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I want to thank the people who make our life easier. I really like our mailman, my hairdresser and the butcher. Our building manager is pretty nice and helpful, too.

Tough to decide what to give: don’t want to seem like a total cheapskate but still want to show “we appreciate you”. And you never know what they’re allergic or morally opposed to.

We gave chocolate truffles to a client once. When he called to thank us, he said “Even though I have diabetes, my granddaughter enjoyed them very much”. And yet candy seems like a safe choice. In worst case, they can just re-gift it.

• The Mailman got a special edition holiday Toblerone ($8.50). Everyone loves Toblerones, right? He didn’t seem very moved but said that he’s in our area for awhile, hopefully he’ll be here next year as well (his words). So I’m thinking he wasn’t too offended. I thought about giving money but it’s against the law.
• I tipped the Hairdresser 100%. I did well here, she was happy, everyone loves cash.
• The Building Manager will either get a box of cookies or a Tim Horton’s gift card. He’s always carrying a Tim’s cup.
• The Butcher is tricky. We shop at the Whole Foods, so would a WF gift card be appropriate? A steak? cash? I’m open to ideas. He is a very friendly young guy. I don’t want him to misinterpret it though.

Holiday tipping guide from CNN
The article suggests that cash is the best choice, average recommended tip is $20 or so, with some going a lot higher.

Here’s a chart with our food expenses, from Jan 2007 to May 2008 (without alcohol). August and September omitted due to our trip in that period.

Frustrating…

There’s a lot of new small business tax rules this year, so I can’t use my QuickTax from last year to estimate how much we should buy before the year runs out. I noticed that tax software never goes on sale so I might as well buy it now and do a rough calculation that’s more or less correct according to the new laws.

Much has been said about budgeting in the Personal Finance (PF) blogosphere. For most employed people it should be relatively easy to figure out how much money goes in and how much goes out. What if you’re self-employed?

It’s practically impossible to predict even a close income figure. Yes, you can see how much money you should be receiving in the next month or two based on outstanding invoices (if that’s how you operate. With anything retail you don’t even get that.), but the reality is that some clients pay faster, some take their sweet time, invoices get lost, and – on the plus side – unexpected quick-paying jobs come in. I’ve given up on trying to predict how much money we’ll receive in any given period.

Instead, I know exactly what our base budget is, and I know what the after-tax minimum is that we need to make to stay afloat. If we don’t make that, it doesn’t mean we’ll go bankrupt, because thanks to sticking to this budget for several years, we have a comfortable cushion to last us at least a couple of years.

For most small businesses cash flow is not stable or guaranteed, at least to a certain point in time. So it’s critical to save in those months when you do have more money coming in than going out. It’s also important to have a “barebones” budget that you can realistically stick to when times get a bit harder.

Self-discipline is the name of the game in “self-employment”. In organizing work hours, choosing business direction, promoting, budgeting – it takes a higher level of self-discipline to do it on your own. I’m not putting down those people who are working for the Boss. I know it can be extremely frustrating and nerve-wrecking, but the truth is there’s a lot less responsibility riding on most employees. By following someone else’s order you essentially give up a part of the reponsibility for your own life. Of course, there are two sides to everything, and you can feel trapped in either situation. But I’m digressing…

Having all of the above in place is helping me avoid a freak out right now, even though March ended with a loss. *sigh*

Every month we try to spend less on food/drinking/eating out, but that rarely happens. In fact, for the past 3 years our grocery spending has been going up and up.

Last year’s food spending worked out to this (average per month):
Groceries – $540
Coffee/Eating Out – $43
Alcohol – $30 wow! (I mean, not much at all)
Supplements – $91
Total: $740

This is for a family of 2 adults.

We don’t eat out or drink alcohol much, as you can see; and we rarely buy pre-packaged foods of any kind. 99% of what we eat is cooked by us at home from raw ingredients. We’ve also been switching to an all-organic diet over the past 3 years, and we’re practically there. The only exception are fruits and vegetables that we buy from local farmers, especially in season. I will take a non-organic local cabbage over imported organic one any day (all berries are an exception).

We shop downtown Toronto at the St. Lawrence Market & Kensington Market (15-20% combined); at Dominion, Loblaws, sometimes at No Frills (35-40% combined); and at the Whole Foods in Yorkville (45%).

Buying organic and/or fresh local food is a personal choice. Even though we grumble at the end of the month seeing how much money we “ate”, we don’t want to start eating lower-grade food. If you live on boxed mac-and-cheese and microwavable “soup in a bowl”, you may save money in the short term, but I firmly believe in spending money on health and prevention today, rather than fix health problems down the road. And bad food WILL make you sick. “Let your food be your medicine”, said Hippocrates.
I can talk about food quality for hours, so I better cut it short now.

We allocate about 30% of our monthly budget for food, that’s almost as much as Americans used to spend on food in the 1930’s. Very interesting graph here: Food, clothing, and shelter see different historical spending patterns.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a money-saving workaround for this. I use coupons and like sales, but those are rare for items that we buy.

If you think we’re just wasting money, and in general are gullible suckers, well… I have eaten really good nutritious food for most of my life. And then I also felt what generic mass-produced pesticide-laden food did to me in US and Canada, when I wasn’t so selective about what I ate. The contrast in my well-being was stunning, and it only took 3 years to go from feeling fabulous, to feeling crappy. Again, what to eat and how much to spend on food is a personal choice. If you grew up on TV and happy meals, you just don’t know any better. You weren’t taught about food and what it should be like. But if you know better, this is a corner you shouldn’t cut. If you buy premium gasoline for your car, and cheap mass-produced food for yourself – is it because your car is worth it and you are not?

If you have 48 minutes to spare, and even remotely curious about the meat you eat, check out this video.

Wow, first post under “Frugality” and here I am, defending wasteful spending (pardon the pun?)