Words From The Wealthy

I was walking around the university campus yesterday afternoon, and I figured I'd drop by and say hi to some of my former professors. Sadly, nobody was in. Granted, I can't really say I blame them; it was actually quite nice out yesterday afternoon.

I wandered up and down the halls, looking to see who was still there and who had moved on. Some profs had old assignments sitting in baskets outside their doors, others had comics taped to theirs. I ended up coming across one door posting that really summed things up for me right now.

It was called: Bill Gate's Rules for Life.

I have absolutely no idea if he actually said these things, or if it's just an urban legend. Either way, whoever said them is right. So, here they are:

Rule 1: Life is not fair -- get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping -- they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

As much as I'm a supporter of developing good self-esteem (I've known first hand what it's like to have very low self-esteem), I understand and fully accept that sometimes tough love is the best learning experience out there.

Having someone else take the bull by the horns is like having someone else do your workout for you; you don't get anything out of it in the end.

Reduce Reuse Recycle

I know what you're thinking, and no, this isn't about cans and bottles. It's about money. I've been trying to employ the 3R's into my financial life as well as with items at home. Hopefully I can keep both of them out of the trash? Here's how it works:

Reduce - Your Expenses

Reuse - Your Expenses

Recycle - Your Expenses

Okay, so they all say the same thing, but it's actually two different types of expense I'm talking about. I'll explain.

Reducing expenses is fairly self explanitory, almost everyone reading this blog is trying to do the same thing. In my grandfathers words:

If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.

I like that saying; it's catchy and it gets the point across. If you want to keep more of what you bring in, you have to figure out how to spend less of it. Sometimes it's as easy as keeping track of where it's going, sometimes it requires painful cuts and changes in lifestyle and expectations. Mine required both: I needed to track where my money was going to see that I needed to adjust my lifestyle and expectations. I don't use any fancy accounting programs or online software, I use plain old Excel. Or on my home computer, Numbers. Pencil and paper works fantastic here too.

Reusing expenses is one that I've actually been doing a fair bit now that I think about it. The most recent example of this was this semester's university tuition. School is expensive, and I didn't have $2000 sitting around waiting to be used on courses and books until work reimbursed me in May. So, we got work to reimburse me as I was paying out of pocket, rather than at the end of the semester. My first expense was $250. When I got that money back I added a little more to it and paid $300. Then $400. Then $450. I snowballed the same money onto my university tuition until it was completely paid for with minimal pain. Same with my medical expenses; as I pay out the money and get reimbursed for it, the money will be put back in the medical envelope to be reused the next time I need medication.

I've done the same thing with a $25 microloan I made while I was in university. I had been reading about microloans and how they were giving a hand to people that the banks wouldn't lend to due to the size of the loan or not enough credit history. I signed up with Kiva, who seemed reasonably reputable, and donated $25 to a young woman in Tajikistan to start a business. When that money was paid back, I donated it again to a young woman in Ukraine. It will be paid back again soon, so I'll be able to lend it to someone else. It's like the charitable donation that keeps giving.

Recycling is easy; once something has outlived it's usefulness, turn it into something else! My last tuition expense reimbursement should be sitting in my account tomorrow. Rather than saying "Yay, free money!", it's going towards my internet set up costs and a big credit card payment. It's going to feel so good watching that sucker get knocked down another notch! The hard part here is avoiding the "Oh perfect! Now I have money and I can buy ________." or "Now I have money for Starbucks this week!"

No. I. Don't.

I have money that can be used towards my goals, not instant gratification. Isn't that what got me into trouble in the first place? Right, avoiding that. Onwards and Upwards.

Work Life Balance

My slow cooker and I are about to become very close friends.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
6:30
7:00
7:30		1.5 Hours		1.5 Hours
8:00
8:30
9:00
9:30	4 Hours		4 Hours		9.5 Hours
10:00
10:30
11:00
11:30		7.5 Hours		7.5 Hours
12:00
12:30
13:00
13:30
14:00
14:30
15:00
15:30
16:00
16:30	2.5 Hours
17:00
17:30			2 Hours
18:00
18:30
19:00
19:30
20:00
20:30

This is my weekday schedule for the next 4 months. Green is my time in class on campus, yellow is my time at work, and blue is my time in transit. The buses slow down to hourly in the evenings, so I spend a lot more time waiting. I can get home in 45 minutes if I leave the office at 5:00 or 5:30, but not if I leave after that.

And somehow I’m going to fit dating in here. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

One nice thing about the long transit block after work is that if I get stuck waiting at the West Ed transit center I can do some grocery shopping at the Asian market. If the bus I take doesn’t turn out their interior lights (understandable why they do it, it gets dark here really early during the winter), I can get a bit of studying done in the evenings. Or I can blog from my phone, I’ve done that before too.

But yeah, I think I’m going to do a big batch of chili this weekend and freeze some. One last (jam packed) weekend of freedom before the busy season really begins.

Time Management from the Inside Out, Second Edition: The Foolproof System for Taking Control of Your Schedule -- and Your Life
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Time Management In an Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day (In an Instant (Career Press))

The Savings Solution!

I figured out what I’m going to do with my 3% raise! I am so stoked about this one. When I started with the company I’m working for right now, there was no contribution matching for money you put into the company RRSP accounts. They used to have it, but it was discontinued when the economy took a face first nose dive off a cliff a couple years back. The company I left had a very generous plan. They automatically gave you 4%, and matched dollar for dollar up to 6% of your own contributions. That meant that in order to put in the maximum 18% allowable savings every year, you only had to put in 8% of your own money. Losing that, plus taking a pay cut when I left there, severely hampered my savings ability.

The matching is back! It’s not fully reinstated yet, but given the fact that the economy appears to be stabilizing the company directors have reinstated part of the contribution matching program. If I put my 3% in, the company will match me with another 2%-3%. That’s an automatic 67%-100% increase in my savings! I’d love to see a savings account with that rate of return. Heck, I’d love to see a savings account with a 10^th of that rate of return.  Then come tax time it goes against what I owe (or towards what they owe me). There’s another 20-25%. So just by putting it in this account (which stands a solid chance of growing), I’ll be getting a return of 87%-125% without lifting a finger. I can’t argue with that.

Oh yeah, and the university head honchos gave me permission to take two courses at the same time which I otherwise wouldn’t be allowed to do. I wish all Wednesdays were this good J

Up and down and up and down…

While my paycheck did come with an unexpected downfall in the form of overtime paid out as straight time, I completely missed something else on it. I got a raise. It wasn’t earth shattering, but I’m certainly not going to turn my nose up at another 3% annually. The last time I got a raise, I pledged to save it and not adjust my standard of living to include it. All was going well until my property taxes were adjusted for the year, and my mortgage (which includes the property taxes) went up another $50 every paycheck. Good bye raise savings. It’s time to institute the raise savings again.

The beef came in cheaper than expected, but the groceries and dry cleaning came in over. My coupon that would have saved me $10 on the dry cleaning (bringing me under the budgeted amount) expired 3 weeks ago, but I found 540ml cans of tomatoes on sale at the grocery store for $1 a piece (60% off!). So far over all I’m still under budget on this pay check.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I had an unexpected expense related to work that I may be able to get them to pay for. I’m applying to the university to take a couple courses which will increase my usefulness to the company. All going well they’ll pay for it. If not, it will just increase my raise potential and hopefully get me some more interesting work to do. The application fee was $75, which went on my credit card. It didn’t wipe out the entire payment I put on it this pay check, but pretty close. Hopefully work will decide to cover that.