Halloween Havoc

I love Halloween!

Don’t panic everyone, I’m still alive and well. Yes, I know it has been over a week since my last amazing and awe inspiring blog entry, but I here I am starting of year number 2 with a poor rapport with blog writing so it’s time for me to jump back on the bandwagon. Well, it’s not just the blog writing I’m struggling with, but there are couple other things as well that I’ve fallen behind on. Do you every have those days when a number of stupid little things grind your gears and everything just seems frustrating? Well that was certainly me yesterday. I really wanted to write my blog entry but I was in no mood to do anything other than eat and sleep (in that order).

Those who know me in real life and not just on this blog, know that I am generally a very lighthearted person and when you want to be around someone positive, normally I am the guy to go to. However, there are some days where I just want to say “eff it” and just go home and crawl into bed. Those kinds of days are pretty rare, but every now and then, I really need to step back and not put anyone ahead of me but myself. Truth be told, that still is one of the life lessons that I struggle to wrap my head around. Where I find the most difficulty is just being completely selfish. There’s a tendency for me to put others first but sometimes those people don’t reciprocate and I get frustrated. It’s also a huge source of why I (and others) get into debt.

In any case, I’m feeling better today and a little less strung out so I think that everything is going to work out just fine. What is at the core of my stress is my bank account. I love Halloween so much, but I went overboard on my spending again this year. I had a Halloween party at my place on the weekend and it was lots of fun and well decorated, but I certainly blew the budget. To top it off, with Christmas around the corner, my savings account got a swift kick to the chestnuts and it’s drained back down to under $500. Not really impressive in my opinion, but what’s done is done and I cannot wait to see my family again in less than 2 months! The best part is that I finally (FINALLY) get a paid Christmas vacation. Do you know how hard it is to pay bills, fly home, and buy gifts when you lose 2 weeks of salary? It’s a lot like listening to U2’s music – awful.

But there’s no point in complaining right? With all the knowledge I have, I can certainly get back up and rebuild my savings and get the debt repayment back on track. In a lot of ways, I’m really starting out year two with the same kind of problems that I had before. I have been eating like garbage, I’m not getting as much exercise as I was before, and my meal plan and fallen deep into the toilet and I have to find some extra long rubber gloves to fish it out.

Last month I finished my 30 day challenge with flying colours. I didn’t spend any money outside of the grocery store, but I think that made me go a little crazy with my spending at Halloween. My new challenge over the next couple months is going to be to save up some spending money while I am in Saskatoon, get better at making a meal plan, and find ways to stay as positive as possible while surviving the holiday season somehow - wish me luck!

The Return of Mr. Français

Another memorable trip to Ikea!

Things have gotten, well, interesting again now that I am back in French classes 3 times every week. I fell like my brain is slowly turning into a croissant. Normally, I am quite good at managing stress levels, but being back in school while working full time is certainly elevating my stress. It’s taking me back to the time in my life when I was a full-time student and full-time worker. I was always strung out (which I’m now realizing probably had something to do with why I was single most of the time while I was in school). Lately I have gotten used to being able to do yoga whenever I wanted and when I left work, and the part that I loved is that I was actually leaving work instead of going to do 3 hours of even more work. Yes, yes, I know this is all for the greater good in the long haul and one day I’ll be completely bisexual bilingual, but I sure have my doubts about whether or not I can manage this all the time. I suppose that as long as I continue to work hard at this, there shouldn’t be any problem getting my French up to par and then sailing through my career and onward toward more money. Honestly though, I think that because I am unable to go and do yoga as much as I want, I’m truly depriving myself of the one thing that I have been using to manage my stress levels.

Delicious Pad Thai by John! 

The time is quickly approaching for day 21 of my 30 day challenge and I must say that it is going really well for the financial part, the yoga on the other hand; well let’s just say I have cancelled my class tonight in order to write you this blog entry. Anyone who reads my blog knows that when I put my mind to something I can achieve anything, so why wouldn’t I be able to not buy any food outside of the grocery store? Certainly I have had a little helping hand along the way from my friends who will grab me a cup of coffee (which I haven’t asked for) or share some of their Ikea meatballs (thanks Jess), but if I really don’t want something, then I can say no. The main thing I am learning is that I can make myself meals everyday that taste effing delicious and don’t cost me more than $5 per serving. For example, last week I made an amazing vegetable curry with lemon-ginger rice. It cost me about $40 for the ingredients, but since I didn’t use all of them (i.e. the spices) it worked out to about $20 for 8 servings! That’s right, only $2.50 per serving. A couple nights ago I made myself a roast (to my vegetarian roommate’s horror – “is that cooked? Do people actually eat that?”) for about $2.00 a serving and today I made a tofu Pad Thai (to my vegetarian roommate’s delight “mmm, I love tofu”) for about $2.25 per serving. It’s really incredible how far you can stretch your money when you cook at home!

