I used to be a huge huge fan of Boxing Day (not to the point where I would start lining up at 7pm on Christmas day in order to score a flat screen TV) when I was younger, but for me, it has lost its lustre.  I think part of it is the realization that most of the merchants just put out their crap leftover from the previous year and try and sell it at deep (and lately I find, not so deep) discounts.

Uh… What’s Boxing Day?

For those of you that don’t know what Boxing Day is (which is basically anyone NOT from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, or Canada), according to Wikipedia, it occurs on December 26 and its origin is said to be from the Roman era where the more well-to-do place boxes of goodies outside the Churches for those less fortunate.

Why is it Bad?

Now it has become a mass frenzy of consumerism (an extension of the associated Christmas consumerism of course).  Not only do you have Boxing Day where people line up at insane hours of the day just to wait to be the first one to get the 1 of 5 available $899 50″ flat screen television, you get Boxing Week too, which basically is Boxing Day for the entire week.  It’s a sign for the public to BUY BUY BUY and… not stop buying.

It’s now EVEN EASIER (which is scary for me because I hate line ups) to participate in Boxing Day.  You can do it from the safety of your own home (without having the brave the mad crowd) by participating in the Cyber version of Boxing Day.  I find this much more dangerous than shopping in person because you don’t have to wait in line, you don’t have to get dressed and brave the cold, and you don’t have to find parking.

How to Avoid the Boxing Day Hangover?

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Given all the recent talk and hubbub about the Occupy Vancouver/Portland/San Francisco/ New York (insert big city here) movement, I started thinking about the current state of our economy and the dismal state of our current generation.  I know.  I’m being a Debbie Downer.

I came across an interesting article in the local Vancouver magazine by Tyee Bridge, aptly named Going Going Gone.  It is about whether generation Y is should be actually renamed generation F.

Generation F doesn’t stand for Generation Facebook, but Generation F stands for Generation F&#(d

Due to Vancouver’s rising real estate costs and general high cost of living, many young middle income earner families (whose household income is in the healthy $100,000 range) are being squeezed out of the housing market.  Unfortunately, the salaries and wages in Vancouver are not increasing despite the exorbitant increase in real estate cost.

I know that in other cities with high real estate prices, like New York, or even San Francisco, the salaries and wages have kept up with the cost of real estate, but for an unknown reason, this doesn’t seem to be happening just yet in Vancouver.  Many people are drawn to Vancouver’s beauty, charm, delicious food, and of course, developing hipster culture, however they are unable to afford living here.

Many families are raising their children in apartments or even basement suites due to the high cost of housing here.  Either that, or they are moving to the suburbs and commuting in to Vancouver for work.

I personally believe I will never be as successful as my parents were (haha, how’s that for positive thinking?).  I’m not complaining, I’m just being realistic.  Inflation has gone up to extreme levels and income has not.  My parents bought their home in the 70′s for $100,000 and now it is worth well over a million.  I know that incomes weren’t as high then but I still think that the cost of real estate is very high relatively speaking.  I am 110% sure that the home we bought recently will not be worth 10x our initial purchase price in 40 years.  Personally, I absolutely love living here but I’m not sure what this place will be like in a 5 or 10 years with the rapidly changing city scene and real estate market.  If we move though, we would probably end up renting out our home to keep some sort of stake in this popular city.

I know that we as generation Y are given a bad rap for not working hard like our parent’s baby boomer generation, but I do feel that it is harder to work hard and be successful in our current society.

That’s why I think it’s of even more importance for us as generation Y to be able to  “think outside of the box” and generate passive income or different income streams, be frugal, and save for multiple rainy days…otherwise we would probably be even more screwed than we already are.

Readers, what do you think? Do you think we belong to Generation F or do you think there’s a glimmer of hope for us 20-somethings?

