Everything you do is based on your choices.

Even when you don’t think you’re choosing something, you are. And most of the choices you make in life have to do with your money, even when you don’t realize it.

Can you remember the last time you made a conscious choice regarding your money? Or the last time you really, on your own, made a choice that could impact your life, be it in a positive or negative way?

I’m always astonished when people tell me, “But I don’t have a choice.” Yes, you do.

If you know me, you know this topic comes up often in my conversations, especially after I say I don’t own a car or I live in a rented apartment. You can read more about my choices here, where I explain why I buy concert tickets instead of cars.

Usually, the dialogue goes like this:

“Yes, it’s true: I don’t have a car.”
“Oh, so you must be lucky enough to live near the metro station.”
“It has nothing to do with luck. We chose to live by the metro.”
“Oh, then you must be rich! Few people can afford to buy a place near the metro.”
“No, I’m not rich. I don’t even own my place. I rent an apartment near the metro because we chose mobility and we like to live on the island.”
“Well, I don’t have the option of not owning a car. You know, I have two small kids and I bought a house in the suburbs because it was what we could afford. Housing on the island of Montreal is so expensive!”
“You know you do have a choice, right? At least you did, but you blew it.”
“No, I don’t.”

So this friend of mine actually chose to have two kids, buy a house in the suburbs, and own a car. Ok, kids are sometimes a surprise (I know that for a fact), but everything else is optional, a choice you get to make.

You have a choice between buying a house in the suburbs or renting an apartment somewhere else.

You have a choice between continuing to pay rent or paying a mortgage for the next 25 years.

You have a choice between owning a car or using car sharing services, taxis, Uber, public transit, or even bikes.

You even have a choice between having a baby or not.

And yes, I know you’re probably thinking about thousands of arguments against any one of these choices. But that, my dear friend, is still you choosing one thing over another.

Values (not the money kind)

We all have internal values that dictate how we live our lives. They can be religious or practical. They can be taught to you by your grandma or your parents. You may even have learnt them by yourself.

The thing is we all live our lives and make our choices based on these values, day in and day out.

Whenever you’re faced with options, your values determine your choices and their outcome, whether you’re aware of it or not.

Every time you make a decision, you build your destiny. Every time you face a dilemma, your brain checks your options against your core values and chooses the one that makes the most sense for you.

This is why it’s so hard to understand why people do what they do, especially when you clearly wouldn’t do the same: your values are different from theirs. Or, more accurately, your values’ hierarchy is different.

For example, family may be more important to you than social status. This means if you had to choose between staying with your family for the holidays or attending a media conference where you’d be the center of attention, you’d choose to stay with your family.

However, given the same choice, your friend might choose the conference. Why? Because to her, social status comes before family. Is that wrong? No. Is it right? It is for her. When it comes to core values, there’s no right or wrong; there’s only what makes sense for you.

There’s no right or wrong

Knowing your core values is just as important as understanding that there’s no right or wrong in this matter.

Your significant other may be hesitant to accept that new job and move to Vancouver with you because his security value may be higher than yours. While you say “Yay, adventure, let’s go!”, he may say “Let’s wait until everything’s properly set up.” That doesn’t mean he’s not willing to make it real, but the way you both handle the situation will be different because you’re evaluating it from different perspectives, each based on your own core values.

So instead of saying “You don’t understand me” or even “I don’t understand you”, think about the other person’s values. What value is most important to them? How do those values differ from yours? Maybe then you can understand them a bit better, and maybe you will connect with them on a deeper level.

What about money?

Once you understand what your core values are, you’ll understand the reasoning behind most of your decisions.

And of course, a lot of those decisions are money-related.

The main financial application for your core values is building a budget. If you know what’s really important to you, you’ll have no problem building a budget that makes sense for you!

The main problem with budgets is that they’re like diets: you wouldn’t stick to a budget that made no sense for you any more than you would stick to a diet full of food you don’t like! This is why people have a hard time after receiving advice from a (bad) financial advisor: he will force a budget down their throats, but they won’t relate to it.

Let me help

It doesn’t really matter what you want to know your core values for. Self-knowledge is a powerful tool with infinite potential uses.

