I was looking at this balance where I have a large amount of funds that are waiting for me to collect. Whenever I receive payments from them it is usually in a US currency. However, they do offer me a choice of converting it to Canadian funds and so when I bring it to say the bank I won’t have to worry about paying these high currency exchange fees just to deposit the cheque.

You may think this isn’t a big deal, but from my experience banks can often charge a ridiculous fee to the point where you could easily lose say three percent or more of your total amount. That’s not including say flat fees that many charge on top of that. If you are depositing a lot of money it suddenly becomes very apparent at how much you are losing.

I think the best examples are airports as the rates in those little exchange booths are always a lot higher. It’s almost the equivalent of how even food and drinks are marked up. Take a closer look at it for yourself next time and you may be amazed.

So I got a Google Adsense cheque in the mail today for the amount of $209.12. As usual, it is in US funds and since the Canadian dollar is lower that means I should technically get more. The thing is, over the past few months the dollar has been going up and down so quickly where cashing these cheques at the right day could mean gaining or losing a few extra dollars.

It might not seem like much, but it does add up and is one of those things that it is good to develop a habit for I’d say. But as usual, for the sake of number tracking I am just going to tally up the total based on the figure on the written cheque. It looks like I finally broke the $1000 mark with the web publishing category. Not extraordinary I’d say, but again it shows that if you just do it things can add up.

Now whether or not I really want to think of ways to make it like a full time type of operation is up for debate. Though again my intent was to try and find as many different things to do as possible.

Stock Investment: $800
Web Publishing: $1095.67
Million Dollar Term: $100
Affiliate Sales: $91.01
Free Money and Credits: $100
Loose Change Savings: $209.23
Selling Items: $55.64

Total: $2451.55

So today I was having a brief conversation with a lady who is definitely going to try and turn her financial situation around as right now she seems to be pretty well off in terms of an income, but having a lot of children is a big factor on why at the end of the day there doesn’t seem to be anything left.

She actually showed me a list and all too and some of her children were growing up in a different country that is definitely not as fortunate as say here in North America. It was amazing too to see how one dollar here was able to buy so many things over there. At the same time, this made trying to save money even more alarming.

For example, she indicated on her list that she would need about $2000 to buy a laptop for the children and at the same time other things such various clothing items was a few cents. So after educating her a bit and that she could say buy a laptop for say less than $500, in this case especially that $1500 savings could almost take care of the child for an entire 6 months there.

That sure is an eye opener if you are one to always think that saving a dollar here and there is not worth the time.