Blinded by the light

Another Christmas means another Sears gift card from my grandmother. This gift in itself is not news. Usually, I hoard them until the spring sales. This time, I played a hunch that the List of All Things Broken might contain something Sears carries in their online catalog.

I sometimes get dressed in my kitchen. When the poplar tree came down last month (at the request of our attached neighbour), privacy became an issue. I'll be picking up my new vertical blinds for the patio door from Carlingwood Mall next week. Happy New Year to me.

Harmony, comfort and balance

Such is the promise of Feng Shui. This week, I've been reclaiming household spaces.

Gone from my desk is the big scary box of unsorted receipts, and in its place now rests two tidy fan-style folders containing the orderly version of my 2010 financial reality tour.

Gone from my bedroom:

• The iPod dock from my dresser. I could not look at it without thinking about the summer of 2008, and the Depeche Mode songs: Somebody and It's No Good.
• Several books on parenting. I read all of them; my kids never will. I kept one.
• An unread rare book, a gift from a former in-law I was genuinely fond of. It moved to Kanata with me in 2006. Safe to say I'm never going to read it, and I'm unlikely to see her again before his funeral. We'll find other things to talk about.
• Another unread book, a hospital gift from the visiting sister of a close friend who saved me from certain death by coma in the summer of 2007. I could not look at it without remembering the emergency room doctor who talked about me in the past tense, while I was still in the room. I much prefer the present tense.

My new hobby

I now find myself looking at waterfront properties, Quebec-side. How did I get here?

A bonus at work is rumoured for February 2011, and the target number is significant. I'm not spending it before I see it though. It would go a long way towards solving the credit line problem if it really does materialize.

Make that three

Between me and my shadow, I also dream of owning a modest piece of rural, waterfront property in Quebec, about 30 minutes from the Champlain bridge. Well, I do.

With a little cabin on it. And an herb garden. And maybe a tire swing.

Two recurring fantasies

Version One involves music lessons for the family. They can wait until the daycare expense is behind me. Everything I read says later is better. We own several instruments.

Version Two involves coming home to a clean house. A clean bedroom might just be enough. I'm on vacation for ten days, starting now. I'll try and find time. There's still an unpacked suitcase in there from a November trip, and the dust bunnies are getting ugly.

Update: December 26
Room is done.

A vested interest

This morning, I woke up to another email alert from eTrade. It seems I have a decent number of restricted stock options coming due in a few weeks. Naively, I logged into their system to look up the strike price. Times have certainly changed since the last time I had options of my own. (Was that really ten years ago?) Restricted shares have no strike price, and I do not have to buy them. They just become mine when they vest. This is good news.

Pacing

Today, I put together a menu for our Christmas dinner; I shopped to it this afternoon.

• Chilled jumbo shrimp, with cocktail sauce
• Baked Black Forest ham, with Dijon mustard and pineapple rings
• Scalloped potatoes, oven-baked
• Stir-fried mushrooms, with garlic butter
• Creamy cole slaw
• Petits croissants
• Blueberry corn bread pudding, from scratch

Tonight, I finished knitting two grey socks for my eldest. My youngest will get one of the pink purses I knit on the weekend. I haven't decided how I'll wrap their gifts yet. Mañana.

I used the gift card from Shoppers Drug Mart for stocking stuffers.

For the stockings, I dug up a fairly large gift bag (surely a ghost of Christmas Past) and cut it into two equal pieces. Et voilà! Add a bit of light basting, and they work nicely. I cut the drawstring ribbon in half, stuffed and tied them with bows at the top. They look good, and will reside in my high kitchen cupboard until Santa is ready to set them near our fireplace.

Things are coming together.

Update: December 25
Great family dinner. We did not touch the shrimp or the croissants. They'll keep for later.

On queue

My library lets me pre-order movies and books, online. I'm not too fussy on the order I read or watch them. There is no additional fee associated with the service. The system works well for me. This weekend the system delivered an unexpected pleasure in a political documentary, Water on the Table. The disappointment came in The Vortex: it had been highly recommended to me, I waited six months for it, and it's going back after 21 pages.

