Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind?

An e-mail was passed around work today, and apparently our brains have a limit on the amount of will power we have. So, with the recession in mind more and more people are thinking about money all the time, trying not to spend (at least they ought to be). The result of this is less or no will power when it comes to other things - such as eating!

I found it a pretty interesting read, although I'm not sure how much I'm going to buy into it. I found a copy of the artical printed by the New York Times. The artical is called Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind By SANDRA AAMODT and SAM WANG.

Investing Time

How much time do you spend on your personal finances? Is it enough, or too much?
I think when you first start budgeting and planning you can start investing a lot of time. I review my budget, and tracking numbers at the very least each week. I’m hoping to eventually do it just on pay periods, and then eventually monthly.

I would estimate that I spend about 2-6 hours each week, thinking about, writing about, or talking about my finances. It is overwhelming to say the least.

So one of my new goals will be to let the plans that I have set up work, what I mean to say is to just leave my auto debits-credits and what not alone. Plans need to have time to work and mature. This will be hard for me, and probably won’t happen right away. I need to be confident that I have thought them through and I will pay of my debt, and reach my savings goals.

I need to remember to have a little fun, and talk about things other then money too!

So, how much do you spend on your personal finances?

Timeframes - do you know what yours is?

Today I was going over my budget (again) and realized something. I set up some arbitrary goals that I am saving towards. The goals section of my blog has some arbitary dates for said goals. I haven't actually sat down to figure out if the plan I have will help me realize my goals in time.


I spent some time on excel and it looks like it will take about:

• Emergency Fund - 27.05 months


• House Deposit - 108.57 months


• RRSP - 106.35 months


• Planned Spending - 11.32 months


• Shares at Work - 14.73 months

I considered the current interest rates when I did the calculations, but I didn't count any extra funds I will get once my CC is paid off. As once that is paid off, the monies will go towards my student loans. That whole debt repayment process will take about a year and a half. That said, once that year and a half is up, most of that money will go into my savings.

I am also going to start reinvesting any tax refunds I receive in my RRSP's as well so this will help with that timeline. If I get any raises at work, I will also adjust my numbers accordingly. The house deposit timeline is a little deceiving because J also puts $300/month into the same savings account that I do. If I consider that it will take about 3 years (depending on interest rates).

So I think i'm fairly on track, but the numbers will defninatly deserve some re-vamping once my debt is paid off.

Do you have a plan to pay off your debt? Do you know if your plan will pay off your debt within a certain timeline?

Spend Less Money

Alternativly, to making more money, I could spend less money.

Give Me Back My Five Bucks recently posted asking her readers what their barebones budgets looked like.

This is what my barebones budget looks like:

This Hearth & Heart budget assumes that I am still employed. I have paid upfront for parking, which is why it and gas is still included. If I cancelled my cell phone I would be out $300, which is why it is still listed. I took out my Visa payment b/c I wanted to see how much $$ I would have leftover to put towards that.

So.

• Hearth & Heart = $1,109.55/month


• House Fund & RRSP (which is my future Hearth & Heart) = $ 400.00/month

I could potentially put away $1070 in total on my credit card each month! This includes the current repayment of $600. That is an additional $470.

This would mean giving up all personal spending, restaurants spending, my emerg fund, WOW, my 'other' fund, and my gifts fund. They would all go on hold. Until my silly CC is paid off and fed to a dog. A mean dog.

So... What do you think?

Making More Money

It always comes back to this doesn't it. Either make more money, or spend less money. These are the two options when it comes to being debt free and building a nest egg.

Below are a list of ideas I am tossing around for making more money. Keep in mind that I am up every morning at 6:30am and get home around 6pm (I'm done work at 4:30pm, hit the gym, and then have a 30-45min drive depending on traffice). J and I get home about the same time and then have to make dinner. So currently, our day runs from about 6:30am-7pm before we are finished for the day.

• A second job

A second job in the traditional sense doesn't work for me. Even as an evening waitress I would probably have to start shift around 5 or 6pm and then work until ast least 11-midnight but probably 2am on nights like Thursdays. I don't think this would work because the lack of sleep and proper eating (bad habits would develop) would put pressure on how successfully I can do my *real* job.

• Do odd jobs

I do a lot of Costco trips for my Great Aunt. I could perhaps expand this to do weekend trips for Lots of little old ladies/gentlement. I was thinking that I could do up a flyer (to leave at bus stops) and put an add in local community bulitans. I could charge $15/trip and do all of their running around. This could potentially expand to small odd jobs (my aunt asks us to do a lot of lightbulb changes, taking heavy trash out ect).

This could work b/c it could be done fairly easily on the weekends.

• Rent out a room

We recently had a roomate leave, and May was the first month we split the bills (utilities and rent) four ways instead of five. I am really enjoying the space, and quite, and stress free environment, but the pocket b0ok has definatly taken a hit. One of my other roomates is leaving for the summer, she is (awesomely) still going to be paying rent, but utilities will be split 3 ways instead of 4. This will *hopefully* balance out b/c bills are usually less in the summer (heating is next to nothing) then in the winter.

• Any other ideas???

Those three ideas are the best that I can come up with for my working-life situation. I don't want to take on something full time or that isn't flexible b/c I don't want to sacrifice my LIFE for my DEBT REPAYMENT. My debt isn't a huge mass of money, but it's this irritating little itch on my back that I just can't reach.

Unexpected Expenses - okay, maybe I should have planned for this.

Something new has popped up again. Maybe this is why it's so hard to stay on track. I need summer tires. Well, I needed summer tires. Growing up in my family, there is one thing you don't neglect on your vehicle and that is proper summer and proper winter tires. That's right, you need TWO sets of tires.

I did find an excellent deal!

I managed (through my boyfriend) to get 4 Hankook Mileage Plus II's for $322.06!! This is an amazing price... I was quoted as high as $560 to buy and have them installed. I bought them at the cheaper price, and J was able to install them at his shop!

So, it's wayyy less then I was expecting (I figured it I would have to shell out $500) but it's still not $$ that I have available right now. So, I put it on my credit card (not yet updated in the tracking bars). Further to this I recently received a ticket for not displaying my car registration properly (Grrrr to Alberta for having different rules than BC!). That is going to cost me about $300.

So... I have about $700 of unexpected costs this week. *sighs*

I am having troubles decieding if this counts as an 'emergency'. Do I use my emergency fund to pay for this? Do I use part of it? or - do I had two more payments to my credit card debt repament. I really don't want to do that.

or - do I spend less money, or do I make more money?

There are a lot of options here...and I just don't know what the right one is.

Updated Tracking Numbers

Today was pay day - so I have updated all of my tracking numbers. I am quite pleased to say that I am on track with my credit card. I now owe $1368 on it! My student loans are creeping downward ever so slowly and I am really looking forward to being able to up the debt repayment on those soon.

In terms of savings I hit the 25% to my goal with my EFund. I've manged to sock away 907.50 towards my goal of $3550!

J and I's house deposit is also inching up - making good progress there. We have saved 5% of our goal of $35,000.

My new bank account that I set up with ING is working out well too! I now 'pay myself' an allowance of $250/every two weeks. Originally it was going to be $300, but I think until the CC is paid off, $250 is more realistic. So that $$ goes into a seperate account. This is for all of my variables from fun money to groceries. So far, so good!

I have made some changes to my budget as well. This budget is for both the months May and June. With having the seperate account for all of my variables (which has noooo overdraft) it should be *impossible* for me to overspend if I don't use my CIBC debit/credit cards.