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Thursday 30 January 2014

I know it's only been a few days...

...but I'm getting pretty good at this whole "not spending money" thing! It's literally been less than a week...but, I was severely addicted to Starbucks and it has actually been not that hard to give up! All I have to do is think about Australia. Today I was worried because I actually walked somewhere, and my neighborhood is littered  with Starbucks (Starbuckses?). I ended up coming home with more money than I left with, haha. I brought a backpack stuffed with books to the used bookstore...they only wanted 6 or 7 of them. They gave me 12$. Better than nothing! When I was thinking about getting a delicious skinny peppermint mocha from Starbucks, I just thought about how I will probably have to sell 2 or 3 of my old books to make up for that. Not worth it!

I used to only order my food or go to restaurants. My husband and I never made dinner, I literally can't remember the last time we made dinner before this week. We have spend 0$ on eating out this week so far! I actually went grocery shopping! I know, pretty amazing, it's like I'm an adult or something!

I think this is the first time EVER that I've actually been serious about being good with my money. I am the worst with money. I get paid pretty well at my job, and we get paid weekly, but somehow my money would always be gone by the time I got my next cheque. I have nothing to show for it either. I don't buy expensive clothes, jewellery (I can't even spell it, that's how often I buy it), ANYTHING. I have no idea where my money goes. It's like I have multiple personalities and one of them is a drug addict and my other, semi-regular personality knows nothing about it. Anyway, I am excited that I am taking this seriously. My husband didn't think I would be responsible enough to actually pull off this Australia plan, but it's happening. I will not let it fail. I am determined to save up enough in a year. I do not want it to take longer than that!

I brought up the idea that we should, maybe, sell our crappy Ikea furniture (we might get a little bit out of it), get rid of all of our books, movies, games, random crap, and clothes that we don't really need, and move into a cheap bachelor apartment so we can save a few hundred dollars a month on rent. Hubby said maybe. I think he is confused at how seriously I am taking this, haha.

I did splurge on something this week but it was before I made my budget and realized how frugal I have to become. I bought tickets to see a Second City show this weekend. If it was after I had made my budget I would have waited for some sort of deal or something, but oh well. At least I will be able to cross something off of my "Explore My City" list!

I read that selling used books on Amazon was a great way to get some extra cash but I tried to put one of my books up and just before I posted it, I looked at the Canada Post website to see how much it would cost me to ship it. It came to about 13$ for me to ship it. Amazon was only putting shipping at $6.50. I put the book up for $5.50. Amazon was also taking a cut of $2.50 when/if my book sold...so I would just lose a lot of money. It's stupid. I made one big ad on Kijiji instead. I doubt any of them will sell that way but I figured it was worth a shot. The bookstore probably won't want many of these ones either.

There's a clothing store down the street that buys clothes but they only want nice clothes and they only buy for certain seasons at a time. I am going to go through my clothes soon and see if they will take any of it. The way I am looking at it now is, we are going to have to get rid of practically ALL of our stuff before we go to Australia, so we might as well start now. Especially since I am unemployed for now, haha. I hope this motivation lasts!

Tuesday 28 January 2014

Reality Check

Yesterday, I wrote about how I could finally start making up a budget because I found out when I will be starting my next job. Well, today I started making one...and then I cried. My pay cheques do not go as far as I somehow originally assumed they would. It was a super depressing activity. 

I thought that my husband and I would pay off all of our debt and save up enough to leave for Australia by next February. That was a little too optimistic. By May I will have hopefully paid off one of my credit cards...that's almost halfway through the year. Altogether we have 3 credit cards, a very large line of credit, and a new car loan. (We also have small student loans but the payments on those are so small that they're kind of off the radar right now). On top of that, to do a working holiday in Australia, we each need 5000$ in our bank account so that they know we can afford to live there for a little bit. It's also very expensive to even get to Australia. It doesn't help that this job is only for, maybe, 7 weeks and then I have no idea when my next one will be after that. Basically, it's going to take us longer to get to Australia than I originally thought.

It made me feel a little bit better when I realized that we could for sure have the line of credit paid off by the end of the year, probably a lot sooner actually, now that I am doing the math. That's assuming we are both working almost non-stop for the rest of the year, which is definitely not guaranteed...or even all that likely. I'm getting depressed again. 

