12-Minute Diet and Meal Planner (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on August 12, 2012

When it comes down to food, the 12-Minute Way can be quite useful to help you manage your diet and plan your meals. 

There’s more to it than the common dozen eggs.

Because approximately 40% of food goes to waste in America, an incredible opportunity for improvement exists in the vast food domain, an opportunity to save precious resources and money.

But also an opportunity to reduce stress and free up some of your schedule because, day after day, food preparation can sometimes be pretty hectic and time consuming.

12-Minute Financial Makeover Step 5 - Slash Boring Expenses to Relieve Pressure

Our Financial Makeover Series features carefully selected personal finance topics. We hope talking about these basic principles can allow you to figure out what can help the most in your own unique situation.

In Part 1, we discussed avoiding fees and using a no-fee online checking account.

Part 2 pointed out how no-fee savings accounts and a fun budget approach could allow you to spend more on things you truly love.

We followed up in Part 3 with budget choices and the amazing freedom it can provide to realize your projects and dreams.

Part 4 suggested to start and build up emergency savings in accordance with your own crap-happens plan.

Today we’ll talk about expenses and propose ideas, hopefully inspiring, to reduce them.

We know a lot of people have a very hard time cutting down their spending as it can be simply too painful to them. But oftentimes, just focusing on boring expenses can give you the spark and motivation to get the slashing process going.

Getting More of What You Love

As we already highlighted in Part 2, getting more of what you love is the key here. So, try to focus on getting more resources like precious time and money!

 

On the cash front, reviewing your expenses and slashing unnecessary ones can be a straightforward way to free up big bucks to attain more of that.

 

An even more motivating approach is to concentrate your expenses carving on the boring kind. After all, cutting down on expenses that don’t provide you much joy should be much easier.

 

Working hard to tackle down your expenses should also help take out much of the guilt associated to spending. Enjoying more of what you love is not a sin, especially if you worked hard to achieve so.

 

As you can see, boring-expense money could provide some leeway and ultimately allow you to spend more on what you love. That’s plain and simple!

 

Fun Right After Necessity First

 

In all of this, you still have to prioritize essential spending.

 

You have no choice to spend some money on what you and your family, essentially need. There’s no way around it.

12-Minute Financial Makeover Step 4 - Keep Cash Flowing with Crap-Happens Plan

Our Financial Makeover Series talks about personal finance basics and lets you figure out what applies best to your own unique situation.

In Part 1, we pointed out to avoid fees as much as possible, especially the devastating recurring ones. We also suggested to open a no-fee online checking account.

In Part 2, we followed up by proposing to use no-fee savings account to organize the projects that provide you pleasure. We insisted on how budgeting can allow you to spend more on things you truly love.

We continued on a similar theme in Part 3, telling you that budget choices can make you feel awesome and emphasized on how it could provide you more freedom.

This time, we’ll talk about another way to liberate yourself from financial worries setting up a solid custom-made contingency plan.

In the financial realm, we often hear about that basic concept to set up a rainy-day fund. Some might argue that their financial days are already rainy, if not stormy.

But we really believe starting an emergency fund can be a great first step to getting out of the hazardous living-paycheck-to-paycheck spiral.

The object is not to obsess about risks. In fact, your own crap-happens plan could allow you to forget about possible misfortunes and free you up, allowing you to truly taste and appreciate life joys and ventures.

Try to Get Money Worries Out of Your Way

We know many of you worry about money even in normal situations, some even worry about finances all the time.

The main objective of the financial aspect of your contingency plan should be set enough money aside to allow yourself to focus on living through tough situations and fixing things for you and your family. Your contingency fund should allow to relieve financial pressure as much as possible in these bad situations.

It’s impossible to anticipate all eventualities, especially the worst ones. But, having some and enough money stashed away for those bad periods sure may help to cope with any situation. No matter how bad it can be.

For instance, losing your job can be very tough both financially and psychologically. Yet, having money aside should at least give you some time to get your act together and focus on finding a new job.

Another example would be if your fridge or car breaks down. Most people often have to move heaven and earth just to scratch sufficient funds for those kinds of repair. The actual hassle of just getting those things fixed is bad enough. At least get the money part of it out of your way.

