Bi-Weekly Spending Recap January 9-22

January 9
No spend Day
January 10
No Spend day
January 11
No Spend day
January 12
No Spend Day
January 13
No Spend Day
January 14
No Spend Day
January 15
No Spend day
January 16
$10.17~Body Shop
January 17
$41.68~ Gas
January 18
$5.63~ Value Village
$11.28~ Value Village
$5.64~ Talize
$4.20~ Liquidation world
$3.39~ Dollarama
$11.87~ Chapters
January 19
$38.00~ movie tickets *on visa
January 20
No spend Day
January 21
No Spend Day
January 22
$10 flea market and home hardware


~~ I think this might have been my  best two weeks ever!!

Pay Day

I got paid today... and so did my funds, debt and bills.

 I paid my visa off completely all $465.81 of it. Made up from the $200 I put in from my second job and the $265.81 I paid today from my left over time and such. I am now consumer debt free again. It was a bit touch and go while I was figuring it out but it all worked out in the end. After I paid the rest of my visa I had $1.50 which was snowflaked into my Christmas fund. I didn't get it to $800 as I had hoped but its close. Also I paid my phone bill. I budgeted $100 and it was $74.24, so I snowflaked the $25.76 into my LoC. In my budget notes was reminder to pay off the cost of gas I put on my visa from my gas fund. But since I paid the visa I snowflaked that money into my LoC, $23.82. I also found 10 cents in my bag and one cent on the floor at the bank so I snow flaked that into my LoC$ 0.11.

As for bills, I have paid my visa, cell, LoC, car insurance and OSAP. The only thing left out standing is the storage until and I have to call on that tomorrow.

Total snowflakes for this pay 1.50 + 25.76+ 23.82+ 0.11 = $51.19+441.94 = $493.13 (total in snowflake jar)

I have updated my side bars.

I was feeling so rich, now I feel poor again... oh well such is life. 

Snowflaking for the 'Good of it"

On Wednesday I got paid by my second job. Not a lot because frankly the week before I didn’t work a lot. But it was just under $90 by a few cents. For a while I flirted with what to do with it. Originally when I put the goal of getting a second job this year on my list it was to use the money to pay down my LoC. And I have for the most part, if I got paid $180, $150 would to my LoC and the other $40 would go to other stuff, maybe $20 for gas and $20 into my What if fund.  So I was pondering what to do with my less then $90 dollars. And I had this desire to allocate it to something other then my LoC, a very scary feeling. I ended up ‘talking’ myself into just dumping the whole amount into my LoC instead of splitting the amount up.

 Yesterday I got paid from my full time job and before I started moving around numbers I did a bit of calculations. As I was leaving the office on my way to my car I started to feel less ‘strapped.’ It's was a completely psychological feeling but a dangerous one. I felt like I had ‘money to spend’. Today as I am writing thing I can tell you I am back to feeling ‘strapped’ finically. Don’t get me wrong I didn’t go out and blow everything I made. I did spend it, but on things like my vet bills fund, retirement fund, car fund and the list goes on. However after I dished the allocated money out (I get shift premiums which I never budget for because it’s a varying amount) I have $58.48 left. $10 I put back into my Emergency Fund because I took $10 out of it earlier in the week, so that left me with $48.48. 


The question becomes though what do I do with the extra money. 
This is the most dangers kind of money I think. It’s these little amounts that slip away from you. So when you get your T4 statement around tax time and it says you made XX over your normal pay which means to actually made $40,000 instead of $35,000 and you can’t remember what you did with that $5,000. It just simply slipped away; it’s the $48.48 dollar amounts that add up to that $5,000 you can’t remember what you did with.

This was my delma last night what to do with that money. In the end I decided to put it in to my LoC. But I did realize something. I feel like I never make any progress on my funds, I think I piecemeal my pay to much. I am looking forward to when my Xmas fund is done so I can reallocate it. Maybe it makes sense to dedicate one month and put all the money in to one fund and all the money into another fund when the first fund’s dollar cap has been hit. What to you think???

