Letting Things Fall in to Place

For the last little while I have been musing over what to do with my GST cheque. Should I put it into my Christmas fund to get it finished off or into my visa account or into my LoC. I have decided to put it into my drum roll…. My Christmas fund. Little Lamb has consistently told me that I should focus on one thing at a time, instead of splitting my money a little bit at a time over lots of little things. And I think she is right. Also I called TD to see how I was coming with my Loc this month and I was pleasantly surprised. Last my over time will be on this week’s pay, so I have decided to take the over time minus the rest I need to finish my Christmas fund and put that into my visa card. It should bring it down at least by $150.00. I hate that I have to use my over time money for consumer debt but you do what you must. The next thing is that starting next month I have to decide if I will focus on my vet bills fund or my car fund. But that’s a discussion for another day.

On a side not as of today I have been working for the Bank exactly 1 year. Gosh how time flies.

Happy About Paying bills?

I started writing a blog post while at work today. However I forgot to email it to myself so its currently siting on my desktop at work. oh well. Yesterday I got my Roger's bill in and I was every excited to get it. Last month when I called Roger's in an attempt to reduce my cell bill or to find out how much it would cost me to brake my contract. By the end of the conversation the agent was able to drop by bill by $15.50, so I excited to see that my bill this month is $75.45. Since I budget $100 every month for my phone that means that I have almost $25 I can snowflake into my LoC, how wonderful is that!! Also I got a cheque in the mail as well today, I didn't expect one until June, but what ever works for government. I am not sure what I will do with the cheque ideally, I would like to put it into my LoC. But we will see how everything goes.

Andrea over at So Over Debt blogged about wanting to buy an ipad, she has put the vote to her readers. I voted for her to put the money towards her credit card. The comment on her previous post mentioned a lady by the name of Suze Orman. I had never heard of her and didn't take much note of the name until I turned on the TV and by chance landed on CNBC and her show happened to be on. From what I saw it seamed very 'american' lots of flash and fast talking. I found some of her comments a bit extreme, I mean who needs $5,000 in income monthly when they are 'retired' with no debt!!  But that's my view at least. Any ways it was interesting to see the show and she had some valid points. 

I have GOOD NEWS!!!

Today I went to the TD bank to finally deposit my GST cheque in to my line of credit, a whopping $62.50.  This is not my good news per say thought at the end of the month when I find out how much I have been able to put on to my line of credit it will definitely boost the number. NO the good news is I also asked what my balance was on my credit card. Guess what the number was... wait for it... ZERO!!!

That's right I am now CONSUMER DEBT FREE!!!!!!!

YAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

***jump up and down***

I am so excited, my friend drove me to the bank and I told him first. But besides him you my friends  are the second people I have told.

I haven't bothered to tell my mom or my BF... I want to saver the moment with people who will understand  how I feel. This means that there will be extra money this month I can put into my line of credit!! Snowball here I come!!




I had so much more I wanted to blog about today but I am to excited so it will have to wait until tomorrow.

More Banking Woes

On Tuesday I went into the bank to discover that my Company Bank had over drafted my account again by $8 (5 fee for every NSF change).  It was after work just before they were going to close and she the teller said she would reverse the charges. Apparently since I had a staff account it shouldn't have charged me. Wednesday I went a gain into the bank and blasted the teller and branch manager about why this was happening. Any ways they said they would do it and in fact it had nothing to do with my account being staff but that the branch could reverse the  charges as a courtesy. But it would take 24h to reverse the charges. At lunch I went down stars to deposit my GST cheque in my Company Account so as to protect myself from any other charges. I got the same teller and i apologized profusely because it was unfair of me to blast her the way  I did. After I deposited my GST cheque and left i looked at my receipt and my account was back to  normal. I guess 24h turns into 4h when you make a fuss.

In other news after work tonight I am finally going to get to a  Scotia bank to deposit my Tax Return cheque. I am so excited!

Tax Return, GST and Banking Woes

I have become a bad case of what not have happen when dealing with Banks, Gail would be so disappointed in me. Today after work I went to the ATM to see if my $50 deposit had gone through OK, only to find my account was in the negatives again. If screaming in a work environment was considered OK, trust me my friends in Australia would have heard me!! Any ways I walked in to the bank branch before it closed to talk to a teller about this. I explained that I had already talked to ING about over drafting my account but that I had deposited $50 into the account to being it back up to a balance of $2. She told me that for every overdraft transaction the bank charged me $5 because my account was 'mistakenly' not treated as a staff account. I don't know why this is the case... I haven't been fired... and trust me when I leave the Company Bank this account with be Closed, CLOSED. The Teller told me she should reverse the charges tomorrow, since it was the end of the day. Now I will have to go down tomorrow at lunch to make sure the charges have been reversed, so that I don't have further issues with over draft charges. Honestly this is becoming one bad nightmare!!!