Because it’s Much More Than About Money

You don’t have to become survivalists, but your contingency plan has to be more than about finances. For instance, everyone should have a plan in place to survive at home for 3-4 days.

12-Minute Financial Makeover Step 3 - Savour Freedom thru Budget Choices

Our Financial Makeover Series talks about personal finance basics and lets you figure out what applies best to your own unique situation.

In Part 1, we suggested to open a no-fee online checking account. The point is to avoid fees as much as possible, especially the devastating recurring version.

In Part 2, we talked about the pleasures of budgeting and how it can allow you to spend more on things you truly love. We proposed a no-fee savings account as one tool to organize in that fashion.

Today, we’ll talk about how budget choices can make you feel great. We hope you’ll see it can be an amazing way to exercise your freedom!

The Wonderful Power of Budget Choices

For most people, budgets are boring and restrictive. For us, our budget is fun because it helps us make wise and sometimes tough financial decisions so we can realize more of our dreams.

Try to view your budget as an essential versatile tool at the heart of each of your personal finance decisions. It’s the ultimate key to make everything work together. It’s not only about dollars and cents but rather more about dollars and sense.

As clearly as possible, your budget should be a concise representation of your financial reality and should help you manage your financial operations. Many may be afraid to face that reality and suffer from guilt. They prefer to live in denial and stick their head in the sand than to truly find out the extent of the damages.

But a budget can be the most efficient tool to know where you stand and the best way to start doing something to make things better. Your budget can give you the means to improve and help you take back power over your finances.

After retroactively accessing your present situation, an efficient budget will highlight your options to choose and can be the first step towards your financial well-being.

The objective is not to become perfect but rather to have the means to take decisions that can make things better. At worst, you’ll know more about the impacts of your financial choices.

Like we elude to in our last post of this series (Part 2), ultimately, budgeting should and can allow you to spend more money on things we truly love.

The Questionable Anti-Budget Cult

For many people, keeping a budget seems appalling. Some are even utterly against any form of budgeting. They think a budget will only limit their freedom. They prefer to let money flow.

12-Minute Financial Makeover Step 2 - Enjoy More of Whatever You Like with Budgeting

Our Financial Makeover Series talks about personal finance basics and lets you figure out what applies best to your own unique situation. In Part 1, we talked about avoiding fees and their potential devastating financial pitfall. We also suggested to open a no-fee chequing account to get out of the perpetual monthly banking fee rip-off.

Today, we’ll continue to try to bring excitement to what many consider a tediously boring subject.

Like many, we used to consider budgeting like a restrictive thing. Plainly put, expenses were bad, and income was good. In practice, it mostly translated into trying to have less expenses. At some point, it could also transform into working more to have more income. With that perspective, budgeting was no fun at all.

It was like being on a strict diet all the time. Spending would be like eating. Although some of it is essential to your survival, too much of it is plainly bad. It can either get you fat or poor. With that thinking, discretionary expenses like desserts and treats can be devastating to your wellbeing. In the same fashion, exercise can be compared to income. Regular doses of it can get you in better shape. In the end, this only meant a lot of sacrifice.

Because I liked numbers, I still found some pleasure in it. But to be frank and despite some success, our penny-scratching restrictive budget was a torture that kind of got lost in all the spreadsheets. No insane person would get excited about it. Nobody was really interested to get involved in it either.

Fortunately, our way to budget transformed over the years. It’s now more about pleasure. It’s much more motivating knowing it allows us to get and do more of what we love. We finally realized that, after basic expenses, we could do whatever we liked with the rest of our hard-earned money.

So, to expose our renewed point of view, this post will be about the pleasure of budgeting. We hope you’ll discover how you could enjoy life more with clever budgeting.

Next time, we’ll talk about when we were kind of halfway there with our previous approach that still gave us significant power over our finances thru sensible budget choices.

An Efficient Tool to Boost Your Fun Level

One key to make budgets attractive is to put some spice and fun into it. Wouldn’t it be great if your budget allowed you to have more fun? The great news is that it truly can!

12-Minute Diet and Meal Planner (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on August 12, 2012

When it comes down to food, the 12-Minute Way can be quite useful to help you manage your diet and plan your meals. 