One of the first things I do with my clients is to help them figure out their core values. I can’t overstate how important and useful this is, and during the course of our work together, we always come back to them: to build a budget, save money, choose investments, change habits, make more money, you name it.

A friend of mine challenged me by asking what’s the most valuable thing I give my clients. And I can say without a doubt: core value knowledge.

Then she challenged me to give this most valuable thing away… for free.

Challenge accepted!

I’ll help you figure out your five most important core values on a 60-minute live call on which we’ll go through a simple but powerful exercise. No strings attached, no selling anything, just a pure and simple gift from me to you.

So reach out and let’s decide on a time slot. It will be a pleasure to connect and share such important information with you!

The post On choice and your values appeared first on Save with Dan.

To be successful, before anything else, you must WANT to be successful. It may seem a bit counterintuitive, but when we are talking money people have a lot of negative beliefs about it. Who has never heard that “money is the root of all evil” or “money is a necessary evil”? These are beliefs that can hold us back when we are trying to figure out how to be financially successful.

For a lot of people, being financially successful means being rich. And being rich means being greedy, cheap, evil, despicable. Media shows us rich bad guys fighting poor super-heroes (Lex Luthor vs Superman, Malfoy vs Harry Potter). Or the poor guy who wants to be rich and then turns into a bad guy — because apparently this is the only way to get there.

When we believe money is evil, we want to get rid of it the fastest possible! (or we sabotage ourselves from getting any money)! Acting this way we allow money to control us. We need to put these thoughts behind us and move on.

To be financially successful, you need to show your money who is in charge. You need to change your relationship with it. You need to tell it what it must do and how it must work, and not the other way around. YOU are the master of your money. Money is a tool!

Only after that change, only after you are convinced that you deserve the money you are making (and that you can put it to GOOD use), only then you can start thinking about budgeting, investing, saving and being rich.

By then you will be already rich, without even knowing it.

If you like this post, maybe you will like this one too: “More money will not make your life better“.

(Image: Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park on the Siksika Nation Reserve in Alberta. Leah Hennel/Calgary Herald)

The post Thoughts on being successful appeared first on Save with Dan.

“Lifestyle inflation” is the tendency we all have to start spending more as soon we earn or save more (and sometimes even before that).

It’s so easy to fall for lifestyle inflation, but at the same time, it’s easy to avoid. Sometimes you have everything in place, but out of nowhere, more money appears in your bank account. Sometimes you don’t even notice the money lying around, but you spend it anyway. So what do you do with it?

Why do we do this?

Because we like to believe we’re “growing” in our lives or “progressing” in our careers. Because we think we “deserve better”. Because we’re never happy with our lives or our choices.

We want to keep up with the Joneses. We tend to compare ourselves only to people who are “doing better” than us, at least the way we see it. Nobody ever said, “I’m so happy I have a better life than my neighbours!” But a lot of people say, “When I have the same car/house/pool/job as the Joneses, I’ll be happy!”

This is what we call “keeping up with the Joneses”.

I, Victim of Myself

So it happens that this month, our family succumbed to lifestyle inflation. Here’s the story:

We found an amazing cook who was starting a frozen lunch delivery business. As with any change in our life, we sat down and discussed the idea. We put everything on paper—including the emotional relief of not having to cook anymore—and we determined that we’d end up spending less on food than what we were spending at the grocery store every month.

That’s perfect, right?

Not exactly. There are still human beings and brains to consider.

We used to shop at Maxi. Good prices, good selection, brands we like and trust, the works. It’s not within walking distance from our home, but we set a “Maxi taxi” limit in our monthly budget, so we used to take the bus there and call a cab for the ride back. We’d spend no more than $10 in taxi fare this way.

Then there’s the Metro three blocks from our apartment. It’s a fancy supermarket, with better fruits and meat, a better presentation, a bakery with fresh bread, and everything else money can buy. But here’s the problem: Metro is more expensive than Maxi, and they don’t price match like Maxi does.

Just this once…

“Since we’re saving money with frozen lunches, we could take a look at Metro this weekend,” I said, “just to check out the extras and satisfy our curiosity.”

The first time was fine. We were delighted! Everything from the layout to the products felt more premium than at Maxi, including the price. But it was just a test run, right? Picking up a Car2Go to drive three blocks home felt wrong, but it was starting to get chilly and we bought a bit more than we could comfortably carry in our bags.