My GST cheque came in the mail last week ($62.50) it will go to my Line of Credit, when I get to the bank hopefully tomorrow.

My tax return finally came in on Monday. The total came to $2,178.23.

This is how I have decided to brake the money down.

$852.20 to wipe out my Consumer debt (Visa card debt)
$490 for Child Sponsorship renewal
$237.30 to my accountant for doing my taxes
$450.00 towards my Car Fund
$50.00 towards Retirement Fund
$98.73 towards What if ...Fund which will go towards my Anime North 2011 weekend

So tell me what do you think?? Any suggestions?? I am not going to get to the bank until after work tomorrow so any feedback is welcome!

bi-weekly finances, funds and relationship issues

As promised I am going to post my bi-weekly funds allocation. And just as I was about to write the first word I realized there was still a lot of money sitting in my checking account because I haven't actually moved any money around since I got home. The last few hours I have been going through a roller coaster of emotions and now I am just emotional zapped and don't even feel like talking about it or blogging, let alone doing any banking. However I have responsibilities so I just did the transfers. When I got home I was so ready to just rant about everything that had happened but my sister was home so she became my sound board. Now I am just drained and mellow.  Also for some reason when I last called in to ING to switch around the date my automatic withdrawals were to come out of my account they skipped the automatic withdrawal for this pay. So as a result I just cleared my Company Account and didn't even realize until I finished trans the money around and still have $119.00 left in my account instead of the $75 I was expecting.  A quick call to ING to find out what was going on and after trans of amounts to my back up Fund accounts and the issue has been sorted out. Only somehow I short changed my Retirement Fund by $6.00. And I have no idea how I did it!! So I have reduced my spending money by $5 to help make up the short fall, I will put the other $1 back at the end of the pay cycle.

                                                                 Pay: $1,098.89
TD line of credit~ $382.55
OSAP~ $117.45*
Visa~ $25*
Retirement fund~ $24
Emergency Fund~ $25
Christmas fund~ $40
Storage unit~$85*
Cat fund~ $50
Cat food fund~$20
Condo fund~ $5
Cell phone~ $50*
Company stock~$82.16
Spending money~ $70

* = money siting in bill account until the time comes to pay the bill.

On a side note my GST cheque came in for $62.50, so when I am next at the bank I will deposit it into my line of credit.

UPDATE: I didn't feel like finishing the post last night so I went to bed. Sorry for the tartyness.

GST, Taxes and Debt Repayment Musings

I got another GST cheque in the mail a total of $65.00 which will get deposited in my TD account when I get the chance. I also got in the mail a T4A statement. To the best of my knowledge it looks like it has to do with the Canada Student Loans Program but I have never received anything like this in the mail before. So if anyone knows anything about the purpose of this form please let me know.

For a while I have been thinking about doing my own taxes. Many other PF bloggers do there own, but many others don't. I have been debating back and forth about it. This year I can't since there are forms that I fill out so my parents can use the tuition tax brake, as it does little for me. But next year I was thinking of doing them myself. I am definitely glad that I have an accountant for this years taxes since I now have a T4A form and other OSAP related forms that I have never dealt with  before.

I have been musing about a few things over the last little while and I would like to bounce a few things off you. As everyone knows I have been working away at my line of credit. But I have been wondering if it would be better to switch focus on my OSAP. The reason for this is that it is a smaller number and the it would feel like  a grand accomplishment to get at least one of my student loans paid off. The other thing is that because I have been focusing on my TD line of credit I have been only paying $50 towards my visa. While its doing down its slow... slow... slow progress. I feel strapped with it being almost at max. Another thing is that there are things coming up in the next couple of months that I will need to use the card for. It is easier to do this when the card is at 0$ since than your only budgeting for the amount you have put on it.  So I am wondering if it makes seance to take a month off putting money into my student debt besides the min payments and just dump everything into my visa to get it paid off. Or should I wait until my tax return and use that instead of putting it into my line of credit. Or if it is large enough would it make more seance to dump the full tax refund  amount into my OSAP which will knock a large chunk off. And make it feel as though its going down faster.

Do you see what I mean about musing over every thing. The other side to all this is that I feel like I am not making any progress because I only paid min. payments this last pay and put nothing into my funds. And when next pay roles around I might feel better about paying things down. As well I might be jumping the gun with everything because I haven't even put my revamped March budget to the test.

