The Cost of Being a Bridesmaid

As my regular readers know, I recently came back from a destination wedding in Mexico, as I was a bridesmaid for one of my closest friends. I've decided to do this post totalling up all the costs, because I'm sure some of you are wondering. I really never kept complete track of it nor did I keep receipts so a lot of it is strictly from memory, but I do have a pretty good one!

Ok here is the list!

Bridal Shower:
$100 (did not actually attend, but emailed her mom and BFF money)

Bachellorette:
$50 decorations
$200 paid back to her sis and BFF after the fact to help cover some of their costs
$100 approx.- gas for drive to Ottawa

Trip:
$1269 vacation package
$104 cancellation insurance
$30 clinic fee for travel consultation
$35 Dukoral prescription
$25 havrix prescription

Appearance:
Dress: $180
Bra: $36 (had to buy a special bra to go with the dress since almost my whole back was exposed)
Hair $50
Waxing: $52
Nails: $15
The bride gave me a gift card for a shellac manicure, I paid extra $5 to upgrade to french and then I gave $10 tip. For jewelry I wore my own earrings, a necklace I borrowed from my mom and a bracelet that was also given to me by the bride for the wedding.

Reception:
Dress: $45
Shoes: $62
Flight to Ottawa: Free. (paid for by her husband, she doesn't know I'm coming!)

Total Cost: $2353

Holy crap. That's a lot of money!!! It wasn't all strictly to benefit her though. I mean, I did get a vacation out of it. I got a trip to Mexico with one of my best friends and I had the time of my life. My bridesmaid dress is one of those convertible dresses that you can wear like 15 different ways so I will definitely be keeping it for future summer events and may wear it again. I didn't NEED to get those prescriptions but its better to be safe than sorry and now I'm protected for years. Overall, yeah I did spend a LOT of money and I kinda can't believe I spent that much. It didn't seem like that much because  it was spread out over a long period of time, so I wasn't thinking about the big picture. Do I regret it? Not at all. She's one of my closest friends, and I know it meant a lot to her to have me be a part of it.

Dipping into my emergency fund..

A couple days ago I started feeling a little bit of pain in my mouth. It was so subtle it was barely there, but it got a little worse the next day and the day after. Finally I looked in the mirror and I was like:

I have a freakin wisdom tooth coming in!!!!

So after the pain got worse I called a dentist that my coworker recommended and got an appointment for that same night. This was yesterday. So I was texting my friend about it and she said to watch out, they might charge me an emergency fee! She said a dentist once tried to charge her $250 for getting an appointment the same day. I though oh my god, I really hope they don't do this to me!

When I got there I asked them and they said they didn't charge emergency fees. And these people were like, the nicest people on the planet. I mean, talk about service. I was so glad I went there because they really made me feel at ease. I was the last patient of the day and they didn't make me feel rushed at all, even when they were starting to close up and they were going over the prices with me of having the procedure done to remove it. 

So, it turns out that I am getting 3 teeth removed next week! I actually have 4 of them but only 3 are coming up and the 4th one would be more complicated right now because its still really far into the gums. The one that has been bothering me is actually infected, so I have to take antibiotics for a week to clear that up before they can do the procedure. So I get to live with this pain for a week and starve because I can barely open my mouth to fit food in. I went to the grocery store and got lots of soup and applesauce. 

So you guys are probably wondering how much this is costing me. Well for the exam and x-rays I had last night it was $120. To get the 3 teeth removed its going to be about $350. I have benefits but I have to pay 50% since I'm technically only part time (on paper). So that's my portion. So thats $470 i've got to take from my emergency fund :(. I hate having to take money from my emergency fund, but I guess the good part is that I have one right?! 

