By Couple of Sense

Sarah and Scott are personal finance bloggers and coaches. They have paid off debt, paid for a wedding in cash, bought a house, completed home renovations, gone back to school and handled everything else along the way without going into debt. They want to share how you can do that as well! When they aren't writing or talking about money you can find them at home, working on their home, in their veggie garden, binge watching some TV and snuggling with their cat.
Connect in real time on Twitter: @coupleofsense

June 14, 2017

Wages Gro-o-ow In Ontario!

A Look At The Proposed Increase To Minimum Wage In Ontario

One thought that is shared amongst almost all millennials is that the cost of living is increasing at a much faster rate than income. In a perfect world, there would be parity between inflation of costs and inflation of wages. This isn’t a perfect world though and these trends tend to work more on reaction rather than cooperation. After much fanfare – Ontario is on the cusp of raising the minimum wage. This is part of the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017. Due to the impact on retail and food service chains, the reactions are mixed. These employers often use a large number of minimum wage (or close to) workers to operate their business. I believe this is both a good, and necessary step towards improving our economy. Only time will tell if the effect is positive or negative.

June 7, 2017

We Are Having a Baby

Huge secret to share. This is my last week of work. Why? Because I’m going on maternity leave as I’m 38 weeks pregnant and we are having a baby.

I KNOW, RIGHT? We are the worst.

We kept this one super quiet. SUPER quiet.

May 31, 2017

What It Takes To Be A Millionaire!

From A Non-Millionaire’s Perspective!

There are over 1 million millionaires in Canada. Cross the border to the South and that number skyrockets to around 16 million. So in a sample of approximately 357 million people – almost 5% of us are millionaires. I wrote a post not that long ago about how the value of a million dollars has shrunk considerably. I still believe being a millionaire has a certain prestige to it even in today’s world economy. So if your goal is to have the title of millionaire – what is that going to take? I’m not talking about strategy – I’m talking about what you need to actually have to be a millionaire.

May 24, 2017

Couple of Sense in the Capital – Our Trip to Ottawa

A weekend getaway:

Sometime in late March we decided that it would be really nice to get away for a weekend. The last time we had gone on vacation was when we went to Las Vegas to celebrate our second wedding anniversary in 2013. It had been quite a long time for us and we figured it would be nice to get away even for a couple of days. We spent some time looking for a place to go. We knew we were not going to have a lot of time so we wanted to keep it in Ontario. After looking at a few places about an hour or two away from the city we decided that we would make a trip to Ottawa (our nation’s capital) for a weekend.

May 17, 2017

Budgeting on a Commission

A Few Ideas on How to Budget When Your Salary is Commission-Based

There are a few different ways to receive payment for work performed; you can be an hourly employee, working on a fixed salary, completing a project for a contracted amount, or working for a percentage of the sales you make (AKA Commission). There can also have a combination of these methods of payment – you can work on a salary up to a certain amount of hours and then qualify for overtime at an hourly rate. An employee can have a base salary and get a commission for sales. Generally speaking you wouldn’t have both a salary and a contract payment but almost any other combination is possible. I recently started in a position with a sales role. While I’ve been in sales in one way, shape or form before, this was my first foray into a pay structure that involved commission. I have a base salary, but the question came up – how do you budget for commission?
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May 10, 2017

Can You Save Too Much?

A couple of months ago Des from Half-Banked had a blog post about how to spend or save your tax refund for maximum happiness. One of the points was to treat yourself; guilt-free. (Check her site out if you have not already!) Her point was if you are responsible with 90% of it you don’t have to feel guilty about spending 10% of it. It’s a great concept and it really works for people who are more likely to spend 90% and save 10%. The problem with that is that I can’t seem to put that into practice myself. So I was wondering if I should feel odd for saving/investing 100% and if I’m missing out on something.

May 3, 2017

Why Being Money Nerds Makes Us Happy

Time For a Money Nerd-Out!

Ever since before we got married Sarah and I have been money nerds. When we launched Couple of Sense we had an outlet (besides each other) to talk about money. This outlet lets you read into the inner money dork in us, our concepts and habits that really drive our voice. We may not be completely unique in our dweebing out (1^st paragraph and I already have used three variations of nerd). What is important to us in our budget is analytics. In order to have pertinent stats, we need to gather data. This is where we really rev our engines.
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April 26, 2017

What Is The Value?

I work a stressful job for the industry I’m in. It’s not brain surgery, active military duty or coal mining however it is fast-paced, active and I have to think on my toes and dance every day. I love my job and it’s the best role I have had in the 9 years I have worked for this company.

April 19, 2017

Judging Up The Place

As personal finance bloggers, we are extremely passionate about helping people with budgets, saving money and investing. One of the downsides of being so passionate about money is that we have to constantly keep ourselves in check regarding judging how other people do things – especially how people spend their money.

April 12, 2017

How To Make Budget Decisions

Making Budget Decisions

When was the last time you made budget decisions? Changing your budget is important. A good budget makes a difference between financial success and crisis. This isn’t just making sure your extra money is moved into the right investment vehicles. This could also be dealing with a loss of income or other financial setbacks.