Automation and Money

I have a confession. I have been neglecting my snowflaking account. I know I know... you all though I was going to say I racked up debt!! Trust, I'd very upset if that was the case. I just thought I would shame myself to get back on track. Because I know I have let the money slip off my accounting system.

 Another thing was unknowingly happening over the summer and I just didn't realize it. My base income went up over the summer and it went down and it went up and then it went down... yup you heard that right, 5 different base pay amounts.  All though my take home pay never went down enough for me to realize it. Which basically means that a couple hundred dollars was spend and not completely accounted for. I say that because I can account for it in my budget when I go back and see but I wish I had been more on top of it. For example I got a raise at work for getting my license I thought that I wouldn't get it on my pay until all of them had come in so not for another month. Turns out they added it in August. basically it works out to be about 50 dollars extra on my pay. Now because my base pay has gone up so has amount I get taken off to buy company stock. I want to make sure that the automatic savings got a boost too but since I don't know how everything will be effected I didn't boost it up to much. ING use to take out 50$ each pay, 25$ for retirement and 25$ for my emergency fund. Starting next pay they will be taking $60 off. $30 for my retirement fund and $30 for my emergency fund. Which works out to be an extra $20 off each month. I think with this and my stock increase I won't even notice that I am not 'spending' the pay increase. 

I think that's the best way to make savings painless. If you get a yearly raise, raise your automatic deductions. 

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!

weekly Spending Recap April 4-10, 2011

April 4 (Monday)
No Spend Day


April 5 (Tuesday)
No Spend Day

April 6 (Wednesday)
No Spend Day

April 7 (Thursday)
No Spend Day

April 8 (Friday)
No Spend Day

April 9 (Saturday)
No Spend Day

April 10 (Sunday)
$3 on Keno ticket to brake a $20 bill
$8.50 GO train ticket
$6.00 Hot dog and drink


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I mentioned the other day that ING hadn't taken the money out of my account. So I called them to ask them not to. The Rep I talked to told me that she wouldn't but well she did. Thus resulting in my Company Account being over drawn by $48. I freaked out when I found out yesterday. I am trying to put an end to these over draft charges and I am now going to have another month of them. So today in the poring rain I walked to the nearest Scotia ATM to take out 50 and than walked to the nearest Company Bank to deposit it in my account over drafted account. I am so frustrated with this whole situation.

I called my Company Bank about having overdraft protection put on my account. However the min amount I would have to have is $500 and they would have to pull a hard credit check. First off I don't need $500 of over draft protection I only need $50. And I really don't need the hit on my credit bureau. I have way to  may strikes against it as it is.  I just can't afford to have another one on it.

April's Monthly Goals

Paying Myself does monthly goals at the beginning of each month and then at the end does a goal round up. So I am going to steal borrow her idea.  Starting this month I am going to set monthly goals to help me progress through my yearly goals and just to get things done in a timely manner. And just like Paying Myself first I am going to split the goals up in to two groups: Professional and Personal

                                    Professional 


1) Have read the full text book for my LLQP
2) Have done notes for all parts of the LLQP
3) Have done all the multiple choice questions in the Q&A book

                                       Personal


1) Pay off visa card with tax return
2) Make charitable contribution
3) Write cheque to ING to link accounts
4) Get Rez project sighed by prof for Duke of Ed
5) Get vol. signed for Duke of Ed
6) Getting my line of credit under -30,000.000

I think that is ambitious enough for this month. I would love to add more things but I am afraid to over do it.

Weekly Money Check-Up And ING

Thank you MPP...


1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on much needed cat food ($48. 58)

2. Today I feel flat towards money. Last night I went to the movies and I paid for the condiments and my BF paid for the tickets. its only came to a little over $19 and then I got my 10% discount so it was under $17. Thank goodness for the discount because I would have had NFS, I am sure I have less then 1$ left in my account. And to be honest I am not sure I care. There is nothing I need nor anything I want. And provided I get to work ok tomorrow. I see no reason to spend money.

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was this past weekend I played the game Pictionary with my BF, his family and his brother's GF. We had a blast!!! It was a great night, best I have had in a long time.

4. I will consider this week a success if I get to work ok tomorrow, I get packed and on my plane this weekend after working an early morning Sat. shift.

