Christmas shopping finally underway

Whew. Finally getting on the ball and getting the shopping going. We bought a few children’s books for my niece and friend’s son while in Watertown on Saturday, as well as some cookies for Hubby’s grandfather which aren’t available in Canada.

Hubby also bought a Wii game for his Dad while I wasn’t looking. Apparently, despite his looking at the spreadsheet and repeatedly nodding approval of the budgeted amounts, I was the only one paying attention to the numbers:

“Oh, I got a video game for one of the presents in Mom and Dad’s basket. Dad will love it.”
“Great! How much was it?”
“$50.”
[awkward silence]
“What?”
“The budget for their whole gift was $60.”
“You should have told me that before.”
“I did tell you that before! You agreed!”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Of course you don’t.”

Last night we went to Chapters and got a few crosswords for my grandmother, some Hercule Poirot short stories on CD for Hubby’s Gran (who is blind), and some codebreaker puzzles for my Dad’s birthday. Hubby’s Gran’s present was significantly over budget, but the others were under and it worked out about even.

Tonight, we’ll be heading out to get the rest of the stuff for our parents’ baskets, including the baskets themselves. We won’t be able to completely recover from the Wii overspending, but we might be able to come close. If all else fails, we still have the $75 from the gifts we’re no longer buying our friends.

Tonight, I also get to go to the post office and pay some exorbitant amounts to get the kiddie books I bought to Toronto and Wisconsin on time because I was too tired and cranky to get my butt into gear a month ago. This is where the procrastination, which has occasionally served me well, comes back and bites me. Good thing my niece is in Toronto for Christmas. She actually lives in Australia, and I’d be totally S.O.L. getting it there on time.

Procrastination pays off - for once

Two years ago at Christmas, my mother gave me a very nice pair of pants. They were attractive, expensive, warm and suitable for work. The only problem with them was that they were fall-off-my-hips too big.

I meant to exchange them, but I forgot until it was too late. I meant to sell them on eBay, but I was too lazy. I meant to donate them to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, but I was too cheap.

So they sat in my closet. I even moved with them last year, again meaning to sell or donate them but never getting around to it.

The upside of all this laziness and procrastination is that now that my waist is starting to thicken and my regular pants are getting too tight, these wool trousers are now not only staying on, they’re pretty comfortable. I figure I can probably get about two months wear out of them before I’m too big. Sweet! That’s one less set of maternity pants I have to buy in the near future.

The only remaining downside is that a closer look at the label reveals them to be dry clean only. Well, that won’t be a problem as long as I don’t spill my decaf on -- Ah, crap.

My big money mistake and how to avoid it

The Canadian Capitalist is running a contest in celebration of his third year blogoversary. He’s offering some truly snazzy prizes. Go check it out and recall your own biggest mistake for him. We’ll all learn from it.

My biggest monetary mistake was taking eight years to graduate from university. Yep. Eight. Impressive, no?

Why did it take me eight years? A combo of reasons, the first of which is going to sound arrogant as hell. Apologies in advance.

I’m an intelligent person. It doesn’t always show (this being a case in point), but I score highly on IQ and other aptitude-type tests and breezed through most of my school years with no trouble at all. I never learned how to study because I never needed to. My parents never noticed the deficit. I was getting As, clearly I was doing all right.

My grades started to fall in my upper high school years as the work got harder. Sadly, this corresponded time-wise with my highest levels of teenage insensitivity and angst, so I didn’t even try to figure out what was going wrong. Consequently I still got into the university of my choice, but I didn’t get the scholarships my earlier marks would have assured me. Financial mistake #1: Not realizing the potential savings four years of free schooling would have provided. Luckily for me, my parents were prepared to pay for my first two years, and I had enough saved up to cover the other two.

Enter first year. Become overwhelmed with entirely new level of expectations and knowledge. Still fail to learn to study. Ergo, fail first year.

I made a substantial effort to learn more (and drink less) and scraped through my second year, earning the credits needed to pass the first year and ending the suspension the university had placed on me for failure. But I still had no study habits or methods that I could apply regularly. Financial mistake #2: Not taking full advantage of half a free education.