There’s more to it than the common dozen eggs.

Because approximately 40% of food goes to waste in America, an incredible opportunity for improvement exists in the vast food domain, an opportunity to save precious resources and money.

But also an opportunity to reduce stress and free up some of your schedule because, day after day, food preparation can sometimes be pretty hectic and time consuming.

12-Minute Financial Makeover Step 1 - Promise to Combat Chronic Strain of Fees

Welcome to our 12-Minute Financial Makeover Series. This is the first installment of our usual twelve. If you commit to it, this series could be a great way to get your financial affairs in order.

Because of its personal nature, we don’t believe in easy one-size-fits-all financial solutions. General principles will always apply but you will have to adapt them and decide what to implement in your family’s unique situation. So, don’t expect things to fall straight into your lap.

In that regard, we will propose some homework at the end of every post of the series. Our intentions are to only provide guidelines and clues on what you could work on and think about for each theme. You should have plenty of time to accomplish what suggested between each article. We even think each step could be achieved within a week. In that sense, if you discover our series after its original publication at the end of 2019, we recommend one stage a week to get you through the whole financial cleansing process within 12 weeks.

So, let’s immediately get to our first enlightening subject!

One Simple Financial Truth to Teach Our Children

To tell you the truth, fees were not our intended original subject. But it all changed after we let our teenage daughter have her first few experiences with money. Let’s just say she already has had a few run-ins with some intricacies of our financial system. Let’s now tell you about some of it.

For her 12^th birthday, she received from a friend, a 25$ cash gift card that initially seemed quite nice. But we were surprised when we realized it cost 2$ just to activate the card. We were even more astonished about the 1$ monthly fee to keep the card. Let’s just say she quickly got rid of that insane-fees card.

A few months after that, a school trip was her first chance to use her brand-new bank card. Our local bank rep had told us it would work fine to shop in the US. But after the card was refused at a few shops, she reverted to an atm machine that charged her an absurd 7-dollar fee to get some good old cash to pay for her modest purchases.

After she got back, we helped her look at the fine prints to realize she almost got lured in the big bank monthly fee trap. Her account is free to start but will become quite expensive after she turns 18. Hello high monthly fees!

We know financial institutions don’t always have your best interest at heart. After some more research and reflection, we recognized fees are everywhere and can be very harmful to your financial wellbeing. The good news is that alternatives exist to fight them.

This led us to one fundamental question: to get your children well started in their financial journey, what financial truth would you want to teach them? Our humble answer is to be extra wary about fees. They can be your worst financial enemy. Fortunately, they are often simple to avoid.

Note here that we assume kids know some basics like money is limited, you can work to earn money and you can buy stuff with money.

Ultimately, all those little misfortunes made us realize how costly fees can sometimes be. The good thing is that you can mostly avoid them. And that modest truth may be at the core of broader financial wisdom.

We have gradually become aware of senseless fees with experience. Now, we can even say we have developed a fierce aversion to them. As we get a little deeper into it, let’s hope we can make you realize the recurring ones are the worst kind and that low investment fees can be a crucial key to your financial success.

Despite Widespread Belief, TFSAs Can Stay Liquid

A few weeks back, we were kind of stunned when we discovered someone in the family (Ray not to name her) had a lot of money in a savings account but did not register it as a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA). Interests gained in that account resulted in a juicy tax bill for her. Unnecessary because she still had plenty of TFSA contribution room available.

The money was not put in a TFSA because it was primarily used for emergencies and to pay for imminent renovations and Ray thought funds in a TFSA were not easily accessible. We checked with other members of the family and again, to our surprise, a lot of them believed TFSA money was not liquid at all. For many, TFSAs and RRSPs are all the same…money stashed there won’t be accessible till…far away retirement. So, many folks have the impression that TFSA money is tied up in some way that would prevent immediate access to their funds. But in fact, this is not true.

It’s sad because despite our financial knowledge and a lot of effort, money remains a taboo subject for many in the family. It seems like the more you are successful with money, the more people get shy and the less they are willing to talk about it. We try to remain humble about all of it, but it appears our glow still scares quite a few. These poor folks (no pun intended) prefer to keep things as anonymous as possible and give their trust to alleged advisors.    