5. This Valentine’s Day I am spending it with my BF who does way more for me then I deserve.


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I got a letter in the mail from ING. My cheque has been cashed, which means starting next month my automatic withdrawals will start to happen for my retirement fund. I now have to set up one for my emergency fund. The letter also confirmed that I should see additional $25 because I deposited more than $100 and used Jessie's Orange key for referral. I will get my own soon enough so expect to see it on my blog as well. I will have to drop Jessie a note to let her know to look out for the extra cash.

Saying No to RRSPs and Yes to TFSA

I mentioned yesterday that I had tried to open up a TFSA for my company stock. The first place I had started was with my employer bank to open up a staff account. The gentlemen on the other end of the phone asked me why I had not opened up RRSP. I explained that I had no interest that it was a tax deferral system and not a tax saving system. And since I am currently in the lowest tax bracket it made no scene to me to defer paying taxes now to later when I might be in a higher tax bracket. The guy launched into a spiel about how I would be in a lower tax bracket when I retired, and blah, blah, blah. I stopped him in mid sentence; there was no point in him wasting his breath. I said let me be frank with you last year I made less then 15,000 RRSP will do nothing for me!! This is of course not taking into consideration the political, charitable and education credits that I have built up over the years because my income while at school has been on average less than $5,000. The last nail in the coffin for RRSP for me is that I have over 10,000 of TFSA room to play with and before I go tax deferring my money I would rather max out my opportunity to completely shelter my money form tax in at TAX FREE SAVINGS ACCOUNT!! I know that the bank agents are pressured by the management to sell sell sell RRSP but come on commonsense should kick in when the answer of No is backed up with lots of solid reasons.

I was having this conversation with the bank agent while on the bus home and when I got off the phone the bus driver throw her two cents in. She said she thought I had made the right decision and that guy on the phone needed to learn to take NO for an answer.

This morning I wrote the cheque and sent it off to ING. I have also just sent off my paper work for entering into company stock.

Lat night I made my mom do a leg exercise with me to strengthen our core mussels. I use to be able to do 3 sets of 5min of this exercise no problem. I mean it would hurt afterwards and for the next few days but I still could do them. I am more out of shape than I thought. I struggled to do the exercise for just one set of 5min and had to take several brakes within the 5min. I clearly need this exercise and will now endeavour to do it everyday as it only takes about 5min any ways. Mom however might not be as enthusiastic to do it again. I will likely have to put her feat to the fire. :P

OSAP, ING, Company Stocks

I got a letter from OSAP in the mail today. It was an official receipt from them stating that last year I paid $197.50 in interest. Not to bad considering I put $3,000 into it.  I still have to write the cheque to send into ING, but its going to be off tomorrow. I also got an email form work saying that I am now eligible to take part in the company stock. I called the HR department to set up a TFSA to place my stocks. Talk about getting the run around, any ways I know that I have to enrol in the program first before I can set the TFSA account up. Ya know for all the flash that comes with the 'enrolment booklet' its exceptionally light on 'How to enrol.' I was planning on enrolling in March because that's when I thought eligible. Now I know I can do it now. I am nevus as hell, though I think doing it now will be good because by March I will have a better understanding on what my base income will be. So I can reformat the budget. I want to make sure everything is in place so I can get back on track in March. I booked my trip and I am looking forward to it. However it has wrecked havoc on my budget.

No Salsa tonight. We have had lots of snow and my dance partner decided he didn't want to risk it. 

ING and Fund Name Change

I sent up an ING account yesterday. One of the options they had was for them to do direct deposits from your 'normal' account to there's every week, bi-weekly or monthly. I decided to set up bi-weekly starting March 10th for $25.00. This isn't a lot of money I thought since I have never ever had a direct deposit system a mall number was the way to go. Also it means that I can budget the transfers being done for me since it should come out every pay day.

 You will notice on the right hand side I have changed my general savings funds (10% fund) name to Retirement fund. This is because this is what it should be. From now on it will be known as the Retirement Fund.

The ING fund is going to be the final home of my Retirement Fund. This however has left me with a bit of a problem. You see currently my Retirement Fund money is in my Scotia account and my new direct deposit will be coming from my paycheque account which is with a different bank. This means that I now have to transfer money form one bank account to another bank account. Then I have to write ING a cheque for it all from my paycheque account.

I hope to have all this done by the end of the week so I no longer have to look at my savings account in my regular banking. Thus allowing it to slowly grow with any interference on my part. 

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.

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.