financial credit products you have with them, the better the rate they'll give you. So, if you have your mortgage, credit card, line of credit, RRSP, TFSA, and other investments through them, they'll give you a better rate than if you have just a chequing or a savings account with them.

Lovely.

If you wanted my investment business to build our "customer relationship", why did you try to convince me to lock into a 5.5% fixed rate mortgage when I was being offered 3.99% elsewhere? That doesn't sound like good relationship building to me.

Save 1.5% on a $237,000 mortgage, or save... any number... on a $11,000 line of credit balance.

You tell me what to pick.

There was the option of securing my line of credit to my house equity, but that wasn't guaranteed to be successful. Along with the application process there was an assessment cost of just under $200, and other application/closing fees of close to $500. Those fees alone are essentially the same as tacking another 6% onto my interest rate for the year. Why on earth would I want to do that for a drop of a couple percentage points? I'm trying to pay the thing off, not float it.

The other option offered was to look at increasing the limit on my line of credit. Apparently if I bumped the limit up to $20,000 it would put me into a different "relationship" category, and COULD possibly drop my rate 0.1 - 0.15%

Excuse me if I don't jump for joy on that one.

I contemplated the very financially dangerous maneuver of increasing my credit limit and using the money to pay off my credit card to save myself a few percentage points. I thought better of it.

If I'm going to be shopping around for a better rate, I want as few credit inquiries as possible. The financial advisor did offer me a useful piece of advice though. She said that if I have investments with another bank, I should consider looking to them because they might give me a better rate on a line of credit. Definitely something to remember.

I was just hoping to get a better rate through my existing account. The last thing I wanted to be doing was rate shopping with a balance sitting at 90%+. Not good.

Makes me want to rethink my savings vs. debt repayment plan.

Any Canadian guys/gals know what the banks are offering for line of credit or loan rates right now?

Avoiding Temptation

Reason #437 to bring something interesting (and filling) to work for lunch:

Avoiding the brand new shiny restaurant downstairs. Damn does it smell good.

For the last 8 months or so the restaurant on the first floor of our building had been under renovation. And I believe new ownership. What that meant for me was that my office, conveniently located directly above the bulk of the work, has been noisy as hell with them sawing, drilling and banging away to their hearts content on the kitchen ceiling and plumbing. Those pipes run up my office wall, and the sound was downright deafening at times. I actually went to the safety department, got a stash of ear plugs, and went around my corner of the office offering them to people. Everyone took a pair. I think someone may have finally taken us seriously and lodged a complaint, because towards the end the louder noise held off until 5pm on the dot. We all thought we should get coupons to the place for having to endure that, but no such luck.

But, it's over now, and what was once a fairly dated run of the mill restaurant and salad bar is now a brand spanking new Brazilian BBQ joint.

*insert drool here*

If I'm not mistaken it will be featured on the show "Opening Soon", because their camera crews were hanging around the last few days. Opening day came, so I decided to check out their website rather than tempting myself by going in to have a look.

Holy crap. It's going to be a while before I go there.

It's a fixed price meal that uses what is apparently called a "rodizio" concept. You have a little disk you flip back and forth between the red and green sides. Green signals the servers to bring over a selection of meat skewers from the BBQ, red signals them that you don't want any more meat at the moment. You pick up your side dishes from some form of salad bar off to the side. It doesn't say whether or not appetizers, drinks and dessert are included in the price, but considering they have a bar in there and the dessert pictures look plated, I'm going to say probably not.

Lunch is $22

Dinner is $45

This girl will go broke(r) in there.

I can see why they need the keep the price up, especially since it looks like an all you can eat meat bar. Very Alberta friendly. Very not Cassie's wallet friendly.

And I smell it every time I go downstairs now.

So not fair.

Grappling With Groupon

I think I'm going to cancel my Groupon account.

It's not really a problem with Groupon persay. Well, it is and it isn't.

I thought it was for coupons, not discounted gift certificates. The name is a little misleading.

Every day a new promotion is delivered to my inbox, tempting me with the siren song of heavily discounted wares. 50% off event tickets. 67% off spa services. Marked down dinners out, clothing and hair care. Everything I would spend money on, if only I had it.

Today's Groupon was my final straw. 50% off my favourite Indian restaurant. Only $15. It's just $15, that's not such a big deal, that doesn't hurt. Oh, but what about that spa package that's only $40, that's such a steal, I really should get that too. And on, and on... Next thing you know my debt payments aren't digging me out nearly as fast as they should be. Bugger.

