Thanks for listening...

Yesterday I had a slight freak out over money. I confess I lost my cool. But I am better now after I wrote my post I had a light bulb go off and so I might be able to fit it all in. My friend has agreed that dinning on the cheep is cool and we are crashing on a friend's floor. This means that although the budget will be super tight I might just be able to squeak by unscathed, God willing of course. I will let you know when the final numbers are all crunched when pay day roles around. I just want to say thank you for listening.  I talked to my mom about it and her advice was live a little and only pay your min. on your line a credit if necessary.  Advice that I found not nearly as helpful as I am sure she meant it to be.

Also I have been thinking about reopening my Ally account or signing up for a ING account. I don't like the accessibly of my 'retirement fund'/ my 10% fund. On weak moments its hard to think about retirement when I am only 24 years old.  Its just very easy to consider using the money for other things. But I have not completely looked in to ING. Nor do I want to make another rash decision about it.


Lesson learned: Emergency fund of any size is necessary and will in future be worked into budget.

Ally, Rogers bill, 2011 Goals

Today I called Ally again to make sure that my account has been officially cancelled. As it stands I'm done with them. It has been cancelled for good, good bye!!!!!!

One of my 2011 Goals was to get cut my phone bill in 1/2 preferably by January. Now my monthly bill with taxes in and no long distance charge is $93.85,  that means that my bill has to be dropped to $46.93 a month.  Today I called Rogers and the 'best' package that they could give me was the Student 40+  this is what it includes:

                   ~200 weekday minutes
                   ~100 MB
                   ~My 10  Canada wide
                   TOTAL: $47.94  taxes and fees included

Now this does not include unlimited incoming minutes which is an extra $10.00 a month. If I added this feature my TOTAL would become: $ 59.24 taxes and fees included

However if I did this I would not be under $46.93. The other MAJOR down side is that they want me to resign a 3 year contract. This makes me feel completely uncomfortable. My current contract ends at the latest October 2011 and  I contract free, this is something that I would ideally like. The reality is that I want to be able to look at other options and if I lock myself in for another 3 years as of Jan 2011 I will be stuck until Jan 2014 with Rogers. The other down side is that I want to go away to Japan in a few years for a year or more beings unable to get out of a contract would be very problematic.

If I don't change my plan though I will be pay assuming no long distance charges until October 2011 my overall phone cost will be $938.50 ($93.85 x 10 months).

The other option is to buy myself out of my contract at $20.00 x the number of months left in my contract which would be 10, thus $200. I can't afford to do this until March because I don't have the spare cash. So at that point it would be $160 + (93.85 x 2)=  $347.70.

I just don't know what to pick or what to do. This is why I am posting, I need your help, I need your advice. Any suggestions???? Please....

Ally, Bank fees and Cat fund, OSAP

Yesterday I got a call from Ally for a status update on my account. It turns out that they have disqualified my cheque because I did not write out "five cents." So they decided the the dollar amount was different form the numerical number on the cheque. For 5 cents I have spent the last 3 months  trying to send them money. The first time I had an issue I called them and asked very specifically how they wanted the check written out and I was told that I had written it correctly. Clearly I have been lied to. So I have decided to cancel my account. Let me explain why:

1) the reason that I opened the account was for the wrong reason.

Explanation: when I decided on my 10% fund it was to replace the fact that I had not signed up for the Defined Contribution retirement option at work. So this money was to be invested into retirement plans of some sort. However I have moved the money around for my car fund last month and then decided to convert it to a down payment fund for a house. This is why I opened up the Ally account. The major reason for this is that I had no idea how to invest for retirement. But I have been reading lots of books on the topic and I decided how I will plan for my retirement. As a result there is no need for this fund and I would have been using the money for the wrong reasons. As much as I really really want my own place until my debt has been reduced there is not a hope in hell of that happening.

On December 31 my bank took money out of my account for bank fees $9.95. I am not all that happy about that but I agreed to it so say-lave. 

I had to get more cat medication $64.43 today. This brings my cat fund down to $39.91. I booked the cats, both of them in for vet aptms in April. This will be around  $150 each plus $30 for stool sample testing. God willing I hope to have enough money to cover this from my cat fund but at the rate I am going through it, who knows. Sigh. 

