New Job: I Get To Work From Home!

My husband and I both work at a motorcycle dealership and have always worked retail hours. Over the years we've managed to wrangle our way out of working Saturdays and have managed to cut off the later hours but we were still working at least 9-6 every day. 

Since I've been on maternity leave I've been stressing out about what I would do once it was time to go back to work. I knew I wasn't going to be able to work my old hours if I wanted to remember what my kid looked like awake.  I avoided thinking about it because I didn't like any of the options I could think of. 

I love my job. I manage a shipping and receiving department (among many other things...) and I enjoy what I do.  We have benefits now and I can't get another job that pays me a wage that's even close at least to start. 

The best solution I could think of was to continue working 20-25 hours at my current job (just enough to keep the benefits) and then pick up some weekend work (maybe as a server) when my husband was home to watch the baby.  The only problem there is that I would have to find a way to get my full time hours back when we wanted to have another baby in order to get full maternity leave benefits. I thought about going back to work pregnant (I'd have to get on that now as my mat leave is up at the beginning of June) but I don't really want to have another baby yet. I just want to enjoy the one I have a little longer...  This was all weighing very heavily on me and time just seemed to be flying and I was getting a little panicked.

A couple of weeks ago my husband texted me and told me to call my boss. I said, 'What does he want?' and husband said, 'Something managery.' OK. So I called my boss and he suggested that when I come back I become more involved in the management of our online store and website. I was a bit taken aback at first as I wasn't sure if he was trying to push me out of my current department or what. I had actually been pushing for the online stuff to be taken care of by my department for some time already but I didn't think it was ever going to happen.  I told him I'd think about it. At that point it didn't really appeal to me.

Over the next few hours though the idea really began to grow on me.  It occurred to me that if the bulk of what I was doing would be web based, I might be able to work from home for some of the time! The more I thought about it, the more excited I got.  I developed a pitch and sent my boss an email to look it over.  I proposed that, when my mat. leave was up, I would come back for 5 days a week from 9-1pm and then work from home another couple of hours each day. I still was quite unsure that he would even consider it.  This type of arrangement is not one that our workplace really sees much of. 

To my surprise, he completely agreed that it would work.  I am able to work a few hours currently while I am on maternity leave without losing any benefits so I have begun working a few hours a week for now and will be returning to a 30 hour (or so) work week at the beginning of June. I am so stoked that it has all worked out this way!! I can't wait to be making a more regular amount of money again as well so we can really see some progress in our finances and well, save some money up for the next kid! :)

Baby On A Budget: How We Avoid Unnecessary Spending

Baby on a Budget is a series of posts that I'll be doing to share all the ways we've managed to save money while bringing up our baby.  When I read the stats about how much money new parents supposedly spend getting ready for a baby and caring for a baby in its first years, I cringe! I can certainly see how it happens though.... These posts are meant to help you stay away from that awfully high number!!

While it's certainly difficult to keep from buying every single thing your kid might possibly be able to use when you're still expecting, it's near impossible to exercise a reasonable amount of restraint once your child is actually born.  Suddenly, nothing is too expensive for that cute little face! Every piece of baby clothing becomes essential. $500 photo shoot? Completely necessary!

Luckily, I've devised a way that has become so effective in keeping me from spending excessive amounts of money on my child that it surprised even myself: I make my baby pay for his own stuff. (And he's much less likely to buy yet another pair of pants to add to his overflowing collection.)

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Slashing Expenses: Unsubscribing...

In order to reach our goal of financial freedom, we are increasing income and slashing our expenses.  We will be sharing ways that we've successfully decreased our monthly expenses in order to help you cut your own costs.

I really enjoy home design.  Since purchasing our home six years ago,  we've renovated our house top to bottom and I have loved having the opportunity to redesign our home that is completely our own taste.  I love to read design blogs and I have been a faithful subscriber of Style at Home magazine for several years now.

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How We Earn Extra Money: Selling Stuff on Kijiji

I recently mentioned that we are saving up for a new vehicle despite having no extra room in our budget.   We have managed to save up about $3000 towards this by finding ways to earn extra income aside from our regular paycheques.  This is one of the ways we've been earning extra money! You can see the rest of the ways we earn extra money here! 