Musings and Reflections on Advice, Weekly Spending Re-cap and Weekly Money Check Up

I started the below post while at work during a brain brake form studying for my LLQP exam. I went into work 2.5 h early to try and get more studying in. But by the end of the day, I am feeling very negative about my changes of passing. I feel like a failure, there are a lot of hopes on my ability to pass this test and I feel like its not going to happen because of brain's ability to retain things, something I struggled throughout school with. It's got to the point were I have figured out what I will say in a job interview when I get asked how come I was only at Bank X for 10 months. Any ways on to something a little less depressing.


On my last post I mentioned I have been mussing with what to do with the $1,000 I have in a mutual fund. Out my Window (see comments) motioned that investing is ‘for the long haul’ and she is right however this is not HOW I wanted to invest for the long haul. When I do start to invest I will likely be following the  Lazy investor method of investing. And mutual funds are not going to be part of my investment strategy. Out My Window is right, I did know when I ‘bought’ the mutual fun that it would likely be a 5 year thing and I am impatient with it. I just don’t feel anymore that the cost is out weighting the potential long term benefits. Also I have recently learned that Mutual funds are considered ‘risky investments' in the world of insurance/ investments. I fell I was mislead by the bank rep who told me mutual funds were save especially the one I have which is a ‘balance fund.’ I think what I should have been told was mutual funds are a risky investment but a balanced fund is a less risky mutual fund option. 


Little Lamb suggested I take the money out and put it into my emergency fund. This isn’t an idea I had thought about. Actually it was never considered because I feel that if I haven’t used the money now it should be ‘returned to OSAP’ just like I did with the $3,000 I had left over in summer OSAP last year. Though I might have to consider it depending on what happens by the end of this month.

As for the job aspect, depending on how well this test goes I might just be looking for a new job. However I don’t have any desire to look for a better/ higher paying job until after Dec 2011 when bank STI is paid out and salary increases are offered. Provided I pass my LLQP I am entitled to $2,000-4,000 pay increase which would put me at just under $40,000. I have been debating on going back to school in Sept 2012 depending on how things go at work. I want to take some computer courses and brush up on my language skills. Work is willing to accommodate employees who have been with the company longer than 18 months and I will be at 2 years at that point.  However, all these plans hinge on this LLQP certificate, and if that falls to pieces than I will be job hunting again.


I just want to say thank you to Out My Window, Little Lamb and Rafiki for commenting and giving me their advice. Having a third party take a look at a problem they are not personally connected to often provides a clearer idea of what to do. I still haven't decided what to do with it but I think I will hold off until stuff at work has been sorted out. 

Weekly Spending Re-cap May 30-June 5 2011

May 30 (Monday) 
$16.00 taxi $28.25 via rail ticket $20.00 transit tokens


May 31 (Tuesday)
 No Spend Day


June 1 (Wednesday)
 $2.75 MacDonald's 


June 2 (Thursday) 
Snowflaked 4.25+3.25= $7.50 jar at: $339.32  into LoC for June (left over from last pay/AN weekend spending)
No Spend Day


June 3 (Friday) 
$6.77 on a second hand DVD


June 4 (Saturday) 
No Spend Day


June 5 (Sunday)
 No Spend Day

Weekly Money Check Up

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on TTC tokens unless you count my LoC payment but I don't because its budged for.

2. Today I am thankful a job, I might be out of one soon,  its best to be thankful for what you have got! 

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was clean my room, I had let it slip to a right mess worse than it normally is at the end of the work week. I also catalogued another case of books, so I am making progress on my 2011Goals, slow progress but progress.


4. I will consider this week a success if I pass my pre-qualifier LLQP and email my professor about getting my Duke of ED trip book sighed.


5. One of my pet peeves is when friends don’t get that I need time to study and make any excuse to show up at my door. Case in point: a friend said he had something he wanted to give me so he showed up sat morning which through my morning study out the window, only to give me $1 dollar, granted it was a special Olympic addition but REALY this was his MUST give me! And than of course mom came home and well the rest is history as they say. See Sunday’s post.

