Bi-Weekly Budget & Goodbye to the NSL

Today is a pretty stellar day. Today My Canada (National) Student Loan Has Been Paid Off! Okay, so all of my online payments haven't gone through yet, so according to nslcs it's not paid off - but as far as I'm concerned it is.  The balance this morning was $472.97.  My regular $75...

Winter Has Come Back?!

I was planning on writing this brilliant post about my garden. I was going to take before and after pictures share about where my plants have come from and why they are sustainable. But, it has snowed. Again. Last weekend when I bought the plants it snowed....then it was nice for a few days and there was hope. Yesterday, my city at a Winter Storm Warning - and this morning the world is covered...

Saving Money in Small Ways

I'm still feeling great from our purge and re-organize this past weekend.  I've loved sitting in the living room drinking my coffee with the morning news on. Which got me thinking. Just by setting the coffee maker on delay to brew a fresh pot for 6:45am I'm saving upwards of $600/year ($3.00/coffee * 5 days a week * about 40 weeks).  That's not too shabby. What small ways do you save...

Spring Cleaning

When I got home on Friday Jordan and already completely cleaned our bedroom!  He had laundry started and was vacuuming!  It was pretty great. Well, that got us started on a huge Sunday clean and re-organization of the house. Sunday, we woke up and had our coffee.  I looked around the living room and sort of had this i'm fed up moment.  Fed up with the dust on the baseboard...

This and That

So I suppose you can tell that there's not a lot going on this week with my lack of posting and all, but there are a few odds and ends that I can share. My Aunt gave us a chain saw to cut up some firewood we have (giant wood that needs to be sawed before axed) however; it doesn't work right. My dad had a look at in and figures it needs a new diaphragm (a piece in the carburetor). So, yesterday I...

It's BBQ'ing Season

...and Jordan and I bought a new BBQ. We've been saving for this on the side for a while now and finally found one that would meet our needs!  It cost about $400 after taxes from Costco. The online price is a bit higher ($550) - my mom says that's because of shipping. We've roasted hot dogs...

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...

$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...

so....I lost my phone

...in the Vancouver International Airport. So sad. I've contacted the lost and found and as of about 2pm on Tuesday afternoon, it hadn't shown up.  I would have left it there between 11:00am and 1:00pm on Friday.  So - I have a few options. 1. Just buy a phone from Solo Mobile (my carrier).  This will cost about $100 for a very basic unit. 2. I could cancel with Solo which would...

Shopping in Palm Springs

...was pretty fantastic! The whole trip was fantastic actually.  I had four glorious days in the sun.  We lounged, we shopped, we swam, we walked, we explored! It was a good time! Above is a picture of some of the clothes/shoes I picked up. In total, I spent about $430 on: 9 new work...

The (eventual) Demise of My Alberta Student Loan

You read earlier this week about paying off my Canada Student Loan this April - it's a pretty exciting time.  There isn't anything more exciting right now, then the eventual demise of my Alberta Student Loan and becoming debt free. As of May 1, 2010 my remaining debt will be $5,064.01.  My regular $75 bi-weekly repayments over the rest of the year total $600 - which will leave me with $4,464.01...

Financial Priorities

My recent raise and the prospect of paying off on of my student Loans in April, prompted me to re-evaluate the financial priorties I had established at the beginning of the year.  I spent a couple hours talking about it with my mom - and when I asked well how does this look (pointing to an excel spreadsheet) she would say, well what's important? hmm...what's important? well, at the beginning...

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...

Bi-Weekly Budget - there isn't one

Me not being organised combined with going to Palm Springs combined with the Easter weekend means there's all sorts of un-rest in my bank.... That said my credit card is paid off and I have $154 American and $260 Canadian to get me to Palm Springs and back.  I'm leaving $50 behind for groceries for Jordan (to fill up the fridge while I'm away) so we're all sorted.  I'll be chipping in $100...

11.32%

11.32% could mean a lot of things. Would you like to know what it means to me, today? i got a raise!!!!! yea. that's right. a big freaking raise.  Effective April 3, 2010 my new annual salary will be $53,000 (it's currently $47,000). Whoa!  After running some numbers - I'm guessing that will be about $160 more each pay.  Though, I now pay for parking on a bi-weekly basis (comes...