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a bit about the decluttering campaign that I began once I started my maternity leave.  I talked about selling all kinds of our 'junk' on Ebay and how we had sold all sorts of things from DVDs to USB sound cards to used cloth diapers using this method. I love Ebay because it gives me a great platform to sell small items and reach a large audience.  What do you do if you have a large item though? After all, it's not very practical to ship a piano across the country.

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How We Save Money By Using Our Credit Cards

Credit cards have gotten a very bad rap in the personal finance world for quite some time now.  This is for good reason considering the amount of debt many people are carrying around on their credit card accounts and how much interest most of them are paying to service that debt.  We have been there and it wasn't pretty!  

As we began to dig ourselves out of debt we naturally had to stop using our credit cards (with some small exceptions).  It was very important to do this at the time as we needed to make changes to our relationship with money and the way we viewed it.  We needed to be more aware of our spending and feel the pinch of a lower bank balance at the same time as the high of a new purchase. 

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Baby On A Budget: Hand-Me-Downs and Second Hand Stores

Baby on a Budget is a series of posts that I'll be doing to share all the ways we've managed to save money while bringing up our baby.  When I read the stats about how much money new parents supposedly spend getting ready for a baby and caring for a baby in its first years, I cringe! I can certainly see how it happens though.... These posts are meant to help you stay away from that awfully high number!!

We were ridiculously lucky to have a baby boy almost exactly one year after my sister had her own baby boy.  This is not because our son would have a cousin close in age, though that's nice too.  My thoughts are inclined to be more selfish in nature.  I was mostly ecstatic about all the hand me downs I was about to receive!!

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How We Earn Extra Money: Simple Computer Repair

I recently mentioned that we are saving up for a new vehicle despite having no extra room in our budget.   We have managed to save up about $3000 towards this by finding ways to earn extra income aside from our regular paycheques.  This is one of the ways we've been earning extra money!


I am very lucky to have an incredibly talented husband.  He is very handy and seems to understand how things work on a level I may never comprehend.  Somehow over the years he has become extremely adept at fixing and building computers.

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How We Budget: A Simple and Easy to Maintain Budgeting Strategy

I have previously shown a breakdown of our budget in percentages (here and here) but neither of these breakdowns really served to show exactly how we budget on a day to day basis. I shared our budget categories in 'Our January Budget' but didn't go further than that.  We've finally come across a great method that's been working for us for about 9 months now and if it can help you do the same then it's worth sharing!

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Slashing Expenses: Couponing and Pricematching

I am desperately trying to cut our food budget.  I read about all these other people that are spending $50 a week on food or families of 6 spending $100 a week and I wonder how the heck they do it!?! I budget $200 a week on consumables and that feels like a lot.  That includes toiletries, gas and medications (mainly just over the counter) though so perhaps it isn't so bad...

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How We Made $275 in 30 Minutes

I am usually quite wary of free money.  I come by it honestly.  My parents always taught me that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.  As a result, I don't click on ads offering me $500 a day working from home.  I don't respond to newspaper ads that tell me I can earn $50 an hour stuffing envelopes.  I always anticipate that there is going to be some awful string attached anytime someone wants to give me money for very little effort on my part.

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Manulife One Review

Here is my humble review of our Manulife One account.  I do not claim to know about all the different types of mortgages and accounts out there or pretend to have an idea of how it would work in your situation.  I can only attest to how it has worked for us over the last year and a half that we've been working with it and perhaps this will help you make an informed decision as to whether or not it is the right type of product for you.

I had seen the Manulife One commercials a few years back and looked into the M1 a bit but at that point we were new homeowners and didn't have enough equity in our home to take advantage. As time went on and we paid down more of our mortgage as the value of our home rose, I looked into it again.  This time I inquired about it on the website and an advisor offered to come meet with us.  I still didn't think we'd qualify and I was somewhat wary to look into it because I was embarrassed about the amount of debt we still had, even after paying a large chunk of it down! 
The M1 advisor actually informed us that we looked like good candidates for the account and explained how it all worked.  I had done a lot of research prior to the meeting so I didn't have a lot of questions.  The main drawback the I was able to find in my research is that this account has a $14 monthly fee.  I'm not ecstatic about the fee but using the account has saved us enough money in other ways to justify the monthly fee.  Perhaps once there is more competition in this market Manulife will decide to drop the fee. (hint, hint)

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Baby On A Budget: Making Your Own Baby Purees

Baby on a Budget is a series of posts that I'll be doing to share all the ways we've managed to save money while bringing up our baby.  When I read the stats about how much money new parents supposedly spend getting ready for a baby and caring for a baby in its first years, I cringe! I can certainly see how it happens though.... These posts are meant to help you stay away from that awfully high number!!

