A friend of mine will soon be moving to a different city. As we all know, moving can be a real hassle with all the hustle and bustle of packing, organizing, etc. In order to save time, my friend purchased boxes rather than driving around to different places and getting them for free.
It is understandable that sometimes it is worth paying for the convenience of saving time. However, she paid more than $60 for her boxes, when she could have gotten them for free quite easily.
If you have already or will soon be receiving a bonus from your employer, have you given some thought as to what you plan to do with it? Many employers provide bonuses around Christmastime to show appreciation for their employee’s hard work throughout the year. If you benefit from receiving a bonus, it is important that you do some thinking before deciding what to do with this extra cash.
Are you already saving enough to attain your retirement goals? If not, consider putting some of your bonus into an RRSP. You may even have the option to have the bonus go directly into an RRSP so that you are not subject to the taxes right now.
One way my husband and I save a lot of money on food each week is by preparing and bringing our own lunches to work rather than paying for cafeteria food. What I usually do is make a big stir-fry, lasagna, pasta, or a big pot of soup or chili on the weekend and then I put portions into containers and freeze them so that they can be used for the week ahead.
In the past I just used leftovers from various meals I made throughout the week. I found, however, that by doing so I often ended up having to cook twice in one evening because I seldom prepared enough to cover both our lunches plus our supper. By preparing a lot of food on the weekend, if I don’t have enough leftovers I don’t have to cook a second time that evening. And if I do end up with some leftovers, all the better, I can still use them for our lunches the next day.
If you are like me, when it is really cold outside, all you want to do is stay at home and sip something hot. Well, for Christmas this year, friends of ours gave us some homemade Peppermint Cocoa in a cute little jar. It tastes great and warms you up from the inside out.
The recipe is as follows:
2 cups icing sugar
2 cups coffee whitener
½ cup baking cocoa
4 large candy canes (crushed)
Once mixed, put 3 heaping teaspoons of cocoa into one cup of boiling water or hot milk.
If you had to withdraw funds from your RRSP in 2010, the good news is that you still have until March 1, 2011 to make a contribution to help offset your withdrawal. Although you will never get your contribution room back for the amount you took out, at least you won’t suffer as many tax penalties by putting some or all of the money back.
However, before you decide to put the money back, make sure that you can truly afford to do so. If you don’t already have some money set aside for emergencies, then it is probably better to refrain from adding any additional money into your RRSP. Why? Because you are just as likely to end up having to make another RRSP withdrawal and then it defeats the purpose of contributing to an RRSP altogether. Just be prepared to pay some tax in the Spring.