Here are a few pins I loved this week:

What I Spent on Vacation

Ok guys here is my recap of what I spent while in Portugal. I was not completely diligent in keeping track of every little thing. This is based on all the receipts I kept from most of my shopping and then some other spending that I specifically remembered. There might be a few little things that I didn't remember but this is basically it. I'm not going to give an itemized breakdown but just a few categories. The conversion is based on an exchange rate of 1 euro =  $1.30 Canadian which is what it was when I left.

Clothes for myself: 180€ ($234)
Souvenirs for myself: 52€ ($67)
Souvenirs for family/friends: 315€ ($410)
Food: 75€ ($98)
Baby shower gift for my cousin: 17€ ($22)
cough medicine: 7.50€ ($10)
whale watching: 32€ ($42)
garden entrance fee: 2.50€ ($3.25)
Dinner and drinks at hotel bar: 13.50€ ($17.50)

grand total: 695€ ($903)

I didn't pay for accommodation or much food. A lot of the food I ate was home cooked, more so than eating out, and most of the money I spent on food was for stuff that I brought home.

Theres a few other random things I spent money on like a few drinks when we were out and stuff but this is most of it. Overall, things were less expensive than I expected and therefore I didn't spend as much as I thought. I saved over $1800 and as you can see I spent about half!! You are probably wondering what will I do with the rest? Well I think I'm just going to leave it because I have my friend's wedding in Mexico in December and considering it's all inclusive I think the remaining $1000 will be enough for that trip. In fact, it's probably more than enough.

Weekly spending and belated Sunday funnies

Friday May 18 - Thursday May 24th:

18th: $21.47 warehouse sale
         $0.80 snack at work
         $5 donation to sick kids hospital
19th: $17.90 LCBO
         $7.01 groceries
         $7.94 groceries
         $48 Old Navy
20th: no spending
21st: $5.99 iTunes movie download
22nd: $25.61 cds (Carrie Underwood and John Mayer)
23rd: no spending
24th: $8.00 subway

And sine I didn't do any Sunday Funnies for you heres a few:

Weekly Spending and a small warehouse sale haul!

Here is what I spent from May 11-17

11th: $50.63 Walmart ( $39.51 moms day gift, $11.12 groceries)
12th: $34.29 Zehrs  ($21. 47 Joe fresh jewellery on clearance, and $12.82 groceries), $35 gas
13th: no spend day!
14th: no spend day!
15th: $0.70 juice on lunch break
16th: no spend day!
17th: $1.94 Tims french vanilla

Total: $26.58 food, $39.41 gifts and $35 gas

I did so much better this week in terms of buying more groceries  and bringing my lunch to work which is ultimately cheaper and better for me!


Now for my small haul. The Revlon/J&J warehouse sale comes to my city now which is kinda cool. It was here last time but I didn't bother to go. This time I wanted to check it out, so I headed over before work today. I really had no expectations because I knew they probably wouldn't have that much. I did manage to score a few items though.

1. SpaResource Sole Saver $3

Its some sort of thermal sock thing to make your feet really soft. Thought it seemed interesting and good for getting my feet summer ready!

2. Vaseline Soothing Hand Cream $4

3. Veet Hair Removal Gel Cream $4

Ive always been curious if any of these Veet products actually work and I thought for 4 bucks why not?

4. Revlon Colorburst Lipstick in "ruby"$3

Another red for my collection

5. Revlon nail polishes 3 for $5

The colours I got are a nice coral/orage ("Make Mine Mango"), pale yellow ("sunshine sparkle") and bright pink ("guava")

I'm off this weekend and my plans are: drinking wine, painting my nails and toenails, hopefully visiting a friend, maybe a little shopping at Old Navy ( heard they're having a massive sale on tanks, figured its a good time to stock up on the basics), a BBQ with coworkers, and just relaxing in general. 

What have you got planned this weekend?

Saturday Sales

Today was a fabulous Saturday! It was my day off and it was a beautiful day out. It was the first day that it felt like summer is on its way. I even wore shorts! I got up early to go watch my friend's son's first soccer practice. It's so funny watching little kids play sports, cause they're so cute!

