Do you consider the future when looking into your finances?

We all plan for the future, whether it be marriage, children, building a home or even what you are having for dinner but what do you to to keep those plans on track? Something like planning for dinner is simple, you look up the recipe, grab the ingredients and take the meat out of the freezer to defrost. But if you have plans for a good financial future it takes a lot more care and work to make it happen. How do you make it happen?

For my husband and I, we have a lot of goals both in our near future and in the distant. We want to build our home, have savings, I plan on going to school to become a registered nurse (RN), have another child and have savings for our children's future. Unfortunately we are late in the game on getting this started because of the cards we have been dealt but we are jumping in and never looking back!

So here is our little story on how we plan on getting where we want to be including our time line. Sure things may change, we may come across some bumps and have to leap over some hurdles but we are confident that we can reach our goals if we work together and remain focused.

We plan on building our home. Now this one is a tough decision because all of our other goals rely heavily on making this happen. If we can't build savings, we can't build a home, if I don't finish school, we can't build a home. Everything goes hand in hand so this one pretty much depends on all of our other goals but we will sock away every little extra that we have to get to this point in our lives. Our first goal was to clear our outstanding debt so we can begin building credit which we successfully did in May of this year. Now we begin building credit so we can bloom from here.

I am currently in the process of doing everything I can to begin and complete the registered nurse program (RN) In order to do this spending the least amount of money possible we have decided that I would focus on all of my upgrading for the remainder of this summer and fall through the Independent Learning Center. My decision to do this was a financial one. I had three choices when considering how I would find myself in the RN program. Decision one was to go to night school classes being offered in the city at least 30 minutes from my home. Now add in the factor that I do not drive and come September I will have four children in school this would mean two trips to this city twice daily for my husband and my children staying up late four nights a week. This was not a smart parenting or financial decision for us. My second decision was to skip the upgrading and apply to the college for the pre health sciences nursing program which would give me all of my pre-requisites for the program. This would save me time and would ensure I had all of the credits that I would need but this also brought up two obstacles. One being I again do not drive and the college is in the city so lots of travel and gas spent and secondly being that I would have to pay for this program to the tun of over $3000. This made little financial sense to us so I choose to skip this option. My last option was the Independent Learning Center which would allow me to do all of the upgrading in my free time at home online. This would be the cheapest option and still give me the flexibility to be home with my children and husband. This made the most financial sense to us and is the decision that I have committed to. Once this is completed I can then apply directly to the RN program, complete it as quickly as I can and hopefully be within my career of choice and making great income in no time.

Now another financial decision that have had to make was savings for both ourselves and our children's futures. For our own savings the best way for us to be able to accomplish this was to first get more income whether it be through surveys, or to save money on other expenses such as groceries. This is where my couponing really comes into play as well as freebies. This allows us to spend less than our budgeted amount every week and sock away that extra into savings. For our children's savings right now we aren't able to contribute much at this time but we ensure that we put all birthday, Christmas and other holiday monies in there. Although it may not be much it all adds up and helps build something for their futures. We also put in $50 per child each month and rather than spending outrageous amounts on holiday gifts for our children we instead have chosen to give them a larger sum of money to put into their accounts rather than a lot of toys that they will forget or will be broken months later.

Overall we have made some very small changes like couponing and having a very detailed budget but those have made a very big impact in our futures. We only spend cash, never credit cards and we never spend more than we need to for anything. We look for rock bottom prices and always wait on larger ticket purchases to see if we really need the items or if we can find it cheaper else where. Entertainment for us is almost always free or next to nothing as we will spend the day at the beach, swimming at a friends house or movies which we go to with free or buy one get it free movie tickets from cereal boxes and other offers.

What I would like to know from all of my readers is how you plan for your financial future? What steps do you take and how often do you revisit your financial plan? Do you talk to a financial adviser? I'd love to hear what you do to invest in your future! I look forward to all of your tips and will be sharing a sample budget with all of my readers for those of you who are interested in budgeting! I hope my financial plan has inspired you or has given you some ideas on how to invest in yourself and your future!

Listia, have you heard?

I just joined the site Listia after doing a little research on it first and wanted to share with all of my readers what the scoop is on it. So here is the basics of the site, you get 100 credits just for signing up and quite a few more credits (I got over 700) by filling out information, setting your first auction and bidding on other auctions. Basically you search for things you would be interested in finding, for example I searched for iCoke pins since I can never have enough of them. The search will then bring up any of the available auctions for the items you are looking for. If you like what they have to offer you then put in your bid using your credits given to you. This is a great way to get some free items using the credits that are given you initially and then as you list things that you don't want for auction you can use those credits that you receive for auctions of items that you do want.

It seems like a really great site to get some cheap items or even free and get rid of items that you no longer want. I've decided that I will only use the site to auction off pins or coupons, just things that would not cost much at all to ship. I think that is where it could get a little sticky because you could get stuck paying a lot more in shipping then you do for an item.

Anyhow I thought I would share this with all of you. I'm pretty new to it but thought others maybe interested in trying it! Best part is you can get started for free and try a couple auctions without having to invest much time into it just to see if you like it!

If you'd like to try it out and see for yourself just copy and paste the link into your browser and check it out! http://www.listia.com/signup/626487 I hope you enjoy it as much as I have so far! Happy bidding! I currently have a General Mills free towel pin listed, something I could not use (I've already reached my 10 total) and will hoping win the auction for the ICoke pins that I could use!

I appologize for my absence

After my long absence I am here to apologize to my readers. As much as we sometimes have good intentions life gets in the way of all of the things that we want to do and instead there are things that we have to do instead. With that said things have calmed down for us quite a bit and I am back into couponing full swing. I hope to offer my readers valuable information with couponing and am going to be offering many more things to my readers in the near future.
Things you can look forward to seeing here at My Thrifty Canadian Life include ways to find coupons, how to best use them and lots of information on the different types of coupons. I am forever being asked how I keep my binder full and how I find the unique coupons. I look forward to sharing all of this information with my readers in the near future. Along with this information I hope to provide direct links to printable coupons, manufacture coupons and websites that will allow you to order coupons that will be delivered right to your door step.
I also intend on offering links to sites which will allow you to order free items, some of which are limited time offers and others which you can contact the companies at any time to receive! These are great offers which I have enjoyed receiving both in the past and look forward to receiving in the future.
Here at My Thrifty Canadian Life I will be offering contests, giveaways, product reviews and movie reviews for all of my readers to enjoy!
I hope you are all looking forward to everything that my blog will have to offer in the near future as I am very excited to share with all of you.
For today I will leave you with a freebie that I recently applied for and am looking forward to receiving! On facebook right now Trident is offering a free gift pack to all members who help build a bike for the bicycle factory. These bikes are being built by entering UPC's from certain products. These bikes will be built and sent to students in Ghana.
The terms for this giveaway are: Enter unique pins participating UPC's below. As a thank you, we will send you a gift pack consisting of new Trident layers mint mint gum and new Trident Splash Grape Orange Gum. Limit one gift pack, per person, per day. 20 000 gift packs available. Offer expires the earlier of July 31st , 2011 or when all gift packs have been given away. Must be 14 or older. Only available in Canada.


You can find this giveaway here:

https://www.facebook.com/BicycleFact...39019656133966

And to get you started here is the 5 UPC codes needed to receive the gift pack. Please help continue to build the bikes though as this is for a great cause and will mean the world to the students in Ghana!

0 61200 08445 0
0 61200 22591 4
0 61200 00380 2
0 61200 08680 5
0 57700 21505 0

Enjoy your Trident Gift pack and doing a great thing for those in Ghana!