So, another one greatly handled by so-called expert advisors. In this case, with no commission in play, the «expert» simply did not bother.

 

The Frozen TFSA Asset Misconception

Somehow, many people think TFSA funds are frozen and not easily accessible. And, despite the fact we love Disney, we are not talking about Frozen starring Anna & Elsa. And in reality, your TFSA might be more like Olaf, the chill snowman that loves and dreams about summer.

12-Minute Diet and Meal Planner (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on August 12, 2012

When it comes down to food, the 12-Minute Way can be quite useful to help you manage your diet and plan your meals. 

There’s more to it than the common dozen eggs.

Because approximately 40% of food goes to waste in America, an incredible opportunity for improvement exists in the vast food domain, an opportunity to save precious resources and money.

But also an opportunity to reduce stress and free up some of your schedule because, day after day, food preparation can sometimes be pretty hectic and time consuming.

12-Minute Financial Tips to Immediately Improve Your Situation

One of the main concepts at the basis of the 12-Minute Approach is improvement. In most cases and in most domains, it’s easy to get to ball rolling with only 12-Minute a day or 12-Minute here and there. It’s no different for your finances. Your family’s financial situation can be greatly improved by investing just a little time, 12 minutes, on it. The idea is to start with 12-Minute and build up from there.

Consequently, today we will try to present a bunch of ideas on how to quickly improve your dealings with money. Note that our intention is not to present an exhaustive list. If you have a minute or even better, a dozen, pick one of these and try to implement it. 

Stop Wasting Time Looking for Better Short-Term Rates

For merely a decade, Canadian interest rates flirted with historically low levels before the Bank of Canada finally started to gradually raise the prime rate in 2017. Almost immediately, many banks consequently increased their mortgage rates. As expected, they still took a while longer to offer better rates on savings account. So, for an extended period, so-called «high-interest» savings accounts were paying negligible interest.

Competition, especially from their virtual counterparts, now has forced even traditional financial institutions to offer improved rates. But, in the end, does this really matter?

We just don’t think so.

12 Suggestions to Reduce Telecom Expenses

In this digital era, where everything now seems to be connected one way or another, we profusely consume telecom services. For most of us, they are a given of our modern life. We pay for them little by little or systematically get charged every month. So, without really noticing it, these convenient connected services can cost a lot of money.

Because we often incur recurring monthly fees to enjoy them, the financial impact of telecom services may even be more important than you think. As we already talked about, Reducing Recurring Expenses is A Great Strategy to Save. In fact, it could immensely help you build wealth. As previously mentioned, saving only 10$ each month could translate into a couple hundred thousand (not just a couple 100$ or 1K$ but rather, a couple 100K$) dollars more in your pocket over your lifetime. Just imagine the impact of a monthly saving of 25$, 50$ or even 100$.

In the end, this type of simple recurring savings could even make you a millionaire or prevent you from becoming one. That’s why we believe trying to reduce your monthly recurring telecom bill is a great idea for your long-term financial wellbeing.

We don’t have all the answers about it. We will try to stir up the discussion or help start your reflection by providing and commenting a list of ideas to deflate your telecom costs. There sure exist a lot of different opportunities to save or avoid unnecessary expenses in the telecom realm. Note that the list is not exhaustive and is presented in no particular order.

12-Minute Diet and Meal Planner (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on August 12, 2012

When it comes down to food, the 12-Minute Way can be quite useful to help you manage your diet and plan your meals. 

There’s more to it than the common dozen eggs.

Because approximately 40% of food goes to waste in America, an incredible opportunity for improvement exists in the vast food domain, an opportunity to save precious resources and money.

But also an opportunity to reduce stress and free up some of your schedule because, day after day, food preparation can sometimes be pretty hectic and time consuming.

Additional Interesting Budgeting Ideas

A couple months ago, we started this series on budgeting by presenting our distinctive way to Enjoy the Pleasures of Budgeting.

Last time, we talked about How Budgeting Can Be So Simple and Easy as even children can have fun with it.

Today, a more profound look at budgeting will propose interesting advanced budget ideas.

So, let’s cut to the chase and get right to it!

Additional Budget Tips

Before spending any of your hard-earned cash, you should always ask yourself this vital question: 

Do I really need it?