You already know where this story is going, right?

Fast forward some weeks: After spending almost $100 in a “quick” run to Metro, my wife told me, “I think we should re-evaluate this decision and go back to Maxi.”

I was happy with my new Metro life! People there looked richer, the products looked better, and even the employees looked happier! But then the month came to an end and my house of cards collapsed…

Reality Check

Every end of the month, we revise our budget and set new goals for the next month. We register every expense during the month into GoodBudget; this way, we always know where our money goes and where we plan to spend it next.

The results were crystal clear: we spent more at Metro than we’ve spent on average in the previous months at Maxi. Add that to the cost of the frozen lunches and our food budget was blown away.

The mere idea of saving money with frozen lunches tricked us into thinking we could afford an upgrade to Metro. And maybe we could, but we’d have to check and recheck our lifestyle and the way we shop at the supermarket.

Is it nice to have baguettes for breakfast? Sure it is. Do we need them? Definitely not. We have a bread machine that makes perfect loaves that everybody loves! Does Coke from Metro taste any better than Coke from Maxi? Absolutely not.

This month, we’ll go back to Maxi to continue the experiment. But one thing is for sure: the frozen lunches are here to stay!

The post Lifestyle inflation is a bitch appeared first on Save with Dan.

Montreal is an amazing city if you like concerts and shows. It’s an amazing city for a lot of other reasons too. But one thing that’s not amazing is its traffic. So today, I’ll tell you why we’d rather spend our money on concert tickets than a car (or a home, for that matter).

“Oh my God, Daniel, here you go again with your anti-car speech!”

No, that’s not the point I’m making today. I want to show you that when we’re the masters of our own money, we decide whether we’ll own a car or attend amazing concerts (because not everyone can do both, you know).

“You’re rich!”

This summer, I told a friend we were attending the Louis CK live show during the Just for Laughs Festival. His reaction surprised me: “Lucky bastards!” I replied, “I know it’s hard to get tickets for some events because they sell out fast, but if you subscribe to certain newsletters, you can get them in advance.” I’m not sure this was the kind of ‘luck’ he was talking about, though.

The other day, my wife and I told another friend that we’d seen several concerts this year already and were waiting for a few more. He asked how much tickets for each concert cost.

“Anywhere from $80 to $500, but we never pay more than $200 each,” we said.

“Oh, you’re rich!” he said, clearly disappointed.

But the truth is we’re not rich. Far from it, by Statistics Canada’s standards. We simply made a choice about what to spend our money on.

We can have it all, but…

The great Oprah once said, “You can have it all, but not at the same time.”

When we write down our priorities, owning a car is not even close to the top of the list. I would say it’s not even on the list. Sometimes we think about it during the winter, but then we see people shovelling their cars out in the morning and we change our minds again.

I think the real reason we don’t want a car is that to us, the experience of attending concerts and shows, making memories together, and supporting the artists who helped us build our cultural background is way more important than owning a car. Heck, I’ve seen Queen perform live in the same city where the classic 1980 concert was recorded! I’ve cried listening to Sir Elton John and Adele, and I’ve seen Depeche Mode, Iron Maiden, The Nutcracker, the Montreal Symphony, Seinfeld, and many, many more.

I wouldn’t have had all these opportunities if I still lived in Brazil. Maybe this is a major reason I spend this money. I could have had a car back in Brazil (even though I didn’t want one), but these experiences are unique. I’d never exchange them for a car!

If I had a car (or even a mortgage) here in Montreal, I’d probably think twice before shelling out $200 for a ticket.

But I don’t.

While most people spend $400 a month on a car or (in most cases, and) $1500 on a mortgage, we rent, use public transportation, and attend concerts. Life is good.

We chose to live like this. We chose to track our spending and make these decisions. We chose to be the masters of our universe, and that includes staying on top of our money.

Until you understand it’s all a matter of choice, you’ll struggle. You choose how you live your life. You choose how you make, manage, and spend your money.

You.

Have.

A.

F*cking.

Choice.

The post Why we buy concert tickets – instead of cars appeared first on Save with Dan.

The Rise of Robo-advisors?