I think I might be suffering a bad case of the February blues complied with the debt fatigue. 

Good Bye Vacation Fund and Line of Credit Update

If you look to your right you will notice that I no longer have a vacation fund bar graph. I used up all the money in the account and shamefully dipped into my retirement fund account to cover the rest of the trip cost. This is  one of the reasons I decided to change the name of my general savings account to retirement fund so that it would no longer be used for 'general use.' Any ways since I have for the most part paid and this is the last major trip I will being taking in a while I have decided to get ride of the fund for now. 

I am  a little behind on my updates, I am sorry about that. I have great news I had planed to have my line of credit down to $-32,000.00. I have accomplished this, my line of credit is currently standing at $-31,965.95 which is LOWER than 32,000.00. How wonderful is this!!!

Recap of amounts put in:
Dec.31  LoC balance: -32,915.15
Jan 4 deposit: +30.00 (Dec. 2011, snowflake)
Jan 4 deposit: +200.00 (Dec. 31 pay day deposit)
Jan 10 deposit: +35.00 (Xmas money)
Jan 14 deposit:+28.64 (snowflake)
Jan 14 deposit: +300.00 (Jan pay day deposit)
Jan17 deposit: + 62.50 (GST cheque)
Jan 28 deposit: + 17.07 (Snowflake)
Jan 31 deposit: +400.00 (Jan pay day deposit)
Jan 31 interest: -124.01

END BALANCE: $ -31,965.95

The exciting thing is that I paid $2.11 less in interest as December's interest was $126.12 every cent counts! To the best of my knowledge the interest rate between the two months stayed the same. But until the paper work comes in from the bank I won't know for sure. The bank isn't able to tell me this stuff over the phone... sigh.

Oh and incase you'd like to know last month I put in $719.90 beyond my min. line of credit payment.

TD Line of Credit and shopping bans

Yesterday when I deposited my GST cheque I asked for an updated balance. My current balance is $-32,259.01. Assuming that the interest is roughly the same as last month (126.12) and I put another 300 next pay my balance will be 32,085.02. Only $85.02  away form having it at 32,000.00!! So I am going to up my amount to 400, this way I will definitely be at or under the 32,000.00.  I'm not sure how the numbers will work out but I am sure I can make it happen!! I am so excited about the idea!!!

Recently I have been mussing about getting rid of my Chapter's Member's Card it costs about $20-30 and gets you money off every time you buy books. The catch is you have to buy a lot of books to make it worth the money. In the past I have always just paid the fee. Justifying it with, "I always buy lots of books, its worth it." In the past I have bought a lot of books from there. But one of my goals for 2011 is to read 50 books I already own. So paying the money to buy more books would be kinda counter productive. I told my BF that I was planning to give up buying books and he thought I was joking. It is true I am a book-holic, I admit my weakness. He doesn't think I can do it. And I admit there are 2 books that Chapters has that I want to get.

I wonder if after Feb 1 (since that's when the 2nd book comes out) I should put myself on a book buying ban, like the cloths shopping ban that other bloggers, go on. What do you think...

I have to decide though... if I will only include new books or second handbooks a well. The thing with second hand books is that when you are trying to complete a series that has been out of date for over 20 years you have to grab it when you see it.  Or does that defeat the purpose of ___ buying ban? I am new to this I have never deprived myself of doing something I enjoy for the sake of finances. Actually maybe before I do decide to do a book buying ban I should find out how much I have spend on books in the past.

Any thoughts...

GST Cheque

I finally got around to depositing my GST cheque in to my TD line of credit today. It wasn't a grand a mount but $62.50 less I have to put into it.  My mom had a new sliding glass door and windows put in this past year but the window people didn't insulate around the door we discovered. So I ripped all the old trim off and found massive gaps between the window and the door frame. The largest being 2 inch. Mom got the spray filler foam.  I have gone through 1 large bottle and a small bottle. The project isn't done as I ran out of foam but you can still feel the difference. I highly recommend anyone with draughty windows check to see if its insulated properly and if not spend the extra money and get this stuff!!

TD Line of Credit and GST

Yesterday I got my GST cheque in the mail which is $62. 50. I planned to put it in to my TD line of credit, yesterday but didn't have time to go to the bank. So when I am next there it will do it. I got my updated statement in the mail. My line of credit is at $-32, 915.15 not including the $230.00 I put on it  Dec. 31 which will show up on next month's bill.  When I called TD the current balance was 32,685.15, this includes the $230 and will be on the number I will update my tracker to on the right.

