Pay Day

Well, it's pay day today.... I try to have all of my automatic debits to various savings accounts, and visa payments come out on pay dates. That way, when I check my online banking in the morning, what I have is what i have. This works for the most part (except ING has a few days latency).

Of course, you have to keep in mind all of your fixed costs that may come out of your account throughout the weeks. If you feel that you always have less money the first half or second half of the month I would suggest looking at your cash flow. Perhaps one of your automatic payments should be moved to a different part of the month.

Give it a try to see if it helps you too!

Updated $$ Sidebar

Hey there,

I've updated the $$ lines on my side tracker there --->>

everything has gone in the proper direction excpet for my planned spending, but hey, it's planned spending, i expect that to go up and down a bit.

:)

Tax Time

I wanted to say a few words about tax time as well...

I think I'm going to get a refund of around $1500... and it's ALL going to hit my Visa... i'm just waiting for a few more Tslips and it should be a go. I have to tell you, it's going to feel so very good to have such a big chunk of that credit card paid off!!

Support

okay.. so i really really failed at keeping track of things.. so much so that last night I really felt like I was drowing.

so i was talking to Jordan about this, and I wanted to relate the conversation to you. I think that support is one of the largest parts of setting goals and sticking to them. Having someone to support your goals and encourage you is a great step to sticking to your plan!

Okay... so I pretty much failed at keeping tack of things for the first week of February...I've got to rein in and get serious about this if it's going to work.

The hardest part of keeping to a budget, is the tracking what i actually spend part - the hard part.

So.. I think today, I will go to the dollar store, near where I work and buy an 'inbox' here I will put all of my recepts for each week, so that they are in one place and easy to track.

*crossing my fingers*

Sticking to it...

okay... so I've owned up and made a plan. I don't think that there is any sense in making a plan unless your going to stick to the plan. To do this I'm going to create an excel sheet and track all of my expenses for February 2009. I will summarize the data each week in to my budget categories to show you the progress.

I hope that things will be on track! If I underspend, I will push the excess funds onto my credit card debt as that is the one I would like to be able to pay off first.

:)

Next Steps....

Yesterday I owned up to my debt and my savings goals, the good and the bad.

I think that the next step to becoming debt free is making a plan to dig myself out. I have set out to develop a budget myself. I have built in a buffer in that I make a little more than what my total expenses add up to. This way, if I over spend in one category, I don't go into my overdraft or have to use a credit card. I have essentially given myself an overdraft of my own income (this is an idea I got from reading Gail Vaz Oxlade's blog).

My Budget:

Referral Codes

I had someone ask about where I've hidden my referral codes on this blog. I hadn't actually posted any (exept for Swagbucks)

ING Orange Code - 17396382S1

SwagBucks referral link - Click Here

i have burried this post to february, 2009 although it was written in august 2009

Owning Up

I think that the first step to clearing out any debt you may have, and planning for long term savings you first have to own up to yourself. This is what this blog is for me - owning up to my debt, and making the conscious choice to eliminate it.

So.. here goes.

My Alberta student loan is sitting at a 3% variable interest rate, I'm making payments at just over $60/month. My loan term is currently sitting at 112 months.

My Canada student loan is sitting at a 5.5% variable interest rate. I'm also making payments at just over $60/month. The loan term is 63 months.

My student loans entered into repayment in November 2008. Although I could have ramped up payments during the first 6 months after graduation to avoid interest, that didn't happen as much as I would have liked.

My credit card's interest rate is 11%, to have that rate I have to pay an annual fee of $22. Right now, that's worth it for me. Once the debt is down, I will re-consider if an annual fee is worth a lower interest rate.

I don't think it's fair for a person to only look at there debt (it's also depressing)... so lets have a look at my savings goals...

The goal for my emergency savings is to have 3 months of fixed expenses covered.

The goal for my planned spending is to have $1000. Planned spending for me includes gifts, car repairs, and other small life expenses such as these.

I picked a random goal for my RRSP line (which is actually two RRSP's). My goal (for now) will be $50,000.

My house deposit fund is my most recent endevour. This is actually a joint account with my boyfriend. We would like to be able to buy a house in the next two to three years - and this fund is what's going to help us do it. I started the account with $50 (just last week) and we are going to depost $150/week to boost this fund. We plan on rotating weeks so its fair, and this also matches up with our pay cheques from work.

okay... thats it...

i realize that my debt might not be as overwhelming as some - but it's mine, and it's scary... and i'm going to take you through getting rid of it.

Debt/Savings Meter

Wow! So after a night and an afternoon of searching I finally found what i was looking for. A sidebar meter where I can measure both my savings goals and my debt repayment progress! I will try to write some simple instructions for other new bloggers to use in the near future.