Remember to have your kids apply for all bursaries that their schools offer. Having just graduated from York myself, I can confirm that York does offer many bursaries for students.

Even if it is not required, your kids should at least apply for OSAP - with all three at school, it should be easier for them to get OSAP, and this increases their likelihood of receiving bursaries and work/study and service-bursary positions at school.

While at York, I had a service-bursary job, which allowed me to work 125 hours over the year, and gave me a stipend of $2000 for the work; this might be an option to help your son cover his half of tuition. Don’t forget that books also add up to a hefty amount!

Some tips I have for books:
- Hold off on purchasing the books until necessary. Yes, the lineups will be long at the bookstore if you wait, but once you have the reading list, you’ll then be able to track down some of those books used
- Even better option: check which of the books are available at the library. Most people don’t think about that - in my final year, I paid under $250 for my book purchases (mostly course kits which I couldn’t obtain from the library/books for what I deemed my “important” classes or that I’d read again), and under $20 in late fees for the books I had to hold onto while writing essays. (I was looking at around $1500 for my books).

If you want more information/tips that your kids might be interested in, I’d be happy to chat with you via email.

I’ll scout about for a notebook, and keep it with me for jotting. We were audited two months after my daughter was born (23 years ago), and while that lovely young man’s presence in my dining room for seven solid days was rather taxing, he very kindly set us up with the paper ledger. It has worked till now, but the computer’s so much more accurate, especially when the bills reach such ghastly numbers!

Thanks again for all your help. Cheers, Mary from Toronto (Kipling/Bloor) - and I’ll catch you on the next blog!

I would keep the business and personal expenses on separate sheets. Remember to keep all receipts and bills for the business for each month in folders - just so, if the tax man comes to you, you have proof of expenses and what you earned too.

I don’t use actual jars - I have a note book that I carry with me to the store - each page is a jar - so right at the top - in BOLD writting, write your heading and how much you are allowed for that week. We get paid monthly, so everything is calculated monthly, then divided by 4 weeks.

I use one credit card, because, I am afraid to carry cash and plus the card gives me money back at the end of the year - each time I buy something, I write it under the right ‘jar page’ and subtract to see how much money is left in that ‘jar page’. The only money I carry is $15 a week for fresh vegis from our local market.

I keep all the receipts and when I get the statement, I pay it off in full. Each week gets a fresh set of ‘jar pages’.

I hope this helps Mary - once you get the hang of Excel, you will be whizzing through it, it’s easy, just takes a bit of time to get use to it.

Mary, I’m sorry to hear about your breast cancer - my thoughts and prayers are with you. Your children sound wonderful - I’m sure they will be fine. Take this time to do something for yourself, something you had always wanted to do. Don’t look at it as a negative, think of it as time for you and your partner to once more focus on yourselves. In 2 years, I’ll be sending my child off too - have started a list of things, I always wanted to do! It’s going to be quiet around here for sure.

Hope this helps, thanks.

Thank you so much to everyone for their super ideas. I have decided to simply take the present categories/columns I have in my ledger book and enter them into Excel - these would be: Month/Year across the top; next line Cash Disbursements heading, then next line horizontally it would read: Date; Information (who it’s payable to); Cash (was it cash or credit card); invoice no. (I assign every reciept a number - January is JA1, JA2, etc.); amount; bank charges/interest; auto gas; auto repair; auto parking; auto insurance; office supplies; advertising and promotions; gas; water; hydro; telephone (includes cell phones and internet); cable tv; printing/photos; computers/software; books/publications; magazines; miscellaneous (includes landscaping; expenses shared by both personal house and my husband’s home office; professional fees; medical/dental; charitable donations; property tax; professional dues; professional insurance; school tuition; courses; ETR expense; house insurance). I’m also thinking that I no longer need a miscellaneous column because on Excel I can have as many columns as I want. I probably should put car expenses on a separate sheet, house expenses on a separate sheet; a separate sheet for his income, and a separate sheet for income tax and gst paid. Any other suggestions? Anything I may have missed for a home office/self-employed person? My husband also works full-time at another job, so income tax for that income is deducted there already. Both of us also have medical/dental coverage with our employers, so our family is pretty much covered in that area (except for alternative meds/therapies I look to for my ongoing post-breast cancer treatment).

