Deep Dive Part 1: Where the money goes

As part of an expanded savings and budgeting effort, I took a look at the so-called fixed payment in my budget. These are my monthly bills, usually paid as pre-arranged debits from my bank.

To break things down and further explain, the listing goes from lowest to highest percent. The large blue wedge called "discretionary" is the money left over after I've paid my bills (including the savings category, as that is taken out before I even see my paycheque). This wedge is what I would use for groceries, spending money etc. I plan to take a close look at that later, as I don't seem to have much to show for it. But right now, lets look at the other categories and what can be done.

I'm going to point out the large category called Child  - this includes only those expenses related to my child's monthly activities and after school care. Her clothes, food and entertainment are in the "discretionary" category.

Utilities and Dues both come in at 4%. Utilities include heat, water and electricity. These numbers vary with season and I believe this to be low as it was summer when I originally made the calculation. I would work on reducing utilities.

Dues includes fees toward my 2 professional organizations (non negotiable) and my gym and private club (ooh, its fancy but I love it). The gym and private club are both non-essentials. These total up to roughly $140 per month.

The next two categories I will mention today are cleaning and parking. Again, both are non-essentials. Having my house cleaned twice a month is a luxury, while parking is a bit more important. This category is my parking spot near work. I pay $150 a month for a guaranteed spot, as the general parking for my work is usually full by the time I get there. My arrival time is usually dictated by school drop-off time. However, if I could get there earlier, I could forego the parking.

So, just looking at the categories I've discussed here, I could trim $450 from my monthly bills just by cutting out my club, cleaning and parking.

Of course, these are my luxuries! Can I find money elsewhere first???

March Magic! Some goals.

Winter is Marching on, where I live there are many more weeks of it left. No problem for me, we need to ski a few more times to make our passes worthwhile! Just a few quick notes on this month's goals. I have a Deep Dive into my fixed expenses coming.

The quick and dirty:

My fixed expenses/bills take 53% of my after-tax income
Savings are 16% of it.
Discretionary costs (includes groceries) are 31%

This month I will do a Deep Dive into the fixed expenses/bills and see what I can do there.

But right now, this month, I plan to save a bit more of that discretionary money. You see the savings of 16% goes all into registered accounts, which is great when those accounts are needed. But I want a larger pot of funds for bigger projects, and right now those funds are piddled away in discretionary.

As I've focussed the past 2 months on groceries/food I am confident that I can allocate $700 to that category this month. We have a few upcoming activities including a sports tournament involving travel, and March Break (no camp, yay!). So I'm doing up a B..U...D...G....E...T.  for the next four weeks.

Groceries/Food $700
Babysitter (I have 2 work evenings) $75
March Break activities $150
Gas ( 2 fill ups) $100
Haircuts $100
Medical supplement $66

I will scour my calendar to see what more will be coming.

Watch this page for updates.... heh.

February Summary: the Food Expenses

I did not do a weekly analysis of my food spending in February, and I did pay much less attention to being careful. However, I also was not particularly extravagant either. Since Feb 1, I spend a total of $709 at the grocery store and $142 on fast meals or dining out, for a total of $851. I did spend a bit more on our own "dining out", and I treated myself to some nice lunches. February food expenses were about $200 more than the previous month, and I do note that we were taken out for dinner one night!!

This extra $200 on food amounts to a 30% increase from the previous month, which is huge. Interesting to put it that way, because my initial response to the $200 increase was that it wasn't a significant increase. That's entirely incorrect, and it really helps to shine some light on how my spending slowly started creeping up. I have to readjust to thinking $200 is a lot of money. It may not be excessive in one spending category, but if I squeeze a hundred here and a hundred there, it will add up quickly.

As an example, I was just able to transfer my child into an after school program that is $100 less than her previous program. So if I can reduce my food spending by $200 per month, and my child care costs by $100 per month, I can save an extra $300 per month. Now, that is starting to sound like a lot!

The moral for me is that "smaller" amounts add up. Whether you're in the 100's or the 1000's, you can apply the same thinking. Seemingly small cuts in each expenses category can make for a large monthly savings.

Next post: some goals for March!

Kicking the Savings into High Gear

One of my goals for the year is to make up for lost time with my TFSA. A TFSA is a Tax Free Savings Account in Canada. The program started in 2009 and is open to Canadians 18 or older, with a social insurance number. The account holder can contribute a certain amount each year, and any growth from investments or interest can be withdrawn tax-free. 