After that I went to the nearest Zehrs to pick a few things and noticed they had a large selection of Joe Fresh jewellery on for half price. I ended up picking up a few things:

Earrings $3.50

Bracelet $5

$3.50 

Chain link necklace with ribbon $7

There was a lot of other nice things and I really had to stop myself from buying more!

Today I also tried this new recipe for healthy pancakes from Blogilates! I wasn't too sure about it from looking at the recipe but they turned out to be so delicious!! It makes about 4-5 pancakes and they entire recipe is only 222 calories!! She has a few more recipes that I also plan to try out and I hope they will be just as good. 

Weekly expenses: It's all food again!

April 27-May 3

Apr 27- $3.30 tim hortons
Apr. 28- $11.99 dried mangos (yummmmy), $3.97 lunch, $20 jack astors (went out with coworker for                        dinner)
Apr. 29-$9.00 chinese take out
Apr. 30- $4.57 lunch at work
May 1- $22.46 zehrs, $17.71 food basics (stuff to bring for lunch!)
May 2- no spend day!
May 3- $1.65 tim hortons (french vanilla)

So I went and got some groceries finally which is why I had that one no spend day because I brought my lunch. Hopefully that should cut down on my spending this following week because I should be able to bring something to eat most days. Although I will be spending a lot this coming Sunday to go out for dinner with coworkers, but I don't feel bad about that at all :) It's going to be so much fun.

Something new I am trying lately is using almond milk in my morning shake now. I recently had the most fabulous smoothie from Jugo Juice that consisted of chocolate flavoured almond milk, peanut butter, and i don't know what else but it was amazing. I decided to get my some almond milk to put in my daily smoothie! So far I have only tried half regular milk and half almond milk cause I wanted to ease into it. I didn't notice any difference in taste at all so I think tomorrow I will use all almond milk. I am definitely going to try and re-create something like the Jugo Juice smoothie I had though!

Weekly Spending April 20-26

Fri Apr 20: $1.94 Tim Hortons
Sat Apr 21: no spend day
Sun Apr 22: $5.30 Tim Hortons
                    $1.40 juice from vending machines @ work
                    $38.40 protein powder
                    $8.00 subway
Mon Apr 23: no spend day
Tues Apr 24: $8.60 tims
Wed Apr 25: no spend day
Thurs Apr 26: $7.91 subway

Total: $72.22 all food yikes!!!

This week sucked in terms of preparing lunches for work as you can see! The good thing is I ate mostly sandwiches from Tim's or Subway instead of greasy food from work like I used to before I really started trying to lose weight.

I also went to Hot Yoga and Hot Pilates this past week! I am really enjoying this stuff, even though it is challenging I feel really good afterwards and I can already notice changes in my body. The Pilates was much harder than the yoga by the way!!

Weekly Spending and Hot Yoga!

Since this is supposed to be a personal finance blog I'm going to try to post more about my daily spending. I've been keeping track of all my spending in my Expensify app on my iPhone and I'm going to try to remember to post weekly updates again. Since I get paid on Fridays it will go Friday to Thursday.

So here is my spending from Fri Apr 13th to Thurs Apr 19

Fri-  $2.00 juice and snack at work (we have vending machines)
Sat-  $12.19 bulk barn
        $22.29 food basics
        $5 admission to bar, $5 drink at bar, $2 coat check. 
Sun- $5.25 subway fee (when we went to High Park)
        $10 lunch at High park restaurant
Mon- no spend day
Tues- $5 parking at local college for my course exam
Wed - no spend day
Thurs- $5.55 goodwill
           $45.20 yoga studio (one month trial) 

So thats:
Food: $46.49
Misc: $73.46

So this week as you can see was my final exam for my course. I think it went well, I didn't find it too hard or anything, it's always just a little bit of nervous anticipation waiting to see if you passed, especially because a pass is 70%. So I should know in about a month or so.