A gift of hope

This afternoon I delivered two Christmas dinner hampers (and a bag of deflated soccer balls to my friend Danielle). My youngest child was with me, asleep in her car seat.

I'm not entirely sure how much we spent on each hamper, but knowing would probably defeat the purpose of the project. I've contributed small items to similar projects in years gone by, but this is the first time I took on the responsibility for family dinners that were not my own. We sponsored two families of four. Ironically, our festive dinner is not planned yet!

It remains difficult for me to graciously receive things I don't need and will never use. I don't like storing them either. I don't mind spending money wisely; although, I could get a little better at earning it and saving it, before spending it.

Valued objects

My children have many wants, but few (if any) unmet needs. The same is true for both of their out-of-town cousins. They treasure all things hand-made, as gifts from the heart.

Last year, I made slippers for them at Christmas. This weekend, I will try to make gifts for my two nieces and get them posted as regular, non-expedited mail by Monday morning.

I do not want to spend my weekend in a mall. I will not succumb to shopping fever.

I've collected a free purse pattern, a ball of discounted yarn from a nearby department store, and four previous enjoyed bracelet bangles from a nearby thift shop. I intend to knit purses and use bangles as handles for them. Total cost of supplies for this project: $8.

These turned out great, and there was enough yarn for three!
Total cost to mail two parcels, non-expedited rate: $18.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Today is payday. I usually direct most of my mid-month pay off to my Visa bill. At $2766, the amount due this week is more than my net pay.

As it turns out, I do not need to borrow an additional $1600 (my original forecast) from my credit line to cover this bill. Between the HST transition payment, a little self discipline, and two dental insurance payouts which arrived in my chequing account before the costs of two dental visits appeared on the Visa bill, I've got enough in my account to cover it.

While I may have only postponed the inevitable by one month, I may also have saved eight dollars in not having to make interest payments on an amount not yet borrowed.

Liking these odds

Today's office draw is for a pair of Club tickets to a February hockey game, valued at $280 for the pair. Cost of the ticket: $5. Proceeds to Christmas Hamper program. Count me in.

Making educated guesses

It's the lack of progress with my credit line balance that will slowly yet surely drive me to distraction. I find I've worried less about money since starting this blog. The writing serves to focus my worries on things within my control. I am generally responsible with money; I try to learn from my mistakes, and trade financial decisions off with a view to the future.

To date, I've saved $14,135.95 in an RESP to educate my eldest. While it doesn't sound like much, I've got eight years left to contribute, and the financial responsibility is one that I share with her father. I have no idea what his plans are, but they are not something I can control, and I choose not to worry about them. The amount I save biweekly aligns with the expected cost for two years post-secondary study provided she lives at home. I ran the numbers once, when she was eleven months old. It might be time to check my math.

Math check, check. Numbers look within range. Carleton University has a calculator tool.

While I started early with her, it's a completely different story with her younger sister. Thankfully, there is a five-year gap between them. There is no other parent to provide for my youngest, which I intentionally traded off against the cost of a future divorce, and she only recently became eligible for a social insurance number. I do worry about starting it too late, but there are a lot of steps to get there, and it's best approached patiently. The next step in my financial plan for her is to get the correct legal name on her paperwork.

My youngest has my TFSA in the meantime; however, without the RESPs, she's missing the Canada Education Savings Grant. I can catch up on that later as it's tied to a percentage of what I'll eventually put in, and I could still max it out. Born in 2005, she's also eligible for up to $1525 worth of the Canada Learning Bond. Her sister does not get that.

Artistic license

Every few months, I'll drop a small set of monthly anchors on my calendar. These are planned things I'll have to look forward to on days (like today) that could be going better.