If you know me, you know I’m a big fan of robots. Google’s driverless cars? I’m in. Bread machines? You can bet on that (here in Quebec, we call them bread-maker robots). We even use a Roomba to vacuum our floors from time to time, and we only paid $70 for it (secondhand, of course)! A robo-thermostat is on my wish list, and the list goes on.

So the idea of robo-advisors is a no-brainer for me.

Quick Recap: What are robo-advisors?

Robo-advisors are a relatively new class of financial service in which machines automate part of your investments. They blend the facility of index investing with diversified strategies of “normal” investing, but for a fraction of the cost. While investing with a regular financial advisor or even with your bank may cost you an average of 2.2%/year, robo-advisor fees can be as low as 0.2%.

While the fees themselves are not the only factor to consider when choosing where and how to invest your money, paying more fees can hurt your retirement badly, as Barry from Money We Have has beautifully shown in this post about the Management Expense Ratio (i.e. investment costs).

Right now in Canada, we have a bunch of robo-advisor services available. You can check some of these services and their fees in one handy sheet published by my friend Sandi from Spring Personal Finance.

A Wealthy Bar

This week, I had the pleasure of watching a presentation by WealthBar’s CEO Tea Nicola. WealthBar is one of the robo-advisor companies operating in Canada. They’re from Vancouver and are now entering the Quebec market (you know, with French language requirements and everything). After the presentation, they invited some people over for a pleasant evening of wine and wealth. Sweet! It’s nice to see something finance-related happening in Montreal (and Quebec in general). :)

I got to talk to Tea about the Quebec market and WealthBar’s investment strategies. I asked some questions about their website and business and she ran a quick demo for WealthBar’s system and site, showing me everything from the sign-up process to the dashboard to all the calculators and graphs they provide their clients.

Some of My Impressions

When signing up, each client answers a quick questionnaire (and by “quick”, I mean four or five questions). The goal is to determine your risk tolerance, then match you to one of their available portfolios.

One thing I found interesting was that you can have a different risk tolerance for each of your accounts. Since your RRSP and your TFSA will likely serve different purposes, it makes sense for these accounts to have different settings.

Laws in Canada don’t allow companies to use mathematical algorithms to manage money or investment funds. So what will a robo-advisor do with your money?

To answer this question, you need to understand a simple basic principle of investing: rebalancing. Simply put, rebalancing makes sure your money is optimally distributed across all your portfolio’s categories.

Bring on the Metaphors!

Imagine your portfolio is 60% rabbits and 40% elephants (for some reason). Well, we all know rabbits reproduce much faster than elephants. At some point, you’ll count your rabbits and elephants and find that your portfolio now consists of 80% rabbits and only 20% elephants. Rebalancing would mean selling rabbits and buying elephants until you reach a 60/40 ratio again.

As you can imagine, all this buying and selling can quickly become tedious and cumbersome. This is where a robo-advisor comes in. It will make sure your portfolio is always balanced at the initial proportion (this is known as asset allocation, which we’ll talk about another time).

But who chooses the animals that go in your portfolio? What if I like squirrels better than rabbits? Well, in that case, you’re out of luck. WealthBar “animals” are chosen by a team of experts and the final distribution is what they believe will give better returns, according to their knowledge and theories. But if you think about it, it’s the same as when your financial advisor or bank manager pushes some “magical” fund on you.

Of course, you can change your funds—I mean, “animals”—with your financial advisor, but then it’s up to you. If you’re just getting started with investing or you don’t want to be bothered with these decisions, then it’s ok to take their advice. And believe me: it takes a lot of effort and knowledge to choose your own “animals”—I mean, investment funds. But like I said, beware the costs!

Final Words

I’ve only scratched the surface of the robo-advisor world. WealthBar is only one of the players in this field, and I really can’t recommend any more because I haven’t tried them all.

The goal of this post is to open your mind to new possibilities. It’s a big world out there! As I’ve said before, personal finances are personal, so your needs and solutions will be different from mine and your neighbours’.

The only sure thing is that you must think about your future and invest your money. The sooner you start, the better. If you think you’re not ready, or if you’re struggling with anything money-related, give me a call and we can talk. I’ll love it!

Photo by Kyla Duhamel: Downtown Saskatoon

The post Robo-advisors: some words appeared first on Save with Dan.

