Blogging Income

Do any of you make any?

Since the inception of this blog, I  have made a grand total of $27.35 from AdSense.  As it's such a small amount, I've never requested a payment - and probably won't for the foreseeable future.

I have on the other hand been approached by a few people who have/administer websites and wanted to either put up a guest post with links or have a link under my advertisement link list on the right hand side of this page.  I haven't made a lot of extra money this way but there has been more interest lately.  That said, I never intended my blog to be one that produces an income - I see it as a nice side benefit.  The only advise I can give is to make sure that you have an e-mail address posted on your site so that potential advertisers known how to reach you.

After paypal took their cut and the funds were changed into CAD - my most recent bit of blogging income totals $175.  After moving the money to my main account, I have made an extra student loan payment of the same amount.

My new student loan balance is $2,923.68.


It feels so incredible to have my student loan balance starting with a $2.... when this sucker is paid off...we're so going to celebrate (and it might just be sooner than we think).

Student Loan Update

I ran some projection numbers on our joint account, and if we stick to our budget/spending plan -  we just might be able to pay off my student loan this month....I've talked with Jordan about it, and he is 100% behind us using the joint account to get the loan dealt with.

I currently owe $3,096.81 on my loan and it's at 2.25% interest rate.  In August, my regular student loan payments total $600 - leaving me with approximatively $2,500 owing.

If we stick to our plan, we'll have about $2,400 left over in August - so If I just save about $200 bucks of my own personal allowance - it'll be done.

It would be an incredible achievement...and both Jordan and I want this pretty bad.  So, cross your fingers for us - lets stick to the budget.

Student Loan Update

It is a little awkward to see, but I wanted to share with your the progress on my Alberta Student Loan.  At the time I captured this image, my $300 payment on July 9, 2010 hadn't been processed yet.  When it does, my total amount owing will be $3393.26.  That means I have about 11 and a half payments left!  

One Car Family

Currently Jordan and I have a small truck (which we just paid off) and a small car.  We've decided, in the interest of becoming debt free as fast as possible and fast tracking our savings for a home of our own - to sell my car.

The small truck is the most versitile of our vehicles (for camping etc.) and the car, w/ its low mileage is the most sellable.

We've listed the car for $2,500, in hopes that we'll be able to come close to the $2,000 mark. Needless to say, I spent a few hours yesterday cleaning the car out and making it pretty for it's new owner.  In addtional to the money we'll get for the car, we'll also save on insuring a second vehicle and gas for a second vehicle - of course those costs will increase for the pickup - but it should sitll work out to be less.

Jordan and I will carpool, as i can drive right by his work on the way to mine.  In the summer, he'll likely walk/bike home.  Come winter, we'll re-evaulatue and might use some transit.

Pay Day Today!

so, today is kind of a big day.

why is today a big day you ask?

For one, today is the first pay with my new salary PLUS I had 21 hours of overtime paid out.  So I have a big fat pay.  As a result of my big fat pay -

I'm paying $1,100 towards my Canada Student Loan

That leaves $472.11 remaining.

wow that feels good.

I think the rest of my bi-weekly budget is pretty self explanatory - not a lot going on.

$300 bi-weekly

Further to my post last week about the eventual demise of my Alberta Student Loan, I have changed my repayment plan on my loan.  I was going to just do extra payments through onilne transfers but, after thinking about it some, I thought that was too easy to not do.

Effective May 14, 2010 my default payment will be $300 bi-weekly.  From the spreadsheet below, I will just have to make one extra payment of about $15.00 to have my loan paid off before Christmas, 2010.

So, I'm pretty excited about that and pumped that I won't be able to cop out.

April's a Big Month

Not only do I get a raise this month and a third pay cheque.  I'll also have 96 hours of overtime paid out.  I'm going to make some huge strides towards some of my goals and be able to re-evaulate my current goals.

The following bi-weekly budgets (April 16th and April 30th) have some pretty big assumptions about what my new pay will look like and how much my overtime is worth - but I'm hopefully that I've done the math right.

They key things to notice are the gift fund categories and the CSL Lump Sum Pay.

What the above means, is that come the end of April I will have paid off my Alberta Student Loan and reached my Christmas savings goals!!!

That's prety darn incredible if I do say so myself.

$850 towards debt!

Today's is a short post, but a good one!

Jordan and I received our tax returns 6 days after we filed them (using e-file)!  The same day we took the money and applied it to our debt.

Jordan put $400 towards the truck loan and I put $450 towards my Canada Student Loan!  It felt so good to put a lump sum on those suckers.

The truck loan is now just cents under $1,100!! My Canada Student Loan is now $1,887 and change - for a total student loan debt of about $7,090!

It feels real good!! 

Student Loan Update: Need $240/bi-weekly.

I got off to a bit of a rough start with my debt repayment goals this year with a family emergency that came up in the beginning of February. Now that I have settled that – I’d like to re-visit one of my goals.

My primary goal this year is to pay off my student loans and finally become debt free.

As of today, I owe $7,539.90. I owe $5,204.07 (2.25%) to my Alberta Loan and $2,835.83 (4.75%) to my Canada Student Loan. I’ve mentioned this before, but to any new readers – I currently focus lump sum payments on my CSL because it has the lowest balance and the highest interest rate.

My default repayment schedule is $75/month to each loan.

So I did up this little chart on my spreadsheet to see what I need to do to get these suckers paid off by the end of the year. I’ve added interest but considered the total interest I would pay for the year if I didn’t pay off any of the balance rather then figuring out the interest owing after each payment made (much easier to figure out and I prefer to round up). For context, I have 10 monthly payments left and 21 pay periods left.