Amazing Veggie Curry! 

Really though; I know that cooking isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really not that difficult and you do save a lot of money. The biggest key to making it successful is to keep it interesting! If you try a dish that you really enjoy, go home and look up the recipe and challenge yourself to make it one night. If you don’t do it properly, or it tastes like congealed donkey testicles, then try something different. Don’t be afraid to ask friends for their recipes either (unless it’s Dana’s lasagna recipe) or better yet, get together and cook with them. In no time you will accumulate a cornucopia of deliciousness. There are other way to find good recipes other than through friends, check out some food blogs, or buy a new cookbook full of recipes of foods you actually enjoy eating. I just bought (with gift cards) a book for my partner’s birthday called “Jamie’s Food Revolution” by Jamie Oliver; it is full of recipes that are just as cheap and easy as he is. 

Great cook book!

Now that I’m on the topic of my partner’s birthday, I should probably mention that my savings account has taken a little bit of a hit and it’s not quite at $2,000 anymore, but what I loved the most about that how I was able to use my savings instead of credit to purchase the present for him. I was a little generous (I got him a new guitar) but it was on sale so I felt it was justified and since we’ve been together for 3 ½ years, it seemed like an okay thing to spend money on. The problem with spending in stores for me though, is that I get the taste for shopping again and I have started to spend when I shouldn’t be. I think I’ll just take the money that I have spent already out of my “prize” at the end of the 30-day challenge. Yesterday I managed to blow through $82.50 at Ikea on 3 new pots, a rug for the foyer, and some candles. A little excessive, yes, but I did say no to a bunch of other stuff (a frame for my art print, a $40 drying rack, a drawer organizer, even more pots, a giant picture in the ‘as is’ section, and even our adorable shopping mascot, Peanut) so that made me feel good that I was actually able to leave Ikea without spending more than $100 (which used to be a huge challenge for me).

  

Ok, that’s the gist of it today. The only other thing that I want to mention is that I have officially paid my MasterCard down to under $5,000 from an original $14,581.45 to a mere $4,684.98! And there’s more to come this month! MasterCard better start getting ready to say good-bye because this cash cow is beginning to run dry!

1/3 of the Way There and My Fear of Apples

Completely useless

Words can’t even describe how incredibly happy I am to announce that I have paid off 1/3 of my debt in under a year! I started this debt repayment journey on October 21, 2010 and here I am, less than a year into it, and ahead of my goal! It won’t be long before I have my MasterCard completely paid off and I will save so much money on interest! Can you believe that I still pay $70 per month in interest just on my credit card? I don’t know why I ever let it get to this point in the first place. The thing is that we all use credit cards, but we don’t all use them in a smart way. If you are a smart credit card user, you make a payment the same day that you buy something and you get a card that does 1% cash back. You can actually make money off of the credit cards. You might be thinking, big deal, what’s a measly 1%, but the reality is that when you take 1% for every $1,500 that you spend, that $15 in your bank account! It’s like getting paid to shop and it’s freaking wonderful. I plan on doing something like that once I have my MasterCard banished into the fires of credit hell because right now I am getting those super useless Airmiles, which if you don’t have thousands of, they’re pretty pointless. So yeah, cash back or some kind of actually good rewards program.

Now enough with that ranting about plans when my credit card will be paid off (which is only a few more months away) and on to my challenge! As you heard from my last post, I started a 30 day challenge to not buy any food outside of the grocery store (including coffee, snacks, poutine) and make one gourmet meal per week. Not to mention I also have to do 5 yoga practices per week and on the other 2 days, I have to do a 10 minute meditation. This challenge started on Wednesday and the results have been completely successful so far! Admittedly, since most people know that I am doing this challenge, they have been extra supportive and not pushing me to eat out. I’ve also had two lovely ladies buy me coffee (from Starbucks no less) when I was looking a little worse for wear. It’s amazing how something as simple as a cup of coffee can really brighten your day!