Let’s say you decided to save some money. You cut coupons, you get a cheaper cable package (or you just cut the cable altogether), or maybe you got a rise in salary and you decided not to inflate your lifestyle.

Now what? What are you supposed to do now?

If you are saving to try to fit your salary in your budget, than you just have to keep going and stop spending. It’s just too easy to reduce some fixed expense and then “reward” yourself with a dinner out later on the month because you reduced that bill. Don’t do that, be strong.

But if your main goal is to save more (in the sense of having more money somewhere for a specific goal), then your job is not done here, sir. I’ll show you how to really save money, once and for all.

Once and for all

Let’s take the cell phone bill as example, because I did exactly this last month. I called my phone carrier and said “I want my bill to be lower”. Then, as it was Black Friday, I got a nice promotion: my very same plan for $10 less. Score!

As soon as I hung up the phone, I went to my bank’s website and scheduled a nice $10 monthly transfer from my checking account to my savings account. And THIS is even more important than calling the phone company and asking for the discount! If you fail to complete this step, you can try to save your entire life and you will never succeed!

Why?

Because this extra $10 will stay floating around your bank account and you will eventually spend it! And then you will not save for retirement or that trip you are desiring for so long.

But, Daniel, I cannot do anything with $10 nowadays. Ok, so do you prefer to just give them to your phone carrier? I’d rather see my savings account growing each month, even if it’s only by $10.

But really? $10? Keep on reading…

My employer started paying more or less half of my monthly transport card. I still have to buy it every month (or subscribe to the anual plan) and then I get a refund of $33 in my pay-check. Guess what I did?

Correct! I set up an automatic transfer to my savings account to coincide with my pay days, every two weeks. Now, with the $10 from the cell phone plan, it’s $43 more into my savings every single month. What about it now?

It means, if I am looking at a short time frame, consumerism way, that I can buy myself a new Playstation4 next Christmas. Got our attention now, right?

It means that you can pay $43 more per month on your mortgage or credit card debt. By putting only $43 more every month towards your 25 years mortgage you can pay it off in 24 years! You will be debt free one year sooner!

And what to say about a rise in salary? Why not put this into savings too?

I know you are thinking “But I DESERVE to have more because I make more money“. You are right. Just answer this: do you NEED more right now?

What you can do is put part of your rise into savings. This way you are happy today and your future-self will be happy too, thinking “Man, I am glad I’ve read Dan’s post several years ago and he told me to put part of my risings onto savings”

You are welcome! Send me a cup of coffee from the future ;)

Photo by J.H.

The post So you saved money. Now what? appeared first on Save with Dan.

One day or another we all face this reality: we overspend. We splurge. This month was my time.

I have a plan, I have a budget, I even control my credit cards within my budget and heck I am good doing this. But sometimes life happens. Relatives come to visit from overseas, friends come to visit from Brazil, great amazing concerts are announced (I hate you Canada for selling tickets with so many time in advance and for hosting so many good concerts), the Canadian Personal Finance Conference happens in another town and all of this during one single month.

I am not blaming any of these things, let me tell you. I am 100% sure that it’s my fault, and there is some valuable lessons to learn here.

One: like I said, life happens, and you better be prepared. No matter how well you manage your financial life, your budget and your investments, one day you will have unexpected expenses and, well, you will have to deal with them.

This is what an Emergency Fund is for. It hurts to have to withdraw some money from my Emergency Funds to pay credit card bills, but this is how my plan is set up to work. Of course I didn’t have plans to splurge, but that’s the beauty of a financial plan: if sh*t happens to your financial life, you have the peace of mind to put it on its tracks again.

Two: We splurged, for sure, but even then it was conscious. Even if we were overspending, we knew what and how we were doing it. We did not went into a shopping/restaurant/tourist spending spree like if there was no tomorrow, frugality is in our veins, after all. No questions, no doubts, no fraking possibility of paying less than the full amount on the credit card bills, this is a big NO-NO in my family life.

Three: Sometimes I can lose track of my spendings. Even if I have a nice set-up and a pretty decent system for tracking my expenses and control my budget, I didn’t get to remove the weakest link from this system: me myself. Sometimes I forget to register a transaction, sometimes I postpone reconciling and then I think everything is fine. And worse, wife believes I am doing everything according to the plan and believes the system is telling her the truth. Result: we both rely on the reports on the screen and we end up spending more than planned.