I wish we had things we could sell. All of our furniture is Ikea so it's practically worthless. We have a car but we owe more money on it than it is even worth. We'd have to make a LOT of extra payments on it just to break even when we sell it...BAH!!

Maybe we shouldn't do our working holiday in Australia. There are other cool places. My sister found this program for working holidays in the UK. They will put us together in jobs at a hotel and you're provided with free or very cheap accommodations at the hotel you are working at. It's cheaper to fly to the UK and you don't need to have as much money in your bank account to apply. I don't really care where I go as long as it's somewhere different and somewhere I eventually want to go anyway. If I had to pick only one place to do the working holiday, I would choose Australia...but maybe I don't have to pick one...

Monday 27 January 2014

List for Exploring My City

I have come up with (the beginnings of) a list for what I plan to do in order to cross "Explore my city" off of my 30 Before 30 list. My research (aka googling) didn't go exactly as planned. I was hoping it would be easier to find the best/coolest restaurants, bars, and cafes in Toronto, but it was surprisingly difficult. I actually didn't even try to look up the best bars or cafes because I got too annoyed just trying to find the best restaurants...There are just so many options. It is too hard to find a list of, let's say, 10 that I should go to. Especially because I don't want to go to the best of last year, or the most expensive ones, or the ones with the fanciest (or weirdest) food. I am super picky about food. I have this thing with textures and if it sounds icky I don't want to try it, haha. I think instead of finding the top restaurants, I will just go to 10 restaurants that I have never been to before. If I end up hearing about a great restaurant that I just have to try I will definitely try to go there, but for now it will just stay as 10 that I have never been to. I feel like that's a really small number (especially because my 30th birthday isn't for almost 4 years hahaha) but as I said in an earlier post, I am trying to save and stop spending money as much as possible this year so I can afford to go away. (And then after this year I might not even be in Toronto again before I turn 30).

My list looks like this so far:

1) Skate at Nathan Phillips Square
2) Explore the Royal Ontario Museum
3) Take a ferry to Toronto Island (and take a picture of the TO city skyline)
4) Visit Casa Loma

5) Attend a Second City show
6) See the BATA Show Museum
7) Tour the Steam Whistle Brewery
8) Rock out to an indie concert
9) Watch a TIFF movie

10) Wander around the distillery district
11) Shop at St. Lawrence Market
12) Eat/Drink at 10 restaurants/bars I've never been to


I have already done a lot of the must-do things in Toronto. I've gone to the CN Tower (during the day and at night), went to Niagara Falls, seen a Leafs game, a Raptors game, a Blue Jays game, I've walked (and gone for a run) on the boardwalk at the beach, been to the Art Gallery of Ontario, shopped at Kensington Market, etc. I actually have already seen a very small indie kind of concert at a bar but the band just played covers so I am not going to count it....Plus it's a cool thing to do a few times, haha. 

I'm going to post this list on the side of my blog underneath my 30 Before 30 List and cross things off as I go through them! 

In other news, I have not been playing guitar very much. I am getting really bored of playing the same two chords over and over but I really want to follow the lessons I am doing. I think it will be better for my playing in the long run if I stick with these online lessons. As bored as I am of the two chords, I am still not even good at playing them, so I should shut up and keep it up. I need a capo for the next song I'm supposed to learn as well so I have to go out and get one of those tomorrow. It will get better once I get past this boring song I'm supposed to be learning. 

I started reading my first non-fiction book of the year! It is called "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. I started reading it a few years ago and then just stopped for some reason and never finished it. I started it all over again, it's really cool! I also went to the bookstore and bought a couple other non-fiction books. I'm really excited to read them! As soon as I finish the first one I am going to make a list on the side of the blog to keep track of how many I have read. 

Today I found out when I will be starting my next job, which means I can start making a budget for paying off debt and saving! I won't be making as much money with this one as I was hoping. It's difficult to find work over the winter though so I am grateful for anything at this point. I don't start till closer to the end of February so I get a few weeks off! Hopefully I use that time wisely! 

Friday 24 January 2014

Already changing things.

I'm already changing one of the things on my list...the one about getting clear skin shouldn't really be a 30 Before 30 item, it should just be something I do anyway, haha. I am changing it to "Explore my city". I saw it on this guy's awesome blog. I've lived in Toronto for a few years now and I still don't know what's what. Friends come to visit me and I have no idea where to take them! The only problem with this item is that I was hoping to radically reduce the amount of times I actually go out and spend money this year, since I am supposed to pay off all my debt and save up for my working holiday. Maybe I will try to come up with a way to make extra spending money specifically for these things...or just try to do mostly free things. We will see how this goes...

