The Budget

I suppose the last thing to do before I get into the money saving tricks is to outline our monthly budget:

Food: $200 (or $50 a week, we add $50 in months when there are 5 weeks)
Personal Care (Home/Drugstore): $50
Clothing: $25
Entertainment: $25
Allowances: $100 ($50 each)
Gas/Parking: $150
Public Transit: $150
Car Insurance: $120
Money to Emergency Savings: $100
Rent: $550
Phones: $160 (we both have smart phones because it helps with our jobs)

I keep a spread-sheet which includes all of these numbers plus periodic expenses (oil changes, gifts for birthdays, travel around holidays, text books, etc.) It usually works out to about $1500 a month

Because we are in full-time school, our income does not quite cover these expenses, however - that's what summer income is for! We have a savings account from the summer which evens everything out.

I'll break all of these down a little more in future posts. But I figured it would be a good idea for people to see the baseline.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

Ok so before I start getting into our budgets and money saving secrets, I need to give credit to the people who have helped us get here. We both have undergraduate degrees and both received support from our parents during that time. However, we also worked summer jobs, and worked at least one job (usually 2) through each school year. But the bottom line is that we got a lot of help. We also receive bursaries from our schools to help pay for our tuition. Finally, our parents helped us pay for the wedding. Our share was around $5000. We also rent an apartment from really great friends, which helps us keep the costs low. So a BIG THANK YOU to everyone to has helped us get to where we are, we couldn't have done it without you.

Welcome!

A lot of people ask me what it's like to be 22 (almost 23), working on my Masters Degree full time and married (to another full time student). In the last year we have paid for a wedding and tuition. We work 10 and 15 hours a week respectively, we live in one of the most expensive cities in Canada, and yet we have almost no debt. In fact, the balance on our line of credit is $0. The only debt we actually carry is a small OSAP loan from before we got married, and since it's not accruing interest at the moment I'm not worried...

ANYWAY, people always want to know how we're doing it. And I'm happy to share our secrets, because I don't really think they're secrets at all. We're just careful. What people are most interested in is how we live on food budget of $50 a week.

I hope that you enjoy our insights on living lean and being happy.