If it was a coupon, it could sit in my envelope, patiently waiting until the cash reserves build up enough that I could use it. Instead, it's a limited time offer, like a sale sign in a store window screaming "BUY ME NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!"

If I avoid the mall to get away from shopping temptations, why should I be allowing it in my inbox? At least at the mall I get to stretch my legs.

But anyway, Ta Ta for now Groupon. See you when I have money.

Waiting For Interest to Work In My Favour

My annual mortgage statement came in the mail last night. I'm glad, I was beginning to wonder where it had gotten off to. That was right about where the glad part ended. There is something rather unfortunate about paying almost $17,000 onto a loan and only seeing the balance improve by about $4,500. It's like having one of those payday loans, only it has a nicer name.

Hey you, yeah you Interest, I've got something to say to you: Bite Me.

I have the sudden urge to empty my wallet into my lump sum payment jar right now. In fact, I'll probably do that as soon as I'm done typing here.

The envelope wasn't entirely filled with suck though. Apparently my mortgage provider is starting a website where I can go to check my balance, review my statements, change my payment frequency or amount, or make lump sum payments. That last one makes me happy, it will make the process much easier come the end of the year.

Home sweet home. One day you'll be all mine.

Price Check Please?

For some reason my back and neck are really sore today. Massage is covered by my insurance (up to a certain dollar amount), so I figured I'd book an appointment on pay day (so I can pay cash).

I looked up one of the spas near my house online, checked their prices, and then called to book an appointment. This was the tail end of the conversation.

*booking appointment, inquired about price*

Spa: "That will be $110"

Me: "Your website says $55-$75"

Spa: "That's the American price, our spa isn't listed on there"

Me: "I looked you up on the Canadian site, and they have different services listed based on the locations so I know it's not standard pricing."

Spa: "But that is the American price. We're globally owned though, so after the exchange rate it comes out to the same price."

Me: "The dollar is at par"

*long pause*

Spa: "It is right now"

*It has been for, ummm, quite a while, and is projected to be for some time in the future*

Me: "Thank you for your time, but my insurance won't cover that cost."

I'm glad I double checked the price before I hung up the phone, that would have been a VERY unpleasant surprise if I hadn't. Needless to say, I'm irritated. Granted, that could also be due to my back being sore. Has anyone else run into this lately? If so, how did you handle it?

Month End - January 2011

Every once in a while I have to sit back, look at my finances, and go wtf?


This is one of those months

	31-Mar-10	31-Dec-10	31-Jan-11
Chequing	$116.66	$1,140.22	$149.68
Savings 1	$0.24	$0.26	$0.26
Savings 2	$100.00	$0.90	$0.90
Savings 3	$500.00	$0.07	$0.07
Investment	$2,189.67	$1,182.81	$1,154.89
TFSA	$0.00	$2,463.64	$2,423.86
RRSP 1	$1,525.96	$1,594.74	$1,632.31
RRSP 2	$3,868.08	$4,016.84	$4,016.41
ASSETS	$8,300.61	$10,399.48	$9,378.38
Car Loan	($13,138.27)	($9,760.77)	($9,397.49)
LOC	($10,000.00)	($11,100.00)	($11,000.00)
Credit Card	($5,155.65)	($4,978.23)	($4,433.32)
DEBTS	($28,293.92)	($25,839.00)	($24,830.81)
Net Worth	($19,993.31)	($15,439.52)	($15,452.43)

It's more a question of where my money went, so I guess I should be saying WDMMG, rather than WTF.

I know I finished off the last month with an extra pay cheque, which skewed my assets higher and mostly went to a mortgage payment, but I'm not entirely sure where the money went. My net worth changed by $13 in the wrong direction? I'm shaking my head at this one. 

I've tried writing down every penny I spend before, and unfortunately it's failed miserably in the past. I had been thinking about making it a mini goal to write down everything I spend in the month of February. This post seems to be heavily encouraging that - coincidence?

Tomorrow I'll be taking a look at my slip ups in the cash only department in January, maybe I'll be able to shed a little light on this situation? I hope so.

Captcha Conunmdrum

Random Observation:

Nothing is quite so irritating as trying to fill in the little captcha box on your phone's browser while it's trying to autocorrect what you're typing. *facepalm*

That's all for today folks.