On Vacation!

It's officially started - Jordan and I are on vacation.  For the next two weeks, Jordan and I will be hanging out in beautiful british columbia.  Our roommates are taking care of the house - and I think it will be a great break for both of us as we get used to living together.  It's been a good start to the living arrangements - a few hiccups, but thats all settled now and I think we're in a good place moving forward.

It's 8am (ish), and I'm sitting on the couch enjoying my first cup of coffee - Aries (one of my dogs) is at my feet,  my mom is gearing up to make home made buns and all in all - it feels like a pretty awesome way to start the week.

As a follow up to my last post - my overtime pay came through and I was also pleasantly surprised by a $600 bonus.  I usually get around $1,000 but wasn't expecting anything at all this year - so wahoo!  Sure, after taxes it was closer to $380 - but still pretty awesome!  This Thursday we should see Jordan's final pay and vacation pay - his employer basically told us if they weren't organized that he wouldn't get his vacation pay until two weeks following - but we've done everything we can to hand-hold them through this process....so we'll see.

End of The Year Income

As the days left in December tick away Jordan and I have started to solidify our income transition plans from his bi-weekly pay schedule to his new twice/monthly pay schedule.  He has approximately $4,500 worth of vacation owing to him that will be paid out, and I have 30 hours of overtime that I have requested be paid out.  As Jordan has hit his CPP/EI maximum's, I expect that after taxes the vacation will  net about $3,000 and my OT will net about $650.  We also just received the second portion of December's rent ($300) so it looks like we're in fairly good shape to ride out whatever changes come our way.  

My mouse trigger finger just wants to sweep that $$ onto our debt, but the plan is to hold strong until mid-January to feel out our 2014 cash flow strategy first.

December Networth

Well, here it is - our final net-worth post for 2013.  We started this year at $16,938 and wound up at $74,198!  An incredible increase of $57,260!

The biggest factor you'll recall, is that we built our garage, deck and fence - all which significantly increased our homes market value.

We also made big gains in RRSP/Pension savings and purchased 100 shares through my work - which have already increased in value.

I am so proud of our accomplishments and look forward to the coming year where hopefully we can break through the 100K barrier!

Here's a breakdown of where the assets and debt are currently sitting.

While we still owe more on both vehicles than their trade in value - I'm comfortable with this because of the 'off the lot' phenomena.  We like new vehicles - with new vehicle smell...and (knock on wood) - these two will last us a long time.

RRSPs, Pension, and Shares have all grown significantly where planned spending has had it's ups and downs.

Our checking account has a healthy buffer which serves as our own overdraft protection - something that has been nice to have and as we move forward with Jordan's new career - a must have.

Since buying our house a little less than two years ago - we have paid down 4.43% of it - a mere $15,457.  We've sure paid a lot more than that in interest - but it is going down bit by bit.  We've toyed with increasing our weekly payments and while I'm not ready to do that just yet - it's something that is certainly on the horizon.

We have only paid down 2.73% of the Kia - as a very recent purchase we've only had a few payments so far.  The Escape on the other hand is down 40.40% of what we financed and I'm confident we're going to make a lot of progress with that loan in 2014.

Finally - our line of credit.  What we once thought would be a $10,000 limit to help coverage overages on our backyard project, turned into a $40,000 limit for several of life's incidentals.  Sitting on the LOC now is:

• $900 in online courses (crossing my fingers for reimbursement)
• $2,6179.50 for the first phase of Jordan's dental work (to be reimbursed)
• $5,406.43 for our recent share purchase at my work (interest is tax deductible)
• $977.60 for winter tires

The remaining $14,836.47 - is a combination of the remaining back yard debt as well as some credit card purchases (consumer spending).  We were expecting to carry forward around $15K in 2014 before I decided to go back to school, Jordan got dental work, we decided to invest in shares, and we bought winter tires.

So, technically (?) we're on track (ha!).

Okay, so we're not on track for the LOC - we had some expenses that we decided to incur that's that - our LOC balance has gone up.  As we knock it back in $5K increments, I intend on also reducing the amount of credit we have access  to in the same - until it's down to a 10K limit - - the original plan.

There it is - 2013's ups and downs of our networth, thanks for reading along as we navigated all these changes, I'm looking forward to another fantastic year with you.

No-Income Transition

I'm now pretty confident on how we'll handle the bills when Jordan's job changes - but I still need to work out the transition between the two.

