do you shop Costco?

Not too long ago I highlighted the grocery comparisson that CTV Calgary does each month.  The reporter compares the top four grocery stores in Calgary and there are pretty consistent results in terms of where it costs more/less to shop.

I have been a long time beleiver that Costco is cheaper to buy a great number of items.  Today, I thought I would compare the meat prices found at Costco, with the meat found at the grocery stores that CTV reviews each month.  Though I don't see posting exactly what I purchase as a regular feature on Jessie's Money, I thought it would be valuable to share a stocking up shop.  Jordan and I probably do a meat shop like this every 10-12 weeks or so (I'm guessing, haven't ever really paid attention to the frequency).

mmmmeat!!

Here's the breakdown of the Costco shop:

* The sausage was two dollars off! That's why the weight and regular price/KG don't add up to $9.20

I gathered my comparrison data using the most up to date flyers I could find online.  I had troubles comparing the exact same roast, but that's the only one I'm not sure of.  Here is a price comparisson of Costco against the four main grocery stores in Calgary:

Unfortunatly I wasn't able to find details online about each product - they don't all have the same items listed online - and at this point, I'm not willing to drive to each place to check it out.

I'll tell you though, going through this exercise took about 90 minutes, and I'm much more aware of how much meat could/should cost then I was when I ventured out.  Overall, I'm pretty happy with the prices I paid - though I'm cetainly going to watch for sales on chicken breast.

Book Review: Your Money Ratios

I was recently approached to write a review on Your Money Ratios: 8 Simple Tools for Financial Security, by Charles Farrell. I’ve so far seen a couple of reviews crop up already, and I must say – I’m impressed with your work! I’ve picked up and put down this book a solid half dozen times trying to read it. I wanted to be able to provide a comprehensive, thoughtful review.

Unfortunately, I am only able to share with you some basic highlights.

I found this book very hard to get into. Not that the language was difficult – it was actually very basic language – and so on the surface easy to understand, however; it was also very repetitive which made it frustrating to try to read. At times I felt like the author was speaking to someone very young, so you could say aspects of the book also felt somewhat condescending; however, that may have been just due to the repetition.

The book set out to answer five questions:

1. How much should I be saving each year? 
2. How much should I have saved at my age? 
3. How much debt can I carry? 
4. How should I invest my savings? 
5. What type of insurance do I need? 

These questions, were meant to be answered through a variety of ratios. Basically, by age X you should have saved $X/$current salary = ratio of savings to salary. I won’t detail the progression, but I will say that the books’ message was by the time you reach retirement age you should have saved 12x your salary. The ratios themselves seem pretty easy to follow along – but I didn’t necessarily agree with the information provided – there wasn’t a solid reason behind the math, why 12X?

I’ll be the first one to say, that by the time the book got to the math, I may already have had a mental block that it wasn’t going to work. It’s hard to say at this point.

I am sad to say, that I stopped reading after the introduction to Chapter 3: Social Security. Up until that point, there was no specific mention (that I caught at least) that the book was directed to folks from the U.S. of A. I am Canadian. I said to myself, and to Jordan, maybe the concepts will still apply. Again, I tried to get through them but unfortunately the American language was so lost on me, that I gave up.

I so appreciate that this book try’s to provide guidance on answering some age old questions relating to how much and for how long someone should save – but I truly believe that every case is different and it so depends on your personal circumstances.

The Truck Loan

Last week I posted a question that Jordan had about some vacation that his company wanted him to either take or have paid out.  After some really excellent feedback (thank you everyone), he decided to request the pay out and put it towards his truck loan.

His company works quick!  They paid him out yesterday, along with his regular pay.  He requested an even $500.  After deductions that worked out to be $341.60.  With his brother staying with us, he's decided to keep the $41.60 as he'll probably need an extra tank of gas and pay $300 towards the truck loan.

I've just completed the online request to make an additional loan payment  - the online system said that it can take up to two days to process.  Given that it's Friday morning, I won't call the bank until Wednesday morning (if it's not processed by then).