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The following is a guest post (thank you Andrew for listening to my desperate plea for help LOL) from Andrew Hallam aka “The Millionaire Teacher”.  I am so thrilled to have him as a guest poster as he writes articles for The Globe and Mail, he has a new book coming out in October called The Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules about Wealth You Should have Learned in School, and he is a fantastic personal finance writer.  He teaches high school English at an International School in Singapore and I am envious of his lifestyle and life in general.  Enjoy!

If you haven’t spent an entire month in Thailand, there’s probably one of three reasons:

• The middle-aged / elderly European gentlemen who strut around with their teenaged Thai brides or “companions” give you the creeps.

• Walking by bars containing nothing but slinky women playing pool in the middle of the afternoon smacks of an uncomfortable underworld Thai tourist brochure.

• The costs of a month long (plus) holiday isn’t within your budget

If any of the three above are keeping you from hunkering down in the Jewel of the Orient, let me offer a solution.

Ton Sai Beach:

No arm-candy toting Teutonic Sugar Daddies

No prostitutes

Clean, off-season accommodation for $8 a night.

A haven for rock-climbers, Ton Sai Beach is a place where everybody learns your name. I’ve made roughly 20 trips to Thailand, but I’ve never found a place as homey as this. Most of the travelers staying there are (like our good host) young and thrifty—while others are just plain young and broke. But that’s the beauty of Ton Sai Beach. You don’t need plenty of money to stay there. And the accommodations are fabulous: chalets with ceilings fans, impeccably clean linen sheets, and bathrooms that are scrubbed spotlessly on a daily basis.

And here’s the best part: the (typically) dull folks who prefer to stay at the Hilton or the Shangri La don’t bother to show up at Ton Sai. Ok, perhaps I’m being a bit too judgmental, or hypocritical. My wife and I do spurge on the odd five star evening, but we’ve never left a swanky resort with a new friend.

Needing some time to chill, and a place to do put some final editing touches on a book I just finished, we visted Ton Sai in early August.

We flew to Krabi, from Singapore, costing roughly $120 return.

And from the airport, we grabbed a public tourist bus which took us to Ao Nang. The Lonely Planet describes it as a dead-end jumping point to more desirable destinations, but that’s one of the things I love about The Lonely Planet. They aren’t always right.

Offering Thai food, western food, and massages for less than $8 an hour, it’s a perfectly relaxing spot.  The main drag runs parallel to a perfectly sandy beach where you can swim in some of Thailand’s most beautiful waters, or just hang out on the beach.

We spent a day in Ao Nang—enjoying three massages (yeah, we’re a couple of bums) while chuckling at some of the varying accommodation prices.

You could stay at the JMansion for roughly $12 a night (which we eventually did) or splurge on any number of places, a few hundred meters away, charging into the hundreds of dollars for a bed and pillow…for the gullible.

A word about JMansion: the Lonely Planet suggests that it’s so popular that you need to book your room with the kind of advance you’d normally reserve for a Canadian MRI. (Editor’s Note: LOL! Canadian MRI.  That’s funny but sad at the same time )

But the Lonely Planet has doomed this place by putting such a coveted title on it. We nearly didn’t bother to check it out, which would have been a mistake. It wasn’t full at all…not even close.

Taking a $4 boat ride to Ton Sai Beach brought us to heaven. And before long, if you make the same trip, you’ll make lifelong friends with the world-travelers choosing to climb the amazing limestone cliffs, sometimes for months at a time.

The food is amazing, and most of the visitors at Ton Sai eat at the same alley, where you can gorge yourself on delightful Thai dinners for less than $3 a plate, while sharing stories and tips of your daily adventures.

(note* 70 Thai Baht is $2.30 Canadian)

As someone who never rides roller coasters, and whose fear of heights keeps him off ladders, I was reluctant to try climbing. But we hooked up with an eccentric, deep-thinking Australian and a Texan rock-climbing master who encouraged us to give it a whirl.

