Tag Archives: saving

Preoccupation much?

Posted on March 1, 2012 | 1 Comment

The preoccupation is becoming a little much.  So much so, that I find myself becoming obsessive with other things just to take my mind off money.

This is not all bad.

The last time I had a major preoccupation in my life was when I was writing my master’s thesis and planning my wedding.  What did I do?  I flaked out on my couch for hours a day reading the Twilight books repeatedly.  I think I read all four books 5 times back to back that summer.  Surprisingly I physically become nauseous if I try to read them now.

Last month I became quite determined to run the Bluenose half marathon in May.  Then it was starting the Hunger Games trilogy (thank goodness those books are short! I accept all judgment regarding my tween-lit love!).

My point?  My distraction from my finances last month actually led to money being left in my account at the end of the month.  It was slightly odd and amazing at the same time.  It’s been so long since that happened!  Well, there’s always some money, but this time it was almost $200.  So for me, a distraction was likely helpful.  Granted my distractions are typically things that don’t cost me anything, if I distracted myself with shopping that would be a problem!  I can whole heartedly tell you that I am happier for not racking my brain to try and find a way to make or save more money.

We had a big car bill last month which came out of our savings account so that $200 will go towards replenishing that account.

Our established credit card credit was partially used towards a course in January and recently towards insulating our basement.  I will give an update on that project soon!

Nothing overly helpful or insightful in this post.  Simply an end to my recent hiatus and an update on how I am doing.

Stay tuned for fancy-schmancy home project posts, hopefully coming soon!

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Posted in Bad Habits

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Aaaaaaand ACTION!

Posted on January 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

Things that require I actually do something:

1. Exercise – got to start sometime!

2. RRSPs – should I be borrowing for top up right now?  Need to talk to someone that knows!

3. BooBoo’s RESP – get a move on already!

4. Side Hustle (finally e-mailed someone who might be able to help me get started doing statistical analysis – anxiously awaiting a reply)

5. Goals, summaries and review.  Need to figure out what we’ve done and what we can realistically accomplish with our finances.

6. Actually using the dozen blog post ideas I’ve written down but ignored.  They are good ideas, not flimsy like this one!

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Posted in BANKS!, Plan

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Family Value

Posted on January 25, 2012 | 2 Comments

It’s been a rough two weeks, financially, emotionally and thanks to a lack of sleep we can add ‘physically’ to the list as well.

When I get run down I tend to use it as an excuse to get take out, buy coffee, and just slack off in general.  Now that I have a baby I have become a little bit better about the slacking off part.  There is always work to be done with a baby around and I want to make sure I put the time in to play, smile, hold and cuddle as much as possible – you know, before BooBoo becomes to embarrassed to be seen with me!

Last week we ordered take out.  The weather was terrible on Friday, it took me three hours to get home (it’s usually 45 – 60 min) and things were just a mess.  The interesting thing when we finished?  Neither Han Solo or I enjoyed our take out the way we used to.  So while the “days without takeout” calendar is being reset, I can tell you that the longer we go without bringing grease and crap into our bodies, the less we enjoy it when we do.

Saturday BooBoo went to my parents place for the day.  They had a blast and played up a storm.  Han Solo and I had 6 hours to veg out and spend time together.  We are in serious need of reconnecting since a baby came into our lives and having a bonus day once in a while helps that a lot.

After watching the lack of sleep continue to wear Han out, I decided to take yesterday off from work and stay on baby duty Tuesday night in order to let him recharge.  I am thankful for having such a generous employer to let me be able to do that.

So today’s post?  What is it all about?  I’m worn out, run down, having difficulty focusing, but I wanted to share with you that while I’m so focused on our financial goals as a family, there are so many things that my family members do for us or that we do for them that go a long way.  Not just financially but emotionally as well.

The debt repayment is long and painful and full of stress.  Add a baby into this equation and we have this beautiful little bonus that exhausts us and entertains us at the same time.

And let’s be honest, my parents dropping off muffins, lending us their car when we need a second vehicle, baby-sitting for the day, my work letting me have a ‘family’ day, these are all things that have a real cost associated with them.  So while I do not have these things in my monthly budget.  I think it is important to recognize them (in the anonymous blog they know nothing about) all the same.