So lets have a look at the numbers:

Current Balance: $2,373.49
Less Vacation:         300.00
New Balance      $2,073.49

With an interest rate of 9.25%, of each $150 payment (bi-weekly) $141.10 goes towards the principal of the loan.  That means that there are now 13.82 bi-weekly payments left.  Rounded to 14, the truck will be paid off by July 29, 2010!!  Wow! Jordan will be complete debt free by this summer!

Receipt Tracking

Last week, in my bi-weekly budget post, I promised that I would keep track of all of my receipts to try to get a better handle on my budget and to ensure that I had correctly allotted amounts for each category.  Week one is up, here is a summary:

 Jordan and I contribute $100 to our food budget/jar each pay day - as we are paid on opposite weeks - this is $400/month.  This includes groceries as well as personal items that would be purchased in a grocery store.  So that worked out just about perfectly this week!  This week I bought a few new scrapbooks that I want to work on (a budding hobby).  They are half sized - so I'm hoping they won't be as daunting as my first try doing a big book.  McDonald's was a bit of an indulgence, we were out almost all day and starving - when we get hungry - we get b*itchy with each other....so the food was worth us being nice :)

I included the car wash as an 'other' but perhaps that should have gone in transportation?  I'm not really sure.

Over all, I'm pretty happy with this.  As long as I don't spend more then $20 over the next week - which should be completely doable.  I would like to get out of the habit of spending my variable budget money during the first week I get paid, but it works out b/c Jordan gets paid on opposite weeks.

Utilities in the Winter

I`m not sure about all of you folks, but for me, winter is the hardest time of year to keep the utility bills down.  It's cold and costs more to heat the house, and people generally spend more time inside and at home (using more resources).  Rainy Day Saver has spoken about her struggles with this as well.

To try to combat the house heating woes this year, we installed some special indoor glass plastic over the windows that is supposed to act as an insulating double pane.  I did this before Christmas, and as the heating part of the utility bill is always a month behind, we`ll see the effects on the bill at the end of the month.

Before that happens, I wanted to share with you how easy it was to install!!  I did it myself while Jordan was watching hockey.

Before:                                                                     After:

Other then a bit of shine, you can`t tell the difference between the two!  I`m really hoping that in a few weeks, I`ll be able to share how much $$ we saved!

Further to the fake double pane, we also where sweaters and use a small room heater when necessary - so we're only heating an extra small space instead of the entire place. We keep the house at 20C, and I turn it down to around 16C when we leave for work in the morning.

Do you live somehwhere where you have to combat the heating bill each winter?  I'm also wondering if folks have used this type of insulating plastic before and if you noticed a different.  We used it on our the bedroom/bathroom windows as well as the door - all of the major heat loss affenders.

ahhh.. Finished The Basement

Yesterday I mentioned that Jordan's little brother (14 yrs old) is coming to stay with us for two weeks and that I was working to get the basement in order so he would have somewhere to hang out with friends, other then his bedroom, if he didn't want to hang out with Jordan and I.  After all of the moves in and out over the last couple of months a lot of work had piled up but I finished last night.

Before:

After:

I`m really pleased with how the space came together.  The fish tank you see in the corner of the first after picture is up for sale, and someone might actually want to buy it now (worth about $300 with all of the stuff that goes with it).

I through away 2 bags of garbage and had a huge box and a bag of recycling!  There is still a pile of electronics for Jordan to go through - but other then that, it`s pretty excellent I`d say.

Comment Moderation

Hello Folks,

I apologize as I have a couple of spammers that are starting to crop up.  Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to manually delete comments if I didn't have comment moderation on to begin with.  I  have just changed my comment settings to have word verification to hopefully stop any further spamming.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

 - for those who use blogger, if you know how to delete comments - please let me know!

[Edit]

As it turns out I had to remove word verification b/c people couldn't see the box to enter in the word :(  I'm going to try comment moderation for a while, to see if that works.