Rejigging the Budget for May and June

Yesterday My BF came across town to see me. We had a wonderful time and it was lovely to see him; since we haven’t seen much of each in the last 2 weeks. At one point as we were kissing I was thinking about budgets. Does that make me pathetic or what! In my defense it’s been on my mind for a while now. With April almost over and May upon us its time to structure May’s budget. 


May, will be the first month for a lot of things including changes to my budget structure. Even more so when June comes.  In June I will be on flex hours and we also have a 3 pay month. My BF’s b-day is also in June so I will need to do some budgeting for his gift. He doesn’t know it yet but I plan to get his parent’s involved. This coming Monday the cats go in for their annual checkups. Depending on how that turns out, it will dictate further changes to the budget. Last but not least Anime North is coming happening in May and I have financial obligations for the hotel cost that was booked last May, as well as food and other convention costs. Having a hard time following… so I am I. All these things have been bouncing around in my head and I haven’t managed to sort them out into a concrete budget for May or June as result. I am going to try and lay it all out a little better for you and for me.


This past week I have been aggressively snowflaking trying to get my LoC down to $30,000.00. I had an account set a side as a bill slush fund. After paying the storage until I decided to see how much was left in the account. I decided to leave $170 in the account to cover the cost of the storage until for next month and I left $12.00 to cover any bank fees, more of a slush fund really. What was left over was rolled in to my LoC. However now that the money has been put aside I don’t need to budget for the unit next month. This gives me $170 flexibility to role into my What if… fund for Anime North.


May will be the first month that I don’t have to ‘officially’ make a visa payment *yahoo*. I have rolled this money since last pay into my LoC, and will continue to do so in May and June.


I mentioned the cats are going in. If after there appointment I still have money left over in my cat fund I am debating about reducing my monthly contribution from $100 to $50 and diverting the other $50 into a house/condo/triplex fund. I am hoping that I will have enough money in my What If …fund that I won’t need to divert the money to cover my Anime North expenses. So I can start contributing to a condo fund.


In relation to June I have decided to role the 10% shift premiums into my car fund. I think this is the right thing to do. Since I am doing this, does it make sense to snowflake the left over pay from #3 into my line of credit or into my car fund as well? I think it will be about $300. Ideally I would like to put it into my line of credit because I think it will drop it to about $28,000.00 at that point. However it might just push my car fund to the finish line.


Do you see what I mean about having lots of things rolling round in my mind? The fact that until some things -happen like the vet appointment- I can’t finalize the budget is driving me nuts! Normally this stuff is sorted out the week before pay day #1.


PS: I just got off the phone with OSAP and I got my updated balance. My outstanding balance is $-9,838.14 that's a decrease of $572.  If I wasn't so focused on my LoC, I could easily have it paid off. But come September my LoC payments are going to jump through the roof!! Next year I am going to make it my New Years resolution to have it paid off by the end of the year. I am going to update my side bar now!

Bi-weekly Pay, Fund Allotment and Playing with Money

It was payday this last Thursday. I didn’t however move money around until yesterday.  As it turns out I was in over draft again by $0.11 and because I always have my Work Bank Account at zero they dipped into over draft again. What this all means is next month I will be paying over draft on overdraft… ARGGGG!!! I fell like such a (fill in blank). It bothers me because I have never had nor neared overdraft. In my mind when the bank balance says zero then that’s it. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Also in those rare occasions where I want on the read with Scotia I never got charged over draft interest. So I now have had to leave $2 in the account so as to stop these charges once and for all.

I made sure that I walked into the bank and withdraw the money that was left in my account AFTER ING had taken the money out. I use to do email money transfers as we are allowed 2 free, on one month billing cycle. I thought I had been ok that I hadn’t gone over the 2 transfers. However it has been indicated to me that I did which is how my account ended up in the negative.  Another reason I was given because I called in twice to find out how the charge happened; was that the ING stuff comes out of my account at 12am the day I picked and my pay comes in at 4ish in the morning. So hopefully by resetting my ING money to come out the day after I get paid this will stop the over draft interest as well.  Than on Fridays I will be whipping my account out at a branch and walking it over to Scotia. The hope is that all this will brake the gross cycle of over draft interest I have been paying. After all I worked hard for those 11 cents!!