Then I need to start keeping “jars” for our family expenses - namely groceries and kids’ tuition/living expenses. Because I like to use our one credit card (free grocery points and easy to keep track) and debit card, I will have to have electronic jars, I think. All three of mine head off to university this fall - daughter heads up north to Nipissing for teacher’s college (renting an apartment and cooking on her own), middle son to York University (he’ll stay at home), and youngest son off to Ottawa for fashion design (living in an apartment and cooking on his own - ha!). All three are on the hook for half of the tuition fees. Yikes! May the good Lord help us all!

If anyone has any other ideas/tips/suggestions for either the business part of our expense tracking or how to save/put aside/keep track of the kids’ education/living expenses, I’m all ears!

I think the hardest part will be learning to navigate Excel since I do not use it regularly, and trying not to listen to the “silence” around me as the house slowly empties! Thank you!

Mary - Absolutely right, there is no right or wrong way of doing the excel sheet - sit down with a piece of paper and pencil and draw out a rough chart that will work for you, then go in and create your own personalized excel sheet - my sheet has changed over the years, as more expenses came in or stopped, so the sheet evolved.

It takes a bit of time in the beginning, but you will be so much happier once it is done, because it makes your life easier and everything is getting tracked and there are no surprises, because you can always refer to the previous month or year to see what expenses are coming up when, eg every Dec, my husband has to renew his driving license, which is one payment a year, so no surprises, look at the past year excel sheet, make a note on the present year excel sheet, start saving for the license payment each month, come December, you are all set.

Let us know how you are doing Mary and if you want our sheets - I’m sure we will all be happy to send them your way.

Thanks a million.

I have monthly tabs within one main spreadsheet for the year, and on each tab is the following (horizontally):
~ “Where” (purchased)
~ Date posted
~ How paid? (cheque #__/PAP [pre-authorized payment]/Credit card [stating which one]/cash/Internet Banking)
~ Amount Paid

Then I have the following subcategories that I will copy the amount paid into (this is how I determine the full amounts I spend for each category per month):
~ Entertainment (includes any meals out, any snacks purchased out, etc)
~ Shopping (this is for when I buy myself clothes or other things)
~ Toiletries (I don’t often use this one individually)
~ Bills (payments to my RRSP and savings are included here as well)
~ Food (this is grocery store stuff. No meals out can be included here)
~ Medical (if I need pills, bandages, etc)
~ Transportation (my metropass is a bill, but if I buy other tickets/take a taxi, the expense gets listed here)
~ Miscellaneous (this is where gifts purchased go to, or if the purchase doesn’t fit one of my other categories

All of these are then followed with the ever important:
~Total (this tallies up all of my expenses)
~ Description (in here, I account for my purchases, writing down the items I buy. This helps remind me that there is a lot of stuff that I don’t need, even if I want it, and it helps me know what the money was spent on)

A hint for those of you who may decide to start using an excel spreadsheet:

When setting up your columns, only enter an amount once. Don’t re-enter it, use the settings to help you out. In each cell, type ‘=’ then select the previous cell amount you want in there.
To complete functions where you add the amounts in the cell, type ‘=D5+E7′ (or whatever cells you click on). Once you spend some time setting it up, it’s easy to track.

Like NKM, if someone wants an example page, I’d be more than happy to help.

It drives me crazy the “access fees” and other nonesense that are household bills are padded with! Even if we literally turn our gas off, we still have to pay the gas company! OUTRAGEOUS! My “no frills” phone bill has a big list of extras that get me a little hot under the collar…. the cost of having a landline I suppose.

I have a question regarding the sneaky ways of billing: Often when I add a service, they will bill me for that service for an extra month, for example Shaw likes to add on an extra month’s fee to the first bill that the service is on. So you’re always paying a month ahead.

But then, when it comes time to disconnect that service, they’re not refunding any money!

Does this actually make sense somehow and I’m missing the point, or are all these companies basking in my ignorance?

Inquiring minds want to know

I start a new sheet every month. On the first of every month, I will check my balance of all my loans and saving accounts, and record the findings on my sheet.

I divide my expenses into 5 groups: fixed expenses, saving and loan repayment, groceries, eat-out, and discreationary items. After an expense has been made, I note down the item under one of those groups. And I have excel adding up all the numbers under each group.

With those numbers, I create a nice pie chat.

So I think my sheet is not as complicated as NKM’s.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way in doing it. So, Mary, just give it a shot!