List Update

I updated my list and posted it on the side of the blog so it's easier to find. I changed the "read a book every week" one. I just put it up at first because I saw it on lots of people's lists and I love reading so I thought it would be cool. Then I started realizing something like this should be on someone's list who doesn't spend a lot of time reading and wants incentive to read more. That is not me. BUT, all I read are fiction/fantasy books (plus they're generally between 700 and 1000 pages long, so reading one a week is a bit difficult when I need to spend time working on the other items on my list). I decided it might be good for me to start reading some non-fiction books. That way I could actually learn a few things when I read instead of just pretending I live in a magical world where I have powers and fight dragons or something. I guess I'm pretty behind in that one now. At least I had one fiction book under my belt this year haha. I ordered a few travel books from Amazon so I will start reading those as soon as I get them! Oooh and this gives me an excuse to go to the bookstore! I will do that this weekend! 

I've been practicing guitar everyday but still can't practice for very long before my fingers start hurting too much. Luckily, I will be unemployed for a few weeks after today so I will have LOTS of time to practice and build up my callouses, haha. I've moved on from the Buffalo Springfield song to a new song that only uses the exact same two chords, except it has more strumming and you play the chords for two beats each instead of one. It is Silence is Easy by Starsailor, I actually like it!


Hopefully I can move beyond the E and A chords soon...that will be my goal for after this weekend I guess. 

I was looking into last minute cruise deals yesterday just to see what kind of deals there were. The World cruises are still way out of my price range, and the ones that are a bit cheaper just don't seem worth it because they don't go to enough places that I actually want to go to. The travel books I bought are about traveling all around the world so I might have a better plan once I read through those. I did notice that you can sometimes find decently priced cruises from North America to Australia. Since flights there are expensive and SO LONG I thought this would be so much nicer. I think mostly it's a repositioning cruise so you don't stop at a lot of places on the way, but I would take a 20 day cruise over a 22 hour flight any day! It's not like we have a deadline to leave home or get to Australia. I'll definitely be looking into this more. 

I might be finding out about a new job over the next couple of days so then I will be able to make up a budget for paying off debt and saving up some money! As much as I hate my job and don't want to work, I am excited to start a new job just so I can start saving up for Australia! It'll be much more bearable knowing I am working towards something like that. 

My 365 Project is not going as great as I would like it to. I keep almost forgetting about it and then end up taking a last minute picture for my gratitude instagram. Most of my pictures are actually screenshots...which shouldn't count. They are things that I was grateful for though, like I was grateful I could do my wedding thank you cards online because it's so much easier and I could get it done so much faster, so I took a picture of the design online on my phone. It's a lot of stuff like that. From now on I am not going to allow screenshots or pictures of my computer. I think it will be a lot better in the end if I stop doing those kinds of pictures. 

I think that's about everything I have updates for. My guitar playing is going to get way better over the next week or so, maybe I will even post a video ;) 

Wednesday 22 January 2014

30 Before 30 Instead...

I've decided my bucket list will actually be a 30 before 30 list. I feel like I will be more likely to do the things on the list if there is a time limit on them. So I have almost 4 years to complete this list! I think that is pretty doable...other than the cost of some of this traveling...But that's Future Sam's problem. I might end up changing some things but, for now, here it is:

1) Learn to surf for real (I took a surf lesson in Hawaii but the instructor always had to push me onto the wave instead of me just paddling super fast)
2) Live and work in a new country
3) Go on “Around the World” cruise or just travel around the world
4) Write a novel
5) Travel to Iceland
6) Learn a new language
7) Play guitar (and/or other musical instrument)
8) Go scuba diving
9) Go inside a volcano
10) See lava flowing or a volcanic eruption
11) Travel to New Zealand
12) Complete a 365 project
13) Get a separate picture with each Hanson band member
14) Write a song
15) Start a blog
16) Learn to cook
17) Learn to dance/take a dance class
18) Get a nice camera and take a photography course
19) Get Debt Free
20) Travel Europe/The UK
21) Get decent at skiing or snowboarding
22) Swim with wild dolphins
23) Start liking beer (this probably seems weird but I don't care haha)
24) Go storm chasing 