My worst nightmare

This challenge has proved to be really, well, challenging at times though. There are moments when I come home and really just want to order a pizza, or the other morning I was so tired and I forgot to make myself coffee before I went to the yoga studio every coffee shop seemed to call out to me, enter me John, come inside me and give me your money, but I didn’t give into their seductions. An added challenge for me was when I went and made a purchase for the yoga studio at the local farmers’ market. There were lots of delicious baked treats there that I was so ready to whip my wallet out for, but that wasn’t the real challenge. The biggest challenge was what I had to purchase – apples. Now, you’re thinking, oh yeah, apples are in season right now and they are so delicious – WRONG. Those of you, who know me well, know that I have a hatred and borderline phobia of raw apples. I don’t know what it is, but the (I’m getting anxious just typing this) feeling of peeled raw apples and the sound and texture of them makes me really uncomfortable. I have gotten A LOT better over the years, but buying those apples was the first time I had purchased apples in well over a decade. I’m serious when I say I really hate them. I love apple juice, and anything involving cooked apples, but if that apple is raw (even if it’s a caramel apple) I cannot handle it.

Side tangent – once I went to my friend Maya’s farm to stay there for a weekend and I helped them pick a whole whack of apples; this is something that I did often when I was a kid and I think it has something to do with why I hate them so much now. I hate climbing to heights, and it makes my palms sweat when I think about climbing and potentially falling, so I think that has somehow managed to tie itself to raw apples. Anyway, after the apple picking, I was given a bag full of apples to take home – talk about ironic. Since I don’t eat raw apples, I decided that I was going to make myself an Apple Crisp so I began to peel the apples. It took me at least 20 minutes to peel 4 or 5 apples. I had to set the apples down every time that I would touch the peeled apple parts. What was worse is that when it came time to have to cut the apples, I couldn’t. I hated it so much I had to ask my partner to cut the apples while I went as far away as possible from the sound. I know, I am bat$hit crazy. But the point is that I still did more with apples than I had in a long time. Every now and then I do try to eat a piece of raw apple because I acknowledge that my raw apple problem is completely insane.

So what is the point of that story; well, I guess to teach you that sometimes you need to do something that scares you or that you are worried to do in order to get ahead. If you never try, you’re never going to learn what you need to do to succeed. When I bought those apples, I felt good that I had done something that I would never normally do and I faced my (completely stupid) loathing of raw apples head on. Thank you (and Happy Birthday) Katie for getting me to do something that I wouldn’t normally do and pushing me outside my comfort zone.

As I was saying earlier, the challenge is going very well. I have been maintaining my no eating out goal and making delicious meals for myself. Today I am going to try making Chicken Vindaloo, again, thank you Gojee.com for giving me a great recipe that uses things I already have in my cupboards! I think I’ll start posting links to the recipes I love for you guys to try. I’m not going to turn this into another cooking blog though! This challenge has added in an extra element of exposure for me too. I got to open up and share this process with a number of new people doing the 30-day challenge and the reception to my blog is always heartwarming! I plan to do a weekly Wednesday updates on the challenge so that you can see how I have progressed!

Gorgeous!

In other news, I bought this beautiful print by local artist StephenFrew for only $10 at an art show/concert yesterday! I want to buy the original giant paiting, but I am on this budget so I think I will have to wait a bit before I buy any artwork for the apartment. What was even better was that I got to check out my friend’s new band called Bearshark! What a great name for a band.  The crappy news though is that I am going back to French classes starting on October 11, so I think that I will be extra challenged to do the yoga and cooking that week! It’s so hard to stay in the same room with one person for 3 hours 3 days a week! Oh well, eff it!

See you Wednesday! 

My 30-Day Challenge!!

Aren't pearl necklaces wonderful?

Where do I begin? I just finished an amazing weekend of debauchery and now I am a sleepy boy who is not feeling like this blog entry will be the crème de la crème which it usually is because I went crazy and killed a few brain cells! Regardless, I will persevere to write you something both captivating and informative and you will come back to me wanting more and more blog entries and more pearl necklaces of wisdom.

