Freakanomics

Had my first major recession freak out today.

I was industriously going about my day when I flipped over to Facebook for a brief break from the pile of pages on my desk. I only saw one status update. It confirmed that a former colleague - someone who had been a mentor in the earliest days of this, my second career - has been let go from her position at a major Canadian newsstand publication.

Suddenly, I felt panic. I had that heavy feeling on my chest, like someone has decided to just sit down on it. And I started thinking about all my frivolous spending lately. Personal training!? A fancy laptop!? I mentally started to meltdown, only I couldn't melt down because there was so much work on my desk that needed to be done.

Logically I know that I'd figure things out if I were to lose my job. I survived for many years with nary a notion of where next months rent would come from. But it always came from somewhere. Plus I have a partner who is gainfully employed on a television show that has just been renewed for another season. And I don't think my job is going anywhere. (But I fear that everyone thinks that same thought before it happens to them.)

So I called the DP and vented a bit to him. Then I went about my day. He arrived home with a bouquet of pink tulips for me and some reassuring words. Then I went to the gym to meet my luxurious trainer and she worked me so hard that I simply don't have the energy left to be worried anymore.

Still, I have to pay attention to the reality of the world right now. It's time to be grown up and smart about where and how we spend. At the same time, it costs money to live and life is for living.

This is the eternal struggle.

Spent today: $0 (I fully left my wallet at home by accident. It was the last Monday in February - what do you expect?)
Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1700

You gotta have heart and music

I just spent this snowy evening out at the theatre, seeing A New Brain. If you are a music theatre lover, here are four reasons you should get yourself a ticket:

1. The music is awesome! Fantastic harmonies, quirky fun numbers, and a couple of tug-your-heart ballads that might make you pull out a tissue. I love the way William Finn writes. The book is a little wonky though, so consider yourself warned.

2. The performances are absolutely top-notch. I couldn't find fault with any of them. And there's something so satisfying about hearing intricate, lush harmonies sung by amazing singers. Made me smile.

3. Acting Up Stage is a company built and run on pure passion. The artistic producer chooses shows that are more obscure, interesting works rather than relying on yet another classic revival to drive ticket sales. That's why I paid $40 to see this show rather than $80 to see Sound of Music.

4. It's still February and February sucks. February will suck less if you do something fun.

I think this was a worthwhile splurge... even though there are other things that require some money in my life. But more about that tomorrow!

Spent today: $41.50
Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1700

Who wears short shorts?

I missed my weekly round-up yesterday, because I was babysitting my friend's adorable, hysterical children last night. They are almost 4 and 6 and hanging out with them is often like a fast-paced comedy routine. Every time they say something grown up, like, "You don't want to go there!" or "I can't even talk about it," I laugh hysterically on the inside while trying to maintain a concerned expression on the outside, so they don't feel like I'm dismissing them. They are a hoot!

Anyway, let's get the housekeeping out of the way first.

Spent yesterday: $7-ish, I believe (I'm too comfortable at the moment to get up and find a missing receipt.)
Weekly total: $104.83 (I didn't count what I spent last Friday, which was still in my wallet from the week before.)

Okay, back to today.

After a looooong day and a looooong week (although short technically, it was long spiritually) I welcomed in the weekend by enjoying a coffee date with one of my college roomies, who has just returned to town after an extended stint out east. And on my way home from that, while enjoying that buoyant feeling that a good friend can give, I stopped in at the drugstore.

And spent $50.

What IS it about the drugstore!? I didn't even buy anything super extraneous. And 95% of my purchases were on sale. But I had to buy razors. And let me tell you, readers, I use the ones made for the men folk. Always have and always will. Growing up, that's what my mom used, so she was the first one to buy me a sturdy metal-handled tool to take away all the hair that society says women aren't supposed to have. Oh sure, I've tried the cheap plastic pink things. I've even tried the ones with the dumb built-in soap. Nothing gives me sleeker gams that my beloved Mach 3. And so I pay the price.



I charged the visit. I had to! We also got groceries this evening, so there was no way I could stretch my budget to accommodate both AND the show I'm going to see tomorrow night. (More on that tomorrow!)

Do you drop a bundle at the drugstore? Tell me you do and make me feel better.

Spent today: $45 (Plus the aforementioned splurge.)
Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1700

I just wasn't that into it

I didn't get a chance to blog last night, because I was out at the movies with a lovely bunch of ladies. Out at a free movie. One of my cohorts was gifted with a whole bunch of passes to see "He's Just Not That Into You," and invited us along.