The TFSA differs from an RRSP in that the contributions are not tax deductible. Contribution room does carry over from year to year. So if you were 18 in 2009, and didn't make any contributions (or whoops, maybe you did and withdrew it all, ahem!), you can make up the following contributions:

2009 to 2012 was $5,000

2013 and 2014 was $5,500
2015 was $10,000 (whoa! The government was feeling generous)
2016 to 2018 was $5,500 (Government came to their senses, hahah)
2019 is $6,000

Now, I did at one time take advantage of this program. As I said, I used to be GREAT with finances. However, I made a big move and I needed the extra funds.

Adding up the above, I need to contribute $52000 to make up for lost time, as well as the $6000 I can contribute for 2020.

The BIG Question…How am I going to do that?  

I’m obviously going to need to be more diligent about saving. The good news is I’m no longer paying down debt. I have put $2000 into my TFSA in 2020 already. The TFSA is my main goal at the moment, as I’m already making automatic monthly contributions to my child’s RESP on target to receive the government contribution (more on that later) and while I have some room in my RRSP, retirement is not my primary goal right now (I am in good shape there).


I usually get healthy tax returns, in the order of $5000 or thereabouts as I’m still paying a large amount for child care.  My next big task will be to do my taxes and submit, and the amount will be fully deposited into my TFSA.



Next steps will be to invest that money (in the range of $7000), after all it needs to grow! That is the point of it being tax-free!



So that just leaves $45000 left to contribute! Easy peasy, haha. I’m going to have a savings target of $500 per month for at least the next 4 months.

Final week of January!

So January is but a distant memory (ok so maybe it was just last week), and I can provide a run down of my final week of the month food expenses:

Groceries $230.61
Convenience $17.45

Looks like I spent quite a bit more on groceries that week, I'm not entirely sure why but its still a reasonable amount in my opinion, considering there are two of us and my convenience food costs were low. Grocery shopping usually includes other expenses such as pharmacy and household items and even children's clothes! I summarize my expenses from looking at my bank account expense lines, and whenever I see a grocery store it gets added to this figure.

I do know that the first week of February will likely show some higher costs in the food category, as I splurged a bit!

So let me summarize the month! For the past 4 weeks I spent:

Groceries $686.44
Convenience food $101.25

I made a big effort to bring my lunch, and not eat out other than a few quick snacks and coffee.

I'm not sure what I think of this, I would say its probably a good result. I haven't skimped a lot, but I didn't splurge either. The biggest factor is the price of grabbing a quick lunch, as shown by the week I spent over $40 on convenience food.

What do you think? Does this seem reasonable?

Third week of January Food Update

January is never ending, and we are heading into one more week of it! Fortunately the way the dates fell this year, my monthly pay came a bit ahead of schedule. The bad news is that means it will be another 5 weeks before my next monthly pay. Often the Dec - Feb pay sequence is 6 weeks and then 4, but this year its 5 and 5. Update on the monthly goals later however.

Foodwise, my grocery shopping continued along the same as the previous week, with multiple small trips to our mainstream (and therefore, pricier) grocery store. The totals spent add up to $151.79 which is completely acceptable to me. My "convenience foods" expenditure was up this week, to $46.63. This is primarily due to two "meals" purchased from the local cafeteria. Truth is, they weren't actually meals but they priced out to over $9!!!What I purchased were basically the equivalent of a protein snack box at Starbucks or the like. Boiled egg, peanut butter with tiny bagel or crackers, fruit, etc. Sooo easy to make myself if I am ready!

I'm happy with the food expenses thus far and plan to keep this goal going for February. I would really like to add to my savings in February, which may take some effort.

Food Expenses Jan 11-17

Here is my update on weekly food expenditure for the second full week of January, from Saturday Jan 11 to Friday Jan 17:

Grocery shopping= $190.43
Convenience = $23.91

Overall I still think these are pretty reasonable expenses, even though they are higher than last week. I am continuing to cook from scratch and bring my lunches. There is more in the "Convenience " category this week as I relaxed a bit and felt more free to get coffee to go! I also think there might have been a few small treats for my daughter as we were out doing errands.

I might take a deeper dive into my food expenses next week. This week does not reflect any attempts to shop around or compare prices, however I did make a note to buy less expensive items at the store. I do plan to increase my fruits and veggies this week, so that will make an impact.

Cheers!