February Spend Update

I've just finished February's spend report - but thought I would post it along side January for comparison.

You may remember I mentioned it had been a busy month - the gas bill sure shows it!  We're way down on groceries - but I would expect my mom's was higher than it normally is...I also traveled a lot for work and meals were comped.

We don't usually spend a lot on pets outside of dog food - but this was an extra bag to leave at my  mom's house along with a new leash for Aries.

Vehicle Maintaince - we had a 12 point inspection done for hitting 12,000 KM's on the Kia - everything is in good shape there and also had a few car washes and other odds and ends.

The Clothes bill this month is actually for drycleaning.  Jordan is wearing suits and dress shirts again so I expect to see this as a semi-regular occurrence going forward.

I registered for my fourth courses for the program I'm taking in school.  I've already been reimbursed through work for this one.

Great Aunt Izzy!

One of my Great Aunts lives in an Assisted Living Facility here in the city.  When I was visiting last week, I snapped a picture of her latest masterpiece.

This, is a cactus.

My Money, My Choices

I've just signed up for Gail Vaz Oxlade's newest project: My Money, My Choices.

I'm wondering if anyone else has decided to go through her process?  I've just registered and am at Level 1 - Financial Literacy.  I think I'll probably get through the first couple of phases pretty quickly (I've kept a spend record for three years, so that'a tick box for the first activity).

I haven't found a community or team to work with yet - but I wanted to log in and get started to see what it was all about first.

I would love to hear your thoughts on if you've started the program, heard of it but aren't interested - or anything else!

As I work through the process, and the activities, i'll post my progress on my blog.

Mortgage Payments

It's so so sooo tempting to increase our mortgage payments - but with the loan sitting at 3.39% and our Escape at 6.90% - it's hard to justify that over the Escape.  But now that we've changed our payment scheduled to accelerated bi-weekly, I don't like seeing that the amortization has gone up.  Here's some scenarios for what we could do.

Our current payment is now $770.22/bi-weekly and we could increase it as high as $885.75.

We could drop from 24 years amortization to 15 years, 6 months....from being 53 to 44 years old w/out a mortgage.... wowza!

...but what would we have to sacrifice now in order to do that?..For each of these scenarios we would need to come up with $29.78, $54.78, $79.78, or $115.53 bi-weekly.

 Do you see where it could come from?  Here's a snapshot of our current monthly budget and our debts:

 

I should  mention...just in case there's anyone new reading along - that this monthly budget is based on Jordan's salary with no commission.  I can't budget fixed amounts for that - but it's how we intended on reach the rest of our planned saving/spending goals.  We also intended to continue to pay of the LOC, and Escape using commissions.

oh!

One last thing.. in case your interested....the interest rates.

• Kia Rio - 0%
• Mortgage - 3.39%
• Line of Credit - 5.49% (unsecured, and tied to prime)
• Escape - 6.90%

Weekly to BiWeekly

Wowza!  It's been a long time since I've written.

February is a pretty hectic month for me generally speaking.  I spend a lot of time back home with family ( I went three times) and my brother comes in from Eastern Canada for a visit with his girlfriend. I also went to Ontario three times, northern Alberta twice and worked a crap tonne of Overtime for work.  Jordan and I also had houses guests on the weekend when I wasn't in BC.  So...its been busy.

Here's the thing though - I love busy!

My blog doesn't, but I do....

So...that said, on to today's topic.  Since Jordan has started his new job and his salary went from every two weeks (bi-weekly - opposite weeks of me) to bi-monthly (15th and the last of the month), I've been trying to keep up with weekly payments on all of our planned savings, retirement and debts...it was getting a bit much, so we decided to switch everything to bi-weekly and sync things up with my pay schedule because Jordan's salary will fluctuate a lot.

Most were pretty easy to do - all of my ING funds were just a quick switch.  The streetwise funds too slightly more effort to organize, and the Mortgage took some time as well.  

Here's a the before and after snapshots of our Mortgage:
 

Because technically we're now 'short' two payments of $385.11 and we'll pay a bit more interest because of the change - the remaining amortization changed.

The last thing I have to sort out is the payment on our Escape - we fought tooth and nail to get it switched to weekly and things got so messed up when we did that last time BMO took wayyyy more money then they were supposed to and bounced a mortgage payment...so, I'm nervous.  Jordan and I are debating just paying off the Escape with the LOC (and I know, I know, we've talked about doing that before) - I just can't decide.

That's it for now :)

Home Value is Up!

I didn't show it in my Networth post yesterday - but Jordan and I have more good news on our overall net worth.  Last year we connected with a real estate agent and found that on the market our home was worth $377,000 - we connected again this past month and found that on the market our house would be listed at $390,000!

Our tax assessment came in as well, and it went up from $328,600 to $363,200 - which validates the increase in market I think (if it had gone down or was the same, I wouldn't be as confident in the real estate agent's opinion).

February Networth Update

Wow!

Our net worth shot up from $77,804 to $88,068 in the last month!  A big piece of that came from my educational reimbursement ($1,900) and Jordan's dental reimbursement ($2,700).  Of course it also went up because of our regular debt repayments and regular savings as well as the increase in value of our investments (share, pension, rrsp).

There is a small balance on our Amex that we'll pay off next week, our Escape is down to $12,800 and the LOC is down to $24,400 - combined there's $37, 200 - which I could combine onto the LOC which has a lower interest rate.

I'm really torn - because the interest is 1.41% lower - but the LOC is tied to prime which could go up at anytime.

I update my tracking bars more regularly then I post these but I thought I would share where we're at with our planning spending goals - I suppose the emergency and baby fund aren't exactly planned spending - but they aren't us unaccessible as the RRSPs/Pension/Shares (which I'm not showing here).

We're coming along on paying off our debt - here's a snapshot of where we are at.