Happy new years everyone. It seems like here there is a lot of fees are going up when it comes to provincial stuff such as income taxes and even various things like pubic transportation getting more expensive. Of course this has a lot of people saying how that isn’t good for the economy and such. One thing that this made me think of is the public transportation price and how I remember a quote before of someone saying compared to a car you are getting a bargain for what you pay. Therefore the small increase shouldn’t matter much.

It made me think because if you are trying to lure people into using it more from a financial point of view isn’t it better to make it a lot cheaper as opposed to just a little? I know the argument is usually that people are willing to pay so many dollars for another thing anyways so you would think they shouldn’t be apprehensive if you price it similar except a bit cheaper. I personally think that only really works if what you offer is in a sense exactly the same thing. Example, people that run a barber shop where if everyone else is charging $10 per cut then realistically you can say you can undercut it by just a little. However, saying like because people are willing to pay $12 to watch one movie in the theatres means that people should be contempt to pay $10 to order one movie on their TV as it is a bargain in comparison doesn’t work the same I think.

I would be inclined to say there you would need to make it a lot cheaper as it is not the same. Either way guess people will have to adapt to the increases since these are more of an essential service of sort as opposed a non essential.

Today I decided to take the public transit to pretty much go in a large circle to make all of my purchase needs. As you may know, the transit tickets you get have an expiration time on them and in this case it was about one and a half hours. So the first thing that usually comes across my mind in these cases is I want to get in and out of the stores as fast as possible as I would rather not waste money in having to buy another transit ticket to get back home.

It sure works wonders in making sure that you don’t waste time browsing around where you can potentially end up buying more things than you expected. Or worst, buying things that you don’t even need just because it seemed cool and was at a good price. Not bad for a day’s worth of shopping today as I pretty much got around everywhere that I needed and it was definitely a cheaper way to do it.

I was watching a show where this couple was debating about wanting to buy a house that was either very close to work where it required virtually no commuting to work or to have a property that was so close to various stores and sights where you wouldn’t have to travel far for those. They then started to debate on which one would be the more cost effective choice.

I would think not having to commute far to work would be the biggest money saver as you can technically do things like your grocery shopping in one trip or so per week. Whereas for work you need to do it probably all week long. Imagine the amount of money you could save not having to say drive the car each day as well as the extra time you save where you can focus on something else. Usually people think of this when it comes to their child’s school as they want to be close to one. Makes you wonder why more people don’t think about it too much when it comes to their professional life too.

Looks like I will be surrounding myself with Olympic related activities for the remainder of the month as the Olympics have begun here in Vancouver. I’m actually very interested to see how people and businesses will be affected as well. One thing that has constantly come up is that if you were even thinking of driving a car during the Olympics time that you should simply ditch it for public transportation.

So, I was anticipating that things like the buses would be jammed pack. I guess the public transportation officials did too good of a job as while traveling to a celebration site there were so many buses that for a long period of time I was the only person on the bus which I thought was kind of crazy as you can see here:

It’s kind of cool too as in terms of saving money I get to use the system for free since I have an accreditation pass of sort. Guess it was a good thing to get that Visa card too as virtually all of the merchants within the Olympic venues only take Visa because of the sponsorship. Let’s see if I end up spending more because of all these events.

Just the other day I was going to a workshop that wasn’t too far away from where I lived as it was only about 5km away. By car you are probably looking at about a 10 minute drive. Guess what? I decided to use the free form of transportation and walked there. One way took about 30 to 40 minutes.

Aside from saving money for the transportation, usually what inclines me to do this too is for general fitness. Every time I think about it, look at how much money people spend on things like the gym membership. So in that sense I am kind of killing two birds with one stone in situations like these.

Yes, many people think I am crazy to be walking that far. On the other hand, I tend to think some are crazy to think walking that distance is like climbing Mount Everest or something. But in general, I think many times we tend to focus too much on the money aspect when it comes to situations like this as oppose to the overall benefit that it would provide us in the long term.

Example, in this case one could argue that all you really save money wise was a few cents worth of gas and the time I lost by walking makes it look like a silly decision financially. On the other hand, I think of the bigger picture where I am keeping myself physically active and won’t be one of those people who struggle to walk a flight of stairs where in the end they will have to spend even more money to adapt to the fact that they rarely get any exercise.

The same applies to other things too such as learning to make certain things yourself. I guess cooking would be a great example where you can say it is a lot faster to just buy something pre-made from the store versus the amount of time it will take you to learn how to do it yourself. Similar in that situation, thinking about it for the long term it can probably be more beneficial to learn it.

Not only can you cut the labor cost that you are essentially paying for with pre-cooked meal, but imagine what else you can do with that newly acquired skill/knowledge. Teach others….….write a book? Basically, don’t always just think of things purely from a direct dollar point of view I’d say as there is usually so much more benefit to not having to rely on things because they are so convenient.