Now, let's be honest. I really wanted to see this movie. Here's why:

1. A great ensemble cast that includes several hot young actresses, which usually translates to cute outfits. I enjoy cute outfits.
2. I read the book many years ago (pre DP) and found it both witty and totally true.
3. I have a serious soft spot for romantic comedies, even if they look kind of crappy.

I wasn't planning on seeing it in the theatre, but rather renting it alone some night. (My Blockbuster records can never be released, lest people see my record of renting truly shitty movies.) But when an offer came up to see it not only for free, but also with a small gaggle of great women, I knew I could go public with my desire.

I wish I could say that I loved it. Instead I was both slightly entertained and mildly offended. (Are women really as awful as this movie paints us? Maybe subconsciously I know that I've acted as ridiculous as some of the female characters, so I'm automatically defensive.) Why are great romcoms so few and far between!?

Now if someone could please give me a free ticket to see "Confessions of a Shopaholic." But only if the free ticket comes with great company.

Spent yesterday: $7.44 (Some quick dinner before the movie.)
Spent today: $14.58 (My dry-cleaning)
Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1700

Quick hit

Apparently I don't feel inclined to blog during long weekends! But here I am, catching you all up on my spending, while also watching "Heroes." (Is anyone else totally annoyed every time they introduce a new character on this show? It's out of control!)

Anyway, Family Day is awesome! I'm SO happy that February is on the flip side now. Only one more Monday!

Okay, I'm going to get on with the money stuff and stop my excessive use of exclamation points.

Spent Saturday: $38.81 (Happy belated Valentines Day! Oops, another exclamation.)
Spent Sunday: $37-ish
Spent Monday: $0

A little bit extra

I just did my banking, so I wanted to update my tax number. Here you go!

Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1700 (Almost there, finally!)

An unexpected evening

This afternoon I got an email from the DP asking if I wanted to accompany him and his work peeps on an outing to see the SYTYCD Canada tour. His boss had an extra ticket. (In case you're just tuning in, hi. This is my blog. My DP works on SYTYCD Canada.) While obviously a very generous and fun offer, it gave me pause. Not that I didn't want to go, but that I didn't plan to go.

I am a capital P Planner. I get a great deal of satisfaction out of planning my time and then following through with my plans. Maybe it's just my birthright as a Virgo. But I have to try to fight against it sometimes, because I'd hate to be considered intractable. Don't we all want to hear others describe us as "easy going?"

So instead of coming home, heading to the gym for some cardio, making some spaghetti and meatballs, watching "Grey's Anatomy" online, writing the DP's Valentine's Day card, skyping with a currently faraway friend and finishing my current guilty pleasure read, I went to see the show.

It was good! Our seats were great. I had a nice time.

But I also missed my planned stuff.

Do I need therapy!?

Spent today: $8.27 (Dinner before the show. But it was all still in my wallet from last week!)
Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1400

Free prix fixe

In what seemed like a smart budgeting move several weeks ago, I booked a Winterlicious dinner for the DP and I for this evening. My reasoning is that we could have our Valentine's Day dinner two nights early, since tonight is the last night for Winterlicious. (Oh, I just found out that they've extended it from February 16th until February 28th, but tonight was supposed to be the last night.) But as you all know, I have been spending far beyond my budget lately. And frankly, I'm starting to freak out about it a little. But we already had the reservations (and I really wanted the flourless chocolate cake, which was one of the dessert choices).

So off we went to Five Doors North. Dinner was pretty good. Our appetizers were just okay, but our entrees and our desserts were great. (Can I just say baby back ribs!) The restaurant itself is supposed to be sort of shabby chic, I guess, but I thought it was just kind of shabby. The bathroom was sort of gross even. Plus they serve wine in tiny little juice glass, which just doesn't do it for me.

But the important part, in regards to this blog, is that the DP totally treated me! Isn't that sweet? Especially considering that I've been spending, spending, spending while I still owe him a whole bunch of money! I'm a lucky girl.

Spent today: $27-ish
Weekly total: $131.23
Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1400

Raindrops keep falling on my head

All this exercising has left me exhausted! I'm not sure how well my brain is working right now...

I saw two different people wearing these boots today:



Very cute. Now I want some.

I did go to the mall at lunch. Not to buy silver rubber boots, although they would have come in handy today, but to pick up a few more cards, buy the DP a Valentine's Day treat (an inadvertently more expense treat than I had planned) and pick up a wedding present. The wedding present got charged, but for the rest I paid in cash.

Spent today: $15-ish
Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1400

Experiencing a little discomfort

It's a good thing typing a blog doesn't require the use of my lower body, because I'm not sure that part of me works so well anymore. Um, personal training is awesome and causes a great deal of pain. Especially if the person being trained gets all keen and goes to the gym for some serious cardio the day after the first personal training session. My trainer told me to go and she warned me that I would be sore, but this is a little beyond my expectations. But on the bright side, it feels like my legs look like this:


Tomorrow I meet with her again, for upper body this time. Let's hope I can still type after that!