His last regularly scheduled pay in December will include his last two weeks worked - last day is on December 20th and on December 26th he should be paid for the weeks ending December 13th and December 20th.  He will also be paid out his vacation accrual which is currently sitting at approx $4,300 - so they'll be a tad more added to that from December's accrual.

Jordan's first pay in January will be the 15th....that's almost a full month of no regular pay, just the vacation monies...though if nothing had changed it would have been on the 9th..so it's only six days longer that we're used to.

Juuuust in case I'm going to stash $1,000 from the vacation money to use for bills and the rest (less taxes of course) will go to savings/debt/Christmas.

Am I missing something?  Am I forgetting something?

Variable Income - Fixed It (I think)

Thanks to an Anonymous poster on my post earlier this week- I think I just might have this variable budget business sorted out.  Check out the updated scenario where the bills/paydays are worked in.

The Regular category includes: Mortgage, Monthly Spending, Escape, LOC, both RRSPs and the Baby Fund.

I had messed up the LOC payments before, and I had to reduce the Baby Fund from $50/week to $40/week - so that we always have greater income then expenses.

With a $2,000 account buffer, it should never dip below $500 - which does allow for some variability in the timing of withdrawals which is helpful when there are holidays and what not.

I will have to be careful in both May and October when there are 5 Friday's but they aren't the months where I get a third pay - those months we'll have to manage the extra savings/debt payments that aren't necessary depending on commissions and the like from the previous months.

The plan for any commission/bonus money is to first bolster our emergency/savings accounts and then full steam ahead against debt.  For the next few months we also have our new roommates $600/month rent money which we'll use for the same purpose.

A big, big thank you to Anonymous who spotted my error earlier this week - I'm feeling much more relaxed about the changes.

Utilities - Year in Review

It's silly really - but I love being able to do my annual report on utilities because i've been tracking it for so long, I am able to create pretty graphs.  Keep in mind that each month is that which the utilities were billed, so if it was billed in November, it was actually the utilities used in October.

The trend line, while a bit bumpy, cleary shows the dip one would expect to see in the summer - and spikes in colder months.

For those that find the above graph a bit too cluttered, this one shows the monthly average a bit more clearly - I use this data to predict my monthly bills now for budgeting purposes and find that I'm usually within about $10!  I'de say that's worth doing all this tracking.

The last little graph I have for you is the combined monthly average year over year.  Remember that we've only been in our current house for the last two years - and the differences was less than $2.

Variable Income

How do you manage?
How do you even set up the budget?

I don't know how many different charts/sheets I've already created and tossed because they didn't work as I had anticipated...I need some help on where to start.  I want to create the budget, with all of our automatic payments, based on Jordan getting $0 commission - so I know we're covered.  Then, if/when he does get commission - I want to use that money to 'top up' our debt/savings plans.

Using a typical month, I've sorted out that we cannot continue regular contributions to our Emergency, Vehicle, Christmas, Gifts, and Vacation Funds - so that will come from commissions.  I've also reduced our payment to the Line of Credit to what is mandatory.  I've kept RRSPs and the Baby Fund.  All that and you can see we're left with $43/month - perfect.

So that tells me I'm on the right track - but the part I'm having troubles with is the timing of it all.  Jordan will get paid on the 15th and the end of the month and I get paid bi-weekly.  I feel as though we need to consider the four months that have five Friday's (January, August, May and October) - but in only two of them (January, August) will I get paid three times...and of course Jordan will still just be paid twice.

I also broke down our expenses on a weekly/monthly basis to see if that would help.

So looking at this chart I know that (I think), at any given time - I need to have $2,587.12 in my bank account to account for both monthly and weekly withdrawals.

I also know that every single Friday $1,303.28 is withdrawn from my account.

Given that my take home pay is ~$1,775 and Jordan's base take home would be ~$1,025 - what do we do? How do I figure out what my 'buffer', my personal overdraft should be, to account for the fluctuations in income/withdrawals.

Here's one scenario that I worked through - trying to see how the numbers would jive.

You can see that we don't have get past $0 in the account - but at the end of the month we're down to $1,419...not the $2,500 we would need to start out with.  So I'm stuck again on how to make this balance.

I would appreciate any thoughts/ideas on how to make a budget that works given this new pay structure.


Thanks!!!!
Jessie & Jordan