A Chore A Day

Contrary to what many of my friends think, I really don't like to clean. You wouldn't know it if you came to my house. That's why they think I like to clean. Fooled them! I hate cleaning. But, I hate clutter and dirt even more. When I was working full time, the problem was solved by paying someone to clean my house. Now that I am enjoying the life of a stay at home mom who gets to write hub pages, blog, have tea with girl friends, be there for my kids when they get home, make great healthy meals for the family, I really do not want to go back to full time work any time soon. So, no full time work = less money = clean my house myself. Aagh!

So, I used my Process Engineering prowess to develop my own system. House cleaning is a process with many tasks. If we break the tasks down to bits that can be done in 10-15 minutes, then it won't seem so onerous. I call this method A Chore A Day method.

I have no set schedule to clean the house. I used to set a certain day for house cleaning - I grew to really dread "that day". I think some of us would rather have a root canal than have to spend a few hours cleaning the house, every single week.

Today's chore for me was cleaning the bathrooms. I only have 1.5 bathroom to clean and they are quite small. When I woke up this morning, I did not plan on cleaning the bathroom. What happened was, someone had plugged up the bathroom and I was clearing it after everyone had left the house. Then I noticed that it was not looking as sparkly as I like it to look. OK, I'll be honest, it had a brown stain on it, probably from it being plugged. So, I decided then and there that today was bathroom cleaning day. So, I proceeded to clean the bathroom - toilets, sinks, bathtubs, floors, mirrors, baseboards, pictures, window sills. My bathrooms are very small - so I get them done very quickly.

Yesterday's chore was cleaning the burners on the stove. They just needed to be done. The day before that was, Sweeping the floors. And, the day before that was Dusting the TV area and the piano. On days I am short on time, I pick a quicker chore to do, like dusting the night stands and dresser in my bedroom - that takes less than 5 minutes!

Basically, I do what needs to be done but only one chore a day. If I missed a day, I make sure that I do 2 chores the next day. The best place to start is to make a list of all the chores. Break them down into smaller chores if you only want to devote so much time to a chore a day. For example, instead of cleaning the entire bathrooms all at once, break it down to cleaning the toilets only as one chore. Cleaning the sinks and bathtub as another task. Cleaning the baseboards, mirror and window sills as another task. Cleaning the floors as another mini-task. Here's a list to help you get started:

1. Dust TV area.
2. Dust window sills.
3. Dust dining room furniture.
4. Dust bedroom 1 furniture.
5. Dust bedroom 2 and 3 furniture.
6. Toilets, sinks and bathtubs.
7. Bathroom floors.
8. Kitchen/hallway floor - sweep.
9. Mop Kitchen floor/ hallway.
10. Vacuum living room.
11. Vaccum bedrooms.
12. Vacuum hallways.
13. vacuum stairs.
14. Vacuum basement.
15. Clean stove burners.
16. Dust lamps and pictures.
17. Dust ceilings.
18. File/recycle paper work.
19. Check and refill toilet paper holders.
20. Take out garbage from all rooms, replace with new plastic bags.
21. Wipe down baseboards upstairs.
22. Wipe down baseboards downstairs.

It seems like a long list - but when you only do one chore a day, you cycle through that in a bit more than 3 weeks. If you get other members of the family involve, it would get done faster. I suggest putting this list on the fridge, every member needs to do a chore a day, they are to initial beside the chore they did that day. You can't do a chore when someone else has already done it, until all the chores have been checked, unless it is something diffcult like cleaning the toilet if it needs cleaning.

The following are things that I do on a daily basis, make my bed, clean up after every meal, put all toys back where they belong at the end of the night. This is just good habit to get into - this way, dishes are never piled up on the kitchen counter, and there is no clutter.

The following are tips to ease the tasks:

1. Use rubber gloves (from the dollar store) when cleaning the bathroom. It makes the cleaning go faster because you don't need to worry about getting in contact with any nasties!
2. I keep a bottle of Windex and a rag under every sink with a mirror. This way, spots can be cleaned away at any time.
3. Cut up old towels and cotton Tees for use as rags for cleaning. I have a stack of clean rags and I have a bucket they go into after I use them. I launder them with lots of bleach when I am out of clean rags.
4. Keep all your cleaning supplies in a bucket - no need to hunt for different cleaning supplies when you need them.
5. Keep your broom and dust pan handy - I had screws put in the wall neatly and have them hung up so that I can access them quickly.
6.  A good feather duster can make dusting less of a chore, I prefer using an old clean sock - I slip the slightly moistened sock on my hand and wipe what I need to dust with it.

Slash and Burn

No, this is not about burning calories.  It is about trimming my operating budget for our household.  In order for me be able to stay semi-retired and be there for my kids (I love being a stay at home mom who works occassionally as a consultant to keep the brains from turning to mush), and saving enough for the 2 summer months when my husband is not working, I had to trim some fat off our budget.

