As mentioned back around New Year's, Snickers and my goal this year is to save mad cash and make our preparations for moving back to Canada. Landing this job at the hospital would make the first part of our goal all possible. I refuse to live paycheck-by-paycheck like so many people I can only assume are doing back in Canada. I've never lived like that, I've always made more money than I've needed. Even after marrying Snickers and taking on the responsibility of being the sole breadwinner, we've never had to live a tight life. Cash flow has been slower than years before but it's still flowing and we still have a very healthy stash in the bank.
Snickers and I continue to religiously practice our $100-a-week. Every Sunday we take out $100; he gets $50 of it and I get the other $50. House expenses and our other expected monthly living expenses (rent, hydro, 2 cell phone bills, and Snickers' brutal medical insurance) are dealt with separately. The $50 we each have is for extra things, like coffee with friends, dinners out, and our movie dates.
Estimated monthly living expenses + $100-a-week = $1,500
The goal this year would be to pocket the money my job brings in and have Snickers make the money needed for our monthly living expenses via a part time job, boxing sponsors and boxing bouts.
We sat down today and the excitement of both the challange and my potential new job got us all revved up. We figure that we'll use our first paychecks to some buy things we've been wanting, so we both wrote down two things we wanted.
Snicker's Wish List:
1. a new rice cooker with all the fixings
2. a new computer
My Wish List:
1. a new handbag
2. a coffee maker
Oddly enough we had so much fun popping in and out of various stores tonight, looking for the items on our individual wish lists. Leave it to Snickers to make eye-shopping the funniest thing ever... hahaha.
I've had my eye on this beautiful brown tanned handbag over at Home Plus for a couple of months now but tonight I was shocked to see that it had been sold. Shocked and not shocked I suppose, after all it was a beautiful bag.
I guess if I could add a third item on my wish list I'd add natural peanut butter. I've been making my own almond butter for the past few months but I've been craving the gooeyness of store-purchased natural peanut butter. Mind ya, at $14 a jar, yikes, I think I'll hold off on buying it so soon.
QUESTION OF THE DAY...
What's on your wish list?
QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.
-- Donald Trump
3 comments:
Is it a secret how much you pay for rent? And how does your rent compare to the average rent in your city? What are your average bills (electricity, internet, water) like? I've always heard Korea is expensive, but 1500 is actually quite a low number, so I'm wondering if your basic living expenses are a lot cheaper than people imagine them to be. If you don't want to share personal information, can you give us an idea of what the prices are like in general?
Oh, I forgot to say. I understand prices vary wildly depending on your choice of living space, how much you run electricity/heat, etc. but just an idea. For example, I live in Thailand. Rents for a house/apartment here (about the same price)start at as little as U$350. However, you can't really get anything decent for less than $500. I rent a place for $570 because that gives me a yard for my dogs to play in. Same with electricity. It's always summer in Thailand so I run the AC at least 14 hrs. a day. That comes up to about U$120 a month in electricity. The locals spend much less because they survive without AC (I can't imagine how), but what I spend is about the norm for foreigners living here.
So... would you mind sharing? I've always been curious about the cost of living in Korea.
Hi Anonymous,
My rent... I pay $380 a month. I think it's pretty much the norm in my city for similar apartments. I use to live in a office-style loft but it was a bit more expensive because of it being right downtown, new, and having extra things like security and whatnot. It was $450 a month.
As for electrity and my water bills, it's quite cheap. I don't have AC here and so winter-living is more expensive because I like to crank the heat. In the summer my bills add up to about $40, on average. Back when I lived in the downtown loft (called Sambu) my bills were so much higher. A bit part of that had to do with the clothes washing machine I had. It washed and dried in one cycle so that was quite expensive. I have an old used washing machine here and I hang my clothes up, either in my apartment or on the roof top patio, so that saves me a lot of money.
Living in Korea is generally very cheap. Food, especially eating out, is very cheap. Taxis are cheap too. Like I mentioned in my homepage entry, Snickers and I try to live on $50 a week each of extra spending. Last night we ate out and our bellies were stuffed after a $12 meal... that's $12 for the two of us together. As for clothes shopping, if you're not buying name brand clothing than clothing is also really cheap.
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