One of the things that I've highly enjoyed doing in the last few months is cooking for my baby.  This might be comical for those of you that know me as I'm not a great cook, but I love knowing exactly what my kid is eating and saving a whole bunch of money while doing it!  It's also nice to have a stockpile of baby food in my freezer and not have to be too concerned about running out as making the purees is as easy as pie (though, even with my limited cooking experience, I doubt making a pie is all that simple...)!

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How We Earn Extra Money: Selling Our Stuff on Ebay

I recently mentioned that we are saving up for a new vehicle despite having no extra room in our budget.   We have managed to save up about $3000 towards this by finding ways to earn extra income aside from our regular paycheques.  This is one of the ways we've been earning extra money! You can see the rest of the ways we earn extra money here!

One of the things that drove me nuts when I first went on maternity leave was all the clutter in our home.  We've spent the last 10 years working our butts off during the week and shopping on the weekends and the amount of stuff built up in our home was showing it! Being forced to sit at home and look at it, and put it away and clean it made me crazy and all I could think about was getting rid of it.

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Slashing Expenses: Cutting Your Own Hair

In order to reach our goal of financial freedom, we are increasing income and slashing our expenses.  We will be sharing ways that we've successfully decreased our monthly expenses in order to help you cut your own costs.

About once every month (two if I'm lucky) my husband talks me into cutting his hair. I have to be entirely honest; this is one of my least favourite ways to save money.  The only reason I go along with this is because my husband absolutely insists.  He hates going to the hairdresser as much as I hate cutting his hair.

If you are going to attempt to employ this crazy money saving technique in your own life, do yourself a favour and learn from our mistakes.

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Our Financial Goals: Where We're Headed

Our specific goals are always changing. However, the general idea behind our goals stays the same; we want to achieve a level of financial freedom that allows us to create an acceptable (to us) balance between work and play.  Throughout the years, we have felt forced to stay at certain jobs and work extra hours because of financial obligations and we want to feel as though we have more of a say in this.  (We realize that we are responsible for our actions and that we always have a choice as to what we do, but we have sometimes felt that the monetarily responsible choices in our situations aren't very agreeable when they mean staying in an exceptionally stressful work situation or seeing less of our family than we desire.)

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Slashing Expenses: Saving Money on our Phone Bill

In order to reach our goal of financial freedom, we are increasing income and slashing our expenses.  We will be sharing ways that we've successfully decreased our monthly expenses in order to help you cut your own costs. 


We've been counting down to this January for the last several months.  It wasn't because we were going on a nice vacation or having a baby or buying a new car or anything terribly exciting like that; it was because our phone contract with Bell was finally going to be up. (!!!)

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Our January Budget

I realized after attempting to show an accurate picture of our current budget using a piechart here, (and failing miserably) that because of the way we budget, the only way to paint a realistic picture of a budget was to give an accurate accounting of where our money has gone in any given month.  As previously mentioned,  we have a Manulife One account and I had to make some major adjustments to the way we budget in order to get the most out of this account.  It took me about a year to really feel like I was 'on top of things' in this area.

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How We Earn Extra Money: Teaching Piano

I recently mentioned that we are saving up for a new vehicle despite having no extra room in our budget.   We have managed to save up about $3000 towards this by finding ways to earn extra income aside from our regular paycheques.  This is one of the ways we've been earning extra money! You can see the rest of the ways here!

My parents invested a lot of money into piano lessons for me while I was growing up.  I also invested a lot of time and energy into going to lessons and practicing (unfortunately less than I should have...)  I worked my way up to Grade 9 of the Royal Conservatory of Music and did fairly well.  I was really great at theory, quite good at music history and OK at the practical exams.

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