My first of many letters form OSAP came in today. Over the last 6 months of 'free period' from Sept. 1 -Feb 1 I will have accumulated $308.46 of interest. This can be paid in a lump sum with my first payment  or it can be added to my overall total. Ideally I would rather pay it upfront but given that it is due at the end of February I do not think I will be able to do that.  As such I opted to add it to my overall student debt balance. In September I put in lump sum amount of $3,000 which was summer OSAP I had left over.  This brings my overall OSAP down to $10, 410.46 (including the $308.46). This amount of money is stretched out over a 114 month repayment period. My monthly payments to OSAP starting in February will be $117.45.

It would would be ideal to be able to put pay more them the min. monthly payment. And this is my over all goal. But I have decided that my goal of $15,000 debt reduction will be focused on my line of credit. For 2 reasons: 1) when the first real payment comes through I will be paying interest  + principle and if I don't focus on bring the principle down the payment will be painfully high. 2) I get a tax credit for the interest in my OSAP which for now I will need to bring my into a lower tax bracket to max my income return.  I can make lump payments to OSAP at any time so when I have my TD line at a manageable amount I will increase my payments to OSAP.  

Bi-weekly finances and funds

Today is pay day. Pay days are fun because well you get paid ;P

I walked in to my bank and the Ally cheque hasn't gone through. I'm telling you its so frustrating. I almost wish I hadn't sent the cheque in. I think the Gods were stickin it to me today. I told you it would be boring and quiet at work today and I was wrong. It was so busy today that it wasn't until 10 min. before lunch did I realize that I needed to sort out my budget to take money out of my account.

With out any further ado:

TD Line of credit: 200.00

General Savings: 117.26

Cat fund: 50.00

Vacation Fund: 150.00

Car Fund: 425.00

Transit: 48.00 (2 sheets of tickets)

Duke of Ed fees: 30.00

Spending money: 80.00

My friend gave me back 50.00 he owed me from a while back. I have decided to put the money into my car fund.

I snowflaked 30.00 from my last pay into my TD line of credit.  I am not sure if this is an exact figure of what was left from my last pay but I think it is about right.

I have decided to move the general savings into my car fund. I haven't deposited the amount form my friend yet so I am not including it into my updated fund tracker.

Money in Money out….

Ally, Credit card, New friends, Max, boy friend

Today I called Ally to check on the status of my cheque because every time I check my accounts the money is still sitting in the account. Having money in my account unnerves me, I feel as though it might trigger impulse buying. I am not by nature bad for impulse buying but it's never good to tempt the 'pulse.' The other annoying thing is that I can't snowflake what ever is left in my account. I have no idea what will be left over, if cashing cheques have service fees and such like that. I just don't want to end up with a NSF charge because I haven't left myself wiggle room.

Pay day is tomorrow and I have made up the budget. There are a few things with it that still need some tweaking which I will do while I'm sitting at my desk bored tomorrow.

I was reading GMBMFB and she had a blog list up of the "Top 10 Realest Personal Finance Bloggers" one of them is Paying Myself. I thought I would check out her blog. I browsed through it and found a post about Debt and her reasoning for focusing on savings and not her debt.  Point 3 is " I want to learn a lesson (or two or three). Basically she said that by having the debt on her credit card it discourages her from using up the little room she would have by putting more then her minimum payment on her credit card. When I read this I felt like OMG there is another person in the world who has the same thing as I do. I completely get where she is coming from. And she understands cat vet bills  :) So I have decided to add her to my blog role ...a new friend ... or a PF blogger creeper lol

For those that were wondering Max is doing much better. His sneezing has significantly reduced and I still have $53 in the Cat fund. He's feeling better and I have money in the bank still. I fell really good about it knowing that I will be able to afford what ever comes up with the cats in the future because of my Cat fund. I feel more in control and that's always a good feeling.

