Monthly Archives: March 2013

Wants vs Needs Challenge

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After c hecking out Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s blog Making Money Make Sense I stumbled upon a blog post called Wants vs Needs. You may know her from Till Debt Do Us Part. Simply put and blunt, Gail explained that we all believe that everything we buy is a need, but in fact most often these purchases are wants. So I did a bit of challenge myself to see what kind of purchases I was making. Were they all needs? or were most of them frilly purchases that I could do without aka wants.

What you should do: Write your own list of your week, 2-week (however long you want) expenditures. Figure out if they are wants vs needs. Look over them again and make sure your needs really are needs and not in fact wants. Then evaluate how you are spending your money. Could you have made lunch more that week instead of buying food out? It’s definitely a great way to really think about how you are spending your money. You can be pretty surprised how all the little things add up.

Here’s a breakdown of my spending for a week (don’t judge me on any of this)

Thursday

  • WANT-Bulk Barn-$1.56
  • NEED-Metro-$3.00-Used Checkout 51 to get $2 off that Cereal..btw
  • NEED-TTC Fare-$3.00

Friday

  • NEED-Bought some TTC Tokens-7 tokens for $18.55
  • WANT-LCBO-$18 Bought myself some Shock Top Beer & a bottle of wine for my mom

Saturday

  • WANT-Went to Il Bun Ji-$23 for 5 beers, Bibimbap, mussels, popcorn and fruits (I’ll be writing a review about this awesome place soon btw!)
  • WANT-Smoke’s Poutine-$7 (I was super lame and bought traditional…who does that?)

Monday

  • NEED-Bought TTC Tokens-$18.55 (All those weekend outings cost me some additional coin)

Tuesday

  • WANT-Bulk Barn-$1.80

Wednesday

  • NEED-Bought throat lozenges since I’ve been battling a cold for 3 weeks. $4.50 

Thursday

  •  WANT-Went out for lunch at work-$11 (I could have eaten my packed lunch)

Conclusions

WANTS- 6 purchases

NEEDS-5 purchases

Basically you may be wondering, how are you even alive, aren’t you buying food? My life is a bit less studenty right now since I have been living with my parents, who I love to death. They have been letting me live rent free and feeding me since January so they have helped me reduce a lot of my costs. Additionally, I’m pretty happy with my almost 50/50 split on wants vs needs, and felt like I was really fair when I determined a want vs need. For the most part, transportation has been my most common need lately, but I have been fortunate enough to get rides to work with my cousin since January, I just take the TTC home. I also managed to take the TTC all the way home from Christie and Bloor on Saturday, saving myself a ton of money in cab fare (would have cost me a good $25 dollars 1 way probably).

Also I’m wondering where my extra TTC tokens went…pretty sure my wallet eats tokens.

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How Not to Move Back in With Your Parents-Review

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So here’s the first of many book reviews that will find it’s way on my blog. If you don’t know already, I tend to read a lot and the number has increased since I’ve been working in my co-op job since January. For my first review I decided to start off with a Canadian book written by Rob Carrick who is a writer for the Globe and Mail and guess what..he writes all about personal finance. In this book called How Not to Move Back in With Your Parents Carrick goes through a variety of topics that most people in university would find pretty scary, but explains it in a fairly easy to understand manner to avoid you from getting confused.

How Not to Move Back in With Your Parents

Right off the bat I don’t want to tell you that this book is filled with super secret information you won’t find anywhere else..because you can (like on my blog of course). It does cover a bunch of topics including student loans, rising tuition costs and then costs that you will incur once you graduate from university. All of that scary stuff like retirement savings, which you should start as early as possible (and Rob makes that clear as well), insurance, buying a house or renting and even financial considerations for weddings, life insurance and children.

What did I think?

It provided a wide variety of information that will help you build a better idea of what certain things are like RRSP’s, TFSA’s, RESP’s and a some generally great ideas in terms of saving and making good financial decisions. Some of the tips would never work for me since Rob continues to suggest getting all this money from your parents to fund your first home, part of your wedding and even some of your student loans. Now that may work for some students, it’s not an option for everyone. Overall the book itself provides readers with a basic knowledge if they don’t know where to start when it comes to their finance.

Final Thoughts

The book itself may also give you a bit of an idea on how to avoid living with your parents,but isn’t the main focal point of the book, nor is there a detailed step by step guide. Personally if you’re in a ton of debt after university it may be your best option anyways, and by becoming financially healthy you may be able to avoid living there for long at all. Also it was a super quick read so don’t get discouraged, I borrowed it from the library but wish I had of bought a copy so I could highlight and fold corners to make it a real reference guide.

Interested in checking out the book for yourself? You can Buy the Book Here

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Are you planning on moving back with your parents after university?