It would make the most sense (to me) to pay an additional $240 to my Canada Student Loan until it is paid off, and then make that payment plus the $75 default payment to my Alberta Student Loan once the first is paid off.  In my student loan plan of attack post, I thought I could get away with lump sum payments of $175 - but I now think I need this extra $65 bi-weekly to make it.

Does that make sense?  I'm a missing anything?  Is this doable? 

I've looked four pay periods ahead (until the end of April) - and it looks like I can IF IF IF I stay away from my credit card and stick my variable spending allotments and don't go over.

Student Loan Plan of Attack....

One of my goals for 2010 is to completely pay off my student loans.  Now that we're into the swing of things for 2010, I thought I'd review my plan to get it paid off.

The combined balances (after today's deposit) are standing at $8,007.  The Alberta loan is sitting at $5,342 and the Canada loan is sitting at $2,665.  Here's a visual of my plan:

As mentioned in my goals post, I'll need to come up with about $2,500 extra (plus a couple hundred for interest).  I haven't got a chance to do my taxes yet, but once I get my paperwork in, in a few weeks, I'll be sorting that out.  I'm hoping that I can get a solid $2,000 from taxes to put towards my student loans - otherwise... i'm going to have to figure out how to make more money.  Although April is when we get raises at work - it's hard to say what will happen this year.

It's pretty sweet that I'll get my Canada student loan paid off within a week of Jordan paying off his truck!  July will be a month for celebration!!

Debt Update

I don't believe that I posted an update on my total debt for a while, though I think that most of you know it is down to just student loans.  As my student loan payments just went through, I thought I would post an update.

I am 38.91% towards my goal of being 100% debt free.  Slowly but surely, it's coming along.

I've been playing with my 2010 budget some, and have hopes of increasing my student loan debt repayment to about $500/month. This will likely start in January, 2010.

I have read on some blogs, that many people feel that student loans aren't/shouldn't be a priority.  I think that because my other debt is paid off, it should be my number one.  Jordan and I chatted about this, and he is going to make sure his truck loan is paid off in short order as well.

Planning For the Future - Episode Two

Yesterday I wrote about making a plan with the funds I'll have 'left over' each pay period, and I briefly mentioned that the money could go towards my student loans.  I'm actually quite surprised that folks didn't put a larger emphasis and paying down this debt. Perhaps it is because student loans are traditionally looked as as 'good debt'

Part of the conversation my mom and I had was about aligning my student loan debt repayment plan to reflect our goal of having all of our debts paid of prior to buying a home in a few years.  With Jordan ramping up his truck loan payments, I think I should increase my payments as well.

So, below I present two cases.  One is to apply this years 'left over' $1,300 towards my debt AND re structure my payments to have them paid off in two years.  The other is to assume the lump sum goes somewhere else and JUST re structure the payments to have them paid off in two years.

As of August, 2009 I owe the following:

Alberta Student Loan Owing: $ 5,593.78

Canada Student Loan Owing: $ 3,118.16 

Scenario One: Use the $1,300 towards student loan debt.


I would of course use that money towards the debt with the highest interest, which happens to be the debt with the lowest principal owing which would bring my balances to the following:

Alberta Student Loan Owing: $ 5,593

Canada Student Loan Owing: $ 1,818

If I continued my current payment ($75) as a minimum payment on the AB loan and had a payment of $375, it would take me approximately 5 months to pay off the Cnd loan.  After that I would have a full $450 to pay down the remainder of the AB loan.  In those five months, my AB loan would be brought down to (with the $75/month payment) $5,218.  It would take me about 12 months to pay this amount off with payments of $450/month. For a total debt reduction timeline of 17 months.


Scenario Two: Use the $1,300 towards something else entirely.


If I had a minimum payment of $75 on the AB loan and had a payment of $375, it would take me approximately  9 months to pay off the Cnd loan.  After that I would have a full $450 to pay down the remainder of the AB loan.  In those nine months, my AB loan would be brought down to (with the $75/month payment) $4,918.  It would take me about 11 months to pay this amount off with payments of $450/month.  For a total debt reduction timeline of 20 months.

So using scenario one will only actually save me about 3 months if I choose to increase the money dedicated to paying off my student loans by $300/month AND use an extra $1,300 to help pay them down.

That's not actually a very big difference between the two.  Of course, I would actually have to be able to come up with $300/month for this to work as well, which should be doable because I did have $500/month going towards my credit card debt.

With that in mind, I don't think I'll use the $1,300 for my loan - but I do think I'll look at increasing my payments again.

$15/month

Over my lunch break I was checking the status of my student loans. With interest rates fluctuating so much, a greater percentage of my debt repayment has been going to the principal amount. I started playing with the calculators offered on the sites (Edulink & NSLCS) for my Canadian and Alberta student loans.

Since my loans went into repayment status I have left the amounts at their defaulted payment schedule which was:

Edulink: $65.87/month
NSLCS: $69.12/month

I've known that small amounts can make big changes - but this actually surprised me. I have changed my repayment amounts to $75/month for each loan. This increase goes into effect for my June payment and is an effective increase of $15.01.

• This has shorted my repayment schedule by 28 months!

Through this change. I will pay off my Edulink loan 21 months sooner and my NSLCS loan 7 months sooner then previously scheduled!

• 28 months is 2.3 years

I will continue to make changes and put more money towards these loans as it becomes available through cutting expenses, and paying off other debt - but I feel really good about these changes.

I will be revising/updating my budget for June in the next week and posting the changes as well as posting my goal updates.