Oh, I ended up spending a bit of money last night, after I blogged. I needed a couple of little things at the drugstore. I managed to get them all on sale, although I suspect I'm going to regret buying the sale deodorant. It's peach scented. Meaning it's kinda gross.

Spent yesterday: $4-ish
Spent today: $1.23
Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1400

Starting to feel normal again

Sorry I flaked out as far as blogging this weekend. I was both too busy and too exhausted. Apparently jet lag and I do not mix well. I managed to drag myself through the week just barely, so Friday night I was comatose on the couch all evening. Saturday I managed to sleep in and do a little workout, which meant I was perky for the wedding I attended that evening, but then I was out late and up early on Sunday for a wedding shower, leaving me completely done by last night.

But then I turned off the TV early (the Grammys make me feel old and out of touch, for the most part) and settled in with some magazines in order to wind down. By 9:30 p.m. I had unplugged the phone and crawled in to bed. I had high hopes of hitting the gym first thing this morning, but I managed to screw up setting the alarm on my phone, so it was a full good night of sleep. Heavenly!

As promised, the budget is back! And I'm already going over it... You see, I still had $45 in my wallet on Friday, when I added my $100 for the week. And instead of cutting down my weekly budget by $45, I kept it, because I knew I would need to take cabs to and from the wedding on Saturday night. (The DP was out of town, picking up the cat who has been on holiday up north with the DP's mom for three weeks now.) Plus I have several cards to buy for upcoming events. So here's how it has panned out thus far:

Spent Friday: $45 (groceries)
Spent Saturday: $39-ish (Cabs and nylons)
Spent Sunday: $0
Spent today: $0

But here's some good news:

Tax goal: $2000
Current balance: $1400 (Yay! But this is taking me forever...)

I'm heading to my first training session tonight, so I'll fill you all in tomorrow. I hope it's worth it!

Swindled!

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may recall that one of my Christmas presents from the DP was a gift certificate towards some personal training at my gym. Exciting! I've been wanting to see a trainer for a long time, but it's not exactly a budget-friendly activity. Now that I'm in a better place financially, I have the means to put some money towards this luxury.

So I went in on Tuesday night to talk to someone about setting up a package. What I didn't do beforehand was think about what I wanted and how much I was willing to spend.

It's okay, you can say it: Stupid.

I met with a very gregarious woman who asked me a bunch of questions, had me stand on a scale that measured my percentage of body fat and blah, blah, blah. I did a squat test and a plank test. She told me what I knew - I'm pretty damn healthy. I may not be in the Excellent range, but I am in the Good range, which is above the Average range. She threw around the word "aesthetics" while she had me define my goals. She outlined a comprehensive plan of action that had me working out with a trainer twice a week for almost five months.

Then she gave me the number: $2800+

My eyes got wide and I sputtered something about that being a lot more than I was looking to spend. And she didn't miss a beat! She reorganized the program, shortening each phase and pricing out a level 1 trainer, and came back with another number: $1500+

I paused. She jumped on it and mentioned a monthly payment plan. She said we could spread it out over four months, which meant monthly payments of just under $400.

Suddenly that seemed reasonable. And exciting. So I signed on all the dotted lines, made the first payment and toddled on home to tell the DP about it.

He was, justifiably, surprised. Asked if I really felt I needed so much. I regurgitated what she had told me and felt confident that it was an investment in my health. He was supportive.

A little later I pulled out all the paperwork to have a look and noticed that the monthly payment plan involved an interest charge that she didn't tell me about. The DP argued that since I wasn't getting all the services up front, I shouldn't have to pay interest. Which is true. And then I began to think about my monthly budget and how I'm still not at my tax goal. How I haven't even started on my next big financial goal.

By the time I went to bed I just felt like an idiot. Who do I think I am that I require $1500+ of personal training!? Last time I checked I was not Halle Berry and there was no chance I was going to have to shoot any nude scenes to make a paycheck in the near future. I was just bamboozled by her great sales pitch and brainwashed by society to think that the Good range just isn't good enough!



Long story a little less long, I emailed her the next day and went in this evening to amend the plan. I wanted to get it down to half of what it was. Between my gift certificate and my fitness subsidy at work, I could handle the extra cost if the whole thing was around $750. Well, she still managed to upsell me to just over $850, but I'm breathing much easier tonight.

Oh, and I paid for it right away to avoid their interest fees. I just need to devote my next paycheck to it.

