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The great thing about managing your money is that if you get the big things right, you can afford to spend like an idiot the rest of the time, because everything becomes so much easier. I cut my cable for Hulu/Netflix and a $2 a month DNS service; I subscribe to Wind because they are so cheap; I don't have a car because it would be frivolous to own one when I only use it a couple of times a month, so Zipcar is much cheaper, etc. All of that stuff means that I can afford to save several hundred bucks a month (or in my current case, aggressively pay off my student loans), and still afford to travel a few times a year, eat out all the time, and buy whatever games I want on Steam. All that, and my wife is in grad school bringing in little to no income. Seriously, just take the time to get your poo poo in order, and life becomes infinitely more livable. e: \/\/\/ 
Franks Happy Place fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Mar 13, 2015 |
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Mar 13, 2015 17:33
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| # ? May 15, 2024 23:39 |
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Keeping control of your monthly cash flows is no joke the secret to becoming happy.
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Mar 13, 2015 17:35
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Aren't most that 12% of extremely indebted people are basically first time homebuyers?
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Mar 13, 2015 17:42
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Honestly, the best thing you can do is learn to cook well and enjoy doing it. Eating and drinking in restaurants and bars is expensive as gently caress.
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Mar 13, 2015 17:47
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PT6A posted:Honestly, the best thing you can do is learn to cook well and enjoy doing it. Eating and drinking in restaurants and bars is expensive as gently caress. Some of my friends who make as much as me and my wife combined have 0 savings because they eat (and DRINK) out like 4+ times a week. We don't even drink so a night out and a nice dinner is like $30 for both of us, they'll spend $50+ each.
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Mar 13, 2015 18:07
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When we meal plan (we aren't consistent, yet) I think we easily save hundreds of dollars a month and cooking becomes way less stressful for me because I always know that we have exactly what we need in the fridge and I don't have to think of what to make for dinner that night.
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Mar 13, 2015 18:15
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Solution to the debt bubble: buy chicken when its on sale and rent
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Mar 13, 2015 18:17
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Baronjutter posted:Solution to the debt bubble: buy chicken when its on sale and rent Unironically yes. If you understand why those two things are a really good idea, chances are you aren't piling on debt.
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Mar 13, 2015 18:22
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also make your own alcohol fake edit: my phone keeps trying to correct it to 'alcoholic' 
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Mar 13, 2015 18:26
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JawKnee posted:also make your own alcohol I save a lot of money making moonshine. 
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Mar 13, 2015 18:27
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JawKnee posted:also make your own alcohol This is only partly correct. I've worked out based on my own beer-brewing that it's slightly cheaper. You need to brew a lot of beer in order to pay off what you've spent in gear--by a lot, I just mean volume really. I am about $200 in beer-making supplies so far and it works out to about $30/batch for 22L in beer so if you were to use $10 for 6x355 mL as a basis, it would pay for itself in about two or three batches depending. The $30 takes into account the ingredients, cleaning supplies, and anything need replacing. You can cheap out if you get the right bottles--Howe Sound Brewing has the best bottles of for home-brew. It's also water intensive as gently caress.
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Mar 13, 2015 18:38
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OSI bean dip posted:This is only partly correct. I've worked out based on my own beer-brewing that it's slightly cheaper. You need to brew a lot of beer in order to pay off what you've spent in gear--by a lot, I just mean volume really. well over $1200 in brewing supplies and a self-built keggerator - with 4 keg/20 gallon capacity  I brew (and drink) a stupid quantity.
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Mar 13, 2015 18:47
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Hard stuff is pretty cost-effective, it probably costs me like $4 for a litre of 40% stuff that is high quality. Canada's Debt Bubble: The Solution Is Moonshine
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Mar 13, 2015 19:11
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If it's not 70%+, it's not worth drinking. 
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Mar 13, 2015 19:20
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So when they quote the disposable income and debt ratio are we always just supposed to assume annual? Debt is a scalar figure. Some amount. Income is measured over some period. This also crops up in economic figures like 11% year over year growth in <stat> during February. Meaning this February's value was 11 percent higher than last Febs, not that it grew 11% in february. Or even one month's worth of annualized growth of 11%. It could even have shrunk!