As we already talked before, in our consumption-driven society, a lot of people seem to crave high-ticket items and end up buying plenty of useless stuff.

To address this bad habit and improve deficient buying decision making, we like to convert possible purchases into working hours.

How Budgeting Can Be So Simple and Easy

Last month, we wrote about our unique way to Enjoy the Pleasures of Budgeting.

Today, we’ll continue on the same exciting subject and see how budgeting can be simple, accessible and even fun for everyone. We’ll also share some easy starting pointers. These fundamental basic budget principles should get you going in the right direction.

In our next and last article of this three-part series on budgeting (coming your way in June), we’ll continue to expose our distinctive point of view on the matter. Additional Interesting Budget Ideas will be presented to you along with more elaborate tips.

Simple Math

Many people get stopped by the supposedly complex nature of budgets.

But in fact, budgeting is only basic math. The arithmetic behind a balanced budget is far from rocket science. You only must obtain a positive result (greater than zero) when you add up your different sources of income and subtract all your expenses. No magic can get you around this basic budget equation.

Enjoy the Pleasures of Budgeting

Many view the budget as an ugly nagging beast they will never be able to master. Because it only reminds them about the frustration of being in the red, they prefer to ignore it instead of trying to tame it.

In the same fashion, many other persons not completely averse to budgets still find it utterly dull. In that sense, a lot of people resign themselves to accept the sad truth that money matters are a reality of our modern life and nobody can really get around it.

For us, keeping a budget is quite the opposite. It’s much more fun and to some extent, it rhymes with excitement! We get those pleasant vibes perhaps because we mostly associate budgeting to having dreams, realizing projects and the freedom of making choices.   

From our standpoint, a budget is an easy-to-use tool to understand where your hard earned money goes. It helps you regain or keep control over it. It can also point out interesting opportunities to improve.

An effective budget can be set-up on a single piece of paper, using the most sophisticated software or with many possibilities in-between.

Next time, we’ll talk about How Budgeting Can Be So Simple and Easy.

So today, let us expose our unique point of view on this simple yet extraordinary tool. Let’s hope you’ll see how powerful it can also become for you!

12-Minute Diet and Meal Planner (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on August 12, 2012

When it comes down to food, the 12-Minute Way can be quite useful to help you manage your diet and plan your meals. 

There’s more to it than the common dozen eggs.

Because approximately 40% of food goes to waste in America, an incredible opportunity for improvement exists in the vast food domain, an opportunity to save precious resources and money.

But also an opportunity to reduce stress and free up some of your schedule because, day after day, food preparation can sometimes be pretty hectic and time consuming.

12-Minute Diet and Meal Planner (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on August 12, 2012

When it comes down to food, the 12-Minute Way can be quite useful to help you manage your diet and plan your meals. 

There’s more to it than the common dozen eggs.

Because approximately 40% of food goes to waste in America, an incredible opportunity for improvement exists in the vast food domain, an opportunity to save precious resources and money.

But also an opportunity to reduce stress and free up some of your schedule because, day after day, food preparation can sometimes be pretty hectic and time consuming.

12-Minute Diet and Meal Planner

When it comes down to food, the 12-Minute Way can be quite useful to help you manage your diet and plan your meals. 

There’s more to it than the common dozen eggs.

Because approximately 40% of food goes to waste in America, an incredible opportunity for improvement exists in the vast food domain, an opportunity to save precious resources and money.

But also an opportunity to reduce stress and free up some of your schedule because, day after day, food preparation can sometimes be pretty hectic and time consuming.

Try to Relieve Pressure from Your Tight Schedule

Invest a little time on planning your meals, you will greatly benefit from it.

One general measure that can be taken is to try to relieve pressure on moments your schedule is tight.

Analyze Your Budget According to Your Activities

The Activity-Based Budget

A different way to organize your budget exists:  the Activity-Based Budget. Rather than using the traditional budget items or headings, this method consists in evaluating the cost associated with each of your activities.

Evaluate Real Costs

In addition to considering direct costs of an activity, the activity-based budget also takes into account indirect expenses, i.e. the cost of various resources necessary to practice the activity. That way, this method enables us to better evaluate the real costs of an activity.