When I called TD to get my updated line of credit amount for my net worth numbers I asked the guy what my monthly bills will look like once they add the principle.  Every time I have called them or walked into a branch no one will given me an answer to the question or even explain to me how they calculate the principle amount. Now this I find rather strange, after all TD is a bank and they are in the business of making money not giving it way for free. The lack of information TD has been willing to share about the process of paying them back has been minimal. Any ways I finally got it out of him, grudgingly. It was like pulling teeth.

So hears how it works: Lets assume that I stop paying anything into the principle now and only pay the interest. When Sept. 2011 roles around my line of credit will have an outstanding balance of -32,685.15. Now they factor min. payments of 1% of the balance. So this would mean $326.68, how he explained it to me was that this would also include my interest payments which are currently $126.12 a month.  If you calculate that 326.68-126.12= 200.56 will be the amount that goes directly into the principle amount each month.  The interest is calculated at a rate of 4.5% a month and this also assuming that the intrest stays the same for the next X number of years. If these factors all stay the same it will take me 1184.24 months or  98 years (1184.24/12 months a year) to pay it off.  98 YEARS!!!!

This sounds a bit crazy to me so he said no I think they make you pay 326.68 plus the interest each month. If this is the way they do it then it would be a payment of 326. 68+ 126.12 = 452.80. This is of course assuming that the interest of 4.5% stays the same from now until Sept. 2011. If this is the case then it will take me 100. 05 (32.685.15/ 326.86)  months to pay it off OR 8.33 years (100.05 months/ 12 months in a year). THUS 8.33 YEARS!!!!!

Now how much will I have paid in interest.... I have no idea. If some one is good with numbers and wants to solve that riddle, be my guest.... actually please do as I would love to know myself. Also I would love to know if my calculations are correct.

As I write this down I am getting a budget facial... Max comes highly recommended if anyone wants to give it a go! ;)

HST/GST Cheque and Vacation Fund

Today I came home from work to find a letter in the mail. It came in a nondescript grey envelope with Revenue Canada as the return address. It turns out the Government is sending out Christmas bonuses as well this year as they sent me a cheque for $100. Getting 'free' money in the mail is always good however the dilemma is what does one do with it now... sigh

So yesterday I said I would put what was left over from my chequing account into my TD line of credit. Now though with this cheque (which is definitely going into my line of credit) maybe I should use the extra money for my vacation fund; which needs major work.

Oh I have great news I got the vacation I wanted so besides being able afford it and booking it I am all set to go to Cuba for my academic conference. I am so excited!!!

decisions decisions...

This is such a pain I had it all mapped out yesterday. I was feeling really happy about it all the bases (car fund, vacation fund, student debt) were all getting a little something, something. Now its all off balance.

Who ever thought that having something would be more complicated then having nothing.

Any advice?

Plan of Attack: Student Debt Part 2

I blogged a little while back about the size of my student debt. To recap my TD Canadatrust Student line of credit is $34, 380.00. Now my line of credit was originally only support to go to $34,000.00, but for a couple of months during the summer I did not pay my minimum payment on it. This happened because for a couple of months while I was still taking my last summer course to finish my degree I was not working. Never do as I did. Not paying your monthly minimum is a bad idea. So when it came time to catch up my first payment was $700.00. It was a real squeeze. Since I started my new full time job I have been putting in $150.00 every bi-weekly paycheque. So about $300.00 a month. As well in Ontario we get GST/ HST cheques from the government. So every one I get I will continue to put into my student debt. My goal before September 2011 is to get a significant about of the principle down. So that when October 2011 roles around and they add principle on top of the interest to my monthly payments I will hopefully not be paying $700.00 each month.

What about my National Student Loan you ask? Well I do not start making payments on it until February 2011. So until then I am focusing on my TD student loan.

Of course don't forget that I have also had several other sundry debts as well. In total $727. 41 which I have systematically reduced down to $192.80.

Focusing only on the TD line of credit at $34,380.81 and my sundry debts at $727.41, how much have I paid off since August 23, 2010?

As of the end of October 2010 I have put in $776.44 bringing by debt down to $33,604.37.

As of November 10th 2010 I have paid down $534.61 in sundry debt.

In total I have paid down $776.44 + $ 533.61= $1310.05 in debt.

So that leaves me with $34,380.81 +$776.44+ 13,058.00 -$1310.05 =$46,905.20 in debt

As of November 16th 2010 debt remaining: $46,905.20 (including OSAP debt)