About a month ago my wife’s cell phone got broken and I had to figure out how to get a new phone without spending too much. Since we have an account with Rogers already, it made sense to check what they have available. My choice was “Samsung Gravity t456”. After talking to friends, checking reviews and prices on the internet I felt comfortable to buy the phone.
Now, after I picked the phone and place, question was – how can I save as much as possible on that purchase?
The first discount is offered right on the Rogers page, with a purchase of 3 year plan. So let’s throw some numbers.

Here I have to mention that 24.99 is a price after mail in rebate .Rogers didn’t do really good job about notifying customer about this, so I learned about this when I actually called Rogers to make a purchase.

Tip* Buy trough website or over the phone it will give you peace of mind and also one additional piece that you not going to get at the store – SIM card.

The next stop is Best Buy. With times I accumulated 3 cell phones out of use, in simple words each time when I purchased or upgraded a cell phone I didn’t throw it but rather thriftily putted into the box, just for a case, who knows. Well, the moment arrived! Ladies and gentlemen Best Buy announced “Trade In” campaign. I took my wife’s cell phone and traded it in for $8.00, unfortunately they didn’t take another 2 phones, but I think I will wait, who knows .
So let’s do some math:
$199.99 – Original cell phone price
$74.99 – Price with 3 year plan
$50.00 – Mail in rebate
$8.00 – Best Buy “Trade In” gift certificate
I get 74.99-50-8=16.99 actual spending on the dissent cell phone.
Conclusion: I’m pretty happy about how all this turned out.

References:
Best Buy mobile trade-in campaign
http://www.bestbuy.ca/marketing/tradein/en/default.asp

Rogers promotions
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-promotions?cm_re=Consumer_Wireless-_-Lower_Badge-_-Promotions

Two Social Justice teachers have decided to start eating on one dollar a day.

Do you need  a proof you can reduce dramatically your groceries spending? Check out this web site http://www.onedollardietproject.com

Young couple, two teachers in fact, putting up an experiment trying to live on 1 dollar a day for groceries. It looks like they were successful so far. Any way take a read it is quite interesting.

How do you save on groceries? 

In order to get in control of your financial situation you have to see first where all your money goes. And that is about budget. You can do it old fashioned way with pen and paper or with software. Since I’m a software engineer my natural choice is software. I spent fair amount of time researching the market for a product that will suits my needs. It came down to two software products Intuit Quicken and MS Money. I liked more Quicken because it better adopted for Canadian users.

Here comes a challenge, both products are complex enough and instead of focusing on your initial goal you have to spend time learning the product.
I believe I read this on Joel Spolsky blog:
“When you design a software design it like if your mom will be using it!”

That is so true! Well, I didn’t plan to spend so much time on learning process so I decided to compile something simple for my own use. And voila, my “Household Budget” excel is ready. Please feel free to download it, use it, modify it and of course if you have suggestion or wish to change something in it but don’t know how drop me a line I will be glad to help.

Here is a link for download: FamillyBudget_v1_00.xlsx (134.69 kb)

The only thing I would like to ask, mention this website if someone will get interested where you got the file.

User Manual

Assets & Liabilities
The first tab on the file called “Assets & Liabilities”. It’s a sort of reality check, where actually you stand with your finances. Please understand it’s not a net worth statement, it doesn’t include any tangible assets like real estate or car or boat. It’s more about cash flow.

Semi-Monthly/Monthly Budget
These tabs are most important ones. Since I’m getting paid on semi monthly basis I’m using “Semi-Monthly Budget”. I find it easier to plan based on pay cheque frequency. Choose based on your situation. Simply delete the tab you don’t need (put mouse cursor over the tab you want to delete, right click, chose option delete). I broke it into “Income” and “Expenses” parts and the summary at the bottom.

Cheque Information
We are all humans and it’s really difficult to remember to who you wrote a cheque especially if it’s a post dated cheque.  So when it’s withdrawn from your account the only thing you can see cheque number and in my case lender will charge me $1.5 to view an image of the cheque. So I figured out it will cost me less if I will simply keep a record of it.

Groceries
Although we are using cash envelop for our grocery spendings, we still can get into the situation when we are pulling some cash from our chequing account for bread or milk. So I got interested in stats on how much precisely we are spending on the groceries and that’s the tab meaning. Besides that I’m considering to become an executive member   in Costco so I need data to understand if it’s worth it.

Clothing
This tab is very similar to groceries. I’m just interested in stats. But will you come up with your own idea please share with me.

That’s pretty much it, for demo sake I inserted random numbers into tables, so please feel free to delete them. I’m looking forward to hear from you on” Household Budget”.