I got my Internet/Home Phone/Wireless bill and was simply appalled at how much it was.  The culprit was the Wireless.  It was $106.00!  We are on a Family plan where my husband and I share 100 minutes and we can call each other anywhere in the country for free.  We have been consistently using more than 100 minutes every month, resulting in extra charges per minute used.  I know that some may say to me, "why do you even need a cell phone?".  Well, the answer is, we need one because my husband is a Supply Teacher who needs to continuously call for that assignment.  It represents our main income stream at the moment.  So, I decided to call Rogers up and asked if there was another plan we could be on that would provide us with more minutes in the package.  It turns out, they have a new package called the Family Share $50 Plan.  To make a long story short, the Customer Service Representative switched me to the new plan where I get 200 minutes (so we doubled the minutes), unlimited text messages (the last plan we were on, we had to pay by the number of texts!), same free calls between my husband's cell phone and my cell phone, all this for less money than I was paying!  I get to save $40 per month because I no longer need to spend the extra dollars due to over usage.  Bonus!  It sure pays to call up your Service providers to check up on any new plans they may have introduced.

Then, I called up our Insurance company.  In the olden days when both my husband and I were working full time, with our time commitments at home, at the church, and rental properties, I just did not have the time to examine my policies.  Now that I'm a stay at home mom/semi retiree, I have the time to read those auto and home policies in detail.  I realized that they had been charging me for extra extensions for ground water and above ground water damage.  I've lived in my house for enough years to know that we do not need that coverage (we could have made a claim on it a few years ago because we did have some problems due to sump pump not being maintained properly - but now that we've got 2 sump pumps that are mantained properly, it is no longer an issue).  So, I called them up to cancel the extra premium and was able to reduce my premium by $14 per month.  It may not seem like a lot but that converts to 2 movie tickets on cheap Tuesday movie nights.  I strongly recommend reviewing your policies in detail to see what optional items they have tacked onto the bill.

Another service I cancelled was the Alarm monitoring service.  Now that I am home all the time, I did not see a need for an Alarm monitoring service.  In fact, we had not been using it for the last year.  That was another $28 per month that was slashed from the budget. 

I did not want to cut the charitable giving part of our budget.  We give to the ministries at our church, World Vision and Holt International.  However, given our budget and my unwillingness to change being a stay at home mom, I had to temporarily suspend the donations to World Vision and Holt International until our financial picture changes.  But, will continue with the donations to our church.  Any comments on this would be most welcome.

Well, all in all, I was able to slash our budget down to what my husband's income is plus save $5,000 over the next 5 months to cover most of our budget for the summer.  The rest will be made up with that wonderful Tax Refund that will be coming to us in February (yes, I do my taxes very early).

It feels good to have a budget that allows me to breath a little more easily because of the practical budget cuts that have not changed how we live.

Visual Manufacturing Tips

When entering data in any Visual window, if you need to enter the current date, simply type the letter "t" in the date field and the current date would be entered. This is useful when entering labour tickets.

The Joys of Investing

I love reading finance news, finance commentaries, stock trading tips, etc.  Maybe it's because I had some very good experiences in the past.  Back in 1998, during the Technology Bubble, I started to trade stocks during my maternity leave.  I got tips from friends and family.  It was so fun.  It seemed we could do no wrong.   Those were the good old days when RIM traded at $6 per share!  I started with $8,000 and in 10 months it was at $95,000.  That was right before the end of the year - should have cashed out then.  But, I did not.  I wanted it to eke out another $5,000 to make it a round number of $100,000.  Lesson number 1 - I should have put in Stop Orders!  Well, I cashed out the day Nortel went into a coma - it's value was halved.  My portfolio went from $95K to $44K in 1 day.  Well, I'm glad I did not hang on like many people did - Nortel had since died.  $8K to $44K in 10 months was still a pretty good return.  It was such a scary experience that I stopped trading altogether.  I was also back at work and no longer had the time to monitor those stocks.  I understand from the Indices that it was a "lost decade" anyways - so, I did not miss much.  Fast forward 10 years - I got back in.  I'll talk about some of my experiences in this blog.

Toys, Looks and Prestige

Hope you all had a great Christmas.  We sure did.  It is always fun spending time with my family.  I have a sister and a brother and we can talk about anything under the sun.  There are no subjects that are Taboo for us.  Our conversations are never boring - they are usually about religion, money and politics.  And when things get ugly (not as much anymore - we're all in our forties - so, we have learnt a thing or two about each others' body language to know when to back off), my mom steps in to force us to apologize to each other.  That is one lesson I've learnt from my mother - sibling comraderie is taught, encouraged and maintained to a great extent by parents.  I credit the fantastic relationship I have with my siblings to my mother.  I hope to do the same for our kids - I am already seeing the fruits of our labour come to fruition - my two kids love playing (and fighting - with mom and dad as peacemakers) together.  But, that was not the topic of my blog today!  I digress.  We are here to talk about toys we got for Christmas and other times of the year.