Four: Course corrections are OK. Like my friend Holy Potato says in his book The Power of Simple (a review is coming, stay tuned), you will have to make small adjustments to your main course. The important thing to keep in mind is the broad direction. If at any given moment you see your ship is facing a complete different direction then yes, it’s time to stop and come up with a new plan. If the main direction is fine but you just diverted some degrees, keep up and just make the necessary corrections, no need to panic and no need to stop the journey to recalculate everything.

Five: Nobody and no system is perfect. Like I said, my system is nice and I am good using and following it. But there are flaws to both of us. Me, I don’t like to sound like Uncle Scrooge and then sometimes I ignore the Goodbudget’s warning red bar with thoughts like “I did not spend within my Gifts category, so I can afford this”. And for my budgeting and track system, maybe I should think about one thing or two I could do to get it better. Any suggestion is wildly welcome and expected, of course.

But don’t worry. Sh*t happens to everyone all the time. What sets you apart from everybody else is your capacity of dealing with it your way. The main lesson here is: have a plan. Think about what will be your actions if your financial life get out of track before it gets out of track. This way you will have a much clearer vision without letting emotions take over. After all, we all know how bad we are dealing with money when emotions are involved, don’t we?

Photo by Emmanuel Milou

The post I screwed up this month appeared first on Save with Dan.

What do you do when you get to the supermarket, for example, and you don’t find the exact product or brand you are so used to buy? Do you upgrade or do you downgrade?

This may look like an innocent question, but stop to think about it for a while.

Last time I went to the super-big-expensive_market near my office, I couldn’t find my regular hot chocolate mix brand, Nestlé’s Carnation (you know I buy hot chocolate at the supermarket and then get the hot water from the coffee machine, instead of paying $0.50 for half a cup of hot chocolate).

I get so frustrated when this happens! I don’t like changes on my routine, mainly because I have to calculate the outcomes and the costs of said changes. Then I started looking at the alternatives. Several other hot chocolates were even more expensive than Carnation, and several others were less expensive.

The cheapest ones, you know, looked cheap. The expensive ones, oh my god, all of them looked delicious and creamy and chocolatey! They have fancy packages, with amazing pictures and they are placed right there, in front of my eyes. I don’t even have to bend to reach them!

I am pretty sure you’ve been there, right? So, what do YOU do?

You have three different options here:

Let’s talk about each of them.

You buy nothing.

If we are talking about a first necessity item, like toilet paper, chances are you are going to look elsewhere, right? Maybe you will get it at another supermarket or at the mini-market on your way home. In this case, we must consider asking the same question again: what if you don’t find it there either?

But if we are talking about a non-necessity item, like chocolate, maybe you just go home a bit frustrated and that’s it.

You buy a more expensive brand

From the informal poll I conducted with a couple of friends, this seems to be the default choice. Why?

First off, we like to think about ourselves as fancy little creatures. We deserve better! We can afford it, it’s just a can of hot chocolate mix, come on! And by doing this we are giving the first step into lifestyle inflation.

Dan Ariely talks about this in his book, “Predictably Irrational”. Do you know when you pass by a restaurant and see a bunch of people forming a line outside? You immediately assume this restaurant is good. By buying another more expensive brand, you are just putting yourself on a line outside of this restaurant.

If the new brand you are trying is good, chances are you will buy it again, even if your old favorite is available (and cheaper). “I’ve tried this and it’s good. Let’s take it again”. This is you looking at the line outside of the restaurant, only that you are the only one on that line. You build a mental system that “proves” you that this new brand is good. And every time you buy it, it’s like there is a new person on that line: you confirm time and again that this must be good for you.

Notice, however, that we will happily change our fidelity from one product or brand to another even if the new and more expensive one is as good as the old and cheaper one.

Supermarkets know that. I am seriously convinced they take medium-priced products off the shelves temporarily to promote more expensive alternatives. Because they know we are going to bite this bait and go for the fancier product and we will never look back.

What can we do in these cases? Well, this takes us to the next option…

You buy a less expensive brand

I know it’s super difficult to do this. You work hard, your college days are long gone and there is no need to buy No Name products, you can afford better stuff, right?

