Tuesday 14th
No Spend Day!

Wednesday 15th
$29.61 groceries

Thursday 16th
$16.22 dinner

Friday 17th
$23.70 lunch

Saturday 18th
$25 brunch at Graze Restaurant

Sunday 19th – Las Vegas, NV
$200 cash

Freelance Income: + $0 (+ $130.95 refund)
Expenses: - $303.44

TOTAL: - $172.49

This was a pretty stressful week at work, so as a result I didn’t bring in any freelance income (although I did bill out), and my dining out was a bit excessive. Granted, Friday was a team lunch with co-workers, and Saturday I met up with a former editor I used to work for.

On Sunday, I flew out to Las Vegas. Instead of trying to track every dollar I spend in cash (which is next to impossible in Vegas), I’m just going to lump it in as a cash sum. It doesn’t matter anyway, since all travel expenses will end up getting put into one category at the end of the month.

Here are a few pictures from this past week:

The post Spending Recap: May 13-19, 2013 appeared first on Give Me Back My Five Bucks.

May 18th, 2013: My first stop was Target Canada, in the suburb of Coquitlam – approximately 32 km from downtown Vancouver.

May 19th, 2013: My second stop was Target USA at the Bellis Fair Mall in Bellingham, WA – approximately 83km from downtown Vancouver.

For my trips, I decided to compare the prices of a few common household items. These figures below don’t take into account provincial or state tax, duties charged at the border, the extra cost in gas, or puts a dollar value on the time spent crossing the border (although with the Nexus pass, it didn’t take me that much longer to get to Bellingham than to Coquitlam). Instead, I’ve chosen to focus just on the price of the products – taking into an account an exchange rate of $0.97 on the Canadian dollar.

Ready? Let’s shop at Target!

We’ll head to the personal care and beauty section first, because that’s where I generally start my Target shopping trips. My go-to mascara is Maybelline’s Volum’Express (The Rocket).

Now to pick up some Aveeno body lotion, which is only slightly cheaper in the USA.

I can’t live without Burt’s Bees lip balm, and at any given time, I have 3 to 5 floating in between my purse, home, car, and desk at work.

When comparing a 24-pack of Durex condoms, I found out it was 32% cheaper to practice safe sex in America.

A major expense most men complain about is the cost of razor blades. I thought they would be significantly cheaper in Bellingham. Turns out the savings is barely worth mentioning.

If you’re sick of paying so much for disposable blades, perhaps an electric shaver system will be your next big purchase. Note the U.S. package also has a bonus of a few accessories (worth over $30) that the Canadian version doesn’t have.

This was a bit of a surprise to me. The regular price of a 20-pack of Energizer Max Alkaline batteries in the USA is $13.79, which is 23% more than the regular price in Canada.

I don’t know much about video games, but I do know that if I’m ever going to buy myself Call of Duty for Xbox, it’s going to be across the border.

If you’re in the mood to hate your life, I’d recommend picking up Windows 8 Pro in Bellingham.

I now know the best thing about living in Vancouver isn’t the ocean or the mountains or the abundance of delicious vegetarian restaurants – it’s the fact that Nutella is 17% cheaper in Canada.

The Magic Bullet in Canada isn’t pictured with all the accessories, but it’s the same 17-piece system that’s selling in the U.S.

I just read an article in MoneySense magazine about how generic baby diapers are just as good as the brand names. I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never changed a diaper in my life. But, if you must have brand name Pampers, they’re cheaper in America.

Note to self: Don’t buy Calphalon pots and pans in Canada.

Even the bonus Tide Pods attached to the detergent bottle can’t help out this price match.

I don’t have any pets, but it’d be cheaper to feed their faces with food from Target USA.

Well, there you have it! A short 15-product comparison of Target Canada vs. Target USA. What did we all learn from this? Buy your Nutella and batteries in Canada. The rest could be worth taking a trip across the border.

I personally never go across the border with the specific intention of shopping. It’s always an added stop to a pre-planned trip – to catch a flight from Bellingham, a baseball game or concert in Seattle, etc. That way, I’m already spending the time and gas to get across the border, and it makes my trip worth it. And as always, if you are going shopping across the border, it’s in your best interest to declare all purchases when you head back in to Canada.

Just as a side note, I came out of Target Canada (Coquitlam) empty-handed. But I left the Target in Bellingham $66.79 poorer.

Have you been to Target Canada yet? How do you find it compares to Target USA?

The post Target Canada or Target USA: which is cheaper? appeared first on Give Me Back My Five Bucks.

Fast forward to about a month ago when I was introduced to a really cool website called Can I Pay Less.