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Mar 13, 2015 19:39
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I looked into making homemade whisky and jeez homebrewing hard liquor is not simple. But I should get around to it, I'm pretty sure I can make better swill than the ridiculously overpriced poo poo the SAQ sells.
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Mar 13, 2015 20:25
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YouTube is your friend for that, and you can buy all the mini still stuff online and ship it as like purification equipment or whatever
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Mar 13, 2015 20:32
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I made a lovely still in College just to prove it would work. Built it out of supplies from Walmart. Basically a croc pot heated on a big skillet and spiraled copper tubing out the top. Filter what comes out through activated Carbon(several times) for that smooth winter mountain taste. It caught on fire super good.
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Mar 13, 2015 20:38
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Baronjutter posted:Some of my friends who make as much as me and my wife combined have 0 savings because they eat (and DRINK) out like 4+ times a week. We don't even drink so a night out and a nice dinner is like $30 for both of us, they'll spend $50+ each. There's one key point that I only rarely see mentioned when looking at the cost of restaurants versus cooking. That is- the savings from home cooking become MUCH more significant as the number of people you're feeding increases. If you're feeding a family of five the return on your time invested in shopping, cooking, cleanup, etc becomes much greater, and of course you can save on ingredients by buying in bulk. As a single person without really extravagant taste, I've generally found only a slight price premium on buying a burrito at Chipotle for example instead of buying the ingredients and making the same thing at home for myself. When you factor in the time and effort, Chipotle comes way out ahead in my view. Now, if I was feeding a family of five it would become a much better deal both cost- and time-wise to make a large tray of burritos at home from bulk purchased ingredients. Of course this doesn't touch on the issues of taste, health, and the fact that some people just enjoy cooking for its own sake.
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Mar 13, 2015 21:07
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Franks Happy Place posted:Hard stuff is pretty cost-effective, it probably costs me like $4 for a litre of 40% stuff that is high quality. did you buy a pre-built set up or do something on your own? I love infusing and making liqueurs so I'm generally interested.
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Mar 13, 2015 21:11
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Lumius posted:did you buy a pre-built set up or do something on your own? I love infusing and making liqueurs so I'm generally interested. I am hesitant to go into a great deal of detail for obvious reasons, but I can say: a still was made, it was not at all hard, and the components are easy to find. A keg formed the basis, I can say that much. All in I think it cost like $150-200 for the various components, and it was a simple welding job to bring it all together. Normally I'd say "PM me for more details!" but honestly any description I gave you would be less helpful than a Youtube tutorial, of which there are thousands. Making good whiskey is dead simple. I just make a wash out of corn or corn + barley, boost the yield with sugar (our testing so far shows no impact on end taste), and use a Lavlin EC-1118. Distiller's yeast is bullshit. Then you just put it in a glass jar or jug with some chopped up barrel chunks, and between the sunlight and the higher surface ratio you can age it really well in WAY less time than some caveman "barrel in a barn" poo poo. And that's my last derail post, I swear. 
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Mar 13, 2015 21:16
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That depends on the nature of your cooking though, really. If I make up a slow cooker roast & veggies, or a full pot of Japanese Curry, that will easily give me lunch & dinner for the next 4-5 days. If I say an average of $15/day on food otherwise, it's paid for itself by the second day. When I was doing a DIY soylent mixture for a month I think my daily cost was around $3.50 for all three meals combined, and I felt healthier than I had in years. Granted, many people can't stand to eat the same food that many days in a row, and the thought of subsisting on a nutrient sludge is abhorrent to most. Abject poverty opens your eyes to what levels of existence you are prepared to accept in return for cold hard cash, I guess. 
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Mar 13, 2015 21:17
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JawKnee posted:also make your own alcohol I'm making my own maple syrup atm
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Mar 13, 2015 21:19
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Smilin Joe Fission posted:There's one key point that I only rarely see mentioned when looking at the cost of restaurants versus cooking. That is- the savings from home cooking become MUCH more significant as the number of people you're feeding increases. If you're feeding a family of five the return on your time invested in shopping, cooking, cleanup, etc becomes much greater, and of course you can save on ingredients by buying in bulk. As a single person without really extravagant taste, I've generally found only a slight price premium on buying a burrito at Chipotle for example instead of buying the ingredients and making the same thing at home for myself. When you factor in the time and effort, Chipotle comes way out ahead in my view. Now, if I was feeding a family of five it would become a much better deal both cost- and time-wise to make a large tray of burritos at home from bulk purchased ingredients. Out of curiosity, where do you live? I've had trouble pushing my portion cost beneath 10-20krona (about 3$  ) ever since moving and Stockholms food prices are pretty drat high when compared to the rest of Sweden, especially when it comes to vegetables. The cheapest portion of prepared food I can find is about 50krona which as you can see is a lot when compared to the cooked food even while living alone.Or perhaps Canadian food prices are just crazy? 