If you have some “added value” in your life, please share it here and we can celebrate together!

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Posted in update

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Debt vs Savings vs Emergency Savings

Posted on December 6, 2011 | 1 Comment

Oh priorities!  My life runs smoothly with lists and order and structure and knowing (and believing) what needs to be done in a particular sequence.  Ironically my mother once compared me to a barge moving through the water, I tend not to do one project at a time but try to do everything all at once.  So here is my dilemma and how I am trying to prioritize and, unfortunately, remain in my true ‘barge’ nature.  As must as I would like to focus on paying off debt, and then building my emergency savings fund and then saving money for our house renos, there are things outside of my control that messing with this.

Emergency Savings!  So important to have.  I really started putting 10% of hubby’s salary and my income into a savings account this summer while he was working.  Thank goodness I did because it paid for almost half of our new furnace!  The other half was paid for by basically doing the spending fast before I had heard of it.

Savings! My hubby has some courses to do for his job, I have some conferences I should attend this spring that work may not pay for, and we have this old house that needs an insulated basement, a new bathroom and eventually a new kitchen.  Now out of these things the basement and Han Solo’s courses are really the most important, with Han Solo’s courses beating out the basement just slightly.

Debt!  We are doing the spending fast for a reason!  We need to pay off debt, we have more debt coming (the looming septic field loan) and potentially MORE if we borrow money to finish the basement.  The longer we live with the debt, the more interest we pay and the more stress we have in our lives.  Not healthy, not happy, not good.

So where to put the limited funds we have?  Our plan was to put all money left at the end of the month and all bonus money (pay from Han Solo’s boat structure building related jobs) towards our debt.  Han Solo’s credit card being at the top of the list.  The reason we decided to start there rather than rebuild our diminished savings was that if an emergency arose, we could at least tap into the available credit on that card.  Not ideal, but hey, it would be an emergency.

Now we have decided to amend that plan.  Leftover money goes to debt, bonus money is going to the courses Han Solo needs and we are considering borrowing money from our parents for the basement (which should be about $1500 tops).

The thought of owing more money rots me.  Plain and simple.  The snag is (and I may have mentioned this in my blog before) that there are tax incentives for increasing the energy efficiency of your home.  If we go through with borrowing the money, however we borrow it or whomever we borrow it from, will be the first priority for our income tax returns in April/May, rather than it going to our debt.  It is far from an ideal situation but it is what it is.

Course #1: $1200

Course #2: $850

Basement project:  $1500

How are we going to come up with $3550 over the next two months?  Currently we have about $700 in our savings account.  It is actually more but the rest of it is what I refer to as “Booboo’s money”, and it is money that will get moved to an RESP eventually.  Back to the $3550.  It is time to get a serious hustle on if we want to keep things under control.

Along with budgeting our income we need to start budgeting our time.  We are not making time for things that could potentially make us more money.  We are simply running out of time everyday.  If we want these things we will have to work for them!

Stay tuned, at the end of the month I will be posting not only how much extra debt we will be able to pay down buy how much of the $3550 we have managed to save scrap together.

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Posted in Plan

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Winter is coming

Posted on November 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

With Christmas on the way Han Solo (my husband’s alias for this blog — his request) and I are in full on budget mode.  We have $500 from a yard sale and some serious kijiji hustling.

We have budgeted $100 for a tree and for Christmas dinner, which we will host.

Then we added up our family members, we have 4 on my side, 6 on Han’s side so that works out to $40 per person if we ignore each other and our daughter.

We also have a birthday between now and Christmas as well.

So, how are we going to make this work?

Well, for the birthday gift I worked swagbucks.com like you wouldn’t believe in order to get two $5 amazon.ca gift cards which reduces the cost of the gift I’m looking to buy from $25 to $15.

We are buying “couples” gifts as much as we can in the hopes of spending about $50 per couple rather than $80.  We have warned people about this ahead of time (the whole family is aware to a certain extent of how broke we are).

And lately we have been putting Han Solo’s photography hobby to work and will be framing photos to give to everyone in an attempt to “beef up” their gift.  This will cost us nothing as we have lot’s of frames in our basement not being used as well after simply registering with the photo lab for costco we receive 60 free prints! Score!

It’s early days yet so we’ll see how this all comes together!

 

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Posted in Christmas

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