Still doing it many years later............

Back when I started this blog in May of 2008 I wrote a post here about how I put money away for various things on a weekly basis.  All these years later I am still doing it, albeit some things have changed slightly.

I still put $20 per week in each of my birthday and Christmas boxes.  This is something I do religiously and now I always have money in those boxes ready to use.  It also helps that quite often, especially for the adults, I give cash gifts for their birthday's and Christmas gifts.  As cash is always welcome I find!!

I have a third box and I put $50 away each week in that.  Now that box isn't earmarked for anything in particular, but we'll use that money if we go away as spending money.  Or we emptied out the box just last week to put towards some new furniture we have bought.

Over the years I have seen many savings schemes come and go.........this one works the best for me though!!

I go to the bank once a week and take out a set amount of money, and after many years I have had to increase the amount I take out, as I can't seem to make it last through the week.  There are a couple of reasons why.  Groceries have gone up a lot and we are trying to eat a lot more healthier.  However saying that we don't eat a lot of meat.  I am now spending $100 a week on groceries, sometimes more and there is only two of us.

Since we got the Ford Escape I am using a little more gas/petrol than I did with the Fiesta.  Also since moving to the city I am out and about a lot more; spending money.  So I can see where the extra money is going.

We are fortunate we can afford these extra expenses.  I often wonder how young families with daycare expenses, mortgages and more groceries to buy survive/manage?

House Move.....Part 1

There are times you just want to forget.  This last house move was one of those.  If it could go wrong, it went wrong.  So get comfy with a cup of tea/coffee and get ready for a long and miserable story.......

The move was scheduled for November 15th.  The people who bought our house closed on theirs on October 30th and they went down to Florida to their winter home.  They were flying back up on November 20th (around that time) to move their stuff out of storage and into their new home; our old home.

It had been hectic prior to this, as we went to Britain in September, came back and sold our house, and then had to find a house for us to buy.  We then had to pack up our house and sort out all the logistics of it all.  Luckily this was not our first move and I knew how to pack up the house and sort everything else out.  Still will say did find it a lot harder this time, I think due to us getting a bit older.

So fast forward to November 15th.  We had decided to rent a truck to move the stuff from the garage to save us some money.  Dh and son would do that and we booked a truck a couple of weeks prior to the move.  Son would pick the rental truck up as it was close to his house, drive down to our house (30 minutes away) and dh and son would pack up the garage all before the movers arrived at 11 am.  Son goes to pick the truck up to find that there was no truck for us?  After much waiting son is sent to the middle of nowhere to pick up another truck, drives down and they get the garage packed up.

Movers arrive half an hour late, but there are four of them and two trucks?  We were only paying for one.  Very energetic group, one young kid who was like an energizer bunny.........or he had been drinking multiple energy drinks, who knows?  Another guy who looked as though he should have retired but turns out to be just over 50..........so I guess he had, had a hard life.  Another guy who was a millionaire and had numerous properties and a business..............you are not the only one who is thinking then why are you working moving furniture..................he reckoned the boss asked him to help out and he was doing it as a favour for him???  The leader of the crew, who was a very nice guy.

They start packing the house up.  I had packed the boxes, put colour coordinated sticky notes on each box indicating which room they were for at the other end.  In big bold red letters, wrote FRAGILE on boxes that they needed to be careful with.  Put arrows on boxes indicating which way up where applicable.  Shrink wrapped a number of pictures and other things.  I have done this a few times packing up a house.........remember all of this paragraph as it will all come into play in Part 2 of this story!!

The movers finally finished up at 4 pm, just as it started to snow!  One of the movers co-workers was retiring, and as their office was just around the corner from where we were moving we said go to the retirement do and we'll call you as soon as we close on the new house.

We closed on our old house around 2 pm-ish so that wasn't a problem.  We were just waiting to close on our new home.  Called the lawyer and they kept telling us it hadn't closed, so went down to the office to see what the hold up was.  

The next part of the story I'll skip the details and just tell you want the outcome of this was.

Our old house closed at around 2-ish as I said before.  The lawyer was instructed to wire transfer the money for the new house to NOT ONE of the main banks in Canada, a smaller one which they did.  The main banks in Canada tend to have longer opening hours, not this one the lawyer wired money too, they closed at 5pm, so it turned out the employee who should have pressed the button to accept our money went home without doing that.