25) Read a book/novel a week for a year (or 52 books in a year)
26) Do an unexpected nice thing for a stranger (pay it forward, tip 100%, pay for someone's meal, etc)
27) Finish a fitness program (Insanity, T25, P90X, Yoga challenge, Bodyrock challenge, etc) 
28) Find a routine that finally gives me clear skin
29) Travel to Australia
30) See the pyramids 


I have plans for some of these and have started working on some already! This year my husband and I are going to work hard, pay off all of our debt (#19), and save for a yearlong working holiday in Australia (#2 and #29). I have already started learning guitar (#7), started this blog (#15), I usually read quite a bit so I think #25 won't be too difficult, I decided a few years ago that I was going to learn to speak Icelandic (#6) so I have a book and a CD to help me learn I just have to stick with it, and I started my 365 project a few days ago (#12), I am doing the 365 Grateful project on instagram, taking a photo of something I am grateful for everyday. I tried to pick a decent amount of things that I didn't have to travel for so the year I am taking to pay off debt and save money isn't super boring and uneventful haha. I think I am off to an okay start...


Bucket List Beginnings

Hello!

So I started writing my bucket list today. I will post the whole thing when it is finished but for now I want to write about a couple of the things I hope to cross off that list. One of them is to have a blog! So here it is! Done. That was easy. (haha) I think to actually cross it off though I am going to have to keep it up for more than one post haha. I wanted to start a blog for a couple of reasons:

1) I like to write and this will force me to do it more (and hopefully get better at it...)
2) I am planning on starting a lot of new things and I'm one of those people that quits most things I start. I'm hoping that writing about the new tasks I take on will help me stay accountable...
3) I came across a few blogs about completing bucket lists and I really like reading them so I thought it would be kind of cool to do my own!
4) I watch too much TV...I need as many hobbies as I can get my hands on...

Another thing on my bucket list is learning to play a musical instrument. I guess it started last week. My sister and I were in Jamaica for a series of concerts from my favorite band (Hanson). We were meeting a lot of new people but found that we didn't have a whole lot to talk about with anyone because we don't really do anything. WE ARE SO BORING! We have no hobbies, we work long hours at super boring jobs that we hate, then go home and watch TV or read. We quickly decided that we both needed to come up with some hobbies. 

On Thursday of last week I started thinking that playing a musical instrument would be perfect. I love music, I have always wanted to be able to play a musical instrument, I used to have a keyboard and would play that a bit but, like I mentioned earlier, I give up on things easily. (I did the same thing with the drums...) I thought maybe guitar would be best, basically just because it is portable and I'm planning on doing more travelling. Friday I told my husband I wanted a guitar and started researching beginner guitars and prices. Saturday I bought a guitar... When I want something I go out and get it...I have a problem with not thinking things through...but so far it has been a totally acceptable impulse buy! I have been practicing everyday until my fingers can't take it anymore and I can't WAIT until I get callouses so I can play better and for longer. I read that putting rubbing alcohol on your fingers and avoiding lotions and skin-softening soaps helps the skin harden faster so I have been doing all of that! My hands are DEAD from no lotion, I have the driest skin in the world but they will just have to suffer until I build up the callouses. 

The internet is so wonderful because it is totally going to teach me to play the guitar. I found a video on YouTube which lead me to this website. I checked out a couple of his lessons and the first thing he has you do is learn two chords and then play along with a song. The song is For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield. I've just been practicing playing along to this song...that is basically it. Once I get okay at doing this song all the way through I will move on to another song, I heard that Free Falling by Tom Petty is not too difficult for beginners so that might be the next one I try. 

I'm really hoping I stick with this and can finally say that I play an instrument! I feel less boring already!

Oh another thing I wanted to talk about on here is I read a blog today that I thought was just so cool! Here! She thought of this idea where instead of doing a bucket list where you write all the things you want to do, you could do an anti-bucket list where you write all of the cool stuff you have already done! That way you are looking at a list of your accomplishments which might feel nicer than looking at a bunch of stuff that you have to do and might never even get to. I made one myself because I thought it was such a great idea.


I plan to add a lot more to this list! Basically, this blog will just be keeping track of the steps I am taking to cross things off of my bucket list and become less boring! I want to live life more fully I guess and start to actually do the things I want to do before it's too late. Hopefully my writing becomes less rambley along the way as well...