We got a Wii this Christmas as a present for the whole family.  We bought a 6 months old unit from Kijiji, complete with 2 remotes, 2 nunchuks and 3 games for a grand total of $170.  This kid we bought this off of paid over $325 for everything.  That sure demonstrates depreciation!  Glad I'm the beneficiary of this depreciation.  I remembered my kids asking me for a Wii when it first came out a few years ago.  I said to them, "we will wait until people get tired of their Wii in 2 years and they will want to sell it for a good price - that's when we buy".   It took us a few years, but we did buy it when it was not such a "hot" game anymore - the new thing now is the Kinnect.  We are still thoroughly enjoying our Wii now, even though it is not "hot" anymore.  It's new for us!

It often baffles my mind how folks could justify spending so much money on the newest toys, cell phones, technology and gadgets.  I understand if they had a household income of greater than $100K and are not in debt.  Take my brother for example, no debt, mortgage payment of $32 per month because it's almost paid off, great household income (greater than $100K) - I have no issues with him running out to get the ipad when it first came out.   Even he, Mr. Techno Buff, waited till this year to get a Wii and he got it for $170 at Zellers because he went to line up when it was on sale (I still think I got the better deal because I got the extra remote, nunchuk and games for the same price).  He has a Smartphone but it is neither an iphone or a Blackberry - it was some phone he got from the US for a song.

There are so many who strive to have the toys and gadgets, the big house (when they cannot really afford it), the big car (when the bank owns most of it and they have difficulty making payments), the gold credit cards (that cost $190 per year for no good reason) - all looks - and yet, has a large debt to income ratio - have we become such a deprived society that we need to have these "things" prop up our self image? 

Being a Financial Advisor on the side, I saw a person I know whip out their CIBC Aerogold card the other day to pay for a meal.  This is someone who cannot really afford to have that card.  So, I really want to talk about this.  I remember carrying the CIBC Aerogold visa card for many years - I got it the first year it came out - back in the 80s.  I gave that up when I realized that I could get a not so prestigious CIBC Visa Dividend card where they paid me money to use the card instead of me paying them money to use it.  Last year, I was paid $261.26 to use my card!  As for the rental car collision insurance benefit, I got a CIBC Platinum Visa card which was free but still gave me that benefit.  I remember this one card - Diners Card International.  It costed me over $200 per year to have this card.  The benefit?  I could use the Air Canada Lounge every time I travelled - that was the privilege of carrying this card.  Yes, it was nice and prestigious (and very comfortable when I did a lot of traveling) but once I stopped all that traveling, I cancelled the card because there was no longer need of that benefit - prestigious or not!

The moral of this story is, delayed gratification pays.  Looking for more cash flow?  Cancel that prestigious looking credit card!  Get a free one or better yet, one that pays you to use the card.

Financial Planning for Life

As I sit here typing while teaching my daughter piano, I can't help feeling content and blessed.  Although life is certainly not all a bed of roses, I find that a thankful heart is indeed a happy heart.  There is too much we take for granted in life.  Our plan is to always be here for our family.  I believe in God's protection for our lives, however, I do not want to be too arrogant to presume that I am always in control.  Therefore, I do have Life Insurance purchased to protect our kids.  I am the kind of person who is very practical and make decisions based on probability and risk percentages.  Therefore, since the probability of my demise before I turn 65 is minimal, I have opted for minimum insurance.  Basically, it will be enough to pay off the mortgage of the house (our only "debt").  If my husband survives, he can continue to live in the house and his income will be sufficient for the operating expenses of the household.  If we both don't survive, the house can be sold and the people who have agreed to bring up our kids will have that money for bringing them up until they finish University.  The cost of our Life Insurance for both of us is only $120 per year ($10 per month) - cheap, cheap - because it is a group insurance (Professional Engineer's group) with Manulife and we had purchased it many moons ago.  What I have is a Term Life Insurance.  When I leave the group, or when I reach 65, it is no longer valid.  All the money I had put into it is not recuperated.  I am ok with this because to me, it is a minimal cost for sufficient protection which I hope to never use.