Before I started on this entry, I spent a few minutes with Gail, listening to her shoot the $hit with some 40-year-old Prince$$ about how she had no savings and no plan for her future. It was a scary idea to me to think that if I hadn’t done anything about my debt now that I would have been right in the same place that that woman was. The idea of retiring in my 60s sounds awful. I mean how often do we hear about people dying shortly after retirement; for me, it’s more often than I would like and that keeps me motivated to try and retire in my 50s. Yes, I realize that I will probably be paying off the debt of the baby boomer generation until I am rolling in my grave, but I certainly don’t want to be paying off anything stupid like a mortgage well into my 70s. But anyway, I feel like my retirement savings will be taking a seat on the backburner for another couple years until I have this ridiculous debt paid off in full. Although, the icing on the cake is that I am beginning to become really confident that I will be able to say “I have no debt” even sooner than I had planned.

There are a couple of things that I wanted to talk to you about in this blog. The first is that a friend of mine has hit the milestone of paying off all of their consumer debt. You can see how happy he is talking about how he has gotten it all paid off and it really inspires me to continue on this journey and get to that point too. He tells me that he even has coworkers asking him to do up a budget for them so that they can also get onto the road to financial recovery! Which brings me to my first point; if you don’t think that you can make a budget and get out of debt, you’re wrong.

It is not completely hopeless and it’s actually much more rewarding than just having no debt. Since I have started this process, it’s not just my finances that have improved, but my relationship seems simpler, my stress is lower, my health is improving, I’m making and saving more money, I make smarter decisions, and list goes on. I guess what it boils down to is that I have learned to take control of my life again. I’m not lying when I say that I couldn’t sleep at night knowing that I had $14,581.45 in debt and that was ONLY ON MY MASTERCARD! Not only was that balance ridiculous, but the interest rate was 19.5% and at the rate I was going, there was absolutely no possible way that I would have had that all paid off anytime soon (MasterCard told me it would take more than 30 years if I only made minimum payments). Now, it’s been almost 11 full months since I started this process and I have paid that card down to an astonishing balance of $5,814.57! I am a couple checks away from being under $5,000 on that card. I think I will probably break down and cry tears of joy when that balance is gone. Not only did I get this paid down rapidly, I did it without taking out a consolidation loan. I see people on Gail’s show making double my total income (they’re couples after all) and not paying this off as quickly as me – and it makes me feel overjoyed to know that I am doing this all by myself; well, all by myself in terms of payment, but with a lot of social and emotional support from my loved ones.

30 Days and I could have that sexy mustache!

Now the other and less sappy part of my blog entry; my major 30 day challenge! As I have mentioned in past issues of my blog, I do volunteer work at a yoga studio in exchange for unlimited free yoga (and the savings are substantial). The studio is challenging its volunteers, yogis, and yoginis, to eliminate one bad habit from their life and add a new positive activity in their lives. I know that I have an incredible amount of willpower because I have quit everything from coffee, alcohol, and biting my nails just for the heck of it, so I wanted to challenge myself to do something that I know will push me to a new limit – not eating out for 30 days! That means NO coffee, NO desserts, NO dinners, well, you get the point. There were other things I had thought about doing like, cutting out drinking, or caffeine, but as I said before, I’ve done that before and for much much longer than 30 days, so I figured it would be a smart idea to do something that will not only get me saving money, but living healthier as well, and not to mention how freaking delicious homemade meals are! If you haven’t cooked yourself something at home in while, you really should, it’s the stuff that health is made of! 

AKA Sex in a pan

So, in addition to cutting out a bad habit, I also have to add something positive into my life. Luckily for me, this really is the challenge because I feel really good about where I’m at in my life right now! I figured that in keeping up with the no eating out theme, that I would add cooking one delicious (and not too complicated) meal for myself each week. Last night I made this amazing RosemaryChicken Skillet (thanks Gojee) and I got inspired to stop making the same old bland $hit and get creative in the kitchen again. What I enjoyed most about my delicious dish was that it cost a mere $15 to feed two people with completely fresh ingredients. It would have been good for two meals, but we were really hungry, and it was effing mouthgasmic!

There you have it, my challenge for the next 30 days. I will try to come up with some sort of “Gail-themed” chart again so that you can all follow along with my progress! I feel like I need to reward myself somehow though so my deal will be, if I can go 30 days without spending money on eating out, I will give myself $300 to go shopping! I really need new work shoes because they’re looking pretty ghetto – they have freaking holes in them! Also, I’ve wanted to (finally) get some sewing supplies and start working on some sewing projects! For every day that I screw up, I will take away $10 from my shopping budget! I’m really hoping I can save the whole $300 though!

Wish me luck everyone!

Oh yeah, and one more thing, I have to do 5 yoga classes per week and 10 minutes of meditation on the other two days for the entire challenge! Oh boy…