On that note, I've just purchased two singleton tickets for upcoming events:

• Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet - Orbo Novo at the National Arts Centre on Thursday, March 3 at a cost of $55.78 for my front row, centre seat
• Strawberries in January at the Great Canadian Theatre Company on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at a cost of $36.70 (which reflects a discount of $10 because it's one of two performance preview nights)

They will both also cost me a sitter, but not at weekend rates.

This just in.

HST transition payment: $335.

In keeping with tradition

Tonight's the night we make our annual trek to Bethel Pentecostal Church to partake in the Gift of Christmas. It's an unlikely destination when you consider I did not baptize either of these children, and my current religious views hover between Buddhist and humanist.

We learned about this annual family-friendly concert shortly after I had separated from my ex-husband in 2006. My friend Norm's daughter was singing in the show, and he thought the sound of children singing would lift our spirits, and it certainly did. This will be our fifth consecutive year of attending it, if all goes according to plan.

Fiona and Shrek greet church visitors in the lobby. The evening begins with an inspiring and tear-jerking slideshow of ongoing mission-style work to families in need. A few songs in, the Grinch works his way through the seated crowd. We listen to the sermon. Towards the end of the show, they light up a huge Christmas tree, and fill it with heavenly song.

Both my girls were orphaned by circumstances beyond their control: for the eldest, it was Chinese politics; for the youngest, African poverty. They question social justice. While they both probably still have living birth parents, only the youngest retains memories of them.

When I tried to cancel our visit to this year's event, my eldest protested vehemently and came up with a strategy for containing the youngest. She likes the reunions of families separated by distance and harsh circumstances. I am pretty sure that these reunions are restricted to parishioners and/or believers; through her eyes, I can better see the appeal.

There are many elements to the show including free hot chocolate and religious recruitment in the church basement after the show. We skip that part, and also take a pass on handouts proffered. There is no cost associated with the show; rather, it's a pay-or-give what you can. We take food for the local food bank, and a bit of cash for their charities.

Little things

Small victories today, worth noting:

• finding every item on my drug store list on sale, not straying much from the list, and being handed a $10 voucher for my next visit. Thank you, Optimum card.
• getting RBC to lower the interest rate on my line of credit, but just a little. On my second call to RBC, I learned that CIBC can offer me the better rate because they have my mortgage and could secure the loan against my home equity.
• discovering soccer balls on promotion for $5 (and buying five deflated ones for Danielle) when I was picking up my boot from its repair. They will pack well.
• my daughter's caregiver insisting I include her "spare" frozen turkey with one of my Christmas hamper projects. She said they were on sale.
• two kids so thrilled with breakfast-for-dinner, that we ate together at the table.
• remembering and confirming I intentionally did not deduct the $3178 I put into RRSPs (November to December 2009) from last year's taxable income. 

This is, after all, a financial blog.

Day of reckoning

My accountant has finished my corporate books for fiscal year end, and rendered his verdict. The actual amount I need to borrow amounts to $6104, calculated as follows:

• Accounting fees $2712
• HST $2700
• Corporate taxes $704

On the bright side, the credit line is not yet exhausted, and that's welcome news.

I am tempted

At fairly predictable intervals, I get the Visa "cheques" letter. Always personally addressed, it's clearly junk mail. It usually goes straight to the recycle bin, yesterday being no exception to the unwritten rule. The difference this time is in my behaviour this morning, when I went back to the recycle bin and took a second look at the terms and conditions.

The idea of the program is that I can use the cheques to move a large balance of money owing from one account to another, and pay a much lower interest rate on it, guaranteed for six months. I can transfer as much as I like, provided the combined total of amounts owing on the cheques and on the Visa balance does not exceed the Visa limit.

The Visa company wins because they are getting interest payments they would not normally see, and I am pretty sure they are gambling on the fact that I'll forget to move the money back to the other account later, when the period of the guaranteed lower interest rate expires and crosses over to the realm of extortion: 19.5%

Looking at the Royal Bank credit line balance, the CIBC Visa limit, and the difference of at least 4% in interest rates, it seems to me that I could save in the range of $400 during the next six months if I actually used a Visa cheque for the intended purpose. Instead, I am going to call the Royal Bank and cite the CIBC rate, to try to negotiate a lower one on the credit line. If it comes without an expiration date, I could save more in the long haul.