Well, if you think like this, you have big chances of be ruining your financial present and future. Like I said before, lifestyle inflation is a serious thing. If you upgrade your choices every single time this option is presented to you, it will come a day when you will not be able to afford your lifestyle anymore.

And, like I always say to my clients: “I am sorry but you cannot have it all”. Unless you have infinite money, which is not the case (nobody has infinite money).

So, consider this option. Consider downgrading the price you pay for a product. Do this once and try to be really honest with yourself. Analise if the most expensive alternative is really better. Chances are you will not even notice the difference.

Make a test!

Buy a cheaper alternative once and ask your wife/husband or kids if they see or feel or taste a difference. Of course, if the difference is noticeable by everybody, than you should consider going back to the brand you are used to.

For example, I cannot believe that rice can be that different from one brand to another to justify a price gap between them. Anyways, we bought a cheapest one, nobody complained and then we adopted the new brand.

On the other hand, we tried this same experiment with cola soda, and it was a total failure. Orange juice was the same case.

Getting back to the hot chocolate mix, I tried Nestlé’s Rolo brand (it was on sale) and I just couldn’t stand it, too much caramel for my taste. The other day I tried the No Name equivalent, and it was ok. It was not as creamy as Carnation, but it was totally acceptable for my hot-chocolate-at-the-office needs.

I’ll probably continue buying the Carnation if it’s on sale, but if it’s not available or if it’s just too expensive, now at least I know I have a choice.

The post Do you upgrade at the supermarket? appeared first on Save with Dan.

We’ve talked about that. You can see my post here to refresh your memory.

But while for brick-and-mortar stores it may be easy to just return the item and buy it where it’s cheaper (or get a refund) for online shopping things can get a bit more difficult (and expensive).

How-to (not that you will, however)

First off, you have to check what’s the store policy regarding returns. It’s not uncommon that you have to pay the return shipping, and then the savings you would have buying it elsewhere is gone.

Besides, there is the paperwork involved. Sometimes you have to fill a web form, sometimes you must print a form and a tag, and then you have to drop it by the post office.

This is why, for example, the dehumidifier I bought from Amazon is still in our bathroom…

How to avoid this?

The best way to avoid all of this is attacking the root of the problem: the act of buying it at first place!

No, I am not saying that you should stop buying stuff, but instead make some research prior to clicking that PLACE MY ORDER button.

If you search for the best deal, you will unlikely have seconds thoughts about how much you did pay for that, and therefore you will rarely need to deal with online returns and refunds, right?

Tips and tricks

• Let your friends know that you are looking for a new AC unit, for example. This way, when they are shopping somewhere and they see a sale on AC units, they will remember you. When I was looking for a new TV, I constantly received messages from friends with prices and pictures. Your friends LOVE to help you, remember that! Use this power on your own advantage!
• In the case you have no friends, however, an online community may come in your help. Redflagdeals.com has one of the best forums around to discover deals and ask for opinions about almost anything you can buy, be it online or offline.

Dynamic Pricing

Now I want to alert you about something that may be hurting you and your wallet. Dynamic pricing.

Dynamic pricing is the practice of, erm, adapting the price according to the client. It happens in offline stores all around the globe everyday: a salesperson would try to sell something more expensive if he perceives the client is wealthy, well-dressed, arrives in a fancy car, etc. And of course online stores would try to profit from this method.

But what do online stores know about you, you would ask? A LOT. Your browser stores information about websites you visited, search queries you typed, links you clicked, your computer model, what browser you are using… And these information is passed along from one website to another. So when you land at Amazon website, they already know what you are looking for if you searched for that on Google or if you visited a forum about this interest before.

What do they do with this information? Well, you guessed it: at first sight, it’s only for suggesting you products based on your past behaviour, or showing ads “tailored for you”. Have you ever noticed how you only see ads for swimsuits everywhere after you looked at one at Amazon? That’s just the beginning.

Orbitz was found guilty of showing higher priced hotels for users using Mac systems. Walmart can show different prices depending on what browser you are using. Some websites gives you lower prices if you are logged in, and others may charge you more if you visited the competition before.

Is this illegal? Nope. What can you do to protect yourself? Stop your browsers from sharing this information. How? Private mode.

