Give Me Back My Five Bucks

When there is a discrepancy between the cost of what you love to do in life, and what you can actually afford to do, sometimes it can be a tough decision to make. What makes it easier, is the ability to plan ahead and understand what you value in life. For me, aside from loved ones and family, my passion lies in traveling. I’ve always known that, but unfortunately, what I love to do just happens to be expensive. So up until a few years ago, I just didn’t have the money to go anywhere. I was either getting out of … Continue reading →

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written a couple of articles on the etiquette surrounding tipping, and the service industry in general. The first, was “The one where the waitress added in her own tip,” where there was a lot of debate, but the general conclusion was that she was definitely stealing, and probably should have been fired. Then, for Moneyville I wrote “Tips on holiday tipping: how much and to whom?” and a similar type of article called “The etiquette of splitting a restaurant bill.” I then got flooded with at least a dozen e-mails and Formspring comments all asking … Continue reading →

Monday 31st + $400 freelance/side income $4.87 Starbucks Tuesday 1st No Spend Day! Wednesday 2nd No Spend Day! Thursday 3rd + $50 freelance/side income $4.20 Starbucks Friday 4th $34 Yaletown Brewery $26 parking Saturday 5th $12.71 gas $12.27 TSB Shipping (Point Roberts) Sunday 6th $25.45 Shang Noodle House WEEKLY EXPENSES: - $123.50 WEEKLY SIDE INCOME *: + $450 TOTAL: + $326.50 Well, not much to say about this week. I didn’t bring in a lot of freelance income, but at the same time, my expenses were low. It’s weeks like this that make me scared to ever venture into full-time freelancing. I like stability, … Continue reading →

NOTE: Today’s guest post is from Nelson Smith, one of the funniest and most controversial personal finance bloggers I know. He writes at Financial Uproar, and can also be found on the Canadian Finance Blog. Every workplace has at least one of them. They’re the person who gets the promotion and raise even though they’re not really that useful. They have a sexy and wonderful girl/boyfriend. They always seem to get the lucky breaks. Everything keeps on getting better for them. And why do they do so much better than the rest of us? Unfortunately for us common folk, there’s … Continue reading →

So yesterday on Moneyville, Madhavi wrote an interesting article called “Teens think they’ll earn $90,000 a year by age 30.” According to the National Report Card on Youth Financial Literacy (.pdf), high school graduates seem to be extremely disconnected from reality. Especially when you consider the results from a survey of over 3,000 recent Canadian high school graduates: The average survey respondent expects to earn $90,735 in 10 years; roughly three times the average income of 25 to 29 year‐olds with post‐secondary degrees ($31,648). The median survey respondent expects to earn $70,000 in 10 years.  However, the median income for a 25 … Continue reading →