This is a unique website because it allows you to input how you spend your money and what rewards you’d like to receive – then the site performs an analysis against all credit cards available in Canada, and within seconds, you get to see the cash value of rewards based on your preferences. What I think the best feature of the site is that it can compare millions of credit card combinations to give you a personalized recommendation for the best credit cards for you to use in combination with each other.

For example, check out what happened when I inputted my data:

This tells me that by using my current Capital One Aspire Travel World Mastercard, based on my average monthly spending habits, I would earn around $390 in rewards. But if I added the Marriott Rewards Visa and used it for spending in restaurants, I could potentially earn a lot more in rewards each year.

If you click on the Card Details button, you will get an even further breakdown of how the rewards would work:

I’d still have to do some additional reading, but this is EXACTLY the tool I wish I had known about last year – or even years ago. It likely would have saved me hours of research when all I really wanted to know was what card was right for me, and whether my combination of cards was working for me.

What do you think of the Can I Pay Less website?

The post Finding the right credit card can be confusing appeared first on Give Me Back My Five Bucks.

Tuesday 7th
+ $20.45 Ebates
$68.25 accountant

Wednesday 8th
+ $300 freelance income
No Spend Day!

Thursday 9th
No Spend Day!

Friday 10th
+ $461.36 freelance income
$10.16 lunch
$97.66 Lucky Jeans
$15.13 MEC (bicycle lock)
$40.18 gas

Saturday 11th – Okanagan
$41.68 gas
$17.13 taxi
$105 Mission Hill Winery Tour (for 2)
$40.10 wine
$6.06 lunch
$25 hostel
$10.19 dinner

Sunday 12th – Okanagan
$36.89 gas
$9.78 lunch

Freelance Income: + $781.81
Expenses: - $523.21

TOTAL: + $258.60

This was a good week – not necessarily in terms of spending (as you can see from the totals above), but as you can tell from yesterday’s blog post, it was really nice to get out of the city for the weekend and just relax. Work has been somewhat stressful lately, and I think we both just needed a break. It was expensive, but I worked extra hard this week to bring in some additional freelance income. I also picked up a contract that will bring in a few thousand extra dollars this month, which will be nice.

Also I splurged on a pair of jeans. I’ve been struggling for years to find the perfect pair, and thought I found what I was looking for with Levis. However my pal over at Save Spend Splurge recommended Lucky Jeans to me, and once I tried them on, I fell in love. They are the perfect fit, and definitely worth the almost $100 price tag.

The post Spending Recap: May 6-12, 2013 appeared first on Give Me Back My Five Bucks.

First, the expenses. Because this is a personal finance blog, after all.

The total cost was $357.10, and I guess when you consider $105 (nearly 30%) of that was the wine tour at Mission Hill (for 2), it really wasn’t that bad. We definitely saved money by staying in a dorm in a hostel – we were only gone one day, so it’s not a big deal to share accommodation. Anything more than two days, and I would have wanted to at least splurge on a private hostel room.

Gas was also expensive – but considering the drive was about 1000 km, it was to be expected. This category also includes one taxi ride to the winery (took the bus back).

We ate cheap meals because food was one thing we didn’t feel like splurging on. So this included a trip to Subway, Booster Juice, and the grocery store. :)

And finally, I did do some splurging at the Mission Hill store – snagging a bottle of Compendium wine because it’s not available for purchase in stores. I plan on storing it for at least a few years.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of our trip! :)

We were on the road by 7am on Saturday morning, because our tour was scheduled for 11:30am at Mission Hill. Kelowna is just under 4 hours by car, but we wanted to stop for the world’s best pie along the way:

Once we had our fill of pie, we raced to Kelowna, and made it to Mission Hill Winery with 10 minutes to spare. The weather was gorgeous, and there were only 2 other people in our tour group, so it was a pretty good experience.

The Mission Hill Winery – so beautiful! I’m glad we went early in the season (less tourists).

This was our first wine tour ever, so being able to walk through the vineyard was really cool.

Then we got taken to the tasting room, where we got to sample a bunch of different wines. I liked our small group because we were able to ask a lot of specific questions about the wine, and the winery itself. I was impressed with how fun the tour was, and I would definitely like to go on more. But it was expensive, and sampling wines at the bar wasn’t as fun as going on the tour.

The next day, we headed south to Osoyoos, where we went on a short hike, stopped at Spotted Lake, and then headed home through the beautiful Similkameen Valley.

Spotted Lake – we were both disappointed that we had come too early in the year, and the water hadn’t evaporated enough to see the “spots” of the lake.

Well, that was my weekend. :) I hope to come back again, but likely not for a while. It’s a long trip for just a one-night visit. But it was relatively cheap, and since this year I’ll be focusing on more local travel, it was perfect for that. How was your weekend?

The post A weekend getaway to the Okanagan appeared first on Give Me Back My Five Bucks.