On Firefox, it’s called Private Mode. Go to File>New Private Window.
On Chrome, It’s Incognito Mode. Go to File>New Incognito Window.

What happens is that anything you do while in these private windows will have no history saved after you close the windows. So, no website will know you searched for that new Nike Converse after you close it.

How to use it for online shopping

Open a new Private Window. Search for something, look at stores, take note of the prices. Close the window. Repeat for other websites. At the same time, you will want to check the same products at the same websites in a normal window, just to make sure you grab the best price. Is it more work to buy something? Indeed. But no pain, no gain, sista.

Now, we all know only activating Private browsing is not enough to save serious money. And this is why I created something to teach you how to Save Money Shopping Online. This Private Browsing stuff is only one of the many tips and tools I teach there.

This product is a video course called Save Money Shopping Online and it includes:

• How to research what you want to buy.
• Where to look for reviews and opinions
• How to properly compare prices
• Is free shipping really worth it?
• Tricking websites so you get the lowest price
• The power of your credit card
• Piling up those advantages
• And more…

You can check it out here.

And don’t worry, you don’t need to use a Private Window for this ;)

The post Buy online paying less appeared first on Save with Dan.

Roomba’s battery

We have a Roomba. We paid $70 for it two years ago, second hand. It’s some of the best $70 we’ve ever spent. But you must guess the battery would go caputz someday, right? Well, this day arrived, and the Roomba was working for as little as 9 minutes with each battery charge.

Although you can find tutorials on how to fix the battery, I decided I don’t have the time neither the appropriate tools to go for this adventure. Sure, it would have saved me dozens of dollars, but not this time. We have to choose carefully the battles we fight ;)

Long history short, the original Roomba battery runs for US$69.99 (basically CAD85 today). I’ve found a generic one (very well recommended by Amazon customers, of course) for CAD37.97. You can find it here 14.4v 3500mAh NiMh Battery for iRobot Roomba 500 510 530 535 540 550 560 570 580.

Savings: $47.03 (not computing shipping and possible import taxes).

Ms. Dan’s gifts

May is Ms. Dan’s birthday. I keep a secret list of possible gifts I can get her, and then I can plan in advance. Smart guy, eh? This year, however, a Groupon event got my attention, so she got a mini helicopter training session. Without too much detail (we are not supposed to reveal each other how much we spend in gifts), the Groupon thing saved me $150 upfront.

However, I had to get a Communauto to get us there (Mirabel’s airport), that I’ll estimate at around $70 (I ll just know for sure two months from now, because Communauto is super terrible). Besides, I had to pay the taxes ($25) and my ticket to get into the helicopter with her ($53) to witness my amazing wife piloting a real helicopter (I wouldn’t miss it, right?)

I’ll consider here that all this costs were supposed to happen anyway, so I’ll not add them to the savings this time.

Savings: $150

Ms. Dan’s gifts II

These were unexpected savings. I got Ms. Dan something from La Senza. I bought her gift one Wednesday, and then the next Friday we were walking by the shopping centre when I saw that La Senza was having a 40% sale on everything in store!

The following day I packed her gift and headed to the store where I bought it. I explained what happened to the girl and she kindly asked me “Do you want to get the difference back?”, at what I promptly answered “Yes, please, if it’s possible”. At first she didn’t believe the amount and checked it twice! Ms. Dan was with me and then I made her another surprise and gave her a store credit (the difference I received back) to spend that day on whatever she wanted. Everybody was happy that day! :)

Savings: $40

‘Wealthing Like Rabbits’ book

Well, I should probably not post it here as a saving, but the true is that I won the book in a Twitter sweepstake, from the amazing Chantal Marr of LSM Insurance. How cool is that? Thank you very much, Chantall!

You can buy the book here: Wealthing Like Rabbits: An Original Introduction to Personal Finance

Savings: $16.95

Total savings for May and June:

$253.98

Not bad, eh? Now I’ll just toss this money into my savings account, since it’s saved anyway. This is the main purpose of all this “save it until you make it” thing. It would be just stupid to spend all this time and energy to save this money and then spend it elsewhere in a impulse purchase or something like this.

If you read this, would you please make my day and leave a comment saying on what and how did you save some money this month?

Photo courtesy of Erik Araújo

The post Monthly Savings Recap – May & June appeared first on Save with Dan.