Current Obsession

I'm currently obsessed with listing things for sale on kijiji or craigslist. I honestly look around our house wondering what I can list. Just last night, I sold yet another baby carrier that I bought and barely used (M is not-so-much the carrying kind) and D sold a keyboard stand earlier in the week.

This leads to my other current obsession... savings jars.

I have always been notoriously bad at saving money. It's not that I'm a "spend everything in the account" sort of girl but I have a hard just not touching it unless I can't (RRSP, GIC, etc.) or unless I know it's specifically being saved for something. One thing I have always tried to do is have a piggy bank or other sort of container on the go where change and random bills can be dropped for later use. Typically, this money always goes towards vacations.

D's surprise birthday gift of a weekend in NYC spurred me to start the jar system again. It was something we hadn't been doing at all during my maternity leave though we actively did it while pregnant to open an account for M once he was here. I pulled out two jars and quickly deposited whatever change I could scrounge up in one and tossed a $20 bill in the other. The idea is that you drop your change in there and whatever paper you can live without. I've made a point of withdrawing an extra $20 when I go to the bank machine and it goes in there and we've put the proceeds from everything we've sold online in there as well.

It always sort of feels like "free" money to me. It's fun seeing the jars fill up and even more fun when you add it up at the end. I like knowing that this will be extra spending money or cash for a trip that we hadn't necessarily planned or budgeted for (though it is SO very needed). I also find this is an easy way to save without feeling deprived because the little amounts really do add up! We won't feel the pinch of withdrawing large amounts before we go away and it will eliminate the need to use credit.