I had a very interesting conversation with a friend a few days ago.  She is a WFG (World Financial Group) agent.  She showed me an interesting case study.  It was for a couple who lives from paycheque to paycheque with no money for emergency fund, retirement savings, kids' education, let alone life insurance protection.  In this case study, since the couple had equity built up in their house, if they take out an "interest only" loan to the limit that a bank would allow them (75% of the value of their house), they were able to pay off their mortgage, pay off their credit card bills, have money to put in a TFSA account as an Emergency fund.  Since they no longer have debt payments to make and they have a lower loan payment (an interest only loan vs. a mortgage where the principal has to be paid off), they have more Cash Flow for a Universal Life Insurance policy, where part of the premium paid goes towards Life Insurance protection and part of the premium is used to invest in registered Mutual Funds of their choice.(Or they could simply get a Term Insurance and invest in an RRSP).  The tax savings from the payment into the registered plan can then be used to create an RESP for the kids' education.  So now, they have insurance protection, consumer debts paid off, retirement savings, savings for kids' education and an emergency fund to boot. I asked the question, "What happens if the couple lose their jobs?"  If they did not do anything different, their house would be reposessed because they would not be able to make the payments.  In the second scenario, they could take the money from their rrsp and emergency fund to make the minimum payments on their loan until they got another job, and not lose the house!  She showed me that in 20 years, their net worth would be higher than if they did not do anything (even after they paid off the original loan). 

Of course, the key to making this work is, if they had enough equity built up to allow them to borrow enough to cover the mortgage, pay off their debts and create an emergency fund.  The increase in net worth will occur if the interest rates stay low, if their investments had returns higher than the loan interest rate and if they were  disciplined enough to live within their means and not get into more debt. 

I do consider myself a risk taker, but there are just too many "ifs" I can't control, for me to be comfortable with recommending that someone increase their debt load.  My suggestion to this couple would be - downsize to a smaller house to get the money to do all of the above.  Then, as their income increases, they could upgrade to a bigger house.

Spender vs Saver

When I was single and looking for "the man" - I had a list of requirements that "the man" needed to have. (This was more than 20 years ago :-)).  When I met my hubby, he scored 87% on my list.  The cut-off was 80%.  Yes, indeed, this is the Engineering side of me coming through.  The other 13% was overcome by his continuous pursuit with romantic messages, rap tunes and complimentary "lines"!  Well, one of the items that caused him to not score 100% on that list, was his financial management style.  He was a spender and I was a saver.
He would buy CDs, hide them in the basement and then slowly bring them out, thinking that I would not notice.  Unfortunately for him, his wife was just way too sharp for him :-).  I have heard of women who buy clothes and hide them from their husbands.  It seems to be common for spenders to do, when there isn't enough communication and unity about the finances.

For years, I would struggle with the resentment of my hubby spending our hard earned cash on frivolous things and I had to be the one who ensured that the bills were paid, the one who ensured that we had any savings.  I threatened to have a separate bank account from him, on many occassions. I am so very glad to say that we have overcome that hurdle and we no longer struggle with that.  I am thankful that we did not go our separate ways with regards to our bank accounts.  One of the things we do is run an Alpha Marriage Course at our church, so healthy marriages are of great interest to us.  I have observed that couples who can work through the challenges of having a united bank account (and not have secret accounts or separate accounts) can have more unity in their marriages.

What did we do?  Quite a few years back, I decided to take a chance and have my hubby pay the bills.  We have a designated spot for the bills that come in and when he sees them (because the designated spot so happens to be a spot by the computer he would work on), he would pay them.  I have to confess, I would still secretly monitor the situation, to ensure that the bills were paid on time - I did not want any of my utilities cut off during this learning process.  Unlike some couples whom I have counseled to try this, my hubby enjoyed paying the bills.  He is also an Engineer who enjoys numbers.  I did not have to monitor him for long!  He paid all the bills on time.  He saw for himself what we had and didn't have in the account.  At the beginning, it did not stop him from spending.  He got very proficient in transferring money from the credit line to the chequing account to pay bills when we had used up our Overdraft! 

He could see that when he continued to do this, our debt load increased - he now had another bill to pay - the Credit Line!  We then implemented a family meeting.  I wanted our entire family to be in on our financial goals - not just me.  I just could not bear the burden alone anymore!  So, one night, after I finished doing our Month End, I gathered everyone together to go through the information I had obtained on the Month End.  I told them that it was a Family Meeting.  I showed my hubby and kids our Monthly Budget and how we were doing in reality.  I believe it was a true eye opener for everyone, kids and hubby included.  The kids got to learn that Electricity and Water costs money.  My hubby got to see that if we keep running a deficit, we would keep adding to our debt load.

I am now a believer in ensuring that the entire family is informed, so that I no longer need to be the mean person who puts a stop to all spending.  We are all aware of what we have to spend and so we usually spend responsibly.  I have relaxed a whole lot more and have started to buy nicer things for the entire family, including myself.  We are no longer "spender" vs "saver", but we are a couple who are united in our financial goals. Life is good when there is peace in the household and money in the bank!