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Mar 13, 2015 21:19
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I looked into distilling vodka at one point to save money and also to experiment with infusing some new flavors, but I got the impression that to get the quality level even up to the mid-range stuff that goes for $12/750 ml, you have to filter quite a few times and wind up spending almost as much buying new Brita filters as you would on just buying higher quality stuff to begin with. The economies of scale from huge industrial distillation and rectification equipment pretty much take away any advantage of the DYI approach price-wise, unless you're just doing it for fun. This was awhile back and I didn't do a ton of research, so take this with a grain of salt. For something like whisky that doesn't go through all the filtration I'm sure it would make a lot more sense.
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Mar 13, 2015 21:20
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Smilin Joe Fission posted:I looked into distilling vodka at one point to save money and also to experiment with infusing some new flavors, but I got the impression that to get the quality level even up to the mid-range stuff that goes for $12/750 ml, you have to filter quite a few times and wind up spending almost as much buying new Brita filters as you would on just buying higher quality stuff to begin with. The economies of scale from huge industrial distillation and rectification equipment pretty much take away any advantage of the DYI approach price-wise, unless you're just doing it for fun. This was awhile back and I didn't do a ton of research, so take this with a grain of salt. Vodka is indeed a huge pain in the rear end and the carbon polishing is a big reason why. Don't make vodka/neutral spirits, it's not worth it.
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Mar 13, 2015 21:21
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Xoidanor posted:Out of curiosity, where do you live? I've had trouble pushing my portion cost beneath 10-20krona (about 3$ I'm in a fairly high-cost city in the US, but it also has a huge restaurant and nightlife scene so the competition may be helping. The unfortunate american tradition of paying food service workers pitiful wages to the point they often can barely feed themselves probably plays a role as well in holding prices down. When I was in Stockholm awhile back I remember food being expensive even by European standards, but Helsinki was even worse. The combination of importing most food and actually treating service workers as human beings probably keeps restaurant costs high in most of Europe.
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Mar 13, 2015 21:31
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Food was cheap as gently caress in Berlin, we had a kitchen in our place and eating out was only marginally more expensive than buying from the local kinda yuppie supermarket. Then again the prices varied quite a bit. One cafe would have a soup and sandwich for like 15 euros and a block down would be a cafe with basically the exact same meal for 5 euros. I know here in Victoria there's fairly set prices for most things. A burger at a cheap pub might be $11 and a burger at an expensive pub might be $15, an order of the same sushi might vary by a dollar, not a huge disparity in prices. But in Berlin the same food could cost double or triple seemingly at random, you couldn't even tell by how "fancy" the place looked. We found an amazing classy looking Thai place that had prices comparable to a cheap Thai place in Victoria and was really good, and then not a few blocks down was a shittier looking place that was nearly double the prices. Some of my friends compare eating out vs cooking and say it's about the same but they have really fancy tastes. I'm sure if you cherry pick a very few certain exotic meals for 1 person it comes out close, but for the vast majority of meals it's no contest that cooking your self is way way cheaper. Now if you actually cook for your self and plan your meals around what is economical to cook at home it gets insanely cheaper. So we eat super cheap simple meals at home that we find pretty tasty and enjoy tons of extra disposable income from the savings (which goes straight towards eating out more!!). One of our staples is "tuna pasta". Some green onion, parsley, tuna, mayo, sometimes other veggies + pasta. Cheap as gently caress. Or just a random poo poo salad. Worried about veg going bad? Cut it up and toss it all in a bowl and put a little oil or mayo or something on it. If you've got more time and want a multi-meal result just toss a bunch of poo poo in a pot and make a huge portion of soup you can eat all week. Or the same idea but just stir fry poo poo. Also never buy clothing not on sale. Wait for that $200 jacket to be $75, get those jeans for $30 instead of $80. Basically everything goes on sale at some point and it lets you cut your clothing spending by like 1/3. Basically never buy anything not on sale and stock up on poo poo that doesn't go bad when it is on sale. My wife just bought 3 of the same pair of shoes because she knows they fit really well and they were like 80% off. Saving money feel so drat good and once you get addicted you just can't not save.
