She Works Hard for the Money

Well, I've been working extra hours for the past week and I wondered just how much that was going to turn into on my paycheque. I figure I've earned about an extra $180 over the hours I usually put in and that will probably end up being about $120 once all the deductions are taken off.

That's nice, but I really need more than that. We also finally got the re-imbursement for my visit to the dentist back in the middle of September. The first cheque went to our old address so it had to be re-issued and it's taken a while. Hubby transfered it to me today and I've now paid MasterCard $81.36. So, that's something at least.

What will I use the extra $120 for when I get it in a week from now? I'm sorely tempted to put it all towards IKEA, toss in another $20 or so and have that one fully paid off. The card is at a horrible interest rate (28%!!!) and I never intended to be carrying a balance on it. This is all because of the dumb mirror I took back and they wouldn't reverse my credit card but gave me a store credit instead. I still have almost $40 of the store credit left (after buying bookshelves for the country house) and I think that will turn into a Hanukkah present for one of my grown kids.

Eldest Daughter and I have been talking about Hanukkah and I think we're going to do a draw among all the grown kids, me and Hubby and each get one person to buy for. They feel like we have too much on our plates to be buying a nice gift each for the big ones, plus 8 gifts each for Dear Child and for each of our 3 granddaughters.

ED is also trying to convince me to just get one gift for each of the grandkids because with everybody else buying for them they'll still end up getting at least a gift a night. I'm thinking about it. I'm just not sure it's fair because I'm still giving DC a gift per night regardless (I've already bought 5 gifts, plus one night is always chocolate gelt and dreidels). I should note that I've always tried to keep the kid gifts small, $5 or so per night, but not junk. It's not like we're trying to make Hanukkah into another overly commercialized extravaganza like the other major religious holiday at the same time. But kids like having a little something to open every evening when they light the candles and to have something new to play with while they're lit. It just multiplies exponentially as you add children and grandchildren.

My hubby gave me a cheque the other day for $100 for a Safeway Gift Card from the school (which I wrote about before) and today was the day to use it. Safeway offers 10% off your bill the first Tuesday of every month and I hope to start planning my shopping around that! Today, with not much in the way of real planning I was spending $90 something, once all the sale prices were taken into consideration it was in the mid $70s. With the 10% discount, I paid about $66 at Safeway. (I also went to Superstore for the things that are cheaper there and bought $45, and about 1/3 of that was non-food items like garbage bags and light bulbs.)

I want November to be a really frugal month, one where I actually pay all the bills instead of juggling them. I don't know if that's totally realistic, but I'm hoping. Gas is down, which is good. I actually saw it advertised for 99.9 cents per litre last night, which made the price at the pump 96.4 cents and for 97.9 tonight (94.5 cents/litre at the pump)! It hasn't been under $1/litre for a very long time, and was actually up around $1.52/litre in the summer, so that's just fantastic.