So where did that leave us.  Well it left us with hundreds of thousands of OUR dollars floating around in cyber space.  Due to that we COULD NOT close on our new home, we were homeless😭 and hundreds of thousands of dollars missing from our lives.  Our lawyer and the lawyer for the new home, agreed we could have the key to the new home, as long as we didn't make any structural changes (😲)overnight until we closed on the house the next day.  As they did agree that the money was out there just not in anyone's pockets.

By this time it was 6pm.  It had been snowing steadily for the past couple of hours.  We were exhausted and so we called the movers and asked if they could store our furniture overnight and deliver it the next day.  They agreed and charged us an extra $250 for the pleasure.  Son parked the van with the garage stuff in his driveway.  We spent the night at their house, which luckily is five minutes from our new house.

The kicker in all of this; NO ONE would/will take responsibility for this.............

Part 2 tomorrow.

Grocery shopping and a bit of a whine!!!

I had a good day grocery shopping on Friday and picked up some good deals and stocked up on a few things.  I did also cash in $20 worth of PC points which bumped up my savings.  I got free cereal, orange juice and a  dish scrunge.  So a good start to the month.  Lets hope I can keep it up!!

Now for the whining.........should we have cheese with this?

Firs thing to happen on Friday.  I was in the bank on Friday morning at the ATM machine.  It is in a confined space just outside of the branch inside of the vestibule.  So if anyone is in there with you and having a conversation you cannot help but overhear.  So I am doing my banking, when a guy walks in followed shortly by a second guy, who knows the first guy.

Second guy starts talking and is pretty peed off at his work and he had to leave that day as he was so stressed out and his fellow employees are just winding him up, so his doctor says he has to go on stress leave.  This I gathered in all of a couple of minutes.  What bugged me that every second word out of this guys mouth was F***ing this and F***ing that.  So me with my big mouth turned around and said please watch your language.

He in return said you should mind your own F***ing business!  I turned back and got on with the rest of my banking and he proceeded to tell this other guy, who by the way was older than I was, that he is also F***ing sick of people sticking their noses into other people's business.  I had finished by this point and turned to him and said in this room you can't help but here what people are talking about, and there is no need for that bad language.

I walked out and I noticed he came out shortly afterwards, so he wasn't in there to do any banking as he didn't have time for that.  As dh said I should be careful as in this day and age he could have easily pulled a gun on me.  However good manners tell you, you don't stand there swearing like a trooper if a woman is in the room.  Or at least that's why I think; and why do people think that every other word has to be F***ing?  No manners what so ever.

Second thing to happen on Friday.  I called our newspaper as my "discount" was going to be up and I do this dance with them every three or four months where I "negotiate" another discount.  It's bloody annoying as it reminds me of Bell Canada and their bloody rates, but we do what we have to do to get the best deal.  I only get the newspaper on a Saturday and Sunday, but a few dollars saved here and there all add up.

I get a guy who has an accent.  Coupled with my accent, so begins the nightmare.  Suffice to say I gave up as he couldn't understand me.  I was getting frustrated and asked to speak to someone who could understand me, telling the guy because of MY accent he wasn't understanding what I was trying to say, I was being polite by saying that by the way.

The supervisor is of course busy, so I have to leave a message which they say will be returned (called back) within 2 to 3 business hours.  I am still waiting for that phone call, and the lady has a very strong Oriental accent {SIGH}  I have such trouble understanding Oriental accents, so I don't see that conversation ending well {{SIGH}}

Third thing to happen on Friday.  Not sure if I told you or not but Canada Post is changing our address.  We're not moving, but they are getting rid of the rural route designation, plus the rural postal code.  So we got word on Friday of our new address; which in our case not only changes our postal code, but also our town.  As due to a long winded reason we live in one town but our postal address is another town.

Now on the good side, they were threatening to have us pick up our mail at a community box goodness knows where; that seems to have been put by the wayside, so we are still getting mail delivery to the end of our drive.  Also the post office is paying for a years redirecting of our mail, so that they will deliver things to our old address.

Now on the negative side, I have to bloody well call, email or contact everyone and their auntie to get the new address to them, and it was in our  local paper, that some people's insurance has gone up with the change of postal code.

This is not limited to our area, so if you live in a rural location with an RR # be warned it may be coming to your area soon.

This action is supposed to make delivering and sorting your mail easier.  Also a lot of the older postmen/women are retiring and the newer ones are coming in and have no idea who lives where, because some people's address is:

Mr Smith
RR1
Anytown, Ontario
L0N 1A1

So unless you actually know which house Mr Smith actually lives at, RR#1 can encompass many rural roads, so finding it could be difficult.

So there you are my whines for a Sunday morning!!!