Joint Chequing - Followup

So, Jordan and decided it was totally worth the effort; and have been working at switching over all of our accounts to a joint savings account over the last little while.  We actually started before the post about considering it went up!

We have 13 different companies that interact with our work horse account; not including all of the transactions for auto savings within Tangerine.

p.s.  If you haven't signed up for Tangerine now, it's a really good time to do it.  Tangerine is currently doubling their referral bonus from $25, to $50 if you open accounting using within a minimum of $250 using this code before July 31st - we both get the free money!

All you have to do is click the link below, and enter my Orange Key when signing up: 17396382S1.

Making a Will

We haven't finished Level 4 yet, because we're still taking our home inventory; but I didn't want to lose momentum (either in writing or in the My Money, My Choices process); so I'm going to start working through Level 5.

Activity 1, is to make a will.

Oi!  I knew this was coming, but I'm not sure I was ready for it just yet.

Activity 2 is to name a financial power of attorney, and Activity 3 is to name a personal care power of attorney.

I guess we need a laywer.

Taxes! Do Them!

It boggles my mind how many people don't keep their taxes up to date; especially when they have super standard; nothing to write home about taxes to complete.  We're talking a T4, maybe 2 and an RRSP or school deduction.  Seriously.  It's not hard.

It just so happens that the last two activities in Level 4 of My Money, My Choices to get this years tax return done and catch up on any previous years.  Jordan and I are all caught up; but I can't say it's always been that way.

When I met Jordan, we were 19 I think, and he had several years of taxes to do....like 4 or 5.  So, I sat down on his living room floor (tax software wasn't as popular then); and did them all.  I think payment was my choice of movie and he had to cook me dinner.  Though once he got his cheque in; he took me out.

I was floored that he hadn't done them, and really wasn't worried about it; this of course comes from your influences growing up.  Now, I can't say that Jordan gets excited as I do, but he's happy for me to get them done, and happy to get those tax returns every year.  I don't submit them by hand any more, typically I use TurboTax because I have three returns to do (mine, Jordans, and my grandmothers) and my mom and I often share the license for hers too, but I still usually do a practice run pen/paper style just to make sure everything lines up correctly.

July 1st Networth Update

guh!

So...today, I was going to tell you how Jordan and I broke through the $100,000 Networth barrier!  Wow!

but...we didn't.

Our networth actually went down.



So what happened?

• Our Tangerine Funds went down slightly
• My Sunlife Funds went down slightly
• We spent more money then we had
• We haven't been reimbursed for Jordan's new teeth yet (over $2,100)

That'll teach me for getting excited before it actually happens.

But, some good news!  We now owe less than $10,000 on the Escape...and that's still pretty awesome.

Happy Birthday Canada

Happy Birthday Canada!

I hope everyone is off enjoying the rights and responsibilities we have as Canadian's.

This was just one of the last birthday photo's I took - that's my husband's shirt.

Home Inventory

Do you know what you own?  Everything, every item - do you know what and where it is, how much it cost or what it would cost to replace it?

The pictures I'm sharing with you this week are from the house fire my family experienced in Christmas Eve, 2003.

Our house/garage fire was not nearly as devastating as it could have been, our family and our pets all got out safely. 

The next several months were spent living out of a rental trailer where my brother and I had to share a room and everyone had to be a lot more mindful of space, noise and mess.  I was home for the holidays from collage, and not working and as a naturally curious person (read snoop?) I spent time with my mom looking at the insurance paperwork and asking questions about what it is she had to do.

We were lucky and had replacement insurance, but in order to claim, we had to know what it is that we had - and that meant sometimes guessing or ball-parking because there were no photos, spreadsheets, or lists that we could refer to.  It was during that time that I swore I would take pictures of everything in my house, I would be prepared.

But do you know what, it's been 11 years and I still haven't done it.

But that changes now.  Over the next few weeks, Jordan and I will categorize EVERYTHING we have.  So that if we ever suffer such a loss, we'll be ready.

Also, my brother has recommended the Delicious Library app which allows you to not only enter things in manually, but also scan barcodes using your iPhone camera and, annnnd fancy graphs.  Who doesn't like a fancy graph.  BUT I don't use a MAC and it requires IOS; so, I did some hunting and found MyStuff2 - which has given me a very good first impression.  You can get started for free to test it out (up to 15 items) and then upgrade if you want to keep going.  It's got some pretty cool export features and the barcode scanner is amazing!

This is going to be a lot of work.

p.p.s.
This is Level 4, Activity 7 in My Money, My Choices.

Joint Chequing

So we can make the money work; but can we make sticking to the debit card work?

That's the question that I left yesterday's blog post with.

I called Tangerine - and it turns out, things haven't changed...Ugh!

The Tangerine representative suggested that instead of having two chequing accounts; that we basically open a new joint savings account (you can have as many as you like); and transition our salaries and all of our auto-payments to that and then use the pre-existing joint account as the new day-to-day.

What do you think, is it worth all of that effort?

How do you manage having more than one person spending from a single chequing account?