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Mar 13, 2015 22:11
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Never buy anything in Canada. American stores like jcrew, gap etc have crazy online sales.
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Mar 13, 2015 22:36
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Cultural Imperial posted:Never buy anything in Canada. American stores like jcrew, gap etc have crazy online sales. How do you know how things will look or sit on you? Every brand basically invents their own sizing. I love how like pant size is supposed to be inches around the waist but in the name of marketing different makes have just tossed that out so one brand's 31 in another brand's 33 because apparently inches are not defined units or anything  I guess I could order stuff like underwear and socks online though.
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Mar 13, 2015 23:21
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Baronjutter posted:How do you know how things will look or sit on you? Every brand basically invents their own sizing. I love how like pant size is supposed to be inches around the waist but in the name of marketing different makes have just tossed that out so one brand's 31 in another brand's 33 because apparently inches are not defined units or anything Go into a Canadian version of the store and try it on of course.
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Mar 13, 2015 23:25
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Some places like Old Navy have pretty good return policies if things don't fit. There's also usually size guides online that give you measurements for each size that you can measure on yourself. I need tall sized clothes, and most brick and mortar stores don't carry any (except a few places like Eddie Bauer) so I'm usually left to follow their size guide and hope for the best.
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Mar 14, 2015 04:42
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A lot of Canadian retailers actually have great online presences. Buy online during sales, free shipping and then just return anything you don't like to a store. I buy tall sized stuff from old navy that way.
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Mar 14, 2015 04:45
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My least favourite brand is UnderArmour, because I swear to god they are the worst company at having consistent sizing. I have everything from XS to L in their stuff, like I literally have to try it on or I will have no idea if it'll fit me.
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Mar 14, 2015 04:49
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http://www.bnn.ca/Video/player.aspx?vid=569847&hootPostID=a96aab6c56d79524439faa2545ddcb91 Review of @ActAccordingly report of the Canadian housing bubble by @amberkanwar here: #cdnecon http://www.bnn.ca/Video/player.aspx?vid=569847&hootPostID=a96aab6c56d79524439faa2545ddcb91 http://twitter.com/ac_eco/status/576476742388473856/photo/1 https://twitter.com/ac_eco/status/576476742388473856 Nice prediction of how and why the Canadian housing market will collapse. The think immigration is tightly correlated with oil prices (lol WTF why). So immigration will go down. Housing market depresses. Poloz reduces o/n rate one more time, it doesn't work, doomsday.
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Mar 14, 2015 04:51
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The most consistent sizes come from uniqlo but they don't ship to this poo poo hole so gently caress yall I guess
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Mar 14, 2015 04:52
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http://www.biv.com/article/2015/3/bc-loses-16500-full-time-positions-february-unempl/quote:
I hope you motherfuxkers like part time jobs
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Mar 14, 2015 05:03
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For every 100 full-time Australian jobs created – 264 new dwellings are built
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Mar 14, 2015 05:13
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Cultural Imperial posted:http://www.bnn.ca/Video/player.aspx?vid=569847&hootPostID=a96aab6c56d79524439faa2545ddcb91 lmao what garbage blaming immigrants for the explosive home price growth. It's always someone else's fault besides the dumb greedy financially illiterate locals.
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Mar 14, 2015 06:11
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| # ? May 15, 2024 23:39 |
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It's loving hilarious that all these Anglo countries have huge industries of people writing books and poo poo that basically say "if you spend less money buying poo poo, you end up with more left over at the end of the month! Walla!". I mean you do realize this is all pretty naked just-world-fallacy class warfare right? Yes it's definitely not the system that's rigged to benefit a privileged elite and to make rich people richer, poor people are poor and deserve to starve because they are "bad with money".
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Mar 14, 2015 06:22
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