Financial Wins and Spending | Week 2

I actually really enjoyed showing my spending last week and being able to reflect on it a little more publicly, so these weekend posts are here to stay for awhile. I also loved being able to look back at my week and pick out all of the positive things that impacted our finances.  It’s a nice, positive note to start my weekend on, and everybody needs some  more positivity in their lives.

This past week was a GREAT spending week.

Eating Out

I had dinner and coffee with a friend, which is reflected in my eating out spending, but that’s about it, and J and I even managed to avoid eating out on the weekend, which you can read more about below.

Clothing

J needed some new work pants, so I bought him some when I was out and about last week. Since they are for work and he has a physically demanding and dirty job, $27.98 bought two pairs.

Groceries

J ended up buying the majority of the other groceries but I didn’t eat much of what he bought. I’m still trying to work through food that we have in the cupboard. The sheer volume of pasta and rice we have is alarming. It’s a good money saver right now, but I spent money on the food at one point, so it’s just shifting when I spent it.

Home

My mom and stepdad bought us this amazing BBQ as a wedding gift, and we bought a BBQ cover to protect it from the elements. We also bought some cheap wire drawer organizers for our flatware at Canadian Tire.

Financial Wins

Either we’ve always been financially fortunate and just didn’t notice it, or we’ve been eating horseshoes for breakfast, because it was another great week for financial wins. This time, I do have some financial bummers but the wins far outweigh them.

Gift Cards Galore

It has been so nice because almost everything that we have bought over the past few weeks save for the things listed in the spending report above has been with gift cards.

I saved up my Swagbucks [Referral Link] for quite awhile, so I have been able to use some for Amazon gift cards to buy things that I have been running out of.

Ladies: have you noticed that you run out of makeup items almost simultaneously?

Also I was able to buy a backup phone charger with my Amazon gift cards so that I have more than one. Then I don’t have to be so rough on the chargers, by transporting them around. One at work, one at home. That’s all I need.

We also had a lot of gift cards from our wedding, including a liquor store gift card that a close family friend gave us (ha ha, how appropriate) and we used it to buy some beer for our BBQ last night.

Conquering the Eating Out Desire

J and I enable each other when it comes to eating out. We’ll resolve to eat out less, and then Saturday night will roll around and we’ll be hungry and it will be too hot/cold to cook, or we won’t have anything desirable in the fridge and we’ll end up getting takeout or going out for dinner and wasting $35-$45 on food we could – and should – have made at home.

On Saturday, however, we conquered our desire to eat out. We started going through the takeout menus, but weren’t on the same page with what we wanted, so we ended up just giving up and eating at home out of pure desperation. Huge win for us!

More Money from the Government

I don’t know what is going on with the government, but they sent J another cheque for his tax refund.

I’m a little apprehensive about putting that cheque into our bank, because my understanding was that since we filed our taxes together, and I owed a substantial amount, it ate his refund. Meaning we just rolled his refund into the amount I owed.

The CRA makes mistakes aplenty, so I am sure they’ll send us a letter with their hands out soon, but at least in the meantime the money can work for us to earn interest. Because it is likely not ours for the long term, we put it in a high interest savings account with Tangerine [my orange key is 35611511S1. If you open a chequing account with Tangerine, using my orange key will earn you $25!\

Price Matching

I had to purchase more ink for my laser printer to fill an order, and I did some price comparison. I found that the manufacturer sold the ink cartridges for the least amount, but through Staples, I would get it faster and I could also earn Airmiles. Staples has a price match guarantee, so I bought the cartridges through their website and then phoned the next morning. They credited me the $40 difference.

Hiking Boots

In my review last week I mentioned that I bought some hiking boots for our honeymoon. In wearing them around the house, I realized that they were far too clunky and not very comfortable. I brought them in for an exchange, and the boots I ended up preferring were $10 cheaper.

I got an $11.20 refund, which I am not about to complain about!

Financial Bummers

The only financial bummer I had this week was luckily one that isn’t so much a bummer, but rather more of a “putting the cart before the horse” situation.

Business Supplies

I have this small online business on Etsy, and I got an order for a product. I picked up the supplies I needed to fulfill it ($80) but then I got a message from my buyer saying they made an error with the size and colour. I of course let them correct it, so I am stuck with the supplies to fill an order that wasn’t.

The supplies will go to another order down the road but I just didn’t really have to spend that $80 now.

FYI, I don’t include business spending in my personal spending reports. 

How was your week? Any financial wins?