My last month’s bill for Rogers was way over budget due to the stuff with Cuba, coming in at $155.83, thus $55.83 over. So I have had to play around with the numbers again. I had $28.00 left over from last pay. This was snowflaked into my bills account to help cover this cost. I had $25 (in cash) left over from the cost of my licence renewal that I was going to put into my car fund. This will go into my visa account and my allotted $25 from this pay for my visa will be rolled into my Rogers bill to cover the excess cost of the cell phone bill. This means that I will have $54.00 extra for this bill.

My Company Stock contribution was dropped .I would like in the future to make the full 10% which is $136.93. However I really can’t at this point, so I have dropped it down to 6% which is $82.16 a pay. My Bank only matches up to 50% of your contribution up to 6% which means that they will match 3% of my 6% contribution. You are allowed to put up to 10% but the Bank only matches up to 6%.

I have also added my Emergency fund to my direct withdrawals with ING. Starting this last pay ING will now take of $50 bi-weekly off my pay, $25 for my retirement fund and $25 for my emergency fund.

Last but not least, I have $7.28 that I am carrying around with me until I can get to a TD bank. This money will be snowflaked into my Line of credit.

Bi-weekly pay and fund allotment:

               Amount (after stock contribution): $1, 011.73

TD Line of Credit: $400

OSAP:  $0

Visa: $25

Retirement fund: $25

Emergency fund: $25

Christmas fund: $40

Storage Unit: $85

Vet bills Fund: $100 (50 for last pay and 50 from this pay)

Cell phone: $100 (50 for last pay and 50 from this pay)

Car Fund: $100.00

Spending money: $75

Bills paid to date for this month:

TD Line of credit: $700

OSAP: $300

Visa Card: $25.00

Cell phone: $155.83

Back to Reality

Yesterday I got back from Cuba. I had a lovely time and I came back with money in my pocket, which makes me very HAPPY!! After getting off the plane I got back to reality. I went to the bank traded money around, paid bills and picked up my BF at the airport who spend the past 10 days in Newfoundland.  I also have just set up my 'The What if...Fund'. This fund is basically designed to be an in between fund for things that come up that are just A) oops forgot to put money aside for this or B) money has not been budgeted for this but I want it/need it or C) something needs to get fixed. Option C is currently in effect as my sewing machine is in repair.

Bi-Weekly Budget

                                               Amount: $1,093.89

                                               Amount after ING: $1,043.82 ($-25)

Retirement fund: $50.00

Storage unit $75.00

TD Line of credit: $300.00

Xmas Fund: $80.00

Cat fund: $100.00

Cell phone: $94.86

Car Fund: $50.00

Visa: $50.00

Cat food fund: $10.00

Emergency Fund: $25.00

The What If… fund: $10.00

Licensing fee: $50.00

OSAP: $82.55

Spending money: $67.00

Two Week Spending Recap Feb 14-27, 2011

February 14 (Monday)

$-17.91 Cineplex

February 15 (Tuesday)

$-24.00 for Transit Tickets

February 16 (Wednesday)

No Spend Day

February 17 (Thursday)

No Spend Day

February 18 (Friday)

No Spend Day

February 19 (Saturday)

$-168.37 self store fee for march

February 20 (Sunday)

 $23 budgeted, $13 spent

February 21 (Monday)

$70 budgeted, $30 spent

February 22 (Tuesday)

$60 budgeted, $29 spent

February 23 (Wednesday)

 $60 budgeted, $23 spent 

February 24 (Thursday)

$80 budgeted, $69 spent

$25.00 to retirement fund

February 25 (Friday)