You'd think that I would be more careful with my money by now! But this is a good reminder to me that I need to do the research beforehand and go in knowing what I'm willing to spend.

Sigh!

Budget resets tomorrow...

Back to reality

Okay, to finish up my epic blathering about our awesome trip I will just say this: We had a fantastic time with my family. My three nephews are drop dead gorgeous and all really great guys. My mom has the cutest pets. It was all good.





And now - home. Our flight home was delayed by a good four hours, meaning we didn't arrive in the apartment until 4:30 a.m. on the day before we had to return to work. Ugh. I'm still catching up. Jet lag sucks.

Tonight has been all about laundry and some puttering. I'm anxious to get back into my routine, which will include regular blogging and my budget! But first, tomorrow I will tell you all how I got bamboozled yesterday. Why am I such a pushover!?

Yet more trip stuff

What we did:

Skiing
It was so much easier than we thought it would be! Of course, our pro (yup, we had a pro all to ourselves) started us off as easy as possible – on a slight slope. But when we passed that he took us up the first chairlift (where I remembered how scared I am of chairlifts) and then up on another and another. We also took the new Peak to Peak gondola across to Blackcomb Mountain and skied over there. And we never fell once! I lost control momentarily on an icy patch, which gave me shaky legs, but I stayed upright. But the damn boots hurt so much that I was done by 1:30 p.m. The DP went up to the peak with the pro and skied all the way down while I went back to the hotel and tested the hot tub. It was hot. And good.



Snowshoeing
I was SO looking forward to this activity, but it did not live up to my romantic fantasies. The path was icy and therefore crunchy, plus we had to walk single file, so the noisiness of the snowshoes made it impossible to talk. So we had to walk along silently. In funny shoes. At least it was a gorgeous sunny day.



Dog-sledding
This one wasn’t on our itinerary, but when the DP saw a brochure he decided that we couldn’t let the opportunity pass. Because really, how often in your life do you have the chance to dog-sled? It was fun, but freezing! We got to take turns driving. Did you know that when you’re driving a dog-sled, you’re considered the sixth dog? As soon as we’d hit even a slight incline, the dogs would slow down and look back to see if the sixth dog was running. If we were riding along, they would stop. But if we ran, they would run. It was neat. Also, a dog peed on me. (Thank goodness for snow pants.)



Zip-lining
Let me be clear – I was scared. Really, really scared. The DP kept reassuring me that they would take things easy and thankfully they did. We started with a wee zip-line a few feet over the snow. Then we drove up to the ancient forest and I had to start by tacking suspension bridges and staircases. I was not happy. But you know what? I did it. I lived through the first one. Then I lived through the second one, which was twice as long. And I lived through two more! The DP loved it. He even went upside down on the last one, which was very impressive. Now that I’ve been zip-lining, I don’t ever need to go again. Truly.

And more...

Cheese, please
By that point I had what the DP calls “The Hunger,” so we hightailed it back into the village to find somewhere to eat dinner and discovered the charm that is Whistler Village. It’s a pedestrian village filled with charming alpine-esque architecture. Oh, and Christmas lights in all the trees. It’s so pretty! Now, we’d received plenty of warnings about how expensive Whistler is, so we weren’t surprised to see the prices on the various menus, but we weren’t quite in “spending mode” yet. Thankfully we found a great little Italian place called Caramba that was warm, bustling and not really overpriced. (Oh ya, Whistler was pretty much just as cold as Toronto, which I was NOT expecting!) We inadvertently ordered the all-cheese meal, which became a theme of our vacation dining experience.
After 11 hours of traveling and very little sleep the night before, I was SO ready for bed. In fact, I was out like a light by 9 p.m.

The beauty of buffets
We were concerned that our 8:45 a.m. ski lesson would be too early, but I was WIDE AWAKE before 6:00 a.m. Jet lag worked in our favour! Well, it worked in my favour and the DP had no choice but to get up because I was staring at him. (Why is it so disturbing to have people stare at you while you sleep?) So at 6:55 a.m. we were loitering outside the hotel restaurant, waiting for them to open.
And when the doors finally opened, we were greeted with the most gorgeous site: a luscious, abundant, beautiful buffet.
How can you not love a buffet? And breakfast is my favourite meal to eat in a restaurant, so a breakfast buffet is sort of my idea of heaven. And then hell, after I have overindulged and can hardly breathe. Which is why I was glad we were up so early, because it gave us time to digest before our ski lesson.

Okay, I'm going to try to pick this up, since I am already home and I haven't even filled you guys in on any of the activities yet! Tomorrow I'll post a more concise summary. Promise!