Weekly Money Check-Up

Weekly Money Check-Up is a fill-in-the blank post once a week, from MPP ...

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on  cat litter and I have all ready mentioned how unhappy I am about that.

2. Today I feel blah towards money. I don't feel like I am getting a head with things, yet at the same time I know there is no such thing as instant gratification with this journey. 

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was I sent off my paper work to enrol in my company stock. I know it will 'cost me'  but the fact that I have done it makes me happy.

4. I will consider this week a success if  I have money the night before pay day to role into my retirement fund to reduce the amount I owe it.

5. For the Super Bowl, I  did house work. Not super unexciting but I felt good about it. I also started cataloguing my books, 4 shelf's done 19 to go.

Budgeting is Just Planing in Disguise

As I mentioned yesterday I have been doing a lot budgeting to make sure that I pay bills before I leave for Cuba and any bills that I can hold off paying until after I get back. Its been a balancing act and my calculator has never been out of reach. Its funny while I don't use it at work I always being it with me, I actually start making my bi-weekly budgets at my desk. Any ways I digress...

The key to a successful budget is the planing part. Take for example the cat litter I bought yesterday for almost $15.00 for 22kg (trust me I gritted my teeth about it). Normally cat litter at Cosco cost me $7.49 and when they have the coupons I get $2 off so it only costs me $5.49. Now we normally always pick up 2 boxes of about 18kg each (we have 3 cats its a necessity). When we we get down to 1 box we stick it on the list and get more. Some how the system got derailed and when I mentioned we were on the last box it did NOT get put on the list.  As a result when mom went out shopping on Saturday she didn't get cat litter. So yesterday I had to go to Zellers last minute to get it. We were in desperate need and one litter box down without it... never a good thing in our house. Mom having spent all her money yesterday couldn't afford to pick it up.  So I paied for it.  Now don't get me wrong I am not complaining about paying for it, what galls me is OVER PAYING!! For the cost of two boxes at Cosco I paid the same amount for one at Zellers and I got less bang for my buck!! Instead of spending 15.00 on 36kg of cat litter I spend 15.00 and only got 22kg. This is where the planing comes in, had it been put on the list mom would have known we were out. But even if she wasn't able to pay for it, I would have, but at Cosco. Worse thing  about this whole situation is we will still have to get more litter in a week or two.

Lesson Learned: great budgeting and saving money comes down to planning!!

Weekly Spending Recap Feb.1-6th 2010

February 1 (Tuesday)
$5.*** For breakfast paid in cash from money taken out of ATM Jan. 31
$-594.00 trans from one bank to another for ING cheque

February 2 (Wednesday)
No Spend Day

February 3 (Thursday)
No Spend Day

February 4 (Friday)
No Spend Day

February 5 (Saturday)
No Spend Day

February 6 (Sunday)
$-14.11 Zellers (cat litter)

Its refreshing to get back to the no spend days. I have 4 days until pay day. I dearly hope I make out ok.

I have spent the last couple of days crunching numbers both for this months bills and for my revamped March till August budgets. Once I know everything for sure I am going to share them with you.   

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.

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. 

Weekly Spending Recap Jan. 24-31th 2010

January 24 (Monday)
No Spend Day

January 25 (Tuesday)
No Spend Day

January 26 (Wednesday)
$17.07 TD line of credit snowflake
No Spend Day

January 27 (Thursday)
Pay day funds paid

January 28 (Friday)
$50.00  Visa bill
$94.25 Cell bill

January 29 (Saturday)
$1553.16 Flight Centre for Cuba trip

January 30 (Sunday)
$5.65 food from subway
$40. 00 taken out of ATM

January 31 (Monday)
$20 taken out at ATM
$15.80 Parliament Hill Boutique Ottawa
$9.95 monthly fee

This was a bad week for spending money. I had a great time in Ottawa and it was worth the money. But I am feeling a bit pinched until pay day with less then 40 in the bank. I am hopefully working this whole weekend so that will cut back on the spending. Also now that I am home I will happily got back to taking my lunch to work.