Today I tried hot yoga for the first time. My coworker has been going to this place for the last 2 weeks or so and I decided to go with her. It was $40 plus tax to get a one month trial for new members. After your first month, its super pricey like around $150 a month. So we plan to just do our first month at this place and then check out another less expensive place closer to where we live.

Now for my thoughts on hot yoga - in terms of the poses, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I have definitely been to other more harder classes. It also wasn't as hot as I thought, I'm not sure what I was expecting really, but I would say it was about 2/3 as hot as a sauna. The only thing that sucks is when I can feel the beads of sweat dripping down my body, it makes me itchy! Also its hard to hold on to things like your foot when its soaked in sweat. Can't really get a good grip. Other than that it was great. I'm definitely going back, I mean I've got to get my moneys worth but after that I plan to check out another place.

DONE

Well as of this evening I am officially done my Christmas shopping, with 15 days until Christmas. I think this is probably the earliest I have ever been done. Buying some things online definitely helped and I will continue to do that in the future. There just seems to be better deals online than in the store, usually.

Anyways in case you wanted to know here is my breakdown of spending:

Amazon.com: $53.51
Forever 21: $30.39
Garage.ca: $35.57
Campus Crew: $54.23
Green Earth: $16.94
Dynamite: $25.00
Canadian Tire: $20.00
Costco: $11.29
Etsy: $23.55
Total: $270.48
- $40 amazon.com Gift Cards
-$23.55 paypal balance
= $206.93 out of pocket

(My budget was $250)

I still have not received my purchase from Etsy in the mail. It has been shipped by the seller though, so it should be here soon..I hope!

Correction!

In my last post I said that so far I have spent $135 on Christmas gifts. Well, I forgot that the first present I bought ( the wine charms for my friend) were paid for with my paypal balance which didn't really count. I had about $25 in my paypal account from survey sites. I never mentioned it in my income before because I didn't put it in my bank account, I just left it there. So that $23 was kind of like money I forgot I had lol. So I haven't really spent $135 dollars on Christmas presents, I have only spent $112! :)

Tomorrow is a day off for me. I am planning to head to the mall to look for my mom's gift. I may also exchange some jeans that I bought from Garage online. They are a little big so I might try the next size down. I hope I can exchange them without paying extra though?? Cause there was a sale online. If not, I am just going to keep the ones I have. This is if it is not blizzarding tomorrow. We got a lot of snow tonight. The drive home from work today was like a whole new world compared to the drive in!

My Toronto Adventure

Alright so yesterday was my big exam. It was at the University of Toronto examination building around College/University Ave (for those of you who know Toronto). I had planned to drive to Yorkdale and take the subway to Queens Park station. Turns out that Yorkdale (and all stops north of that) were closed for maintenance. ( I knew this ahead of time because I am super paranoid and was like planning every last move ahead of time). It said on the website there would be shuttle buses taking people from station to station to replace the subway. So I figured I would just do that.

I stayed at a relatives in the city the night before so that it wouldnt be as long of a drive in the morning and I wouldnt have to get up as early. Unfortunately I only got about 1 hour of sleep since I was so nervous!! Good thing I didn't have to drive far! I drove to Yorkdale, and for some reason I couldnt find the entrance to the subway station parking lot. So I just parked in the first place I could find which was a parking garage for the mall.

Let me just say that the one thing I love about Toronto is they really make sure their people get from place to place without delay. I ended up talking to some random girl and we asked a TTC man standing on the corner about the shuttle bus. Turns out all we had to do was wait right there in that very spot! (which was literally like 100 metres from where I had parked). I asked the TTC man if i was supposed to pay to park in the lot. He responded with "Well you're really not supposed to park there if youre not going to the mall....but everyone does it anyway." So I am thinking "oh, crap" but too late, here comes the bus! So we hop on the bus and it takes us to the next subway station in like 2 mins where I hop on the subway to queens park. I was very impressed with the organization. There was TTC people all over the place, directing people where to go and shouting "Shuttle bus over here!!" LOL. It really made the whole thing very easy.