For anyone wondering where I have been for the last couple of days I was away on a romantic couple of days for my boyfriend. He treated me to a lovely trip to Niagara falls. He budgeted to spend $500 in spending cash and I am happy to report we didn't spend that much. I made a conscious effort to not let him. Of course had he known he would have been very pissed with me. He wouldn't let me pay for a single thing. Which was great for my budget because I had not planed for such an adventure. However I felt terrible about it because despite his effort to keep me in the dark I know exactly what the room cost on top of all the things he paid for while there.

Our conversation on the way home was about personal finances and money. This is a great thing because for a while I was fretting about the fact, I didn't feel we could have a conversation about money.
He told me that if him and I ever got our own place together that he would just hand it to me. To make sure it was put in all the right places as long as he was given money to do stuff with. I don't know how I feel about this. But I will tell you its a step in the right direction.  I want him to learn soon rather then later about the benefits of saving good chunks of his pay.

Tomorrow I will post my bi-weekly budget.

When Life Gets in the Way Episode II

On Christmas eve I noticed that Max (cat #2) was sneezing a lot. I don't know if you have ever seen a cat sneeze but it is really cute. However when boxing day evening rolled around he had become a lot worse and he was being very ani-social. That night we decided that he had to go to the vets. So first thing we did on the 27th was take him into the vet's office. You will notice that my Cat fund has dropped to $53. This is because the vet bill cost me $146.92. I am so glad that I started this fund, though I wish I had had more of a buffer within it.  In March both cats are going in for annual physicals. This will be min.  of $150 for each cat, likely a lot more for Max because he is likely very out of date for his shots.

To night since Christmas is completely over and I do not need to get anymore gifts I transferred the $100 from my Christmas fund into my vacation fund. My vacation fund now sits at $311.52.

I checked my chequeings account and it is currently at $455.13 which means that Ally have not taken out the cheque that I wrote them. This is a problem for me as tomorrow is pay day and I have no idea how much will be left in my account to snowflake the money. I am going to have to call them tomorrow as having money in this account completely messes up the system.

Ally, income and student debt

On Monday I mentioned that  I had finally got around to sending in my cheque in to Ally. The lady at Ally said that they would have it processed in a few days and taken out of my account a few days after that.  I checked it today and the money hasn't been removed yet. This scares me. I hate having money or rather large sums of money in my chequeings account. I don't keep large sums in my account to prevent theft and also to prevent impulsive buying. I wish they would  hurry up. Last time I sent them a cheque they had returned it to me within 3 business days.  Mind you maybe the reason its taking so taking is because its actually being processed this time around.  Who knows... its a wait and see kind of thing.

The other day I was on the Globe and Mail site and one of the articles said that to pay down student debt you had to use the rule of 10.  Basically grads need to be making 10,000 more then their student debt to have it paid off in 10 years at a rate of 10% a year. Now according to this assessment I am making  30,000 less then I should be a year. How depressing is that, especially because I do not want to be paying off student debt for 10 years.

Yesterday a friend of mine and I were talking about getting part-time second jobs. I really want to do this because I need the income to reach my debt repayment goal in the new year. However I mentioned this to my boyfriend and he was less then pleased. I think he thinks if I got a second job that the little time we get together will end up decreasing further. I don't want this to be the case and I intend to make sure that this isn't the case. But how do I get him on board. I don't want him to think that his concerns aren't valued but truth be told I am going to get a second job.

New Savings Account

A couple of months ago I called up Ally and sighed up for a TFSA (Tax Free Savings Account). Ally is very similar to ING in that it offers high interest Savings with no fees. The first cheque I sent them they sent back because something on it was wrong. Since then I haven't done much with the account. The other day I decided that it was stupid not to try and sent the cheque in a second time. So I called to make sure that I got it right this time and send it off today. Ally gives its client an interest rate of 2% which is calculated daily. Basically by not getting my act together I have lost out on some interest not much I'm sure but hey every little bit helps! The cheque I sent in was from my General fund which holds my 10% fund. The amount deposited was $425.05. I plan to keep my General Savings fund tracker the same as the amount is just split up into two different account at the moment. The plan is to eventually shift all of my 10% fund into my Ally account so it can collect the interest. Hopefully this time the cheque isn't returned because if it is I will start to get a complex.

On another note I am finalizing my 2011 goals and New Years resolutions still. So they won't be up until closer to the New Year.