Then I got married. Hubby and I moved into our first apartment. We both went to school that year and scraped a few credits out between us. Seemed Hubby had the same problems I did, for similar reasons, only he wasn’t draining his savings, he was chewing through student loans. Financial mistake #3: Wasting my own money on an education I wasn’t paying enough attention to, and allowing us to become saddled with more debt than was necessary.

I spent the next two years going to school part-time and working full time in an effort to keep us above water before taking a year off to 'rest' (from school, not work). Hubby went to school and advanced slowly, graduating in computers just in time for the dot.com crash. Suddenly the streets were filled with out-of-work programmers who had way more experience and knowledge than he did. He ended up working at Timmies...not the most lucrative of positions.

I finally went back to school full time where I was fortunate enough to meet two important people. Erica was gregarious and naturally brilliant, and spent every spare moment sucking up spare knowledge and learning everything she could from everyone around her, be they biophysics professor or homeless man, because to do otherwise was a waste of time to her. Penny was not as quick at picking things up and not as brave, but she worked like a pack mule until she understood everything she needed. I learned to love learning for the sake of it from Erica, and I finally learned how to study from Penny. Together they were unstoppable, and after three years I finally graduated with an excellent upper year average.

Hubby went on to take a three year college diploma in computer engineering, which he worked very hard at. Guess he learned to study somewhere along the way too. I eventually landed a research position at a non-profit, and he recently started working for a now-recovered software company.

Financial mistake summary: In total I wasted four years of my life and ended up with a $4000 student loan and an $11,000 line of credit. We also had $22,000 in Hubby’s student loans to pay.

Couple of geniuses, that’s for sure.

Things you could learn:
1) If you’re good at something, you can always become better.
2) Don’t under-appreciate other people’s generosity, be it institutional or familial.
3) Make sure your children value and nurture their gifts as much as is possible, be they academic, artistic, athletic or otherwise. Ensure they’re not bored or coasting through life without effort. It’ll bite them in the end.
4) Watch the spending, particularly when your income is slim to none.

Any lessons in there that I missed?

The joys of grocery shopping with your spouse, or, Why I’m an idiot.

Last night on the way home from work we went grocery shopping. This was necessary, since food level in the house was getting low, particularly perishables.

But I must confess that I’m an idiot. Why am I an idiot? There’s actually quite a lengthy tabulation of ways, but only a couple are pertinent to last night, the first of which is that I went to the grocery store while hungry. And not only was I hungry, but my husband was hungry too. Everyone who’s ever done the remotest bit of introspection knows that two hungry people going to the grocery store is a colossally stupid idea.

Edit: To see a collection of things that may help you lose weight, see Brip Blap's 101 Thoughts on losing 100 pounds. A few of them will also save you money. Note number 75. Let that reinforce the idea that I am an idiot.

I had a shopping list.

It was a good shopping list.

If I’d stuck to said shopping list, I’d have saved myself about $30.

I decided that instead of making macaroni and cheese from scratch, we’d try the fresh tortellini with cheese sauce the store had on sale. I’ve always thought it looked good and have been wanting to try it for a while. Because it was on sale, it wasn’t that big a splurge. It cost about $7.00, which isn’t too bad considering the mac and cheese would have cost about $4.00 to make, what with all the cheese. Not the most frugal choice, but I could have lived with it.

If I’d stopped there.

But instead of stopping I made my second idiotic move of the night. I let these five words escape my mouth: “Do we need anything else?”

Why, yes. Yes, we did.

We apparently needed some fresh crusty bread for the pasta. We also needed a frozen pizza, some pop, some chips and dip, some crackers and some cookies. I caved on each of these except the crackers, which were wholly my idea.

This falls safely into the category of ‘you win some, you lose some’, right?

We’re moving on today. I have a lunch of leftover pasta and bread. We’ll be having the pizza tonight and while it’s cooking we’ll put the ingredients for a nice, hearty, frugal beef stew in the crock pot so it’ll be all ready to go tomorrow morning. Thursday night we’ll eat out somewhere inexpensive as we have a pre-natal class which starts too early to go home in between.

And on Friday we’ll make homemade macaroni and cheese with four dollars worth of ingredients which we already own.