My exam was only about one block from Queens park, but of course I start walking in the wrong direction and walk about 2 blocks before I figure out I need to turn around. I ended up getting to my exam 15 mins early which was just perfect.

After my exam I walked to a Portuguese bakery called Caldense Bakery. I had this planned out ever since I saw it on this post on BlogTO. (By the way, how cool is this site?!) I picked the bakery that seemed closest to where my exam was. At first I was planning to take the bus, but then I figured since it was a nice day, I would save myself the money and walk. I think it took me about 20-30 mins. It is located at 802 Dundas St. W. I got a ham and cheese grilled sandwich ( I think it was called tosta mista or something). Basically it was ham and cheese on a portuguese bun pressed in some grill and it was absolutely fabulous!! Then I decided to get some custard tarts to bring home to the fam. Let me just tell you they are like pure heaven. So SO good!! Anyone that is in Toronto you must try them!

After that I hopped on the bus back to the subway and headed back to yorkdale. As I got to the parking lot I was secretly praying that: 1. I didnt have a ticket or 2. I didn't get towed away because they figured out what I did! But everything was ok, and I decided to do a little shopping to treat myself after my exam. So I went to MAC and spent about $60.

Here are a few pictures from the bakery. I took them with my cell phone so they are not the best quality)

Getting New Glasses!

I got my eyes tested on Monday. I hadn't had them for 5 years! I got the exam done at Walmart because it was the least expensive. It was only $60 (cash only!) and everywhere else was atleast $80.

I took my prescription to Costo and picked out some glasses. I was pleasantly surprised that I only spent $200! The lenses were $120 and the frames were $80. It was cheaper than I thought, and I am able to get $100 back from my benefits, so that means only $100 out of pocket for me.

I was thinking of going to one of those places that has a "Buy one get one free" deal, but if you read the fine print, in order to get the second pair free you need to spend like $350 to $400!! Yikes, I can't afford to spend that much, just to get another pair. You only need one anyways. So now I am patiently waiting to get the call to say they are ready. I am excited to start wearing them!

Ready for Christmas!

I finished my Christmas shopping today! Well, for my family anyway. I still have to get something for my best friend, but I am not going to see her until New Years so I may hopefully take advantage of some after-Christmas sales going on. I already know what I want to get her.

I've totalled up my receipts and am happy to report that I've only spent a total of $205.00!! I am really pleased, especially because I didn't really have a budget at all going into this, with my recent car purchase this past summer I was not able to save up Christmas money before hand (something I hope to do next year!!). I only had 3 people to buy for so I feel thats a good amount to have spent for 3 people!

I also wanted to share with you what I have been making for my co-workers for Christmas presents. They are little charms that I hand made. They can go on your cell phone, on the zipper of your purse or makeup case, or they can just be a key chain.

Broke my pact already!

Earlier I mentioned that I was going to try super hard not to buy anything that wasn't needed until Christmas. Well, that didn't last long! I bought 2 books, and a tank top.

See, I can't stand not having anything to read. Especially at work, because we have an hour break and well, it doesn't take an hour to eat lunch. So I like to have something to read. So I've bought two books, The Birth House and Stori Telling by Tori Spelling. But I didn't buy them new! I got one at Goodwill and one at Value Village. I love going to these places for books, because its like treasure hunting, you never know what's going to be there which is the fun of it. And its so cool when you actually see a book that you've always meant to read! Plus, when I am finished with them I can take them to the used book store and get store credit for them, which would be about as much as I paid for them anyways.

At work, we wear white shirts and I always wear a white tank underneath, so my bra doesn't show through. The one I have been wearing is so worn that its getting so thin, so I felt it was time for a new one. It was 50% off so it was only like $8 and now that I think of it, I should of got atleast two!