As a guy who had three ribs removed during surgery two years ago, I was pretty cautious about giving it a go. But I soon realized that I could have trusted any of those “tourists” on Ton Sai. Nobody was pretentious. Everybody was helpful. And each of them had their stories—whether they were escaping from the rat race, whether they had never entered it in the first place, or whether they were right out of high school, seeking a bit of adventure.

 $8 per night

I realize one thing.

If you’re young, and you haven’t taken a trip such as this, then you must.

Life has a way of sucking you into its vortex of responsibilities.

And as much as we’re supposed to be “financially responsible” there’s something to be said for
extending yourself for a bit of adventure, even if it financially sets you back a bit.

How much would such a trip cost?

Here are my estimates for one month’s vacation from Canada or the U.S.:

Airfare:  $1,400

Accomodation:  $240

Food and Drinks:  $450

Twenty massages: $160

Miscellaneous: $140

Grand Total: $2400

And if you do happen to see a Middle-Aged Sugar Daddy on a rock with his arm candy, take your hat off to the guy.

He’s going to be interesting.

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Just an extra update this week for y’all.  Since I am living the el-cheapo-no-time-to-myself student lifestyle now, and since we’re on the topic of text books and students and whatnot, I thought that some fellow students might be interested in a contest for students run by RBC (that’s Royal Bank for you non-bank connoisseurs).  If you’re interested in winning $5000 (top prize), $3000 (2nd prize), or even $1000 (eight $1000 prizes) you should probably enter Royal Bank’s new contest- “Show Arbie and WIN”.  In case you’re not familiar with Arbie, he’s the cute little cartoon guy in the blue suit. He wears a hat and looks uber friendly.  If you’re interested in the contest (IMO, easy easy way to win- you don’t even need spend your time writing an essay LOL), go to RBC’s facebook fan page.

To enter the contest, you, as a student, will have to:

1. Like RBC Royal Bank on Facebook

2. Print Arbie (I think a colour printer might be helpful here)

3. Get creative and take a picture of Arbie that shows him how $1,000 would make your student life fantastic.

4. Upload your best photo and share it with your friends and family to get as many votes as possible (so if you have lets say, 10,000 twitter followers and 2000 Facebook friends, I think this is where it will come in handy.  Facebook addicts, unite!).

Along with a nod from the panel of judges, the photo with the most votes wins $5,000!  Or $3000 and $1000 if you get a lot of votes but aren’t numero uno.

Good luck!! And if anyone asks you, you’re procrastinating, but it’s productive procrastination!

Note: I received compensation from Social Media Group for this post.

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I know I may seem all pompous and superwoman-like when it comes to not splurging and not succumbing to being a victim of consumerism.  I’ll have you know that this was not the case a few years ago.  I was a shopping addict, especially when it came to shoes and clothes, my two greatest vulnerabilities.  I would buy on impulse.  I would buy clothes when I was bored.  I would buy shoes when I needed a little emotional stability (aka shopping therapy).  I identified with Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic.  I fortunately didn’t rack up any credit card debt, though I didn’t save much money and basically spent everything I earned.

My closet was getting fuller and fuller and my bank account was getting emptier and emptier.

One day I looked in my closet and wasn’t really happy with the shoes or the clothes in it.  I realized that buying for the sake of buying had to stop.

Set a Goal

What helped me stop shopping without a purpose was that I set a goal.  I started setting a target amount of money I wanted to save per month.  I wanted to save that money instead for a big purchase, like my first trip.  The trip cost $2000 and it was set to happen right after my university life finished.  I wanted to use my money for something I really valued.  I didn’t value the clothes… they didn’t make me feel good.  Traveling makes me feel good.  So I decided to funnel my energy towards that instead.

Pay Yourself First

When I started setting a specific amount of money to save per month, I paid myself first.  I moved my money from my main banking account to a high interest savings account that was only accessible online.  This helped me feel poor whenever I looked at my banking account.  When I felt poor, I didn’t feel justified to spend my money on frivolous non-neccessities like clothes and shoes.

Separate Needs vs Wants

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