Wish me luck, and the presence of mind to place the call before I max out the line of credit.

Seasonal adjustments

Well, the bikes are finally away, but my family still wants to play. Some options:

• Building snowmen, throwing snowballs, snow fort building, and/or having your face washed in snow. Never gets old.
• Driveway hockey: we've got two sticks, ball, forward, goalie, and net. Free.
• Tobogganing: we're already equipped including three sets of snow pants, we have a great hill within walking distance, and no-one needs lessons. Also free.
• Swimming: stays on the winter menu; indoor pools at nearby posh hotel include multiple hot tubs and free underground parking for those unbearably cold days. Covered by our monthly membership fees.
• Skating: we need to upsize two pairs of skates, we live a short walk from an arena at a cost of less than $10 for the family to skate together, and no-one needs lessons. Outdoor rinks, including the canal, are free. Consumers' choice.
• Snowshoeing: we have no equipment, we can certainly learn without lessons, and there are lots of nice places to go nearby for free (including the park across the street from the house). Tempting.
• Cross-country skiing: one of us can ski, we have no equipment, we can probably do it without any lessons, and there are lots of nice forest trails nearby. We all need our dreams. This one can wait at least another year.
• Downhill skiing and snowboarding: one of us can ski, the other two of us need lessons, none of us can snowboard, we have no equipment, lift tickets aren't free. Driving distance to Mount Packenham: 45 minutes; Camp Fortune: 45 minutes. Probably not a good match to the attention span of the 5-year old child.

Expense analysis: chequing account

I took a quick look at the Royal Bank finance tracking tool (myFinanceTracker) against my primary chequing account. My expenses, including automated withdrawals are split across the credit card and this account. I make the monthly credit card payment from the account.

It's going to take some digging to see what Royal Bank has placed in each bucket, but here's its initial analysis of what I've been up to for the past twelve months, according to my chequing account. I remain curious as to what this tool can do, and plan to explore it in more detail, just not tonight. Credit card payments are excluded from the view.

The Loans category has the adoption loan, the car loan, and the progress I made with the Line of Credit in 2010. The Cheques category contains daycare payments and Scholastic book orders for the children, my corporate income tax (and related business accounting services), with the tail end of divorce and adoption-related services.

Pay it forward

My first stop today was Food Basics to stock up on dry goods and non-perishable items for the Christmas hampers. The shopping carts lock together to keep them from straying too far. Pocket change releases them. My lone cart already had a quarter in it, which saved me a bit of foraging time. I decided the coin was not mine to take and left the cart unlocked.

It's not like I need an excuse to wander into Mountain Equipment Coop on a Saturday morning, but when I heard my friend Danielle will be returning to Ethiopia in a few weeks time, I wanted to send something with her for the children she meets along the way. Power rationing, outages, and interruption without warning are common practice as decreasing supply struggles keep up with increasing demand. 25 turtle lights pack very small: $100.

The unexpected

As a full-time employee past the initial 90-day probationary period for new hires, I am eligible to buy discounted stock through an employee share purchase plan. I have been buying the maximum amount allowed by the plan. It's a calculated risk to participate.

I made the decision as follows. The discount is at least 15%, and the long-term analyst view of the stock is good. In comparison, the variable rate of interest on my personal line of credit is hovering around 7.5%. To date, I've acquired 143 shares.

The following Smart Alert has just arrived in my inbox, from etrade.com:

One or more of your investments has paid a cash dividend or interest: $22.52.

Hooray for me.

What's been happening with my credit card

I have one personal credit card. The following chart shows the amounts I've been charging to it for the past 12 months. I do not like the trend. The bill for May is missing. October includes an impulse buy of approximately $1600 in one Montreal lingerie shop. November includes a car repair for $2000. I am in the habit of paying the entire amount off monthly.

Update, December 9:
I found May: $3312.