An Annual Savings Plan..Continued.

So, the more I think about this - more stressed I am making myself.

It is really hard to save for annual expenditures, that you are currently paying for monthly. For example, I pay an additional 4% on my car insurance because I pay it monthly. I would like to pay it annually b/c then I save the 4%. I made this spreadsheet to help figure out what to do.

Above, you can see what my annual costs are. To make this effective, I called up AMA and asked what my renewal dates were. From there I figured how many pay periods I had to save for each item.

Basically. If I had started saving for each item one year prior to having to pay for it, I would need to put away $78.57 bi-weekly. I didn't do this (namely because I didn't think of it). To accomplish this goal now, I would need to put away $229.82/bi-weekly.

Sigh. I don't have a spore $230/biweekly.

So, options:

1. I can just start saving the $78.57 now, and make up the rest from my e-fund

2. I could suck it up and get another job

3. I could use my credit card (boo!)

4. I could plan to save for, and pay for, the three lowest cost expenses which would be $33.60/bi-weekly (without car insurance.). With this plan, I would pay for car insurance monthly again next year, but start saving on the renewal date (or sooner), that way I would have 26 pay periods to save for it rather than 9.

What do you think?

An Annual Savings Plan

I read Gail Vaz Oxlade's Blog and one commentor on today's post, gave me the idea that I should have an annual saving's plan. I like this idea - I think it may be a little hard to implement, but I see the worthyness of it.

If you pay for things like car insurnace in one shot, it cost's less then paying monthly over the course of the year.

So far, the only things I can think of that I need to plan for are:

• Car Insurance
• Car Registration
• CAA membership (required for my insurance).

Are there any other annual costs that I may be forgetting? Does anyone else plan for expenses this way?

Saving Money - Reducing Bills

I have recently decided to increase my contributions to buy shares, as well as increase my student loan repayment. As things were already pretty tight, I felt I needed to 'find' more money within my budget. So following that, here's what I've done:

• I have negotiated some of my utility bills, particularly my Express VU (TV) Bill this will save me $5/month (we split bills four ways, so everyone will save this).
• I recently switched from a fixed rate to a variable rate on our enmax (heat - gas) bill, which will save us about $4/unit of consumption
• I cancelled my WOW subscription - sad face - which will save me $15/month
• I switched from the World Delux to the Canada Delux ancestry.ca subscription. This will save me $18/month (I will likely increase this again when I have more time to dedicate to my family tree projects)
• Now that it's warm out, we have turned the thermistat to 10 (degrees celcious) - so it will probably not turn on for 2 sold months.
• I have started taking advantage of gift cards and points.

To explain that, i recently cashed in some of my airmiles points and received 3 'night out' coupons for the movie theater (includes admission for two, pop, and popcorn). I've received $250 worth of gift cards (from volunteering at work) for a fantastic camping store. I have a $25 gift card for a drug store (from points).

So the actual amount of money I have freed up is $37/month. However; I beleive with doing the other things I mentioned, I will end up saving quite a bit more. This is the *hope*.

Company Shares - Decision

A few days ago I wrote about purchasing company shares. I have decided to increase my bi-weekly contributions to $50 (from $26).

This will advance my goal of buying company shares to this December, 2009. Once I am able to purchase shares, I will decrease my contribution amount to $25/bi-weekly. I am doing this for a few reasons. I'm putting saving money this way because there is a minumum purchase amount of 20 shares, and then you can purchase later on in increments of 5.

I'm buying shares with my company for a few different reasons:

• Increases ownership mentality
• Demonstrates to my superiors/peers that I am committed to my company
• My company is 100% employee owned and bases it's share price on the average of the previous 5 years earnings - making for a more stable growth in share prices
• Share prices have been increasing steadily since the plans inception
• My company not only pays divideds once a year, but also they pay an 'incentive payment' once a year (a different time) which is based on the profits of the company.

House Fund - Update

Wow!

Jordan and I have put away $2500!! Since we started saving in February, 2009. We've also have $6 in interest - so grand total $2506, which is 7.16% of $35,000.

Currently the interest rate is 1.35%, we started at 3% - unfortunatly it's gone down. However; eventually we know it will go back up. At the current rates, and current savings plan ($150/bi-weekly alternated by Jordan and I) ING figures we'll reach our goal by May 2013.

As jordan and I get raises, and additional monies - we plan on increase our contributions. But for now - this works for us.

Hurray!

Saving Money on Utility Bills

Often we read about advise on how to lower your interest rates on the various forms of credit that is offered (credit cards, mortgages, personal loans, ect). Have you ever tried to lower other forms of expenses, such as your utility bills?

In our household we have three sets of bills:

1. Enmax (gas, electricity, water, sewage, ect)
2. Express Vu (television)
3. Shaw (internet & phone)

We have recently been receiving a lot of promotional offers from Shaw, wanting to provide our TV services. We have an HD TV, and quite frankly - Bell still offers the best in HD TV, so I don't particularly want to cancel with them.

I called Express Vu and managed to get a $21.63/month savings on our bill. What services did i lose you ask? - None! We will keep the exact same services for about 23% less!!

Here's what I did:

• Called and asked how much it would cost to cancel our TV services
• Told them about the offer from shaw
• Told them I liked Bell, and would like to stay - but couldn't justify the price difference
• I asked if there were any options that we could explore
• I was transfered to the loyalty department
• The loyalty department (a guy named Jordan), spent a few minutes with me going over my services to see if there were any changes I would like to make - their wern't
• I asked frankly "Do you have any options in terms of my pricing, I would like to stay with Bell but I can't justify this proce"
• He said, how does 71.40 sound?
• I said, it sounded perfect.

Done.

I've done this before with Shaw and received credits when new promotions come out for phone and internet services as well.

Does anyone else do this?

Buying Company Shares

On my tracking bars, you have no doubt seen that I would like to save about $1000 to be able to buy shares at my company. They recently changed the minumum share purchase from 25 shares to 20 shares. Which means I now need about $800 Canadian to buy shares. You can buy shares in June/December of each year - I won't have enough funds ready by this month - so I would like to buy shares by December.

I have already saved $286 through the share purchase program at work, so I figure I need approxmately $462 (I will save another $52 bewteen now and July 1) between July 1 and Dec 30 - that gives me 13 pay periods (b/c the new deductions won't take place until July 1st).

I currently tuck away $26/bi weekly.

I would have to increase my deductions to about $35 bi weekly.

I would hate to increase my deducations, and then come december have to wait another 6 months because of currency rates - so I am thinking of increasing my deductions to $40 or $50 bi-weekly.

What do you think?

Should I increase my deductions, or stay the course - and wait a year or two.