Weekend Spending

So I managed to get my car accessories after all. And for a rather good price! Here is what I spent this weekend:

Friday:
$2.05 starbucks banana bread (on break at work)
$27.09 snow brush and floor mats for my car. I got a snow brush on sale for $9.99 and 2 front mats for $6.99 each on sale. Did not expect to be able to get floor mats for $6.99 each!! And they are pretty good too. They are thick enough and do not slide around.

Saturday:
$5.95 Tim Hortons

Sunday (today):
$21.23 makeup. Shoppers had the GOSH makeup line for 40% off so I wanted to try something out since I haven't really tried their stuff. I bought a lipstick. And then I also bought a new concealer, mine was almost finished.
$17.89 groceries at Food Basics
$12.80 groceries at Zehrs
$2.61 ice cap at Tim's
$5.99 dollar store

I bought some ham, turkey and lettuce to make sandwiches/wraps to bring to work this week. Also got some grapes and bananas and Crispy Mini's which are like my new favourite thing. They are so good, almost better than chips and way less calories! They only problem is trying not to eat the whole bag!

Weekend Shopping List

As you know, I bought a car this summer. Well kids, the time has come for me to get winter accessories! The other night when I went to leave work, I actually had ice on my windshield! And today was the first snowfall. So this weekend I plan to go to Canadian tire to pick up some:

• car floor mats
• snow brush with ice scraper

I thought I would do a recap of what I've spent so far this month:

Sunday: $32.52 movies
I treated my mom, she had a birthday recently. I paid for our tickets as well as some popcorn and pop. The popcorn was not very impressive this time! It tastes better when we make it at home.

Monday: $7 Tim Hortons. I grabbed a bagel before work and also went there on my break. Yes, I have an addiction.

Tues: $6.96 bought some left over halloween candies/chocolates that were marked down.
$4.50 sub

Wednesday: $1.46 drink. I brought my lunch but forgot to grab water when I left the house! Could of been a no-spend day!

Thurs (today): $0!!

Back From Vacation

Well I am back from vacation everyone! I was away visiting a friend, and I've actually been back for a few days but haven't been posting because I wasn't really sure what to write. I decided that since this is supposed to be a personal finance blog, I would tell you all what I spent on vacation!

Here's what I spent:

$70 gas
$38.25 eating out /fast food
$40.75 going out
$25.65 groceries
$9.50 misc
$172.50 on shopping! (beauty products, new purse, etc).

Total: $356.65

My budget was $300 so I was a bit over but overall I am fine with it. I had extra money this month due to some late birthday money which really helped!

It worked!

Well guys, I manged to make that cash budget work! I am getting paid tomorrow and I have $4.13 left in my wallet. I think I might keep trying this out for awhile, because it seems to be curbing my spending pretty well.

How I'm Doing on my Cash Budget

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm operating on a cash budget until my next payday, and maybe even for a bit longer. Basically, on my last pay day, I paid whatever bills needed to be paid, put aside what I wanted to save, and what was left for spending I withdrew in cash. This was all I could spend for the next two weeks.

So far I have to admit that in some ways it is easier. I've only been allowing myself to take a certain amount of cash in my wallet when I go to work so I can't spend more than I need to, and the rest of the cash stays at home. This way I know exactly how much I have left to spend. I don't have to think about how much is in my wallet and how much is in my bank account, because I know there's nothing in the bank so whats in my wallet is it.

So far I've spent:
$10.94 groceries
$10.43 personal items
$18.54 on food (eating out, lunch at work)
$2.49 books

Not too bad, definately less than usual. I have about $25 to last me until Friday. I think I can manage, considering there's really nothing in particular I need to buy, I just need to try and bring a lunch at least a few days this week. I may keep up this cash budget thing for the rest of the month, until I am ready with my down payment for a car, which I plan to get around the end of the month or early July.