$80 budgeted, no idea who much was left over/ spent

$-2.00 for a tea at the airport

February 26 (Saturday)

$-94.64 Roger’s bill

$-50.00 for visa bill

February 27 (Sunday)

$-7.55 Go train ticket from Whitby to Toronto 

I took $500 cash as my spending money for Cuba. After converting it I got $457.35 CUC back. Through out the week I budgeted $23, $60, $70 and $80 depending on the day. I never once spent the full amount on any given day. As such after paying my exit tax ($25.00) and converting my money back from CUC to Canadian dollars I had left Cuba with $205.00 in my pocket. I debated what to do with it. In the end I have decided to use it to pay for the repairs on my sewing machine and for my Anime North ticket. This way I can 1) finish my Halloween costume for reuse at Anime North and 2) pay for my ticket with out affecting my March budget. 

Bi-weekly Budget

First off I would like to say that I am NOT HAPPY with this pay's budget. Everything is bare bones. I have redone this budget 9 times and I can't seem to squeeze the live out of a dead duck as they say. The other major problem for me is while I am in Cuba I get paid. The problem with this is I will not have access to the net so I can't pay any bills and by the time I get back I will not have enough time to pay most of the bills with out everything being late. As much as I am looking forward to Cuba, I am just as much looking forward to having done with financially so I can go back to normal budgeting.


                                                     Amount: 1100.50
TD Line of credit: 125
OSAP: 117.45
Storage unit: 168.37
Vacation: 500
License fee: 50
Cat food: 60.00
Cat food fund:10
Left over: 69.68 (for Vday and the next 2 weeks and transit)

Next pay is major catch up for all the funds that got neglected this time around.

Bi-Weekly Finances and Funds

Today is pay day! last night I moved the last of last pays money into my line of credit YAH! for snowflakes. A grand amount of $28.64 which brings my jar to $63.53. All in my line of credit *big smile* the faster I can get that principle down the happier I will be.

I mentioned in a earlier post in December that I was increasing my TD line of credit payment to $300 starting in Jan. I had thought it might be a tight budget because I had anticipated having a car by now. But that hasn't happened and its not likely to happen until maybe March or April... sigh. That fund is on hold until my vacation fund catches up because I have a conference in Cuba in Feb. that I am going to and haven't even booked it yet. *EKKK* I want to pay it all in cash, truthfully there isn't any other option any ways, since I have no available credit., which is not a bad thing really.

I have applied for a part time job. Stats Canada is hiring part time staff between early March - end of July. The hourly pay is $14.72-18.04 (for supervisors). I really hope I get the job.  This will be a great way to add extra money to my line of credit. As all the money I get from a second job will be allocated to debt repayment.

With out any further ado:                       net pay:  $1,178.98

TD line of credit: 300.00
Cat fund: 50.00
Vacation fund: 450.00
Xmas fund: 40.00
Storage unit: 100.00
10% fund (general savings): 153.40
Spending money: 85.58

Transactions have been done I will endeavour to update my trackers. I no longer pay my visa bill on the first pay of the month because of what happened last time. So it will get paid next pay along with my cell bill.

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.

Pay Day and Bi-weekly Spending

I got paid today and I got my company bonus. In total my net pay was $1094.84 and bonus was 303.70. Don't ask about my gross pay the discrepancy is depressing. Any ways the following is a brake down of how it was allocated:

TD line of credit: $200.00

Savings: $150.00 (currently in holding account until I decide if it is going into car fund or not)

Vacation Fund: $75.00

Cat Fund: $50.00

Visa bill: $50.00

Cell phone: $93.85

Car Fund: 250.00

Transit: $24.00

Christmas fund: $100.00 (currently in holding until I decide if i have missed anyone off my list if not its going into Vacation fund)

Cat food: $50.00

Pay back mom: $20.00

Spending money for next 2 weeks: $31.99

Bonus money ($303.70):

Car fund: $300.00

Vacation fund: $3.70

I have updated the following fund trackers: Car Fund, Cat Fund, Vacation Fund

SO there it is, money in... money out