A person yesterday was telling me how he knows this guy who is in his 30’s and when it comes to money the only thing he wants to do is save it. He would refuse to spend it on anything that is not a necessity such as traveling for a vacation.

The gentleman was basically ridiculing him and how he doesn’t understand why a person like that would even bother making money if they don’t intend to use it. I can definitely understand not wanting to waste money on just anything, but just saving for the sake of saving money seems kind of counter productive both from a time and investment point of view.

To a certain extent being able to save a lot of money is a way to prove to yourself that you can manage money and follow through with goals. At the same time, I guess like most things you can’t keep conquering the same goals that you know you are good at or be afraid to lose a little. It’s like saying, you can’t grow much taller by standing on the same block. Stepping off that block might make you shorter for awhile, but once you find a taller block to stand on you’ll wonder why you did not do it sooner.

Another way to think about it is why should you do all the work while that lazy money sits in the bank account? You earned it, so find a way to make it work for you now.

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Today I had to buy some simple stationary products such as paper clips and tab dividers. It was definitely interesting as there is a business that specializes in these types of items called “Grand and Toy” and it happened that I was at a mall called Metrotown which the business had a presence in.

As apparent though, the business was closing its operations in the mall and they had these 50% off signs plastered everywhere as they had to get rid of everything. I figured that was a perfect opportunity to get the supplies that I needed for less. I was looking at some of the prices and even with the 50% off items offer it still seemed rather expensive such as $10 for a basic color coded tab divider.

Since it was the mall, I decided to look around and went into the dollar store to try my luck. The last time I shopped at a dollar store was just for goofy party products. I actually did happen to find what I was looking for and ended up buying my items from there which ended up to be a little over $3.

While these aren’t exactly the type of places I would go to buy things that I would be very picky about quality wise, another good thing to going to stores such as these from time to time is that you can develop a sense of price value for certain products to immediately recognize if something is a good deal or not.

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Similarly for this year, I plan to use a tax software to file my personal income taxes. For the previous years I have normally used Quicktax. This year they seem to have other versions that fall into the $20 line which I suppose is trying to better compete against products such as Ufile.

I am normally tend to stay with one product, but I wasn’t too happy about the drastic price increase in the T2 version of the Quicktax software and so that made me consider trying something new for my personal returns. I think at this point unless I find a coupon or something to make the purchase worthwhile I’ll probably use something like Ufile instead this year.

A lot better than filing paper returns though I must say.

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For almost all of my billings I try to avoid the use of auto billing features even though on paper it sounds like a good thing to do to save time. I think it is easy to forget those small items and having recurring charges for items that you don’t really use anymore.

I was also just reading some examples of people who also subscribe to services which offer say a free trial and in the fine print they mention that after your trial period they will conveniently bill your credit card afterwards. It’s times like that where it is better to have manual billing options as more than likely the company will nag remind you to renew as oppose to nag remind you to cancel it.

I uses the number one reason I do it too is as mentioned in a previous post I try to charge my credit card after the billing cut off dates and this allows a lot more flexibility to do so. One way to make sure you are always in tune with your finances.

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Just a few days ago I started doing my monthly credit card charges to pay various vendors and as usual I try to take advantage of the monthly cut-off dates for transactions on my credit card to keep more money for myself such as earning more interest in a savings account.

What I mean by this is that credit cards have a billing cycle where if certain transactions do not get posted on your credit card by a certain time period of the month then the charged amount will be posted on your next month’s bill instead. Therefore, you get to keep the money in your bank still and won’t have to worry about it for more than 30 days later.

As an example, for myself any transactions that do not get posted to my credit card by the 16th of any given month won’t appear on the upcoming bill but rather the next one. So let’s take a phone bill that I receive monthly usually around the first to second week of the month. Like most bills, it indicates that payments need to be received by a certain date like say the 28th of the month or else you will incur a late penalty.

Now, if I just paid the bill right away with my credit card upon receiving the bill like say on the 12th of the month then that means I would need to withdraw my own money to pay for it in the upcoming billing cycle. Instead, because there is a rather good grace period for the bill I wait until the 17th of the month to pay the bill with my credit card. Therefore, it satisfies the vendor as they got paid on time and I don’t really have to withdraw money to pay for it until more than 30 days later.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you try this technique then it would be wise to make sure you pay the bill with at least two to three days before the actual due date of it as many times there is a delay in receiving your payment. If your due date was the 28th and you submit your payment on the 27th with your credit card there is a good chance that the vendor won’t receive it on time and hence you will incur penalties. This technique has worked very well for me personally and is another example on how a credit card can be a great tool if used responsibly.

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